(00:00:00):
Thank you, Governor.

(00:00:00):
And just to clarify for our viewers,

(00:00:03):
Springfield,

(00:00:03):
Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status,

(00:00:09):
temporary protected status.

(00:00:12):
Senator, we have so much to get to.

(00:00:15):
We're going to turn out of the economy.

(00:00:16):
Thank you.

(00:00:17):
Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check.

(00:00:19):
And since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on.

(00:00:24):
So there's an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant,

(00:00:29):
apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a

(00:00:36):
Kamala Harris open border wand.

(00:00:38):
That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years.

(00:00:42):
Thank you, Senator.

(00:00:44):
of illegal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership.

(00:00:46):
Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process.

(00:00:49):
We have so much to get to, Senator.

(00:00:52):
Those laws have been on the books since 1990.

(00:00:54):
Thank you, gentlemen.

(00:00:55):
The CBP1F has not been on the books since 1990.

(00:00:59):
It's something that Kamala Harris created, Margaret.

(00:01:01):
Gentlemen, the audience can't hear you because your mics are cut.

(00:01:05):
We have so much we want to get to.

(00:01:07):
Thank you for explaining the legal process.

(00:01:10):
Nora.

(00:01:10):
Thank you, Margaret.

(00:01:12):
That was one of the hottest moments in the Tuesday,

(00:01:16):
1st of October debate between Tim Walz,

(00:01:18):
the Democratic vice presidential nominee,

(00:01:21):
and J.D.

(00:01:21):
Vance, running as vice presidential candidate for the Republicans.

(00:01:26):
Unlike the September debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,

(00:01:29):
the rules for this one were that the CBS news moderators,

(00:01:33):
Norah Donnell and Margaret Brennan,

(00:01:36):
would not fact check the candidates.

(00:01:38):
And in fact, aside from the contentious moment you've just heard, they didn't.

(00:01:43):
In a strange turn of events, waltz and bands were told that they could fact each other.

(00:01:48):
This fundamentally undermines the whole idea that fact-checking is carried out by

(00:01:52):
independent observers and further reinforces the post-truth condition we find

(00:01:56):
ourselves in,

(00:01:57):
where if we are to listen to US Republicans and their right-wing allies around the world,

(00:02:02):
truth is what one makes of it.

(00:02:05):
Moderators fact checking in the US vice presidential debate was dropped due to Republican pressure.

(00:02:11):
Their team claimed that in the previous debate,

(00:02:13):
the one featuring presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,

(00:02:17):
the ABC News moderators only fact checked Trump.

(00:02:20):
But for those of us who still believe that truth and facts matter,

(00:02:25):
CNN concluded that Donald Trump made more than 30 false claims,

(00:02:29):
while Kamala Harris only won.

(00:02:31):
Little surprise then that the moderators would take on Trump, but not Harris.

(00:02:36):
You are listening to episode four of Weird, a global take on the US election.

(00:02:40):
You can check the previous episodes of this podcast on weirdpodcast.com and on

(00:02:45):
podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

(00:02:48):
My name is Vito Laterza.

(00:02:50):
I'm an anthropologist,

(00:02:51):
political analyst and associate professor at the University of Agder in Kristiansand,

(00:02:55):
Norway.

(00:02:56):
I'm currently based in Uppsala, Sweden, where I'm a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

(00:03:01):
So was it a good choice to let Waltz and Vance fact check each other?

(00:03:06):
Did it make for a better debate?

(00:03:08):
These are some of the questions I will tackle today as I provide some analysis on

(00:03:12):
how the two candidates performed in the debate and what they conveyed to their

(00:03:16):
intended audiences.

(00:03:18):
Let's hear what Vance and Waltz said about immigration before the quarrel you just heard.

(00:03:24):
Now,

(00:03:24):
Governor Waltz brought up the community of Springfield,

(00:03:27):
and he's very worried about the things that I've said in Springfield.

(00:03:31):
Look,

(00:03:32):
in Springfield,

(00:03:32):
Ohio,

(00:03:33):
and in communities all across this country,

(00:03:36):
you've got schools that are overwhelmed.

(00:03:38):
You've got hospitals that are overwhelmed.

(00:03:40):
You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of

(00:03:44):
illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.

(00:03:47):
The people that I'm most worried about in Springfield,

(00:03:49):
Ohio,

(00:03:50):
are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris's

(00:03:55):
open border.

(00:03:56):
It is a disgrace, Tim.

(00:03:57):
And I actually think I agree with you.

(00:03:59):
I think you want to solve this problem, but I don't think that Kamala Harris does.

(00:04:02):
Senator, your time is up.

(00:04:03):
Governor, you have one minute to respond.

(00:04:05):
Yeah, well, it is law enforcement that asked for the bill.

(00:04:09):
They helped craft it.

(00:04:11):
They're the ones that supported it.

(00:04:12):
That's because they know we need to do this.

(00:04:15):
Look,

(00:04:15):
this issue of continuing to bring this up,

(00:04:18):
of not dealing with it,

(00:04:19):
of blaming migrants for everything,

(00:04:22):
On housing,

(00:04:23):
we could talk a little bit about Wall Street speculators buying up housing and

(00:04:26):
making them less affordable.

(00:04:28):
But it becomes a blame.

(00:04:29):
Look, this bill also gives the money necessary to adjudicate.

(00:04:34):
I agree it should not take seven years for an asylum claim to be done.

(00:04:38):
This bill gets it done in 90 days.

(00:04:40):
Then you start to make a difference in this and you start to adhere to what we know, American principles.

(00:04:45):
I don't talk about my faith a lot,

(00:04:47):
but Matthew 25,

(00:04:49):
40 talks about to the least amongst us,

(00:04:51):
you do unto me.

(00:04:52):
I think that's true of most Americans.

(00:04:54):
They simply want order to it.

(00:04:56):
This bill does it.

(00:04:58):
It's funded.

