S4 Ep49: Can Kamala Be Unburdened? (with Benjy Sarlin)
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Go to shopify.com slash audioboom to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash audioboom. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, you guys need to take your medicine because we've spent several weeks hearing all of the good news about how swing voters are warming up to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

However, the polls pretty much everywhere are still way too close for comfort. And that's partly because, like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is still relatively weak with some Black and Hispanic voters. Not all of them, not even most of them, but enough to show up in a real way in the numbers.

Harris is also coming off of a CNN interview last week, and we're coming up on a big inflection point in this race with the presidential debate on September 10th. To level set how Harris can make headway with skeptical voters with the time left in this race, I'm turning to Benji Sarlin, Washington Bureau Chief at Semaphore. Benji, thanks for being here.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm just going to geek out here. I'm a longtime fan. I cannot wait to get into this with you. Fandom is mutual, but hey, question. Benji, where's that come from? Benji with a Y.

So it's a funny story. I don't have to give you the long version, but basically I was named after one of my father's best friends. And in Judaism, you're not allowed to name after someone living is the tradition. But he had joined the Hare Krishna and changed his name to Parmananda Das. So the name was free.

And then he later left and changed his name back to Benji. So there were actually two of us and still are now. So we managed to get a loophole in there. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

Man, the Hare Krishnas, I've never heard of the bounce back between those. But you know what? The world is a crazy place filled with people who contain multitudes, as our focus groups routinely show. So a few weeks ago, right after Kamala Harris became the nominee, you wrote about how she had to overcome the ghosts of 2019 because she was, and you're telling, burdened by what has been. So how's she done at unburdening herself so far in your estimation?

Well, the Democrats that I talked to and who also identify the ghosts of 2019, as you mentioned, which I'll get into in a little bit, are mostly very happy with her. Because when I talk about those ghosts of 2019, the biggest one is that she seemed to just get caught up in every damaging conversation between left-wing interest groups. And that whenever they had some new demand of the candidates, whether it was Medicare for all or abolish ICE or decriminalizing the border, they were all very happy with her.

She didn't always adopt their position, but at the very least, she often humored it and tried to not look like she was afraid of this conversation or not look like she was displeased.

distancing herself from the left. So what has she done in her first month or first few weeks? She's tacked to the center pretty much at every opportunity, with few exceptions. I mean, obviously, the biggest one is on border security, where right from the beginning, her biggest ads have all been about how she was a tough-on-crime prosecutor who went after transnational gangs and will sign a bipartisan bill to

crack down on the border even further. They've definitely been trying to shore up that weakness. She has quietly backed away from some of her further left positions in 2019. Some of them came up in that CNN interview in which she elaborated a little further on, for example, why she no longer supports a ban on fracking, a position she was very clear on but abandoned after joining the Biden ticket in 2020.

So they definitely see the overall impression of a candidate who is trying to shore up their weaknesses by moving to the center. That seems to be her biggest concern at the moment. I've got a theory on this, but do you think that she is more comfortable right now in this sort of center left mode? Or do you think she was more comfortable in fighting with 10 other progressives about who is more progressive? Like, which one do you think is the real Kamala Harris?

My suspicion from covering her closely at the time of that election was that she was definitely not comfortable in that mode. In the progressive mode. Yeah. Now, is that because she herself is very moderate and very centrist and doesn't like those positions? No.

I'm not a thousand percent clear on that, but it put her in an awkward position where her background was not as some policy wonk outside of criminal justice issues, which was, of course, the one area where her credentials were especially damaging with the left that cycle. It was hard for her to talk about these things. And also she had to maneuver and make a bunch of concessions. But I thought pragmatism was what came across with her. It was that prosecutor mentality. You know, she was...

not someone who ran as a ideological radical reformer in California. She certainly had to balance the demands of even in a democratic state, a state that frequently elected people who were seen as tough on crime and needed to prove that they would not be swayed by interest groups on the left and show that they would be able to balance these concerns. So at the very least, that was an environment she was used to operating in. And questions about, for example, single payer health care, which is

very complicated and touches all sorts of aspects of the economy and is difficult to discuss often, even among people who support it. She clearly was not comfortable dealing with those more complex domestic issues. And I think she maybe got ahead of her skis a little bit in embracing some positions and not understanding the subtleties of the politics around them.

around who's backing these, how well have these policies been thought through, how far can I go in either direction without angering someone I truly cannot afford to alienate. But it was a confusing time for a lot of Democratic candidates that cycle. They really did not have clear a picture of what voters wanted as they do now on some of these issues after having tested these messages in a few election cycles.

That was a very painful Democratic primary for me up until the point where Joe Biden finally won because watching them all try to out-progressive themselves at a time when they were going to be running against Donald Trump. I'm not sure where they sort of came away with this lesson that the idea of running to the left on a bunch of these issues was going to be appealing to a majority of voters. However...

Sometimes we debate a bunch of things. People are like, well, I want to know why she changed her position on fracking. And I'm like, because she wants to win Pennsylvania. And her previous position wasn't particularly strongly held. It was an activist position. And also, I think that right now, I agree with you that she is much more comfortable

as a pragmatic consensus builder or as somebody who's simply trying to like get the job done, that that seems sort of more her mode. She's not an ideologue as best I can tell. Like she's not a dogmatic progressive who, you know, is mired in the fire and her points of a lot of these progressive policy fights or, or even democratic policy fights. And so I think Republicans sort of want to paint her as having no core and she

Democrats are basically like, I'm happy with the vibes because this isn't Biden. And I think they can kind of impute whatever they want onto her and that that's satisfactory for a lot of people. But I think the bottom line is, and sometimes I feel like it's worth leaning into this, is to say, hey, look, I'm going to bring a lot of people to the table. I'm going to listen to a lot of different opinions and we're going to reach a consensus about how to move forward because that seems to be what she's kind of doing.

