Kamala Pitches Populism, Trump Hawks Watches

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 4 At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 6 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and More.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 10 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 11 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 12 Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 13 Finding the music you love shouldn't be hard. That's why Pandora makes it easy to explore all your favorites and discover new artists and genres you'll love.

Speaker 13 Enjoy a personalized listening experience simply by selecting any song or album, and we'll make a station crafted just for you.

Speaker 14 Best of all, you can listen for free.

Speaker 13 Download Pandora on the Apple App Store or Google Play and start hearing the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 14 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 14 On today's show, Kamala Harris does a big sit-down interview about her economic plan and heads to the border as she tries to neutralize Donald Trump's advantage on two big issues.

Speaker 14 Meanwhile, Trump wants you to know that he thinks Iran is trying to kill him and that you can buy a new Trump watch for the low, low price of $100,000.

Speaker 14 That's so good. And strict scrutinies, Melissa Murray stops by to talk with us about what she heard from some undecided black women voters in her new MSNBC special.

Speaker 14 But first, Kamala Harris has had another busy week with less than 40 days left in a campaign that could not be closer. She's headed to Arizona to visit the southern border.

Speaker 14 On Thursday, she spent the day in D.C.

Speaker 14 being vice president, first at an event with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, then at an event with President Biden to announce some new steps on gun safety.

Speaker 14 On Wednesday night, she sat down for an interview with MSNBC Stephanie Ruhl to talk about the economic plan she laid out during a big speech in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 14 Here she is talking about price gouging and responding to Trump's claim that she didn't really work at McDonald's.

Speaker 15 How do you go after price gouging without implementing price controls?

Speaker 16 Just to be very frank, I am never going to apologize for going after

Speaker 16 companies and corporations that take advantage of the desperation of the American people. And as Attorney General, I saw this happen.

Speaker 16 In the midst of an emergency, whether it be an extreme weather event or even the pandemic, we saw it. Where those few companies, not the majority, not most.

Speaker 16 But those few companies that would take advantage of the desperation of people and jack up prices. Yeah, I'm going to go after them.
Yes, I'm I'm going to go after them.

Speaker 15 So I just want to ask you yes or no. At any point in your life, have you served two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a piece of money?

Speaker 18 A sesame seed bun working out at McDonald's.

Speaker 15 Yes or no?

Speaker 18 That's it. I have.

Speaker 14 Okay, now the other job.

Speaker 18 But it was not a small job. Like, I did the prize.
I mean, I, you know,

Speaker 18 it's a big period of time.

Speaker 15 But then let me ask you about a big job.

Speaker 16 But to your point, if you don't mind, before we get to the big job,

Speaker 16 it's a, there's a,

Speaker 16 part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald's is because

Speaker 16 there are people who work at McDonald's in our country who are trying to raise a family. I worked there as a student.
I was a kid.

Speaker 16 Who worked there trying to raise families and pay rent on that.

Speaker 16 And I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility then is to meet those needs.

Speaker 14 She did fries.

Speaker 19 Do you know, I'm not to derail this thing, but do you know the origin of the conspiracy theory that she didn't work at McDonald's? Because Trump says it all the time.

Speaker 14 Yes. He, there was

Speaker 14 one of those dumb,

Speaker 14 blue-checked right-wing accounts that pretends to be news said that McDonald's stepped forward and said that they have no record of Kamala Harris ever working there. And that's just not true.

Speaker 14 It was just completely made up. So he took the fake rumor or the fake news that McDonald's said that she never worked there to mean that she was lying, but that just never happened.

Speaker 19 Okay. Also, what sort of records do we think McDonald's keeps about an Oakland franchise from 40 years ago?

Speaker 14 That's the best part. And then they, like, long ago, they accused her when she first said it, they accused her of like not having it on her resume when she like sent her resume out after law school.

Speaker 14 Cause like,

Speaker 14 it's like, you know what? I don't put fucking CVS on my resume.

Speaker 14 Although I haven't sent a resume around in quite some time. Anyway, how do you think she did in the interview?

Speaker 19 Great. That was great.
I saw many thoughts on this interview. One, not an easy interview.
Like this, I think I thought it was MSNBC, it's Stephanie Rule, that it'll at least be a friendly interview.

Speaker 19 And it wasn't unfriendly, but those were, she asked tough questions.

Speaker 14 And it was all about the economy.

Speaker 14 It wasn't, I mean, she asked one question on reproductive rights at the very end, but most of the interview was all economy and economic policy and details and all that.

Speaker 19 And it's like, it took her like one question to warm up. And then she was just throwing fastballs the whole time.

Speaker 19 It's just, just, it's when she asked the question about why people trust Donald Trump more. She got, you could see like a little fire in her eyes.
And she went like right hard at the contrast.

Speaker 19 And it was really good.

Speaker 19 And I have two takeaways from this. One is more interviews.
Like she's, she's really good at it when, especially if it's an issue that she, when it's about something real, right?

Speaker 19 A bunch of like the marginalia, stupid bullshit that comes up in a lot of like horse race stuff and interviews. That's hard for any politician when they ask you to be pundit.

Speaker 19 But when she's talking about something she cares about, she's excellent. Second,

Speaker 19 I kind of think that if Trump is unwilling to agree to this CNN debate, they should challenge him to an economic debate. Could be on CNN, could be another network, but like think about she just has,

Speaker 19 he has the advantage in perception, but it's like a mile wide, an inch deep. And she has the better message, the better policies.
She's the better messenger. The contrast is it moves vote share.

Speaker 19 We've seen that in message testing and polling.

Speaker 19 And so finding the opportunity to go back and forth with Trump only on the, like he'll obviously do insane stuff, but primarily on the economy for 90 minutes, I think could be a huge advantage.

Speaker 14 I was watching this interview. I agree.
I thought it was excellent. I thought it was her best sit-down interview yet since becoming the nominee.
I realize she hasn't done a ton.

Speaker 19 I was going to say best of four.

Speaker 14 Yeah, but I think it was the best one. And you're right that she always takes

Speaker 14 the first question to warm up. And she always answers the first question by like thinking and she's like looking.
You can tell that she's like trying to figure out what value statement to start with.

Speaker 14 It's very clear that she has been through debate prep. And we know this because we've done this with Obama and he hated this.

Speaker 14 But they tell you in debate prep, no matter what the question is, your answer should start with a topic sentence that just

Speaker 14 communicates your values about the issue. It doesn't matter what the actual question was.
Right.

Speaker 14 And she did that very well during the debate. And I think that for questions that you don't really want to answer or the answer would be too politically tricky or whatever.

Speaker 14 It's a good thing to do. I noticed that as we got into the meat of the interview, like she just sounded, she sounded wonkier and more detailed, but I liked it.

