In the final sprint to Election Day, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sit down with CNN's Dana Bash to discuss their top priorities for the country, what they would do on Day 1 in the White House, and why they haven t done them already.
00:07:27.400I know it, which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries.
00:07:32.260For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.
00:07:34.920What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to take care of their children in their most formative years.
00:07:43.100What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing.
00:07:45.600My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time homebuyers.
00:07:52.620So they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home, which is part of the American dream and their aspiration.
00:08:00.580But do it in a way that allows them to actually get on the path to achieving that goal and that dream.
00:08:06.760So you have been vice president for three and a half years.
00:08:09.100Now, the steps that you're talking about now, why haven't you done them already?
00:08:14.680Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that.
00:08:18.640I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%.
00:08:23.180The work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors.
00:08:28.160Donald Trump said he was going to do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
00:08:34.380So now, as I travel in the state of Georgia and around our country, the number of seniors that have benefited.
00:08:41.280I've met, I was in Nevada recently, a grandmother who showed me her receipts.
00:08:47.860And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month, she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin.
00:09:00.080I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000,
00:09:10.980when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%,
00:09:20.140when we do what we have done to invest in the American people in bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs,
00:09:31.040bringing business back to America, what we have done to improve the supply chain so we're not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs,
00:09:42.260I'll say that that's good work. There's more to do, but that's good work.
00:09:46.360I want to get some clarity on where you stand on some key policy issues. Energy is a big one. When you were in Congress, you supported the Green New Deal.
00:09:58.400And in 2019, you said, quote, there is no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. Fracking, as you know, is a pretty big issue, particularly in your must-win state of Pennsylvania.
00:10:08.580Sure. Do you still want to ban fracking? No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking.
00:10:17.680As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.
00:10:23.500In 2019, I believe, at a town hall, you said, you were asked, would you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on your first day in office?
00:10:31.840And you said, there's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. So, yes. So, it changed in that campaign?
00:10:38.580In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I've not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.
00:10:47.460What made you change that position at the time?
00:10:50.500Well, let's be clear. My values have not changed.
00:10:53.920I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate.
00:11:04.420And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far, the Inflation Reduction Act, what we have done to invest, by my calculation,
00:11:13.800over probably a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, investing in a clean energy economy, what we've already done, creating over 300,000 new clean energy jobs.
00:11:24.200That tells me, from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking.
00:11:29.440In fact, Dana, Dana, excuse me, I cast the tie-breaking vote that actually increased leases for fracking as vice president.
00:11:39.560So, I'm very clear about where I stand.
00:11:41.340And was there some policy or scientific data that you saw that you said, oh, okay, I get it now?
00:11:47.340What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.
00:24:31.780I mean, this was not however many days ago.
00:24:34.780This was not on either of your bingo cards, especially yours.
00:24:37.780You had to clarify that you had said that you and your wife used IVF, but it turned out you used a different kind of fertility in order to have children.
00:24:50.780And then when you ran for Congress in 2006, your campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.
00:25:00.780What do you say to voters who aren't sure whether they can take you at your word?
00:44:54.060This didn't come across as someone who's inspiring millions of people that she should be among all the 300 plus million, depending on whether or not the SAVE Act gets passed, people that are going to be in the country come this election day.
00:45:26.560She came across as completely inauthentic.
00:45:28.780And it's sort of like, oh, you survived.
00:45:31.360Like you made it to the last round without getting knocked out.
00:45:34.200Is that really someone that we want as our president who struggles through a CNN interview and not into getting the specifics, but that specific that is my overall five to 50,000 foot you take is that this wasn't at the level of where it needs to be for a presidential candidate, nor would it have been for anyone had they actually gone through a primary on the Democrat side.
00:45:54.100Gavin Newsom would have been better than this.
00:45:55.960Gretchen Whitmer would have been better than this.
00:45:57.540Josh Shapiro would have been better at this.
00:45:59.080But Kamala Harris, she just doesn't have it.
00:46:00.960Yeah, and let's just let's just make sure everyone is clear here.
00:46:06.100The bar is set so unbelievably low that there was all this expectation as if Kamala Harris was sitting down for an interview like the interview to beget all interviews.