Yeah, it was interesting how she addressed this in that CNN interview, for example. She sort of touched on multiple points. One is it sounded like she was more worried about being tagged as having no core, as you put it, than being seen as too left wing. She kept repeating the big answer that they clearly had been prepping for weeks because they knew this was going to be the big question. My values haven't changed. Yes, my values haven't changed. And, you know, for the most part, she's right there. You know, she's directionally similar.

on all these issues to some degree. You know, most Democrats are. But she has changed how, you know, extreme a solution she might entertain in response. But she also mentioned that

something that, you know, when our reporters have talked to some of our closest allies and longtime friends that they actually brought up before the interview, which was the idea that being vice president changes you to some degree, which is, you know, you travel the country, you meet people from all walks of life, from very different perspectives. You're not just in California anymore, for example, you're not just cloistered in the Senate to the same degree. And she talked about the importance of bringing people together and building consensus, which is a very Biden idea. So

So she certainly seems comfortable discussing things that way. It'll be interesting as she's more tested. One thing I've found surprising

surprising to me is that even watching her during that campaign, this was just instinctive. My thought was she wishes she could run in the Biden lane. I think she would feel much better if she was looking at me. I'm just pragmatic. I'm a prosecutor. I look at the facts. I prosecute the case against Donald Trump. And if there's a problem in front of me, that's how I'm going to approach it, too. We'll look at the best evidence and then we'll move forward. I thought that was more her natural mode, which sounded a lot like her DNC speech. But it's funny. I've talked to very smart, plugged in political people who

who've made completely opposite assumptions about her when we're talking. That it's, you know, like, wow, it's going to be wild when she becomes president because she's going to have much further left views on this, this, and this. I think that's her true self. You know, just look at her mother was very involved in, you know, left-wing politics in California. That's her core.

And then I've talked to other people who have said, wow, people aren't prepared for after Biden. Now you're going to have this more business friendly candidate because she was on the West Coast and she knows these tech CEOs and they've been longtime donors and friends of hers and that and even family members in that world. It's, you know, people are all over the map on what they think about. Sometimes it's a good place for a candidate to be where everyone is trying to assume if they're left, that they'll be left, if they're to the center, that they'll be to the center.

I will tell you that, of course, it can be a liability when it appears that you have no real core. But there is also a lot of upside in people being able to project all of their hopes and dreams on you. In fact, this is what I saw with RFK. Like RFK was just like absolutely a Rorschach test. Republicans would tell you all of the reasons he was just like them. And then Democrats would tell you, you know, he's an environmentalist. And then the more they found out about him, the less they liked him.

And he lost that sheen of people being able to sort of project onto him. And now he's gone. Okay. So I want to talk about some of these voters that are going to be our focus today. And this is why I said you guys have to take your medicine. Because we're going to talk to some of the people who have in the past voted for him.

Voted for Democrats, they voted for Clinton, they voted for Biden. And now they're Trump curious, which is, I think, a shocking type of person for a lot of people to get their heads around because they're like, who is this person who disliked Trump for multiple cycles?

and is now interested in him. But the fact is, not only do they exist, but in the data, one of the things that has been a real worry for Democrats has been the percentage of Black voters and Hispanic voters who appear to be not only moving away from Democrats, but specifically moving toward Donald Trump, who are finding something to like in him. And so because the

This podcast is not just about the what. We all know that we're seeing some of this movement. We're trying to get at the why. So who are these people and why do they feel this way? Well, that's who we're going to talk to. So Harris has recovered some of Biden's backslide with Black and Hispanic voters, but she's still well behind where Biden was in 2020.

Biden won the black vote by 83% in 2020, while Harris is up by 62 points. Biden won the Hispanic vote by 24 points in 2020, according to an average of the post-election surveys. Just shout out again to Adam Carlson's crosstab aggregator, which we'll link to in the show notes. But I want to get into what a group of black and Hispanic Clinton Biden voters who are leaning towards Trump said about their reservations about Harris. Let's listen.

Like she had Megan Thee Stallion there. That was cringy. Like I wouldn't have done that. Like Trump at his rallies, they kind of get rowdy too and get crazy. But like at least at some point they talk about like what's at hand.

For now, she's been just having parties. And what I do like about Trump is his directness. He does talk a little crazy, but I kind of like the unpolishedness of him where he just tells you what he's thinking. Like, you don't have to really guess too much because he's going to tell you. He's going to say it out loud. I do like that about him and some of his policies. I've noticed that my dollars don't stretch as far as they used to.

I went to the grocery store with my wife to get some eggs, and it was like 10 bucks. I was like, this is crazy. She does most of the shopping, so it's been a while since I've been able, and I saw it was 10 bucks. I'm like, what's going on? And the economy has really not gotten great under Mr. Biden. I respect him as a person. I, too, feel like he has some health challenges that have been kind of hidden from us, and

She's doing a lot to play up her ethnicity. I feel that there's a bit of retconning her ethnicity as well. And she's attempting to play to a demographic that I'm not quite certain is a fair understanding of her background.

And it shows you how out of touch she is with the African-American community to subject us to the ignorance of all these people deserve is a barbecue and a trap concert.

I really don't appreciate it. I have three degrees. Neither of them appreciate being subjugated. I don't even like Megan Thee Stallion or whatever. Like I mispronounced it because I don't listen to her music because I don't identify with hood rats because I went to college three times.

Like, we're smarter than that. I think that this was a plan since Obama left office and they told her to sit in the corner and color. If you look at what she's done from the time she graduated until now, she literally sat in the corner and colored until it was time for her to be taken over by the puppeteers.

Because if I met her, I would have lots of questions. First thing I would say is, do you know that Black people aren't going to vote for you just because you appear Black? Because you don't appear Black. You don't act Black. You aren't interested in our issues. And you haven't done anything to help our community move forward since you've been in office. That's what I would say. I think that she's a fake individual. I've seen her teeth probably more than her dentist has.

I don't think that there's anything authentic about her. I think that she has an ability to pander to whatever community that she's talking to at the time. She's Indian when she wants to be Indian, around Indian people talking about eating South Indian food. She's African-American when she feels like it. It's just whatever demographic she's in at the time, that's who she's going to cater to.

And the reason why I voted for Biden is because he was pushing the student loan forgiveness and the public student loan forgiveness. So that was a turn on for me working in public service.

And so the reason why I'm leaning towards Trump for 2024 is because Trump actually has policies. We have yet to see what the other side has said about anything regarding policies. And so he's actually documented them in Agenda 47, where we can actually see the immigration policy that he's enacting. We can look at the CHIPS Act.

We can look at all those different policies. And so I think that he's been quite transparent about what he wants to do and what he wants to accomplish, whether he gets that done or not. At least we have some sort of baseline. The other side, we've not seen anything. So leaving aside the fact that the CHIPS Act was done by Joe Biden and people are always yelling at me after these things are like, why don't you correct people? You know, when they're not, I'm like, look, it's not what focus groups are for. But it does speak to, I think,

what Joe Biden has done for people or the things that he signed has not broken through. There was a lot of that in this group. But beyond that, part of what's interesting to me, when Donald Trump did his thing with the National Association of Black Journalists, and he did the thing where he's like, Kamala Harris, what even is she? You know, she's not black. There's a reason he did that. And it was specifically, I think, for voters like this, because this is not the first time I've heard

this type of conversation, which is like, what is she? She's a shapeshifter, right? That's what it's about. I hear voters articulate this all the time. Women say they think just because I'm a woman, I'm going to vote for another woman. You hear Black people say they think just because she's Black, I'm going to vote for her. But like I said at the top, she's doing better than Biden was, but she is still underperforming with Black and Hispanic voters. So why do you think that is?

