Harris Surges, Vance Sinks (feat. Gov. Tim Walz)

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Safe America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 3 I'm John Lovitt.

Speaker 5 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 4 On today's show, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden call for Supreme Court reform while Donald Trump panders to Christian activists and crypto bros with just under 100 days to go in the 2024 campaign.

Speaker 4 We are sub-100, boys.

Speaker 4 VP shortlister Governor Tim Wall stops by to talk about going after the weirdos and his theory of progressive messaging.

Speaker 4 And of course, we're going to get into why the JD Vance debut has been such a disaster. But first, Donald Trump is clearly upset.
He's not running against Joe Biden anymore.

Speaker 4 He's still out on the campaign trail doing impressions of the president and talking about his golf game. Really focused.

Speaker 4 He's begun the pivot to attacking Kamala Harris, but so far, it's a bit of a kitchen sink approach. Here's a sampling of comments he's made over the past couple of days.

Speaker 6 She doesn't like Jewish people.

Speaker 6 She doesn't like Israel. That's the way it is, and that's the way it's always going to be.
She's not going to change.

Speaker 7 I'm running against a low IQ individual, her. I'm not even talking about him, her.
I got a low IQ individual.

Speaker 8 And now that she's in this position, they're trying to make her into a, let's say, Margaret Thatcher. I don't think so.
It's not going to happen.

Speaker 8 Margaret Thatcher didn't laugh like that, did she? Did she?

Speaker 9 We're not going to let her turn the United States into communist San Francisco.

Speaker 8 Again, she has no clue. She has no clue.
She's evil.

Speaker 8 I want to be nice. They all say, I think he's changed.
I think he's changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.
No, I haven't changed. Maybe I've gotten worse, actually, because I get angry.

Speaker 4 Maybe I've gotten worse. So Trump's message is that Kamala Harris is stupid, evil, and I guess hates Jews so much that she married one.
I guess

Speaker 4 that's what the message is. Trump also posted a digital ad today that's another version of the Harris in Her Own Words attack about positions she's taken in the past.

Speaker 4 Tommy, why do you think Trump doesn't have a tighter argument about her on the stump?

Speaker 5 I kind of think he's just emptying the Oppo clip. You know, like he treats these rallies as just kind of live-fire focus groups.
He sees what works. He sees what they liked.
And you're right.

Speaker 5 I watched the Minnesota rally. He went back to attacking Joe Biden, I think, four or five times.
We were making fun of him for walking around.

Speaker 5 We were making fun of him for pointing the golf game, like all of it.

Speaker 4 I mean, I guess he's still making fun of Hillary Clinton. So what should we expect?

Speaker 5 Right. We're still locking her up.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, you know, Bruce Brinkstein is still placed under a road.
I mean, you just, you do the hits.

Speaker 4 That's why you go to the Trump rally. That's what they want to hear.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm sure the campaign is like testing all these messages in a real and deliberate way, and that we'll see the most potent messages in the TV ads and in the debates.

Speaker 5 But right now, he's just kind of having fun with it.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 3 if if you look at the turning point speech, first of all, I went to the to the speech because that's where he says, Christians, vote one more time and then never vote again.

Speaker 3 And I was like, all right, let's let's watch this thing and see it. And it's like an hour and eight minutes.
Jesus fucking Christ, this guy never shuts up.

Speaker 4 I said that's a short one.

Speaker 5 But he said it was a buck 20.

Speaker 3 Right, but but in that speech, he's at the beginning, he's casting around, he's talking about the assassination attempt and being talking about bullet versus fragment.

Speaker 3 He's kind of rambling, he's doing random attacks here and there. But then towards the end of the speech, there's a more tighter policy-based hit on Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 And you can see, oh, that's where the campaign wants him to be, but he's still doing what Tommy's saying, which is just like, you know, trying out new material on the road.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's more of a has it playing with my fan club sort of guy. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So it's just if the most committed supporters clap, then that's more important than whatever Chris La Civita and Susie Wiles are telling them, I'm sure, or putting in ads.

Speaker 4 What's your sense just listening to these events and just overall, how far along the entire campaign is in pivoting to Harris? They do have a lot of these attacks in ads now.

Speaker 5 I mean, if you looked at kind of the Trump Twitter feed today, it was every hour a new video about a new subject area. So it does feel like they're all doing what he's doing.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's sort of like Trump's the stand-up, like at the small club working on his material before he goes on the road, right? Like that, that, I think they're all in that

Speaker 5 place. But it does seem like they're focusing on just calling her a San Francisco radical liberal, which is kind of the oldest Republican playbook out there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wonder, right? Like if he knew that Kamala Harris was going to be the nominee, is he still planning to go to Minnesota, right?

Speaker 3 Like, is the, are we seeing the last bits of the campaign as it was envisioned before Joe Biden stepped aside? I don't know.

Speaker 3 Also, like, going to things, like, he's still doing things that reflect a campaign that was in a much more confident position, like, you know, going to the crypto conference.

Speaker 3 Like, these are gilding the lily type places to go. So, I think my question is, like, does his travel change to some, to, to, to, I don't know, other states?

Speaker 4 I think there's an obvious like opportunity to playing up her old comments, right? Clearly they're testing this.

Speaker 4 I'm sure it is probably more damaging with the voters they need to win the election than some of the really gross stuff that they've been saying and that the larger right-wing media universe is saying.

Speaker 4 I do think there's a risk for them, though, in that it is very backward-looking.

Speaker 4 And so if their entire campaign and their entire message about her is look at things that she did in 2019 or 2020 or before that.

Speaker 4 You know, it's useful to them to try to define her before she can define herself. But I think at some point there's a danger there for them if they just do that the whole time.
I think.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's right. I think like Joe Biden's superpower was that

Speaker 3 he was so established and so kind of safe that their efforts to paint him as somehow unsafe and dangerous. So you shouldn't even listen to him were not effective, right?

Speaker 3 Like our, in the go all the way back, like the concerns about Joe Biden in the primary in 2020 was that once he faced the same onslaught as everybody else, his favorabilities and the poll numbers would drop the same way others would, but that didn't happen, right?

Speaker 3 That was his strength.

Speaker 3 I think the energy, the enthusiasm, the fact that so much of the country is saying they want new and normal, they're trying in this very quickly to try to make her seem not new and not normal, but to try to get to the point where people don't hear her when she lays out the actual plans back and forth, because we know that if the election is fought on those stakes, Kamala Harris will win.

Speaker 3 I just don't think they have time. I just don't think they have time to

Speaker 3 so damage her while she is out there making this forward-looking case, right? They're just not, they just don't have the space.

Speaker 4 You guys feeling shocked that the new Trump isn't really taking? Not only has the assassination attempt not changed him for the better, but now he's acknowledging it has changed him for the worse.

Speaker 3 It's so funny. It's like, it's like I saw my life flash before my eyes and I realized I need to spend more time attacking my enemies.

Speaker 3 I'm not petty enough.

Speaker 5 There are a lot of days in this job where I feel like it's Groundhog Day and we just have the collective political memory of a goldfish.

Speaker 5 But even knowing that, it was still like shocking to see reporters regurgitating these lines about him responding in a spiritual, subdued way to the assassination attempt.

Speaker 5 Like, come on.

Speaker 4 I will say, to the credit of the press,

Speaker 4 it was... a lot fewer reporters.
There were a few this time around.

Speaker 4 A lot of people have learned. I think most people have learned.
There's still a few stragglers who were.

Speaker 5 70-year-old men don't change.

Speaker 4 I also think you're not. Well, I also think he realized.
Notice at the end of that, he said, well, I'm worse because you know what? I'm angry. I'm angry.

