The DEA confirms they are looking into criminal activity allegedly committed by a Venezuelan gang, the Trende Aragua Gang has been labeled by the White House as a transnational criminal organization, in a statement obtained by Denver7 Investigates, the DEA says agents have seized multi-kilogram quantities of fentanyl destined for the Denver metro area from individuals believed to be members and/or associates of the gang. Overnight, the Israeli military says it killed five more militants as they continue their largest raid on the occupied West Bank in two decades. New details emerge on an altercation involving Donald Trump s team at Arlington National Cemetery.
00:00:26.660Tonight, for the first time, the DEA confirms they are looking into criminal activity allegedly committed by a Venezuelan gang.
00:00:33.220The Trende Aragua gang has been labeled by the White House as a transnational criminal organization.
00:00:38.900In a statement obtained by Denver 7 Investigates, the DEA says agents have seized multi-kilogram quantities of fentanyl destined for the Denver metro area
00:00:47.700from individuals believed to beat members and or associates of the gang.
00:00:51.800Overnight, the Israeli military says it killed five more militants as they continue their largest raid on the occupied West Bank in two decades.
00:01:01.320Among those killed, a local militant commander who was the mastermind of several attacks against Israel.
00:01:06.460One Kamala Harris policy getting more attention these days is the proposal to tax unrealized gains.
00:01:12.540This is when people get taxed over investment gains that only exist on paper.
00:01:17.240The Harris-Walls ticket proposing a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains.
00:01:22.280And the Supreme Court has now rejected a request from the Biden administration to restore a student debt plan.
00:01:27.860The multi-billion dollar plan that would have lowered payments from millions of borrowers was rebuffed by justices.
00:01:33.700This comes as the Education Department works to create a faster strategy to reduce income-based payments and provide loan cancellation.
00:01:40.980New details on an altercation involving Donald Trump's team at Arlington National Cemetery.
00:01:46.460This is someone who, according to his own former chief of staff, said Americans who died in war are, quote, suckers and losers.
00:01:53.600Apparently, this visit turned into some kind of physical incident.
00:01:58.080Is he politicizing these soldiers' deaths?
00:02:00.060Should he even be at Arlington National Cemetery if he's going to make some politics out of this?
00:02:05.780Donald Trump is a person who wants to make everything all about Donald Trump.
00:02:10.040Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to today's edition of Human Events Daily, live from Washington, D.C.
00:02:31.280It is the place where, predominantly, we've laid to rest the heroes, those who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:02:42.540And recently, a few days ago, President Trump honored some of the very last, I believe, you should actually check that out, something to look up.
00:02:53.420Were these the final deaths in Afghanistan for the U.S. military?
00:09:18.580Oh, and then Robert Kennedy leaves the race.
00:09:21.300And we've been hit with like once in a lifetime stories every two weeks in this political season.
00:09:26.880And that is something that pollsters aren't explaining to people that can cause a very difficult polling environment.
00:09:35.000That being said, I don't want to speak too early, but it does look like things like response biases and social bias, which is really a form of response bias, are starting to iron out.
00:09:48.200I don't want to proclaim that yet, but it does look like that response bias that I'm arguing artificially pumped Harris's numbers for a bit there is beginning to, not beginning.
00:10:47.720Let me ask you about that because I've always wondered about this, and you and I have sort of chatted about it, but I don't think I've asked you right directly.
00:10:55.740Do media polls, do these public polls, is one of the reasons that they provide these, you know, the horse race numbers is to make it appear as though the media is more important than they actually are?
00:11:06.200And I'm not saying that things like the debate didn't have an effect, but they want us to think that the day in day out of watching the media and responding to every little thing that happens has an effect on the electorate.
00:11:18.380But, you know, honestly, I just don't see it.
00:11:20.880I don't think that the electorate is that responsive to news cycles.
00:11:25.720I'm not saying that all news doesn't affect.
00:11:27.560I just don't think it's that responsive.
00:11:28.960But I do think that things like the fundamentals that are going on do have the biggest effect.
00:11:34.700So this is probably one of the biggest things, though, but let me just, you know, rather than go super esoteric with it, I'll ask, is there a obviously an incentive that the media has to make things look like a horse race with ups and downs on a regular basis as opposed to what you're talking about here, these direct trends?
00:11:53.800Yeah, I think there are a couple of things that are going on that explain that.
00:11:57.560One is it's the business model, right?
00:11:59.900I mean, they want these ups and downs.