Well, it's an interesting rejoinder to the conversation we were just having about how people who are inclined to like Harris or inclined to vote Democratic for whatever reason will seem to enjoy the idea that she's not so clear right now because they can project their hopes and their preferences onto her. Trump has always had a natural appeal, and I think this was a huge theme of pretty much that entire focus group that I watched, a huge appeal to people who are very low trust, as they say.

people who are extremely skeptical of politics in general, who might even think that Trump is a liar, but at least he's, you know, being honest about it in his own way. You know what you're getting. It's the thing you've heard in a million. Oh, my God. The number of people they say, look, I know he lies, but he tells the truth. I hear that all the time. Yes. But the point is that the reason I think a lot of people feel that way is Trump is framing everything as,

you're being lied to by everyone. There's all these conspiracies out to get you. I get the larger truth, which is that, you know, it's all BS and we have to overcome, you know, this grand conspiracy against you. What we're seeing here is that I think the fact that Harris is not so well-defined is kind of catnip for that group of people. If you were inclined towards this idea that politicians are constantly trying to pull the wool over your eyes and pull some kind of trick,

They sound very concerned about the idea that this nominee was foisted on them very suddenly. Not that they're, you know, wish Biden were still running. I didn't see that come up, really. You know, it's not like anyone was like, oh, no, we love Joe Biden. If only he had stayed. But that they don't like the idea that there was a nominee very quickly and they don't feel like they've had time to evaluate her. And rather than seeing that as an opportunity, they see it as a negative. I don't have a full impression of her because she's being hidden from me.

Or because she's actively a shapeshifter, a chameleon. I think chameleon was the word that J.D. Vance used to defend those, you know, she's not black, she's Indian remarks that Trump made. It's interesting that that's coming out at the margins.

Yeah, I think that is an excellent description of a particular type of voter that does tend to be Trump-curious. The absence of trust. There's also like a little bit of being like an iconoclast or heterodox that, you know, you see in people where they're just like, no, I'm the kind of person who will not just go along with what everybody else is doing. I think you nailed that.

that in terms of this group of people. And this is not the first group that we have done of Black voters who've voted Democrat in the past who are now leaning Trump. Like, that is a real phenomenon. And I guess, how much do you think that this slide

with Black and Hispanic voters is specific to kind of Biden and Harris or specific to like them liking Trump? Or do you think there's something larger going on with these groups that used to be kind of mainstays of the Democratic Party shifting away over time? Like, which do you think it is? Is it specific or is it a long-term trend that Democrats need to figure out?

It's one of the big questions of this election. I mean, certainly among Republicans, you'll hear some say that this is what they call, like they say, this multiracial working class coalition. The idea that there's no inherent reason why Trump's appeals that seem to work on working class white voters are

shouldn't find some populist appeal to working class Black voters, working class Hispanic voters. There's often a very big focus on kitchen table issues you hear about in the sense that he gets it more than others do. There's also a deep suspicion of what have politicians done for me in general and the idea that maybe he can promise something at least a little more concrete, even if there's not really a lot of policy specifics underneath it. He's managed to brand himself very well as this person who has big ideas and get things done.

Now that he's been president, he's no longer a scary unknown quantity. Now, in some ways, that's hurt him, obviously, in many ways. He's never been popular. People don't like a lot of his record. But for others, he's also more familiar now. And some of the idea that this is someone who is fundamentally disqualified from being president and all manner of terrible things will happen to you if you elect him just doesn't ring true the same way. So that's one possible way to look at it.

The thing that drives Republicans crazy about black voters in particular, going back many years, is that there are many conservative black voters who have very conservative views on many specific issues where Republicans are likely to agree with them. Certainly in that panel, we saw there were quite a few pro-life voters.

You heard one voter talking about how they are offended by hip-hop culture, the idea that that is something that their community is associated with, something you would have easily heard from a Mike Huckabee or someone. These aren't far-out ideas necessarily. But because of the long history of discrimination against Black voters, which had ended up strongly associated in communities with the Republican Party, there was a big expectation that...

At the end of the day, you would vote for Democrats and make your case there. It was just way too much to imagine voting for a Republican. It's possible that that is starting to break down over time, which would be a big concern for Democrats, that especially for the younger generation, there's less direct memory of some of those core experiences in the civil rights era and the kind of activism through the black church that tied black voters so closely to the Democratic Party.

And so I think it is something that bears watching. But also, it's hard to say, you know, good data on this is tough to come by. One of the reasons we're turning to focus groups like your own is that polling is often very unreliable when it comes to polling Black voters, polling Hispanic voters. You know, some small sample crosstab in one poll often isn't going to tell you much. They might vary widely.

pollsters techniques might vary widely, especially with Hispanic voters are using, you know, Spanish language and English language interviewers, you know, do you have a someone who knows the makeup of the state very well, which is, you know, different for Latino voters from state to state, you know, it's hard to get a handle on this. But I think you're hearing a lot of trends in that focus group that have definitely been visible throughout this election cycle.

