Less than two weeks from Election Day, Democratic presidential candidate Zoran Mondani is back on the debate stage to face off against Republican challenger Andrew Cuomo. Meanwhile, the fallout from Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones' shocking texts endorsing murder of Republicans and their children continues to impact the race in Virginia.
00:01:24.660In Virginia, the fallout from Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones' shocking texts endorsing murder of Republicans and their children
00:01:37.180Jones plummeting in the polls, but it's still close, which tells you something.
00:01:42.780And of course, in New York City, where Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani retains a commanding lead over former Democrat-turned-independent candidate Andrew Cuomo,
00:01:52.440Polymarket now has Mamdani with a 94% chance of winning.
00:05:27.220He can go to Gracie Mansion tomorrow, measure the drapes.
00:05:29.900But this is – the debate tonight will have zero impact on anything unless Sliwa literally gets up there, rips the beret off, and says, I'm joining a potential Cuomo administration.
00:06:20.680Cuomo's reputation was one of being, you know, playing hardball, that if you got in his way, he would destroy you politically.
00:06:29.100And his record was pretty enviable in terms of, you know, head-to-head against other people.
00:06:34.820I think if you had said it was going to be you, you know, candidate A, B, C, or D, against a socialist who's 33 years old, I think hands would have shot up all over New York City.
00:07:15.140He's going to keep doing it because he's pissed off at Andrew Cuomo and all of the Andrew Cuomo supporters who are leaning on him to save them all from Mondani, which is not Sliwa's job.
00:07:36.700He's boned up on policy, and he wants to be taken seriously.
00:07:40.100And he says there are down-ballot races that will be hurt if he drops out, you know, Republicans running on the ticket.
00:07:47.060And everyone's looking at him like he's the problem, as opposed to yourselves for letting this sex pest granny killer, Andrew Cuomo, be your only other hope beside the guy who loves the 9-11 terrorists, which we'll get to in a second.
00:08:05.720And we are definitely getting into Zoran Mamdani and where they should go in this debate.
00:08:09.360But before we do, the level of pressure on Curtis to drop out is, like, intense.
00:08:16.100It was on the cover of the New York Post yesterday, and the Post said, we know we're going to take a beating from our audience, which is more right-leaning, but Curtis has no chance, and you've got to choose the lesser of two evils, and that's Cuomo.
00:08:27.280Then Curtis went on Sid Rosenberg's show, the local New York radio show, a very popular host and channel.
00:08:35.160And the owner of it, John Casamides, who started Gristidi's Grocery Stores, just said yesterday or the day before that he wants Curtis to drop out.
00:08:46.120And again, this is not because he doesn't love Curtis, but here's what just happened on Sid's show where Curtis appeared as a guest.
00:09:41.540I know he's expressing anger there, but he's, you know, he's on Fox News three times a day now.
00:09:46.560He's getting a lot of attention from people, rich people, and supporters of folks.
00:09:52.360And even the White House is focused on him.
00:09:54.220So for Curtis, I think he's just he's having fun, regardless of any other motivation he might have to stay in the race.
00:10:01.540And then and then the other issue for him is, does he really want something?
00:10:06.500You know, you know, Sean mentioned a job in the Cuomo administration.
00:10:09.400It's not clear to me from talking to people who've talked to Curtis that he wants that he wants a job in the Cuomo administration.
00:10:15.040So they're trying to appeal to his sense of if you if you if Cuomo loses and the gap, the delta between Cuomo and Mondami is your vote total.
00:10:25.500You will go down in history as having elected a socialist.
00:10:27.840And I think for Curtis, it's like, yeah, whatever.
00:13:21.680I'm a Republican, but you are actually the exact test case why I laid out the scenario that I did.
00:13:26.960In order for someone like me or someone like, it sounds like you, to vote for a Democrat of the ilk of Andrew Cuomo, it would take literally someone like Sliwa saying, I am dropping out and I'm going to be part of this effort.