(00:04:59):
It's supported by the people who do it.

(00:05:00):
And it lets us keep our dignity about how we treat other people.

(00:05:07):
So what's happening here?

(00:05:09):
I mean, we hear Waltz talking about the bill.

(00:05:12):
He's referring to the bipartisan bill that the Democrats were trying to push to

(00:05:18):
show their tough stance on immigration.

(00:05:20):
So fundamentally pandering to the right wing with the kind of explosion of

(00:05:26):
anti-immigrant sentiment that has taken the U.S.,

(00:05:29):
something that we've seen in the last few years in Europe,

(00:05:32):
too.

(00:05:33):
So,

(00:05:33):
Waltz is saying one of the key refrains of the Harris-Waltz campaign is basically

(00:05:39):
the bill was there,

(00:05:40):
the Republicans were on board,

(00:05:42):
or at least most of them were in Congress,

(00:05:44):
and then Trump basically gave an order to just sink the bill so that he could

(00:05:48):
exploit that electorally.

(00:05:50):
I continue to say,

(00:05:51):
like Vance is saying here,

(00:05:53):
that Kamala Harris is just keeping borders open and letting everybody in.

(00:05:58):
On the other hand, what we have is basically vans.

(00:06:03):
keeping on this constant obsession with immigration, very much like his presidential mate, Donald Trump.

(00:06:12):
And throughout the whole debate, anything that Vance can blame on immigration, he does.

(00:06:18):
So migrants are to blame for rising housing prices,

(00:06:22):
they are to blame for low wages,

(00:06:23):
they are to blame for drugs,

(00:06:25):
they are to blame for like gun crime,

(00:06:27):
et cetera,

(00:06:27):
et cetera.

(00:06:28):
So whenever Vance wants to kind of spin or he doesn't want to answer a question,

(00:06:35):
he wants to deflect,

(00:06:37):
he goes back to immigration.

(00:06:38):
We've seen a very similar dynamic actually in the Harris-Trump debate with Donald Trump.

(00:06:44):
And we analyzed that in the previous episode with the Louis Römer episode three

(00:06:49):
that you can check in our archives.

(00:06:52):
But let's go back for a minute to the issue of fact checking.

(00:06:56):
The dynamic here, it's quite different if we look at the Harris-Trump debate.

(00:07:02):
And in fact,

(00:07:03):
the ABC News anchors did a pretty good job in taking on Trump,

(00:07:08):
even compared to that contentious moment you just heard at the beginning of this podcast.

(00:07:14):
You can see here how David Muir fact-checks Trump on the false claims that Asian

(00:07:19):
immigrants are killing and eating their neighbors' pets,

(00:07:23):
for which,

(00:07:23):
of course,

(00:07:24):
there is no evidence.

(00:07:27):
In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

(00:07:31):
They're eating the cats.

(00:07:33):
They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

(00:07:39):
And this is what's happening in our country.

(00:07:41):
And it's a shame.

(00:07:42):
As far as rallies are concerned, as far as the reason they go is they like what I say.

(00:07:49):
They want to bring our country back.

(00:07:51):
They want to make America great again.

(00:07:52):
It's a very simple phrase, make America great again.

(00:07:55):
She's destroying this country.

(00:07:57):
And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success.

(00:08:02):
Not only success will end up being Venezuela on steroids.

(00:08:07):
I just want to clarify here.

(00:08:08):
You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.

(00:08:12):
He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed,

(00:08:17):
injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.

(00:08:20):
Blessing people on television.

(00:08:21):
Let me just say here.

(00:08:23):
The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.

(00:08:27):
So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

(00:08:31):
I'm not taking this from television.

(00:08:32):
But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

(00:08:37):
Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.

(00:08:40):
Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you've heard.

(00:08:44):
So you can hear here quite a different dynamic.

(00:08:48):
The tone of the Harris Trump debate was much more confrontational.

(00:08:52):
I'm not going to go into the details of the debate.

(00:08:54):
We already discussed it in episode three.

(00:08:56):
You can go back to that.

(00:08:58):
But the point here is that there is really a big difference with what happened with the waltz and bands.

(00:09:04):
In fact,

(00:09:04):
many media commentators talked about a much more what they call the civil debate,

(00:09:09):
much more respectful.

(00:09:11):
there were several moments when both of them,

(00:09:14):
both waltz and bands appeared quite conciliatory with their opponents.

(00:09:19):
They almost mirrored each other in this.

(00:09:21):
You know,

(00:09:21):
they say things like,

(00:09:22):
well,

(00:09:22):
I agree with you,

(00:09:23):
but we share quite a lot of common ground,

(00:09:26):
but,

(00:09:26):
and then of course they will mark their differences.

(00:09:29):
You heard Vance earlier saying that he believes that Waltz agrees with him.

(00:09:33):
Not quite clear on what though, but not Kamala Harris, right?

(00:09:36):
Waltz uses the same tactic elsewhere.

(00:09:39):
He agrees with much of what,

(00:09:40):
you know,

(00:09:41):
Vance says,

(00:09:42):
but he then says,

(00:09:43):
well,

(00:09:43):
your presidential mate Trump actually doesn't agree,

(00:09:46):
you know,

(00:09:46):
with you.

(00:09:47):
So there's one highlight of this more,

(00:09:50):
if you say,

(00:09:51):
courteous dynamic almost between the two candidates that to me captures what was

(00:09:57):
going on throughout the debate.

(00:09:59):
Here's Waltz talking about gun violence.

(00:10:02):
Governor, you have two minutes.

(00:10:04):
Well, I think all the parents watching tonight, this is your biggest nightmare.

(00:10:07):
Look, I got a 17-year-old, and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball.

(00:10:14):
Those things don't leave you.

(00:10:15):
As a member of Congress,

(00:10:17):
I sat in my office surrounded by dozens of the Sandy Hook parents,

(00:10:22):
and they were looking at my 7-year-old picture on the wall.