Okay, so you nailed a bunch of stuff in there that I just want to stomp on a little bit for emphasis, because some of it I think is really important. The first is, there's an idea that there's sort of no plan post-Trump. People think that like post-Trump, the Republican Party maybe goes back to what it was before, right? That is not what's happening. The sort of

America First Coalition is built on this idea of a multiracial working class party. There is a real group of conservatives in Congress who care about this. I think about somebody like Marco Rubio becoming much more friendly to unions, for example. In fact, the entire party has become more labor friendly because it is making a play now.

for working class voters. And I talk a lot on this podcast about how we really are seeing in real time the slow political realignment in terms of which voters are in which party. And Republicans want to paint the Democrats as the party of Wall Street and that Republicans are truly the friend of the working class voter. And I think that's what J.D. Vance is sort of supposed to be in part. Like this is a vision that he is not terrible at articulating when you get him on one of his better days when he's not talking about

why women bearing children is their only reason for being, being from Ohio and talking about how you build sort of a new working class agenda, right? And so that is a real thing the Republicans are working to. And I think sometimes people are like, what do you mean multiracial? And I'm like, I'm telling you, they think that they can make real inroads with Black voters and Hispanic voters, and not just the ones who are skeptical of

the establishment or the established order. But the other thing that you said that I think is dead right comes through in the focus groups all the time that I never quite know how to talk about, which is

Black voters and Hispanic voters who like Trump sound exactly like white voters who like Trump. There's a little bit of difference in here, like maybe the Megan Thee Stallion stuff. There might be some things that aren't exactly the same, but mostly their reasons for liking Trump are the same. Talking about the price at the grocery store, the sticker shock, that's everywhere. That's

all sort of working class voters, but also the fact that Trump is a businessman, people like. The fact that he tells it like it is. I mean, there's not like a reason that Black voters or Hispanic voters like Trump that sounds in any way different from white voters. So that ideal that like, hey, if this works for white working class voters, why wouldn't it work for working class voters who are Black and Hispanic? I think it's a theory that rings true. The last thing I'll say is I have really dug in

on the racism piece of it with Black and Hispanic groups where I've asked...

do you think Trump is racist? Like I did one with a group of black men right after Trump did his like, black voters will like this after he had his mugshot because they'll be able to relate to it. And I asked them, do you think that that is racist? And they're like, no, I don't think that's racist. Like Trump understands what it means to have the police after him. He understands what it means to be wrongly accused of things. And so people in our world, journalism world, the sort of talking set world,

We're appalled at this. We think, well, how can somebody not think that this is racist? And the fact is, that is not the way voters hear it, including a lot of Black voters. And so I have tried to disaggregate. I've asked Black voters, do you think Trump himself is racist? And people will say no, they don't think Trump is racist. And I think part of it is his celebrity. Somebody will say things like, well, he's good friends with Don King. And they just see him differently. But if you ask if the Republican Party is racist, they say yes.

And so I do think there is also something particular to Trump, the fact that he is a cultural figure.

And the fact that he stands apart in many ways from the Republican Party, like they are much more skeptical of the Republican Party than they are, I think, specifically of Trump. I also think that's true of white working class voters, many of whom were Democrats. Please stop me. You're naming you are naming one of the big questions of this election that I think this stuff is important to get into. And I do not have a great answer on yet, which is one, this phenomenon, as you mentioned, of big Republican games with Democrats.

Black voters in particular, but also Latino voters, younger voters, you know, outside of Florida, which is kind of its own thing right now. This has mostly been Trump specific. It has not seemed to translate down ballot. In fact, right now you're seeing very Trumpy candidates just getting their asses handed to them in Senate races and governor races, just like happened in the midterms. So far, Trumpism cannot be easily transferred to other candidates.

There is no example so far of a candidate with very Trumpy style and positions closely aligned with him, amassing his kind of turnout, his kind of margins with a very similar message. It so far is just specific to him, which is one reason why I am skeptical of the idea that the Republican Party will be forever changed and it's going to be like this forever. I have no idea what comes after Trump. It might also be a while before there's an after Trump.

Like until I see an example of like a clear platform style that can be used by someone besides Trump in a consistent way and win elections, I'm sort of skeptical of it. But that's one of the biggest unanswered questions of the cycle. Why Trump and not others? Yeah. I mean, just because I'm telling you that they have a plan doesn't mean I think that they can make that plan successful, because I do think a lot of it is specific to Trump.

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OK, so I want to quickly detour to one other group we did. So this is black and Hispanic undecided Clinton Biden voters is a different group from the one we're really digging in on. And we asked them what they were hoping to see from Harris in the coming weeks that might get them over the line. And it sounds like her performance in the upcoming debate is going to be a big deciding factor for a lot of people. Let's listen.

I would like to see her debate Trump. I am interested to see how she handles that. You know, there's a question of some of the restrictions that were put in place about the muting of the microphones, the seating arrangement. You know, we all know what happened when

Trump and Hillary were, you know, he kind of did that weird stalking thing behind her. But having said that, I completely disagree with everything Trump would ever say. But I think he did have a point about changing the rules regarding the debate for being seated and the microphone issues. So,

If all of those are put in play, I do think the debate will be important just to see how she handles the most adversarial entity that she'll ever encounter will be a Donald Trump. And that does kind of show how she'll handle Trump.

despots in the world. So that will be extremely important. And additionally, of course, to see her lay out her complete plan for economic policy, that would be extremely important for me. I'll literally probably be right down the street at a bar. But yeah, I'm definitely really eager to kind of see how this plays out to get more of a clear line of

Less of Trump's policies, but more of Kamala's policies and how they will affect not just the four years that she'll be president, but if she's thinking in a longer term strategy, just like how it will roll over. I think a lot of the times it takes much longer than four years for policies to really be felt. And now I feel like that's something that I notice more or will make note of and will affect my voting strategy.

power and trends throughout the next 10, 20 years.

I would like to see her fight back more, especially in the debate with Trump. I'd like to see her backtrack him, but also challenge things that are already in place. I really want to see what are her plans for taxes, how does she plan on helping the people, what things does she want to change in terms of taxes, prison reform, how corporations are basically taking over. So I want to see her take more of like

an AOC approach to politics. People want a fighter. I got to tell you, I hear that all the time. Okay. So this is the only focus group pod between now and the debate. So we threw this in here because I really wanted to get a little debate conversation. How

How do you think Kamala should handle herself in the debate with Donald Trump? And I guess people always ask me this question, so it's kind of an annoying question, but like, what are the stakes? Sounds like, you know, listening to voters say that the debate matters to them. They want to see the head to head match up. And what does she look like? So relative to other debates and other times, how important do you think this debate is coming up?

I mean, I can't say it's the most important ever because the immediate previous debate knocked out the sitting president from the race. But it is, I don't know, second place. It's going to be a very big deal just because, as you mentioned, voters are still really getting to know this candidate. There's suddenly a lot of interest in the race. I mean, this is probably going to be a very high turnout election. I think a lot of those undecided voters really will be turning into this debate.

I think they're really going to be looking for new information. So how she approaches it, there's a lot of different ways she can go about it.

She has a few goals, one of which, of course, is just to, you know, look strong in front of Trump. Don't get flustered. Be able to elaborate who she is, you know, fill in some of those basic blanks. This is a quick picture of who I am and what I want to do for you. And then also concisely prosecute the case against Trump. What are the biggest doubts about Trump that she wants to seed with voters? Now, the good news for her is that until that Biden debate,

which I thought Trump was better than other debates he's had personally. But, you know, I don't think he had too much to do with the outcome of that debate. Besides that Biden debate, Trump has badly lost every debate he's been in.

