7/31/24: Kamala Flips Swing States. Trump Implodes Project 2025, Israel Assassinates Hamas/Hezbollah Officials, Kamala Accidentally Reveals VP, Debate On JD Vance, Trump Betrays On Abortion
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Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Crystal, thank you so much for taking Ryan's place while he enjoys a nice vacation this week, a hard-earned vacation this week. It's great to have you here. Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm excited about the show we have planned. We've actually decided to do this, what we're affectionately calling the Karens for CounterPoints panel. So we're bringing in...

Some conservative ladies. It was actually my idea. I don't know why I decided that I wanted to be outnumbered on the show today, but bringing some conservative ladies to tackle some questions about, you know, J.D. Vance and how Republicans should be playing abortion. Also want to get their weigh in on who Kamala Harris's VP pick might be, should be, who they're sort of most worried about being on the ticket. So that should be really fun. Looking forward to that.

Lots of other news, though. Middle East once again on the brink of chaos. We've had two major assassinations by Israel in the span of 12 hours. Dr. Trita Parsi is going to join us to break down what this could mean and where we could be heading. And the answers are, frankly, terrifying. Also got new polls to dig into. Project 2025 in disarray. So lots to tackle this morning.

Yeah, absolutely. And producer Griffin has been kind enough to put this element, a one, for us to share. Some folks may remember I left The Federalist a couple of months ago and joined Unheard. And the goal all along was to launch a new show called Undercurrents. And it's up. And so a lot of people have been asking, what's the best way to support it?

And I just, first of all, it blows me away that people even ask that. But the best way to do sport is to go to undercurrents.tv and you can grab a subscription there. You get the whole show, premium features with Q&A, extra segments. Got to get you on, Crystal. That'll be a lot of fun.

I'd be happy to. Crystal, Ryan, Sagar, the whole gang. Got to get everyone on. But, you know, it's just been a blast so far. The YouTube channel is under Currents, so you can just go there, find it. You can subscribe. That is the most helpful thing, if you subscribe and watch the videos. So it's very, very exciting. Never wanted my own show, but it's very cool to have one, Crystal. Yeah.

It wanted you, apparently. I'm so happy for you, Emily, because you really are an independent thinker. And it seems like you've landed in the perfect place to just be able to say what you want to say, have on the guests you want to have on. The show is fantastic. So congrats to you and everybody go and support Emily over at UnHerd.

Thank you. I appreciate that so much, Crystal. Yeah, UnHerd is awesome. Just super, super independent and people with all kinds of different viewpoints. So it's a great place to be. Thanks, everyone, for the support. Let's get to the show because, man, the new polls on the general election, which now is Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris, continue to roll in. Let's go ahead and play this clip of Kamala Harris. This was last night. She's sort of

talking about, we're getting some previews of where the messaging is going here. So the momentum in this race is shifting and there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it. You may have noticed. So last week, you may have seen he pulled out of the debate in September he had previously agreed to.

So here's the thing. Here's the funny thing about that. Here's the funny thing about that. So he won't debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me. And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? Well, Donald.

I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say.

She's feeling herself. Oh, yeah. A lot of swagger there. Vibe shift from when it was Biden at the head of the ticket is like off the charts. There was Megan Thee Stallion was there. They were dancing to Not Like Us. You know, people were going crazy. The whole place was filled up. You know, she's able to

read a teleprompter with energy and vitality. She can get to just the one sentence. It's amazing. And she really does benefit. Like, I want to say, like, I do think on the stump off a teleprompter at these rallies, she is genuinely good. She's better than adequate. She's genuinely good. She hasn't had to do any of the things yet that have been difficult for her in the past. The tough interviews where she gets knocked off balance are not even really tough interviews where she gets knocked off balance, but just interviews where she gets knocked off balance.

the debate performances that were an issue for her last time. But Democrats have totally closed the enthusiasm gap. It seems crazy now that there was anyone who was arguing to keep Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. And so she's got a real momentum that is reflected not just in this enthusiastic crowd down in Georgia, but also by the polls that are coming out, which are starting to show her being not just where Biden was pre-debate, but actually exceedingly

Conceding his performance, even kind of at his peak, quote unquote, peak in this race. We can put this up on the screen, these polls that we have of the battleground states. Now, I want to say this is Morning Consult. They are not a highly rated pollster. So you should always take any polls with a grain of salt. But it's important to notice the shift in this poll from where they were with Biden to now where they are with Kamala Harris. So you now have Harris plus two.

in Arizona. Biden in this same poll never led in Arizona. You have Georgia at a tie. Biden never in Georgia got it to a tie again in the same poll. Michigan, this one's a little hard to believe, plus 11 for Harris.

Let's take that with a lot of grains of salt, but same movement, same direction as the other states. Nevada, Harris plus one. Wisconsin, Harris plus two. And then you've got Pennsylvania, Trump plus four, and North Carolina, Trump plus two. Pennsylvania may be very relevant when we start talking about the veep stakes, the

There seem to be some indicators she may be moving in the direction of Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, much to my chagrin, but we'll save that for later. But, you know, Emily, what's your reaction to kind of where the state of the race is, where the energy is, and if this trend is sustainable for Kamala Harris?

You know, Kamala Harris, Brian and I talked about this last week, had that incredible campaign launch back in 2019 in Oakland. And so much momentum, so much coverage from the media, really friendly coverage from the media. There's a lot of energy and momentum behind her campaign. Can she lead...

Like actually as a leader, an organization that a campaign is, I think is a major question. There have been huge concerns with her sister's leadership of her campaign, Maya Harris' leadership of her campaign. She has a lot of turnover in her office. That's the scuttlebutt is that she's a pretty hard person to work for, which can mean good things. It can mean bad things too, especially when you have highest turnover rates in your Senate office than your vice presidential office. This is something that has dogged her in recent years, no question about it. But

What you noted with this morning consult poll is important because it's a shift from where the numbers were with Biden. So the sample size looks really small to me, but it's still the numbers with Biden versus the numbers with Harris. There's a very notable difference in some of these states, and it's going to be reflected in some of these other polls that we see as well. So I

I don't think that Kamala Harris is going to have the same, a lot of people are using the word honeymoon, I don't think that's gonna follow her into November, although you can expect some of the same. Remember why the Clinton campaign chose the Javits Center for their-- - The glass ceiling. - Yeah, the glass ceiling. - I was there, Emily. It was the saddest place in the universe.

But that's going to happen again no matter what, no matter how poorly this campaign goes for Kamala Harris. They're again going to start to set up this feeling of destiny and history. And so I think some of this theater will follow her into November and this sort of momentum will follow no matter what just because of that. At the same time, I feel like you probably agree with me on this.

I just think this race is never going to have anyone pulling away from the other. It is always going to be extremely, extremely close. Most of the national averages, the polling averages, are probably going to be within a couple points, the entire last leg of this race. Yeah.

Yeah, and then it gets the question, okay, well, how reflective are these polls of actual reality? Because while she's outperforming how Biden has been doing in this election cycle in terms of the polling, in the last election cycle in 2020, at this point, Biden was up by like nine points. These polls were showing a blowout for Biden last time around. Now, he won. Wasn't any kind of a blowout, though, if you look how close he was.

and how narrow it was in the key battleground states. So that's another question is whether these polls are actually reflective of reality. Let's just put a couple more data points, new data points we have up on the screen. We've got a, what is this, Susquehanna poll out of Pennsylvania, and it shows Kamala Harris up by four points. That is actually the within their margin of error. Their margin of error is four points. So that's interesting. Also interesting was the breakdown in the New York Times-Siena poll

poll of where she is gaining specifically. Now, this also, I put this up on the screen, this also really, really take with a lot of grains of salt because anytime you get into these demographic subsamples, it's even less accurate than the poll top line just because you're dealing with smaller slices and smaller sample sizes in terms of the number of people who are 18 to 29, the number of people who are in the Midwest or white college, white non-college, whatever. But it shows significantly

significant improvement among young voters, Hispanics, and independents. Interestingly, one of the groups she falls back with, there are only two groups on here, I believe, that her performance deteriorates over where Joe Biden was. One of them is elderly people, people 65 plus, that kind of tracks because Biden had an unusual strength with that group. That was where he was doing the best, even as everything else was falling off.

The other one is with black voters, which, you know, it's not consistent with what we see in other polls. That's why I say take it with a grain of salt, but it's also very counter to the narrative and the identity politics expectations that have been set by the media. Yeah, and again, that happened in 2016 too. And then we had this whole backlash against women who had voted for Trump, which was a

good chunk of the female electorate in the United States. And so I kind of wonder how many lessons are going to truly have been internalized and will inform decisions that the Harris campaign makes down the line. Open question, because they should be careful with some of this when you're telling people that it's just, it's history, you have to do this for history. There can be backlash to that. One thing I wanted to note in that Susquehanna poll, Crystal, is the

the 3%? What was it? Or no, I think it was at 7% for RFK Jr. That's a, I mean, talk about momentum does look like the RFK Jr. campaign in a lot of different polls, just after Biden dropped out of the race. I know we talked about this at the time, but just a lot of people who were in the RFK Jr. camp, in the Jill Stein camp, were saying, we just wanted

like a sentient Democrat to vote for. That doesn't mean, you know, 7% is still significant. I think he probably will pull significant margins in certain states and there's still time for him to, you know, bounce back and be a Ross Perot. But right now that's not where this race is. Yeah, the air has really gone out of the tires in that campaign. And Biden dropping out was really a blow to it because the core promise of that campaign is like,

the core appeal is like, don't you hate those two dudes? I'm an alternative. Like, here I am, my last name's Kennedy. I'm different than them. I'm difficult to code partisan ideologically. That was like the core premise of the campaign. So when you lose Biden, it also has become much more clear that RFK Jr. is now taking more, quote unquote, from Trump than he is from the Democratic side, because those disaffected Democrats who were just like, oh my God, this guy is too old. I can't possibly vote for him again. They're coming back into the

fold with Kamala Harris. You know, the things that you were talking about before, Emily, with regard to Kamala and her poor track record of managing an office, managing a campaign, et cetera. You know, in some ways, this is almost like the best possible situation for her because she didn't have to build a campaign organization. She just

had to, you know, they just had to change the name on the headquarters on the Biden HQ. She's taking over all the same staff. They've hit the ground running. I mean, I think anybody has to acknowledge it's been an impressive rollout. Yes, aided by the media, no doubt about it, but it's been a very impressive lightning fast rollout. You can see her favorability skyrocketing in ways that are completely insane. And

She's got a really truncated timeframe. Like there's not that long a period of time for her to be out in the public eye and remind people of why she, you know, failed down of the 2020 primary, of why the Biden administration hit her after that disastrous Lester Holt interview, et cetera, et cetera.

