The Megyn Kelly Show - August 13, 2024


Elon Musk Goes All In On Trump, and Predicting the 2024 Election, with Nate Silver, Bethany Mandel, and Karol Markowicz | Ep. 860


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 39 minutes

Words per Minute

190.76941

Word Count

18,909

Sentence Count

1,255

Misogynist Sentences

32

Hate Speech Sentences

24


Summary

Nate Silver is a political prognosticator, best known for correctly predicting the 2016 presidential election in 49 of the 50 states. But he s also a risk taker, and in his new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risks Everything, he lays out the habits of successful risk takers.


Transcript

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:11.880 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Nate Silver kicks off our show
00:00:18.000 today. Nate first rose to fame back in 2008 when he correctly predicted the presidential winner
00:00:23.520 in 49 of the 50 states. He then took predictions and modeling mainstream with his massive 2012
00:00:31.320 bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise. He would join forces with the New York Times and
00:00:36.460 ABC News before going independent last year, relaunching on Substack with the cleverly
00:00:42.360 titled Silver Bulletin. Get it? Publication? I like it. It works. Along the way, he's received a lot
00:00:48.940 of praise and made some major enemies, especially recently for daring to state the obvious about
00:00:53.500 President Biden's cognitive decline. But you're not allowed to say things like that
00:00:57.760 when the left perceives you as one of their own. It's bad enough when they hear somebody like me do
00:01:02.600 it. They really don't want to hear somebody they consider part of their cabal do it.
00:01:06.580 And that leads to particular blowback for folks like Nate. We'll get into where the 2024 election
00:01:12.100 stands, including the one state we all should be watching. But we're also going to talk about the
00:01:17.860 importance of risk taking and the habits of successful risk takers, which he lays out in
00:01:24.020 his new book out today on the edge, the art of risking everything. It's rising up the Amazon charts
00:01:31.440 and sure to be another bestseller. Nate Silver is here for the first time. Lumen is the world's first
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00:02:36.700 That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Megan for 15% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this
00:02:45.040 episode. Nate, good to have you. How are you? I'm great. A little busy. They keep you busy with
00:02:50.380 the book launch, but I'm having fun. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, absolutely right. So let's go back and
00:02:54.280 do a little bio info for our audience, expanding on some of the things I just ticked off. So you were not
00:03:00.460 a political prognosticator at all for most of your adult professional life. You were though a risk
00:03:08.180 taker. So just talk to us about how you got into this line of work. Yeah. So I took a boring consulting
00:03:13.680 job. It was not a very risky job out of college and was perpetually bored at that, but had a friend
00:03:20.580 at the job who was starting a home poker game. And I played poker a little bit in college, but I'm really
00:03:25.320 competitive. So I started practicing on the internet, playing games for fake money, for free money at
00:03:31.120 first, which wasn't very fun. I mean, poker's a game meant to be played for money. But then deposited
00:03:36.200 money at one of these gray market, shall we say, online poker sites and started doing really well. I
00:03:41.960 mean, it was a poker boom. So you had a lot of dumb money in the poker economy. So being mediocre was good
00:03:48.180 enough to, for a period of a couple of years, win a lot of money. In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed a law
00:03:54.760 that basically banned internet poker, took away my livelihood. At the time, it was Republicans in
00:04:01.120 charge of Congress. So I was upset about that and started following politics more carefully.
00:04:07.240 Then in 2008, I was living in Chicago, 29 years old at the time. Barack Obama was a significant
00:04:12.520 figure, obviously, in the Chicago political scene. And so all of a sudden, this guy in my backyard is
00:04:17.240 running to become president. You have all these superstars. You have Hillary and Rudy and John McCain
00:04:21.980 and eventually Sarah Palin. So taking more of a moneyball, dad-driven approach to politics was in the
00:04:27.700 right place at the right time. But before I ever got into politics, I was a professional gambler.
00:04:32.640 It's kind of when I create a model that has odds and probabilities, it kind of comes from that
00:04:36.860 handicappers, you know, setting a point spread mindset almost.
00:04:42.380 It makes perfect sense. And then you realized you could actually make a different kind of living
00:04:46.200 out of those skills and got into the lane of predicting elections or probabilities of somebody
00:04:52.940 winning elections. And then, I mean, things really took off for you. It was, you became a big star
00:04:58.520 in America after that huge, you know, accurate prediction in 2008. And everybody came to know your
00:05:04.920 name and you were with the New York times. And then suddenly last year, like it all changed.
00:05:08.920 And there was a bit of a divorce, which I think we were all surprised to see. And I know officially
00:05:13.640 it was like ABC said it was laying off some people. I can't remember the exacts, but it seemed kind
00:05:19.880 of like bullshit. I see you as somebody who I see myself as in some ways, like you're better off on
00:05:26.500 your own. You don't need these corporate giants behind you. And in fact, I'm sure it's very freeing
00:05:30.000 not to have them. But can you tell us what happened there about how you get how you split when
00:05:34.540 independent? I mean, the problem is we were like a tiny barnacle on like the blue whale of Disney
00:05:40.820 where they're facing headwinds in terms of like theme parks and in terms of the cable news bundle
00:05:46.680 collapsing for ABC News and ESPN and things like that. They've never had a strategy for us to make
00:05:53.080 money. So even though I think it could be a very good business, I mean, my newsletter now, I don't
00:05:56.760 want to say the numbers, but it's a very good business. Never sign up for something when someone
00:06:02.340 doesn't have a plan to actually turn it into a real business because you're depending on the goodwill
00:06:07.280 of the CEO or the or the founder who brings you in and it becomes unsustainable when political
00:06:12.820 conditions change. You know, I don't think it was anything other than having to do with the
00:06:17.940 economics of the network. But, you know, I think they didn't realize the potential they had
00:06:21.180 in this asset and they and they laid off three quarters of the staff. At that point, my contract
00:06:26.420 was coming up, was going to expire in three months anyway. I mean, there was barely a negotiation in the
00:06:31.860 first place. But after that, definitely not a negotiation. But it's been a it's been a real
00:06:36.560 blessing. I mean, I just like being independent. The Substack model works really great. I have a
00:06:41.520 podcast now. I have a book. I like to take my own. I mean, I'm a poker player at heart, right? I don't
00:06:46.180 want to have to play on someone else's schedule. And so it's just very freeing to be able to calibrate
00:06:51.160 and say what you want, how you want it. Be a little bit complex to say, I agree with person X about Y,
00:06:56.640 but not Z. It's been great. So what happened with The New York Times in FiveThirtyEight?
00:07:04.480 That was, I would say, a good relationship. I mean, I was at The Times in 2010 through 2012
00:07:08.940 at a time when they were growing their digital subscriber base a lot. And FiveThirtyEight was
00:07:13.540 one of the most profitable and popular assets on The New York Times. And look, I have different
00:07:20.060 conflicts here, right? I criticize The New York Times a lot. I was a little bit bitter about it when I
00:07:24.840 left them. I also work for them now, sometimes in freelance for them. I think they've become
00:07:28.320 one of the smartest businesses in media. But 10 years ago, I'm not sure that was true. They had a
00:07:33.580 turnover of CEO. And they've always had an issue where the New York Times brand is the brand, and
00:07:40.900 they are afraid of having too much star talent that outweighs the brand, I guess. And so kind of the
00:07:47.560 internal politics were disappointing in a way. I mean, I assumed I'd worked there for many years. I have an
00:07:52.600 apartment that's like walking distance from The Times office. But, you know, look, it's been 12 years
00:07:59.060 now, so I'm willing to forgive that one.
00:08:03.040 But the reason I ask is I saw a headline on Mediaite the other day suggesting that you were
00:08:10.420 displeased that FiveThirtyEight's been, like the forecast, has been suspended. They're now affixing a
00:08:18.060 note to the top of it, where it could formally be found, the forecast saying as of July 21st at 2 p.m.
00:08:24.120 Eastern, President Biden has suspended his campaign for the Democratic Party, whatever, for president.
00:08:31.080 And I guess they decided to suspend the forecast. And you suggested, at least according to Mediaite,
00:08:39.040 that this is being done for political reasons. Can you explain that?
00:08:43.340 I don't think it's being done for political reasons as much as maybe to save them a model
00:08:50.380 they don't trust or that could be embarrassing to them in some ways. They had said back in July
00:08:55.160 that their model had Biden doing substantially better than Kamala Harris, which I don't think
00:09:01.600 made any sense at the time and definitely doesn't make any sense now, given the polling. Their model
00:09:06.280 actually doesn't look very much at polling. It relies on things like the economy and incumbency. So,
00:09:11.000 you know, I don't know why they don't have the model back on. It's one of the most fascinating
00:09:15.840 periods in American political history. I mean, the amount of attention paid to anything having to do
00:09:20.440 with the horse race and politics and polls is very high right now. So I can't speak to what's going on
00:09:25.480 there. But like, I mean, there's an issue making where if you leave a brand and they get to keep
00:09:30.160 the brand name, I mean, 538 was, I'm no longer associated with it, but they have the brand name.
00:09:34.140 And it's a little bit of an awkward spot if, if, if you think they're putting out a product that
00:09:39.020 doesn't live up to, I mean, I'm a demanding person, but it doesn't live out up to the standards that
00:09:43.880 you created. And they have great people there. The people I work with, they're still there, but
00:09:46.840 they, they hired a new guy that, um, that I infuted with and thought, you know, was not someone I would
00:09:52.140 have hired. Um, and so whatever, I mean, you know, I got the model, I got my model, I got, I have myself.
00:09:58.120 And so I got the valuable things out of that relationship, but it's frustrating to have a version
00:10:02.280 of a product that is not, not the product that you helped create. That would be horrible. That
00:10:07.520 would be like me somehow losing control of the Megan Kelly show and being permitted to go off and
00:10:12.360 form my own show. But the new person could call it the Megan Kelly show. I would hate that. Yeah.
00:10:17.980 But do you think that there is, I mean, cause that's maybe they'll start the forecasting now
00:10:22.220 that Kamala's back and it's going well for her. I mean, because to me, it seems so obvious that
00:10:26.460 they lost interest in doing that when it, when it looked like Joe Biden was doing so poorly.
00:10:30.120 Well, cause their forecasts had been the most optimistic forecast for Biden, right? When
00:10:33.980 Biden left the race, they still had it at 50 50, which I think is, is simply wrong based both on
00:10:40.700 the polling and based on kind of common sense, right? I mean, this is a guy who was having trouble
00:10:45.700 delivering even prepared remarks and certainly anything off, off, but off a teleprompter was very
00:10:50.920 difficult for, for the president. Um, so look, I don't know. I mean, the guy who runs the model,
00:10:55.600 I think has definitely seemed like he's more of a partisan leaning Democrat, but look, I, I,
00:11:00.800 you need to separate out your rooting interest from your ability to do analysis and reporting.
00:11:05.220 Right. Um, you know, I am full disclosure. I will vote probably for Kamala Harris. It's not
00:11:12.080 going to matter. It's in New York. Um, but if Trump is ahead by three points of Pennsylvania
00:11:16.460 on election day, then that's what our forecast will reflect. And I'm not going to spin it and I'm not
00:11:20.780 going to indulge, you know, critiques from Democrats because people say all of a sudden
00:11:24.400 when we had Trump way ahead, they're like, Oh, Nate is MAGA now, right? Nate's being funded by
00:11:28.820 the right wing. And now that, now that it's 50 50 again, or we actually have Harris slightly ahead,
00:11:32.860 then, Oh, you're back in good graces. I think people don't understand that some folks are able
00:11:37.540 to separate out their journalism from, you know, I think it's fine as a citizen to have opinions about
00:11:42.280 public affairs and for transparency reasons to even articulate that for context, when you're going on
00:11:47.620 the media appearance or we're writing about the election. Um, but we can decouple these things
00:11:52.740 from one another. I think it's, I think people are, are, should hold themselves to a higher standard
00:11:56.900 of being able to, you know, walk and chew gum at the same time. Yeah. I mean, it's been a while