And you could say this subjectively watching, but really there's snap polls after these debates too. There's the overall way the numbers have changed after the debates. This includes those Hillary Clinton debates. He usually did not do well because he would seize the spotlight. The day two story would be about something he said that upset the maximum number of people or reminded people about the doubts they have, even if they do like him. And among those

Trump-leaning voters you talked to, for example, it really sounded like they were trying to talk themselves into Trump at this point. They didn't sound too gettable to me. Even they had things they hated about Trump. Okay. Well, hold on. You're giving me my transition right into my next pet. There you go. Okay. So let's just get into it because I want to turn back to the more Trump-leaning groups because a lot of these voters do, as you say, they still have serious reservations about Trump, even though currently they would say he's got their vote. Let's listen to how they talk about those reservations.

Particularly, I think the Democrats are going to try to play out to make him seem crazy, unhinged, psychotic, all these things. I just really hope he doesn't play into that and get into that too much, especially as we go into voting and things. He's going to say what he says, but as of now, I mean, I don't have any hesitations. I think as long as he can get us back to where we need to be, he's got my vote. I do have...

some concerns. I'm not quite certain he will respect the institutions and the constitutionality of how things are supposed to go. I did not like what occurred on January 6th.

Although I don't believe he had a direct hand, I don't think he directly said, hey, you go do this. He had to have known that his influence was as such that he kind of stoked the fires. But even considering that the ability for us to feed our families and to have jobs, I mean, my gosh, I have so many friends who have been laid off. I've been voting blue no matter who for my entire life, but that strategy is not really effective.

conducive to working for me or really our community moving forward at this point. I do think that he appeals to a particular group, specifically like white supremacists. I think that even if he doesn't necessarily support that group, he doesn't necessarily denounce them. I don't think he stops them or slows them down. I think he just doesn't say anything which encourages them to continue in the manner in which they're behaving.

Someone said it earlier, too, that I don't think he's racist. I think he just equally doesn't like poor people. I don't think he cares what color you are. I think he's just a rich man that wants to stay rich and wants to help out his other rich buddies. But I do have concerns about that. I have concerns about the January 6th, if he's going to respect the process and the institutions, because like, let's say this election, he doesn't win. Just respect that. It's not like, oh, it's going to be an end of the world or we're going to take over.

I'm worried about another January 6th happening. I live in an area that is 86.6% white. And when I drive in my neighborhood, every other house has a Trump sign and the houses that don't have a come and take it flag waving from somewhere. I've been in these people's homes. There are some Republicans that I love and I have seen how they are protective of me

So imagine someone coming for their country or their freedom. They'd be about it, about it. I carry. I'm not afraid of guns. You think that a mob of Black Lives Matter is scary to watch? You let people that are organized, armed, and have money to burn, you give them a reason. That's what we saw on January 6th. These people were on vacation. They didn't live in Washington, D.C.,

They were there staying steps away from the White House. They could afford that. They had nothing better to do. They took the week off because they were going to take back the country. These people are crazy. Everybody's not OK up here. And what what I'm concerned about with him is that he panders to the fear in those people.

Now, Benji, that sound that you hear is the sound of the heads exploding of the people who listen to this podcast, because they will have heard what those voters just said, which was a very clear articulation with concerns about democracy, about the fact that Trump seems to not be so opposed to the white supremacists, that he's not saying, yay, go, but he's not saying, hey, get away, either. I mean, I'm not even going to play the sound where they had concerns about abortion restrictions, but...

they're still voting for him, mainly because of the economy. And so Kamala is riding her good vibes right now, but she's going to have to do something to tell an affirmative story for herself about the economy and what she's going to do on it. You tell me if you heard something different when you listen to the group, but it sounded to me like the economy was the number one thing that was moving these voters with all of the concerns that we might say, but this, but this. And they were saying, I know, but eggs are really expensive.

Right. So what do you make of what she needs to do if not to win these voters over because they got their minds made up a little bit? People who are undecided.

Well, one thing I think is clear is that the Harris campaign is clearly seeing the same thing in their own research, because they just put out their first big post Labor Day ad push. And it looks a lot like the ads they've already put tens of millions of dollars behind before. And it's all grocery prices. I will crack down on grocery prices. The number of times I've heard candidates in both parties on both tickets say grocery prices the last few weeks, whatever they are seeing that is lighting up the dials.

It seems like J.D. Vance's only job now is just to do 10 interviews a day in which he says grocery prices as much as he possibly can. And the Harris campaign, certainly in their paid media, doesn't seem to be too different. And I do think one thing that's helped them is that Harris is still in this very odd place where she's sort of the challenger and sort of the incumbent. And this is one of those places where I think you're seeing the rubber meet the road on what that means.

which is that Biden was in the position of having to defend his record and really reshape his record to be about, yes, I know you're upset about insurgency,

inflation and higher prices, but look at all these good things I did. Look at all these manufacturing jobs I created. Look how much better we did than other countries. Kamala talks a little about that record. She's defended it well when it's come up, but she does have more freedom just to say, I'm just going to skip the entire debate about how we got here and just start talking about what I'll do about prices now, which is mostly how she's been framing things. Her other big plank lately has been affordable housing.

Which is same issue. You know, we're like, we're not going to talk about how we got here or anything like that. All I'm just going to say is that we need 3 million new affordable homes and that we need, you know, tax credits for first time home buyers. And we need to crack down on market practices that are making it harder for you to get a house instead of some investor somewhere or a speculator. They definitely get this. Now, is that the most effective message? We're going to find out. And I think a question.

you kind of raise there, which I would also bring up, when people say they're voting on the economy, are they actually always voting on the economy? Like to name that focus group, for example, I mean, it seems like a lot of them had fallen into sort of a certain kind of red pill information space that I think extended beyond the economy. They sound like voters I've heard in other contexts where I'm not quite sure the price of gas is actually what's going to move them. It's possible it got them to listen to that more, but there's a sort of separate culture war concern that also comes up.

And, you know, it's interesting, the revealed reason versus the stated reason, which is one of the most fun elements of a focus group is many of them said the economy. I'm glad you're bringing this up. They said the economy, but you listen to the longer descriptions and you hear what people are saying. And actually, it's like a frustration with culture and culture.