00:13:41.820So you can have a clean conscience that when you're voting for Cuomo, you're actually kind of also voting for me because I have agreed to be part of the administration in some way.
00:13:51.040And to Mark's point, I don't know that he wants a job, but I think the bigger question is, does he want to stop Mondami more than anything else?
00:14:28.520The question is, does he care more about stopping Mondami or continuing this race?
00:14:33.000And to Bill Ackman's point, I would just say this.
00:14:35.860There are plenty of creative campaign finance ways that if he really needed the money or wanted to pay off a bunch of people,
00:14:43.000he could front load a ton of expenses.
00:14:44.960I mean, there's a way to get around all that creatively if that were actually the motive.
00:14:49.620I don't think that that's the case because you could find a way to spend a lot of it and back channel it to yourself after the fact.
00:14:56.600Not that I'm condoning that, but I'm just saying that there's plenty of creative ways that I've seen over 30 years in politics to take care of that problem.
00:54:55.060Back with me now, the hosts of The Morning Meeting on Two-Way, Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine.
00:55:07.440Mark's also the host of the MK Media Podcast Network show, Next Up with Mark Halperin, which is a great show.
00:55:13.560Love Mark's talking points at the front of the show every time.
00:55:17.100Had a great interview with Scott Jennings of CNN last week.
00:55:20.200Go and check it out, NextUpHalperin.com, to find out all the places that you can download and subscribe.
00:55:26.860And come see us all on tour, MeganKelley.com, for tickets.
00:55:31.240Did you want to say something, Sean, now that we are post-break on the Katie Couric exchange with, what's her name there, in Virginia, Spanberger?
00:55:43.040All I say is that one of the things, Abigail may not want to talk about that, but the reality is in Virginia, if she is elected, what we call the second reading in Virginia will happen, and parental rights will be taken away from their kids, whether it's trans or abortions.
00:55:57.180That's the big, dirty secret Democrats don't want to talk about, but they're all advancing to their own base.
00:56:02.580Parental rights are on the ballot this year, whether it's the trans issue, the ability to have an abortion, and it will be codified in the Constitution that parents don't need to be notified anymore.
00:56:27.940So if you wanted a transition, before it was pretty obvious that a parent had to be notified the same way you would if you wanted an aspirin from the school nurse.
00:56:34.680What the Democrats have conjured is the ability to remove parents from the equation.
00:56:38.740So you won't need parental notification in the issue of abortion.
00:56:42.120You won't need it when you talk about transitioning, any of this.
00:56:44.940They're removing the ability from parents to stand in the middle.
00:56:48.240And again, this is a big issue that's, you know, on the Republicans are trying to make sure that people are aware of this.
00:56:54.080Democrats don't want to talk about it.
00:56:56.000But it's gotten itself through the process where once it gets through the second right now, the Democrats control the House of Delegates.
00:57:03.200The Senate is controlled by the House of Delegates.
00:57:05.040If they get the governor back, it then will get re-signed and it's over.
00:57:09.580Can I make a broader point about what I think is going on here?
00:57:12.420The Democrats are still addicted to two things.
00:57:15.600They're addicted to hating Trump and they're addicted to being protected by the legacy media.
00:57:21.680And so at a time when we're having all these debates in the country brought about by Donald Trump's election about DEI policies, about academic university policies, etc., the Democrats aren't having this debate.
00:57:36.040The smart people in the party know that the reason Spanberger and Cheryl, the candidate in New Jersey, are being tied in knots over these trans issues is they're still afraid of the base of the party.
00:57:45.720They know where the electorate is, but they're afraid to go there.
00:57:48.680And what these elections are proving is that even though there's the lessons of Kamala Harris' defeat, a year later, the Democrats still aren't having their intraparty debate that the smartest strategies I know say they have to have before the midterms of the presidential or the issues that cost them in 24 will cost them in 26 and 28.