Speaker 14 It sounded less like a politician talking in clichés and more like someone who just really knows the policy and knows the issue.

Speaker 14 And I think it just came across, oddly, since it was wonkier, but it came across more informal and colloquial and just real, you know, than some of of the, like I'm, it's very good that she's talking about her middle class upbringing, very good that she's talking about how she sees the economy.

Speaker 14 But I would just like dial it a little, I dial it down just a little bit, what she did in this interview and just answer the questions and start talking about the policy.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 It, you almost have to deprogram candidates after debate because what is good for debate is generally terrible for an interview because you're told to not answer the debate question or you're supposed to answer it with the answer you want, not the question was asked.

Speaker 19 That that can work in a press conference it can't really work in a one-on-one sit-down interview and so that first question was let me go big picture and do all of this and then everything else is just like i'm just gonna answer the question and it just comes off more authentic and real and it was very very good and the further she's gotten away from the debate i realized i just proposed another debate so i could be screwing us here but um

Speaker 19 Her in each subsequent interview, her questions, her answers have been more on point to the question, which I think is to her benefit.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think it's always the questions that she typically gets tripped up on are questions about like they're hypotheticals, which are always annoying ones to answer.

Speaker 14 But like Stephanie Ruhl asked her, like, what's going to happen if you can't get Republican votes for your tax plan? You know, and then she didn't want to answer that question.

Speaker 14 But I do think even on something like that, it's like, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to propose a tax plan and I'm going to negotiate.

Speaker 14 And what I hope is also that I have members of Congress who are going to work with me to lower taxes for middle-class Americans and raise them on the rich. And that's what I'm going to try to do.

Speaker 14 You know, like it's pretty.

Speaker 19 Or we're just going to, we're going to win the Senate. Right.

Speaker 14 Or we're going to win. Yeah.
Or that's why we're going to win the Senate.

Speaker 14 Like, I just, some of the, I think some of these answers are easier than she's making them out to be, or maybe she thinks that, like, she's not supposed to say it.

Speaker 14 Anyway, I thought she was great through like 95% of the interview and like the best she's been on this. And she should do more.

Speaker 14 What did you think of the big Pittsburgh speech?

Speaker 19 My takeaway from watching the speech was good speech, poll tested through the roof. Like it had the policy proposals are popular.

Speaker 19 It wasn't just a litany of a bunch of like economic white paper vomit on stage. It was like an, it was, it was thematic.

Speaker 19 It spoke to the broader theme of her as someone with a middle-class background who's going to fight for middle working class people, while Donald Trump's going to fight for the wealthy.

Speaker 19 So that was very good. I do watch these speeches now and still sort of wonder what the impact.
of these big set speeches are in this day and age.

Speaker 19 Obviously, it's in Pittsburgh. If you're going to do it, do it someplace where you're going to get lots of local coverage.
I'm sure we're going to see ads that take

Speaker 19 parts of that speech and put it together for an economic message. There will be some social media stuff.

Speaker 19 But how many outside of the ads are going to run for it later, or maybe the people watching Pittsburgh TV, how many people who don't know about her economic plans or want to know more about economic plans will actually consume that speech?

Speaker 19 I think that's sort of a fair question in this day and age.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think it's, you know, she hasn't given, because she hasn't had the time to give a lot of like major policy addresses. So So you want to give your big economic major policy address.

Speaker 14 So that totally made sense for that. It was a good speech.

Speaker 14 I would love to see her do a version of that speech, basically cut it down so that it's a punchy stump speech on the economy and have a few more contrasts with Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 Or basically, she had a lot of contrasts with Donald Trump, but just kind of whittle the speech down to just her plan contrasts with Donald Trump, her plan contrast with Donald Trump, and make it punchy

Speaker 14 for rally events. events because I agree.
Like, I don't know exactly who's going to consume all of that other than the fact that you're right, it could end up in some 30 and 60 second ads. But

Speaker 14 it was a good speech, you know? And like you said,

Speaker 14 it wasn't wonky. Again, there was a few times in that speech where

Speaker 14 she seemed like she was ad-libbing. She was joking a little.
And I really liked those parts because it seemed...

Speaker 14 She was more authentic. She seemed like her.
She seemed like she was having a good time. She seemed like she was connected with the material, with the audience, with what she was talking about.

Speaker 14 Like, I think she just needs a little more of that on the trail and interviews because it's there. And, you know, I've seen her do it.

Speaker 14 But I think that's going to help with connecting with voters who are still undecided. There's obviously a lot to say about her economic plan.

Speaker 14 Campaign also released an 82-page booklet titled A New Way Forward for the Middle Class.

Speaker 14 But for the people who may not have had the chance to skim through that book, what do you think the campaign wants to convey about her economic agenda?

Speaker 14 Like, what are the big things they want voters to remember?

Speaker 19 I think they want people to know that she has a plan.

Speaker 19 This is a classic tactic for a candidate who's new on the scene. Obama also released a plan.
We had a book, in fact, an actual published book.

Speaker 14 I remember editing the book.

Speaker 19 I remember you enjoying that process thoroughly and thinking, what a great use of your time while either writing or editing three rally speeches a day that going through all of that.

Speaker 14 I know so many people read it.

Speaker 19 I think it was the bestseller, John. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Honestly, anyone can do that these days, as we know.

Speaker 19 So it's just like having a plan, right? She has a plan. That's one.
It is just notable in that speech that she's she announced she's a capitalist,

Speaker 19 which

Speaker 14 she said during the convention. Yes, she did.

Speaker 19 And I think there is a argument here is that she is a mainstream middle-class Democrat who's going to fight for middle-class people. Like that is all the policy.
undergirds that.

Speaker 19 That's what it's all about. They really want the footage of her standing up there saying she's going to fight for middle class people and that she's a capitalist.

Speaker 19 And it's to push back against the caricature of her that is showing up on all these ads.

Speaker 19 Trump and the Trump super PACs have a bunch of ads up. They're pretty tough on the economy.
They blame her for what people are unhappy about the economy. Unfairly blame her, obviously.

Speaker 19 And they have this.

Speaker 19 They have this video footage of her saying that Bidenomics is working. So they're trying to make her the candidate of the status quo and what you don't like.
And they're trying to

Speaker 19 sort of push back against that in a pretty aggressive way. And that's ultimately the political purpose of the speech.

Speaker 14 There's a headline in the New York Times that the Harris campaign was understandably and excitedly sending around, which was

Speaker 14 Harris makes a new, tries a new pitch, Capitalism for the Middle Class. I was like,

Speaker 14 that's it right there. Capitalism for the middle class.

Speaker 19 Where are we these days?

Speaker 14 I know.