Speaker 4 He realizes that anger is way more important to his pitch than unity. Like he needs to seem like the angry outsider who's mad at the system and wants to tear it down.

Speaker 4 He can't be all like, let's come together and bring the, that's just not, people will know that's not who he is. And that's not his message, you know?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's right. Also, like, if the, when he first said, I'm not going to be nice, it's, it's, it has to start by saying, I can't be nice.
You can't, that's not what you need.

Speaker 3 You need me to be your vengeance. I need to be greedy for you.
I need to be mean for you. You need me to be that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think he has some advisors who are telling him, sand off the edges, like

Speaker 5 leave the mean tweets, part of your personality out of it, and you will reach the voters you need to win this election. I think those people are right.

Speaker 5 But then there's always going to be Donald Trump who's like, in 2016, I did a hardcore scorched earth base only strategy, and I won. Yep.
And no one can tell me otherwise.

Speaker 5 And I'm going to do what I know is right.

Speaker 4 He's always running a primary.

Speaker 3 Well, I also, by the way, like, maybe, maybe playing it safe was more right. I mean, I don't know.
It could still be right, but it was more right two weeks ago.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So he did two events over the weekend worth talking about.
On Friday, he spoke to a gathering of Christian activists called the Believer Summit.

Speaker 4 And then on Saturday, he spoke to a convention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Here's some of what he said.

Speaker 8 We will be creating so much electricity.

Speaker 9 that you'll be saying, please, please, President, we don't want any more electricity. We can't stand it.

Speaker 8 You'll be begging me, no more electricity, sir.

Speaker 9 Have a good time with your Bitcoin and

Speaker 9 your crypto and everything else that you're playing with. Christians, get out and vote just this time.

Speaker 9 You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years.
You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine.
You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.

Speaker 4 Beautiful Christians.

Speaker 4 So the You Won't Have to Vote Again clip got a lot of play over the weekend. I think even Cardi B weighed in on Twitter.

Speaker 4 It went pretty viral. Love it, what was your take on that?

Speaker 3 So I think people should be sharing it. They should be spreading it.
It does show a total disregard for democracy. He has made a version of this point before.

Speaker 3 In the past, when he has done this riff, what he has said is, Right now, you have to come out in numbers that overwhelm the ways in which

Speaker 3 I'm just translating that you have to overwhelm Democratic rigging the system. You wouldn't have to vote so hard.

Speaker 3 All of you wouldn't need to vote if the system weren't rigged and they weren't faking the election results.

Speaker 3 So if you vote this time and I win, I'll stop all the electoral fraud and then you don't have to vote as much. That is the generous interpretation of it.

Speaker 3 But do I think he also enjoys that this sets off a round of he's going to be a dictator on day one? Like, do I think he is being like vague and anti-democratic and trolling on purpose? Absolutely.

Speaker 3 And by the way, what he is saying is obviously false. They're trying to make it harder for people to vote.
They're trying to disenfranchise people.

Speaker 3 And so I see nothing wrong with pointing out that what he is saying here is about the ways in which he poses a threat to democracy, even if it's, I think, a little different than what the more extreme version of the interpretation.

Speaker 3 That's my take.

Speaker 5 Tommy. That's a good strong take.

Speaker 3 I mean, it could be a couple of things.

Speaker 5 It could be vote for me and I'll fix everything and you won't have to care anymore. It could be vote for me this time and I won't run again and I won't care anymore.

Speaker 5 It could be him signaling that he's going to end American democracy as we know it. I mean, mean, I'm kind of an Occam's razor guy.
I imagine he was just kind of making a joke.

Speaker 5 That doesn't mean he's not a threat to democracy. And so I thought, you know, I thought some of the reaction was a bit high dudgeon over the weekend.

Speaker 5 I saw a bunch of Twitter users screaming at Kate Bettingfield, who was Joe Biden's communications director, and calling her a fascist and a Trump supporter because she had a more,

Speaker 5 you know, not charitable, but she sort of thought he was not signaling that he was going to end democracy as we know it.

Speaker 5 You You know, this is a woman who moved her family and small kids to a city to work for Joe Biden to try to defeat Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 I think, you know, maybe pump the brakes on attacking the motives of everyone who disagrees with you on this subject. But yeah, Donald Trump's a threat to democracy.
This quote doesn't change it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, like, and here's why I think this is worth talking about, because, again, we are trying to persuade voters who don't like Donald Trump, but are not necessarily...

Speaker 4 either sold on Kamala Harris or so scared of Donald Trump that they're not going to vote for him, right?

Speaker 4 And clearly, last time, Trump wanted to stay in power so badly that he tried to throw away our votes and incite a violent insurrection.

Speaker 4 That's just true. And there's no evidence that he's changed in any way.
In fact, as he acknowledged, he's gotten worse. So like, we don't, you don't need to put more spin on the ball than that, right?

Speaker 4 Like that's, that's who he is. That's what he said last time.
I kind of landed where you did, Tommy, that it's he doesn't care, right?

Speaker 4 And for it's, it's so, it fits well with the Biden campaign's message and now the Harris campaign's message that Trump doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself, right?

Speaker 4 He's saying everything to anyone that he needs to just to win right now. And then he's like, in four years, I'll fix everything and you have to worry about me.

Speaker 4 He doesn't give a shit what happens in politics after four years. He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself, right? He just wants to win.
That's all he cares about right now.

Speaker 4 And like, what happens when he wins? Anything's on the table, right? Like after what we saw fucking last time. But I think that's where his mind was.

Speaker 3 He's done this. Like, sure.
I think he doesn't care. I think he doesn't care who wins next time either.
Of course.

Speaker 3 But I like, again, like, this is just Luce Trump having just kind of going back to his back catalog of riffs. And like, this is a riff.
Like, like, there is just a collective.

Speaker 3 Like, he does all these things before. Like, people are like, oh, my God.
He said thin people don't drink Diet Coke. He's been doing that bit

Speaker 3 for years. This is a bit he's done before.
He's saying, I'll fix, they steal elections. I'll fix it so that you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Like, that, that, I think, is. like the riff.

Speaker 3 That is the bit he was trying to do.

Speaker 4 The Christian activist event, I get. Why do you think he put in time at the

Speaker 4 crypto crypto convention in Tennessee?

Speaker 5 I think this one's very simple. It's money in men.

Speaker 5 The crypto-focused PACs are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. There's one that's like, I think seeded by Coinbase that has raised $200 million some odd dollars.
And so Trump wants that money.

Speaker 5 You know, he knows they spent $10 million against Katie Porter in the Senate race here in California, and he wants to get all their cash.

Speaker 5 Also, I think the Trump campaign rightly views crypto as a way to reach young men who might not otherwise care about politics. Some of them are at this convention.

Speaker 5 Some of them just care about crypto and don't want to be regulated. So that's why Trump flip-flopped his position on crypto.
He left office and he was like, crypto sucks.

Speaker 5 I don't think it's a good idea. And now he's full-on pro-crypto because, like, you know, some VC guys in San Francisco had a fundraiser for him.

Speaker 4 Not unlike what he did with his position on the TikTok ban, right? Yeah. And this is just, this is back to my point about where the in four years it won't matter comment comes in.

Speaker 4 It's he's literally, he's just saying anything to anyone he needs.

Speaker 4 And you could see that when you could hear that in the in the crypto comments. They're like, have fun with your crypto or your Bitcoin or whatever.
He has no idea. Passion for the thing.

Speaker 4 I would like to have someone ask Trump, explain the blockchain. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Tell me about the blockchain.