And you stated this up front, but it is wanting to shake things up and being very skeptical of the established order and the people who are running things. I think the red pill escapes no one. Anybody is susceptible to it. Hey, it's Dooji here for Window Nation. If you want in on a little secret, listen up.

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So I want to get into how these voters reacted to the first Harris interview with Dana Bash on CNN. And I should note that while these voters are flipping from Biden to Trump, we do not call them swing voters. OK, just because they are flipping from Biden to Trump doesn't make them swing voters because these voters have largely made up their mind. They want to vote for Donald Trump. So with that caveat in mind, let's listen to how the Harris-Walls CNN interview went over with them.

I saw a few clips and headlines from it. She's actually was in my area yesterday doing an interview. So having a rally.

But what I got from it, I still didn't get anything actually from it. I kind of felt like she needed notes. She had Tim there next to her. So it's like she needs a backup. I don't really think that she's able to stand on her own two feet and just say what it is that she's going to do. It's like she needs an entourage or something. I don't know anything about her still.

She has done a lot of interviews, sit down interviews, and she's talked a lot about her accomplishments, what she's done, things like that. And that's all great. But at the end of the day, I think we need to know not what you've done, but what you're doing. We are in a place right now where unemployment is back up. Prices of food are back up.

There's increase in inflation and rent and things like that. And what is she going to do about that? Low income workers, blue collar workers, unemployment rates are back up again for, you know, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, all that. Like what is the four year or God willing, her eight year plan? And if she doesn't have one and if she's just going to keep bringing up the past, then

then that is not somebody that I can go into a booth and vote for. And I am very curious to see, honestly, her and Trump go face-to-face in a debate because that is going to be the real telling decision. I suspect many people don't know him and that's probably why she did that interview with him to give him a little bit of heft, if you will. I think

For a long time, for many of us, the voting blue no matter who strategy hasn't really worked out for the Black community, to be honest. And a lot of us are questioning it with this so obvious pander to our community by Vice President Harris. But I don't know much about Mr. Walls, and I suspect that that's why they tried to tag team this interview.

It is interesting. Voters always think if there is a female candidate or there's a Black candidate that you're automatically trying to pander to that community, which I don't know. I never hear anybody say that about the dudes. I'm like, he's just trying to pander to men. Although J.D. Vance, actually, I think we could safely argue that that's maybe what Vance is about. So what do

What do you think about Harris's media strategy? I was following your tweets on this. People love my tweets. I get nothing but great replies whenever I discuss anything related to whether Harris should do interviews and how many. Big topic people are totally normal about. I'm sure you have the same experience, Sarah. I do. You should hear the feedback I get when I say people are mostly good. Nobody likes that one. So tell our listeners, hopefully people who are healthy enough to stay off Twitter, what do you make of her media? Should she be doing more interviews? What do you think? Yeah.

So let me just first add the caveat here that there's two Harris media conversations, and I'm going to be addressing one of them here. One is the press asking Harris to do interviews and agitating for access, which is absolutely what the press should do in a democracy. This separate question is, is it politically savvy to avoid the press, do lots of press, do press of which kinds? That is a separate question, and they're not always the same answer to these two issues. Okay. So just to focus on the tactics here.

I think a big question is now that they've gotten this big interview out of the way, what is their plan moving forward? This interview was not the interview you do to get great press and make your case. It's the interview you do to survive.

Because she's a new nominee, because there's all these questions about her, because it's been built up into a thing by her not doing an interview for weeks, it means that this first interview is largely getting the toughest questions out of the way right away. So you just had people complaining, for example, oh, this is all just, you know, Dana Bash going through Republican attacks. Yeah, like those are the biggest questions people have about her. They were mostly pretty predictable. We mentioned, for example, the flip flops from her 2019 campaign that took up a significant portion of this. What

What's your relationship to Biden is another question that she was getting. And how did you react when you learned that he was stepping down and things like that? Do you defend him being in office now? Is he diminished? Now that that's out of the way, things get a lot more interesting. There's a lot more potential for her to do all kinds of interviews. One obvious option that I've heard some Democrats bring up is start doing what Trump has been doing, I think, pretty successfully, which is start doing a lot of nontraditional media.

on topics that are often away from these more kind of contentious day-to-day news issues. So Trump has been doing nonstop podcasts in this kind of like right-leaning space that often includes, you know, sports figures or pop culture, like a kind of Joe Rogan zone of podcasts.

And I've seen some Democrats say that's pretty smart. You know, he's speaking to some of those, like we talked about, disaffected, low trust voters, mostly white, mostly men, but of all races who might, you know, get their news from there, but not get it from other spaces.

There might be room for Harris and Walls to play in some of those spaces themselves. Maybe not the same exact places as Trump, but places outside conventional media. You know, Democrats have placed a very big premium on getting to influencers, for example, something that was absolutely impossible for Biden to do. But Harris has already had success with. I saw Addison Rae, the popular TikToker, just actually was reposting campaign material from Harris, which I'm sure they were doing backflips over.

So one option is, you know, Kamala Harris, you talk about spicy food, go on Hot Ones, you know, something like that. Tim Walls, why aren't you on Barstool Sports next week and on ESPN every week and going to a different high school or college or NFL game every week and doing something with the local radio there, with the local sports radio? That's one example of how you might go about it.

Another route is to just start doing lots of mainstream media interviews, perhaps to get around some of the issues you were naming of people feeling like they don't know her and that she hasn't answered the tough questions. People are still trapped in this Biden mentality where every single media appearance, the only upside was surviving it because there was virtually never a moment where Biden could produce a good clip that supporters would share and that would go viral again.

beyond like the most Biden superfan space. That's not true of Harris. She has supporters who love what she does, who love what Walls does, who they're digging up years old clips of her cracking an egg and it's getting millions of views because they just find her a compelling person. And because people are desperate for content. There's a need, right? People are like, I'm just going to watch her crack an egg with one hand because I need some Kamala content. Yeah, there's actual demand for this. People want to share it. They want to talk about it.

If you do more interviews, you'll get some more of those moments and maybe fill in the gaps. But also very importantly, if you're out there a lot, you know, you're getting earned media. You're getting, you know, media that travels beyond just your ads and travels differently. But also you are burning off some of those tougher questions. They won't get asked every time.

Look, reporters, our prime goal is to make news. Certainly that's my prime goal when we interview these candidates. And we have interviewed Trump and Vance recently. But it was to get to the truth. I mean, that's there too. But we rather would not get to the truth that some reporters asked about six times already. Yeah. And that we already know what they're going to say. We would rather get to some new truth that has perhaps been less explored.