(00:10:24):
Their 7-year-old were dead, and they were asking us to do something.

(00:10:28):
And look, I'm a hunter.

(00:10:29):
I own firearms.

(00:10:31):
The vice president is.

(00:10:32):
We understand that the Second Amendment,

(00:10:34):
is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out.

(00:10:38):
In Minnesota,

(00:10:39):
we've enacted enhanced red flag laws,

(00:10:43):
enhanced background checks,

(00:10:44):
and we can start to get data.

(00:10:46):
But here's the problem.

(00:10:47):
If we really want to solve this,

(00:10:48):
we've got folks that won't allow research to be even done on gun violence.

(00:10:53):
And this idea that we should just live with it,

(00:10:56):
and here's what I do think,

(00:10:58):
that this is a good start to the conversation.

(00:11:00):
I 100% believe that Senator Vance

(00:11:03):
hates it when these kids, it's abhorrent and it breaks your heart.

(00:11:07):
I agree with that.

(00:11:08):
But that's not far enough when we know there are things that work.

(00:11:12):
I've spent time in Finland and seen some Finnish schools.

(00:11:16):
They don't have this happen, even though they have a high gun ownership rate in the country.

(00:11:21):
There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference.

(00:11:25):
It's not infringing on your Second Amendment.

(00:11:27):
And the idea to have some of these weapons out there, it just doesn't make any sense.

(00:11:32):
Kamala Harris, as an attorney general, worked on this issue.

(00:11:36):
She knows that it's there.

(00:11:37):
No one's trying to scaremonger and say, we're taking your guns, but I ask all of you out there,

(00:11:42):
Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?

(00:11:45):
Is that what we have to go when we know there's countries around the world that

(00:11:51):
their children aren't practicing these types of drills?

(00:11:54):
They're being kids.

(00:11:55):
We owe it to them to get a fix.

(00:11:57):
These are things that shouldn't be that difficult.

(00:11:59):
You can still keep your firearms and we can make a difference.

(00:12:02):
We have to.

(00:12:03):
If you're listening tonight, this breaks your heart.

(00:12:06):
And here is Vance's response.

(00:12:11):
Senator.

(00:12:11):
Tim, first of all, I didn't know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting.

(00:12:14):
I'm sorry about that.

(00:12:15):
I appreciate you saying that.

(00:12:16):
Christ have mercy.

(00:12:18):
It is awful.

(00:12:19):
And I appreciate what Tim said,

(00:12:20):
actually,

(00:12:21):
about Finland,

(00:12:22):
because I do think it illustrates some of the,

(00:12:24):
frankly,

(00:12:24):
weird differences between our own country's gun violence problem and Finland.

(00:12:29):
First of all, we have way higher rates of mental health abuse or mental health substance abuse.

(00:12:37):
We have way higher rates of depression, way higher rates of anxiety.

(00:12:40):
We unfortunately have a mental health crisis in this country that I really do think

(00:12:44):
that we need to get to the root causes of,

(00:12:46):
because I don't think it's the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem,

(00:12:49):
but I do think it's a big piece of it.

(00:12:51):
Another driver of the gun violence epidemic,

(00:12:53):
especially that affecting our kids,

(00:12:55):
it doesn't earn as many headlines,

(00:12:57):
but is the terrible gun violence problem in a lot of our big cities.

(00:13:01):
And this is why we have to empower law enforcement to arrest the bad guys,

(00:13:05):
put them away,

(00:13:06):
and take gun offenders off the streets.

(00:13:08):
I think there's a whole host of things that we can do here,

(00:13:11):
but I do think at our schools we've got to talk about more security.

(00:13:15):
So Vance is showing sympathy for the ordeal that Waltz's son has gone through.

(00:13:22):
And Waltz was already sounding quite conciliatory, right?

(00:13:26):
This is a good start of the conversation.

(00:13:28):
I believe my opponent doesn't like gun violence either.

(00:13:31):
And then Vance goes on on something pretty reasonable, right?

(00:13:35):
As they kind of legitimize each other,

(00:13:38):
then now Vance sounds pretty normal, right?

(00:13:40):
We discussed already this in episode two, when we looked at this more kind of libertarian thinking.

(00:13:46):
What Vance does, he starts with what sounds like a pretty noxious point, the one about mental health.

(00:13:52):
It's not quite clear where he wants to go,

(00:13:53):
but you know,

(00:13:54):
there doesn't seem to be anything particularly wrong with that.

(00:13:57):
And then goes back,

(00:13:58):
still with the same reasonable tone,

(00:14:01):
to say that the bad guys with guns in cities,

(00:14:04):
these are the ones that need to be arrested.

(00:14:06):
So we need more law enforcement.

(00:14:08):
So here we're just back again to the xenophobic innuendos about the purported causes of violent crime.

(00:14:14):
which,

(00:14:14):
according to Vance and Trump,

(00:14:16):
in their very false claims,

(00:14:18):
you know,

(00:14:18):
based really on no evidence,

(00:14:20):
all of this is always connected to illegal immigration.

(00:14:25):
And of course,

(00:14:25):
the biggest one to blame for that is Kamala Harris,

(00:14:28):
who's in government and who's just letting people come in.

(00:14:31):
That's the narrative that we keep on hearing over and over again.

(00:14:35):
But the difference again with the Trump debate, with the Harris-Trump debate, is this

(00:14:42):
this kind of dynamical reasonableness.

(00:14:44):
So in this,

(00:14:46):
in the moment in which there's nobody taking on Trump,

(00:14:49):
and of course it's not just the fact checkers there,

(00:14:51):
Harris herself did this,

(00:14:54):
kind of got into this very confrontational mode with Trump and apparently quite

(00:14:58):
successfully so,

(00:14:59):
also,

(00:15:00):
you know,

(00:15:01):
from the polls that were made right after the debate,

(00:15:04):
you know,

(00:15:04):
from those who viewed it.