So the conditions are truly ideal for her. And I've come to see the frame of the election and part of why she's catching on so quickly and really, you know, surging in the polls to the point now to exceed Biden's performance even at his peak is

is because I do think this is a change election. And as counterintuitive as it seems with her being the sitting vice president, she feels right now like the change candidate. Trump feels like, and she's got that line of like, we're not going back, which feeds into that idea of like the change candidate. You know, we're moving forward. We're going to do something different. In terms of the all-important vibes, she does feel like she's the new fresh face.

and the change candidate in an election where I think voters are, you know, looking for something different. So that can change. I'm sure Trump is going to make his own play. You know, these things are not static. Your opponent is going to respond. I do think the Republicans have been caught kind of flat footed in terms of how they wanted to, you know, deal with her and how they want to frame her. But those things are all going to shift. And we got a long way to go still till November.

No question about it. No question about it. Nate Silver throwing some cold water on some of the just some of the honeymoon, we'll say. Just always fun to watch, I guess.

Yeah, so let's put this up on the screen from Nate Silver. So this is the overall polling average, which has them very close. Donald Trump at 44.5, Kamala Harris at 44.1. However, his model has Trump significantly favored. So, you know, Nate runs these simulations and it's like, okay, what percentage

of the time does Trump win in my electoral simulation and get to 270? And what percentage of the time does Kamala Harris win? And it was like, you know, 60-40 effectively in favor of Trump. Now, interestingly, he has Kamala Harris narrowly favored to win the popular vote. But because she has now remade the sort of, you know, modern historic Obama sort of coalition of the Democratic Party, it puts Democrats back at a situation

significant disadvantage in terms of electoral college, whereas Biden, because of his strength with like old white people, had kind of erased that dynamic. I'm just, it's just facts. I'm not trying to be disparaging. It's just reality. Yeah. Yeah.

So he had sort of erased that dynamic. It's back in play now with Kamala Harris reconstituting that Obama-style coalition. Yeah, that's a huge point. She's going to have—the ads that are going to run in Pennsylvania about her being on tape saying, banning fracking. I mean, there's no CNN fact check or New York Times fact check or whatever in the world that can make that go away. It's her on tape, and it will be running constantly.

to Pennsylvania voters. So those are going to be really difficult spots for Kamala Harris to find appeal and build. Obama campaigned very differently than Hillary Clinton, especially in 2008 when he was in those states. And I don't mean Clinton in 2008 because Hillary Clinton also campaigned very differently in the 2007-2008 timeframe when she was in the primary. But I don't know that Kamala Harris can pull that off. She at one point, you know, tried to...

pushed back on identity politics and kind of quickly discarded that and realized it would be more fruitful for her to lean totally into it. I don't know. I just, I have a hard time, Crystal, seeing her pulling off, successfully pulling off

the right kind of Democratic Party messaging in those states. But obviously, that's why she's looking for some are looking at some of the VP candidates that we know she's looking at. Yeah, well, I think the biggest knock on Kamala Harris, and there was some reporting to suggest that, you know, in the sort of testing of her weaknesses done by the Biden team, this is what they came up with. It's not that she's radical left to liberal, blah, blah, blah, which is what Republicans

are really leaning into in addition to a lot of other stuff. But that's kind of like the core of the official campaign messaging, and she's too radical. The real knock on her is that she's nothing, that she's all over the place, that she's wherever it's convenient to be in the moment. And so you mentioned the fracking ban. Like now she says she doesn't support that. She was for Medicare for All. She already had rejected, you know, moved on from that even during her own campaign back in 2020. That's to me the real weak spot

for Kamala Harris. Now, maybe you parlay that into an advantage where people feel like they did with Obama. They sort of see whatever they want to see in her. And maybe you can maintain that illusion through November, but she doesn't have certainly the political skill of an Obama. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And unlike Obama, she has a much longer track record in the public record. Obama was so...

relatively new in Washington, that it enabled this ability to project on him whatever it is that you wanted him to be. So she doesn't have quite that same luxury because of how long she, you know, in the Senate, as an AG, as, you know, a presidential candidate, in the Biden administration, etc. Some of those things have to stick to you somewhere along the line.

The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget. I did something in '88 that hasn't been beaten. Oh, gosh. The US Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meet in the world. We are athletes. We're going out there smashing into each other full force.

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Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

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Speaking of attacks that Democrats really want to stick to Republicans, at least, should we move on to Project 2025, Crystal? Let's do it. This is like you got to do your conservative explainer for me of what the hell's going on here. Well, you know, it's funny because the media has constructed this amazing myth of Project 2025 that is, you know, Donald Trump himself recently said that there's some fine points in it and some, what did he say, absolutely ridiculous points in it that he doesn't agree

with at all. But basically, the Heritage Foundation is the premier think tank, conservative think tank in DC. It is the biggest and most influential think tank on the right. And they've put out what's called their mandate for leadership since the 1980s. And it's like a 900 page book this cycle. Project 2025 is what they, you know, relabeled it because they also coupled it this year, which

The part that, you know, if I were sitting back and going to describe anything as a vast right-wing conspiracy, they did couple it with this personnel recruitment search that a lot of conservative groups started doing and actually realized they had to start doing during the Trump administration.

When, you know, it's no secret the conservative movement has wanted to gut the administrative state literally for decades. The Heritage Foundation itself attacked Ronald Reagan for not abolishing the Department of Education in the middle of the 80s. So, you know, they think they have a real shot at achieving some of this stuff with Trump. And some of it is going to be extremely unpopular with the American people. Democrats realized that and sort of took what was...

fairly commonplace. I mean, Heritage Foundation had been handing these books out. They still are. They were at NatCon recently. They had stacks of these big 900-page Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership books. Just kind of handing them out. They weren't trying to be secretive about it at all. In fact, they were trying to get these books in everyone's hands. The other, if you're going to say there's a vast right-wing conspiracy element of this, is they teased a 180-day plan for the first

180 days of any Republican president who were to win in 2024. For a while, there were a lot of people in circles here in D.C., conservative circles in D.C., heritage circles in D.C., who wanted that person to be Ron DeSantis. It wasn't just about Donald Trump.

So that's my basic, because there has been, to borrow a phrase, disinformation surrounding it. Some of it is fine because it's partisan attacks from Democrats that are being constructed to win an election, which is a totally normal thing that both sides do. Then when it gets kind of parroted by the media, I think is where that's confusing. But it's fine.

It's fairly standard stuff at the same time, fairly standard for a conservative movement group like the Heritage Foundation is not going to be appealing on a mass scale. So that's my basic rundown before we jump into the news of what happened yesterday, Crystal. Yeah, go ahead and break down the news and then I can give my view of Project 2025, which is similar to yours but different in some respects.

Right. Okay. So I'm excited about that. Now, Project 2025 has become a huge lightning rod because Democrats, and I think smartly, have realized they can pin this on Republicans running everywhere. They can create this myth of Project 2025 and hanging around the necks of Republican candidates, Donald Trump. Trump threw cold water on that right away. He was basically, which was shocking because the Heritage Foundation definitely felt like

They had, you know, done this with veterans of a prior Trump administration and people who would be staffing a Trump administration, probably the same people would be staffing, you know, potentially a DeSantis administration or any of these Republicans. They felt like they were in good shape. So what happened yesterday, all of this really came to a head. Let's go ahead and put B1 up on the screen. So,

Roger Sullenberger at the Daily Beast first reported that Paul Danz, one of the top guys at Project 2025, was leaving. And Sullenberger said this meant that Project 2025 looked like it was about to shut down. The Heritage Foundation then came out and said,

No, Paul is leaving because our timeline was always that we wrap these mandates for leaderships up after the election. And Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation said Project 2025, you know, we're extremely grateful to him and everyone's work on Project 2025 and dedication to saving America. Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels, federal, state and local will continue.

So that the kind of mandate for leadership policy blueprint part of Project 2025 shutting down, but this like online portal where you can submit yourself to potentially work in a future Trump administration or Republican administration in general in the federal, state, and local level, still up and running. And again, like,

Chris, to the point where there is something that's sort of weird about it or vast right-wing conspiracy about it, that's the part that I think probably a lot of people would look to. So let's put B2 up on the screen. This all started rolling down the hill yesterday. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, they're the head of the Trump campaign. They took a victory lap.

They didn't even, like, they didn't have to say a word about Project 2025. They didn't have to do anything about it. But they said reports of Project 2025's demise would be greatly welcome and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign. It will not end well for you. That is just, like, so Trumpian in tone and everything like that. So let's also...

move to, before we do that, Crystal, this is B3. This is, you suggested this Vox article on explaining Project 2025, which at one point there were more people Googling Project 2025 than Taylor Swift Googling

in the last couple of months, that was a real thing because it's been in so many ads. It's been, you know, I've had like random people who don't follow politics that closely asking me like, "Hey, what's the deal with Project 2025? Should I be worried about it?" Blah, blah, blah.

And my response would be it's pretty standard conservative movement stuff with some new right stuff thrown in for the better and the worse if you're trying to sell it to the American public. For the better, there's some interesting stuff on labor. For the worse, it goes in some interesting directions on social issues. But as you've kind of looked into this, what do you make of Project 2025?