00:46:16.220I mean, Blake, the lead up to this was like Frost Nixon.
00:46:19.880Blake, as if this was going to be Richard Nixon finally being confronted about why didn't you destroy the tapes, Mr. Nixon?
00:46:25.800This was like a very simple run of the mill interview with hype that you would lead you to believe that she was being confronted on the scandal of the century.
00:46:34.720And but some of the questions were fine.
00:46:36.360The end of the interview was just nauseating.
00:46:38.320Kamala Harris, what does it make you feel that your niece with cornrows is able to watch you with this picture?
00:46:43.980Oh, Tim Walls, you know, your son, tell us about how much you love your son.
00:46:47.300I mean, or my my favorite and lesser appreciated part of this interview was Kamala Harris is obviously fraudulent and lying telling of what happened when Joe Biden called her.
00:48:32.860That was, you know, hey, Trump said those comments about your race where you're you were Indian and then black total softball to just get some hits on Trump.
00:49:14.460It's going to put off moderate somehow.
00:49:16.060I think like she only maybe even over learned that and they're just like, nope, don't talk about it.
00:49:21.240And I guess we'll see whether it's a good strategy or not.
00:49:23.680But it was it was very glaring how much she was staying away from that compared to what we would have seen in 2020, what her own campaign did in 2020, 2016 or a lot of other Democrat elections in recent history.
00:50:32.360But it's pretty consistent if you actually break down the polls and and they're trying to hide all the other inadequacies and they're really hoping that younger men don't turn out as well, which is not the trend.
00:50:48.180I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't know if it's going to be the trend or not, but I mean, this is why we have to turn out as many young men as possible.
00:50:56.060But the reality is, this is like it's so mind numbing to me, because if you live through the Tea Party era, old men like we're the most vicious against Obama and that entire regime and everything else.
00:51:09.860And it's just like it's it's like almost like we're living in an alternate universe or it's like they're totally falling for everything.
00:51:18.120And I just can't understand this, Charlie.
00:51:21.820When I watch this and I read this and we're witnessing this like slow train wreck with this, it's like, how is it possible that older people within the Republican Party in particular, but older independents could potentially be totally duped by this?
00:51:37.460Like, I just don't I don't I just don't get it because I'm watching it and it's not easy.
00:51:41.780There's so one sec, Jack, I call them white noise boomers and basically they have they have the television on all day long and it's white noise and Democrats dominate on white noise.
00:52:16.280So when it comes to the type of polls that you get, who are the people that are more likely to want to answer a poll than people who aren't?
00:52:24.460Well, the people who are more likely are what Charlie's just talking about, these white noisers, that a white noiser is 10 times more likely to want to pick up that phone, to tell the pollster how much they hate Donald Trump.
00:52:37.160These are the people who have the signs, the yard signs.
00:52:39.960You know, hate has no home in this house, et cetera, et cetera.
00:52:42.440Refugees welcome all the all those other things.
00:52:45.140Whereas when you've got a Trump supporter, they don't want to answer the phones when they hear that somebody from the media.
00:52:50.580Now, I was talking about some of my show earlier, but when it's me, I love because, you know, I have a Pennsylvania number.
00:52:56.020So I'm always getting called and pulled all the time.
00:52:59.360And I constantly just make up like all sorts of random things to tell them.
00:53:03.820I just answer things all over the place because I love screwing with pollstered data.
00:53:08.620And, you know, look, the average Trump supporter is nowhere going to be at the same rate of response that your white noiser that Charlie is talking about is specifically in that age demographic.
00:53:19.800And that I'm not going to say there's a ton of that, but I am saying that it's something to look out for.
00:53:23.820Like I'm looking now, I'm looking at more of the reaction on Twitter and something that's been pointed out, interestingly, is Kamala seems really afraid.
00:53:37.080She's got that problem of can she split from Joe Biden on anything?
00:53:41.340Joe Biden's a really unpopular president.
00:53:43.320It's a really unpopular administration.
00:53:48.320And what's been I'm seeing posted here from Zaid Jelani, who's kind of a dissident left winger guy on Twitter.