Speaker 14 But I do, I mean, like, first of all, it gets them away from Bidenomics, which was clearly not the best branding. But yeah, capitalism for the middle class.

Speaker 14 She both gets the like, I'm mainstream and not the comrade Kamala. And also like, I care about the middle class.

Speaker 14 And what I really liked, both in the speech and in the MSNBC interview is that like when Stephanie Ruhl asked her about price gouging, she was like, I'm going to make, and she's like, well, how, you know, there's price gouging, but also how do you convince people that it's not price controls?

Speaker 14 Cause they get nervous. And she's like, I'm not going to make any apologies whatsoever about going after big companies who take advantage of the American people.

Speaker 14 And I didn't look at my record when I was AG. I did the same thing.

Speaker 14 I went on after big banks. So it was great.
So it's like it wasn't, she's not like shying away and trying to be like a mushy centrist on the economy.

Speaker 14 But she, you know, she's basically saying she's a capitalist and capitalism can work, but it has to work for everyone in this country because that's how the economy is strong.

Speaker 14 And big corporations shouldn't be taken advantage and they should pay their fair share.

Speaker 19 I'm sort of curious about the polling that led them to have that line both in the convention and here. It's not something something I've seen show up in any polling that this is a real issue for her.

Speaker 19 She obviously has an economic deficit.

Speaker 19 We can talk about how she has significantly narrowed it over where Biden was, but even over the course of the campaign in the Echelon Insights poll, she's actually up one on the economy.

Speaker 19 And she's only down four on the economy in the Pennsylvania poll that the Times put out last week. So she's made, she has made gains there.

Speaker 19 And I think that's one important thing. Like when you sit up and say, I'm a capitalist, that sounds like you're doing from a defensive crouch.

Speaker 19 And I don't think that's what the speech was not a defensive speech. It was an offensive speech.
It was an economic man. I don't know.

Speaker 19 I don't know how much the campaign cares about whether they actually win on the economy, but that they can make gains with the voters they need to make gains with on the economy by being aggressive.

Speaker 19 And they sort of showed that in the tone and tenor of this speech and the interview.

Speaker 14 I think there's like

Speaker 14 two different groups of voters here. There's the sort of center-right indies, maybe Nikki Haley voters that they're trying to go after.

Speaker 14 Also, some young men too, who I think her saying that she's a capitalist and she knows CEOs and has worked with them and all that kind of stuff, that's going to reassure those voters.

Speaker 14 And then there's the sort of low propensity, don't always vote.

Speaker 14 Younger voters tend to be disproportionately black and brown, women to non-college women that they're going after, who I think that the more populist middle-class, here's what I'm going to do for you, middle-class tax cut, child tax credit, and some of the homeowner stuff, like that, that's who they're targeting with that message.

Speaker 14 So I think it's probably both those groups.

Speaker 19 With all due respect to our green eyeshade-wearing economic policy nerd friends, it's all about advocacy. Everything else, it's who are you going to fight for? That's the whole thing.

Speaker 19 It's all these policies, these tax credits, all these things that you talked about in the campaign. are just a way to answer the question, will this politician fight for people like me?

Speaker 19 Or will they fight for corporations or whoever else? And that's the thrust of it. And that works.
And what is so appealing about that and so important is it works with everyone. It works for those

Speaker 19 Nikki Haley we're talking about and it works for younger voters, more progressive voters, everyone else, and everyone in the middle.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I agree. So this week, she gave a serious policy address, stood next to a foreign leader who's at war, Zelensky, in Washington.
She announced a policy with the president at the White House.

Speaker 14 She's going to the border. I don't know if all this was intentional or just how the schedule turned out, but do you think they're

Speaker 14 trying to sort of burnish her strong leader, commander-in-chief credentials with voters with some of these events?

Speaker 19 I imagine just by having been involved in the challenges of scheduling presidential candidates who are also in office at the same time, that this was more a quirk in scheduling that just happened to be this was the best time to give this economic speech.

Speaker 19 And Zelensky was going to be in town and he wanted to meet with her. Trump announced this just now that he is meeting with Zelensky tomorrow or today if if you're listening to this on Friday.

Speaker 19 And so I think it's something you did. I think broadly speaking, they want to do two things.
They want to show her that she's a strong presidential leader.

Speaker 19 Whenever you're trying to elect someone who looks unlike all the other presidents who came before them, it's important to put them in situations that seem familiar.

Speaker 19 It's why Obama went on that foreign trip in 2008 and met with world leaders. so that you people could imagine him doing the things that presidents have done.

Speaker 19 So I think that's part of the Zelensky meeting.

Speaker 19 And going to the border is, and we can talk a little bit about the politics of that, but it's also just, she is trying to show that she is a mainstream Democrat with policies and values that are well within

Speaker 19 the center. And I don't mean center like centrists, just that are not the, they're not radical, I guess I would say, because she's being portrayed as this San Francisco radical.
She's a black woman.

Speaker 19 open borders, letting people in. She has the burden of being part of the Biden administration, which has been present, which has been in office through these border surges.

Speaker 19 and this is a way an opportunity to go to the border and speak about her actual policies and pushback against the character so it's all of a piece but i don't think this was a i don't think there was a uh like a there weren't a bunch of post-it notes on the on the message calendar with this like three weeks ago and they kind of came together yeah i do think that and we've seen this in some of the ads too because they have uh images of her on foreign trips with foreign leaders, you know, walking by all kinds of world flags.

Speaker 14 Like, I think they are trying to, what you said, like, show her doing what presidents do. And, you know, she's been vice president for the last three and a half years.
So that's

Speaker 19 a helpful thing. It should be sufficient, shouldn't it?

Speaker 14 It should be sufficient, right? Yeah.

Speaker 14 All right. So she's going to the border.

Speaker 14 She's reportedly going to give a speech about border security and her record prosecuting cartels and human traffickers as a border state attorney general.

Speaker 14 So obviously an issue where Trump has a big advantage. And he tried to pre-butt the visit with a long and rambling press conference we're going to talk about in a little bit today.

Speaker 14 But basically, the line he's been using for the last week is, you know, when she tells you about the border, ask her just one simple question. Why didn't you do it four years ago?

Speaker 14 And he says that's true about every issue.

Speaker 14 So Harris' campaign clearly believes it's important for the VP to take on this issue directly and go right at one of Trump's apparent strengths.

Speaker 14 There's also an argument to be made that whenever the campaign is about the border and that's where the media focuses, it's better for Trump. What do you think?

Speaker 19 I think this is the right thing to do. It is, she's being aggressive.
She's willing to take on risk. She understands that for some segment of voters, this is a real question.

Speaker 19 It's not just far-right Fox News watching MAGA voters who care about immigration.