Well, I mean, I think it's terrifying in the same way that like ideological conservative government is terrifying to me and frankly, to a lot of Americans who are reading this and are like, holy shit, that's what you guys want to do here. Some of the language is jarring, right? Like there's this line that says pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex

offenders and telecoms and tech firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. Can you imagine Donald Trump doing that? No, of course not. But this is, I mean, there's a reason why he has gone to great lengths

to try to distance himself from this and say, I have nothing to do with this. It's also interesting too, because he never names specifically what his problem with it is. It's just like, some of it's fine and some of it is terrible. Okay, well tell me which parts are terrible. Which parts do you disagree with? About two thirds of the authors come from,

from the Trump administration. There were 140 different Trump administration officials who were involved in drafting it. As you said, I'm sure all the people who were involved, in fact, I'm curious your view of like their reaction to the Trump, you know, trashing it and all of that, because I'm sure they felt, oh, we're part of the team. We're doing the work that's going to help this next administration. We're going to be in line for jobs. He's claiming he's not going to take anyone on who was

affiliated with Project 2025 at all. So shockingly, I actually think the Democrats did a good job of messaging on this because I never would have expected it to gain the popular traction that it did. And I think part of it is just that the name Project 2025 sounds really ominous and vast right-wing conspiracy-ish. So there's that. But the other problem for the Trump people is like, you know, with the J.D. Vance pick,

The dude just wrote the foreword for the book of the Project 2025 dude. And he said in that, we can put B5 up on the screen. He said literally in that foreword, the Heritage Foundation isn't some random outpost on Capitol Hill. It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

So that also hampers their ability to say, oh, we hate this. We want nothing to do with it. Okay, well, why did you pick someone who was so closely affiliated with it for your ticket? And, you know, we'll talk more about this with the ladies, and I'm curious their view and your view as well. But, you know, the two issues where the Trump campaign really feels like they have a problem are abortion and Project 2025. And Vance brings massive baggage to the ticket on both of those issues.

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. Although I wonder to what extent this will throw, will make it really hard to keep using the Project 2025 attack. I don't know, actually, because to the point about what Vance wrote in that foreword, Heritage was taking money from defense contractors and big tech companies up until Kevin Roberts took over. And Kevin Roberts is very much, uh,

an ideological fellow traveler of Vance. I talked to him about this recently. And

that's where the Heritage Foundation felt like, of course, this is a worthwhile endeavor that if we want any future Republican president to have a shot at enacting real conservative priorities without being undermined by people who work in, a great example would be like the EPA. And that's a great example of why some of this would be terrifying to someone on the left, Crystal. Like they want to be able to make

huge sweeping changes at the EPA. I would love huge sweeping changes at the Department of Education that would probably be terrifying to you and Ryan. And it's hard to do that if you don't have the personnel, which was a huge problem in the Trump administration. It would be a problem in any administration just because there are a lot of people that want to do that. And we can get into why and all of that. But I do wonder about the future of these attacks because let's play...

This is a crazy story. Let's play this next clip of J.D. Vance. Really, I just can't emphasize enough how important the sentiment that he's expressing in this clip is because it has come to be widely adopted by people on the right, many of whom Sagar and I know. This is very...

much what they see as the most important sentiment to bring to the table in American politics from a conservative perspective now. So this is J.D. Vance in 2021, and it was posted by the Kamala Harris campaign rapid response account on Twitter. I think the thing that we have to take away from the last 10 years is that we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.

I was talking about this with someone earlier today where you remember there was some threat that congressional or Senate Republicans made. If you get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. And you actually look at it. It's like, oh, this is not that interesting. We're going to actually deliver on our promises that we've made for decades.

This is the threat. If you get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do this stuff. They're talking about expanding the Supreme Court. They're talking about adding two senators from heavily Democratic places. You get rid of the filibuster, we'll actually deliver on defunding. But you know we don't want to do it. Yeah.

So I think – I mean look, I am a cynic about this and maybe even a little bit of a pessimist. But I think the challenge confronting American conservatives is that we have lost every major powerful institution in the country except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they've ever been. We have lost big business. We've lost finance. We've lost the culture. We've lost the academy.

And if we're going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class. So, Crystal, the reason J.D. Vance's head is cut off in that video is because I filmed it. I actually filmed that video. You're part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Yeah, of course. But

You know, that was on Federalist Radio Hour 2021, summer of 2021. J.D. Vance was on as a guest. It was Ben Domenech and Chris Bedford. So I'm scrolling Twitter the other day and see this video and I'm like, oh, someone pulled it. And then I looked at the account and I was like, that's the Kamala Harris campaign. They used that clip to say J.D. Vance endorsed 2025, Project 2025. What's really in that clip is J.D. Vance actually not, you know, it's long before Project 2025 even was an idea.

But what he's endorsing is the underlying sentiment of Project 2025, which is that the right needs to seize the reins of administrative power. And that is something that is very real, very real.

Right. And so I think that clip gets into why J.D. Vance is struggling as a national candidate and why his favorability rating has, you know, really tanked. And he was already the least favorable VP nominee in history and all this stuff because he's

That language and that sort of posture as a renegade revolutionary wanting to overthrow the administrative state and all this even like very specific niche right wing online language plays very well in that circle. I'm sure people loved what he had to say there. But when you put it out to the general public, people are like, this sounds extreme, fringe, weird, you might say, you know, this sounds scary.

And then again, when you have the dude, you know, writing the foreword for the Project 2025 author's book makes it very difficult to get your fingerprints off of what they have planned. So this has been my sort of take on Katie Vance. We'll talk to the ladies later about this as well. But

In order in particular to overcome the misgivings people had about him from saying things like Trump may be America's Hitler, for example, he really leaned into this right-wing online influencer vernacular and posture, which served him well in terms of gaining clout and gaining a national purchase in that subculture.

but is very off-putting to your average normie voter who you need to win over in order to win a general election. So, you know, I am very much of the view that Vance was a tremendous mistake from the Trump campaign. I think Trump has to think he's a tremendous mistake at this point because of all the baggage that he brings to the table and how little additive in terms of electoral benefit he brings to the table. If you wanted him to be involved with governance, you could have made him chief of staff, right? You didn't have to have him win.

with you on the ticket, because the biggest danger for Republicans is that just like in 2022, they have this whiff and then sense of extremism. And like they're, you know, not in touch with the median voter in the country and putting Vance on the ticket makes it much easier for Democrats to make that case and create that impression.

Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, that talk about power, like actually makes me uncomfortable and I have a lot of disagreements with it, but it's very commonplace in conservative circles here in D.C. No doubt about it, although I still think Trump's number one goal in picking Vance was just to avoid picking a Pence. And you don't get a lot of options for people who are high profile and successful enough that would, you know, certify the

new electors on January 6th. So by Trump's standards, I guess it's probably still a success, but we'll see how or whether J.D. Vance is a drag on the ticket. Ultimately, huge news, huge news out of the Middle East just in the last several hours, Crystal. We continue to get developments. So let's move on to that segment.

The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard pressed to forget. I did something in '88 that hasn't been beaten. Oh gosh, the US Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meet in the world. We are athletes, we're going out there smashing into each other full force.

Listen to The Podium on the iHeart app or your favorite podcast platform weekly and every day during the games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new scandal.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It appears that Israel has conducted two major assassinations in the region with potential consequences that are hard to wrap your head around. The first was Fuad Shukr. He is the most senior military commander in Hezbollah. That assassination occurred in Beirut.

And the second was Ismail Haniyeh, assassinated in Tehran, in Iran. He was there for the inauguration of the new Iranian president. And he is the top political leader of Hamas. Joining us to break down the context of this and the potential consequences, where we could be headed is Dr. Trita Parsi. He, of course, is with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Great to see you, sir. Good to be with you again. So what is your initial reaction to these astounding events?

Well, I think we have to assume that this is done by Israel, given the track record of Israel doing these type of things, particularly mindful of the attack that you also mentioned against the Hezbollah commander. So if we assume that, we have to ask ourselves what the objective is here beyond, obviously, the desire to take out Haniyeh.

They could have taken out Hani at any moment. He was living in Qatar. They knew exactly where he was. The fact that they took him out while he was in Tehran on the day of the inauguration of the Iranian president, I think is designed to send a couple of messages. One of those messages is, of course, that they are trying to undermine any opportunity that Pesach Kian's election would bring about for renewed U.S.-Iran diplomacy, something the Israelis have opposed since the mid-1990s.

Secondly, is to send a clear signal to both Iran and the different groups that Iran is supporting, from Hezbollah to the Houthis to Iraqi militias, that they're not safe. They're not even safe in Iran, and that Iran actually cannot protect them. This is deeply, deeply embarrassing for Iran, of course.

Particularly, particularly if it turns out that some of the reporting that is coming out now is true, which is that he was actually in or very near the presidential compound when he was assassinated. And then you have to ask yourself, so if the Israelis are doing something that they know is deeply important,

It's embarrassing to the Iranians. They're clearly doing it because they know that that will maximize the likelihood that Iran will respond. That will then, as a result, of course, trigger an escalatory spiral, an escalatory spiral that seems to have been in the mind of Netanyahu when he ordered this, if, of course, it is Israel. But I think it's safe to assume that it is.

That's what I wanted to ask about next. What do you expect in terms of the Iranian response? What could we be seeing in the days ahead, in the hours ahead, actually, potentially, from Iran as it plots its response to what happened just in the last 12 or so hours?

So I think contrary to the image or the image that has been presented of the Iranian leadership in Washington, I think it's quite clear that the Iranian leadership tends to actually be rather cautious and very calculating. That's part of the reason why it's become such a potent foe of Israel and the United States. And we saw that in the response that the Iranians gave when the Israelis attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus, the consular compound of it.

It was a very measured response to make sure that it inflicted damage on Israel, but not so much that Israel would have strong grounds for further escalation. And it seems to have had some coordination with the Biden administration.

This time around, however, I think it is much more difficult to count on that type of a response, that type of a calibrated response that is designed to strike back, but without escalating for that actually to be able to succeed for a variety of reasons. First of all,

This was an attack against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran within the span of 12 hours. This likely means that the response will be a coordinated response with Iran and several of these different actors, which then, of course, would be different from what we saw in April.