Speaker 3 I'd like any of us to explain the blockchain. But I also, like, it's, this is like the fucking endless perma challenge, which is like, this is all so stupid and also ridiculous.

Speaker 3 But then you think, oh, he's also proposed a bunch of tariffs. You know what would make Trump feel all-powerful for four years of president?

Speaker 3 If everybody was constantly afraid that he was about to apply some kind of a tariff that would affect their ability to produce goods of rod.

Speaker 3 Like a lot of what he wants to do economically is to put more power in his hands to like choose winners and losers and kind of wield the power of the White House. That is always on his mind.

Speaker 3 There's so many opportunities for corruption in all this.

Speaker 4 Well, and even if he doesn't decide to like stay in power forever, he's going to want four years of his supporters telling him how he's the most wonderful president who's ever existed.

Speaker 4 So he's going to let them do whatever they want. This is why the J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance stuff and the Project 2025 stuff and all that stuff should be scary to people, because even if you don't think Trump's into that, for the next four years, if he's in the White House, he's going to be like, yeah, I want to hear how great I am.

Speaker 4 So I'm going to let the people around me do whatever they want.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean, that's who comes along with him in this coalition.

Speaker 4 That's what we all have to remember.

Speaker 4 So the other big topic of political conversation has been Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, who has yet to generate a good headline for the campaign since he was nominated.

Speaker 4 The Washington Post has a story about how people in Trump's orbit, including Lindsey Graham, were trying to talk him out of picking Vance right up until the last minute.

Speaker 4 Now we're on week two of the fallout over Vance's comments to Tucker Carlson that America's run by too many, quote, childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.

Speaker 4 And then he went on to specifically mention Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pete Budigej. Vance also said that people without children should pay higher taxes.

Speaker 4 It's gotten so bad that even right-wing media types are starting to wince. Here's former Republican Congressman Turned Fox News host Trey Gowdy interviewing him on Sunday night.

Speaker 10 of this country.

Speaker 11 Of course not, Trey. I do think that being a parent actually has a profound effect on somebody's perspective, and we should honor and respect that.

Speaker 11 But there are a whole host of people who don't have children for a whole host of reasons, and they certainly are great people who can participate fully in the life of this country.

Speaker 11 And that's not what I said, Trey. If you look at what the left has done, they have radically taken this out of context and, in fact, aggressively lied about what I've said.

Speaker 4 So, people without children can still exist in America. Thanks, pal.

Speaker 3 Thanks, buddy. Wow.
Appreciate the kind words.

Speaker 4 How about that? First of all, that's compassionate conservatism.

Speaker 3 If you haven't seen the full Trey Gowdy clip, it's worth watching in full.

Speaker 3 He tells a beautiful and moving story about two women he met and then reveals that they were nuns and how much they were caring and wonderful people. And you have to imagine.
J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance is sitting in a studio somewhere. He's got his fucking earthing in, listening to a full five minutes ripping him to pieces on Fox News.

Speaker 3 And the question comes, it's like, JD Vance, tell me where I'm wrong. You seem like a huge asshole.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It was really, really unbelievable.

Speaker 3 What do you think about this?

Speaker 5 I think this is so politically damaging. Some people choose not to have children, and that is totally fine, and that's a valid decision.

Speaker 5 And to say that they're lesser citizens somehow in this country is outrageous.

Speaker 5 But there's also countless people who desperately want kids, but can't have them for physical reasons, for medical reasons, for personal reasons. They can't afford them.

Speaker 5 And he's telling those people they're lesser citizens too.

Speaker 3 Like, that is such a

Speaker 4 rule. He said to somebody who's like,

Speaker 4 of course, because

Speaker 4 I think children are so important, people who can't get pregnant or can't have children. Of course, I feel for them.
It's like, well, that's not what you're, that's not what it's sounding like.

Speaker 4 You're saying they're lesser citizens.

Speaker 3 You're not going one by one to every woman in the country and being like, now, are you doing this by choice or is there something that you're not telling us?

Speaker 3 Like, how fucking dare you make assumptions about every person that doesn't have kids? The whole reason you let people mind their own business is you have no idea what's going on in in their lives.

Speaker 4 Well, that was exactly

Speaker 4 Pete Buttigieg's response to that. Ridiculous.

Speaker 5 Which is what he said.

Speaker 4 He's like, I've two kids. And he's like, and we had a lot of trouble and it took us a long time

Speaker 4 to have these two children. He's like, and I'm sure J.D.
Vance didn't know that, but that's exactly why you don't make guesses and broad generalizations about a whole category of people.

Speaker 5 As someone who's struggled to have kids and now does, I cannot tell you how personally cruel and painful those comments are. No one is ever going to forget that.

Speaker 5 If you're a woman who's miscarried and now doesn't have children and you desperately wanted them and you hear that, that cuts you so deep and it will stay with you for life.

Speaker 4 He also said that parents should get more votes. Did you see that one? Where he said that if he said what happens is if you should get as many votes as children that you have,

Speaker 4 but the children shouldn't vote, obviously, until they're a voting age. So the parents now get, a parent with three kids get four votes or two votes, and then single people don't get that vote.

Speaker 4 So he literally wants to make people without kids have less of a voice in public life he he has already said that he also then said he's sympathetic to the idea that federal agents should be able to track down women who travel out of state to get abortions because it is banned where they live so he wants a federal response to women who leave a state with an abortion ban and try to get an abortion out of state this is all like

Speaker 3 And I talked about this a bit with Governor Walls, but also like,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 he's also not in the party that's trying to make make sure people have prenatal care, if people have pre-K, people have health care and access to affordable education, all the way, all the, all the rest, right?

Speaker 3 So it's like, what is the, what is the only kind of incentive that they want to provide to have children? Like, the fear of their moral judgment is a big piece of this. But it's also just this,

Speaker 3 it speaks to the real mistake in J.D. Vance, which is like he is really kind of letting the world into a very small, niche, right-wing conversation around family where they've been talking about.

Speaker 4 George Teal, Elon Musk now are part of this.

Speaker 3 And it is a kind of combination of

Speaker 3 right-wing

Speaker 3 Christian judgmental

Speaker 3 policymaking on top of a kind of like patriarchal idea of what the family should be, like what people should do,

Speaker 3 what's the right way to live, telling people how to live. And once it gets just a little bit of light in there, everyone's like, what the fuck are you people talking about?

Speaker 4 They say it's not even Christian, frankly.

Speaker 4 It's like, as you mentioned, the story about the nuns and like, it's just, it's so, it is an, it is an extreme ideology that is somewhat new in the last several decades, right?

Speaker 4 Where like this, it's, I mean, AOC tweeted that it sounds like fucking incel culture, which, you know, there are a lot of parallelism.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 4 It's totally incelogy.

Speaker 5 He is like a right-wing blog's comment section, became a person. Yeah.
You know, and like, you're right. He, he's going in some weird intellectual circles.

Speaker 5 It's like Heritage, Peter Thiel, the Claremont Institute, even more.

Speaker 4 Yeah, people who know him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 those guys are happy to debate some very out there political ideas because they don't have any consequences because they're not running for anything. But J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance kind of like dabbles in that and he leaves this long paper and audio trail. And you got to wonder, like, how much of this did the Trump campaign find or vet?

Speaker 4 I'm sure not all of it. I really, like, I also, so he says that childless people, quote, hate normal Americans for choosing a family.

Speaker 4 And now his defense is, he's like, well, Kamala Harris is anti-family. The Democratic Party is anti-family, anti-children.

Speaker 4 There is bipartisan legislation, to your point, to extend the child tax credit that's stuck in the Senate where J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance works right now because Republicans did not want to give Joe Biden and Kamala Harris an election year win on the issue. This passed the House overwhelmingly.