00:58:36.380Like, he almost did it a couple of times before, but New Jersey seems to be morphing a lot more purplish red than it has in recent elections.
00:58:48.280And you tell me whether Kelsey Grammer can save the day because he grew up in New Jersey and just dropped this ad for the Republican candidate for governor, Jack Cittarelli.
01:00:53.020Here, too, there are real questions about, you know, can Democrats turn out in places like Newark and other areas that used to be reliably Democratic?
01:01:01.980Are those voters continuing to drift away?
01:01:05.480Can Republicans turn turn out working class voters of color that Trump made inroads in?
01:01:28.700It made you want to settle into, like, a comfy chair with a blankie and your cocoa.
01:01:34.060I'm going to go back and listen to that before I record the next episode of Next Up, because I'm going to steal some of these craft tricks there.
01:01:40.080But the thematic, I think, is perfect for what they're trying to do.
01:01:44.220All the issues he raises, energy costs, traffic congestion, jobs, all these things are problems in New Jersey.
01:01:54.000So I think that message not just fits the mood of the state and is what the same kinds of things that got Chris Christie elected.
01:02:01.800So even though it's become a very blue state, they haven't elected a Republican senator in forever or voted for a Republican for president, I think, since Bush 43 or 41.
01:02:11.560And they did let Chris Christie that long go on all the same kind of themes, corruption in Trenton, economics out of whack, et cetera.
01:02:19.600So I agree with Dan that Cittarelli's momentum is not what it was.
01:02:24.540But no one I know in either party who works in the state familiar with this race, no one would be surprised if Cittarelli won.
01:02:33.980I mean, she's literally getting swift voted.
01:02:35.960So Mikey Sherrill went to the U.S. Naval Academy.
01:02:37.620There's a massive cheating scandal and Cittarelli has put her on her heels on this issue, which is kind of fascinating that here she is trying to use that as a strength.
01:02:46.980She was a Navy helo pilot and she's on her heels about her own service because of this cheating scandal at the academy.
01:02:58.800Well, not only that, but also there's been complete and utter silence from her about what really happened.
01:03:04.920And that's a shame because what she thought and what the National Democrat leaders thought is that this is going to be a woman who's got an amazing resume, as was the case with Abigail Spanberger here in Virginia.
01:03:14.580And it's turned out to be a liability.
01:03:16.640Look, I agree with Dan and Mark that this is right now.
01:03:18.900He surged at the wrong time a little too early.
01:03:21.820But I still think this is where the ground game is going to matter tremendously on both sides.
01:03:26.240And to Dan's point, the question is, are those traditional coalitions that are so critical to the Democrats, especially the black vote in like northern New Jersey, going to turn back out again?
01:03:39.040I don't get the sense that they've got a lot of excitement there to go out and vote, even the way they did for like a Harris and Biden last time.
01:03:46.560So he may not have surged at the exact right time, but I think Cittarelli can still pull this thing out.
01:07:05.660And the Democrats are excited because this could be a Dem pickup.
01:07:09.140And they have a bunch of Dems who want this seat.
01:07:12.260There are eight Dems who have declared and are running in the primary, including the sitting governor, Janet Mills, who is 77 years old and would be the oldest person ever elected as a first term U.S. senator.
01:07:28.800I mentioned him earlier to the audience this week, former Marine infantryman who later served as an Army National Guard soldier and private security contractor who is a self-described communist, though he says he's moved past that.
01:07:41.460Okay, but there's all these Reddit chats that he's now had to kind of scrub.
01:07:46.520He tried to scrub, but the Internet is forever, where he said things like, all cops are bastards, I'm a communist, and rural white Americans actually are racist and stupid, which is not great.
01:10:10.020Until we got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo.
01:10:18.460And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I've not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.
01:10:24.540No, he hasn't, because several members who worked on his campaign, like his campaign manager, Genevieve McDonald, she resigned last week over those Reddit posts and disputed his claims of ignorance about the meaning of that tattoo.