Those other actors do not have the same discipline, nor do they have necessarily the same objectives in terms of we've seen clear tensions between the Houthis wanting to escalate much more and the Iranians holding them back.

So I do fear that this has created a very, very explosive situation. The Iranians are likely going to respond together with some of these other actors. And I think the Netanyahu government knew exactly what they did, given the fact that we are now in a lame duck period of the Biden administration. Biden has proven himself unparalleled.

and incapable of putting any pressure on Israel in the past, except in that instance when it came to the Syrian, the strike against Syria. But this time around, perhaps he will not even have that. And as a result, the risk of a further escalation that drags the U.S. into it is much, much higher than it was before.

Dr. Parsi, one of the things that you wrote on Twitter and your initial reaction to these assassinations was that this may be an attempt by Bibi Netanyahu to box Kamala Harris in. It's still an open question whether she really wants to move away from the Biden policy with regard to Israel, but that's certainly a possibility, an ongoing possibility. And so lay out for us your logic

of how this could box Kamala Harris in and why Bibi Netanyahu would want to do that. Well, first on the issue as to whether she is moving away from Biden's policy or not, I think you're quite right. We don't know quite yet, but I think we can point to the fact that both the body language and on a rhetorical level, there is a shift and it's a rather important shift.

Any substantive shift will have to be preceded by such a rhetorical shift. Now, it doesn't mean that the rhetorical shift automatically will lead to it, but if we were to see a substantive shift, this is one of the first steps that we would see. But more importantly, how does Netanyahu perceive this?

Given the fact that he will not take any chances, I assume that based on the conversation he had with Kamala Harris, what she said publicly, the body language, etc., he would be quite unlikely to calculate that Harris is not going to try to shift away, not just rhetorically, but on substance away from where Biden has been, which incidentally is not terribly hard. I mean, the bar is very, very low here, right?

So given that, what does he do now before she actually potentially becomes president? Of course, this is all assuming that she would win. I think one of the things that he would wanna do is to box her in, create a crisis that forces her into the same type of a bear hug that Biden voluntarily chose to adopt after October 7th. And by that crisis also take away the opportunity for her to have the initiative. She's gonna be forced to react

rather to be able to come in as president, if she wins, of course, with a new policy and a new initiative. She will only be able to respond to him and the crisis that he has created rather than actually being able to come in and decide, essentially send strong signals to Israel of what she would like them to do. Instead, she's going to be responding. There's already been some speculation about the potential for, if this is confirmed as an Israeli, which it obviously appears to be,

What does that mean for how it could backfire, potentially, if there is a Harris administration? If there is, you know, going forward, it does look like this is something that the U.S. and their relationship or our relationship with Iran, you know, there's a total, this is a new situation, this kind of upheaval.

ends the diplomacy efforts as meager as they were. So is there any chance that it backfires on Netanyahu? You know, and there are a million different ways that could happen, but even just if there is, you know, an escalation and the U.S. is even more or even, you know, less, the public, the public in the United States is even less supportive of Netanyahu's war effort, that puts politicians in a different situation too. Yeah.

I think you're absolutely right. And I think on a strategic level in the long run, we have seen a lot of these different stunts by Netanyahu backfiring when it comes to his long-term interests. Tactically, he may be able to gain some things, but in the long term, it has backfired. Even the attack on April 1 against the consulate of Iran in Damascus, I think backfired because it also forced

Biden to finally actually put some red lines in front of Netanyahu, something that he clearly had not done when it comes to Netanyahu's slaughter in Gaza. But nevertheless, in the short run, I think it's gonna unfortunately have similar impacts as we've seen before. But I think one of the things that is happening right now is that it's becoming increasingly clear to an increasing number of Americans

who don't want to see the United States go into more wars in the Middle East, who don't want to see the United States get dragged into wars, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, are tired of these forever wars, that the one country that is most likely and most intent on dragging the U.S. into such a war is Israel.

It's not just, you know, what is happening in Europe, et cetera. And I think this is also starting to become more clear on the conservative side, where I think support for Israel perhaps has been a little bit more reflexive than it has been on the Democratic side for the last 10 years. So there is a big shift amongst the American populace. And I think if this leads to a large escalation and American body bags come home from this war, then I think

Perhaps it'll help Netanyahu. He just wants to prolong his reign as prime minister. Strategically, I think it will be very bad for Israel. Last question I have for you, Dr. Parsi. Control Room, if you could put the final element, I believe we have it labeled C4, up on the screen. This was Jeremy Scahill over at Dropsite News. Interviewed a scholar of Hezbollah, Amal Saad, and asked, this was before the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh,

asked what a war with Hezbollah could look like. And in part, he said, listen, we're talking here about a much more sophisticated military organization, well over 100,000 fighters, well over that number, over 150,000 missiles and rockets.

He went on to say, from all the information I've been gathering, it would actually lead to the unraveling of the Israeli state. We're not talking here about just a defeat for Israel like in 2006. It would be the sort of defeat that would actually lead to its demise. I'd love for you to react to that if you agree with that assessment and lay out for us in a little bit starker detail the outcome.

escalatory spiral and where it could lead and what it could mean for the U.S. in particular? Well, as was said in that interview, more than 100,000 fighters. We're talking about more than 150,000 projectiles. We know that Israel's air defenses are not as impenetrable as many thought them to be, mindful of the fact that the Iranians managed to get nine ballistic missiles through. And

as well as a much more sophisticated technological base for that fighting force. Given all of that, and particularly if it then also means that the Houthis, Iran, Iraqi militias, and others will be involved, it is no longer a question as to whether militarily where the balance ends up. It's whether a state like Israel can sustain such a conflict. And I think already seeing

10 months into the war in Gaza, in which the Israelis are not suffering militarily, but nevertheless, they're failing strategically and even tactically. How that has created very, very strong raptures within Israeli society. We've seen how the right wing there and very hardline elements have gotten more and more leeway to the point of what we saw just in the last couple of days,

in which they were attacking prisons in order to be able to release Israeli soldiers that had been arrested because of the torture that they had conducted against Palestinian prisoners. And now they have been released. Once again, they won. We've seen how that country has gone more and more in a very, very radical direction, such a radical direction

almost invites self-implosion. This is at least a part of the narrative that exists out in the Middle East. Part of the reason why they think that such a military confrontation with Israel, even if it is lost militarily, strategically, nevertheless, it will lead to the collapse of Israel. Whether it's true or not, it's really impossible to say, but there clearly are signs in support of that analysis, given what is happening in Israel today.

Dr. Parsi, it's always so great to have your insights, and especially on such a consequential day. So thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you so much. The podium is back with fresh angles and deep dives into Olympic and Paralympic stories you know, and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget. I did something in 88 that hasn't been beaten. Oh, gosh. The U.S. Olympic trials is the hardest and most competitive meet in the world. We are athletes. We're going out there, smashing into each other, full force.

Listen to The Podium on the iHeart app or your favorite podcast platform weekly and every day during the games to hear the Olympics like you've never quite heard them before.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal KCBQ.

content for your eyes for your ears for your hearts for your minds well suit up gladiators grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes listen to unpacking the toolbox on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts I've been thinking about you I want you back in my life it's too late for that I have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do

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All right, you may be looking at your screen and wondering, wow, there are four wonderful women here. Why? Who is doing this to us? Just kidding. We are joined by Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute and Ines Dettmann of the Independent Women's Forum. We have a huge panel that we are going to get into. I think there might be some fighting. We'll see. But before we do, we want to make sure we mention this amazing special. I know you guys have heard this, but...

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morning. It's a great way to start the day. Of course, I'm biased, but I love watching Crystal and Sagar all put together perfectly as a premium subscriber myself. So BP free one. If you just want to try it out, see what it's like. You can go to breakingpoints.com, log in, huge news cycle, huge few months ahead of us with the election and then what happens after the election. So we will be there for all of that and you can try it free at

BPFree1 promo code at breakingpoints.com. All right, so we are again joined by the lovely Inez Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum and the lovely Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute, both on the right. And we are going to get into some big topics. Obviously, cat ladies. We couldn't have these two on without talking about cat ladies. We'll get into that. We want to start, though, we can put E2 up on the screen. Kamala Harris is on a swing state tour

She's looking at potential vice presidential candidates from Tim Walz to Josh Shapiro. I kind of feel like Shapiro has the lead on this. We're going to get into a lot of social issue questions later with the panel, but let's just start. I want to toss this to you, Rachel, with Kamala Harris trying to put together the Obama coalition in some of these states where she said things like straight up she wants to ban fracking. That's going to be...

all over the airwaves in Pennsylvania from now until Election Day, as we said earlier in the show. So is there anything she can do? Is there any vice presidential candidate that could really be an advantage, give her an advantage in some of those states? I know you've worked on actually how the right can start to, both of you and Ezra Rachel have both worked on how the right can start to make a sustainable coalition out of the gains it made with the Obama coalition. So what do you make of how Harris could potentially do that?