Speaker 19 It's a huge issue in Arizona and Nevada, two states that are absolutely critical to one of her paths to 270 electoral votes. And so going there is important because she actually has a good message.

Speaker 19 Now, I hope when she goes there, she mixes it with a message about a broader, comprehensive solution to all of our immigration problems. So it's not just border security.
It's also

Speaker 19 dealing with finding a pathway to citizenship and dealing with people who've been in this country for a long time, dealing with the DREAMers, and pushing back also on Trump's proposals, his mass deportation proposal and all of that.

Speaker 19 So it should be of a piece. If it's just border security, then I think you are playing on Trump's territory.

Speaker 19 If it is going to the border to talk about border security, what you would do to secure the border and the broader proposals about comprehensive immigration reform, I think that is a very good thing to do.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I'm a big believer in, you know, when a voter has a concern, instead of saying, well, I know you might have that concern, but let's talk about this issue instead where you agree with me.

Speaker 14 It's like not a good strategy. I did Alex Wagner's show this week.
She was in Michigan and she talked to a bunch of union workers. It was interesting.

Speaker 14 Some of the older union workers were very pro-Harris and some of the younger ones, especially the younger men, were a little more pro-Trump.

Speaker 14 And a lot of them were talking about immigration as the reason why.

Speaker 14 And, you know, they were...

Speaker 14 saying some of the things you hear directly from Donald Trump and a lot of the right-wing media that there's all these illegal immigrants coming in and it's an invasion and they're taking and it was much more they're taking our jobs than anything else and or driving down wages or making housing more expensive and all that and you know i was watching that thinking like

Speaker 14 she i'm sure you know the campaign knows they need to be doing better with men and young men and in the midwest and in the and in area like you said and in the border states as well and I kind of think that you've got to be able to answer the mail on that.

Speaker 14 And there's a lot of people who haven't even heard Kamala Harris's position on the border, even though she talked about it at the debate, talked about it at the convention speech, talks about it all the time.

Speaker 14 And, you know, if you can have some, uh, an image of you at the border and, you know, delivering a few solid lines and then that ends up in an ad, then I think it's probably useful, you know?

Speaker 19 It is, you're, you're right. I think you're exactly right about that.

Speaker 19 And it is just interesting going back to the question about these speeches is back in the day, the speech used to be the end and of itself.

Speaker 19 You'd give the speech, it would get the coverage, it would derive the political conversation.

Speaker 19 And now it's the initial piece of content that maybe people see, but they probably don't, that you then use throughout the rest of the campaign. Like she's going to do this at the border.

Speaker 19 So I assume there are going to be images you can use that will be in these ads because she's getting hammered with immigration ads and her at the border with the image of the border talking about her policy is a much better response ad than your sort of typical voiceover response ads that no one really believes.

Speaker 14 And I'm sure she's going to kick the shit out of Trump there too, right? And talk about how he killed the border deal,

Speaker 14 which also gets it more attention because then they can get in the back and forth.

Speaker 20 Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two.

Speaker 20 We dive deep with guests that you love, like Bill Hayter, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Kristen Stewart, and tons more.

Speaker 20 So join us for a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the smartless mind. Listen to Smartless Now on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 20 Download it today.

Speaker 21 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo, the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 21 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. From CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 21 And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 21 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 4 At Total Wine and More, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 6 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 10 See Totalwine.com for details.

Speaker 11 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 12 Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 14 Trump did his own economic event on Wednesday in North Carolina, where standing in front of a giant banner that read jobs, jobs, jobs,

Speaker 14 he went on a long rant about how he thinks the Iranians are trying to kill him, and he's mad that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren't doing enough to stop them.

Speaker 14 Here's how it sounded.

Speaker 22 As you know, there have been

Speaker 22 two assassination attempts on my life

Speaker 22 that we know of, and they may or may not involve.

Speaker 22 But possibly do

Speaker 14 Iran.

Speaker 24 But if I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.

Speaker 24 We're going to blow it to smithereens. You can't do that.

Speaker 14 It may or may not have to do with...

Speaker 14 But possibly, yes. Yes.
It may or may not have to do with literally anything. I am floating a completely unverified rumor that may or may not be true, but you should believe it's true.

Speaker 14 So So the backdrop here is that there's some actual intelligence about Iran fucking with Trump's campaign.

Speaker 14 I believe right before we started recording, the Department of Justice indicted several Iranians trying to hack the Trump campaign, successfully hacking the Trump campaign.

Speaker 14 The Trump campaign also asked for an Intel briefing that they then read out to the press as containing, quote, real and specific threats against Trump's life.

Speaker 14 There is, of course, no evidence that no one's seen any evidence. No one's put forward any evidence that either of Trump's would-be assassins has any link to Iran.

Speaker 14 We have known for some time that Iran has been interested in assassinating former President Trump, as well as various Trump administration officials in retaliation for the Trump administration killing Soleimani.

Speaker 14 So that's true. They also, I think intelligence also says that they were, they've been trying to assassinate current members of the Biden administration.
So that's all there.

Speaker 14 Why is Trump doing this at a rally? This wasn't even like an ad-lib kind of thing where he just went off. It was in the prepared remarks.
His team previewed it to the press.

Speaker 19 Like, what is he doing?

Speaker 19 There is a part of his remarks that was not in that clip where he talks in some probably not totally accurate detail about the FBI's inability to access the phones and the foreign messaging apps

Speaker 19 used by the individual who in Butler and then in Florida. It's the kind of stuff that is very good at making people believe buy into conspiracy theories.
Like, hmm, that's weird.

Speaker 19 Why can't they own it? Oh, it's a far-known one. Hmm, maybe there's a lot more questions to answer here.
It's like QAnon, anti-vax if it's like textbook conspiracy theory spreading.

Speaker 19 And they want to spread this conspiracy theory. And I know it is crazy.
And it's weird to do it at an economic speech, but

Speaker 19 this is straight out of the playbook of tinpot dictators all over the world is to make themselves a victim that powerful forces somewhere are trying to take them out because they're such a threat to the system.

Speaker 14 Foreign sources. Foreign sources.
Source of some nationalism. Like they're trying to get the USA and I am the USA, right?

Speaker 19 I mean, this is why so many

Speaker 19 people on like online liberals spouted very irresponsibly that this was a false flag. This is why you would have a false flag as for this purpose.

Speaker 19 There was no evidence there was a false flag, but he's basically like six weeks late into running the second half of the play here

Speaker 19 after this. And so it's crazy.
It's poorly delivered. It seems bizarre, but it fits with how Trump has and people like Trump have sought power in the past.
I guess it's the way I'd say it.

Speaker 14 I think they're also just trying to squeeze all the political advantage they can out of the two assassination attempts, just to be perfectly honest.