00:53:55.260And he pointed out in night in 2000, Al Gore actually had a pretty good answer to this question where they said, will this just be a third Clinton Gore term?
00:54:04.360He probably should have said, yes, Clinton was a lot more popular than Biden was.
00:54:08.300But he said, no, we're different people.
00:58:26.640Oh, it's nervous Kamala again, hiding away, can't stand up for herself, can't explain what she really thinks.
00:58:33.120And I think this could be the skeleton key to attack Kamala in a slightly more personal way without going after her personal life in a way that I think we agree is probably not the best way to damage Kamala.
00:58:46.060It'll just kind of be thrown back at us.
00:58:48.740So you want a way to needle her without making it overtly personal in a way that puts off voters.
00:59:13.260I will tell you, first and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class.
00:59:22.560When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that people are ready for a new way forward.
00:59:34.240In a way that generations of Americans have been fueled by hope and by optimism.
00:59:42.080I think, sadly, in the last decade, we have had in the former president someone who has really been pushing an agenda and an environment that is about diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans.
01:01:08.480First of all, this is the obvious question that's always going to get asked on one of these issues.
01:01:11.540But this question is actually beneficial to the candidate because when you are – this is like political consulting 101, folks.
01:01:21.540When you are working with a candidate, and your candidate is going into an interview, and I've worked on a lot of campaigns, the first thing you do is you say whatever questions they have, whatever the scandals they bring up, whatever stuff they have in the news, bring it back to your message.
01:01:33.980Bring it back to what you're going to do.
01:01:35.460Bring it back to what your policies are.
01:01:36.980So you have to have something to say when they ask you what your policies are.
01:01:43.520Donald Trump, day one, he'll have 15 things off the top of his head, and he'll probably come up with like three more just in the middle of the questions.
01:02:10.160So, Charlie, by the way, what you're referring to is a cluster gesture.
01:02:13.820So when I was at Guantanamo and I was in the interrogation cell, one of the things that we learned about down there and that we would look at for detainees was a cluster gesture.
01:02:22.940So you mentioned that she put her hand to her face.
01:02:30.100But when you start seeing multiple elements of gestures that are put into place all at once that occur very rapidly, we're talking micro expression, the hand to the face, the looking down, the looking away, the hunting of the shoulder.
01:02:46.520So anxiety, the fear, the things that Blake was talking about, it's all there.
01:02:50.880It's all exhibited in this cluster gesture.
01:02:54.000And so – and of course, by the way, unfortunately or whatever it is, the medium of television means that the camera is going to be zoomed in on your face.
01:03:04.260And so, Charlie, you and I know about this every single day.
01:03:16.880I don't believe either of us have ever run for office.
01:03:19.140And so you'd think that anyone running in the modern era would know about these things.
01:03:22.880I mean how many interviews has she done in her life?
01:03:25.140And this feels like – it felt like she was in her very first interview and Dana Bash was trying very hard – excuse me, Dana Bash was trying very hard to hold her hand on this.
01:03:36.700By the way, Blake, one of the stories have – and I think we told it on here on ThoughtCrime maybe a week or two ago.
01:03:43.160But about the time where she was going to go to some – it was like an ambassador's dinner or something, some kind of social function.
01:03:49.800And she was so anxious about going to this function that she had her entire staff go and create like a dummy function that she could go to where they were role-playing different people at –
01:04:04.440it was just like a cocktail reception at somebody's house.
01:04:07.900And she like had little – and her staff created little scripts and she had to like navigate the room.
01:04:12.860And this is how you act like a regular human person, Kambala, a human person.
01:04:18.340And it's – I mean this is someone with those kind of nerves – and this is obviously something that President Trump can dig into.
01:04:25.860It's how do you have someone who's that nervous, who's that insecure, who lacks that much confidence being the leader of the most powerful nation in the world?
01:05:51.280She, like, barely made it on base if she made it on base anywhere in that interview.
01:05:55.900I know I'm not – I'm not making any lewd references.
01:05:58.360But what I'm saying is that that was not the level of anything you needed for running for the president of the United States, the same as her nomination.