I think you're probably right that Josh Shapiro, I think, balances the ticket in that regard. I think he seems a little bit more moderate. He talks, I think, more to the moderate faction of the Democratic Party. But I also think that you have, you know, I wouldn't sleep on someone like Mark Kelly, who I think has made his career in that sort of moderate vein. He also has a lot of political architecture behind him, right? You know, he and his wife have built

a pretty massive fundraising and policy advocacy group on gun control. He brings that to the ticket. I also think he speaks well to these voters. He can balance Kamala Harris's progressivism a little bit. By swinging to the middle, he's made his whole career that way. He's like the least inoffensive Democrat in the Senate. And I think that's by design. So I think he brings that

And then you have people, reportedly she's also considering people like Andy Beshear, who's governor of Kentucky, who I think has proven his political mettle by surviving in that state and moderating where necessary. But he's interesting to me, watching him sort of take on the J.D. Vance hillbilly-esque role

persona saying things like, oh, well, he ain't from here. Like you have a little bit of an authenticity issue, I think, with Bashir that rivals that of Kamala Harris. When you think about the fact that, yes, Andy Bashir, you are from Kentucky, but not everyone can have their first job out of law school be handed to him from his daddy's law firm. So I do think there's, you know, a little bit of a try hard element there. But, you know, she's got, I think, some interesting picks. And I think what's going to be challenging is

So when Obama was president, you had very much of a different dynamic now than I think you have in the Democratic Party today, which is you have a progressivism ascendant to some extent. There's a definitely, you know, Joe Biden has shown that. And I think wedding those two, those sort of moderate faction and the progressive wing is going to be more difficult now than it was for Obama. And I don't know that you blend them as easily. Yeah.

frankly. I mean, what we're seeing in the polls right now is, by the way, I want to say for the record, this panel was my idea. I wanted to be outnumbered ideologically overwhelmingly today, apparently for some reason, but it's always lovely to see you both. At least what the

polling is showing now Democrats are so freaking happy it's not Joe Biden that everyone is more or less unified. I mean, that's why you've seen RFK Jr.'s vote totals diminishing and the people who were disaffected Biden voters coming back home by and large.

you have the Democratic coalition pretty unified, which is why I think, and I am ideologically inclined to think this, let's be clear, that Josh Shapiro is actually a risky choice because of his comments. He compared pro-Palestine protesters to the KKK. This is obviously an issue that has been very fraught within the Democratic base.

And so to raise the salience of that, and for lack of a better phrase, to like kill the unified and excited vibes that exist right now, to me, that's a risk. You also have unions not excited about him because he's super pro-charter school. You have an issue with him, you know, allegations that he covered up sexual harassment in his office, and also a personal irritation, which is that he sounds like Dollar Store Obama. So, however, Inez, it looks like

The tea leaves are looking very much in the direction of Josh Shapiro. In addition to the fact there were some new indications this morning, she's picking a governor. She had said previously, according to reports, that she was looking for someone with, quote unquote, executive experience. In addition, we just got the list.

of the battleground stops that she's making next week after she announces her VP pick. And the very first one is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So as a conservative, what do you make of Josh Shapiro on the ticket? Do you think he's additive or do you think it's overstated what he can bring in terms of delivering the state of Pennsylvania?

So first of all, I'd like to agree with you from the right, Crystal, which is that I would call it New Jersey grandparent, like New Jersey Jewish grandparents meets Obama, the accent that he's putting on. I hate it so much. I can't even tell you. There's a whole generation of Democratic politicians who were completely poisoned by the like Obama cadence. Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, the list goes on and on. It is like such a personal pet peeve. It's so irritating to me.

Yeah, I agree. And it is that very recognizable cadence. And even some of the phrases, it's just, it is very noticeable. In terms of the ticket and balancing the ticket, there's, in some way, the Democratic Party, I think, has some of the similar issues because of the swing states that exist, which, let's remind everybody, you know, when we had discussions about the Electoral College many years ago, it was, oh, we're always going to be talking about Florida and Ohio. Well, no, we're not. We're talking about, you know, just a...

A decade later, we're talking about a totally different crop of states. And the fact that those states are very different, you have like a Sun Belt group of those states, right, of those swing states plus Georgia. And then you have the Rust Belt states. And those states have very different geographical interests. They have different economic interests.

So I think it's really interesting if the principal on the ticket doesn't have a strong appeal in one or the other region, it's very difficult for the other person to balance it because you kind of have to pick. And those between the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt and

Like I said, they have different economic interests. They have their different cultural interests in many ways. So I think that's probably a dynamic that will continue in both parties for quite some time. That being said, I don't know. Maybe I'm just not up on the horse race enough, but I don't. I sort of doubt that vice presidential picks make as much difference as people seem to think that they do in elections.

I think the principals are much more important. The people running for president are much more important to people's votes. I actually think they make more, they have a higher importance after the election. So I no longer agree with John Adams that the vice presidency is a useless endeavor, especially because Congress is so sclerotic, can do so little. If you have a active vice president with an active agenda in the executive branch, they can do a lot.

They can shape the agenda a lot. And the other thing, at least on the Republican side, is to signal the future of the party, right? And so J.D. Vance, I think, is a very clear pick on both of those post-election metrics, whereas I think...

you're right to say that the Democratic Party will not get a signal to its base that if Josh Shapiro is picked, that it's going in the direction that its base wants to. So I actually think those things are probably more important in a vice presidential pick than how they're going to balance the ticket or the states or...

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think that stuff is overblown. I don't think people care nearly as much about who the vice presidential pick is as, I guess, political commentators do. You know, I actually do. Go ahead, Rachel.

Well, I was just going to say, I think that, you know, and as you're correct in the front, I think that the frames for the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign are slightly different on the vice presidential pick, because I do think for the most part, you know, this the Vance pick on the right is signaling where the direction of the party is going. But I think Kamala Harris has a different set of challenges when she's picking her VP, which is that she needs a validator.

Right. She is hindered, I think, you know, from where I sit, from a host of progressive baggage. She has she has said things that will not resonate, to your point, in the Rust Belt. You know, I think is going to have a hard time speaking to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. I think she needs a VP that can speak on her behalf. I think there's also the fact that she has a hard time.

maybe articulating coherent thoughts in certain scenarios. I think this might be one of them, to put it gently. And so I do think it actually matters who she picks because she needs a validator. She needs someone who can speak for her to certain groups. And so I think the selection frame is slightly different on the right and the left. I think some of that is fair. I actually do think the VP pick matters. Obviously, the principal matters more. Obviously, people are primarily voting for the president. But if you look back at Trump's pick of Vance,

I think that was important for him because at that point, there was still evangelical skepticism of him in between the Vance pick and then putting out the list of the Supreme Court picks that kind of like solidified him with a group of voters that were a little bit shaky. I also think a vice presidential pick can do harm. I think Sarah Palin did end up being harmful to John McCain and showed when he was supposed

to be like the adult in the room and the serious statesman, etc. The fact that she didn't fit with that image and became a campaign liability in the subject of endless media stories, the coverage, etc. I think that was a problem for him. I think Joe Biden, to your point, Rachel, about being sort of like a validator or someone who was like a more comfortable pick for certain segments of society. I think Joe Biden served that role well for Barack Obama.

He knew foreign policy, been in the Senate forever. He's just like comes off as this sort of like, you know, middle of the road, moderate white dude. And that's kind of similar framework that the Harris people are looking at now. I mean, there's a reason everyone's been joking about, you know, the quest for the perfect like white guy to be on the ticket to provide that level of comfort. And also with regard to the quote unquote vibes, because unfortunately that is so much of what our politics are about. Much of the chagrin of I think everybody on this panel is,

a white dude from the Midwest, whether it's Tim Walz, who has a very progressive record, or Andy Beshear, who has actually pretty good on labor and other issues, but more moderate in other regards, or whether it's Josh Shapiro, like they all come off

as this just sort of mainstream pick because it's the vibes and it's what we're used to seeing in America. It's also like the way that they communicate. Tim Walz, even though he does have this pretty impressive, from my perspective, progressive record, he still comes off as that like high school teacher, veteran, you know,

Minnesota guy, very relatable dude, even, you know, in spite of that record. And I think is very good at messaging that record to people who might be on the fence about a Kamala Harris ticket. Before we move on. Wait, can I, can I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not even push back so much as just narrow what I'm saying. Yeah. I actually, I think a better way of saying what I was going, what I tried to say earlier is that I think it matters more for intra party dynamics than for swing voters. Yeah.

I have a hard time, for example, imagining the person who is comfortable with the things that Trump says and does and is not comfortable with the things that J.D. Vance says and does. I actually think that that person probably only exists in the Beltway where people have much more specific views, both about policy and like about, you know, sort of, I guess, even vibes indicate what ideological camp

you're in. Um, so I, I see it much more. I agree with you that, and, and the specific example of Sarah Palin, I would say the opposite in the beginning, Sarah Palin is the only thing that made the Republican party excited. I think about the McCain ticket. I just think the more our politics become national, um, the more, uh,

divided the country is, the more these kinds of regional politics fade out when it comes to the vice presidential pick. And it's a very traditional thing. Like actually, you know, in the 19th century in America, it mattered enormously how to geographically balance the ticket. I just tend to think that our politics are moving away from that. And I think there are probably some things to lament about the fact that our politics is moving away from that. But at the end of the day, I

I think the best thing probably a VP pick can do is probably solidify and excite the party to the extent that the party is not excited about the main nominee.

in terms of the election. Like I said, I think VPs are very important for the future trajectory of a party and then what happens if that party is actually elected to office in Washington. I think much more important than it used to be. It used to be that most useless office ever devised by man, right? But I think that's much less true now. But in terms of the election,

I think it's probably more important intra-party and what you're saying to the people who are either going to be excited to turn out for you or not excited to turn out, maybe do something else that day on election day. I think that's probably more where VP picks make a difference.

So before we move on, I just want to, we can put, I'm going to go out of order here, control room. I just want to put E5 up on the screen. This is Kamala Harris, a report that says Kamala Harris is going through portfolios basically of different binders full of men. Maybe this is the right way to put it. Not binders full of white men. No.

Now Kamala Harris is sifting through binders full of white dudes to look for who she could pick. Now she's expected to make that decision by early August, so very, very soon. Now we go to E4. We've mentioned Andy Beshear a couple of times, and he's been exchanging sort of romantic tweets.

ex-posts with his wife, maybe suggesting something big is on the horizon. We don't know. Could mean anything. Could just be normal back and forth. But, you know, I think Crystal and Rachel could have maybe an interesting exchange on whether Bashir is

A, is a viable vice presidential candidate, but B, I think maybe is as viable as the future of the Democratic Party where we just left off in this conversation. So I know you guys disagree on this. I'll toss it to Rachel first. You can flesh out a little bit of what you said earlier. He has made some interesting decisions on stuff beyond, you know, just sort of traditional Democratic Party left stances on labor and all that. He's one of

the more interesting figures. I would say him and Waltz are interesting in the context of realignment politics. So what do you make of Bashir, Rachel? Well, I think he's... Any governor who survives in a state that routinely sends Rand Paul and Mitch McCollum to the Senate, I think is interesting. You're building... And he's built a sustainable coalition. Now, he's also...