(00:15:07):
Here we have this dynamic,

(00:15:09):
this so-called,

(00:15:10):
you know,

(00:15:10):
this kind of dynamic where they're having a respectable,

(00:15:14):
polite debate,

(00:15:16):
but then Vance ends up saying very extreme things,

(00:15:20):
but,

(00:15:21):
you know,

(00:15:21):
with this kind of smooth polish over it.

(00:15:24):
I also wonder whether behind this conciliatory dynamic between waltz and bands,

(00:15:31):
there's also some kind of regional identity politics here.

(00:15:34):
Okay, let me explain what I mean.

(00:15:36):
These two candidates have really been picked.

(00:15:39):
That's what many analysts say, and it

(00:15:41):
It seems quite obvious also given the nature of the race.

(00:15:44):
Remember that basically,

(00:15:47):
as is often the case in US election,

(00:15:50):
it is not the popular vote that ultimately counts,

(00:15:54):
but how many of these electoral colleges you get.

(00:15:56):
So basically,

(00:15:57):
you had to win certain states,

(00:16:00):
and some states count more than others in terms of electoral votes.

(00:16:03):
So the race ends up being in a few what are called battleground states or swing states.

(00:16:09):
In this case,

(00:16:10):
we're talking about seven states,

(00:16:12):
and many of these states are in what some people call Middle America,

(00:16:16):
right?

(00:16:16):
So the goal of these two candidates,

(00:16:19):
that's why they were picked,

(00:16:20):
or at least that's one of the reasons why both of them were picked by their

(00:16:23):
respective sides as vice presidential candidates,

(00:16:27):
is really to attract this kind of rural and working class voters,

(00:16:31):
which are in this vast expanse of land that lies between the main urban centers of

(00:16:36):
the East and West Coast.

(00:16:39):
We already talked in previous episodes about the Midwestern origins of the two candidates.

(00:16:45):
Waltz is from Minnesota, or at least is governor of Minnesota.

(00:16:49):
So lived in Minnesota most of his life.

(00:16:52):
Vance is from Ohio and claims rural Appalachian roots through his grandparents,

(00:16:57):
who are from a small town in Kentucky.

(00:16:59):
So there's a bit of

(00:17:00):
ambiguity that whether he himself can claim to be Appalachian or not.

(00:17:05):
But anyway, it's from that area, broadly speaking.

(00:17:08):
Both have stressed this identity politics in the debate,

(00:17:11):
and they've done that also in their campaign rallies.

(00:17:14):
And both of them are pretty skilled at this.

(00:17:16):
Vance mentions his allegedly working class Appalachian background and the mother's

(00:17:20):
struggle with addiction.

(00:17:22):
He does that again also in the debate.

(00:17:25):
also as an example of this post-industrial decline of the Midwest, Waltz mentions Minnesota a lot.

(00:17:31):
And that's also because he's the governor of the state.

(00:17:33):
So in that way, he's showcasing his governing experience.

(00:17:37):
So I was reading in this BBC article by Hannah Feige recently,

(00:17:42):
about the views of some midwestern voters you know basically she interviewed a few

(00:17:48):
midwestern voters on what they thought about the debate and what's quite

(00:17:52):
interesting is that they all seem to agree that they liked the tone of the debate

(00:17:57):
some called it respectable other people use the word nice so i've been wondering

(00:18:03):
how much of this regional identity politics

(00:18:07):
I played a role in this, right?

(00:18:10):
Because when you have this more, when you're trying to establish your roots from a place,

(00:18:17):
you actually pretty push towards establishing some commonality,

(00:18:22):
even towards people that you might not like,

(00:18:24):
or they might have very different views from you,

(00:18:26):
right?

(00:18:27):
So think here,

(00:18:27):
Vance and Waltz,

(00:18:29):
in terms of political views,

(00:18:30):
what they stand for,

(00:18:31):
values,

(00:18:32):
at the almost,

(00:18:34):
I would say,

(00:18:34):
pretty clear the opposite end of it.

(00:18:36):
But if they want to claim

(00:18:39):
those roots from those parts of America,

(00:18:42):
if they want to show that they are really from there and that they are talking to

(00:18:46):
voters from there,

(00:18:48):
then it looks like this dynamic of consensus will make sense,

(00:18:51):
right?

(00:18:52):
You need to acknowledge your adversary,

(00:18:54):
you need to acknowledge that you're at least part of the same broad community,

(00:18:57):
and then you mark the differences from within.

(00:19:00):
I mean, I'm

(00:19:01):
based in Scandinavia.

(00:19:03):
I live in between Norway and Sweden.

(00:19:05):
This is very common in consensus societies like Norway and Sweden are.

(00:19:10):
You need to make your claim that you belong to the society and then from within the claim,

(00:19:15):
from that commonality that unites everybody in that society,

(00:19:19):
at least in this kind of ideal,

(00:19:23):
view of it then from there you can mark some differences then from there you can

(00:19:28):
you know be in favor or against certain policies in favor or against certain values

(00:19:32):
but you are pretty much pushed to acknowledge first that you all belong to the same

(00:19:37):
community so to me that's something quite interesting that emerges in this debate

(00:19:44):
and going back also to some of the issues we discussed in previous episodes we

(00:19:49):
actually showed the positive effect

(00:19:52):
of having Waltz there on the Democrat side,

(00:19:55):
because from the very beginning,

(00:19:57):
Waltz presented himself as a kind of middle America.

(00:20:00):
So the main idea that Waltz is trying to push and has pushed already from early on

(00:20:05):
is that he's trying to regain common sense from the grip of the far right.

(00:20:10):
It is common sense to be in favor of women's reproductive freedoms.

(00:20:14):
It is common sense to be open and supportive of different sexualities.

(00:20:19):
It is common sense to support workers and national paid leave.

(00:20:23):
This was one of the discussion also in this debate.