And so if you're doing interviews regularly, yes, you'll get some questions over and over again. But there's going to be, for example, on the flip flops, like, does someone want to be the seventh person who asked her about her fracking position?

Probably not. And in that space might come some questions that are better for you. And also, if you are a skilled politician and have your faculties a little better in this scenario than Biden did, you can take negative questions and turn them into positives and create those moments and pivot quickly to what you want to talk about. Like Pete Buttigieg came out of the DNC and got huge cheers for talking about how he was the Democrat who goes on Fox News. You

You think he goes on thinking, oh, no, if I go on Fox News, the interviewer will frame the question in a Republican way and they'll ask me about Republican attacks. And how could any politician have a good interview after that? He doesn't give a shit because he knows he can quickly answer the premise of that question and then move to what he wants to talk about to a Fox News audience, get to what he's been working on as transportation secretary,

or a Biden accomplishment that a Fox News audience almost certainly has not seen sustained coverage of, for example, on manufacturing jobs.

These are things Harris can do. And so I think it'd be interesting if she takes that approach, but it's really hard to tell. I mean, the same people running her campaign are largely the people running the Biden campaign when really by the end of it, they were in just a complete siege mentality that became kind of self-justifying, I think. And I think it might be harmful for her if that attitude, which was very specific to Biden, transfers over to Harris, who is a completely different candidate and has completely different strengths and weaknesses.

So we'll see. Yeah, without getting too far into it, because there is part of me that you said this before, there's a secondary debate, because I, of course, believe in the first thing you said about it's good for democracy, she should have to answer questions. Then there's the comms person in me that's like, you know, when you're going to rallies and there's just a gajillion people there screaming and you get to go off your prescripted notes and the media runs with it every time because they're talking about your crowd size and you're like, I don't

I don't know, man. Do you want to mess with that mojo with a sit down interview with somebody, especially when like, there's still a lot of hard questions I think to be asked, but to your point, and I'll just add one big thing that I think would be a benefit to her is like,

Like you got to get your reps in to get really good at it. I mean, part of what Pete Buttigieg is done is just like, I'm going to do this all the time and I'm going to go into this territory and I'm going to get really good. And I think that's not been her. I think she is so much better than she was. Like I think her time as vice president has really gotten her to a much better place. But I think with such a short period of time, you are sort of in a triage mode of like which one gets us maximum benefit with voters. And I think, um,

Make the platforms work for you. Figure out where it's going to benefit you and like lean into those because you're absolutely right. The hot ones guy is not going to be like, are you?

just changing your position on fracking because of Pennsylvania, that's not really how that goes. And so, yeah, a lot of upside. Okay, I've got to talk about one more thing in the news. God, I like listening to you talk so much that this is going to go long, and I'm sorry about that. But it's been about a week since the Trump campaign's dust up with the Arlington National Cemetery officials. We're still talking about it because Trump says there's a video that shows he didn't do it, but then the

military has come out and said, yes, you did shove a person. All right. So we did this group a couple of days after that whole story broke. And I want to play some of the sound from how the Biden 20 Trump 2024 voters reacted. Let's listen. Only thing that I've heard is that they felt that because it's sacred ground, he should have respected it more. But then again, the families that he was there, they had no issues with him there. So it's like,

you can't win if you try kind of things. Like a lot of news about Trump going under scrutiny, just the same way when Biden went to Uvalde after the shooting, it's just, I think that he was trying to show support and respect because that was along the way on his campaign trail. And I think that certain people

left-centered news has sort of taken this and ran with it because they don't have anything else to talk about. Obviously, I'm going to side with the Army because if there's rules and there's regulations, and obviously we don't expect civilians to understand that, but if it's been briefed to you and you're aware that there's a certain section for everybody, not just him,

But there's a certain section, there's different sections in Arlington, actually, that you cannot take pictures of and you can't go to depending on who you are. Like if you have a family member buried there, you can go. But if you don't, you can't go to like particular sections. So I think that it sucks that he did that or that his entourage did that because now, I mean, we don't respect service members. Like she's doing her job and you guys like assaulted her, pushed her down. Like that's not a good look for a former president or one that's trying to be another one. Because for us, he's our commander in chief. He would be.

And that's not just the way you want to show that you support us. Had Kamala or Mr. Biden or Mr. Walz had done something similar, it would be a headache for them. But I know for a fact Trump will not lose one vote because of this particular faux pas that occurred at Arlington National. He's an ass. I mean, very disrespectful for the people that's buried there and their families. But I mean, he's just showing us what he truly is.

All right, so I wanted to get this one in here because I got a lot of emails asking me if we had asked voters about this and if we thought that it would change anybody's mind. I'll tell you, there are not a lot of...

sort of little dust-ups around Trump that I think are mind-changers generally. And so just to answer the many, many listeners who wrote in about this, I think Trump has effectively done what he needed to do by getting the Gold Star families out there saying that he invited them in. I think that the fact that we're still talking about it's a little interesting because usually these news cycles don't go on this long, but I doubt it is a vote changer. What do you think, Benji?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to call anything involving Trump a vote changer. So it's important just to add that caveat. It is interesting in that part of the reason it has gone on so long is that I think both campaigns see some benefit to extending this story for different reasons, such that it's somewhat ambiguous, perhaps.

who might even benefit despite the obvious wrongdoing at the center of this, I want to make clear. So from the Democratic perspective, this reinforces so many of the biggest doubts people already have about Trump and things they dislike about him. There's the disregard for the rules, you know, just having a clear view.

institution, you have respect for a certain rule, and he just does not follow it. There's the bullying and violence of having, you know, pushing around some staffer just trying to do their job, who is presumably a sympathetic figure, they are working at Arlington National Cemetery, making sure that the dead there are respected.

There's also the absolute refusal to distinguish between the nonpartisan aspects of being a president or former president and just politics mode all the time, which is what got him impeached repeatedly.

This distinguishes him more than any prior president, just saw no distinction between official Trump and campaign Trump. So this is another example of that. And then there's additionally the respect for veterans issue, which is suckers and losers, right? Which Democrats have still kept going four years later. You know, the Harris campaign, Biden certainly personally brought it up repeatedly before. I believe it came up at the DNC at certain points. So all of these would say Democrats should go whole hog.

The other side of it, though, is that Republicans are using this to talk about Afghanistan and Donald Trump is. And I think the campaign is betting that a lot of voters probably aren't going to either update their views about Trump too much because those aspects of his character are already so well established, or they're not going to understand from the quick read through of the news, the severity of the rules that he was violating.