His father was a governor. He's trending a little bit on family dynamics in that sense. That dynastic stuff always matters, I think, in state politics to a great degree. When you think about him vaulting to the national ticket, if we talk about vibes in our politics, my objection to him at that stage is purely aesthetic because I just think that the...

he and JD Vance trying to out hillbilly each other is going to be insufferable. And that is that, that like, I think, you know, you're already kind of seeing that. That's why I brought up that comment where he was talking about JD Vance saying, well, you ain't from here. I think it's literally going to be like the war of Appalachia on the vice presidential ticket. And, you know, I just, that is a vibe, right. And we could be here for it, but I also think it would just be insufferable. I'm here for the war of Appalachia. No, I see.

See, Andy Beshear is actually a fascinating character to me because I knew him a little bit when I lived in Kentucky. His vibe is very much like Minivan Dad, really, truly. That's how he comes off. And I think that has served him in terms of his political persona. He is not a particularly charismatic figure,

He's sort of the anti-cult of personality. And, you know, the context in which he gets elected initially in Kentucky is, listen, the fact he's a Bashir, no doubt it makes a big difference. In Kentucky in particular, these things matter, these like historic names. Since it's a state that was Democratic and is trended to the right, the Democrats who have like that historic connection, it helps a lot.

But it also was on the back of the teachers' strike wave. And the previous governor, Matt Bevin, who was himself this sort of like Trumpian businessman out of nowhere kind of a figure, he had gone after teacher pensions. It had created a massive cross-partisan backlash across the entire state. And so Andy comes in on that promise. And part of why he's been so popular, he's the most popular Democratic governor in the entire country, which I think is astonishing, is

is because he's really delivered the goods. There's been a huge amount of job creation in the state of Kentucky. He's attracted a number of large-scale battery, like EV battery plants to the state, which from a Democratic perspective too, you're like, oh, you delivered the jobs, their union jobs and their green energy jobs.

So that's part of why he's been so incredibly popular there. So listen, I obviously think he could be additive to a ticket just from the sense of he's proven that he can speak to people who may otherwise be skeptical of a Democratic Party. He's had his eye on the ball in terms of some of the populist instincts of Kentucky as a state. Kentucky is not just like a hard right conservative state. It's a little more politically interesting than that. So yeah, I think he'd be a decent pick.

You know, electorally, I understand the appeal of Shapiro because of Pennsylvania and because he won there by freaking 16 points. I just think to Inez's point about keeping the positive vibes and the excitement in the Democratic Party, he could be a problem there. To me, the ideal candidate is Tim Walz, who is such an effective messenger. This will be a good transition to the J.D. Vance and the weird conversation, all of that. Like he came up with this tagline that has now rapidly been embraced by

by everyone in Democratic circles, you know, used over and over and over again. And you guys may disagree, but I actually think it is an effective tag in the same way that some of Trump's tags and nicknames like Crooked Hillary, et cetera, were kind of devastating and effective. So to me, that proves his bona fides not only in terms of the record that I like as governor of Minnesota, but in terms of how he's able to communicate about that message and frame the opposition.

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Crystal's right. That's a good point to move on because you will be shocked to learn that when you have four women doing a segment, sometimes you talk more than expected. And that was the case here. So let's talk about...

the battle to brand Republicans as weird. I will say one thing that I think is getting missed in that conversation because I was at the RNC and I heard Republicans talking a lot about how this was the election between crazy and normal. Someone, you know, the three of us definitely know on the right is Terry Schilling and he likes to say that all the time. This is an election between crazy and normal. So there's still

of it happening definitely on both sides. But let's put the first element up on the screen for this block, please. This is John Harwood saying things J.D. Vance has said about people without kids, childless cat ladies, childless sociopaths, less mentally stable, most deranged, most psychotic, radical childless leaders, more sociopathic, driftless, childless Democrats must be

We also have a thought here, a clip here that we're going to roll of JD Vance, and we will get everyone to respond on the back end of this. You can go ahead and roll the next element. There's just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really, really valuable when you have kids in your life. And the fact that so many people, especially in America's leadership class, just don't have that in their lives is

I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less

less mentally stable. And of course, you talk about going on Twitter. Final point I'll make is you go on Twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don't have kids at home. So Democrats obviously feel like this is fodder to make that weird label stick to Republicans. Tim Walz has been using it a lot. Kamala Harris now has been using it a lot as well. Now,

I will start by saying on the right, the three of us, I would say, as compared to the general population, are politically weird. Ideologically, politically weird because we're involved in conservative movement circles and J.D. Vance was running in those circles before he decided to run for Senate.

And before he, you know, so he converted to Catholicism. He worked in a super high profile job in the tech industry, converted to Catholicism, had a real ideological transformation that I think you two know as well as anyone definitely is sincere about.

He was writing like 3,000-word essays for the lamp about his Catholicism and his politics. That would be pretty difficult to totally fake. But is J.D. Vance—I'll start with—oh, who do I want to pick here? Let's start with you, Inez, because you and Rachel may disagree on this. Is J.D. Vance going to help Democrats? Is he really giving fodder for Democrats to make this weird label stick?

Well, it depends on how he responds. And I think he should learn from the person on the top of the ticket, Trump, in this regard. I don't think there's a single pick that Trump could have made where they wouldn't have gone through every statement, like the media wouldn't have gone through every statement and try to pull out some things that especially isolated from context sound crazy. But I don't want to...

pretend to be a political consultant or someone who works on a campaign. I've always been, all the way back, Emily, since I've been doing these shows with you, I've always been really clear I'm not a political consultant. I don't want to be. I'd hire you. Only an insane person would hire me as a political consultant. So my question then is...

Is it true, right? Are the underlying things that J.D. Vance is indicating or implying, are they true? And the answer largely is yes. If we set aside the question of how this plays or who's offended by it, we see a huge gap.

in voting patterns between essentially married men, married women, and unmarried men in one batch that are all between slightly leaning to like, you know, 55, 56% leaning Republican, and then unmarried women, which by the way, doesn't track perfectly with childless, obviously, but there's not that much polling on this. So unmarried women who are 68% leaning Democrat,

So there is a real phenomenon going on here. And then to the psychotic comment, whether or not, again, that language is inflammatory, there's all kinds of surveys now showing that, and self-reported surveys, that liberal Democratic women who are not married report the highest level of...

mental illness, like themselves report the highest level of mental illness. So he's observing something I think is real. And frankly, I would flip this around and say we're talking about, you know, we've been talking endlessly. I can't remember an election cycle that we weren't talking about the gap

between male and female voters, right? That gap opened up in the 1980s. It was not there before. It used to go the other way. So in the 1950s, women voted more Republican-leaning than men did.

But that gap started opening up in the 80s. And I would actually argue that if you look at the underlying statistics, it's less driven by any particular messaging or issue and more driven by the fact that simply fewer and fewer people are getting married. And you see that gap explode with Gen Z, where you see now young men going further right and

and young women going further left. So I think there is something about marriage, about building families with the opposite sex, right, that tempers the political instincts of the two sexes. And I think we are probably about to see the most male-centric campaign versus the most female-centric campaign possible on the respective Republican and Democratic sides. It's going to heighten that. One final thing we could just as easily be talking about, a gap.

on the Democratic side among male voters. Because in 2020, Joe Biden was able to get those numbers pretty close to 50-50. Now, Republicans still won men, but not by a huge margin. Kamala Harris is polling at 39% with men. So we could just as easily have this conversation. We could have pulled up AOC's tweet about incels, right? And we could have this conversation about incels and childless cat ladies and the problem that the Democratic Party has with men.

Yeah, but AOC is not on the ticket is the thing. I'm just saying we could have the same political conversation. But we've got white dudes for a comma, so they're going to solve the problem. No, but the principle on the Democratic side is polling very, very poorly with men. And we could have the same conversation about why that might be or why some of her rhetoric might be alienating to men.

So you would be hard pressed to find a mainstream Democrat or certainly Kamala or Joe Biden or the gents that are being considered for the ticket who have said things that are so intentionally offensive. And the things that you're saying, Inez, I think

Like, for example, I'm in favor of family, you know, pro-family policy. I'm in favor of a child tax credit. I'm in favor of affordable child care. I'm in favor of making it easier for people who want to have families to be able to have families. So the difference is, and Rachel, I'll get you in on this,

how you talk about those things. And Matt Brunick actually made an interesting point. I think part of the problem for JD Vance and how he messages in particular, which is very different from how Trump messages in Trump's cleaning, clean him of this. He was like, he just likes families. He just likes families, not against anyone. He just likes families.

But J.D. Vance did come up through these very ideological and often online spaces. And the rewards don't really come in those spaces from saying things that are broadly appealing. Like, for example, child tax credit has 70% support. They come, and I know this because this happens on the left too, from saying the things that are like, feel edgy, feel subversive. And so when you take those comments out of that context and you blast them out to a general election audience, it's

suddenly you have a political messaging problem. Matt Bruning made this point. I'd love to get your response to this, Rachel, because you're deeply plugged in like in the, you know, the new right space. Problem J.D. Vance has the same one Oren Kass and similar have. They want to break with GOP economic orthodoxy, but not in a way that is so palatable that the Dems are cool with it, which requires either making the policy actually suck or framing it in some way that piques the

the libs. And that's kind of what I get off of his comments is like, if he just goes out there and he's like, hey, we should have a child tax credit. Well, that's not exciting. That's not edgy. But if you say like, oh, screw these childless sociopaths and these deranged ladies who are destroying the country and must be stopped at all costs, like then you get online traction, you become a thing. So, you know, what do you make of his comments and what do you make of that analysis?

Well, I actually think it breaks down into two categories, right? I think the family formation policy and how we talk about our politics being run by, you know, white liberal women without kids are two separate things. And I think, you know, he to get to get to Inez's point about the latter point.