Speaker 14 Like they, they know, we know that the campaign and the Trump believe that like after the first assassination attempt, they thought they had basically put Joe Biden away, that they saw Trump's approval ratings increase.

Speaker 14 I think they're mad that that didn't last, right? Because then there was the switch and Kamala Harris is the nominee. And so everyone sort of,

Speaker 14 the coverage of the first assassination attempt faded away and then the second one happened. And so they

Speaker 14 believe there's sort of a rally around Trump effect and that he was getting some goodwill, not just from his base voters, but from other voters. And they want to keep that in people's minds.

Speaker 14 They're going back to Butler, Pennsylvania,

Speaker 14 where there was the first attempted assassination on October 5th for a rally. He keeps saying he's going to go finish his speech.
I'm sure they're going to make a big deal out of that.

Speaker 14 I just don't know. I don't know how much that gets you.

Speaker 14 I think it's

Speaker 14 a little weird to keep talking about the assassination attempt, especially after

Speaker 14 the convention speech, the RNC convention speech, his acceptance speech, where he said, I'm only going to tell this story once because it's too painful to ever talk about again.

Speaker 19 I'm not sure.

Speaker 19 We can stipulate that Donald Trump's campaign is better in 2024 than it was the other two times, but I don't think it's that good. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Just think about, this is the smallest point on this, but this is the kind of stuff that I obsess over. Why is he speaking in front of a banner that says jobs, jobs, jobs?

Speaker 14 Someone in the campaign knows that that's the better message.

Speaker 19 Well, yes, but even if, let's say you're just doing an economic event, the unemployment rate's at historic low.

Speaker 19 When you look at all the

Speaker 14 polling on the economic event, you can say like prices, prices, prices. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 19 It's just concerns about jobs are way down because the unemployment rate's at historic low. So prices, wages, there are all these other things, lower taxes, all those things.

Speaker 19 And so you pick jobs, jobs, jobs. It's just very amateur.
That's what I'd say.

Speaker 14 Well, let me tell you, if you thought that that event was weird.

Speaker 19 See, this is my segue.

Speaker 14 The press conference at Trump Tower on Thursday. Woof.
We tried to grab some clips from it. We were going to do like a super cut.
Honestly, though, most of it was too hard to follow.

Speaker 14 We couldn't even figure out clips. He spent over an hour rambling and lying about Kamala Harris's trip to Arizona and her record on the border.

Speaker 14 One point he accused her of losing 325,000 children to sex trafficking. I couldn't even follow how or why.
He promised to liberate the city of Aurora.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 14 He also demanded an apology from ABC News for the debate. He attacked moderators David Muir and Lindsey Davis.

Speaker 14 He came back around to David Muir after the first time, like 30 minutes later, came back around to attack him again.

Speaker 14 He called on Nancy Pelosi to be prosecuted for insider training and for January 6th.

Speaker 14 And he talked about Nancy Pelosi because he talked about her trying to push out Biden. And he said that Biden only stepped down because they were threatening him with the 25th Amendment.

Speaker 14 It was just this long tangent. He started talking about how he owned property in San Francisco.
He said that Caracas, Venezuela had become a safe and wonderful city.

Speaker 14 Then he took a few questions. This was all before he took the questions.
And then we took a few questions.

Speaker 14 He took one about the news that New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday on five federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.

Speaker 14 And here's what he said.

Speaker 23 I will say this.

Speaker 22 I watched about a year ago when he talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city and the federal government should pay us and we shouldn't have to take them. And I said, you know what?

Speaker 22 He'll be indicted within a year. And I was exactly right.

Speaker 22 Because that's what we have. We have

Speaker 22 people that use the Justice Department and the FBI at levels that have never been seen before. So I wish him luck.
I don't know anything about what he did, but...

Speaker 14 So there it is. There it is.
Donald Trump defending Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York, because, hey, if you've been indicted, then you're on Donald Trump's side. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 14 Party doesn't matter at that point. And it was because of, and he defended him because he said they were, he was indicted because he was tough on immigration.

Speaker 19 And I just just want the listeners to know that this morning, we had our morning call to talk about the podcast. And we said that Donald Trump had a press conference scheduled for the day.

Speaker 19 And we said, I wonder if it's about Eric Adams. And Jon Favreau predicted almost to the word what Donald Trump would say here about Eric Adams.

Speaker 14 I knew it. I knew that's where he would do.

Speaker 19 I think it's time you

Speaker 19 reevaluate some life choices here.

Speaker 14 I've really, I've spent too long with this man, but it was like

Speaker 14 it would,

Speaker 14 it's just, it was so obvious.

Speaker 14 Well, you could sort of see it online, too, because all of the like right-wing accounts and the blue check marks and the idiots that follow Elon Musk and Silicon Valley, all those dumbasses, they were all starting with the like, oh, the Democrats did this.

Speaker 14 They had their conspiracies, right?

Speaker 14 Because what they don't want to admit is that the Biden Justice Department, which they have accused of, you know, weaponization and going after his political opponents, has indicted the president's son, Hunter Biden, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez,

Speaker 14 Democratic House member Henry Quayar, and now the Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams. So

Speaker 14 not doing a great job of going after Joe Biden's political opponents.

Speaker 19 No, it does not seem that way at all.

Speaker 14 Quite an odd conspiracy that they're like, well,

Speaker 14 if we're going to go after Trump, we got to pick five or six Democrats at random, including the president's own son, to also go after. It seems like a real complicated plot.

Speaker 14 But their answer is basically anyone that they've indicted, it's because

Speaker 14 they haven't done what the Biden administration wanted, right?

Speaker 14 So Eric Adams was too tough on immigration.

Speaker 14 I knew Trump would go there. Plus he just gave a press conference about immigration and I figured, oh, this is a perfect, it's a perfect confluence of events, Dan.

Speaker 19 I think the listeners can decide whether this is a positive thing or a negative thing for you, but you absolutely nailed it.

Speaker 14 What was that press conference, by the way? You and I were both, we were like texting while we were listening to it. That was fucking nuts.

Speaker 14 I know we say that about every single press conference, but it

Speaker 19 in the history of time, I'm not sure any man has been that crazy and that boring at the same time.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it is. It's like,

Speaker 14 it was hard to follow. It got really boring.

Speaker 19 No energy.

Speaker 14 No energy. And the fact that it was so boring sort of dulled like the extreme shit he was saying about migrants.

Speaker 14 Like he was doing a lot of the like, the, the the migrant like the gory stories about like rape and murder and all it was just it was it was it was both disgusting and boring if that's a if that can be yeah it's not if that can be the case it's just yeah just terrible just absolutely terrible to listen to not interesting alarming that this man is a point or two away from being president united states it's just truly terrible and it was i don't he was looking at notes the whole time so did someone

Speaker 19 write 55 minutes of remarks?