And instead, what they'll just see is a dispute involving gold star families who are enormously sympathetic and are talking about an issue that was one of the low points of Joe Biden's presidency in terms of polling, in terms of voter reaction.

putting the policy aside. That has been difficult for them to keep in the news in the years since because it happened early in his presidency. We withdrew from Afghanistan and there hasn't really been anything to update it since. And, you know, they tried to make it a major feature of the Republican National Convention to remind people of this incident.

Furthermore, it's even more difficult to associate it with Harris. You know, it would have been a tough time already reminding voters of Biden when this had passed so long ago. But now they have to tie it to Harris. So I think few people are inclined to think, you know, it was the one making on the ground tactical decisions during the Afghanistan withdrawal, let alone making the decision to withdraw in the first place. So this lets them get Harris's name next to that story.

So I think that partly explains why both campaigns have sort of jumped in a bit. They don't naturally assume that it's bad to have this in the news for either one of them. And I guess we'll find out. But also there's an opportunity cost issue, which is that every day Donald Trump burns on this is a day the news could be about something else. Yeah. Okay. Just because you gave me this opening, I'm going to ask you a question that is a personal prerogative for me. Because you're so thoughtful, I've got a media question that is genuine that I've been thinking a lot about.

Obviously, I listen to a lot of voters, but I'm also in the active business of trying to defeat Donald Trump. I'm a weird figure in that regard because I kind of do both. And I get frustrated sometimes with...

You know, there's a lot of people criticizing the media, whatever that means, right? Because the media is a big sprawling thing that includes a lot of right-wing media, left-wing media, media that is trying to be traditional media, media that's very upfront about not being traditional media. And so, you know, just saying the media is a tough thing. But I struggle with the fact that you say, you know, we could be talking about so many other things. I do find it...

wild that Donald Trump continues to every day say things or do things that I think applied to a different candidate, just a normal one, they'd be disqualifying. The Arlington Cemetery story would be an enormous story if

if Kamala Harris's team, someone had shoved somebody at Arlington National Cemetery and they went and did a photo op, probably campaign ending. Like you'd see a massive shift, I think, in the polls. So I have been sort of engaged in this argument with a lot of people that I think are kind of in my world, sort of conservatives who don't like Democrats, don't want to vote for Democrats, but they're clear-eyed about how bad Trump is. And one of the arguments that they make about Trump

Why they focus on Harris to the exclusion of Trump is because of something you mentioned earlier, which is that they're bored talking about Trump. They're like, I have picked over every aspect of him. Like I've said, he's terrible in all these ways. But like she gives me something new to talk about. She gives me something new to focus on. And she's got all these terrible policies. And so it's just me being honest about her terrible policies. Right.

Because I think that if people were doing the right analysis, a real threat assessment for like, which candidate is acting bananas, which candidate is saying things that are so far outside the mainstream, outside the norm, that like, it is insane that we just go like, okay, like another day, Trump said the most insane thing you've ever heard a candidate say in your life. But we're going to talk about Kamala Harris's tax policy, because that's a new thing for us to chew on. How

How do you do it? Like, what is the way to do your job well in this particular moment? - It's a really difficult question. Now, I am lucky in that I am at Semaphore, which you all should read, it's a great publication.

We are a small publication with a kind of niche audience. So our pitch to you is not all the news that's fit to print. We can kind of pick and choose our spots a little bit. Whereas the New York Times, the Washington Post, that very much is their pitch to you. CNN, MSNBC, we are going to give you a comprehensive view of the campaign and for all audiences of all kinds. And that's a very big mandate and requires you to make some of these decisions in a very thoughtful way.

A lot of complaints about the media coverage, I think, is often sometimes displaced frustration with voters that, you know, you heard it in that focus group, right? Those were high information voters. They knew the details of what happened on January 6th. They knew the details of Donald Trump's ties to extremist groups, how he had egged them on or not egged them on. They could recite chapter and verse in that coverage, but they didn't care. And I think that is the thing that is driving people insane to some degree. Now, I do think

I've been covering Donald Trump since the very beginning. You know, I was on covering plenty of his rallies in person in the 2016 cycle. I was then at NBC News.

The issue of novelty was a big thing then. I made a joke that people should do rotations. Reporters should do rotations out there. But I was actually kind of serious because when you have reporters who follow him every day, which is usually how reporting is assigned, right? You have a Trump reporter or the embeds who work for the networks. They get a nerd to some of the things he says every day and it doesn't shock them. Yeah. And I think sometimes it's important to still have that shock and not just be above it all.

Having said that, I don't see how much value there is to what they really want, which is there's been a lot of reporting, for example, of this Arlington incident. And I don't think even in the old days it would have been reported as the headline is like Donald Trump, who should be disqualified from office, is a shitty person who did this. Like one, I don't think that would matter much, but also.

I don't think it adds much to the reporting, frankly. Like it's a running joke, for example, that people get upset at the New York Times for having a headline and not adding, and this is bad. You know, I think voters can like fill that in on their own often. I think it's up to them to some degree. But I do think that there are some issues that we're confronting now, which is Trump has been around so long that some things we just assume voters know, they weren't even voters in 2016.

It's new to them. This is right. And I do think that there has been a failure maybe to go over some of just the basic history of him. And I think Democrats sometimes don't do this themselves. You know, they decide it's old news. So I give one example here. Daniel Dale, who has been the fact checker of Donald Trump since that 2016 campaign, originally, I believe, was the Toronto Star, since then was CNN.

had a story today on the frustration of the fact that so many of the lies that Donald Trump tells in his stump speeches are the greatest hits. They are things he has said hundreds of times, going back to 2016, 2015, sometimes even before he was running for president. Things he has just said over and over and over again, and they've been fact-checked to death.

And I think it's interesting. You think about someone like him. What is he supposed to do? Do you still slap a front page headline on something he said 1,000 times? Do you still make a story when you've covered it 100 times? And so is every outlet, even if that initial coverage was in 2018, say. You know, what do you do with that? I'm not sure there's great answers to it. I think everyone kind of has to make their own judgment calls. And I think having a diversity of different media with different perspectives is one thing that helps at least.

Okay. I could talk about this one. You're going to come back and we're going to talk about this for an hour. Anytime. We're going to have voters because you were great. I love talking to you. Benji Silas, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of Focus Group Podcast. We will be back next week, but in the meantime, you can subscribe to the board on YouTube and rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts. See you next week, guys. Bye.