00:12:02.280 since I've taken statistics and probability, but those seem like models that one could follow
00:12:07.060 irrespective of one's bias. However, I guess there are some people who put inputs into the models
00:12:13.300 that could change the outcome and they do. It's a fine line because when you're building a model,
00:12:19.660 especially for elections, you know, the other thing I do is sports and in sports, there are
00:12:23.760 hundreds of NFL games played every year and thousands of baseball games. It's easier to kind
00:12:28.860 of have the data speak for itself for elections. We have one election every four years. The political
00:12:33.300 climate is always changing. Conditions are different. Um, so you have to be more assumption driven.
00:12:38.380 And that requires you to think very carefully about like, you know, what are the assumptions
00:12:42.200 I make if I actually had to bet my own money on this election? Um, that's the standard I think
00:12:47.400 people should use because otherwise you get in a trap where, where your rooting interest tends to,
00:12:52.520 you know, surface in all types of different ways with all these decisions that you make when you
00:12:56.320 build a forecast and, and, and how you average a polls together or what standards you have for X and
00:13:01.260 Y and Z. So, um, it's a hard problem, actually. It's, it's a difficult problem. And, and,
00:13:06.500 you know, the longevity I have having done it since 2008, it's a real asset. Cause I,
00:13:11.160 I've been, it's not my first rodeo. So, all right. So just to take a look at your latest
00:13:17.300 probability, you've got Harris at 54.8% chance of winning the electoral college Trump at 44.7.
00:13:26.740 So not quite a 10 point difference between them, but you know, the, the race has shifted dramatically
00:13:31.720 toward the Dems favor since the substitution. Um, we went back and, you know, I know that you,
00:13:39.240 you know this, but you had predicted that Hillary had something like a 71% probability
00:13:43.220 of winning in 16. She didn't win. So that's just as a caution for the audience that this doesn't
00:13:49.120 mean that Harris is going to win. It's, it's a probability based on an input of what all the
00:13:54.360 latest polls are the polls that you trust. Like, how do you come, how do you decide what goes into the,
00:13:59.520 uh, the mix? We, we try to be as inclusive as possible, right? As long as it's a, it's a
00:14:05.140 professional poll, professional scientific poll, we include it regardless of the political ideology
00:14:10.780 of the pollster. You know, if there are polls that are amateur polls, like someone doing it
00:14:14.780 on a blog and they pay 300 bucks for a survey monkey survey, not those, but we are the most
00:14:20.100 inclusive of the different sites because we believe in the wisdom of consensus and the wisdom
00:14:25.180 of crowds. Um, and there are years where some of the polls people, uh, demean as outliers wind up
00:14:30.940 being right. And so we're kind of following a, following a process there. And to the other thing
00:14:34.220 you said, I mean, look, Harris is, it's basically a coin flip 54 46 is not much removed from a coin
00:14:40.620 flip. Um, and you're right that in 2016, Trump won with longer odds. He was a 29% in our model.
00:14:48.460 Now, what I would say is a poker player, gambler, sports better is that you look at where
00:14:52.420 is your prediction relative to the market. Um, the belief there, and if you wanted to bet on
00:14:57.180 Trump, you could get odds of six to one on Trump. So we said it should be actually three to one. So
00:15:01.960 if you're a gambler and you looked at our forecast, you'd say, I have a good bet on Trump because when
00:15:06.440 it pays off, it'll pay off more than enough to make it for the times when, when the, you know,
00:15:11.340 the favorite wins. So from my standpoint, that was what I call a plus expected value forecast,
00:15:16.420 meaning you play out the election a hundred times and you make money from it. Um, but understandably,
00:15:21.040 you know, not many people before have come from this poker playing background into becoming this
00:15:25.800 prominent election forecaster. So understandably, I know why kind of like the conventional media
00:15:30.220 is not going to get that and that's okay. It's a hazard of doing the job, but I do want to emphasize
00:15:34.820 that the uncertainty is there for a reason. The polls can be off. They were off in both 2016
00:15:40.200 and 2020, 2020 Biden had a big enough lead in the polls that he held on, but like they were off by four
00:15:46.400 or five points again in States like Wisconsin. Hmm. So what, I mean, there, of course, at this
00:15:54.080 point in the race, there are many Republicans who are starting to get very worried, right? Because
00:15:59.160 Trump looks so much better four weeks ago than he does today. We had the New York times Siena poll
00:16:03.460 that came out last yesterday showing, uh, Harris over Trump by four points in Michigan, Wisconsin
00:16:09.880 and Pennsylvania, the must win Pennsylvania. Uh, we had cook political report moving three states in
00:16:16.520 the sunbelt from lean R to toss up, including Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, which in Trump had
00:16:24.300 been looking really good in Nevada, which is not historically blue, but he, sorry, red, but, uh,
00:16:29.420 he'd been looking really good there. So a lot of Republicans are starting to get very nervous
00:16:34.080 with these polls coming in. You've got Trafalgar, which is historically, I guess, more friendly
00:16:40.260 toward, uh, Republican voters. They understand them a little bit better. I think the way he
00:16:45.240 polls is very interesting. He's got likely voters, uh, at least in Pennsylvania today, Trump up to all
00:16:51.900 within the margin of error. So how do we make sense of today's polling on this race? I mean, that's
00:16:58.220 kind of exactly what a polling average is designed for where it includes the New York times and it
00:17:02.320 includes the Trafalgar's. Um, I don't mean to totally compare them. I mean, we have pollster
00:17:06.360 ratings based on their historical accuracy and, and, you know, Trafalgar has had great years and
00:17:10.540 not so great years, for example. Um, look, there's a pretty clear consensus that Kamala Harris is
00:17:16.360 ahead in most national polls right now by an average of two or three points. Um, national polls,
00:17:23.280 however, do not determine the election because the popular vote doesn't determine the election
00:17:26.260 in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. She's ahead by a point, maybe two points,
00:17:32.320 but that's really within the margin of error of the polls, right? If you had the election today,
00:17:36.340 which would be a little bit weird, but if, if you had the election today and Trump won Wisconsin,
00:17:40.860 that would be not surprising in the least, right? I mean, I think you'd take Harris at 50, 50 odds,
00:17:46.560 but it's, it's very close. And the fact that look, one way to look at it is that we've had
00:17:50.820 three straight close elections with Trump. One where he came out a little bit ahead,
00:17:56.680 when we came out a little bit behind. Um, and Harris is like a league average democratic candidate,
00:18:03.040 right? I mean, you know, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two points. I frankly think
00:18:06.500 Kamala Harris is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. So if she wins by three points, the popular
00:18:11.120 vote, then you have a close electoral college race where I think she might be the slightest favorite,
00:18:15.680 um, but would be very competitive. Hmm. Okay. So to those despairing on the right,
00:18:22.700 it's too soon for that to those celebrating on the left, same message.
00:18:27.300 No, look, I, um, I think both parties have, look, Democrats went from a terrible position. I mean,
00:18:34.620 Biden was way behind. And I think if anything, our model overrated Biden's chances, cause he was not
00:18:39.620 able to do the normal things that a candidate does as fundraising was drying up. He had another
00:18:43.320 debate to survive. Um, so, you know, I thought Biden's chances might've only been 10% or something
00:18:48.960 and now it's 50, 50 or 54 or 55. I mean, that, that feels great when you're a poker player and
00:18:55.140 you're down to your last few chips and all of a sudden you're a real player in the game. Um,
00:18:59.700 but like Democrats are maybe getting a little bit carried away here. Um, Kamala Harris is going to
00:19:06.320 have her convention next week. And typically that produces a further boost in the polling. So I think
00:19:11.260 August will remain a rough month for the GOP. Um, but September, she will face a different type
00:19:17.920 of pressure. The pressure being a perceived front runner, potentially, um, that can be more
00:19:24.420 difficult. I mean, being an underdog is a powerful kind of constituents or powerful meme in American
00:19:29.700 politics. It's a sympathetic situation. And, and in some ways, in some ways it's a great story,
00:19:34.160 right? I mean, she takes over this old guy and performs way better than people thought,
00:19:37.940 um, rises in the polls could become the first woman president. It's understanding understandable
00:19:43.300 by voters and certainly the media find this story compelling, but, but usually there are twists once
00:19:48.900 you get out after labor day and having this debate September 10th, which by the way, is still pretty
00:19:52.800 early for a debate. Um, that's the most obvious fork in the road for a momentum swing.
00:19:58.160 Mm-hmm. Have you been able, Nate, when you've been watching the media, I mean, it's been such a
00:20:03.820 whiplash, right? Of them eventually deciding Biden had to go, okay, we're going to do our
00:20:09.660 shoe leather reporting. Let's get to the bottom of this. We're suddenly interested in all of his
00:20:13.540 fails and stumbles. And then as soon as she got anointed, it was like, not interested anymore.
00:20:20.580 Forgot all our shoe leather problems. Let's just let her, let's let her coast and be her PR agents
00:20:25.640 on the back of the plane and back of the bus and not insist on interviews, et cetera.
00:20:29.020 Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think the Biden story should have been covered first and foremost as a
00:20:34.980 governance story. It's the hardest job in the world. Um, you know, how much uptime does Biden
00:20:41.300 have seems like a valid question. And by the way, I think these questions can be asked of Trump too.
00:20:45.960 I think, I think, can, it should be more transparent about their medical records and their mental health
00:20:50.420 and things like that as well. And people should have the right to ask questions, but yeah, it's,
00:20:53.620 it's not a great look that once the force race aspect of the story was resolved, that,
00:20:58.480 that the story faded from the headlines so quickly. Um, cause it's about, you know,
00:21:03.540 if there's a 3am phone call from, from North Korea, then do you have the best person in office
00:21:08.700 to take that job? And, and I don't know. I mean, I, I, you know, the fact that Biden's been cagey
00:21:14.800 about his diagnosis, if he has one, it's not been, it's not been a great look. And it's a sign of how,
00:21:20.140 I mean, what's weird about me is like, you know, I'm someone who is kind of in the liberal media
00:21:25.560 establishment, but also critical of it at times. And I think in election years in particular,
00:21:30.500 you sometimes see behavior that's more, more strategic, I guess I'd say.
00:21:35.180 Hmm. My gosh. I mean, that's such a sweet interpretation of it, but well, I mean,
00:21:40.300 corrupt if you ask me, but that's me, but on your point about Joe Biden, um, Tom Bevin over at real
00:21:46.660 clear politics actually went and pulled the president's schedule just to see what he's actually doing,
00:21:50.760 what Joe Biden's actually doing. This is last week. He posted this on August 8th.
00:21:53.780 And he wrote, uh, his schedule this week is truly absurd. One phone call on Monday,
00:22:00.240 nothing on Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday, one phone call and the ceremony on Thursday.
00:22:07.600 And then off to the beach house. He adds any employee or CEO who did this would be fired.
00:22:13.080 Biden is the leader of the free world working 10 hours a week. And our media couldn't care less.
00:22:19.840 They want him to coast. I guess they feel like he deserves it because he stepped down.
00:22:24.740 So it's like out of respect, even though we have two wars going, the middle East and Ukraine,
00:22:29.300 and we may be seeing an expansion of one or both. Yeah. Look, there are various things. There's like
00:22:34.880 the old gold water rule about not wanting to diagnose a candidate's physical or mental health
00:22:39.480 from afar. Um, but look, you know, audience captures a thing too. And, and even the more
00:22:46.680 highbrow, you know, center left outlets will publish more stories that get more page views and get more
00:22:51.500 traction. Those are generally stories that have good news for their, for their democratic leaning
00:22:56.680 audience. Right. So just organically that can sometimes emerge. And I've worked for the New York
00:23:01.200 Times and I don't think they kind of consciously go out and say, let's be, let's, you know, cater to the
00:23:05.360 left today, but I think the readership leans that way. And so, and so you have, you know,
00:23:10.480 that's reflected in the coverage a little bit. Yeah. And so are the reporters, which has an effect.
00:23:15.440 Yeah. And look, the fact that you say that, you know, Roger, I was just gonna say at Fox,
00:23:19.500 Roger understood that when you hire young journalists, they're going to be left-leaning,
00:23:23.340 like young people tend to be left-leaning, certainly young people out of journalism school.
00:23:26.920 And he understood that you weren't not hired at Fox because you were a left-leaning person.