Speaker 14 I think he would like read a line and then sort of go off on a tangent.

Speaker 14 I have a like a smaller strategic question, which is like, why did he do a press conference at Trump Tower the day before she goes to the border?

Speaker 14 Why didn't, why not like do something quick after she goes and like get in the news that it was just very weird.

Speaker 19 It's just, he's not doing very much. He's not even leaving his home.
So why is he in Trump Tower to begin with?

Speaker 19 So he just walks downstairs and does this as opposed to why doesn't he go to the border today and preempt her there? He's old and lazy and his brain is melting before our eyes.

Speaker 14 It was also amazing to me that he goes on a long defense of Eric Adams, even though he doesn't know much about the case or doesn't know Eric Adams well because of this long thing.

Speaker 14 The last shouted question he gets is about Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, nude Africa poster,

Speaker 14 self-proclaimed black black Nazi says he wants to bring slavery back. You remember that guy? Oh, you mean Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaker 19 on steroids? That one?

Speaker 14 Martin Luther King Jr. on steroids, which is what Donald Trump calls him.
Interested in his wife sister.

Speaker 14 According to Nude Africa. Anyway, asked him, like, are you reconsidering your endorsement of Mark Robinson? Donald Trump's response.

Speaker 14 Donald Trump, who just went on, who just had time to talk for 55 minutes and give a long and rambling answer where he was defending Eric Adams. This is what he said about Mark Robinson.

Speaker 14 I don't know the situation. And then walked away.

Speaker 14 Unfucking. I just, I couldn't believe, how can he not just like throw Mark Robinson to the wolves at this point?

Speaker 14 It's not like Donald Trump has any kind of loyalty.

Speaker 19 He never throws people like that to the wolves, though.

Speaker 14 Yeah. I guess he doesn't want to lose his, he doesn't want to lose the Mark Robinson voters.

Speaker 19 Are there Mark Robinson voters?

Speaker 14 I think he'll get 40%.

Speaker 19 But are they Mark Robinson voters or they're just people who would vote for any Republican?

Speaker 14 That's true. Yeah.
Yeah. So then why not? Why not?

Speaker 14 I don't understand it. I don't understand it.

Speaker 19 Yeah. I mean, it's hard.

Speaker 19 We're going to lose a lot of sleep trying to understand this man.

Speaker 14 All right. Before we go, a note to all the collectors out there.
So you've got your Trump trading card NFTs. You've bought Trump's coffee table book.

Speaker 14 You've got Melania's memoir that she's out there hawking right now. You've stocked up on Trump and Son's private crypto currency, World Liberty Financial,

Speaker 14 their crypto platform. And yet, you still want more.
Well,

Speaker 14 today is your lucky day. Take a listen.

Speaker 23 Your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, here to introduce something really special.
I think you're going to love it. My new Trump watches.
This isn't just any watch.

Speaker 23 It's one of the best watches made with almost 200 grams of gold and more than 100 real diamonds. That's a lot of diamonds.
I love gold. I love diamonds.
We all do.

Speaker 23 Owning one puts you in a very exclusive club. I have watch number one, and I'm going to keep it.
It's mine, and that's the way I want to have it.

Speaker 23 Each watch is numbered and extremely rare, a true collector's item, and it includes a personal letter signed by me. Get your Trump watch right now.
Go to get TrumpWatches.com. It's Trump time.

Speaker 14 The Trump watches are $100,000.

Speaker 14 $100,000.

Speaker 14 He's out there talking about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and inflation and people are getting killed with the costs and he's a populist, the Republican Party under Trump.

Speaker 14 There's a Workers' People's Party. He's fucking selling $100,000 watches 40 days before an election.
What is happening?

Speaker 14 What are we doing? I think that Kamala Harris should speak about this.

Speaker 14 I think she should like next time she's in an interview, she's at a rally, I would do an insert in the rally speech in the stem speech she should mock the hundred thousand dollar thing she should paint him as this rich guy who doesn't give a shit about people she's already doing that now now she's got something that's going to make news i would put it in an ad that he's doing this like this is insane insane i agree with all that she should hammer it the The crypto thing is weird and kind of hard to explain to people.

Speaker 19 Right. It's hard to make fun of someone for selling Bibles.
That's a little tricky.

Speaker 14 The trading cards thing is weird and hard to understand. The sneakies.

Speaker 19 You left out the sneakers.

Speaker 14 Sneakers you could do. Sneakers you could do.

Speaker 19 The gold, the gold sneakers. But the $100,000 watches.

Speaker 14 Obama, you know what?

Speaker 14 Obama wanted to do the sneakers in his convention speech.

Speaker 14 It fell out of his sneakers.

Speaker 19 Did you take it out or just?

Speaker 14 I don't know where it went.

Speaker 19 He had to make room for the,

Speaker 14 yes, I think that's what happened. I think that's what happened.
But so the sneakers you could do. But the $100,000 watches, I would be doing this.

Speaker 14 I imagine our friend David Pluff is salivating over this.

Speaker 19 This is not the the biggest point here, but I think my takeaway from this is that Donald Trump has fully become Fox News.

Speaker 19 Like his speeches

Speaker 19 are Hannity, and everything else is just one long Fox commercial. It's the sort of

Speaker 14 Trump Zoom sneakers.

Speaker 19 Don't say that that's going to happen.

Speaker 14 I know.

Speaker 14 Somewhere, Dodge and Mark and Robinson are going to be up there together.

Speaker 14 I don't know, man. I don't know.

Speaker 14 in, if we elect this, I mean, who knows where it's a tie race. It's a tie race.
And he's got an advantage on the economy is he's out there selling $100,000 watches.

Speaker 14 People are most upset that costs are too high. They can't afford a home.
Can't afford groceries. $100,000 watches.
Who's buying that?

Speaker 19 I want to listen.

Speaker 14 I want everyone to know our Reed, Reed, who produces this show and writes this show, wants us to know that the Fighter Watch can be yours for as little as $500.

Speaker 14 That it's not, there is a low price point for folks who don't, who can't afford the $100,000. So I guess, just to be fair.

Speaker 19 Did Reed just Daniel Dale us?

Speaker 14 He was very concerned that we just want to make sure that the $100,000,

Speaker 14 that's the top echelon.

Speaker 19 That's the high price point. Reed is remote, but I'm going to take a close look in the next couple weeks to see if he's got

Speaker 19 a fighter watch on his wrist.

Speaker 14 Look, it does come with a handwritten letter from Trump, so I do think that that's cool.

Speaker 19 I'm sure he personally signed all of those.