00:12:01.580They want these horse race numbers, when in reality, that's not really how public opinion works, and that's not the reality of an election.
00:12:08.620And then two is we all like to overinflate our importance, don't we?
00:12:12.460And then three is that the media is in the bag for one party.
00:12:16.580The America, you know, from 20, 30 years ago and how it used to conduct an election is just not the same anymore.
00:12:22.820We are now basically a state-run media, you know, when it comes to the legacy corporate media, big media apparatus.
00:12:31.860It is essentially a state-run media apparatus, and they want a certain party to win, by that being the Democratic Party.
00:12:38.600So they were looking for any way to exploit the environment to make it appear like Harris is doing better than she is.
00:12:45.820And they all fall prey, like most of us do, to, you know, our own biases and our own search for affirmations of our own ideals and opinions.
00:12:53.880And that's just not how public opinion works.
00:12:56.220And in 2016, we actually – it was a very volatile cycle as well, Jack, remember?
00:13:00.600And then we got hit with the Billy Bush tape in October.
00:13:03.080They had the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
00:13:05.160The truth is, you know, we conducted an experiment, a very different kind of polling, which now people accept and do, but 25% to 33% roughly of the entire sample constantly, and it was a three-day rolling average when we got closer to the election, were repeat interviews.
00:13:21.960And it was a very large sample, constantly recruiting, sure, but always 25% to 33% being repeat to try to minimize that response bias and kind of demonstrate to people that these swings are artifacts of the polling itself.
00:13:35.160It is not – it is not a real swing in voter preference.
00:13:41.320We're talking about a tiny little slice of the electorate that does that.
00:13:45.180The rest is about who's going to vote, and that's really what it comes down to.
00:13:48.460And when you go back and you look at that project, for instance, I mean, Jack, it was really steady compared to the other, you know, public polls.
00:13:57.560And it got trashed back then, but who was right in the end and who was wrong?
00:14:02.320You know, the ABC News poll started with Hillary Clinton plus 14.
00:14:06.580By the time we got to the election, it was within the sampling era.
00:14:09.800Folks, polls don't move like that unless it's a bad quality poll.
00:14:16.940We're in a very, very difficult environment already when it comes to not everyone has landlines anymore.
00:14:24.340You know, not everyone answers a cell phone at an equal rate.
00:14:27.240So we have different modes we have to reach people with.
00:14:29.440That already is a challenge, but when you add everything else onto it and the media's desire to come up with these sports race numbers, it creates a very, very difficult and I would argue fake and, you know, fake polling environment.
00:14:42.460And by fake, I mean just artificial swings.
00:14:48.120The swings just feel artificial because you go out and talk to regular people out there and it's like, and this is where this, this, this myth of the, you know, the swing voter comes in.
00:14:57.280And I'm not saying that there are people that, that don't swing.
00:14:59.520It's just that if you worked in elections long enough and like my, like what's not coming from Pennsylvania, I know that there's people out there who say, yeah, you know, I'm going to vote for like, like I understand that there are people who will vote for Fetterman and then also vote for Donald Trump.
00:15:14.560And that there are people who will vote for Bob Casey and will vote for Donald Trump.
00:15:18.460And with all apologies to Dave McCormick, there are definitely going to be people who vote for Casey and Trump this election.
00:16:17.720I was stunned to see they changed their branding.
00:16:20.080I like the old classic one, but we're in areas in Northern New Jersey and then, you know,
00:16:24.480which are working class, old democratic areas.
00:16:27.000And that border on with, yeah, that border along with working class areas in New York, all the way from like, you know, a little bit bougier Pearl River, you know, and we're looking at these democratic areas.
00:16:38.180You know, they're old school Italians, Irish, Polish neighborhoods, you know, now they're certainly Hispanic and there are big red and white Trump or bus signs all over these neighborhoods.
00:16:49.440And guess what's sitting next to those signs?
00:16:51.460That's the sign for the democratic congressman or the, you know, for the democratic center.
00:17:00.260Uh, so then, you know, Paramus, you know, Paramus, New Jersey, it's not, here's, here's what people have to understand.
00:17:05.280Let me, let me put it this way for folks who are, who are, for folks who want to understand the difference is that, is that people in the Rust Belt for whatever reason, and we could get into the philosophy of it, but for whatever reason, it's not necessarily at people are not as identified with one party.
00:17:21.500The partisanship isn't as high in these areas.