00:23:31.480 You just got the talk about, that's not what we do here. If you, if you want to just write
00:23:36.620 left-leaning things for left-leaning readers, go someplace else. If you actually want to do fair
00:23:40.540 and balanced news, which is, you know, Brit Humes to call it like pick money up off the street.
00:23:44.460 It's just like the whole lane of stories, not told, not touched in a fair way.
00:23:48.420 Then you can work here. But I don't think that reporters at the New York Times get that speech.
00:23:53.720 Yeah. I don't know. Again, I, you know, I am a little conflicted out here. I freelance the New York
00:23:57.020 Times, so I don't want to speak, you know, and you should account for that conflict. Look, I think the issue
00:24:01.000 is that it's kind of the pipeline issue where the Times is hiring from lots of elite colleges and
00:24:07.700 universities, young people from elite colleges and universities. And, you know, they're very bright
00:24:11.440 people. I mean, they get the best and brightest people in their class, but, but people coming out
00:24:15.640 of those elite institutions are progressive Democrats. And, and look, there are more journalists
00:24:21.300 than you could, than you could might expect, Megan. I mean, I'd push back. There are a lot of journalists
00:24:24.960 who care about the truth and are able to separate out their rooting interest from, from their journalism.
00:24:30.040 I mean, I think the majority, even maybe even the super majority who's coming to mind.
00:24:36.060 I'm not going to name names. I mean, look, no, it's the majority. That's insane, Nate. That's
00:24:42.180 insane. I'm not going to deny there are some, but the majority, absolutely not. Look at the news
00:24:46.340 coverage. I mean, look at the news coverage. You see the headlines today after that Elon Trump thing
00:24:49.500 last night at the media knew exactly what to do. It sucked. He sucked. Elon sucks. All our concerns
00:24:55.120 about being kind toward people with special learning and so on out the window when it's
00:25:00.160 Elon Musk, who everybody knows is on the spectrum. No, we can make fun of him to, you know, it's like
00:25:05.500 this is just today's example, but we'd be here all week. It's definitely not the majority. I hear we
00:25:11.820 have a difference of opinion. Go ahead. Look, I mean, I worked in these spaces as well. And I think
00:25:18.220 there are a lot of good people there. I think sometimes the people who care more about the
00:25:22.000 journalistic standards are reluctant to speak up to younger colleagues who want to take the
00:25:27.600 newsroom in a more progressive direction. And you have a lot of internal battles. You know,
00:25:32.300 one thing about the times is that, you know, at the times, a kind of more traditionalist actually
00:25:36.660 said, hey, if you want to turn this into like a progressive newspaper, then this is not the place
00:25:41.120 for you exactly. And they've shifted a lot from kind of the peak of 2020, peak wokeness or whatever
00:25:47.100 you want to call it. I read so much stuff. And, you know, and I might not say that about outlets
00:25:51.900 X, Y and Z. I don't want to make enemies now, but there are outlets that I wouldn't say that about.
00:25:56.460 Yeah, I said it. Yeah, plenty more. I want to play this because you said it's not considered
00:26:02.920 appropriate to diagnose from afar in the context of Joe Biden. President Trump did not get that memo.
00:26:08.980 He feels perfectly comfortable doing it. And here is a little bit from his discussion with Elon last night.
00:26:14.360 Now, Biden's, you know, close to vegetable stage, in my opinion. OK, I looked at him today on the beach
00:26:23.120 and I said, why would anybody allow him? The guy could barely walk. Why would anybody allow him?
00:26:30.180 Does he have a political advisor that thinks this looks good? You know, he can't lift the chair.
00:26:34.620 The chair weighs about three ounces. It's meant for children and old people to lift. And he can't lift it.
00:26:41.000 The whole thing is crazy. It's clearly I mean, it's clearly like we just don't have a president.
00:26:46.260 You don't have a president. And she's going to be worse than him because she is a San Francisco
00:26:52.120 liberal who destroyed San Francisco. And then as attorney general, she destroyed California.
00:26:59.140 OK, so he's getting a little bit more on message there at the end. But Nate, do you think and I
00:27:04.900 realize you're more on the statistics and probability game, but do you think there's a chance
00:27:09.320 they actually might sub out Biden before November so she could run as an incumbent?
00:27:18.020 I mean, I don't know that we can connote an advantage to her. It would certainly make her
00:27:22.620 campaigning schedule more difficult. But I do think there's a chance just because if you look at look,
00:27:26.760 I spent a lot of time looking at curves, right? Curves for how baseball players are going to do or how
00:27:31.700 the polls are trending. And the trajectory for Biden is, you know, seems to be pretty negative.
00:27:37.960 That instead of an occasional senior moment, that that's kind of like the norm now. And we also know
00:27:43.460 if you look at actuarial tables or if you just had older relatives, that once you kind of hit the late
00:27:49.420 70s, early 80s, that you often hit an inflection point where someone goes from having good days
00:27:55.780 most of the time to bad days most of the time. And so, yeah, I mean, the fact that he wanted
00:28:01.980 to be president for another four years, if you extend out that curve, I mean, that was,
00:28:07.140 you know, kind of an untenable ask of voters. It's the main reason that he was losing. But
00:28:11.620 it's a perfectly logical question to ask, you know, why not just step aside now? I think that's
00:28:17.900 perfectly logical. And the media should ask that question more and ask questions about Trump. Again,
00:28:22.400 I would encourage more reporting on, you know, is Trump in some state of decline? I think that's
00:28:28.740 a fair question to ask of any 78-year-old. That is a fair question. Yeah.
00:28:33.760 Yeah, that's absolutely a fair question. And look, I mean, we've, one of the reasons why Trump gets
00:28:38.600 upset with yours truly is because I have been raising that question for a while. And when he has
00:28:43.720 what appear to be senior moments, I will call him out on it. And he doesn't like that. And I can't say
00:28:48.100 that I blame him, but that's, that's my job. I will say that in that discussion with Elon,
00:28:53.780 to me, he seemed quite rambling. I mean, it was like, he rambles, he goes on too long at his rallies
00:29:01.480 and in these exchanges and at his presser the other day to where you get kind of bored, you lose the
00:29:06.780 thread, you lose interest, which is not something you're used to with Trump. Trump in 2016, he was
00:29:13.600 tough to lose interest in. And I think that's probably an age-related change. So I think this
00:29:19.260 is one of the challenges of the people around him who are, I'm sure, are desperately trying to get
00:29:24.560 him to stick on message. No, look, uh, for the first 30 minutes or so of the convention speech
00:29:30.680 in Milwaukee, this is when Biden's still the candidate, remember? And it's like just a few
00:29:35.540 days after Trump was shot at, um, you know, it was a kinder, gentler, softer side of Trump.
00:29:41.500 And I'm like, okay, he's just going to win this election, right? It's kind of just the destiny
00:29:45.300 of it. When the bullet raises your ear and, and Biden is 81 years old and you're four points ahead
00:29:50.840 nationally. And, and, and he's finally figured out that, Hey, I can just kind of, um, have a glide
00:29:57.460 path to the presidency here. And then, and then he goes off in the rest of the speech and rambles.
00:30:01.780 And then three days later, Democrats replaced Kamala Harris or replaced Joe Biden with Kamala
00:30:06.480 Harris. And like, I think he was not, I mean, there's not just me. There is reporting that the
00:30:11.840 Trump campaign was underweighting the possibility that the, that you would have a candidate switch,
00:30:16.200 right? If I were them, just like you're an NFL team scouting for the backup quarterback,
00:30:20.520 when the starter is injury prone, I mean, I would have wanted to have a plan ready to go
00:30:25.020 on day one for Kamala Harris. Instead, they were like tweeting out memes, like the coconut meme that
00:30:30.320 Democrats actually think are funny and endearing to her. They were like actually kind of,
00:30:33.040 you know, making her look like she was fun and different than Biden. And then they got off on
00:30:37.140 the race stuff and, and they were very flat footed about JD Vance. Um, they look, it was their election
00:30:44.460 to lose and they haven't lost it yet. It's 50, 50 more or less, but they have, they have fumbled the
00:30:50.380 ball in a pretty profound way. I think that's a, that's a good way of putting it. Um, so football
00:30:57.360 players take big risks. So do politicians, so to poker players. And that brings me to your book
00:31:03.060 because you take a hard look at some of our best and brightest here in America. Some of our not so
00:31:10.220 great and not so bright Sam Bankman freed comes to mind. You interviewed him repeatedly. Uh, you,
00:31:17.200 there's a great story in the book about Elon Musk. And I was thinking about it when you were talking
00:31:21.720 about your political analysis earlier and sort of the way some people approach challenges.
00:31:28.020 Poker can be a very insightful way into seeing who someone is and in particular their risk tolerance.
00:31:36.720 And why is one's risk tolerance relevant to life? Like, why do we want to know what one's risk tolerance
00:31:44.600 is? I think in part, because we are now forced to make all these decisions on our own, um, in a
00:31:52.780 world where kind of, there's lots, a loss of trust in institutions. I mean, under COVID, you kind of had
00:31:58.600 to figure out in your own, especially if you're in a blue state, um, that, okay, I'm going to have some
00:32:03.800 friends over to my private home because I'm not going to be able to go a year without social contact
00:32:08.500 or whatever. Right. Or I can take my mask off when I'm walking outdoors and things like that. And that,
00:32:13.400 and that some of these risks have been, have been misstated or speculative or people don't have
00:32:17.940 your best interest in mind necessarily. Um, I think in a world where people have to fend for
00:32:22.100 themselves, then a personality type of, you know, questioning the conventional wisdom of questioning
00:32:28.560 authority of being a little contrarian that tends to be rewarded a little bit more. Sometimes that
00:32:33.840 personality type is, is correlated with being a very difficult person, I think, or going too far or
00:32:39.560 questioning the conventional wisdom. And believe it or not, it's actually right. Um,
00:32:42.960 Elon has some of that. The story about Elon playing poker is that he literally just goes all in
00:32:47.280 every hand and rebuys until he's finally broke. Um, which is, I think kind of a metaphor. I mean,
00:32:53.300 you know, both Tesla and SpaceX were, wait, wait, wait, wait, was he, was he with the all in guys
00:32:58.120 at the all in poker game or was this not the, I played, I played the all in guys. This is an
00:33:02.780 earlier poker game. Yeah. Um, but literally just doubling down and going all in every hand. And
00:33:08.020 that's how he ran his companies. I mean, both Tesla and SpaceX, like it isn't, wasn't the story
00:33:12.280 in the book that he kept doing that. He kept losing all in again, losing, he'd get more chips,
00:33:17.260 lose, and he kept doing it until he won. And then he was like, I'm done.
00:33:20.540 You will, you will not, he eventually, I don't know if he ran out of money or he won a small pot
00:33:24.340 and then gave up, but that's, that's not a winning poker strategy. Um, okay. Okay. When you're
00:33:28.480 don't try that at home. Don't, I don't recommend the Elon kamikaze poker strategy. Um,
00:33:32.940 when you're in business though, and you're a venture capitalist, you're looking for founders
00:33:38.320 that have an extremely high risk tolerance that are willing to go all in on a contrarian idea
00:33:43.860 for 10, 12, 15 years. Um, because they, it might be worth a thousand X your investment and you can
00:33:50.280 only lose one time your investment. Um, and Elon's done that twice with Tesla and SpaceX, which, you know,
00:33:56.900 in Silicon Valley, understandably gives you kind of God-like status there. Financially,
00:34:02.520 the bet on Twitter seems like it probably won't be great. However, as a bet in terms of cultural
00:34:07.440 influence, um, you know, as much as he might get made fun of by the establishment media, I mean,
00:34:12.660 you know, Twitter, I think is part of what has caused a vibe shift away from left progressivism
00:34:19.520 toward a more conservative direction. Um, you know, I mean, I think Elon's not a centrist. He's
00:34:24.740 actually a full-bodied conservative. Now he endorsed Trump. Um, but lots of prominent journalists,
00:34:30.680 center left journalists are still on the platform. It's still the best forum for, for many topics
00:34:35.920 like sports, which I follow. It was fun to follow during the Olympics. So I think, you know, look,
00:34:40.300 even the Twitter bet, I think can't be totally dismissed. And the same journalist who would say,
00:34:44.940 oh, this is such a disaster. Twitter are still on Twitter and still using Twitter to like drive
00:34:49.000 engagement to their platforms. They are, they all said they were leaving and they went over to that
00:34:53.720 Mark Zuckerberg thing. And then we never heard about that thing again. And they're all back on Twitter.
00:34:57.400 I see them all the time. I mean, politics doesn't really work without conflict. Um,