Speaker 4 Republicans and Democrats, it got to the Senate and they were like, oh, it's April, it's spring, it's getting too close to the election. We want to kids.

Speaker 4 So they care about rewarding families with kids and giving families with kids a break so much that they just like stuck this thing that they're for in the Senate because they didn't want it.

Speaker 4 Same thing with the fucking immigration deal.

Speaker 3 It's just it also, by the way, like it just also just goes to like the judgmental, invasive kind of politics this is. Because one thing that J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance has talked about is that how much like he is more in favor, according to his own words, a child tax credit than he is to universal child care, right?

Speaker 3 Because universal child care subsidizes parents who work, right?

Speaker 3 And that he would rather subsidize, he would be still stuck in the Senate because Republicans, but that like, oh, if you want that, like he wants to encourage a traditional structure, right?

Speaker 3 So like universal child care is a kind of like way of appeasing kind of the left and like liberal people, especially liberal women.

Speaker 3 And it kind of just gets to this like kind of worldview about like the left that he's kind of unable to stop himself from espousing.

Speaker 4 What does the Trump campaign do about J.D. Vance?

Speaker 5 JD is in a tough spot because like the number one rule for Trump is you cannot back down and look weak, but boy should he be backing down conceding some things and being like I messed up that I was wrong about this, but he's just bulldogging ahead and like like Lovett mentioned earlier like you have Republicans like Trey Gowdy basically begging him to clean this up.

Speaker 5 You've got Ben Shapiro criticizing him. You've got Dave Portnoy, the head of Barstool Sports being like, who is this idiot? How the hell did this guy get on the ticket? And like he.

Speaker 4 Fox and friends, Brian Kilmead was saying it too.

Speaker 5 They just they can't seem to fix it. So it seems to me like they're just going to attack Harris, wait for the next news cycle, hope it all moves on.
But man, like this guy is getting defined. J.D.

Speaker 5 Vance is getting defined in this first couple of weeks. And it's entirely negative.
And we're not even having a conversation about how he is manifestly unqualified for the job.

Speaker 4 And the fact that it got to the reason I brought up Fox and Friends is you know Trump is seeing this now. Oh, yes.

Speaker 4 He is seeing some of this criticism. And the only thing that has surprised me,

Speaker 4 we're recording this on Monday, is that we have not not seen a leak yet that Trump is pissed.

Speaker 5 To a donor, to a friend, then it'll be at a rally.

Speaker 4 You know it's coming, right? Like, I'm shocked that we haven't.

Speaker 5 Don Jr.'s getting some calls?

Speaker 4 For sure.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but the other problem, right, is that, okay, so there's all these recordings that are floating out there. He's then doing a bad job of cleaning them up when

Speaker 3 he's doing a round of interviews. You could maybe say, all right, no more interviews.
We got to get this guy on the stump. He's doing a bad job on the stump.

Speaker 3 Like the fact that his convention speech was so disappointing, the rally speeches he's been giving, they are plotting, not very well done, not very, he's just not that great. He moves too slow.

Speaker 3 So like what you would say is just get this guy out there, get him with a 10, 15 minute tight, good stump with a few new sharp hits on Kamala Harris or whoever the VP pick is.

Speaker 3 But man, like I just, it's hard for this guy to

Speaker 3 run from this when he's just so unappealing in every setting.

Speaker 5 He's also doing a lot of training wheel stuff. He's like doing interviews with Trump.
What a waste of time.

Speaker 4 I know. It's also the challenge of the Trump Republican Party trying to rebrand itself as like the Workers' Party, right?

Speaker 4 Even if you decide to pivot from the tax cuts for the rich and the deregulation agenda and all that bullshit, they are so obsessed with the like weird cultural shit that even if they have an economic populist story to tell, like J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance ostensibly does and has in Hillbilly Elogy and since then, like it's just going to get lost because they have all these other crazy ideas on cultural issues that are so out of step with mainstream America that that's gonna get the attention, right?

Speaker 4 And so, like, JD Vince could go give some stump about like how you know, President Biden, Kamala Harris, overlooked Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, and look at all these, like, but it's not gonna get any attention because he's written all these things and said all these things in the past that just make him fucking weird.

Speaker 4 He's a weirdo, he's a weirdo.

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Speaker 4 Let's talk about our Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, on Monday.

Speaker 4 She endorsed President Biden's brand new proposal for Supreme Court reform, which includes 18-year term limits for justices, an enforceable ethics code, and a constitutional amendment that would strip away criminal immunity for former presidents.

Speaker 4 The Harris campaign also needed the Trump campaign over their refusal to commit to the debate they had already agreed to.

Speaker 4 And the campaign put out a statement saying Harris will be at the ABC debate on September 10th, whether or not Trump is there.

Speaker 4 Clearly, the energy and enthusiasm for Harris is unlike anything we've seen in politics for a very long time, which is great. They've raised over $200 million.

Speaker 4 They're reportedly going up on the air air this week. And Harris will be on the campaign trail in Atlanta Tuesday for the first time since she was in Milwaukee last week.

Speaker 4 What's your sense of how the overall strategy is coming together?

Speaker 5 I like that they're going on offense. The original frame was kind of prosecutor versus convicted felon.

Speaker 5 I think the bigger picture message is future versus the past, which is incredibly refreshing to hear.

Speaker 5 And obviously, for obvious reasons, Joe Biden couldn't really credibly be the one delivering that message, but he also wasn't great at laying out the second-term agenda.

Speaker 5 And she has seized that mantle and done so very quickly.

Speaker 5 Now, both she and Biden are talking about this court reform stuff that I love, because who doesn't support an 18-year term limit and a binding ethics code?

Speaker 4 I bet those pull

Speaker 4 extremely well.

Speaker 3 Through the roof.

Speaker 5 At a time when the faith in institutions is going down, including the courts, like it's a great idea.

Speaker 5 She's also, I think, very quickly walking back some positions from the 2020 primary that her team feels like are too progressive or too liberal.

Speaker 5 And that's going to bum out some Democrats, but it's probably a necessary move to

Speaker 4 sketch that shit.

Speaker 5 You have the best position for the general election, but it's smart to do that quickly. Just rip that band-aid off.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we haven't, we like, I don't know. It's just like been a,

Speaker 4 it's been a week. I know.

Speaker 3 And I just, we've said it. What's happening is extraordinary.

Speaker 3 The like sophistication and like of the campaign, the amount that they've been able to mount the like the videos, the digital strategy, the speeches she's giving, the tone, the fact that it like feels like a coherent national campaign with a clear overall message.

Speaker 3 That is an extraordinary achievement. Like we're watching unfold.
And I just,

Speaker 3 I like think like, all right, you know, two weeks ago, this enthusiasm was not there, right? Like, how do we make most of that enthusiasm in this moment, right?

Speaker 3 Not just with fundraising, but like there's some, you know, we were talking about this before we recorded, but just that all of a sudden, like, there, there's all these people on like places like TikTok talking about how like, hey, you you know, we may not agree with her and everything.

Speaker 3 And yeah, she may be walking back some of these positions, but we're all coming together to do this in November. We can protest in January.
We can be frustrated.

Speaker 3 But anybody that's not getting on board this train right now is not understanding the stakes. And like, what is the vibe shift worth?

Speaker 3 I don't think we know yet, but it's just been so reassuring to even see that change.

Speaker 4 You know, I've seen a few comments like people being nervous that they're not up on TV yet or like, is she not on the road more and stuff like that?