01:10:43.620Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest, she wrote.
01:10:46.780She said he is a history buff who knows damn well what that tattoo means, which I have to say I do find helpful, her interpretation, because when I saw this tattoo, I had no idea what it was.
01:10:59.360To me, it looks kind of like a skull and crossbones, which is, you know, what they put on little poison bottles, like in It's a Wonderful Life.
01:11:07.480That's how young George Bailey knew that the pills were poison, they shouldn't deliver them to the family, and old Mr. Gower didn't wind up going to jail for life with skull and crossbones.
01:11:15.860But when presented like this, I guess it is something called a Totenkopf, and it is a well-known, recognized Nazi symbol, and according to those who know this particular guy, my ignorance of what it means is irrelevant.
01:11:33.320He knew, according to the campaign manager and one other person who gave an interview saying for sure he knew.
01:11:40.660So, thoughts on what this does to him?
01:11:42.380Well, and I think he announced he was going to have the tattoo removed now, which is always a sign that, you know, it may not be good.
01:12:13.240Look, Maine is so fascinating because you mentioned you have Janet Mills, who is, would be the oldest sitting senator.
01:12:20.840Right below Maine in Massachusetts, you have a Democratic House member challenging Ed Markey, the Democratic incumbent senator, on the idea that you're too old.
01:12:29.940So, you're going to have ads running in Boston into Maine.
01:13:50.840And for this guy who says, I'm smart enough to be a United States senator but not smart enough to handle this stuff before I got in the race, I think that's an issue.
01:18:56.580If he knew that it was this Nazi symbol, which according to the Free Beacon, he did, that's a problem.
01:19:03.020I thought the whole defense was going to be, I didn't know I had a Nazi symbol on.
01:19:06.640But if he actually did know, and he's a history buff, and he's running around with a Nazi symbol on his chest, like, who would be okay with that?
01:19:12.320I mean, that genuinely does raise some concerns.
01:19:14.800And his defense, according to the Free Beacon, was he got it in Croatia while on leave, quote, we got very inebriated, and we did what Marines on Liberty do, and we decided to go get a tattoo.
01:20:59.960The reason that he picked Kamala Harris is because of the fact that he believes in, and I certainly believe, the most powerful force within the Democratic Party is and always has been the African-American women.
01:21:14.780They're the heart and soul and the conscience of the Democratic Party.
01:21:21.460And that's why he thought it was so important to have, and by the way, she had an incredible resume.
01:21:31.740She's perfectly capable of being president of the United States, and I would have gladly voted for her.
01:21:37.140But he chose her out of loyalty, and I just don't understand, because I don't understand why someone would choose the expedient path as it relates to that relationship, their own political expediency.
01:22:01.400Okay, so my team tells me that is Tommy Christopher, who writes for Mediaite and is a far-left dude who's literally chewing gum during the interview, which seems kind of passive-aggressive.
01:22:14.480So there he is, ripping on Kamala, but what was interesting was he said it.
01:22:21.500He said it in sort of a back-end way, but he said she was only put in the role because she's a black woman, and for her to now have the gall to turn around and attack us when she was—this is really what he's saying.
01:22:35.420He had to add—she's qualified, of course.
01:22:37.040I would have voted for her, but what he's really saying is she was never qualified.
01:22:39.900She got there for no reason other than her identity, so she should STFU.
01:22:45.360That's how I read the Hunter Biden commentary.
01:26:26.160But, you know, part of the problem for Corinne, of course, is there were so many people who didn't want her to have that job from the beginning.
01:26:35.060And who then, when she fumbled and really struggled in the job, wanted her out, but were afraid to move against her because she was a black lesbian or is a black lesbian woman.
01:26:47.140And they were afraid of offending different parts of the party.
01:26:49.800The whole time she had that job, the foundation under her was non-existent because nobody thought she was qualified or that she was good at the job within the White House.