00:35:02.820 and journalism doesn't really work without conflict. Uh, and so like having like the threads
00:35:08.980 or an alternative where, where only the left was there or blue sky or whatever, like it's just people,
00:35:15.320 I don't know what metaphors I'm allowed to use in the show. It's just people patting themselves
00:35:18.620 on the back, I guess is how I put it. It's not very, it's not very interesting. Yeah. A circle
00:35:24.100 jerk was a term I was going to use. Yeah. I got it. Uh, speaking of Elon's political views,
00:35:29.260 he did speak to that in the interview with Trump last night. Here's a bit of it. It's not six.
00:35:33.400 If you look at my chart, my record, it's, I've actually been, I'm, I'm, I'm not like,
00:35:37.820 so they try to paint me as like a far right guy, which is absurd because I'm like making electric
00:35:41.620 pickles and, you know, solar and batteries helping them with the environment. I supported Obama. I
00:35:46.660 stood in line for six hours to shake Obama's hand when, when he was running for president. I call
00:35:51.020 myself, uh, you know, historically a moderate Democrat and that, but now I feel like we're
00:35:57.660 really at, at a critical juncture for the country. So this is to people out there who are in the
00:36:01.980 moderate camp to say, I think you should support, um, Donald Trump for president.
00:36:08.320 All right, Nate, I have a, I have a crazy prediction for you. I think in four years,
00:36:13.020 that's going to be you. I can see your eyes starting to open. I've been watching your evolution on X
00:36:19.040 and I see, I see you, you are going from somebody who has committed on the left, New York times guy
00:36:26.080 to more heterodox. You challenged a lot of the COVID lockdowns and the madness. You see the lunacy
00:36:32.260 on some of these, you know, media stories. That's my prediction in four years, you're going to be
00:36:36.860 sounding just like that. I would be surprised because I think in part, we've seen some acknowledgement
00:36:42.420 on the left that they need to course correct a little bit. Um, we have seen a decline in wokeness
00:36:48.200 in the past four years. In my opinion, we have seen colleges like Harvard, uh, bring back
00:36:53.600 standardized tests and more requirements for, for attending school there. We've seen outlets like
00:36:58.420 the New York times, I think, understand that, um, they want to have a broad audience, probably not
00:37:03.300 conservatives, not Trump fans, but broad from left to center, right. So I've seen some, you know,
00:37:08.560 some course corrections, I think. And cause what I want is like, I don't think that like questioning
00:37:13.220 authority, uh, or being skeptical of, of the accumulation of power. I don't think that
00:37:19.120 should be right coded or conservative coded, right? Maybe it should be left coded. I don't
00:37:22.720 know. But like, you know, the fact that like, oh, um, you know, oh, questioning the experts
00:37:27.400 is now seen as being something which is very right wing. I mean, that used to be a value I
00:37:31.660 associated with skepticism, a value associated with liberalism. Um, and I can get to, if you want
00:37:36.780 to get into political theory about, you know, I call myself, I'm a liberal, but I'm not on the
00:37:41.700 left. Um, and I hope that, you know, for a long period of time in American politics, there's been
00:37:46.720 a coalition between liberalism, which is an enlightenment political tradition and the left
00:37:51.700 that might be breaking down to some degrees, but, but I don't find like, you know, Elon's
00:37:56.560 political turn, very appealing. For example, he's also tweeting out things that are misinformation
00:38:01.420 and he's gotten like red pilled in a lot of ways. And, and I, you know, I, I think I'm truly
00:38:06.620 independent. And, and like I said, I'm, I'm, you know, a Kamala Harris voter this year. There are
00:38:11.500 Republicans apart from Trump that I would undoubtedly find more appealing. Um, but I know it's a cliche.
00:38:16.820 I, I, I, I feel like I have stood in place and other people have abandoned their values a little
00:38:22.140 bit. I think my faith in institutions has gone down a little bit with the COVID things and some of
00:38:27.340 things happening in higher education and so forth. I mean, there've been a lot of,
00:38:30.540 a lot of, you know, scandals in the Catholic church, for example, it's, it, there are good
00:38:34.380 reasons why people have become less trusting of institutions and authority. And I'm, I'm
00:38:39.040 sympathetic to those. There are certainly more people in my world that are, have, you know,
00:38:43.500 the permission structure to vote for Trump has opened up in my, my kind of poker playing risk
00:38:47.700 taking world that's opened up, but, but, you know, I am not with the program myself and I don't
00:38:52.180 think I will be in four years. I mean, like I've seen this happen to a lot of people. I'm just saying
00:38:56.420 it's my, it's my prediction. It's my statistics and probability, which again, I haven't taken
00:39:00.400 since 10th grade. So take us with a big grain of salt, but I see you on an evolutionary path that
00:39:05.880 I've seen many times. Um, and I do think you're right. The ground underneath your feet shifts. I
00:39:10.580 mean, I really don't see myself as, as feeling any different about my issues than I felt when I was at
00:39:18.080 Fox news and people, you say, Oh, she's a centrist. She's a moderate. Now they say I'm some,
00:39:23.020 somebody on the far right. Somebody even says alt-right. I don't even know what that is anymore,
00:39:27.320 but you know, if being against children, cutting off healthy body parts without their parents'
00:39:32.280 permission, it makes you all right. Then, okay, whatever. You can call me what you want.
00:39:36.640 Um, you know, some of us have got our core issues. Let me just ask you, can I just ask you,
00:39:40.460 and then I want to talk more about the book, but can you explain to me as a Democrat, how you could
00:39:44.480 vote for, for Kamala Harris when we've got the open border. And I mean, these are my two biggest
00:39:52.180 issues, not in, not in this order that you've got the open border and you've got the child
00:39:56.540 transition problem. I mean, you've got literally, you've got kids cutting off healthy body parts and
00:40:01.440 being sterilized by regimes in States that just think it's fine. Even without parental permission,
00:40:06.920 schools, hiding it from parents, life altering, life changing. I realized it's a small segment of
00:40:11.540 the population, but to me, it's just like, these are children. How could, how can we support any party
00:40:17.360 that will facilitate this? Not, not a judgment on you. Just want to explain. I mean, I'm not a
00:40:22.540 Democrat. I'm actually registered Republican. I registered as Republican in 2016 to vote against
00:40:26.440 Trump in the GOP primary in New York. Um, because I live in a very blue district. So your vote has a
00:40:31.100 lot more leverage if you're, if you're Republican in my district. Um, I have no opinion on those other
00:40:35.960 topics. I'm not a Democrat and I, I, I think Trump has some paths that, um, are more obvious. I mean,
00:40:42.660 I think inflation and immigration, um, I think people in the media overrate on both sides,
00:40:48.860 the culture war stuff a little bit. Um, I know it gets people riled up. Um, but if I were trying to
00:40:54.620 Trump, I'd talk about immigration and, and Harris's left-wing record in California and running in 2020,
00:41:00.800 um, and not go for the culture war stuff as much. Okay. But that like, that doesn't answer,
00:41:08.380 you know, I don't, I'm trying to figure out how a, how a relatively moderate, reasonable, smart,
00:41:14.460 likable guy can pull the lever for somebody who's going to facilitate more of this. You know,
00:41:18.980 is it, is it just that it's not a priority? It's not like on your list of things that make you pull
00:41:24.560 the lever for one person or the other. It's, it doesn't affect, it doesn't affect me in any way.
00:41:28.920 And I think, you know, I kind of lean a little bit libertarian and, and I understand that you have
00:41:32.840 issues when it comes to children, but like, it's just not, it's not something, it's something where
00:41:36.960 there is more heat than light. It's not an issue that, you know, I have trans friends and I think
00:41:42.880 it's a complicated issue. I think lots of movements go too far in different directions,
00:41:46.520 but it's not, it's not my issue. I mean, you know, for me, the disqualifying issue for Trump
00:41:50.920 is January 6th. Um, I just think it's fundamentally disqualifying. Um, you know, in the same ways,
00:41:57.460 I thought that Biden's age was also disqualifying, was planning to vote libertarian or some other third
00:42:03.160 party. Um, you know, I could argue that Trump's age is also disqualifying. I would like to see
00:42:07.520 a constitutional amendment where you can't be inaugurated when you're past the age of 75.
00:42:12.080 Um, so to me, it's a matter of, to me, it's a matter of January 6th disqualifying, 86 year
00:42:18.160 president disqualifying. Now I have someone who's qualified and I'm not, I'm certainly not on the far
00:42:22.100 left. I'm very much in the center, but like if you eliminate one choice, then you have one other
00:42:26.120 choice. And, and, and that's the choice I will make as a, as an irrelevant voter in New York.
00:42:30.820 Hmm. I know. Well, I've been an irrelevant voter in New York my whole life. So I understand. Um,
00:42:35.780 though now I'm an irrelevant voter in Connecticut. I I'm, I'm not, I'm not trying to put my value
00:42:40.400 system on you. It's just, it, those things are so important to me. I, it, I hit my head against
00:42:45.100 my desk, not understanding why people don't see it as I do. And then I remind myself, not everybody
00:42:49.320 sees things as you do. Um, just for the record though, it's not about trans people. It's about the
00:42:53.900 children. Um, okay. Let's talk more about the book because explain to me what it means to be
00:42:59.360 a reverian. I want to get the pronunciation, right? Cause I've only heard her. I've only
00:43:03.960 seen it written as opposed to hearing you speak it. Yeah. A reverian means a resident of the river,
00:43:10.640 which are these people who combine being very analytical, um, quantitative with being really
00:43:15.980 risk-taking and competitive. So that's the canonical example of a poker player. Uh, they are
00:43:22.040 really good with math. They're also good with reading people in some particular way, at least.
00:43:25.920 Um, but they really want to win. I mean, poker players are insanely competitive and it's also
00:43:30.520 the mindset. When I talk to venture capitalists and founders in Silicon Valley, it's a similar
00:43:35.600 mindset. When you talk to people in the crypto boom, similar mindset, or obviously things like
00:43:40.420 sports betting, for example, it's a personality type that is very high variance, meaning very high
00:43:45.160 upside. So maybe you are like the richest person in the world, or maybe you're Sam Bankman
00:43:49.740 Freed who's kind of the anti-hero of the book. Um, and, and, you know, shows what happens when
00:43:55.900 these values are taken, are taken too far, but for better or worse, it's my world. It's a guided tour
00:44:00.980 of my world. And the hope is that I can kind of let you see people through their own eyes, through,
00:44:06.100 you know, fair and balanced. That's a cliche reporting where I talked to 200 people for this book.
00:44:11.380 Um, I believe as an author of the principle of show, not tell, right. I'm not going to beat you over
00:44:17.060 the head with something. I'm just going to give you good reporting people in their own words,
00:44:21.140 a lot of fun context and anecdotes. So I'm not trying to wait the dice too much. And I think
00:44:25.620 it does a really good job with that. Again, the book is called on the edge, the art of risking
00:44:31.120 everything. Is it true? You yourself won some $750,000 in the year that you were writing this book,
00:44:40.160 playing poker in the three years. And that's gross profit, not, not net, right. That means how much
00:44:45.860 money you, if you don't count all the losses, right. If you win 750 K, but no, I was in the
00:44:51.180 top 300 in the global poker index rankings worldwide for a period of time, which is pretty
00:44:55.460 cool to be doing it in my spare time. Um, you know, there's a lot of luck involved in the short
00:45:00.180 run in poker, but no, I love the game and I like it cause it is both a strategy math game and a people
00:45:05.860 game. I mean, at the end of the day, um, if you can, if you can look at somebody and, you know,
00:45:10.980 I used to think this was overrated, the physical reads or the vibes thing, but like when you get
00:45:16.400 thousands of hours of training of looking at people when they're playing a poker hand and,
00:45:20.480 and, you know, is their heart beating in their neck? What are their hands doing? Um, their,
00:45:25.600 their eyes, the eyes, people know how to like lie through their eyes, but they forget about like the
00:45:30.000 rest of their body, their posture and things like that. And so, um, so talking to some of the best
00:45:36.300 poker players in the world, in the book, um, as well as being, you know, proficient on the math
00:45:41.540 side of things, certainly I've gotten to a point where, where I'm pretty competitive and poker is
00:45:45.220 unique in that, like, I couldn't go, I'm terrible at basketball. So, you know, I wouldn't be allowed
00:45:49.440 to anyway, but like, I couldn't go and play like a Steph, Steph Curry and, and, and LeBron James at a
00:45:54.500 pickup game of basketball, right? In poker, you can register and pay your $10,000, go to the cashier's
00:46:01.140 window of main event, world series of poker. They'll give you a ticket and you can sit down on the