Speaker 4 I've just seen a few of them here and there, not much. But I like, I don't think people understand.
Like,

Speaker 4 no one has ever built a plane in the air like this with less than a hundred days to go on a campaign, a presidential campaign.

Speaker 4 Like, usually in a presidential campaign, when you just start out your campaign, which she did as the presidential candidate, you do like months of meetings with strategists and advisors.

Speaker 4 That's why you're not on the road. You're not like taking vacation.
Like you're sitting there with threat.

Speaker 4 And you road test a stump speech, right? And then you refine the stump speech. And that takes like for Obama, that took us between, I don't know, February of 2007 to October to get it right.

Speaker 4 Oh, and he was bad for a while. Terrible.
He was really bad.

Speaker 5 There was at one point where Paul Tooza, our state director, was like, maybe we shouldn't have him back in Iowa for a while because this is not going well.

Speaker 4 It was awful.

Speaker 3 Remember that we were all in Iowa. You guys were for, obviously, for Obama.

Speaker 3 But both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were giving these one-hour meandering stump speeches, one-hour plus, because they were...

Speaker 3 getting questions and they're trying to answer every question in their long speeches. So maybe there's some advantage to not having him.
I know.

Speaker 4 You have to test a bunch of ads, right? Before you just do the ads, you want to test them to see if they work, work, to see if they resonate, if you're going to spend that much money.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's so much to do. And the fact that they have done this much with the help of everyone else being really excited in a week's time is just mind-boggling.
It's mind-boggling.

Speaker 4 So it's like, you know, I do think on the Supreme Court reforms, those are great.

Speaker 4 People should just know that it is very unlikely to happen without 60 votes in the Senate or a Democratic House or 51 senators who are willing to get rid of the filibuster for these reforms.

Speaker 4 I do think the constitutional amendment to get rid of criminal immunity for former presidents, which is now there thanks to the Supreme Court, is, I mean, constitutional amendments are, like the bar is so high.

Speaker 4 It's two-thirds of both houses of Congress. It's three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Speaker 4 You know, that's, but good for Joe Biden for like laying down this marker, which he had said he was going to do before he left the race.

Speaker 4 And, you know, good for Kamala Harris to lay down the marker because. you know, filibuster reform started years ago when we only had a few few senators saying they were willing to do it.

Speaker 4 And now it's like everyone but Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. So that's what you do.
Back to the point about enthusiasm and donations. How much do you think that matters right now?

Speaker 5 I think the money and the volunteers are very real. And I do like...
I'm with you that it's silly, I think, to criticize them for not being on TV right now.

Speaker 5 But I do hope they're up soon because we are in a race to define Kamala Harris before Republicans try to define her their way. And so

Speaker 5 you can get a bunch of TV ads on. You can get these new volunteers at the doors to backstop those ads with conversations with people.
Most people just don't know much about Kamal Ayrs.

Speaker 5 And that's the truth. He's the vice president, but a lot of people won't know much about her.
So getting ahead of these negative attacks is hugely important.

Speaker 3 I also like there's been so much value to having a candidate who is not just like. We have now have someone that is kind of taking the fight to Trump.

Speaker 3 And I do think that in ways that are very hard to measure, I think that's inspired a lot of people to just say what they think more, right?

Speaker 3 Like, yes, there are people out there auditioning to be vice president. You're going to hear from one in a minute.

Speaker 3 But I also just think there's been a kind of collective realization that all of us, I think because of a feeling of like concern, a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of, I don't know, being dispirited, like all of us were collectively not fighting hard enough.

Speaker 3 And I think that that's incredibly valuable. And another point that the governor makes is just about like,

Speaker 3 why are we losing some of these disaffected people? Well, some part of it is that people just want to be part of a winning team, a team of people that are excited to be on that team.

Speaker 3 And like that enthusiasm gap was real. There were people that are extremely excited for Donald Trump, and we just didn't have that on our side.
And now we do.

Speaker 3 And like, we'll see what the ultimate value is. But man, is it nice to see?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, you can make an argument that an enthusiastic voter and an unenthusiastic voter, both of them voting for your candidate, the vote counts the same, right? I get that.

Speaker 4 But we were in a situation with Biden where the polls consistently showed that younger voters, especially younger black and brown voters, were

Speaker 4 just not enthusiastic and maybe weren't ready to back Biden. And the the Biden campaign's argument was, well, you know what? They're not enthused now.
They will come home in November. Maybe, right?

Speaker 4 But in a close race, we were in a situation then where there was a legitimate case to be made that a low turnout election might help Democrats because if it looked more like a midterm electorate or a special electorate, then it was going to benefit Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 I don't think we're in that. situation anymore because now Democrats can actually focus on registering and turning out excited voters who otherwise may have stayed home.

Speaker 4 And having having this many volunteers means you can have that many more conversations with people who like weren't going to vote for Kamala Harris or weren't going to vote for Donald Trump, maybe weren't going to vote at all.

Speaker 4 And now you can have more conversations and they see that their friends are excited and they're like, oh, I want to hear more about that. Like it does build.
I think. Especially in a close race.

Speaker 5 I think if we're being honest, the 2020 election was an anti-Trump coalition that came together to defeat him. It was not a pro-Joe Biden coalition.

Speaker 5 Maybe we could have brought back that anti-Trump coalition this cycle, but I think frankly, we're in a much better position because we're giving people something to be for and something to be excited about.

Speaker 5 And that's what was missing.

Speaker 4 We talked about how she should respond to Trump's attacks. We talked about it last episode.
Like, how do you think she should be going on offense? And

Speaker 4 what do you think the campaign should be doing between now and when they announce the VP, which will likely be next week at some point, according to their timeline?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a good question. You know, like you sort of look like what's sort of breaking through and, you know,

Speaker 3 the renaissance of their weird has been been interesting to watch a kind of new take on like the challenge right is like trump even when he says something terrible it's very it's almost always something terrible he said some version of before it's like how do you make trump feel new and interesting to be covered i think new language like we've seen has been doing that i think having all these different vp candidates vying has been doing that i think as she's hitting the road like you know we talked about you know, one, what she's not been able to do where she like, you know, they're currently working on a convention speech without the like year of trying stuff, just trying different versions of riffs, trying different versions of attacks, trying different versions of lines.

Speaker 3 But the, the plus side of that, right, is every time she speaks and tries something new, it is new, right? Like it's a new, it's a new attack. It's a new take out of Trump.

Speaker 3 It's a new way of her campaigning. And I think that that's like a real, that's a cool thing about this moment.

Speaker 4 It is. I mean, you hate to make any campaign about just like winning the news cycle because it's about bigger than that, but with less than 100 days left.

Speaker 4 The reason the JD Vance stuff is so valuable is because now we could have had a week about Kamala Harris and her and the Trump campaign attacking her. And instead, we had a week about J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 4 She also has, remember, at the beginning of a campaign, in a general election campaign, you do all of your policy rollouts, if you're the candidate, in the spring.

Speaker 4 And so, and she hasn't done any of that yet.

Speaker 4 And look, a lot of her policy will be similar to what Joe Biden has already proposed, but she's going to get to eat up some news cycles, propose it, and get some attention proposing new policy.

Speaker 4 So she'll have that. She'll have the convention.

Speaker 4 And I do think to the point about needing new information, if she can pivot to, because she's got to go on offense against Trump, if she can pivot to talking about what Trump will do in the second term, that's new information for voters.

Speaker 4 And I think that she, if she wants to make news about Trump, you know, you're going to have a better chance making news talking about what he's planning than talking about like everything people know about Trump already and his character and all that.