He is correct. There was a Pew poll a couple of days ago that came out showing that I think among Gen Z, among young millennials, people aren't having kids in greater numbers. And the reason is that they just don't want them.

Now, to pretend that's not going to change our politics, to pretend that's not going to change how our social culture is built is ridiculous, right? We have to be able to talk about that. You know, and I think that the white women for Harris, that the woman who led that has kind of gone viral as a case in point of kind of what J.D. Vance is talking about, which is this

sort of HR culture, whether you have kids or not, right? This HR culture that's built toward policing conformity. Helen Andrews at the American Conservative talks a lot about how women in groups act about this, right? They're different than men. Men will go out and create conflict around things. Women police conformity in very sort of passive aggressive ways. That is reflected in our politics. And I think that's kind of what he's talking about. Do you want people making policy in

in that vein, which is totally different in many ways of how people with kids view the world. You know, people with kids tend to have a stake, more of a thought and a stake toward the future. They tend to have a little bit of a different perspective because they've got, you know, financial concerns that are completely different than people without kids. Now, going to the second point about family formation policy, yes, the way you talk about that

I think is a challenge. And Ross Douthat had an interesting Twitter thread about this the other day. The pro-natalism space is inherently weird in itself, right? Being able to talk about it in a way that's, you're talking about something very personal and very, you know, people have unique views on it. It's a difficult thing to talk about generally. And so it can come off as weird. And I think, you know, someone like J.D. Vance, who's an elder millennial who has grown up in a lot of

you know, who came of age, I think in a lot of blue spaces. Thoughts on Garden State. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Saying things that are, you know, edgy and come off as subversive. To your point, that's, you know, if you grow up in, if you come of age in a blue area, that's how you tend to talk about it. It's a very online way of speaking. He's going to have to change how he does that because I think that doesn't fly, you know, outside of these very niche Twitter spaces. So,

And the foundational truth he's talking about, I think, is correct. But to your point, he's got a messaging problem that he's got to fix. Yeah, it's got basket of deplorable vibes where it's like, you know, train all. This is my personal view. Train all the fire you want at the people who are setting policy at, you know, the financial like media. Yes.

But his comments were not just about Kamala Harris, which, by the way, Kamala Harris is a stepmother, which, you know, for a lot of people, they're looking at that and going, wait, you don't count stepmoms. You don't count stepdads who are, you know, raising kids and doing the work as well. But in addition, it was a broad brush. And so there were many people who felt themselves condemned to, you know, this characterization as being less mentally stable, most deranged, most psychotic, etc., etc.,

And so that's to me what it has echoes of is the minute that you show contempt and judgment for like a broad swath of the country,

you're going to lose both in terms of electorally, but also in terms of whatever it is that you're selling. And I don't actually think it is hard to talk about at least some family policy. Like I said, child tax credit is like 70% support. It's very popular. Things like affordable childcare. And I know there are debates about within the right. He wasn't a big fan of the idea of focusing on childcare, but the idea of making it easier for moms to be able to raise kids, for parents to be able to have families, um,

I think those are broadly accepted and very popular. It's only when you go out of your way to frame it in this like aggressive negative way that it becomes unpopular. And for me, it's a problem because I actually want those instincts and the right to be cultivated and be successful. So I'm cheering for the messaging on the right to be better and more appealing on those areas where there is some genuine overlap that's starting to develop.

Well, this will likely be a lesson in that. Here, let me roll, and as I get you to respond to this clip that we're going to roll, this is a Fox News compilation of people being called, or of, I should say, of people calling, like Kamala Harris calling Republicans, Trump, Vance, weird. Let's go ahead and roll this. It's plain weird. I mean, that's the box you put

It's not just a weird style that he brings. It's that this leads to weird policies. That is weird behavior. More extreme, more weird, more erratic. I mean, on the other side, they're just weird. The 32 ounces of weird. Donald Trump and his weirdo running mate. And by the way, they are weird. It is bizarre. It's weird. It is weird. Jada.

- Dirty Vance, just dumb Vance, is pretty weird. - So I actually wanna agree with Crystal. I think it's very, very powerful, which is why you saw this sudden rush of it and why you actually saw Republicans like Terry, for example, at the RNC using something similar. Here is F4, this is a tear sheet. This is from The Hill.

some House Republicans are slamming Trump's VP pick, quote, the worst choice. I've heard that from sources. I'm sure everyone's heard that now. So I'll just, with all of that said, toss it to you, Inez. J.D. Vance, a bad pick or not. If you were a Trump campaign advisor and you could wave a magic wand and replace him with someone else, is that the right move? First of all, I told you nobody in their right mind would give me that magic wand. But-

To answer the question anyway, absolutely not. I think he was, if not the best among the choices, among the best of the choices. Part of that is what I said in the first part of the segment, that I don't really think that VP picks make that much difference electorally either way. And I think actually what Trump needs is a consigliere vote.

a competent, bright consigliere who's actually going to run policy through the executive branch and who's aligned with his vision, which is very different than the establishment of the Republican Party. And that's what I think a lot of this is, by the way, the Republicans sniping at J.D. Vance as opposed to Democrats trying out messaging, which were in an election, that makes sense, is just that J.D. Vance has some ideas that are

very, very different, both domestically and on foreign policy than the party establishment. And I think that's where a lot of this comes from. In terms of whether or not weird lands, I think it maybe did initially. And I think there is a large element of return to normalcy. I think Biden was very much able to tap into that in 2020. I think it's much harder after the last three and a half years to tap into that adult in the room, you know, sort of return to normalcy energy.

for the Democratic Party, there is a record that the last three and a half years have not, if anything can be said about the last three and a half years, it's not that they've been normal. So I think it's difficult, but I think that messaging generally is quite potent. I think this is way overused and I think it's going to end up

either burning itself out or being very easy to just throw back in Democrats' faces by pointing to a lot of weird examples on the left. And then finally, just one sentence about what we were talking about before,

in terms of like how to talk about these issues. I agree completely with what Rachel said. I thought Ross doubt that the same Ross doubt that tweet that she's pointing to, I thought was also interesting. These are personal issues. So it's very difficult to talk about them without, you know, causing offense, even if you're very careful, which JD was not particularly careful in his, his phrasing. I, I also think there is an element in all of this of allowing ourselves to be ruled by the tyranny of, but I'm an exception, right?

We can talk about general trends in society in such a way that, like, oftentimes, and this is not just on this subject, if you talk about any kind of general trend in politics or in culture, and the first 10 replies, whether online or, frankly, in person, a lot of times are, but that doesn't apply to me. Well, if it doesn't apply to you, then perhaps not.

like we can still discuss the rule as opposed to the exception. And actually, I think this applies to so much of our discourse. We are constantly tiptoeing around the exception and therefore not discussing the rule, which I think is a deficit, not just in this conversation about how...

this major change in whether or not we replicate ourselves will affect our politics and civilization. But on so many issues where I guess I'm just tired of the like, the chirp coming up every single time. Well, but there's exceptions, right? That's obviously true. There's no statement you can make that won't have exceptions. This is exactly why you're not a consultant. Rachel, two quick thoughts for you to respond to. First of all, with regard to weird, I have to tell you, I was asking myself last night, I was like,

is this getting overused? But then I have to remind myself that we are weird. Like normal people out there, in politics, the rule is you repeat the shit out of whatever it is you hammer. And Trump is amazing at this, right? No one understands branding and repetition better than that man. Crooked Hillary, low energy Jeb.

Lil Marco, we can still say it to this day. And it wasn't because he used it once, it's because he routine over and over and over again so that it's the first thing you associate with in your head. With regard to J.D. Vance, my just very quick case for why he is a problem for the ticket at this point is because the two areas where the Trump campaign clearly feels vulnerability are abortion and Project 2025.

J.D. Vance has said a lot of things that Trump does not embrace on abortion. And he has authored a foreword for the Project 2025 guy and, you know, is clearly aligned with the kind of like beating heart of all of that. So on the two areas where Trump feels himself to be the most vulnerable, J.D. Vance brings additional baggage that he has to deal with and has to defend to the ticket.

So I think, you know, I'd go back to something Inez says, which is, well, at first, I think to the point you made, yes, I think if you're repeating something to the point where you think you're saying it too much, you're probably just breaking through. And I think that's a maxim of political campaigns that Donald Trump, to your point, has been very good at.

But I think on the second issue, I really, it goes back to this idea that whether or not J.D. Vance characterized it correctly, he is correct when he says that, you know, we are, the divide between parties are people that want to actively control every aspect of how you raise your family, what you do, how, you know, how you talk and, you know,

everybody else. And I think his sort of childless cat lady comments are a proxy for that impulse in the Democratic Party. And I think the Democrat Party can continue to say, oh, you know, J.D. Vance is the weird one, but there's going to be example after example after example on the left, particularly culturally, where they're going to pop up examples of

crazy far left culture and say, oh, these are the people that want to tell you that, you know, JD Vance is weird. And I think that divide is going to continue to present itself because again, what he's saying, you can say it was artless, you can say it was classless, but it's a proxy for this impulse on the left to

to control your speech, to control what you say at work, to control how you talk about your religious faith. These are things I do think will resonate. So I think right now- But Rachel, if I could just, when you're judging people for when and how and whether they have kids,

This is exactly why I think this framing is a problem for Republicans, because you're right. When it's Democrats who feel like they're policing how you live, what you can say, all of those sorts of things, Americans have this knee-jerk reaction against it. And I think that's why these comments are a problem, because they reflect a similar tendency on the right of...

of there is one way for you to go about your life. We're going to judge you for it. Here's the program. And if you don't fit into our model, then you're a childless sociopath, less mentally stable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's what you're identifying, that instinct against that, like controlling, judgmental, like nanny state, cancel culture, whatever type of behavior that has come at times from Democrats.