(00:20:28):
So, Waltz is showing

(00:20:30):
for instance,

(00:20:31):
when he talks about gun violence as well,

(00:20:33):
and he presents himself as a hunter,

(00:20:35):
so,

(00:20:35):
you know,

(00:20:36):
a pretty,

(00:20:37):
not the classic leftist that you have in mind.

(00:20:40):
But then he says, still, regulations on gun violence is common sense.

(00:20:44):
We don't want our kids to

(00:20:47):
to die unduly.

(00:20:48):
We don't want these awful security measures in schools where schools around the

(00:20:52):
world don't need to follow these kind of measures.

(00:20:54):
So I think that some of the dynamic is happening there.

(00:20:59):
In many ways, even as Watts is trying to make the big difference, they make the big jump to say, hey,

(00:21:05):
uh i'm offering something different and hey you don't need to be you know you don't

(00:21:09):
need to be in the stereotype box that if you are a white working class voter you're

(00:21:12):
supposed to be some kind of awful uh extremist conservative but to do that he has

(00:21:18):
to claim some kind of insideness so in that way he can't completely discard he

(00:21:23):
can't completely dismiss the opponent in the effective way that harris did with

(00:21:28):
trump by basically saying you know you're extreme you're you're not credible you

(00:21:33):
you will not be a good leader

(00:21:34):
So this is a very different strategy,

(00:21:36):
but perhaps justified by this kind of different audience and different context that

(00:21:43):
Harris and Waltz have been working in in terms of these two debates.

(00:21:49):
I think there is also a broader issue about a consensual approach and this idea

(00:21:56):
that you try to find some legitimation.

(00:21:59):
So I think we can move now beyond these more regional aspects,

(00:22:02):
which are very important in the US election,

(00:22:04):
because it's quite likely that this time,

(00:22:07):
again,

(00:22:07):
very much like in 2016,

(00:22:09):
everything will be decided by a few thousand voters in a few states.

(00:22:14):
But I think there is a broader point here about consensus.

(00:22:18):
We can now compare the two debates as examples of the pros and cons.

(00:22:23):
On one hand, Trump-Harris, much more polarized, much more antagonistic, much more conflictual.

(00:22:30):
And on the other hand,

(00:22:31):
you get this Vance Waltz dynamic of almost being neighbors with very different views.

(00:22:37):
I'm thinking also about what's happening in Europe because one danger of this kind

(00:22:43):
of consensus approach to trying somewhat to absorb this more extreme far right

(00:22:51):
views into the center,

(00:22:53):
into the mainstream in Europe,

(00:22:55):
we're not seeing this as very positive.

(00:22:57):
So in my opinion, I don't think for the most part

(00:23:02):
the mainstream or the far right has actually neutralized it or has actually

(00:23:06):
diminished the anti-immigration sentiments and policies.

(00:23:11):
I think far from it.

(00:23:12):
I'm Italian, so I've been watching this quite closely in my own countries.

(00:23:16):
And there we're seeing that the centrist mainstreaming of far right ideas,

(00:23:20):
it's actually taking place often through these appeals to being reasonable,

(00:23:27):
appearing to be moderate,

(00:23:29):
moderate your tone,

(00:23:30):
be sober in your tone.

(00:23:32):
Centrist commentators in Italy,

(00:23:34):
you know,

(00:23:35):
keep on praising Giorgia Meloni,

(00:23:36):
who's a far right prime minister with close ties to fascist,

(00:23:40):
nostalgic and neo-fascist movements.

(00:23:42):
So they praise her every time she talks soberly,

(00:23:46):
right,

(00:23:47):
with a more moderate,

(00:23:48):
with a more presidential style,

(00:23:50):
regardless of what she advocates for.

(00:23:52):
They really focus on the tone.

(00:23:54):
This is quite important.

(00:23:55):
They also reprimand her when she takes on an openly vitriolic,

(00:24:01):
anti-establishment,

(00:24:02):
conspiratorial style,

(00:24:03):
which she's well known for.

(00:24:05):
That's what she did actually throughout her career and got into government.

(00:24:10):
So the narrative there is that somehow they reprimand her for something that is her past,

(00:24:17):
some kind of legacy of the past that she has to get rid of,

(00:24:20):
that doesn't have to be central to who she is and what she represents.

(00:24:25):
And the point is that she gets praised because she's outgrowing populist roots.

(00:24:32):
It's quite a dangerous framing because it assumes

(00:24:35):
those vitriolic,

(00:24:36):
anti-establishment,

(00:24:37):
often xenophobic speeches she has and she continues to do,

(00:24:41):
she does a lot of code switching,

(00:24:43):
depending basically to which audience she's talking to.

(00:24:46):
This kind of framing by the centrist media frames this as accidents,

(00:24:51):
slippages,

(00:24:52):
some kind of backsliding,

(00:24:53):
but this is not the case.

(00:24:54):
I mean, Meloni has been very good and that's why

(00:24:57):
You know,

(00:24:57):
she's becoming almost one of the international inspirations for far-right leaders elsewhere,

(00:25:04):
exactly because by alternating this more moderate,

(00:25:08):
sober tone,

(00:25:09):
especially with people outside your base,

(00:25:12):
outside your far-right base.

(00:25:13):
See Meloni when she goes to the UN,

(00:25:15):
for instance,

(00:25:16):
or see Meloni when she shakes the hands of the president of the European Commission,

(00:25:21):
von der Leyen.

(00:25:22):
and then still continuing to fuel her base,

(00:25:26):
always signal to her base that she's still the authentic populist,

(00:25:30):
right-wing populist.

(00:25:31):
She still believes very strongly that there is a conspiracy of the left and she

(00:25:36):
keeps and repeats it over and over again to certain audiences and in certain moments,

(00:25:40):
usually when she loses or when she has some challenges that she has to get out.

(00:25:44):
In that way, she's quite similar to

(00:25:47):
Trump and Vance.

(00:25:48):
So this is actually a political strategy.

(00:25:50):
There's nothing to do with backsliding.