01:06:06.500There were – by the way, no breakout lines, no breakout moments.
01:06:10.460It didn't sound like they had anything – you know how, like, politicians will have those sort of pre-planned, like, and on day one we're going to do this.
01:06:29.160And so coming in mid, coming in mid, even though I'm not saying it was like a personal disaster, which, by the way, the rally had a lot of personal disasters, if you want to talk about those earlier in the evening.
01:06:39.640And I'm sure we'll get to those clips.
01:06:47.380They reported it just after she joined the race.
01:06:50.340In April 2022, Harris was the guest for a dinner at D.C. news mogul David Bradley's home, a salon-style event Bradley hosts with Washington journalists and newsmakers.
01:07:02.700So at this point, Kamala is already the vice president of the United States.
01:07:09.380This is not nuclear tensions with Iran or Russia or whatever.
01:07:13.180This is meeting journalists at a guy's house in D.C.
01:07:17.720And it says here from Axios, quote, Harris's anxiety about the dinner was such that her staff held a mock dinner beforehand with staffers playing participants, according to two people familiar with the event.
01:07:33.380Harris aides even considered including wine in the mock prep so Harris could practice with a glass or two.
01:08:15.300Maybe that's the, maybe that's the nickname Trump's going to have to use.
01:08:18.280My biggest takeaway from that is you can't practice with two glasses if you've already had three.
01:08:22.580So that's, I feel like that's the unstated thing.
01:08:25.460They're like, look, she gets sloshed enough if we have two practice glasses and then this is right before the dinner.
01:08:30.940So if she just goes from there to the dinner, oh boy, I think that the big thing, and I don't know if we want to discuss this at length, but I mean, just visually watching this, her being in like the back of the table, just slouched back and just leaning back like this.
01:08:50.140It was like, this was what she looked like the whole time.
01:08:52.760And then you had, you know, Timmy over there, just like this, like on the side of the, I mean, if you look at the, that, that frame, it's like the weirdest scenario.
01:09:04.780Like, I don't just, I can't believe they picked that to like frame that because they're, the Democrats are just so terrible at framing between Biden looking like Adolf Hitler in that one, you know, you would, you would think that they're good at it.
01:10:54.820I mean, he's huge and he's like doing nothing the whole time.
01:10:57.820And she just keeps getting interacted with, and I missed the waltz parts, but like she just like, she just like slouches way back and looks almost like kind of like a weird hamburger mobster in the back.
01:11:12.580That's all I could think about the whole time.
01:11:15.220I'm going to sit like this for the rest of the time.
01:11:17.200You've got, you've got like a deep knowledge of McDonald's lore.
01:11:20.760Well, Grimace became famous again last year because they did that whole shake thing.
01:11:26.940So it's just like on the psyche and, and Jack posted about how we, yeah, I had a tweet earlier this, this week that went like pretty viral actually.
01:11:35.540Cause I was just doing a riff on like things that Trump is going to bring back from the eighties and nineties.
01:11:40.400And, um, I, I found one that not a lot of people talk about, which we've got to try if the, uh, if the guys want to try to get the photo of the original McDonald's playground.
01:11:51.120And I don't, uh, I, I'm like, Charlie's like, what are you talking about?
01:11:54.760So, and he's like, I, when I was a child, I didn't play, I did arithmetic, um, and studied dead languages.
01:12:00.940Um, Charlie's from the backyard of where McDonald's was like started.
01:12:06.740And that, no, I know that's why I never went though.
01:12:09.360So I didn't go, but, but so the old, the old playground had like the, um, it was the Hamburglar prison that you would climb into.
01:12:16.860And it had like the metal slide and just so much really cool stuff.
01:12:22.060And I think I unlocked a lot of, uh, a lot of core memories, but it, it also goes back to what I was talking about with the pizza hut nationalism thing.
01:12:28.860And this idea that, you know, we used to have a world that was, we'd have a country that was just very welcoming towards children.
01:12:36.920And, um, you know, this is kind of one of the things that gets into, you know, all these questions about like, like fertility and abortion and IVF.
01:12:46.120And these are all like these big, you know, third rail topics that are coming up today and over the past couple of days.