Speaker 5 I also think one thing that Obama was really good at in 2007, 2008 was delivering a hit as a joke or with humor generally to like soften it and also make it more interesting. And,

Speaker 5 you know, Biden, I think, struggled to do that recently. You know, he seemed defensive and angry at times.
Kamala Harris is very good at delivering a hit while laughing.

Speaker 5 And I think the Calling Republicans weird narratives just perfectly folds into that. Just they are weird.
Project 2025 is weird.

Speaker 5 Calling the Jan 6 insurrectionists hostages and playing their song is weird. QAnon is weird.
Bringing that all up is worth it.

Speaker 4 I even think that when she does the prosecutor versus Felonriff, there's a way to do that where you sound like your fingers pointing angry kind of thing. And when she delivered, I know his type.

Speaker 4 Yeah, really.

Speaker 4 It was the exact right tone.

Speaker 3 I wonder too, like,

Speaker 3 you know, just like good old-fashioned. Donald Trump said at an event over the weekend that I'm not going to have, that we're not going to have to vote anymore.

Speaker 3 Would you want to have the vice president at her next stump be like, did you see this?

Speaker 3 Here's what Donald Trump said, that this is going to be the last election because he's not going to have you vote anymore. Like, that's because he's a scared of your vote.

Speaker 3 Like, would you be out there kind of like trying to make news cycles out of the weird new things you can kind of grab from a speech? I think the answer is yes.

Speaker 4 Definitely, for sure. Definitely.
I also think there's just a broader point.

Speaker 5 Like, Trump is a celebrity. He's larger than life.
He's still this kind of like New York character from The Apprentice in some ways.

Speaker 5 But electing him empowers people like Speaker Mike Johnson, who sends his son a weekly update on his porn viewing to prevent masturbation. Yeah.
That's a real thing that happens in this world.

Speaker 3 That's weird.

Speaker 4 It's weird.

Speaker 5 No one wants that. No No one wants that person to be empowered and part of this governing coalition.

Speaker 4 J.D. Vance is the

Speaker 4 embodiment of Project 2025, right?

Speaker 4 Project 2025, it's been landing with voters. And I talked to Sarah Longwell about this wilderness over the weekend.
It's been coming up organically and focus groups.

Speaker 4 And part of it is this conspiratorial nature. We've talked about this.
Now you have... J.D.
Vance, who like everything about him is Project 2025, including all of the weird shit.

Speaker 4 And it just makes it easier to, I think, effectively communicate the stakes of the election and what's going to happen because you're like trump whether he cares or not about this shit jd vance is going to be the vice president and he's going to be sitting there implementing all the crazy project 2025 shit yeah it's like it's like the villain from the da vinci code wearing a tech vest like elon mess like you put you put that guy in the tech vest it's like the the worst of kind of like old like kind of revantious traditional like mores and laws to control people and like the tech fucking bureaucratic, technocratic control.

Speaker 3 Like, put those fucking things together. Got a pretty gross dude.

Speaker 5 Get that guy on the psychiatrist's couch, you know?

Speaker 4 Hey, learn a lot of things.

Speaker 3 He's like, I'm having trouble concentrating because of the couch.

Speaker 3 This is this attractive couch.

Speaker 4 What are you going to do? Anyway, I'm going to cushion those remarks.

Speaker 4 Hey, hey, you're going, yeah.

Speaker 3 So, so close, sofa?

Speaker 4 We should pull out of this one. Hey.

Speaker 4 The point about Trump, Tommy, and how he's like the celebrity, well known, everyone knows everything about him, and also your point about past versus future.

Speaker 4 Like, I think that in mocking Trump, a little bit of like, aren't we sick of this by now? Yeah, sick of the sexual. The act is getting old.
Did you see that?

Speaker 4 Like, the Trump act is just getting

Speaker 4 old.

Speaker 3 Did you see the rally the other day when he was like, they made fun of me, and I hate getting made fun of?

Speaker 4 Yes. Oh, yes.
He tells us everything.

Speaker 4 And you know what he hates the most about in terms of getting made fun of is irrelevance, the idea of irrelevance or that like he's not cool or that he's yesterday's news.

Speaker 4 He's boring, he's boring, he's old, annoying. It's not like this, the Trump is senile thing that everyone's pushing around on Twitter.
I don't think that people buy that as much.

Speaker 4 It's like the guy, it's just, we're so tired of this. It's like the same blah, blah, blah.
Like you said, the same hits. The blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 4 Oh, we're going to get the shark thing. We're going to get the Hannibal Lecter thing.
And we're not like upset about it. We're just like, enough with this.

Speaker 3 The drama and the just the endless noise.

Speaker 5 Shays and Shays are the same speeches.

Speaker 4 Yeah. No, it's just, it's, um, I keep, someone in the.

Speaker 3 Did you look up synonyms for California?

Speaker 4 I did.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Chat Chief.

Speaker 4 Of course. Of course.

Speaker 4 Someone in one of the focus groups who's a swing voter,

Speaker 4 Trump Biden swing voter. He was like, you know, the problem with Trump is it's just like, we know what we're going to get.
It's just a rerun for four more years.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, yeah, someone should use that. That's a good line.
It is like a rerun. It is like a rerun.
It's like we're getting fucking celebrity apprentice reruns for another four years.

Speaker 4 We want something new. And it's not new to us.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that's my thing. All right.

Speaker 4 Speaking of VP picks, when we come back from the break, you'll hear love it's conversation with governor tim walls before we get to that though a pitch from us look when we when we started doing this show uh we wanted to be a home for everyone who wanted to be part of a progressive conversation we want you to join in and help us invite more people to do the same if you haven't subscribed to our podcast yet now's the time follow us on apple help juice the algorithm to get the pod in more people's ears and if you've got 20 seconds Please share your favorite episode with your friends, families, undecided voters you've matched with on Hinge, or anyone else in your life who could be more engaged, active, and hopeful for democracy.

Speaker 4 When we come back, Tim Walls.

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Speaker 3 Beyond serving as governor of the great state of Minnesota and chair of the Democratic Governors Association, our guest today is also rumored to be under consideration to serve as Kamala Harris' vice presidential pick.

Speaker 3 Welcome back to the show, Governor Tim Waltz.

Speaker 4 Hey, John, thanks for having me. Good to be back on.

Speaker 3 Great to have you. Governor Walls, notice respect here, but a matter of days ago, you were basically unknown on the national stage.

Speaker 3 Now a good chunk of the internet knows what rides you went on at the state fair last year. Where the fuck have you been?

Speaker 4 What? Doing my job out here. I'm just plugging away and

Speaker 4 hearing. Yeah, just doing the work.

Speaker 3 Vice president gets dangled in front of you. Suddenly, you're like one of the best messengers in the party.

Speaker 3 Where we needed you.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I was coaching those football teams, plugging a wave. No, it's

Speaker 4 get some observations. Look, there's joy all over the place.
The vice president blew the lid off this thing, and it feels like a spell's broken. So I'm excited.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so you said

Speaker 3 that as part of this new

Speaker 3 joy and enthusiasm, that your kids who are 17 and 23 told you TikTok was on TikTok was on TikTok. I'm 100 years old.
That TikTok,

Speaker 3 TikTok is on fire with enthusiasm.

Speaker 4 are they your gen z whisperers they are they are my my daughter especially she's a good one i'll have to say she's a she's out in montana um social worker but uh she's it she's in tune to it i listen to her uh i get her work ethic the things she cares about and look these guys have been through a lot quite seriously you know when they were kids they went through the great recession they're coveted babies you know missed out on on things there and then they're coming out of this and they're they're seeing you know trump bring back this horrific message and and they're done with it i think i'm feeling it this is their first time to really feel a campaign that's enthusiastic.