00:46:04.720 table and the best poker players in the world might be there, uh, battling against you. So it's
00:46:08.740 a very lowercase D democratic enterprise. Um, and it's kind of my, it's kind of my safe space is my
00:46:14.940 joke. What's the game. What's your game of choice? I mostly play Texas Hold'em. That's the, that's the
00:46:21.440 most popular game. It's a two card game where you get two cards face down. So you have no information
00:46:26.060 about what someone has apart from their betting patterns. Now, would your methods work against say my
00:46:32.440 children? I mean, I have a 14, a 13 and an 11 year old. They love to play poker. Um, would it,
00:46:38.500 would they work against a child, right? Who's they probably wouldn't be bluffing a whole lot of the
00:46:43.220 time, but they're reading their emotions is such a different game. Kids are pretty good at deception.
00:46:50.780 I think actually, I have a friend who wrote a book about like, you know, if you apply game theory to
00:46:55.440 parenting, because sometimes when you have kids, I don't have kids myself, but like, you know, if you have
00:46:59.240 kids in your, in your extended family, you're doing a little bit of negotiating with them
00:47:02.740 sometimes, right? I'll offer you X if you're behaving and otherwise we'll do Y. And here's
00:47:07.620 the, here's a carrot and here's a stick. I think your kids might be pretty good at poker.
00:47:11.440 I read parts of the book and I think I saw you citing, um, forgive me. I can't remember his first
00:47:18.180 name, Nash from a beautiful mind from Princeton who came up with game theory or the whole, you know,
00:47:24.260 it's all detailed, detailed beautifully in the movie, uh, played by Russell Crowe, but is his
00:47:29.240 theory actually important to your poker playing abilities and your assessment of your competitors?
00:47:35.680 Yeah. So game theory is basically about what are the conditions that emerge in a highly competitive
00:47:41.600 world? If I'm trying to apply my best strategy and you're trying to apply yours, then what's a
00:47:46.660 prediction for where we end up? And this is the whole basis for poker. The reason why you need
00:47:51.100 bluffing in poker is because you need an incentive for your opponent to pay you off when you claim
00:47:56.500 to have a strong hand. Um, that comes straight out of game theory and game theory is kind of one of
00:48:00.600 the foundational concepts of the book, but, but I like it because like I said, it gives people credit
00:48:04.660 for being intelligent. Sometimes I think politicians and political parties assume that they're the only
00:48:10.020 smart party in the room and the other party is stagnant and stuck in the mud. And, and, you know,
00:48:15.240 most recently that assumption hurt Trump by being very flat footed when the ticket was changed and
00:48:22.140 underestimating Democrats desire to win the election, even if that meant, you know, um, and
00:48:27.240 to be clear, people say, Oh, Joe Biden kind of nobly stepped aside. I mean, that's stretching it a lot,
00:48:34.320 right? He was, every ounce of pressure was put on him by Nancy Pelosi and others, which I think was the
00:48:40.100 correct strategic move, but there was a lot of pressure applied. And by the way, in 2020, Biden
00:48:45.240 got a lot of help from the party, Jim Clyburn endorsing him, um, all, you know, uh, Amy Klobuchar
00:48:50.920 and Pete Buttigieg dropping out and endorsing him and really boosting him very quickly after South
00:48:55.620 Carolina and after super Tuesday. So if the party wants you in the party, the party wants you out and
00:49:01.340 the democratic party for better and worse is a stronger capital P party than Republican party. The
00:49:06.880 democratic party gets what it wants. It might not always want the right things, but, but you know,
00:49:11.740 it it's, it's been smarter about, about Canada choice, I think. Oh, I think the Republicans are
00:49:17.160 jealous of that. I don't think you're wrong about that at all. I think a lot of Republican voters
00:49:20.700 who are much more individualists in these moments are more like, damn, why can't we behave more like
00:49:25.320 them that you get out of line, you get the stick, you get back in line, then they have an election
00:49:30.720 and they win. But I think team Trump should be listening to this, especially as they
00:49:34.220 go a little closer to that September 10th debate and a lower expectations for her,
00:49:39.900 which is not smart. Go back and look at her debate against my Mike Pence. She was good.
00:49:43.480 She was strong. I just watched it on Friday. Uh, they should be reading your book. Everyone should
00:49:47.960 be. It's called on the edge, the art of risking everything. Great stories in there about so many
00:49:55.520 colorful characters. Nate, thanks for being here. All the best to you. Of course. Thank you, Megan.
00:49:59.480 Okay. And we'll be right back after this. Some Americans enjoy using their credit cards
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00:50:40.940 Fresh off his massive ex conversation with former president Donald Trump, there are calls from abroad
00:50:46.440 to censor and potentially arrest Elon Musk because, you know, hate speech over in Europe is
00:50:53.980 illegal. You can't say offensive things or you might get arrested and God forbid you platform Donald
00:51:01.940 Trump and he insults some. This is so ridiculous. Elon responded perfectly. I'll tell you exactly what
00:51:09.440 happened. And college students are returning to campuses this month and there's a new plan for
00:51:14.540 how they will show their anti-Israel support for the Palestinians. Cutting class. Yes, they're going
00:51:22.600 to be doing massive like sick outs, I guess, which seems like an improvement on tentafata, but we'll
00:51:29.160 see. Commentators and co-authors of the fantastic book, Stolen Youth, Bethany Mandel and Carol Markowitz
00:51:36.460 join me now to discuss all these and more headlines. Bethany, Carol, welcome back.
00:51:41.700 Hi, Megan. So nice to be on with you again. Thanks for having us. Likewise. Okay. So I love that
00:51:47.700 Elon so upset the people over in the UK and Europe writ large that the EU is actually warning him. This
00:51:54.900 was ahead, ahead of the Trump conversation saying you better watch it tonight that you can't have any
00:52:03.680 incitements to violence or hate speech or racism. And, uh, if you do, you could potentially be
00:52:11.900 arrested. You're having that exact plan and arrest argued for in the paper today, suggesting really
00:52:19.080 that's the only thing that will make Elon listen to these international in particular European
00:52:23.380 constrictions on speech. And Elon's response, uh, to this was to fuck off. Um, I'll get the exact
00:52:31.820 quote. It was better than that. I think it was to be precise. Go fuck your face. That was
00:52:36.820 that was something about us that, that we just like let loose. I love when Megan curses with us.
00:52:44.440 I know every time I just trying to be accurate in my reporting of the story, Bethany. So, um,
00:52:52.720 how did you think it went last night and what do you make of the advanced leftist freak out about
00:52:59.400 the platforming of hate? I, he's one of the candidates running for president. Do the people
00:53:04.240 really think that he shouldn't be platformed? What country are we living in? And I, you know,
00:53:08.460 I love Elon using the F words. I love him using it creatively. That's all terrific. But you know,
00:53:13.840 I, I would say that we fought a war not to care what Europe thinks. And so here we are,
00:53:18.720 we shouldn't worry about their insane anti-free speech laws because we live in America. Elon is
00:53:25.600 now an American. This is not our problem anymore that you guys can't, you know, deal with the fact
00:53:30.880 that people will say things that you disagree with. We're a little bit past that. I listened to the,
00:53:35.540 the, the whole thing on X. I thought it was really excellent. Um, I'm actually, I don't love listening
00:53:40.880 to stuff like that. I'm not like every interview politically. I listened to that. I don't. Um,
00:53:45.860 and I really enjoyed that. It was casual. It was smart. I heard things that I'd never heard before
00:53:50.720 from Donald Trump. I thought it was excellent. Well done. Lots of listeners. I mean, they're saying
00:53:55.880 they had a billion listeners all ultimately impressive and amazing. I feel the need to
00:54:01.200 correct the record on that. They, they say there were a billion views. We don't know what that means.
00:54:06.080 I think a view is counted. Even if you scroll right past it. I mean, there's no way there were a
00:54:10.440 billion views of that actual watches of that last night, because if there were, it would be the
00:54:15.220 lead story in every newspaper and publication worldwide. Like that's just not, that's not,
00:54:21.740 but I'm sure there were tons of eyeballs. It's just, this is an X marketing device that they use
00:54:27.860 to try to boost whatever big thing they're getting behind. That's just for the record. Um, so Bethany,
00:54:34.760 um, by the way, it was in the guardian and it was an ex Twitter boss who said he has a way of grabbing
00:54:40.820 Elon's attention. If he keeps stirring unrest, it doesn't like some of his, uh, posts on what's
00:54:46.440 happening in London, get an arrest warrant. And same thing talking about how, uh, it was clear
00:54:52.560 from my eight years at the platform that there's something lost in translation between British
00:54:56.420 interpretations of free speech and those parroted by a U S libertarian interpretation of the concept.
00:55:02.880 Correct, sir. Correct. There is, there is something lost in translation. It's called
00:55:07.920 the U S constitution. And that's what we follow over here. We don't follow your definitions of a
00:55:12.620 hate speech. Thank God, as Carol points out, whole war was fought to get rid of those shackles.
00:55:17.820 Yeah, no, thank God. I mean, what was really interesting to me was that all of these folks who
00:55:22.220 were, you know, preemptively up in arms about anything that could be said, um, none of them have
00:55:28.520 listened to Elon Musk's talk. They've never listened to Donald Trump talk. They have this
00:55:34.080 caricature in their minds of what these folks sound like that is, has no basis in reality. Um,
00:55:40.020 and I was really disturbed watching a lot of these individuals who like DEI is their entire personality.
00:55:45.780 They're always talking about inclusivity and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as they actually
00:55:52.360 heard Elon Musk speak, they said, Oh, this is rambling. He sounds like an idiot. He's on the
00:55:58.960 spectrum. He talks about being on the spectrum and all of their, their sweet talk about inclusivity
00:56:05.080 went out the window. The second and actually autistic individual got onto a platform in which
00:56:10.740 he could speak freely. I thought it was really disturbing, uh, and really instructive about how,
00:56:16.740 how committed they actually are to inclusivity. Uh, they're not,
00:56:21.120 but don't forget Bethany joy. This is the joy party. It's having such a good time.
00:56:26.980 I just want to add also that a Washington post reporter also tried to shut down this conversation.
00:56:33.020 He asked Corrine, uh, you know, the, the spokeswoman at the, at the white house.
00:56:36.600 Oh, we have this. Hold on here. Let me play it. Let me play it. And then you react on the back end.
00:56:40.520 So yes, for the audience, this is a Washington post reporter at the white house press briefing
00:56:44.380 asking Corrine Jean-Pierre, one of the dumbest questions we've ever heard. Here it is.
00:56:48.680 Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tomorrow, tonight, um, on, on X. Uh, I don't
00:56:55.100 know if the president is going to tune in. Feel free to say if he is or not. Um, but I, I think
00:57:00.900 that, um, misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It's a, you know, it's a America
00:57:07.380 issue. Uh, what role does the white house, uh, or the president have in sort of stopping that
00:57:14.800 or stopping the spread of that or, um, sort of inter intervening in that. Some of that was about
00:57:20.240 campaign misinformation, but you know, it's a wider thing, right? Yeah, no, I mean, you've heard
00:57:24.360 us talk about this many times from here about the responsibilities that social media platforms have,
00:57:30.100 uh, when it comes to misinformation, disinformation.
00:57:33.220 That person asking the question is an idiot, Carol, an absolute idiot. I can't believe that
00:57:40.440 he considers himself a member of the press and it works for the Washington post. Go ahead.
00:57:46.420 It's crazy. I mean, I think that we used to have at least some faith that these people weren't full
00:57:52.680 on lackeys the way they are, but the last like two months have really opened some eyes. I don't just
00:57:57.940 say people who are like political, like the three of us were, were really involved. I hear from people
00:58:02.100 all the time that how can I believe anything that this media is telling me because Joe Biden was
00:58:07.400 hidden from view. We were told he was totally fine. He's not totally fine. Then they just swap
00:58:12.300 him out. I think all of that has really broken trust with kind of more normie people who maybe
00:58:17.960 don't follow things quite as closely as we do. And then hearing this kind of question, uh, in the
00:58:23.120 white house to say, how can we shut down speech that we don't like is just unbelievable. It's
00:58:30.240 un-American. It's unacceptable. So one of the best known, most famous, richest men in the world,
00:58:39.340 somebody who's created, I don't know how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of American
00:58:43.600 jobs. Elon Musk wants to have a public conversation with the man who was president and is running to be
00:58:50.540 president again. And the question at the white house by a member of the white house press corps is