00:17:25.100What you have instead is more, do I like this person?
00:17:28.680And if I like this person, then I'm for them and I'm all the way for them.
00:20:58.160He is a failed sports handicapper who has turned into a failed election forecaster who was fired from his own website because he's been bleeding in the red six to eight mil a year since it started.
00:21:11.760The problem with citing Nate Silver is that he's going to scam you.
00:21:14.980Okay, so you're citing it now, and then in a week from now when he has Harris up again, he's scamming credibility from everybody right now.
00:21:26.120And listen to what he said in these tweets.
00:21:28.360When he puts out the post that his model has changed, he essentially attempts to explain away some weird thing that's going on that has given Trump belief.
00:21:37.820And what that really means right there is I can't fudge the numbers too soon because I just got caught fudging them by Nate Cohen a week ago and others, by the way, about how I made adjustments to the model that gave Harris more of an edge.
00:21:50.740So he's attempting to explain it away, and then that second tweet, which you just read, is a wink, wink.
00:21:56.780High-quality polls is code for the cool club.
00:22:01.220It's code for election mafia, which is a bunch of crappy polls who overstay.
00:22:06.320He's talking about the state of Pennsylvania.
00:22:08.480To Nate, what he's saying is he's giving a wink and a nod to the New York Times, to Quinnipiac, to others who routinely, disgustingly overstate Democratic support in these battleground states.
00:22:18.680He's telling them, hey, guys, drop a Harris plus 8 so I can shift the model again.
00:22:27.740The only thing that should matter about the quality of a poll is their accuracy and their track record.
00:22:33.200High-quality means I paid too much for live caller interviews that were subcontracted in India by a person who can't even correctly speak English.
00:22:40.840So somebody in the Midwest has absolutely no idea what they're saying on the other line.
00:22:45.160And, oh, by the way, not a single one has accurately predicted the state of Pennsylvania in the last two presidential election cycles.
00:22:57.200To those out there, you know, Fairleigh Dickinson, do me a favor and fudge another poll like you did last week so I can go ahead and put it on my average.
00:23:05.680Nobody, nobody criticized that guy for putting up that Harris plus 7.
00:23:10.840That was the most unethical thing, and I've seen a lot of unethical things.
00:23:14.980That was the most unethical thing I have seen as my career as a public pollster.
00:26:44.740And I think we're going to see something like that.
00:26:47.220And by the way, you just mentioned the internals.
00:26:49.520That translates what that you know, that that's internals means expensive.
00:26:53.780So, you know, as opposed to the fake high quality polls that he's talking about right there, campaigns do high quality, meaning expensive, meaning that they set these stratified quotas and they pay for them to make sure no groups are being underrepresented.
00:27:08.800And this picture has not been rosy for Harris for weeks.
00:27:14.460That it's been weeks that this has been the situation.
00:27:17.240But they're getting to a point now where maybe she had a lead in Minnesota within the margin.
00:27:23.380Maybe she had a you know, they were bobbing back and forth in her polling between like a one point lead for her, one point lead for Trump in Michigan.
00:27:29.960And it's getting to the point now where it's a very clear direction.
00:27:36.160They're afraid they're going to get Hillary Clinton's where all of the polls showed a rosy picture for their candidate and Donald Trump outperformed.
00:28:36.940Or on the reverse of that, in a state like Pennsylvania, for instance, it's going to look like they have enough early votes banked or something.
00:28:46.200And they'll win it by a margin that they got accustomed to winning it by.
00:28:51.400And so it'll look like they'll have enough to overtake whatever the election day lead is.
00:35:09.840Talk to me about this idea, though, about response bias and the polling and your contention that the polling industry has been completely destroyed in the last eight years.
00:35:20.380So what I what I noticed, especially when Trump is running, there is there's been something called a, quote, silent Trump voter we've heard about a lot.
00:35:28.800It doesn't show up in polling quite a bit that there's more support for him than polls are picking up.
00:35:34.420And then I was just wondering, I was like, let me look at Biden's numbers right before he dropped out.
00:35:39.800And Biden, I mean, the national polling was a little tight.
00:35:42.680I mean, Trump had the lead, but it wasn't a humongous lead, especially when you consider that Virginia and New Jersey and Minnesota and New Mexico were all in play.
00:35:50.500Right. So I noticed that there was one group that stuck out, among all others, that really had a huge level of support for Biden.
00:35:57.660That was older voters, despite the fact that Trump won older voters back in 2016 and in 2020.