(00:25:51):
There is no outgrowing her roots.

(00:25:54):
She's very conscious of what she's doing.

(00:25:56):
I think in the same way, we need to be very careful of Vance doing something similar.

(00:26:01):
It's clear that Vance's views are extreme.

(00:26:03):
It doesn't matter whether he can put them in a way a bit like salesman style that

(00:26:11):
that make him sound reasonable.

(00:26:14):
That actually doesn't matter.

(00:26:15):
It doesn't mean that if he's legitimized as a kind of reasonable opponent,

(00:26:20):
his views somehow become less extreme.

(00:26:21):
And I think the debate with Waltz is a very clear example of that.

(00:26:25):
Okay,

(00:26:26):
sober tone,

(00:26:26):
okay,

(00:26:27):
they can even somewhat acknowledge each other from time to time,

(00:26:30):
but the views that Pence espoused throughout the debate remain extreme nonetheless.

(00:26:35):
It really matters little whether they are shouted or not.

(00:26:39):
So I think that's something quite important to remember.

(00:26:42):
In any case,

(00:26:44):
going back again to these views and ideologies and what the two candidates and what

(00:26:48):
the two parties stand for,

(00:26:50):
so what the Harris-Walls ticket and what the Trump-Vance ticket stand for,

(00:26:56):
I think it's clear that there remains a huge divide.

(00:26:59):
So I want to give this as an example.

(00:27:02):
how Vance and Waltz talk about the challenge that Trump did in 2020 when he didn't

(00:27:09):
acknowledge his defeat.

(00:27:12):
You know,

(00:27:12):
he said that there was some kind of election rigging and that Biden basically stole

(00:27:17):
the election.

(00:27:18):
So we can see here that Vance and Waltz have, in fact, very different view.

(00:27:23):
Let's see Vance first.

(00:27:26):
I believe that we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country.

(00:27:29):
But unfortunately, it's not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about.

(00:27:35):
It is the threat of censorship.

(00:27:37):
It's Americans casting aside lifelong friendships because of disagreements over politics.

(00:27:43):
It's big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens.

(00:27:46):
And it's Kamala Harris saying that rather than debate and persuade her fellow Americans,

(00:27:51):
she'd like to censor people who engage in misinformation.

(00:27:54):
I think that is a much bigger threat to democracy than anything that we've seen in

(00:27:57):
this country in the last four years,

(00:27:59):
in the last 40 years.

(00:28:01):
Now,

(00:28:01):
I'm really proud,

(00:28:02):
especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue-collar Democrats,

(00:28:06):
to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr.

(00:28:08):
and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition, of course,

(00:28:13):
They don't agree with me and Donald Trump on every issue.

(00:28:15):
We don't have to agree on every issue.

(00:28:17):
But we're united behind a basic American First Amendment principle that we ought to

(00:28:22):
debate our differences.

(00:28:23):
We ought to argue about them.

(00:28:24):
We ought to try to persuade our fellow Americans.

(00:28:26):
Kamala Harris is engaged in censorship at an industrial scale.

(00:28:31):
She did it during COVID.

(00:28:32):
She's done it over a number of other issues.

(00:28:34):
And that,

(00:28:35):
to me,

(00:28:35):
is a much bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said that

(00:28:40):
protesters should peacefully protest on January the 6th.

(00:28:43):
That was Vance.

(00:28:44):
He was basically responding to a question as to whether he would challenge an

(00:28:52):
election again,

(00:28:53):
even if he were to be legally certified,

(00:28:56):
as Trump basically was trying to do after,

(00:29:00):
on the day that Pence decided to,

(00:29:03):
his vice president decided in January 2021 to basically certify the election as legal.

(00:29:10):
Back then, Trump

(00:29:12):
played a really big role in fueling then those riots, those people who actually stormed the Capitol.

(00:29:19):
So the moderator was asking Vance, okay, are you going to accept defeat if that's the case?

(00:29:26):
If you lose the election, are you going to accept defeat?

(00:29:29):
Vance basically just deflates

(00:29:31):
and basically saying,

(00:29:32):
no,

(00:29:32):
no,

(00:29:32):
the problem,

(00:29:33):
the real threat to democracy is not what you're saying,

(00:29:36):
is not the danger that Trump or me might challenge the election results.

(00:29:41):
The real threat to democracy is Kamala Harris and her censorship kind of regime.

(00:29:48):
Here, it's quite interesting because we go back to some of the topics we explored earlier in the show.

(00:29:53):
See podcast,

(00:29:54):
you know,

(00:29:55):
the episode two of our podcast,

(00:29:56):
for instance,

(00:29:57):
where we discussed in quite some depth the whole idea of this free speech coalition,

(00:30:03):
right?

(00:30:04):
Quite interesting here, Vance, is bringing again this idea of diagonalism.

(00:30:08):
Okay, diagonalism is this concept.

(00:30:10):
We discussed it in most of the previous shows developed by Callison and Slobodian, two academics.

(00:30:16):
They wrote quite a popular essay on the Boston Review.

(00:30:19):
It's the idea,

(00:30:20):
basically,

(00:30:20):
there are movements,

(00:30:21):
this was especially strong during the pandemic with the kind of no-vax,

(00:30:25):
no-pass kind of copy skeptics movements.

(00:30:30):
The idea is that these movements go beyond left and right.

(00:30:33):
They're kind of new social movements that don't believe anymore in this division between left and right.

(00:30:37):
But effectively, very much like Vance, they still end up moving towards the right in that way.

(00:30:45):
So here what we have is Vance also playing on this topic,

(00:30:48):
basically by saying,

(00:30:49):
hey,

(00:30:49):
people who have some kind of leftist credential,

(00:30:52):
I would call them more red-brown,

(00:30:54):
basically,

(00:30:54):
again,

(00:30:55):
mixing these far left and far right topics quite strongly,

(00:30:58):
like Robert F.