That's what comes across in these comments is I'm going to police you, your life, your bedroom, your choices, et cetera. Yeah, I think he in my interpretation of it, having lived in these circles, is that it's an efficient proxy way for him to talk about that widened aperture that we're both speaking about. So I do think he has to

contextualize the way he talks about it because they're hanging him on a throwaway way of speaking about these things. I do think he has to widen that and contextualize how he talks about it. He's going to break through the caricature that they're trying to paint of him on the left because I do think

Whenever, to the point that you made earlier, whenever you speak about someone with contempt, it's dangerous, especially on the national ticket. And I think unless he's capable of, and I think he is, of explaining this impulse on the left that he's fighting against, it's going to be an issue.

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One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

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All right, let's go ahead and move on to another totally not fraught and difficult conversation about abortion. But really the best example of what we've been talking about, Crystal, in this entire conversation about, you know, this is one of the best examples of where this is potentially a vulnerability for Republicans and potentially especially for the Trump-Vance situation.

Right, so Vance in particular, I mean, he voted against the IVF bill that went through the Senate. He was spoken in favor of some sort of national, whether it's an abortion ban or quote unquote federal response bill.

to deal with abortion tourism. He's been out there on the issue in a way that is uncomfortable for Trump and not where Trump wants to position himself. We already know Democrats are going to make this a key issue because it's been successful for them in the post-Roe environment, in special elections, etc. Let's

put this up on the screen. This is just a report about how Kamala Harris plans to lean into abortion. And I think it's fair to say as a much more credible and much more comfortable messenger on the issue who, you know, as opposed to Joe Biden, who is himself personally Catholic and personally pro-life,

and I know you guys will probably object to that characterization, but that's how he would describe himself, and has been on the side of pro-life positions at times in his career. So he just, he's not really all in on the issue, wasn't comfortable talking about it. I think Kamala Harris' gender is an asset here as well. Just off the top, Inez, how do you think that this issue

plays in the election? And also, what do you make of the Trump campaign's clear moves to basically push abortion to the side, you know, take it out of the RNC platform, just say we're leaving it to the states and that's that, we're not going to do anything at the federal level. Do you think that those efforts are good? And do you think that that will be successful?

So first of all, these are the problems of victory, right? Because what happened when Dobbs came down is there was a very large and obvious separation between what Republican elected officials were telling their voters, their most enthusiastic voters in fundraising emails, and what

First of all, what they were willing to do as a party. And second of all, there was a gap between what they were telling those voters and where the country ended up being on the issue. That's, you know, more probably relevant than the first, but it split that open. So before the Republican Party could comfortably use pro-life rhetoric, you know, as sort of

all the way to the wall as hard rhetoric as they wanted because they had no power to do anything about the issue. And I do think this is like a, and I know Rachel has many, many examples of this in the Senate from her years in the Senate, right? But this is the classic sort of virtue signaling politics issue where you have politicians who are able to say things

exactly because that like their base is liked exactly because they had no power and no intent of doing anything about it. And that's just very irritating. So, and I do think that applies to the second part of your question as well, which is how to deal with the fact that the Republican party, the dominant position in the Republican party base on this issue on abortion is increasingly isolated in the country. It's a minority position.

Right. But it's very strongly and sincerely felt by the large part of the Republican base. Right. So how to deal with that. And again, I'm not a not good at answering these questions in terms of politics. I do, however, think that there is a certain insincerity that is always picked up.

Um, when you just try to sidestep questions and I would prefer to see Republicans in general, take this on in an honest and sincere and head on way and say simply, look, I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this issue. I myself, I'm going to, by the way, a moderate on abortion, but I, I,

I know that people, a lot of people are going to be disagreeing with me on this issue. Here's why I hold the position that I, you know, this is the difference between leadership and just, you know, putting your finger in the wind and following whatever is most popular in the polls. And I think that insincerity actually does come through. And I think it makes people mistrust the rest of what you say. I think the average person, again, maybe at all. Right, like Vance's Mifepristone comment.

So, yeah, Jaydee Vance went on one of the Sunday shows before he was picked as VP. He was obviously in as a contender and kind of flip-flopped on the abortion drug myth of Pristone, sent alarm bells across the pro-life movement. And I agree with you. I think that makes people distrust you and distrust your sincerity on other issues, let alone that issue. Is there something particular you think about abortion that that's

That's most dangerous for a J.D. Vance to to tack to adopt a Trumpian tack, I should say, now that he's on the ticket and basically has to.

Yeah, I'm really not sure if there's a good way for him to tack here without appearing insincere. And I think maybe the best way to talk about it would be just to be very honest and say, these are my views. I know they're not held by the majority of the country. They're not even held by my running mate. They're not part of our policy agenda for the presidency. But here's why I believe what I believe. I'm going to be honest with you. I know that most of you won't agree with me. I think that's actually a more, I don't know,

As an American voter, as a citizen, I'd rather be talked to that way, even assuming on an issue that I very much disagree with someone on, than to be gaslit and sort of...

And I just don't think it comes off very well. And I think it just makes you lose credibility on other issues when you're not honest about, you know, things where you can easily pull up, you know, 500 clips of you saying a particular thing, right? It just comes off.

it damages your credibility and other issues, not to be honest. And then to also be honest about the fact that you have realistic expectations about how much of those views of yours are likely to be enacted through the political process because the majority of the country disagrees with you. Rachel, as a social conservative, I've been really actually curious to talk to you about how you felt about these issues clearly being, which I know you care a lot about, clearly being intentionally sidelined by the Republican Party.

Well, I think Inez has sort of distilled this correctly. You know, this issue has been protected from politics for 50 years, right? It's been protected by judicial fiat. Neither party has had to actually engage it as a political matter in the political process. And they become almost two separate questions at this point. How...

in terms of the morality of the issue, which drives a lot of how Republicans feel about this. I'm a pro-life Catholic. So is J.D. Vance. I have thoughts about how Joe Biden presents himself on this issue that I will leave to the side for this moment. But how we have to now engage the political process

almost at a state-by-state level, which is the position that Donald Trump has frankly taken. And I don't think we can jump to the end and say, now we have to impose our end goal on everyone without doing the work first, to Inez's point. I don't think you can moderate on this question if you are

of someone who is pro-life for the very reason that you believe human life begins at conception. There's no moderating on that point. Be honest about it, but also be honest about the fact that we live in a country where these decisions are decided politically. I personally think our pro-life movement on the right

has to sort of re-architect itself. And they aren't doing this, right? They're continuing this federal push for all these federal policies, when in reality, I think there's a sequencing element here. You have to go make your case. You have to persuade people at a very granular level before you can get to where you say you want to go. They're not rebuilding themselves that way. So I think we have a real disconnect. And it's why the pro-life movement keeps losing around the country, because they aren't actually going and doing the work. So, you know, this is a

a generational quest, I think. It's not like suddenly Roe falls and, you know, it's like Roe falls, question mark, question mark, abortion ban. Like that's not how it works. That's not how the politics of this work at all. And I think you're kind of seeing the Trump campaign grapple with that reality. Rachel, what do you think of the potency of the issue come November? Because I have to tell you, I mentioned before I lived in Kentucky, we were talking about Annie Beshear. Um,

Democrats in Kentucky were getting killed on the issue of abortion for years, right? This was, you know, Republicans-

really took control of the state. One of the key issues that they used was abortion in a state that is very religious. And so it was quite shocking to me to see the way that Andy Beshear was able to run affirmatively on his pro-choice position. And it was a tremendous asset to him. He ran an ad, I'm sure you saw, the young girl who was raped and he said, you know, Daniel Cameron would force her to bear her rapist baby. It was a devastating ad.

And to see that flip in Kentucky to me was wild. I would not have predicted that the politics on the issue, even in a state like Kentucky, would flip so quickly. The question is, does it remain so salient? Clearly, Donald Trump wants to push off to the side, make other issues more of the focus, immigration in particular, or the economy and inflation as well. Do you think that that is possible for him to...

Or does this continue to be a highly salient and important issue? You know, it's honestly hard for me to say. I think it's going to be something the Trump campaign is going to have to grapple with because Democrats are going to make them. But I don't think that, you know,

On the right, Donald Trump has already decided how he's going to handle this. And people can agree or disagree with it. But how he's determined it is he's basically saying the traditional Republican position on this has been we are pro-life. From Donald Trump's perspective, we have exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of a mother in our abortion policy. End of story. That's how Republicans are comfortable talking about it. I think that's what you're going to continue to see from his campaign.

Now, the pro-life movement, I think, has a different perspective and they need to rebuild on this front. That is a years-long process. I don't think you're going to see that come out in this campaign. I do think Democrats are going to continue to make abortion a centerpiece. However, I do think if Donald Trump doubles down on his economic arguments, if he doubles down on, you know,

life being difficult for middle-class families, talks about open borders. In that vein, I think Democrats are going to have a hard time continuing to say the only thing that matters in this campaign is Donald Trump's going to make your nine-year-old get an abortion or not get an abortion if she gets pregnant. I don't think that that resonates too far when you're dealing with kitchen table issues. Hmm.

Well, you guys, this is, oh, I shouldn't say guys. I'm sorry. You ladies, this has been a riveting discussion. Thank you so much for joining us on today's edition of CounterPoints. We appreciate your insight. Great to see you both. Thank you, ladies. Thank you for having us. Crystal, it's always so fun to have you, to co-host with you. And it's always so much fun to have you to bounce kind of ideas and arguments against. So appreciate you joining the show today. Oh.

It was my pleasure. This is a fun one. I like that we leaned into the lady power. So, yeah, next time we'll have all men, I guess we'll have two guys on what we'll do, like white dudes for Kamala or we'll do like maybe we should we should do it differently. We should do like black women for Trump.

Oh, okay. Yeah, we can do that. Just do the exact opposite. Yeah, I like that. That would be a little bit of a... I can't, like, off the top of my head think of who that would be. We'll come up with it. Candace Owens, maybe she can join us. We can get Sagar to figure that out and we'll make it happen. Yeah.

All right. Thank you, Emily. Of course. And everyone, don't forget BP Free One over at BreakingPoints.com for a free 30-day trial of Breaking Points Premium. We appreciate you watching. I'll be back here with Ryan next week for another edition of CounterPoints. Thanks, everyone. Hope you have a great rest of your week. Crystal will be back here with Sagar tomorrow.

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