01:12:50.440But it, I think a huge part of it is that we just used to have a country that was much more open to having children and a, and normalizing the idea of children being around at a regular time.
01:13:01.960It was much more family oriented country.
01:13:03.900And now all of that's been pushed aside and it's leading to all these other issues.
01:13:10.920Let's play another piece of tape here.
01:13:12.880Let's see what CNN is saying afterwards.
01:14:44.860I mean, I've always been excited for this because we know the same way that we knew that Joe Biden could not form sentences.
01:14:51.740We know that Kamala is not going to be able to maintain her composure.
01:14:54.940She's not going to be able to handle herself.
01:14:57.120Like I said, I really do believe in that.
01:14:59.180I'm not joking when I say this is that they probably Adderall her up, you know, said you can't drink for a few days or I don't know.
01:15:07.340You know, remember Obama smoked and all that stuff and it chilled his nerves and, you know, they just handle you, handle yourself differently when you get head into these situations.
01:15:16.700This is not a good lead up, run up practice, if you will, for what the debate is going to look like if you're her team.
01:15:25.520And I can only imagine the inside, you know, NBA stuff that's going on over in Kamala camp.
01:15:32.780And I hope someday it ends up in a book that we all get to read.
01:15:37.680But, you know, after a loss, a Kamala loss.
01:15:40.980But this is going to be a very, very interesting scenario that pops out here.
01:15:47.200And if anybody had any kind of journalistic integrity over in that camp, Donna and anyone else, you know, there would be some demands here that all this would get played.
01:15:59.860And that the transcript would be released and that we would see the place, the uncut version of this, at least online.
01:16:10.060Speaking of the debates, I think we've actually had some interesting stuff this week that I think is it's alluding to how the debate might go.
01:16:17.760We had this sudden push from the Kamala camp to change the debate rules.
01:16:22.140So for everyone who's forgotten the rules back in June at basically the request of the Biden campaign, where mics are muted when you're not talking and you can't bring notes into it.
01:16:35.540You can make notes during it and there will be no studio audience.
01:16:39.100And that's kind of Trump basically agreed to it because he said, I'll debate wherever, whatever you want.
01:16:44.100And then the Kamala camp is saying, can we change this?
01:16:47.700Can we actually turn the mics back on?
01:16:49.620And then the other request they made, which I think didn't get as much attention as it should have, was she asked, can we, one, make opening statements?
01:16:56.440And two, can we bring prepared notes as well as making notes during the debate itself?
01:17:02.240And what that's communicating to me is that they, as we saw here, they're not confident when Kamala has to think off the cuff, has to respond to something that she's unprepared for.
01:17:13.420So what they wanted is they wanted the mics on.
01:17:16.380They wanted the mics on because they thought that they could kind of, you know, maybe Trump would try to interrupt her or she could try to interrupt Trump.
01:17:25.420But I think they just count on Trump doing it.
01:17:27.460And then, you know, you can make it all personal and bitter and they'll go back and forth on this.
01:17:32.340And the other thing is they want to make it as prepared and scripted as possible.
01:17:37.260If she can bring in notes and they can make an opening statement, she can give some three or four minute opening statement.
01:17:44.160Some people will turn off the debate after the opening statements already.
01:17:47.480And she can have all these like little prepared lines.
01:17:50.320So, OK, if they ask you about abortion, say this.
01:17:52.420If they ask you about the border, say this.
01:17:54.380You know, if she comes in with 15, 20 canned lines, she can get out as many of those as she can.
01:17:59.620Her only good debate moment in the primaries in 2019 was an obviously scripted, oh, that little girl was me.
01:18:25.680Kamala is not prepared for this, is not ready for this.
01:18:30.560And they need to cover this up and conceal it by scripting everything as much as possible.
01:18:37.000You know, and I was really surprised and this was, you know, in the lead up to the debate as well.
01:18:47.180I was actually shocked they didn't spend more time on really stupid, stupid stuff.
01:18:52.800I thought there was actually some decent questions mixed in there that aired, you know, who knows what didn't air.
01:18:58.720But, you know, there is the pieces that were aired where, you know, well, you know, you are the incumbent and, you know, what are you doing?