(00:30:59):
Kennedy Jr.,

(00:31:01):
dropped from his independent race for president to endorse Donald Trump.

(00:31:06):
And Tulsi Gabbard,

(00:31:07):
who was a former member actually of the House of Representatives,

(00:31:09):
elected with Democrats and then left the Democrats,

(00:31:13):
they both endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.

(00:31:15):
So,

(00:31:16):
Vance is here trying to say basically,

(00:31:18):
well,

(00:31:18):
the real distinction here is not really left and right,

(00:31:21):
but it's people who are in favor of free speech,

(00:31:23):
you know,

(00:31:23):
to defend freedom again,

(00:31:25):
and people like Kamala Harris at Kamala Harris camp who are

(00:31:28):
basically that set on stopping that.

(00:31:30):
And of course, this is kind of one of the themes of the Trump-Vance propaganda.

(00:31:38):
We should also mention here that

(00:31:41):
What Vance is also referring when he's talking about Harris alleged censorship role

(00:31:47):
during the pandemic is basically referring to a statement by Mark Zuckerberg,

(00:31:53):
the CEO of Meta,

(00:31:54):
basically the company that owns and runs Facebook and Instagram.

(00:31:59):
Zuckerberg at the end of August,

(00:32:01):
you know,

(00:32:01):
with the presidential campaign in full swing,

(00:32:03):
so in my opinion,

(00:32:04):
quite inappropriately so,

(00:32:07):
he went off and said that White House officials from the Biden administration

(00:32:12):
pressured Meta to,

(00:32:13):
quote,

(00:32:13):
censor certain COVID-19 content during the pandemic.

(00:32:18):
So this also shows that there is also a much broader alliance, not only across left-right lines here.

(00:32:25):
When we talk about these more extremist views of free speech,

(00:32:29):
the big tech platforms are never really that far away.

(00:32:32):
They monetize on free speech.

(00:32:35):
And even when this can cause really serious harm,

(00:32:38):
a lot of hate speech and a lot of violence against certain groups.

(00:32:42):
So there is a broader alliance here that one should consider.

(00:32:45):
And when somebody with a responsibility like Zuckerberg,

(00:32:49):
who's basically a company with huge amounts of power on what kind of media people

(00:32:54):
can produce,

(00:32:55):
distribute,

(00:32:56):
can read,

(00:32:57):
then they have to take quite a lot of responsibility when they kind of give these

(00:33:00):
boons to people like Banz to then,

(00:33:02):
you know,

(00:33:03):
authoritatively used to say,

(00:33:04):
you see,

(00:33:05):
Kamala Harris is censoring people,

(00:33:07):
you know,

(00:33:07):
and of course,

(00:33:08):
there is no proof and evidence that of what Zuckerberg really meant.

(00:33:11):
So is it censorship if you're asking Facebook to do, you know, to stop

(00:33:16):
content that says that COVID-19 is not real?

(00:33:19):
Is it censorship if you ask Facebook to stop content that says that people

(00:33:23):
shouldn't vaccinate when there is life or death at stake?

(00:33:26):
I think that's very questionable.

(00:33:28):
That is really Zuckerberg's opinion and he would have probably done better not to

(00:33:32):
have raised this in the middle of an election campaign in this way.

(00:33:36):
But we know again that there are very strong monetary interests.

(00:33:39):
Why?

(00:33:40):
People like Zuckerberg, even worse, Elon Musk,

(00:33:43):
Look at how Hex is coming, you know, full on supporting Trump in a very inappropriate way.

(00:33:48):
You know, a CEO that sends his own tweets saying, you know, I support Trump.

(00:33:53):
Let's hear now how Waltz is taking advance on the issue of Trump challenging the

(00:34:00):
2020 election results with a clear mention of the Capitol Hill riots.

(00:34:06):
Well,

(00:34:06):
I've enjoyed tonight's debate,

(00:34:08):
and I think there was a lot of commonality here,

(00:34:09):
and I'm sympathetic to misspeaking on things,

(00:34:11):
and I think I might have with the senator.

(00:34:14):
Me too, man.

(00:34:15):
There's one,

(00:34:16):
though,

(00:34:16):
that this one is troubling to me,

(00:34:17):
and I say that because I think we need to tell the story.

(00:34:20):
Donald Trump refused to acknowledge this,

(00:34:22):
and the fact is that I don't think we can be the frog in the pot and let the

(00:34:25):
boiling water go up.

(00:34:27):
He was very clear.

(00:34:28):
I mean, he lost this election, and he said he didn't.

(00:34:32):
140 police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day,

(00:34:35):
some with the American flag,

(00:34:36):
several later died.

(00:34:37):
And it wasn't just in there.

(00:34:39):
In Minnesota, a group gathered on the state Capitol grounds in St.

(00:34:43):
Paul and said, we're marching to the governor's residence and there may be casualties.

(00:34:47):
The only person there was my son and his dog, who was rushed out crying by state police.

(00:34:53):
That issue and Mike Pence standing there as they were chanting, hang Mike Pence.

(00:34:58):
Mike Pence made the right decision.

(00:35:00):
So Senator, it was adjudicated over and over and over.

(00:35:04):
I worked with kids long enough to know,

(00:35:06):
and I said as a football coach,

(00:35:07):
sometimes you really wanna win,

(00:35:09):
but the democracy is bigger than winning an election.

(00:35:11):
You shake hands and then you try and do everything you can to help the other side win.

(00:35:16):
That's what was at stake here.

(00:35:18):
Now, the thing I'm most concerned about is the idea that

(00:35:22):
imprisoning your your political opponents already laying the groundwork for people

(00:35:27):
not accepting this and a president's words matter a president's words matter people

(00:35:33):
hear that so i think this issue of settling our differences at the ballot box

(00:35:39):
shaking hands when we lose being honest about it but to deny what happened on

(00:35:45):
january 6th the first time in american history

(00:35:50):
that a president or anyone tried to overturn a fair election and the peaceful transfer of power.