Speaker 4 That's what I see.

Speaker 3 So, you know, speaking of the seriousness that they've experienced, you have talked about changing your views on gun safety, in part because of the urging of your daughter.

Speaker 3 Are you worried at all about the accusation of being in the pocket of big children?

Speaker 4 Yes, it's my kids are influencing me. I got the other day, I got asked, I'm a horrible progressive because our children eat breakfast and lunch in school.
We just got to embrace the things

Speaker 4 that make this country great. But no, on seriousness on that one, I'm friends with David Hogg.
He and I have talked about this. I think an evolution on this.

Speaker 4 I grew up, and I know this is a small towner, but I put my shotgun in my car at school or in the football locker to go pheasant hunting afterwards. That was a reality.

Speaker 4 But we weren't getting shot in school.

Speaker 4 We didn't have

Speaker 4 ARs in school. And so I said,

Speaker 4 it was, for me, both a reckoning and an embarrassment.

Speaker 4 Uh, I was one of the people who took the meeting with 23 sets of parents from Sandy Hook in my office, and they thanked me for taking the meeting. Um, that's a reckoning.

Speaker 4 And then to just listen, their kids would have been my son's age at 17. So, uh, I appreciate all the people who've worked on that, and we're seeing that move.
So, there's reasons to be optimistic.

Speaker 4 These kids have seen a lot, but they're ready to end it.

Speaker 4 And boy, when you see the numbers flipping and how much they engaged, and I don't, don't make light of TikTok, you know, in terms of really connecting. My daughter talks about that a lot.

Speaker 4 You, You avoid us at your peril of getting the message out.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 one part of this new enthusiasm has been a kind of collective realization or moment of attention on the ways in which Republicans are not only a threat, but to use your words, kind of weird.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You actually used that term back in February when you were on this show about gubernatorial candidates like Mark Robinson. The Harry's campaign's now running with it.

Speaker 3 I feel sometimes there's this challenge, right?

Speaker 3 Because we've got to make sure people understand that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, that what they're proposing is extreme and dangerous and something to be terrified of.

Speaker 3 At the same time, we want to not allow that to build Trump up into some kind of a strong man figure, right?

Speaker 3 That's being strong, as DeBill Clinton famously, being strong and wrong is better than being right and weak. So

Speaker 3 how do you think about putting those things together?

Speaker 4 No, that's exactly it.

Speaker 4 I think on big problems, climate change, homelessness and things, if it becomes just an aspirational goal, people don't understand the steps you can make to actually get rid of it.

Speaker 4 And that becomes then, they just kind of fade away and we don't get it done. You have to have touch points.
And the thing you're talking about is you lift this guy up.

Speaker 4 Yes, he's a threat to global democracy and global peace, in my opinion. I think your constitutional rights are under threat.
That becomes almost overwhelming and it's not inspirational.

Speaker 4 And I think taking them down to what this is, this weird thing is not an insult. It's an observation.
And people are saying, well, Governor Wallace came up with this. No, people are telling me this.

Speaker 4 My Republican friends are telling me this. Because when you look at it this way, who's asking for some of this stuff? Who's asking for health care to be taken away?

Speaker 4 Who's asking for birth control to be taken away?

Speaker 4 Who's asking? You picture some guys, you know, they always do the, oh, the guy's sitting in Racine, Wisconsin in the bar, you know, what's really concerning them?

Speaker 4 I damn sure guarantee you it's not banning animal farm. They're talking about, God, it's too damn expensive to pay for child care, or I'd like to do this.

Speaker 4 So I think the thing is that this spell, and you listen to him, there's nothing there. And it opens up a huge space if you can shrink him, shrink the message, and then really start to focus on that.

Speaker 4 Because look, I say this all the time. Those folks that were at that rally in St.
Cloud, they're not going to vote for me, but I'm going to make sure they get health care.

Speaker 4 I'm going to make sure the women who were at that rally are going to get access to birth control. And there were people there with signs that said Somalis for Trump.

Speaker 4 We're very proud of our immigrant population.

Speaker 4 We have a large Somali population here, but I'll be the guy making sure I'm pushing back on his Muslim ban or the denigrating words he used against that community.

Speaker 4 I think you get it to where people are listening. And I want people to be very clear.
I'm not talking about Republicans being weird. I'm talking about that dude.

Speaker 4 Just my point on this, he's making fun of Kamala Harris laughing. I got a bet out there, and he'll never collect on it.
He will not laugh in public. He's incapable of it.
And that's just strange.

Speaker 4 It is strange. Yes.

Speaker 3 The not laughing in public thing is so strange.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 What kind of a person never has an authentic moment of laughter in the public eye? The guy's been in our faces for 50 years. Yes.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 4 So how do you make sense of it? Yeah. Picture.
And you tell me, no matter how conservative you are, that's somebody you're going to be around. Like, I'm telling my theme, I'm not,

Speaker 4 I just keep pointing out that why this guy, why this guy? You come home from work, you throw the frisbee to your pup, and he gets it. He comes over, you give your good boy a belly rub.

Speaker 4 Picture that guy doing anything normal like that. No way.
No way. And I think when people start thinking about this, my Republic, my family who are in this, they're concerned about taxes.
Maybe.

Speaker 4 You know what they don't want? They don't want the public schools cut so you can give a tax cut to the wealthiest.

Speaker 4 There's a conservative mantra mantra that has been taken over. And these, I'm just going to say it, these weird ideas of, you know,

Speaker 4 like J.D. Vance,

Speaker 4 the only people

Speaker 4 that can vote and benefit are people with kids. And then their kids are going to get a vote or whatever.
And we're going to do all this.

Speaker 4 It's ludicrous. And I think what's happened is the spell's been broken.
And now we need to step into it with some positive ideas.

Speaker 3 So let's talk about that. One group of people.

Speaker 3 So Trump's campaign manager told the Atlantic's Tim Alberta that their target group of voters are disaffected young men, a majority of whom, at least in some polling, show an affinity or an openness to Trump and to Republicans.

Speaker 3 How do you make sense of this shift amongst young men? And what's your pitch?

Speaker 3 to bring these men back into the fold.

Speaker 4 Look, if it weren't so serious, Trump is funny. If he weren't involved in some of this, he's a buffoon.

Speaker 4 And some of it is like when he's doing his shark thing or whatever, I'm laughing, but this guy is a danger or whatever. And I think when you're a young guy, you're on the edge.

Speaker 4 Look, it's the prefrontal lobe stuff. There's some of that.
I was that guy, man. I know the glasshouse I lived in.

Speaker 4 And you got this guy out here wild, breaking the rules, saying this stuff, crazy, all this. It's attractive or whatever.

Speaker 4 I think what you're seeing now is we don't have to be like that, but we can give them something. That's why you see TikTok with a younger generation.

Speaker 4 You see, you know, Vice President Harris engaging, understanding, listening. Look, I don't understand everything about Gen Z, but I love him.
I guarantee you, this dude doesn't.

Speaker 4 And the Republicans, everything they're proposing is anti-against them. This generation cares about their neighbors.
They don't give a damn about race. They truly are much more inclusive.

Speaker 4 And they do care about climate change. So I think these young men are looking for something there.
It's the Trump spectacle. Here's what I think is really getting him.

Speaker 4 Kamala Harris is becoming a phenomenon.

Speaker 4 That's what he was.

Speaker 4 And her politics are good and wrapped around that. She is starting to gain, and you're going to see that.
It starts to shift.

Speaker 4 And the enthusiasm level amongst that age group is shifting hard and they are gettable. They are gettable if we bring them back.
Look, I coached these kids in football for years.