Speaker 14 All right, we have some pitching of our own to do before we get to Melissa Murray.

Speaker 14 On the latest episode of Inside 2024, Alyssa Mastromonico joins me and we talk about political rallies since Alyssa has put together quite a few political rallies in her time.

Speaker 14 We're going to talk about how effective they are in 2024 and talk about some of the best ones that she put together back in the day.

Speaker 14 To get access to exclusive subscriber series like Inside 2024 and more, head to crooked.com slash friends now.

Speaker 14 It won't cost you $100,000.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 you won't be making Donald Trump richer. You'll be supporting independent progressive media.
How's that? When we come back, Melissa Murray.

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 4 At Total Wine and More, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and Moore is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 6 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 10 See Totalwine.com for details.

Speaker 11 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 12 Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 13 Pandora makes it easy for you to find your favorite music. Discover new artists and genres by selecting any song or album and will make you a personalized station for free.

Speaker 13 Download on the Apple App Store or Google Play and enjoy the soundtrack to your life.

Speaker 21 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo, the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 21 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 21 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com.

Speaker 21 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 14 Joining us today is our pal Melissa Murray. She's the co-host of Crooked's Strict Scrutiny Podcast, a professor at NYU Law, and has a new MSNBC special airing this Sunday at 9 p.m.

Speaker 14 with our friend Simone Sanders Townsend. It's called Black Women in America, Road to 2024.
Welcome back, Melissa. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 17 Great to be back.

Speaker 14 So I want to start with a clip from the special where you and Simone are sitting down with some young black women at a nail salon who have contemplated sitting out this election. Let's listen.

Speaker 25 How are folks feeling about this election season? It's crazy to say the least.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I'm feeling a little iffy. The first time that I was able to vote was for Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 26 That was my first and last time. Because I felt like, okay, I felt hope that Hillary would win.

Speaker 26 I felt excitement from the community around me I just had so much hope and then look what happened and so now I'm like mm did my vote really matter I don't know what were you excited to vote before the switch or were you just gonna sit it out I was probably gonna sit it out as well

Speaker 27 I agree

Speaker 27 I was definitely sitting it out I was not voting at all before the switch. I'm still up in the air.
Obviously, I'm a Muslim woman, so it's very nerve-wracking and very scary for me.

Speaker 27 It's already hard wearing hijab in public. So when you talk about things like Project 25,

Speaker 17 it's kind of scary.

Speaker 14 So I love hearing from undecided or persuadable voters, even if what they say is frustrating or frightening, which it often is.

Speaker 14 How many did you guys talk to, where,

Speaker 14 and what else did you hear? Was that typical of what you heard?

Speaker 17 So we talked to a lot of women. I mean, these weren't focus groups in the way that know, you and Sarah Longwell have done on other shows, but we did talk to a pretty broad cross-section of women.

Speaker 17 So there are women who were older, like in their 40s and 50s, and they had very distinct views. This group of women were true millennials, like 28 years old to 32 years old.

Speaker 17 And we met at this nail salon, the Cosmo Beauty Bar in Washington, D.C. And I have to say, I've never felt so old.
Like when they asked me, what would you like to do with your nails?

Speaker 17 I was like, I would like them short and finger colored. And they were like, we haven't done anything like that since 1994.
So

Speaker 17 I got a true education in all of the new nail techniques that are available. But I also got a real education about what younger women are thinking.

Speaker 17 And, you know, one of the things that struck me is that we are hearing constantly in the media that black women are just ride or die for the Democratic Party. And I just don't think that's true.

Speaker 17 It's not true for these women. They feel overlooked.

Speaker 17 I think all of the black women that we talked to felt overlooked by the traditional political parties, that their votes were either taken for granted or were overlooked entirely.

Speaker 17 But for these younger women, they really felt that no one was sort of speaking to them. And to be really clear, some of their complaints didn't strike me as being entirely plausible.

Speaker 17 And that's not because they're wrong. I think it is a failure of messaging.
So, you know, there was this one really interesting discussion about how much they were invested in student loan relief.

Speaker 17 And student loan relief actually did happen. And then it was sort of withdrawn by the United States Supreme Court.
And, you know, they hadn't really heard about it.

Speaker 17 No one that they knew had gotten student loan relief.

Speaker 17 And in their view, the administration was not talking about their successes in having student loan relief go forward and then the failure of having that eradicated by the Supreme Court in one fell swoop.

Speaker 17 So there are a lot of really interesting questions here, some of it about messaging, but also some of it about really appealing to these voters where they are.

Speaker 14 What were some of the issues that they spoke most about and

Speaker 14 some concerns they had with the administration?

Speaker 17 So one issue that was a particular concern, they lived in Washington, D.C. Most of them did.
Some were from other states like North Carolina, but police violence was a big issue.

Speaker 17 And again, It was hard to sort of

Speaker 17 understand where they were coming from on this. Like, you know, they wanted the administration to do more and be more proactive about addressing police violence.

Speaker 17 But, you know, I think there was a misunderstanding about what any presidential administration can do about the 18,000 police departments that are actually under local and municipal control.

Speaker 17 And in fact, the Biden administration did a really big effort with an executive order that provided lots of funding to local and state offices to track police violence, to do better training, things of that nature.

Speaker 17 They weren't really clear on that piece of it. And I think that is actually a failure of messaging from the administration.

Speaker 17 Maybe also a failure on the part of those of us in the media, because, you know, for the last year and a half, we, all we've talked about is Donald Trump and his criminality.

Speaker 17 We haven't talked about some of the other things that the administration has done to address really pertinent and entrenched problems like police violence.

Speaker 17 So that was one thing they talked a lot about. Student loan relief, reproductive rights was a big issue.

Speaker 17 And they all recognized that it was salient, but it still wasn't enough to ensure that they were going to the polls.

Speaker 14 You talked about messaging. What do you think Kamala Harris needs to do to sort of close the sale with some of these voters?

Speaker 17 So we spoke with these young women after the switch had happened. We spoke with another group of older voters right after the debate.
And, you know, that was actually a very interesting conversation.

Speaker 17 But even after the switch had happened and Harris was the nominee going forward for the Democratic Party, they wanted real specifics from her. What are you going to do?

Speaker 17 So I think this was a little bit before she started articulating some of the particulars particulars of her plan, certainly on the home ownership piece.

Speaker 17 But they wanted to know what she was going to do specifically about reproductive rights. And again,

Speaker 17 not a ton that a presidential administration can do without having a Congress and work being done in other branches of government, but they wanted more particulars.

Speaker 17 How are you going to shore up Roe versus Wade? What is that going to look like? Can I get behind this? And so that was really important. I think very,

Speaker 17 very particular to her. They just felt she was a bit of a cipher at that point, and they wanted someone to fill it in.