01:27:00.640I'm probably the only person that believes that she didn't ever know what Biden was doing because, from what I could tell, she never had access.
01:27:07.640She may be the only person that can say she didn't see Joe Biden's decline because I don't think she ever had access to him in the first place.
01:27:16.000It's a very uncomfortable truth for people in the Biden White House and for the Democratic Party at large, which is she's unambiguously unqualified, not because she's a black woman, but just because she was.
01:27:28.840The irony is they were trying to elevate the concept of having a black woman president and did a massive disservice to the many qualified people who could have done the job, who happened to be black women.
01:29:15.260Immediately upon leaving her, I returned to my office and sent an email to the chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff.
01:29:20.960I cc'd her and wrote that I'd just been told I shouldn't go to Israel, one of the most important trips the president would likely take during his tenure.
01:29:28.440Minutes after I hit send, Dunn swept into my office, bypassing my assistant and flinging open my door.
01:29:42.340I wasn't the only woman on the White House staff who had negative experiences with this person.
01:29:47.180She had spoken dismissively to female colors of the administration, especially those who are also people of color.
01:29:52.820She doesn't like black women, black women, black women.
01:29:55.320A white woman once said to me that it was uncomfortable being on emails with her and witnessing her tone and the way she addressed women of color.
01:30:05.840It was that bickering, backbiting and behind the scenes machinations, says Corrine Jean-Pierre, that led her to question, do I really want to be in a party that treats people this way?
01:30:20.340And then she says, now that I can speak fully from the heart, I have an answer.
01:30:24.800After being a party insider for 20 years, I now believe I can fight harder for my country from outside the Democratic Party than from within it.
01:30:30.520From here on, I am politically an independent.
01:30:35.900And then she adds, people felt seen when they saw me at the podium.
01:30:39.980Woman of color, black woman, queer community, LGBTQ immigrant.
01:30:42.520They felt seen and that mattered to me.
01:30:48.460I mean, honestly, like, how do you go forward with these people as representatives who are all identity and no substance?
01:30:57.540Well, and it goes to the fact that Mark said this earlier in the show, which is the party, the people who want to win elections know we have to change.
01:31:04.440We have to stop playing these identity politics.
01:31:09.100And I mean, it just all this is doing is showing that not just was Joe Biden struggling at the end, but the inner workings of the White House were a complete mess.
01:31:17.860I mean, it's just there's nothing good that's coming out of this that makes you as an American or as a Democrat have confidence.
01:31:24.260And as we think about going forward, you know, you want candidates to staff their campaigns with the most qualified, not checking all of these boxes and then layering people with other people.
01:31:35.480It's just not the way to run a campaign or a government.
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01:35:18.960Speaking of representing, Sean Spicer represented the United States of America at the lectern in the White House press briefing room for a time.
01:35:27.560It was a time that preceded Jen Psaki's time there.
01:35:31.300Jen Psaki went on with this lunatic woman named Jennifer Welsh who's getting in the circulation for being a very nasty, like, really absolutely foul-mouthed Trump critic.
01:35:45.140And that's really her only qualification because I think she used to do some show on, like, gardening or something stupid.
01:36:34.020But even for people who, like Dana Perino, or dare I say even Sean Spicer, I don't know if I should use them as an example.
01:36:41.540It's a very different briefing room now than it was then.
01:36:44.940And Dana Perino is probably a better example of this, right?
01:36:48.660I disagree with Bush on a bazillion things, right?
01:36:51.480But you had to go in there and answer questions from the same type of reporters, and often the same reporters I had to answer questions from.
01:36:58.220What it feels like it is diminishing the job.
01:37:00.880It is diminishing the role of the press secretary, the honor of being in that job.
01:37:24.000First of all, Caroline is a—I don't mean to inject this, but to make fun of her body size, which is not true.