01:19:08.020And, you know, I was kind of shocked that that actually got asked because I didn't think any of that was going to get asked.
01:19:12.380So that's that's a that's a white pill moment for a second, because I think that that was that added to the tenseness of everything.
01:19:19.660But I was really surprised there wasn't more, you know, you know, Green New Deal type stuff like adjacent stuff and just talking more about abortion.
01:19:31.220And, you know, the question got brought up about, you know, Kamala being black.
01:19:36.320Yeah. And if they're not being black or whatever, because, you know, there's that debate that's going on in society.
01:19:42.380I think most in the black community, honestly, more than anything else.
01:19:45.400I think that's where we discussed it. She didn't answer. She didn't take the debate.
01:19:49.200She didn't answer, which I don't know if maybe that added to the part of the problem, you know, for like they expected to spend like, I don't know, 20 minutes on that or something.
01:19:57.580And they did not send an entire segment on it. But, you know, I think that it really tees up.
01:20:03.620I think this interview actually tees up the debate properly because, you know, of course, they're going to ask some of these stupid things.
01:20:11.800But I think what this tells us is that they know even, you know, the MSNBC, CNN types know that America doesn't care about that stuff.
01:20:20.680So they're trying to make her look as, you know, rational, reasonable, you know, try to talk about the things.
01:20:26.940Obviously, she came out with like the build the wall policy this week and everything else.
01:20:30.840They're just like she's just trying to copy Trump. And that's a sign of desperation.
01:20:34.500Charlie tweeted today, you know, talk about putting Republicans in her cabinet.
01:20:37.700That's a sign of desperation. They're running with this whole Republicans for Harris thing.
01:20:41.240One hundred. That's desperation. They see the data. And let's just red pill everybody.
01:20:46.520I'm not saying we're going to win, but Blake will even agree that the data is much better than it was two weeks ago.
01:20:52.260Nate Silver agrees like the data is nowhere near where it was in the honeymoon sugar high two weeks ago.
01:20:57.080It's changing. It's normalizing. And who wants to interject there?
01:21:00.880Well, I was just going to say, Charlie, it's the data isn't just better.
01:21:05.200They're having to shift. I think it's even better than the better that we're seeing because they're having to play catch up with the shifting polls, too, on things like some of the polling that we're seeing is really oversampling Democrats still.
01:21:19.780You know, and as we get closer to the election, I think we kind of anticipated that based off of previous elections.
01:21:26.520But and again, you know, you could ask big data polling big, you know, and other guys this.
01:21:34.320With with Barris. But you I mean, I would I would I was expecting less of that to happen the closer we get to the election.
01:21:41.680I mean, we're effectively a month out from early ballots. Right.
01:21:45.460So the election weeks in North Carolina. Yeah.
01:21:48.260Two weeks in North Carolina. And and I think ballots went out yesterday in New York.
01:21:52.880But, you know, this is a and I'm joking, but this is a real ending of the thing.
01:21:59.220And, you know, there I would argue even some of the polls I saw today were worse than some of the ones that we saw before.
01:22:05.520What one that came out today, you know, we were looking at it and identifying it.
01:22:11.980It had only one percent of the Democrats that polled voting for Trump.
01:22:16.760Well, that in no real world and no swing state is that happening.
01:22:20.300And it's that it is certainly not indicative of nationwide polling of everything that we're seeing everywhere else.
01:22:26.880So that that's really bad, because even the worst polls and some of these non-ideal polls,
01:22:33.860they're shifting. And I think that some of that is is because they're just trying to keep up this this charade.
01:22:41.020And, you know, I think that some of the pollsters are in on it, whether they intend to be or not.
01:22:49.900Let's play. Let's play cut 106. This is Mark Halperin, who this two days ago predicted.
01:22:54.720And today we saw that some of the data Nate Silver now has Donald Trump with a 52 percent chance of winning.
01:23:00.640Again, all this is subject to change. It goes up. It goes down.
01:23:02.760And it's what we call the polar coaster. But interesting. Nonetheless, it's been a big movement.