Speaker 19 I mean, Democrats' struggles with young black men have been a major topic of conversation this cycle. So I'm very excited to have something entirely new to worry about.
So thank you for that.

Speaker 19 But do you have a sense of whether it's similar dynamics going on with young black women? Is there something different going on?

Speaker 19 Is there something specific Democrats should be doing to address these concerns?

Speaker 17 Sure. I actually do think there is a difference here.
And, you know, I too have heard all of the discussion about how Trump curious young black men are.

Speaker 17 I did not get the sense that these women were Trump curious at all. You know, the woman who previously spoke, who was in the hijab, she was just very clear.
Like, I am not voting for Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 Like, I don't like him. I think he's a criminal.
I mean, they were very clear. This was really more a question of, am I even going to get out of the house on Tuesday, November 5th to vote at all?

Speaker 17 And so this was really more, is there anything that's going to animate me to get on board with Kamala Harris and the Democrats, not what is pushing me towards Trump?

Speaker 17 So I think it's a different kind of conversation. I think one of the things the Democrats really need to think about is

Speaker 17 how they message what they've done and also how what they've done is being received. And, you know, we talk a lot about low information voters.

Speaker 17 I think it's unfair to talk about them in that way because it sounds as though they are purposefully disengaged. And that's not true.

Speaker 17 But it did occur to me when I was talking to them that these are young women who came of age after 9-11, after No Child Left Behind, when we as a country systematically stripped public education of superfluous things like PE and music and art and civics education.

Speaker 17 So it's not surprising, perhaps, that they don't understand that the police departments don't get dictated to by a presidential administration.

Speaker 17 It's not surprising that they may not understand precisely that the president has to work with Congress to pass a domestic agenda.

Speaker 17 So we have really made them ill-equipped to understand how government works in a very particular way. And that's a real problem.

Speaker 17 I mean, an electorate that doesn't understand how government work is an electorate that can be preyed upon with misinformation. And that's exactly what we're seeing.

Speaker 19 Aaron Powell, Jr.: You know, there is a conversation to be had about how Democrats talk about their accomplishments, what we say, how we make it matter people.

Speaker 19 There's also the broader question of how do we we reach these people? Because I agree with you, low-information voters is a pejorative way of discussing it.

Speaker 19 But most voters, most people in this country, do not engage with news in a real way. The sort of distribution mechanisms of news are sort of broken.

Speaker 19 Did you get any sense of where these people are getting their political information, platforms or media outlets that maybe the Harris campaign or other Democrats should go on to actually inject themselves in front of these voters?

Speaker 17 So they talked about getting a lot of their information from social media and podcasts and sort of YouTube shows. So Hot Ones was mentioned.

Speaker 17 And I think those are really important platforms. It's not traditional news media.
It's not even cable news, which, you know, I think for a lot of them, that seemed like my parents' media.

Speaker 17 Like they're getting it from a bunch of different sources. And I think it's important for her to sort of meet them where they are.
And it's non-traditional media.

Speaker 17 But I also think, again, it's worth thinking about.

Speaker 17 Is it the case that we can only understand what the government does and how they do it it if we go to law school, if we took constitutional law?

Speaker 17 Like there's a real gap here, and we are going to have to address that going forward. I mean, it's all of a piece with these book bans and preventing people from having certain kinds of curricula.

Speaker 17 It's all of a piece. Like you make it harder for people to understand what's happening.
You don't give them the tools to be able to critically assess it.

Speaker 17 And I think it's a lot easier to sort of put one over on them.

Speaker 14 I know you guys talk to voters and other black women in politics and leadership roles.

Speaker 14 What was your main takeaway from the entire special? Like, what did you walk away with?

Speaker 17 So black women are deeply engaged with the issues.

Speaker 17 They understand

Speaker 17 that this election is probably unlike other elections. All of them seem to understand the kind of existential crisis that undergirds this election.

Speaker 17 I think some of the older women were just much more explicit about it. But even the younger women were like, this is the election that I'm voting on because if I'm voting, I'm voting for my kids.

Speaker 17 That was very palpable and very clear. They are engaged.
Their levels of engagement are different. But to a person, they all feel a little misunderstood by those who are in power.

Speaker 17 You know, the women we talk to in the suburbs say that when they talk about suburban women, they're not talking about me. And the younger women feel like they've been completely overlooked.

Speaker 17 The attention we're spending on young black men, talking about what animates them, we're not spending the same kind of attention talking about what is animating young black women or what is keeping them at home when they might be out there voting.

Speaker 17 So this is a sector of the electorate that's regarded as reliable and die-hard. But in fact, they're more wobbly than you think.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Well, I'm really glad you guys did the special. Everyone should tune in.
It is Sunday night, September 29th, 9 p.m. on MSNBC.
And you can catch Melissa on strict scrutiny.

Speaker 14 And Simone is going to be our guest host at our Philly show. We're going to do a live show in Philly next Sunday night.
So check that out too. Come visit us in Philly.

Speaker 14 Melissa Murray, thank you so much for joining us as always. And thanks for doing this special.

Speaker 17 Thanks for watching. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 14 That's it for today's show, but Dan and I are going to stick around to answer some audience questions from our Friends of the Pod subscribers and play some rounds of Take Appreciator.

Speaker 14 No, we're playing one round of Take Appreciator, Elijah.

Speaker 14 If you're signed up for Friends of the Pod, this is already in your feed.

Speaker 14 If you're not signed up, you can join at crooket.com/slash friends or through your Apple podcast feed to get this and much, much more.

Speaker 14 That's our show for today. Thanks to Melissa Murray for joining.
Everyone, check out Black Women in America: The Road to 2024 on MSNBC, Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Speaker 14 And we'll be back with a new show on Tuesday.

Speaker 19 Bye, everyone.

Speaker 14 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at cricket.com/slash friends.

Speaker 14 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 14 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review to help boost this episode or spice up the group chat by sharing it with friends, family, or randos you want in on this conversation.

Speaker 14 Pod Save America is a cricket media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Faris Safari.

Speaker 14 Reed Cherlin is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 14 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 14 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 14 Thanks to our digital team: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toles.

Speaker 14 Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail, and beyond.

Speaker 14 They don't just tell you what happened, they tell you why it matters, how it might impact you.

Speaker 14 Join the NPR Politics Podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 October brings it all: Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.

Speaker 4 At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 5 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 6 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore.

Speaker 9 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 10 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 12 Drink responsibly. Be 21.

Speaker 19 What's poppin', listeners?

Speaker 28 I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week, I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time.

Speaker 28 Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them. What about a career con man? We've got them too.
Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins.

Speaker 28 Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more.

Speaker 28 Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.