00:58:54.480 what are you going to do to stop it? What are you Kareem Jean-Pierre going to do to stop it and
00:59:00.960 rein in the misinformation in this press conference, in this, in this conversation that I wasn't invited
00:59:08.400 to. I mean, he could listen, but then I'm not allowed to participate in. See, I am the gatekeeper.
00:59:12.760 That's what he's saying. I get to decide what the parameters are. And I feel really uncomfortable
00:59:17.980 when people are going outside of my controlled circles, like to X with Elon and having a free
00:59:24.500 flowing conversation, Bethany. He's literally, you can see he's uncomfortable with it.
00:59:29.120 Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's completely authoritarian. And what's, what's been interesting having Elon take
00:59:34.480 over X was seeing, you know, we thought we had free speech in this country and then watching
00:59:40.220 the Twitter files come out and seeing, wow, they, they absolutely silenced people who were against
00:59:48.260 all the COVID restrictions. They, they actively worked with the government in order to make sure
00:59:55.140 that people could not speak freely. But I'm thinking back to remember the tips line that Obama had
01:00:02.180 during Obamacare, they've always footsied with this authoritarian stuff where, you know, report,
01:00:07.860 don't, don't, don't, don't be afraid to report misinformation. And we are the determiner of what
01:00:13.820 misinformation is. We saw that really, really balloon during COVID. One of the disturbing things
01:00:21.280 that I heard again and again from doctors when we were researching stolen youth was that they said
01:00:26.520 that the medical associations were making it possible for them to lose their licenses if they spoke
01:00:34.640 misinformation about COVID. And then that definition of misinformation then spread to misinformation
01:00:41.340 about reproductive rights. And you could not give misinformation about reproductive rights if you
01:00:47.480 were an OBGYN. So all of this stuff, all of this authoritarian leanings, it has been going on for 10 years,
01:00:53.700 but really, really hit the gas during COVID.
01:00:57.100 It's, I mean, the conversation was fascinating. I said before on the show, to me, Trump was too rambly.
01:01:02.480 You just got to write tight, Trump, write tight, keep it tight. It's too long. You can't follow.
01:01:10.080 And I'm in the business, you know? So it's like regular civilians are like, I only have a limited
01:01:15.920 amount of time for this. I got to put my kids to bed. I got to get ready for work. You got to write
01:01:20.080 tight anyway. But there were some fascinating exchanges. Here was one in which Trump was trying
01:01:24.840 to make the case against Kamala. Obviously, what's happening sort of overnight is they're rewriting
01:01:31.940 history and making Kamala sound like a moderate when in fact she is far left, like far, far left.
01:01:38.680 Worse than Bernie Sanders. She is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She's a radical
01:01:45.380 left lunatic. And if she's going to be our president very quickly, you're not going to have a country
01:01:51.180 anymore. And she'll go back to all of the things that she believes in. She believes in defunding
01:01:55.960 the police. She believes in no fracking. Zero. Now all of a sudden she's saying, no, I will. I
01:02:03.140 really want to see fracking the day that if they got in the day she got in, she'll end fracking.
01:02:10.780 OK, now here's this is my lead up to the next topic. So that was good. That was actually solid
01:02:17.680 by Trump. Not rambling up and down on a point. Hit her on a few different things. Good, good,
01:02:22.360 good. But too often what we get is the rallies or these long rambling, you know, 90 minute
01:02:29.920 rhetorical journeys. They don't get anywhere near the pickup that they once got. You know,
01:02:36.520 the channels aren't just putting them on TV like they did in 16 because he was a ratings machine
01:02:41.080 that's either not working anymore or they've just finally realized that that's actually not
01:02:46.220 appropriate. I said it in 16 and I'll say it again. You shouldn't just take one side's rallies
01:02:50.560 and put them on television. That's not that's not OK for journalists. But anyway,
01:02:56.000 he's not getting the pickup he wants. And the polls are not looking anywhere near as strong for Trump
01:03:02.200 as they were. It shows a very tight race. The latest New York Times Siena poll shows it's her race
01:03:06.500 by four points in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That's not good. Enter Peter Navarro.
01:03:13.640 Peter Navarro. I mean, a Trump loyalist. He went to jail because he was held in contempt of Congress
01:03:19.000 for not giving up Trump state secrets. You know, his conversations with Trump around J6 and he's out
01:03:26.180 of jail. He's sitting in for another man who's in jail for the same alleged crime. That's Steve Bannon
01:03:30.980 hosting War Room. And Peter Navarro, who's I mean, he loves Trump, obviously.
01:03:36.360 Had the following to say about Trump, the polls and messaging. I think it's very interesting. Listen.
01:03:44.880 The problem you have with with giant figures like Donald Trump
01:03:51.680 is that people may tend to tell him what he wants to hear rather than what he needs to hear.
01:04:02.360 But clearly, the last three weeks have been difficult. There was a decision made to
01:04:09.520 debate Biden prior to him being crowned the nominee. And I'm sure there were good and
01:04:17.480 bad pro and con reasons for that. But you can at least say in hindsight that that was a catastrophic
01:04:27.720 error. It's not just less than 90 days to the election. It's less than half that to early
01:04:36.260 voting. The question is, what is the strategy going to be? Roughly half of the Trump rally speech
01:04:44.820 now is usually scripted red meat for the Trump base. And the current rally formula is simply
01:04:52.560 not sufficiently focused on the very stark policy differences, policy differences between him
01:05:00.660 and Kamala Harris. When Trump attacks Harris personally, rather than on policy,
01:05:08.100 Harris's support among swing voters rises.
01:05:11.940 What do you make of it? Does he have a good point, Carol? Start with you.
01:05:17.140 Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that anybody who wants Donald Trump to win would tell
01:05:23.680 him, run on the issues. Your support will rise if you remind people that just before, you know,
01:05:31.920 COVID, their lives were going great. Economy was going great. The country was going in a good
01:05:36.660 direction. No wars, et cetera. He has an argument to make, but he keeps falling back into this childish
01:05:42.980 name calling, you know, nickname giving thing that resonates with his base. But the base is already
01:05:49.200 there. They're already coming to vote for him. He doesn't need that. He needs a swing voter who's
01:05:54.060 saying, wow, I'm actually thinking about voting for Donald Trump. But then he keeps pushing them away.
01:05:58.560 I think that it's absolutely correct that he can win those voters on the issues. But he keeps playing
01:06:06.380 these games. I just don't know. And the funny thing is, you know, the Trump campaign keeps saying that
01:06:11.280 Kamala is not talking to the press and like they keep pointing this out. Trump should maybe talk to
01:06:16.380 the press just a little bit less, like a little bit less press, a little bit more, you know, talking to
01:06:22.440 union workers in Michigan and trying to get their vote, a little less talking to The New York Times.
01:06:26.880 Well, here was Peter Navarro's prescription, Bethany, which is equally interesting.
01:06:31.740 He says, first idea, the former president immediately begins entering into an interactive
01:06:37.380 jumbotron policy dialogue with Harris. Once Kamala's words are played, then Trump offers his side. And
01:06:47.920 most importantly, he says Trump offers a set of concrete solutions. That's one. Two, before each rally,
01:06:53.760 Trump should hold a press conference with different officials on different issues. Example,
01:06:58.920 Rick Grinnell on foreign policy. And they get into specifically what happened during Biden-Harris
01:07:04.740 and what Trump would do differently were he to be placed in the Oval Office again. Third,
01:07:09.960 insert his own remarks with American citizens harmed by the Biden-Harris administration policies.
01:07:15.580 Like in Pennsylvania, you'd have fracking workers who have lost their jobs. Like put that in the
01:07:21.040 middle of the rallies. That could get some pickup. Fourth, rallies must start on time and only last
01:07:27.360 55 minutes. Less is more. This is back to my right type, right type. What do you, I mean,
01:07:34.820 Bethany, that's so simple. Do we have a person in Donald Trump who is capable of taking this advice?
01:07:41.720 So during the debate, we saw a disciplined Donald Trump that we had never seen before. That Donald
01:07:48.380 Trump was killing it. We have not really seen that discipline since the assassination attempt.
01:07:56.440 Unless I think, I think he's rattled. Someone can't shoot at your head and shoot you through the air and
01:08:01.760 not get rattled. So I think there is definitely that component of it. I was really frustrated and I
01:08:07.640 actually wrote a column for Newsweek and it came out today about J.D. Vance, because I think a lot
01:08:13.080 of these criticisms can be made of the vice presidential candidate as well. He went on all
01:08:17.600 the Sunday shows and he talked about how Kamala Harris, you know, all of his, his woman comments
01:08:23.800 were indicative of the fact that Kamala Harris is anti-family, which I think she is. And I think the
01:08:29.280 Democratic Party is. But the fact is he sat there and said that his prescription was a $5,000 child's
01:08:36.640 tax credit. And, you know, as a mother of six, I'm like more than all for that. But he, he skipped
01:08:44.120 the vote. There was a vote for an increased child tax credit a week and a half ago and he skipped the
01:08:50.260 vote. And so I'm sitting there thinking, you, you, you have the opportunity to do that as a legislator
01:08:57.200 right now. Just like when people say to Kamala Harris, like I, all of these lofty goals, you're in
01:09:02.240 office right now, you could be doing these things. I say the same to J.D. Vance. And he gave another
01:09:07.160 example of, um, it was the child tax credits and then COVID. And he sat there talking about all of
01:09:13.740 the excesses that happened in blue states. And nobody talked about that more than the three of us.
01:09:18.640 But all of those policies about masks were written by the CDC under the Trump White House. I have,
01:09:26.400 as a journalist, tried to figure out who wrote those policies. Why did they differ from the WHO?
01:09:31.800 Because the WHO said that kids should be wearing masks much older when they're more developmentally
01:09:37.260 ready to do that. I have never gotten an answer about why the CDC under president Trump
01:09:42.580 differed so drastically from the WHO. And so when I did control to Fauci and all of his, you know,
01:09:50.080 band of brothers and sisters there who are so zealous, but wait, I, I do want to say something
01:09:54.240 about the child tax credit, because I will confess to you. I've paid almost no attention to that debate,
01:09:58.380 but J.D. Vance raised it when he was on my show and he keeps raising it. So I actually did start
01:10:03.480 looking into it. The reason he didn't show up, I'm sure I, this is this piece of speculation.
01:10:07.500 He didn't show up for the vote. It was defeated by the Republican Senate, uh, by the Republicans in
01:10:11.720 the Senate. And the reason the Republicans came out against that child tax credit as proposed,
01:10:17.600 and you still have a child tax credit, but they were going to revise and change it a bit,
01:10:21.540 uh, was because they said, you've, you've changed it from like a, a tax rebate that you would get
01:10:29.640 upon paying taxes to just a gift. It's no longer under the Democrats new plan linked to income.
01:10:38.060 It's like, it's not going to be a write-off under the new proposal. It's just going to be a gift,
01:10:42.460 which looks like welfare, which Republicans oppose. And there was a long piece in national review by
01:10:47.720 Marco Rubio a couple of months ago that really laid out a strong case for why that wasn't a good
01:10:52.400 bill. They let, he likes the child tax credit and Republicans like they're the ones who raised it
01:10:56.180 from 1000 to 2000 back in 17, but they were saying this is a bad proposal because it changes it into
01:11:02.640 sheer welfare. Yeah. I mean, I think it was frustrating that he didn't show up and that there
01:11:08.700 wasn't a conversation. And so they seated the ground on this whole conversation to Democrats.
01:11:13.620 They made it look really bad because they blocked it and there was no viable alternative offered on
01:11:20.420 the floor. He just didn't show up. And I recognizing he is running for vice president,
01:11:25.580 but it's not a good look when you're sitting there saying my solution is X and you don't show up to the
01:11:31.640 vote and you don't have anything to say, nor has he said anything publicly that I've seen. And I wrote
01:11:36.040 a column about it. I got to hear more from JD on why he didn't show up, but it wouldn't have mattered.
01:11:40.580 They, the, it went down by I think four or five votes. So his vote would not have made the
01:11:44.900 difference. And I have to say personally, I'm against that. I am against that kind of wealth.
01:11:49.080 Like it should be tied to income. That's bullshit. We shouldn't just be handing out with all due,
01:11:52.440 with all due respect to you and your six kids. You shouldn't just get a check because you have
01:11:56.400 six kids. It should be tied to income, which is what the Republicans did. They was originally tried