00:36:03.480Biden was winning older voters in 2024, in July.
00:36:07.180This was after his horrendous debate where he said he defeated Medicaid.
00:36:11.320Go back four years, back into 2020, and Biden had a double digit lead on Trump among older voters.
00:36:19.240And you go back to 2016, this is in the polls, not in the election results, but in the polls.
00:36:24.000In the polls, Hillary Clinton had a very, very large lead with older voters.
00:36:29.540And in swing states, states like North Carolina and Georgia, where Trump won older voters by close to 20 points, it was tied close to it.
00:36:37.520So in this last in this election, 2024, the same thing is coming up.
00:36:42.800The Quinnipiac poll that was released today has it a two point race when you consider all third party candidates at one point Kamala Harris Lee when you just have head to head.
00:36:52.420But she's winning seniors by 10 points and she's almost guaranteed to lose this demographic by five to six.
00:36:59.420And this 15 point poll by the most polled and answered group of voters is because liberals are answering the phones way too often.
00:37:09.480And conservatives, especially older conservatives, are not answering them enough.
00:37:14.300Older Karens can't wait to give people their opinions, it seems like.
00:37:18.060And older guys and especially older men, working classmen, do not pick up the phone nearly enough.
00:37:24.840Well, and, you know, that actually kind of makes sense because when you talk about and this is exactly what we were talking about earlier in the show is that, you know, I see the psychology of the sort of like the person who is willing to take the poll.
00:37:37.540And it just doesn't match up with when you when you think about the political psychology of people that you meet in the real world.
00:37:43.800And I was talking about how, you know, I've done a lot of elections in Pennsylvania.
00:37:46.620I'm familiar with the Pennsylvania voter.
00:37:48.420I'm familiar with the different pockets of voters of Pennsylvania.
00:37:50.780And they just don't exist in the way that the polls seem to think they do.
00:37:55.340But then when you add in what you're talking about is response bias, what it really means is people's likelihood of whether or not they're willing to respond to a poll.
00:38:06.060Now, I, of course, love responding to pollsters whenever they reach out to me because I still have a Pennsylvania phone number.
00:38:46.880They love to get on the phone and tell you how much they love Kamala Harris.
00:38:50.860But, you know, it's not about loving Kamala Harris.
00:38:53.420It's about hating Donald Trump because they didn't love Kamala Harris till they were told to five minutes ago.
00:38:59.180Yeah, it's these voters who listen to every word Rachel Maddow saying it and is like going to pull out the Ten Commandments and add them to like the first ten.
00:39:29.080These are not the ones that are answering the poll.
00:39:30.540My best friend is a Republican, middle, you know, 35, working class guy.
00:39:35.660He does not answer polls because he believes his union is spying on him.
00:39:39.100It's just that you cannot convince him to answer a poll.
00:39:41.800It's just how people naturally treat polling and the industry of polling.
00:39:46.560Some have very high trust for it and some have very, very low trust for it.
00:39:50.920But that's why I think most of these pollsters now, most of these people who are analyzing polls like Nate Silver even, you hear him saying, well, Trump does overperform quite a bit in these pollsters.
00:40:00.620They're acknowledging there's something wrong, not necessarily with maybe how they're operating with it, but the information that they're collecting is biased.
00:40:11.080And that's what it really comes down to.
00:40:12.720And, of course, when you're talking about it, if you're a public poll, if you're not trying to spend that much time in the field, if you don't want to – now, obviously, this can be controlled for, but it's going to take more time.
00:40:25.980It's going to take more responses, more phone calls, all of those things, more call centers.
00:40:30.280And so eventually you get to the point where you say, you know what, well, you know, maybe I'll just – I'll dial it down a little bit in the data.
00:40:36.680But even then, even if they're trying to wait for it, they're still not getting to the kind of fidelity that you would have if you had actually reached out to the correct number of people for each demographic.
00:40:49.340So coming right back, fantastic story about public polling and the potential for response bias and how it skews the polls that you're looking at on a day-to-day basis with Ryan Gradesky.
00:41:02.400In my ear about the boring people at your office, I'm trying to listen to the new Human Events with Jack Pazovic.
00:41:22.020All right, Jack Pazovic back live, Human Events Daily.
00:41:24.760We're all a political consultant and writer, Ryan Gradesky.
00:41:28.240We're talking about his piece on response bias.