01:23:07.920Let's play cut 106. There's some public polling already.
01:23:11.220There's more coming. And there's some private polling that suggests that nationally in the battleground states, she's not ahead.
01:23:20.180She might be ahead on paper, but well within the margin of error.
01:23:23.580And there's some battleground states now where I think Donald Trump's on this trajectory is going to be ahead.
01:23:29.000And it may be, regardless of what happens in the interview and regardless what happens in the debate, it may be that by the middle of September, when things have calmed down, when the Trump campaign have had time to prey on some of the weaknesses that I suggested, that he's ahead in all the sunbelt states.
01:23:47.320And ahead in Pennsylvania and competitive in Michigan and Wisconsin, which would be roughly where Joe Biden was before the debate.
01:23:57.300With a single path to 270 electoral votes, the three Great Lakes states in Nebraska, too.
01:24:05.340And that would be a scary position for the Democratic Party to be in from mid-September through Election Day.
01:24:15.200Yeah, I mean, look, what he's doing there is explaining that something that you've been hearing a few people in the media speak of already, what they're referring to as the blue mirage.
01:24:24.300And the blue mirage, now, of course, this is a reference to what we were told all the way back in 2000, the red mirage of when they said, oh, Donald Trump's going to be up big prior to mail-in ballots coming in.
01:24:36.480And then when mail-in ballots come in, it's going to tighten.
01:24:38.300Now, we weren't told that it was going to absolutely fly up to another level.
01:24:43.600But the blue mirage now, what they're saying is, is kind of what we were talking about before, about this response bias in polls, talking about the fact that there's people who are giving this huge bounce.
01:24:53.240There's a lot of people who have a sugar high after not so much the DNC itself, but actually just the dropping out of Joe Biden.
01:25:02.520And what he's saying there is, of course, the blue mirage might just be all of this gaslighting.
01:25:06.920He's being very careful about the way he says it, by the way.
01:25:09.480He's saying, look, there's a lot of information out there to say the race is probably a lot closer than it looks.
01:25:14.900And there are some indications that a few of these key swing states, one of which being my home state of Pennsylvania, might actually be closer to the Trump camp.
01:25:23.640And, of course, one of the main things you have to look at in terms of this is the fundamentals.
01:25:28.040The fundamentals have not changed between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
01:25:32.620What's changed is that they have this sort of – they're offering this potential of – it's very Barack Obama.
01:25:40.100But it's this really weird situation where she's trying to claim credit for the things that she believes are good that were under the Biden-Harris administration,
01:25:48.560but at the same time also trying to position herself as a change candidate.
01:25:53.340So she's trying to be the incumbent and the challenger at the same time.
01:26:01.080And Donald Trump is going to slaughter her on those questions and all of these – he's going to heighten the contradictions in 12 days' time of that debate.
01:26:31.080You know, using a lot of inebriating substances will do that, it said, according to studies.
01:26:38.880So let me ask a question, which is, Blake, you are a resident Tim Walls critic.
01:26:46.160Do you think that Tim Walls successfully navigated the attacks with a question about stolen valor, drunk driving, lying about fertility treatments, lying about basically everything?
01:28:56.280He was the governor during the George Floyd riots.
01:28:58.680He didn't call out the National Guard when the mayor of Minnesota – or of Minneapolis asked him to do it.
01:29:06.240He let a police precinct get burned to the ground by Antifa.
01:29:11.580He is the only governor in America who can really – we can definitively say he let an entire city in his state be taken over by an armed, violent mob.
01:29:24.220I think Walls remains extremely vulnerable on his personal history, on his political history, and on all of the statements that he's made to the public.
01:29:35.040And I don't know if that will be a big force in the overall election, but I certainly know the military stuff, the National Guard stuff, that has gotten a lot of play with the people that that is most interesting to,
01:29:45.880which is veterans groups, current soldiers, they do hear about these things through their own networks.
01:29:51.560And I have to believe that for a few of them, this will play a role in how they vote.
01:29:55.360Well, and I want to point out something, just to remind everyone, remember back in 2000 when five days before the election,
01:30:03.200the Democrats dropped that bomb on the George W. Bush DUI?