(00:35:56):
And here we are four years later in the same boat.

(00:35:59):
I will tell you this,

(00:36:00):
that when this is over,

(00:36:02):
we need to shake hands,

(00:36:03):
this election,

(00:36:04):
and the winner needs to be the winner.

(00:36:06):
This has got to stop.

(00:36:07):
It's tearing our country apart.

(00:36:10):
I think Waltz is pretty clear here about the dangers of Trump not accepting defeat again in 2024.

(00:36:15):
So I don't think there's much to add there.

(00:36:20):
We know that despite Vance's attempts at whitewashing this,

(00:36:23):
Trump has indeed already made several innuendos that he might not accept defeat

(00:36:28):
after 5th of November,

(00:36:29):
repeating a similar kind of propaganda.

(00:36:33):
A few days ago,

(00:36:34):
some court documents were unsealed from the federal 2020 election subversion case

(00:36:39):
against Trump.

(00:36:40):
So there is a court case actually against him for that.

(00:36:43):
The documents provide also additional evidence basically of Trump's involvement.

(00:36:49):
in the events that led to the Capitol Hill riots and new revelations.

(00:36:53):
You can go and check more on the media.

(00:36:56):
I recommend you do because these documents are quite important and they give even

(00:37:01):
more of a picture of what we already knew up to now.

(00:37:04):
The new revelations include Trump's disregard for his vice president's safety, basically

(00:37:10):
Trump attacked Vice President Pence on Twitter on the day of the riots,

(00:37:14):
just as Pence was being evacuated from his Senate office with all these rioters,

(00:37:19):
angry rioters around the place.

(00:37:22):
And there's also evidence basically that shows that Trump was well aware that these

(00:37:25):
allegations of election fraud were false.

(00:37:27):
He knew that.

(00:37:28):
In other words, he lied repeatedly just to pursue his desire to keep in power.

(00:37:35):
We've covered quite a lot of ground, so it's time to

(00:37:38):
wrap up.

(00:37:39):
So what can we say about the performance?

(00:37:42):
You know,

(00:37:42):
if you had to give some kind of overall commentary,

(00:37:46):
some kind of summary of how Vance and Waltz did.

(00:37:51):
I mean,

(00:37:52):
I think Waltz,

(00:37:53):
perhaps from a performative point of view,

(00:37:56):
stumbled a little bit at the beginning,

(00:37:57):
but he picked himself up pretty quickly.

(00:38:00):
I think he stood his ground and he came up perhaps more strongly on the issues that

(00:38:06):
he cared most,

(00:38:06):
that he's most passionate about.

(00:38:09):
which is welfare of people, you know, the national paid leave, housing, women's rights.

(00:38:14):
Those, I think, were the things where he definitely did best.

(00:38:18):
But I think he also took on the idea of a Trump and Sticker very well, especially on the

(00:38:24):
January 6th and on those Capitol Hill riots that we just heard about.

(00:38:28):
He made a clear cut through kind of Vance kind of sophistry and kind of attempts at

(00:38:35):
charming the audience with a lot of blah,

(00:38:37):
blah,

(00:38:37):
blah that often didn't actually make quite a lot of sense.

(00:38:41):
From Van's point of view, yes, okay.

(00:38:43):
Perhaps as a performer, he might sound quite slick.

(00:38:47):
He's very comfortable.

(00:38:48):
You can see that he's very camera savvy.

(00:38:51):
And again,

(00:38:52):
no matter what questions he has,

(00:38:53):
he can always find some answers,

(00:38:55):
some kind of charming answer that often deflects from the actual question.

(00:39:00):
There were very few questions that he actually answered or even attempted to answer,

(00:39:05):
especially the most difficult questions.

(00:39:09):
But then again, how far that is going to go with the voters or not, we don't know.

(00:39:14):
We know that Vance has this kind of,

(00:39:17):
you know,

(00:39:18):
origin really as a political commentator,

(00:39:20):
as a commentator on the way on TV.

(00:39:23):
That was,

(00:39:24):
you know,

(00:39:24):
we discussed it in previous podcasts,

(00:39:26):
also to do with how he was launched into the political scene with the

(00:39:31):
memoir of this Appalachian roots and Appalachian kind of cultural collapse and this

(00:39:37):
idea of the white working class in Hillbilly Helegy,

(00:39:40):
the book that he published in 2016,

(00:39:42):
actually in the middle of the other presidential campaign.

(00:39:47):
But whether that makes him a credible or trusted vice presidential pick, I think that's all to be seen.

(00:39:56):
we should be very careful of this kind of ability to spin a lot because behind the

(00:40:03):
spin there's actually a lot of very extreme views,

(00:40:05):
very far-right views and very dangerous views for democracy and for people in general.

(00:40:11):
The debate doesn't seem to have caused significant shifts in the election race in terms of polling.

(00:40:16):
And that actually was quite similar to Harris Trump,

(00:40:19):
even though many thought that Harris did much better than Trump,

(00:40:22):
it still didn't actually shift many votes,

(00:40:25):
at least according to the data we have up to now.

(00:40:27):
What we know is that this remains a very tight race.

(00:40:31):
Harris is leading by a low margin on the national vote and is completely within the margin of error.

(00:40:37):
And in the seven battleground states,

(00:40:39):
which are likely to determine the winner,

(00:40:41):
Harris and Trump are basically neck and neck.

(00:40:45):
So the next few weeks are going to be really crucial.

(00:40:48):
There is already early voting happening.

(00:40:50):
So some people have already started voting.

(00:40:53):
We'll need to see in the next few weeks how this is going to be unfolding and what

(00:40:58):
kind of situation we'll face on election day.

(00:41:02):
We've come to the end of the show for today.

(00:41:04):
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(00:41:07):
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(00:41:11):
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(00:41:13):
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(00:41:17):
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(00:41:23):
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(00:41:29):
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