Speaker 4 They want to be part of winners. I'll tell you the fastest way to get them on there, they don't want to be with losers.
And that's my point with him. You're hanging with the wrong dude.

Speaker 3 So shifting gears, in the late 90s, you were teaching and coaching at Mencato. You volunteered to be the Gay Straight Alliance's first faculty advisor.

Speaker 3 As governor, you signed an executive order protecting the right to gender-affirming care for trans kids, and you signed a bill outlawing book bans.

Speaker 3 My question is, for being such a friend to the queer community, why don't you dress better?

Speaker 4 It is true. You got to have the ally that looks like this dude, the old white dude.
But I'm proud of that work because I look, I was the football coach. It was the thing.
You know what I'm proud of?

Speaker 4 I'm proud of the students there who understood that. I'm proud that we were starting to get past this issue.
And a lot of it was just,

Speaker 4 you know. just it's ignorance a lot of times and we got through that and so uh yeah i got to do better on this but i you know i'm trying

Speaker 3 No, I think it, look, I noticed this over the weekend. There are people seeing you with you in your

Speaker 3 giving a press conference, and it's not clear whether you were, this is not my joke, whether you were going to run for vice president or maybe fix a radiator. Listen,

Speaker 3 but in all seriousness, I do think that, you know, we talked about young men.

Speaker 3 It does seem like attacking trans people, making this a debate about masculinity is a kind of way to kind of peel off some of these young men.

Speaker 3 That's why they kind of target trans people, scapegoat trans people, try to make this something about being against men.

Speaker 3 What do you think about that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's that toxic masculinity. There's something about embracing this, about doing good.
Look, I'm proud I played football, but I also helped do the set at the plays.

Speaker 4 There's being a well-rounded person and understanding you can do these things. It's about being part of your community.
And the thing is, they try and do that. This is the thing, John, too.

Speaker 4 They're all the tough guys of toxic masculinity. We used to have a trap shoot in Congress.

Speaker 4 You know, we'd go out and we would shoot 25 sporting clay, 25 ski, you know, 25 trap or whatever. I'd be top gun.
I can shoot these guys. So I'd ride back on the bus.

Speaker 4 How does it feel to get outshot every year by a liberal gun grabber? Most of these guys have never been around guns. It's just like a persona.
It's like they pick up. Look, you know it.

Speaker 4 I've been talking about J.D. Vance or whatever.
That's not my small town. That's not where I was from.
That's not how we talked. And I think part of it is letting them know it's okay.

Speaker 4 You're right about round cars. I'm proud that I can do some things around a car.
I fix it or whatever. But there's a whole wonderful, you know, rainbow of things that people can do.

Speaker 4 But I do think you're right, that it's targeting. They turn scapegoats into punchlines.
You know, they make people scapegoats.

Speaker 4 We need to embrace, and that's what we've done. And it's okay.
But that toxic masculinity is a scary thing.

Speaker 3 So let's say you're on a debate stage with, say, J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance, and he accuses you of being a big government liberal who's attacking our families, making life worse for our families, doesn't share our values, doesn't care about families like yours.

Speaker 3 What do you say to him?

Speaker 4 Yeah, first of all, it was up to him. I wouldn't have a family because of IVF and the things that we need to do reproductively.
My kids were born through that direct, you know, that way.

Speaker 4 And also, I make sure that I'm the guys and our folks are investing in prenatal care. We're the ones that are there for universal pre-K.
We're the ones that are providing school meals at this.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to back down one bit on this whole family values thing and it's us.

Speaker 4 That construct that he's putting out there is absolutely untrue.

Speaker 4 We're making it more affordable to have children by having paid family and medical leave so that you can go home when your kids are sick and take care of them or if you're a dad i don't have to go right back to work five days later after my wife had a c-section because our insurance wouldn't pay for it we're boosting those things up there's nothing pro-family other than having women be incubators for their vision of this and

Speaker 4 I don't know. Once again, it's weird.
I don't want J.D. Bance talking about my family.
I certainly don't want him talking about my daughter or my wife. It's none of his damn business.

Speaker 4 But I said the one thing is we need to talk about how we've invested in families. We have the most generous child tax credit, and it's what Vice President Harris is proposing for the country, that

Speaker 4 people are poor because they don't have money. And when kids don't have the money on the front end, all of the things that a chain reaction of can't learn can't go on.
So I'll challenge him on that.

Speaker 4 Whereas J.D. Vance's pro-families forcing people to have, you know, not be able to have medical care if they have a bad pregnancy or something.

Speaker 4 We need to stand in front of that. And again, You don't need me to give a sermon, but try and live one.
Try and be decent. Try and help your neighbors, try to invest in those kids.

Speaker 3 Before we go, I do want to talk to you about something that is quite depraved that you're not only involved in, but a huge proponent of. And that's the Minnesota State Fair.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 3 I'm actually coming to the state fair this year.

Speaker 3 I am actually dating a Minnesotan.

Speaker 3 And I wanted to ask you, first of all, is there any kind of dispensation or government-provided lactate that can be provided at various stations just for the safety of the people involved? And

Speaker 3 the amount of dairy and the rides you're putting in such close proximity to each other, What about safety? What about public health?

Speaker 4 Well, I'll go over and be there. You can get chocolate or regular.
$1,

Speaker 4 $1, all you can drink. So you got to picture this.
You're out there. It's 90 degrees.
You can have unlimited amounts of milk. And then you go do the slingshot.

Speaker 4 It's a rite of passage, but I think it's a good one.

Speaker 3 Now, one hard question here.

Speaker 3 I want to ask you about four different food options, and one's got to go.

Speaker 4 One is no longer going to be available. All right.

Speaker 3 Here are your four choices.

Speaker 3 Fried cheese curds. I think we have a photo for you.
The corn on the cob, that's famous. A bucket of sweet Martha's cookies

Speaker 3 served by the bucket. And a pronto pup, which seems to me some sort of amalgamation of corndogs, pancakes,

Speaker 4 and different. Different.
I'm teen corn dog. Cost me lots of votes, but I'm clearly clean.
a corn dog. You bailed me out on that one.
I did. I'm throwing the pronto pup and sticking the other

Speaker 4 corn dog. Wow.

Speaker 3 And now my understanding is the bucket of cookies, it can't be closed until you've eaten several families' worth of cookies.

Speaker 4 And this is when there was a simpler time in 2018. I bought my bucket and the Republicans, I'll give them this, old school Republicans, smart.

Speaker 4 Their booth was right next to the Sweet Martha's booth. Smart.

Speaker 4 And I bought one of these and I walked through the booth. And nine out of 10 people took them, you know, like from him.
One guy's, I'm not taking anything from you. And I'm like, oh, that's fine.

Speaker 4 And the lady next to me says, well, I'm not voting for him, but I'm taking the cookie. Sweet Martha's is the ultimate, uh, it is the ultimate bipartisan entry point.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I can't, you eat about a dozen before you get to the bucket. That's sick.

Speaker 5 You people are sick.

Speaker 4 We walk on water half the year. We have to do something.
So,

Speaker 3 Governor Tim Walls, thank you so much for your time. Really great to talk to you.

Speaker 4 Thanks, John. See you at the state fair.

Speaker 3 Yeah, see you at the fair.

Speaker 4 That's our show for today. Love it and Stacey Abrams will be back with a new show on Wednesday afternoon.
Wow.

Speaker 4 Really, we're going big for our guest hosts these days.

Speaker 5 Yeah, pretty exciting.

Speaker 4 All right, everyone. We'll see you then.

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Speaker 4 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producer is David Toledo.
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