01:12:00.120 to try tied to income tax, sheer income tax. Then they added in your social security tax payments
01:12:05.680 that it could work against, which was good, good for parents. And then the Democrats were like,
01:12:10.360 let's forget all of that. Just give like, and that just seems like a vote getting welfare mechanism
01:12:14.320 that generally Republicans would not support and didn't hear. Um, okay. So let's keep going because
01:12:19.480 I just had on Nate silver hit. He sounded the alarm the other way. Like don't panic. Carol was what he
01:12:26.120 was saying. He's like, yes, she's got what I think it was a 56% probability of winning right now to
01:12:32.100 Trump's. He she's 46. He's, uh, he's 46. He's 54. You know what I'm trying to say? 54, 46. Um,
01:12:39.500 don't panic though, because it's early and because she's still in the honeymoon period,
01:12:44.080 which is going to go into this convention, but then things will settle down. The other side of
01:12:47.760 the ledger is as Peter Navarro was saying, early voting begins in weeks. And this media seems
01:12:53.640 determined to just run cover for her and all of her leftist Marxist policies, not to mention waltzes
01:13:03.500 walls is until we get past the point of docking banking, real votes.
01:13:11.940 Yeah. Well, I would say that like Nate silver, I play poker. So when it's 53 47 and I have the 53,
01:13:19.260 I don't feel great about it. I don't feel great about it until the hands over. So I don't think
01:13:23.980 anybody should be resting on any laurels on either side right now. I think there was a moment in the
01:13:28.500 Trump campaign where they thought they were unstoppable. And then obviously they swapped
01:13:32.720 out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris, injected a new enthusiasm into the race for the Dems. Um,
01:13:37.900 anything could happen and look, they're going into their convention. The Democrats are going to have
01:13:42.080 their convention. I'm sure they're going to get a bump out of it. Um, you know, unless the,
01:13:45.360 the Hamas next take it over and really make it a disaster that it might become. Um, and the Trump
01:13:51.300 campaign has to be ready for this. They can't just say we are comfortable with where we are.
01:13:57.420 I think neither side could really say that, but I think for a long time, the Trump campaign just was
01:14:01.080 on a trajectory where they didn't think anything could stop them. So I don't think anybody should
01:14:06.580 be comfortable right now. I don't think either side should be resting. Um, I, I'm them I'm in,
01:14:11.440 you know, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania over and over and over again.
01:14:16.740 Don't forget. I do think this, this anti-Israel thing could be interesting, um, with these
01:14:25.000 protesters. I don't, I think we will have protesters at the DNC. I, do you guys think
01:14:29.340 that they staved that off just by picking walls? No, absolutely not. What I think is interesting is
01:14:35.700 at the RNC, there was a hostage family there that the crowd let a cheer, bring them home that
01:14:42.480 and they were family, they were family, the parents of an American hostage. And that's what happened at
01:14:48.340 the RNC. I think though, if they, if hostage family goes to the DNC, they need security. Not
01:14:54.600 only are they not going to be cheering, bring them home, but the DNC need to make sure that family
01:14:58.860 members of hostages being held in Gaza, Americans need to have security. That really is indicative of a
01:15:05.680 real rot within the democratic party. Well, you think they will have a family member of a hostage?
01:15:11.880 I mean, they should, but who knows? I don't think so. But I think there will be protests in Chicago
01:15:18.280 because look, they already protested her on the trail post picking walls. So they're going to be
01:15:23.320 there. They're not, they didn't put that story to bed. And I do think it's interesting though,
01:15:27.360 Carol, that this plan by these young democratic socialists of America, those are the ones who were
01:15:32.480 literally in the streets of New York celebrating on 10 seven, literally celebrating the death of all
01:15:38.100 the Jews. Yay. This is before any retaliatory campaign. That's the group. So now they're
01:15:44.020 getting their act back together because campuses are opening back up. And this new thing that I said
01:15:48.340 in the intro is like a sick out of kind and they're predicting. And I'm quoting here from the piece that
01:15:55.040 was in the free press. No one can ignore large swathes of empty classrooms. No one can just turn
01:16:02.700 around and plug their ears when the university can no longer call itself a university. I'm not sure
01:16:10.780 they're not there. I think I just keep going on teaching my class and ignoring them.
01:16:15.660 I mean, first of all, I wish I had come up with a cause that I could strike out for in college and
01:16:21.560 not get penalized. I think that that's really where I went wrong in my college career, but that's
01:16:26.420 really the thing. These colleges already have rules about attending classes or about how many classes
01:16:31.960 you need to get to, or about the work you need to get done. And yet they're overlooking these rules
01:16:36.940 for these protesters. So at some point the protesters are not wrong. The colleges are responsible here.
01:16:43.540 Are they going to hold these students accountable for not showing up to class for days and weeks at a
01:16:48.300 time, or aren't they? And I think that this is the problem in so many facets of our society. I think
01:16:54.080 that we don't enforce rules that already exist. We don't enforce laws that already exist. I was in
01:16:59.380 Singapore this summer, not saying we should cane anybody, but everybody comes back from Singapore
01:17:03.940 saying, oh, it's so clean. It's so nice. It's so law abiding. They have largely the same laws about
01:17:08.680 littering and everything else that we do. They just enforce those laws. So the colleges need to understand
01:17:14.500 that we're going to be looking at them and saying, are you going to enforce the rules or do these
01:17:19.240 protesters get a pass for not going to class for weeks at a time? Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting
01:17:24.660 dynamic though, Bethany, because I don't, that won't have the visual effect that the tentafata did,
01:17:29.480 which I think she'll be very grateful for. Go ahead. Yeah. No, Rutgers University at,
01:17:35.660 at the orientation and I went to Rutgers and it's a garbage school and no one should go there,
01:17:39.400 but it's for this reason. They, they had protests at orientation and parents were like,
01:17:46.020 what's going on? Like they don't enforce policies. At the end of the day, they need the visual. They
01:17:51.320 need something. But so much of what all of these protests were was performative and it was about
01:17:58.660 status. And it was about, you know, you're in with the right line of thinking. It, it, they don't
01:18:04.220 actually believe what they were saying. And if they did, they would be in the streets protesting for
01:18:08.480 Bangladesh right now. They don't actually care about any of this stuff. And that's what's most
01:18:13.180 disturbing to me. That this is what Douglas Murray has been saying. And he's in trouble over in the UK.
01:18:21.820 They're trying to cancel him yet again. I mean, truly there's no more courageous, effective truth
01:18:28.760 teller in the world than Douglas Murray. He's my number one. I listen to him with bated breath.
01:18:36.460 I try not to breathe. I try not to let my stomach growl. I just listen. Like I have to take every
01:18:44.040 word of this in everything he says is so spot on. And one of the things he was saying was that if this
01:18:53.720 really were about their heartstrings being pulled for the poor Palestinians, we would see protests
01:19:00.800 everywhere. We'd see protests in Yemen. We'd see protests in China where they're undertaking a
01:19:08.000 genocide against Muslim Uyghurs. None of it. Lebanon. Yeah. Over and over. It's about Jews and they'll find
01:19:17.420 a different reason to tell us that we need to hate the Jews and the Jews are bad depending on the news
01:19:22.200 cycle. But he has seen through that. And he's also been very critical of the UK immigration policy.
01:19:28.440 And so now his haters are trying to blame what's happening in the UK streets on him. We can get
01:19:34.160 into that in more detail. Yeah, I think that what they're doing to Douglas Murray is indicative of how
01:19:41.460 afraid they are of his arguments. His book that came out, I think it's several years ago now, he's
01:19:46.820 getting for a book that predicted the problems that Britain was going to go through. And so him being
01:19:53.440 kind of a fortune teller of where the things were going to go, which I think was obvious to a lot of,
01:19:58.720 you know, right thinking people has gotten him into trouble. And we're going back to our first
01:20:03.160 conversation on the show where, you know, they don't have the kind of free speech protections that
01:20:07.820 we do. So a book written several years ago, inciting violence today is something that potentially
01:20:13.980 makes sense to, to, you know, the British left. And that's terrifying. And look, Douglas Murray is ours
01:20:20.380 now. They can't have him anymore. I think we should make him American as quick as possible.
01:20:25.360 Maybe that's the first thing you should do. He should. That's exactly right. He, um, he was making
01:20:31.260 the point, and we're going to get into this a little bit, uh, in more detail later this week,
01:20:35.060 but he was making the point in an interview a few years back and promoting the book that he's sick and
01:20:42.340 tired of these protesters, uh, coming to the UK or to America only to tell us how much they
01:20:50.180 hate our guts and how shitty our countries are and how they want us to, I guess, obey Sharia law.
01:20:57.320 They do actually say that in some of these protests. And he, in the perfectly indignant
01:21:03.060 Douglas Murray tone took on that among other points. I'll just play you a little. Here's
01:21:07.940 sod 18. I don't want them to live here. I don't want them here. They came under false pretences.
01:21:15.780 Many of them came illegally and continue to come illegally. And we don't want them here.
01:21:21.780 And I'm perfectly willing to say that because it needs to be said. If I hated Australia, hated the
01:21:30.260 Australian people, hated Australian history, hated the Australian way of life, broke into the country
01:21:35.700 illegally and spent my time trying to undermine Australia. Why should I be in Australia? Why?
01:21:41.540 What would I have brought the country? What benefit? What moral benefit? What financial benefit? What
01:21:48.340 social benefit? The answer is you'd have brought no benefit. So why, why just hope that those people
01:21:57.540 are not in large enough numbers and keep your fingers crossed and put it off for another day?
01:22:02.340 I think we have to start saying very clearly, if you don't like it here, go.
01:22:10.100 And if you don't like it here and you intend to make it worse, we will make you go.
01:22:14.500 Yes. Yes. So sane. Yeah.
01:22:20.180 Yep. I mean, the same with all these campus protesters here on, on visas.
01:22:24.820 Yes. So Douglas Murray is a threat because he's such an effective truth teller and he just keeps
01:22:32.420 saying more truths, which bother, uh, you know, the leftists, but he's putting his thumb on exactly
01:22:38.100 the right problem because it's not just a UK problem. It's absolutely a problem here. That's
01:22:43.060 the guy we need making our case over on the right for the reason why we can't have four more years
01:22:49.300 of Kamala Harris. We need those points being made, Bethany. You know, it's like,
01:22:54.020 this is my frustration with Trump. You know, I just, when I hear him do the rambling wind up and
01:23:01.300 it's fine, like Peter Navarro is right. The red meat for the base is entertaining, but he's there with
01:23:07.460 him. They're with him. You need those kinds of arguments being made about how, what a terrible
01:23:14.740 position we've all been put in because of our open border and how now things are going to get
01:23:21.060 more explosive. We just saw a woman get, get raped at gunpoint this week in New York in front of her
01:23:28.020 spouse or fiance. We're going to have more just like it. If we continue these open border policies
01:23:35.700 and her statements now that she's some sort of a border hawk are not to be believed.
01:23:41.140 Yeah. Yeah. I thought that one of the best portions of the space last night with Elon Musk
01:23:47.220 was when Trump talked about October 7th. And he said, you know, that can happen here. And I think
01:23:53.060 that that's, that's a lot of why Americans are not paying attention to the fact that Americans are
01:23:58.420 being held in Gaza, because we think that we're somehow immune. We're not immune. We have people
01:24:03.060 coming over the border who are threats to national security, who want to commit another 10,
01:24:07.700 seven here. September 11th was history for a lot of people, but there are a lot of voters who remember
01:24:14.260 that day and they'll never forget it. And we need to put back, put, put on our, our go back machine
01:24:21.060 and remember those moments. Remember that feeling because we can have that here. Um, and if we continue
01:24:27.780 these open border policies, we're absolutely going to see a replay of October 7th here.
01:24:31.700 You know, not only has she been pretty squishy on Israel and this whole conflict, but she chooses Tim
01:24:39.700 Walsh. And in the news this week is the fact that he's, he's apparently pretty tight with this guy
01:24:48.100 in Minnesota. Hold on. I want to make sure I get his name correct. Um, Imam Assad Zaman. He is a