01:37:30.220Actually, I thought it was—for a bunch of folks on the left that take pride in this kind of stuff, that was actually rather uncalled for.
01:37:46.740I don't know what TV she's looking at, but that's just simply not true.
01:37:49.240So that was really uncalled for and false.
01:37:52.080Number two, look, I think that for Jen Psaki, who had the phrase, circle back, I mean, to get up there and talk about integrity at the podium is a bit rich, right?
01:38:03.720And so I just don't—I find the whole fascination that these guys covered up one of the biggest issues in modern history in terms of the physical and mental decline of the president of the United States
01:38:14.560and has the gall to come on and talk about how other people do the job.
01:38:18.460I think she should sit this one out and talk about something else.
01:39:46.240We've seen so much of this, and I really do—I genuinely do not on this show just bring up one instance of bad behavior and try to tar an entire side of it because it's not fair.
01:39:54.320But somebody said something to me privately, and I was like, that's a very interesting point.
01:39:59.360You've got these young people like that gal who have been clearly radicalized, you know, into saying something like, watch your neck.
01:40:05.720And then you've got these older people at these No Kings rallies who are wearing the 8647 sweatshirts and calling for ICE agents to get shot.
01:40:14.700And I don't—they don't consume the same media.
01:40:17.680Like, the older people are watching MSNBC, and the younger people, I think, are getting all their news from social media.
01:40:35.140It seems to have crossed a wide swath of the Democrat Party.
01:40:40.060And I just have to say, like, it's deeply concerning to me because, like, crazy left I can understand and I can deal with and I can argue against.
01:40:47.620But, like, wanting to see Republicans dead and celebrating Charlie's murder is a totally different kettle of fish.
01:40:55.660So sorry, Dan, but I'll ask you that one first.
01:40:59.160No, I mean, I think one of the things that the No Kings rally, you know, kind of sadly showed is just this continued focus on Donald Trump, the hatred of Donald Trump.
01:41:09.200It's like a group therapy session, the way people were kind of all together, like, yeah, we all still hate him, but the party is not moving forward.
01:41:18.500There's no—I mean, like, if the rally was on health care, right, like, this is why we're shutting the government down, because we really want to fight for you.
01:41:25.580But instead, it's just this continued animation of, like, the fever will break.
01:41:32.080Like, at some point, you will realize your mistake.
01:41:56.480Well, lately I get a lot of complaints when I talk about Trump derangement syndrome.
01:42:00.020But I think it's, you know, it is the explanation of our time.
01:42:04.300And as I said before, the party, whether they're MSNBC watchers or TikTok watchers or college students, they're addicted to hatred of Trump.
01:42:16.920That's what gets them engaged in the national town square.
01:42:19.800And it's – I think it's personally very self-destructive.
01:42:25.080But it's also not, as Dan said, it's not leading to a rebuilding of the party as a party focused on the future.
01:42:32.840I understand a lot of the issues that upset them.
01:42:35.180I don't understand why they're so upset about construction on the White House grounds.
01:42:38.280But I understand a lot of the issues that upset them.
01:42:40.040But they're channeling it into just a level of vitriol and an addiction to being obsessed with Trump and hating Trump and Charlie that I've never seen anything like it.
01:42:50.100And I don't – as much as I think about it and talk to people out and study it, I don't really understand it.
01:43:37.320People do feel deeply moved by his message of faith.
01:43:41.140And I don't think they're all Republicans.
01:43:42.820I do believe that there are Democrats in there.
01:43:45.020And those are the people who are going to bring us forward.
01:43:48.600Those are going to have to be the leaders.
01:43:49.820I do believe that people of faith, no matter whether young, old, red, blue, doesn't matter.
01:43:55.740But that's – those are the people who are going to resonate because their message is infused with a special power, a special magic, a special allure, and something that's not so much about ourselves.
01:44:06.500So if you're not one of them and you need one, go out and get one now for Charlie.