00:41:31.160So, Ryan, earlier on the show, we were talking about this idea of the concept of a blue mirage, this idea that potentially, you know, is it possible that all this common lamentum doesn't actually exist because we know in reality that she wasn't someone that anybody wanted to be the VP?
00:41:47.880And, by the way, there were people who were involved with that discussion, excuse me, about making her the nominee from the VP.
00:41:54.340There were even people who said that maybe it's not a good idea to do this or maybe not even a good idea to pick her.
00:41:59.820And we're talking about high-level Democrats, by the way, who were saying this.
00:42:03.660And now, all of a sudden, right out of the gate, we just get this massive polling boost for her out of nowhere.
00:42:11.600Well, if you check out my article in the American Conservative magazine, I sit there and I discuss how a lot of older voters, a lot of older liberals are really throwing these polls off.
00:42:21.340But I want to say that, one, it definitely, the enthusiasm sometimes can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:43:27.920I would argue that the entire Harris, you know, huge push for Harris the media has been having and correlating with polling showing her surging has kind of fed into the entire thing.
00:43:38.300Now, as we get into November and as polls have tied in, you already see Nate Silverday say Trump is the favorite to win the general election.
00:43:45.480We'll sit there and maybe see a more competitive race in the polling even, which says, you know, everyone needs to go out and vote.
00:43:52.820But that is how it happens in many, many places, not necessarily right now, but in many places.
00:43:58.100Higher polling continuously can create the narrative and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy when one party or another decides, I am just going to sit it out.
00:44:06.560It doesn't really matter this election.
00:44:09.700And this is a huge key because it can actually, so people talked about suppressive effect, but it can also have a depressive effect because it could depress your own side if your polls are too lofty.
00:44:22.660And so, that being said, I really think that this election is tight.
00:44:28.480I tend to think that Nate Silver's forecast today is accurate, that it's, you know, you're looking at a couple of points one way or the other in most of the swing states.
00:44:38.120Michigan, as far as the Rust Belt, probably has the biggest split where Kamala would have the biggest lead.
00:44:43.360Pennsylvania is probably the place where Trump has the best opportunity right now, which, of course, pains me to say that, not because I'm from there, but because I'm always biased against good news for Pennsylvania.
00:44:58.220Because I just have this, I just have my own personal response bias is that I reject any good news potentially coming out of Pennsylvania.
00:45:06.600Listen, this election will come down to working white voters.
00:45:10.860It's not going to come down to special groups of minorities sitting there and turning out.
00:45:16.660It will come down to do working white people actually show up to vote.
00:45:20.760If you are a Trump person and you are an activist or you are working for the campaign, I would go to every mobile home community in every swing state and make sure they have turnout because whites without a college degree have the worst turnout of any group aside from recent immigrants.
00:46:30.680I'm not saying partisanship doesn't exist.
00:46:32.420I'm saying it's way different, though, when it comes to your overall voting swath of people.
00:46:37.840So it's not this idea that they're, you know, suddenly one day they're for Kamala or one day they're for Trump.
00:46:42.520It's just that whichever candidate makes the best pitch for what will help them the most, again, in their wallets, in their wallets, not, you know, on some esoteric issue.
00:46:54.140No, the wallet issue, the economic issue, whichever candidate comes out in front of the economic issues for working class whites will win working class whites.
00:47:21.580And listen, the good thing is if this election is tight, I mean, Arizona is going to take four days to count votes just the way that it is.
00:47:29.420But the three states that will decide this election early on is Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.
00:47:34.540If Trump wins all three, this election is effectively over, and Donald Trump will be the next president.
00:47:42.720Those are the three early states that matter as far as east to west goes.
00:47:45.420And it is because if the working class whites in all three states, including Georgia, where a number of districts in the southern part of the state and the northeastern part of the state, like Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, they have significantly lower turnout than the city of Atlanta, than the cities of Raleigh and near Wake County.
00:48:06.200And just like in Pennsylvania, the Montgomery suburbs, the Collar counties of Philadelphia, they have high turnout.
00:48:12.240It can all be countered because the votes are there.
00:48:14.500It's just a matter of making them show up and don't believe the polling because it's really, really, really off because of the response bias.
00:48:23.360Ryan, where can people go to read your work and to get more access to what you're up to?
00:48:26.500Well, you can go on theamericanconservativemagazine.com to amcommag.com to go check out the article.
00:48:33.120Otherwise, my substack, the National Populist Newsletter, or on Twitter, or at Ryan Grudusky.