01:24:57.060 quote, Hitler promoting Imam, according to the DC examiner, a master teacher, according to Tim Walsh.
01:25:05.860 Uh, and he offered Tim Walsh lessons over some period of time. Tim Walsh admits they quote spent
01:25:13.140 time together in which he was giving Tim Walsh some sort of lessons. And this is a guy who
01:25:19.940 is apparently a big fan of Adolf Hitler and Walsh has appeared with him several times. He's a local
01:25:27.400 Muslim leader in Minnesota. He has justified Hamas terrorist violence. Um, reading here from a
01:25:34.100 Breitbart piece, which is quoting the Washington examiner. And this pro Hitler thing is because
01:25:39.100 he shared a film on social media that is some six hours long and just kind of re-imagines Hitler
01:25:45.700 as just, I guess in the way Tim Walsh re-imagines socialism as something that's just neighborly.
01:25:50.460 It re-imagines Hitler as just something who's like some guy who's kind of a vuncular, you know,
01:25:54.940 I don't know, Carol, but every day we get a new piece of info that doesn't suggest is going to be
01:26:00.800 a very particularly friendly administration toward, uh, our friends in Israel.
01:26:05.520 Well, that's, I feel like absolutely right. And I, Trump hit the Israel point several times last night
01:26:11.280 in a bunch of different ways. I mean, as you said, he mentioned, he tied it to the border.
01:26:15.700 Um, he talked about the fact that if he was president, you know, he doesn't think October
01:26:19.060 7th would have happened, et cetera. I think it's on his mind in a way that I think that with
01:26:25.160 democratic ticket, it's on their mind as like, how much can we minimize this so that we don't
01:26:29.820 get in trouble talking about it. And this is the kind of thing where the Tim Walsh and the,
01:26:34.460 and this Imam, these are the people that they're openly courting. And you can't deny that those are
01:26:40.620 the people who are going to be disrupting the convention. I think that that's exactly where they're
01:26:44.560 afraid to go and they're afraid to talk about this topic. So they end up, you know, having,
01:26:49.840 having these crazies in the party, in the tent, interrupting them and screaming at them. Now,
01:26:54.840 of course the media has been papering over these interruptions and Oh, Kamala, isn't she so,
01:27:01.060 you know, just so cool in the way that she shuts them down. But I'm going to have a hard time seeing
01:27:05.880 her shut down a lot of them. And that's going to be a much tougher thing for the media to cover up.
01:27:10.920 So I think that we're in a situation where a lot of the policies that they're pushing are
01:27:16.720 specifically tied to not having these conversations.
01:27:22.000 Here's Tim Walsh speaking about this Imam, Bethany. He's on camera, 15.
01:27:27.200 I would like to, first of all, say thank you to Imam. I am a teacher. So when I see a master teacher,
01:27:36.140 I know it. And over the time we've spent together, one of the things, one of the things I've had the
01:27:43.940 privilege of is seeing the things in life through the eye of a master teacher to try and get the
01:27:49.840 understanding. So he's a big fan of this guy who, for the record, this Imam, after a one party leader
01:27:57.280 in Minnesota posted on 10-7 that he was beyond heartbroken to see what happened in Israel and
01:28:02.220 that he knew some of the people who, and they were brutally killed or kidnapped. This guy responded
01:28:07.120 that the person expressing the sympathy and his group cannot be joined at the hip to apartheid Israel
01:28:14.940 and still hope to count the Muslim vote. That was in response to a 10-7 post that was expressing
01:28:21.740 sadness for what had happened. This is exactly the kind of thing that used to be able to ruin an
01:28:28.060 entire campaign. But when you have all of the media running cover for you, it's fine. He won't
01:28:33.500 even be asked about it. That's the overwhelming likelihood here. So it's funny because Gabe Kaminsky
01:28:40.980 at the Washington Examiner uncovered this stuff within like, I don't know, a week and a half since
01:28:45.060 he was named the vice presidential nominee. So my question is, was he vetted? If he was and this was
01:28:51.640 found and they decided to run with him anyway, that's terrifying. My suspicion is they thought that
01:28:57.720 they were going to go with Josh Shapiro until there was such a insurrection within the Democratic Party
01:29:04.000 that God forbid that they choose someone with the last name Shapiro that they pivoted at the last
01:29:08.420 minute to Waltz and they didn't do their research. The fact that they didn't choose Shapiro when the
01:29:14.200 reality is a lot of his policies and public statements about Israel mirrored that of Waltz is because he's
01:29:20.520 Jewish. There is a real fundamental problem within the Democratic Party. And we've heard Canales say
01:29:27.680 about these protesters, I understand the emotion. I understand where they're coming from.
01:29:33.060 It's wildly inappropriate for an American president to be saying that when one of our closest allies
01:29:39.700 is facing an existential war for its survival, that can come to our shores tomorrow.
01:29:44.740 Yeah. And not to mention the people she felt such sympathy for are tearing down posters of American
01:29:52.280 hostages, like, and is Israel hostages, including babies. And it's, oh, I understand your anger. Really?
01:30:01.300 Well, not in that context. No. All right. Stand by. Quick break. Back with more. Bethany and Carol. Stay with me.
01:30:06.280 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest,
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01:31:05.320 So it appears that no good deed goes unpunished because even though J.D. Vance wrote this bestselling
01:31:16.300 book, Hillbilly Elegy, that was made into a film by Ron Howard that cast Glenn Close in the iconic role
01:31:25.240 of J.D.'s Mamaw. Glenn Close is not grateful for any of those opportunities because, by the way,
01:31:33.100 for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award
01:31:40.460 because today she's out there taking shots at J.D. Vance because Hollywood leftists are going to do
01:31:47.340 their leftist thing. She posted on her Instagram on Monday a photo of herself and her cat. You know
01:31:55.960 where this is going. The message was Eve would have left a bleeding mouse head in the bed of anyone who
01:32:02.440 criticized any kind of lady with a cat. Now, of course, the media is loving it. Carol, you've got
01:32:10.560 Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, Deadline, New York Magazine, all out there with headlines along the
01:32:17.380 lines of New York mags, which was Glenn Close and her cat bite back at J.D. Vance. To me, this is just
01:32:23.760 so gross. You got all those awards because he told his family story and you played someone who is so
01:32:29.400 important to him. And by the way, the whole point of his stories about her were to show you the
01:32:37.040 importance of the most powerful female in his life, the woman who shaped him more than any other
01:32:44.820 to whom the whole book is an homage. But you can't see through that. You've got to essentially attack
01:32:51.420 him as being a misogynist because of the cat comment. It's absurd. It's sort of funny. Well,
01:32:57.960 first of all, I would say that the Glenn Closes of the world have to tell their team that they're still
01:33:03.240 part of the squad. I know I did the movie where I played Meemaw or whatever. And I know that that
01:33:10.360 makes me possibly aligned with J.D. Vance somehow. But I want you to know that I would never and here's
01:33:16.320 my cat and I will speak out against this man. It's a way of keeping them in line, right? I think that
01:33:22.080 that's how Hollywood polices each other. But of course, there's no waiting for the media to be fair.
01:33:29.440 And I think that they love covering this kind of thing. Celine Dion asked them not to play,
01:33:34.420 you know, one of her songs at their rallies. And it was just all over the media. They just enjoy so
01:33:39.660 much covering these meaningless squabbles because they can't cover what Kamala is saying. She's not
01:33:46.080 really saying anything. So this is what they do instead. I just I think it's just so nasty. Honestly,
01:33:53.060 like I had this Bethany, I've told a story before, but like Charlize Theron and her friends basically
01:33:58.560 cribbed my entire book for that movie Bombshell. And she played yours truly. And then on her press
01:34:03.540 tour, she went on out and kept dumping on me. It was like, first of all, you stole my book. You
01:34:09.400 stole my very intimate story. And you didn't pay me anything, not that it was for sale. And then you
01:34:14.920 like and you took all this time to play this story. You took absolutely no time to actually get to know
01:34:20.220 what me. And then you decided to just spend your whole press tour dumping on me. Like what the
01:34:25.480 Hollywood is disgusting. Just take your fucking award and slink away.
01:34:30.620 Yeah. I mean, it makes them look bad at the end of the day. It's not it doesn't it doesn't
01:34:35.520 impact my impression of J.D. Vance seeing Glenn Close do that. I look at that and I think that's
01:34:40.720 trashy and that's a trashy move on all of their parts on Glenn Close's part, all of them. And
01:34:46.460 all of this stuff is what makes people want to vote for Trump, because this like elitist,
01:34:53.680 holier than thou, like bullshit that they do makes me hate them and makes me want to see them lose.
01:35:01.740 And so this is the stuff that radicalizes me, but in the other direction.
01:35:05.600 Mm hmm. Yes. I just feel like have the class to say, I'm going to sit this one out. You know,
01:35:11.900 I of course she's voting Democrat. Nobody thought otherwise. But just you know what? I'm sure she
01:35:18.280 met him. There's zero chance she didn't meet him when she did that movie. Just have the class to sit
01:35:24.340 this particular one. Not every fight requires you to participate. But you're right, Carol. In Hollywood,
01:35:30.640 she's got to shore up her bona fides like she's probably getting some incoming like how could you
01:35:35.120 play his grandmother? Right. And so she's got a telegraph. I'm with you.
01:35:39.980 She needs to make a spectacle of it. That's you know, that's how communism works.
01:35:45.040 Well, we're not going to get the media to change anytime soon. That's for sure.
01:35:49.140 I'll leave you with this soundbite from Michael Steele, who used to run the RNC,
01:35:53.960 but he's a Republican like Nicole Wallace is a Republican. Both ladies are shaking their heads
01:35:58.080 no immediately. And now he's running cover for the fact that we're not hearing from Kamala Harris.
01:36:03.680 And according to her own statement, won't anytime until perhaps September. Listen to him.
01:36:11.120 What has struck me since Donald Trump's press conference is sort of the sort of highbrow
01:36:17.500 nature of the press coming at Kamala Harris saying, well, she, in my view, whining that she hasn't,
01:36:25.760 she doesn't talk to us. She hasn't done a sit down with us. She hasn't done interviews with us.
01:36:31.500 And I watched that press conference and I go, well, when you start actually asking real questions
01:36:37.060 of Donald Trump and pressing him, then that sort of creates a space of balance. But right now,
01:36:42.760 is there a real need for her to sort of, you know, get the imprimatur of the press on her campaign and
01:36:48.240 her efforts when she's having a very good conversation seemingly with the American people without them?
01:36:53.320 What conversation? Where is she having a conversation with the American people?
01:36:59.280 I, I, it just, it's unbelievable to me that they could say stuff like that with a straight face.
01:37:04.060 Like what a sellout. He used to be, you know, sort of a moderate Republican who would say
01:37:09.440 occasionally smart things. And now he's become this sycophant on the left who will say anything.
01:37:14.800 The media loves Kamala Harris. They're not going to give her tough questions. They're going to give
01:37:18.900 her the easiest possible questions that she could answer with no problem. I would love to see her
01:37:24.100 do a conversation like Trump did with Elon Musk with, you know, anybody of her choice. It doesn't
01:37:30.380 have to be Elon. She could pick somebody on the left that will, she could pick Michael Steele and
01:37:35.020 they could have a conversation. I'd love to see her get into a long range conversation for over an hour
01:37:40.860 talking about all kinds of things. Let's see that happen.
01:37:44.300 We'll take what we can get, but it'd be better with adversarial media. So we could actually learn
01:37:48.040 something Trump faces them all the time. Bethany, I'll give you the last word.
01:37:52.780 I mean, if you watched JD Vance going into the line of fire, I mean, I didn't love everything
01:37:57.140 he said on all the Sunday shows, but he actually took the time to spend in a sit down conversation
01:38:02.460 with all three of those, of those networks. We will never see that from Kamala. And I I'm hopeful
01:38:07.660 that once the honeymoon wears off and people actually hear what she says, she is not a very strong
01:38:14.140 candidate. And once people see that, I'm hoping that, you know, her numbers will go down, but she,
01:38:20.140 I think she realizes that Biden made a mistake in letting himself be participate in the, in the
01:38:26.460 debate. And she's not going to let herself make the same mistake.
01:38:30.280 Ladies, a pleasure. Thanks for being here.
01:38:33.080 You're so much prettier and smarter than Charlize Theron. I just want to add that.
01:38:37.460 I don't know about that, but thank you. I'll take smarter. Thank you. We're back tomorrow with
01:38:42.280 the fifth call. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no.
01:38:48.980 I don't know.
01:39:02.140 I don't know.
01:39:04.240 I don't know.