01:31:37.060You had to clarify that you had said that you and your wife used IVF, but it turned out you used a different kind of fertility in order to have children.
01:31:49.800And then when you ran for Congress in 2006, your campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.
01:32:00.240What do you say to voters who aren't sure whether they can take you at your word?
01:33:04.760You had to clarify that you had said that you and your wife used IVF, but it turned out you used a different kind of fertility in order to have children.
01:33:17.540And then when you ran for Congress in 2006, your campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.
01:33:28.040What do you say to voters who aren't sure whether they can take you at your word?
01:36:27.120A grandmother who showed me her receipts.
01:36:31.260And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month, she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin.
01:36:43.460I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000.
01:36:54.340When we do what we did in the first year of being in office.
01:36:57.620So that was, again, the question was, why haven't you done the stuff you're pledging to do?
01:37:03.540And she's just like, the Biden administration is great.
01:37:15.600Doesn't even really engage with the question.
01:37:19.300Just go to something completely different.
01:37:22.240I feel like maybe there's some people that this works on, but I feel like if they're doing it to every awkward question, and there's a lot of awkward questions, and especially if we harp on it, people are going to notice this pattern.
01:37:36.900That Kamala, she dodges, she dodges questions, she dodges even giving interviews, she dodges press conferences, she avoids the press, and when they actually pin her down, she avoids answering the actual questions that they give her.
01:37:49.900Maybe avoidant Kamala is one we can go with here.
01:37:53.720But she's truly a person who is very afraid to give a direct answer to a question.
01:38:02.040And I think it's so telling how different it is from Trump.
01:38:05.820Trump will be very combative in his answers.
01:38:08.320They'll confront him on something tough, like abortion, and he'll just not give an inch.
01:38:12.880He'll just start, he'll say like, oh yeah, it was great what the Supreme Court did.
01:40:27.220And one of the other things, by the way, is that could just be a scheduling thing.
01:40:30.760But Donald Trump had a fantastic town hall tonight that just got totally, I think, honestly, I think it got overshadowed by this, which is sad because he was there with Tulsi Gabbard.
01:40:55.240But, you know, over the next couple of days, we can get back to some of that content that Trump put out tonight, as well as one thing I think we should look at.
01:41:02.160Maybe the producers can dig into it a little bit about just these the response from the left.
01:41:07.300And I think we've got some some CNN maybe coming up as to as to what exactly the you know, because they are the ones.
01:41:14.040OK, they're the ones who needed to do this.
01:41:16.100Donald Trump does, what, 10 interviews a week.
01:41:18.120And he's on like a podcast every time you turn around.
01:41:20.620I even pointed out that, you know, he was doing another event tonight, even during hers.
01:41:26.240So, you know, this guy's got more content out there like crazy.
01:41:36.320So it's become this sort of like, you know, sort of like, you know, man bites dog kind of situation where it's like, well, she never gives an interview.
01:41:43.060And so even though she had a mid one, it's actually much more newsworthy in a sense because Trump is just inundating and saturating the environment, which, by the way, is a very strong strategy for him.
01:41:53.080She is making it clear that she will embrace and be a continuation of Biden's economic policy, his record, what they've done.
01:42:01.580She didn't offer she offered no remorse, no regrets, no introspection about anything they've done.
01:42:06.560She continued to blame inflation on this fantasy price gouging idea.
01:42:10.700She had no additional thoughts on the economic situation in the country or what they've done beyond just saying Joe Biden and I have done a great job.
01:42:18.760Now, if I were the Trump people, I would be salivating over the idea that that's how they are going to run the race.
01:42:27.560I also thought it was interesting that she didn't take any responsibility at the end for telling the American people that Joe Biden was fine and he was strong.
01:46:02.360Because didn't Lizzo, isn't Lizzo losing weight now because she got fat shamed?
01:46:06.620And so she's taking a gap year because she, and she's like actually going to some like weight loss clinic down in like Ecuador or something.
01:46:14.080And she's losing all this weight and posting photos of her fat journey, or excuse me, her body positivity journey.
01:46:20.300And, you know, it's like Chris Hayes, you're next, man.