The Harris-Trump debate unpacked: empathy vs hate

We compare two radically different visions for America in the 10 September presidential debate. We talk about the ideas, the emotions and the communication tactics.

Key topics:
- Harris’ opportunity economy is aimed at a broad coalition of middle classes, workers and small business owners. Republicans identify as “working class” even when they are not.

- Trump is obsessed with stoking fears about immigration. Harris takes him on and shows he is derailing from the real issues.

- Trump’s statements on immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, are extreme, absurd and tragically farcical: a surreal twisted spectacle that produces very real violence and hate against migrant communities. Vance admits to “creating stories” about pet-eating just to get media attention.

- Harris’ empathetic focus on women’s reproductive freedom beats Trump spinning abortion bans as a democratic expression of the “people’s will”.

- Harris recognises Palestinian suffering but struggles to make a significant break from Biden’s Israel policy.

- Trump’s “anti-war” narrative is revealed as a muscular stance based on “inciting fear” on the world stage.

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Transcript

(00:00:00):
But I'm going to tell you all,

(00:00:00):
in this debate tonight,

(00:00:02):
you're going to hear from the same old tired playbook a bunch of lies,

(00:00:07):
grievances,

(00:00:08):
and name-calling.

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What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project

(00:00:15):
2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.

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I believe very strongly that the American people want a president who understands

(00:00:26):
the importance of bringing us together,

(00:00:28):
knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us.

(00:00:32):
And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.

(00:00:37):
There was Democratic Party's presidential candidate,

(00:00:40):
Kamala Harris,

(00:00:41):
during the first TV debate with her Republican opponent,

(00:00:45):
Donald Trump,

(00:00:46):
aired on ABC News on Tuesday,

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10th September.

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Harris' call for unity stood in stark contrast to Trump,

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who grabbed every opportunity to spout vitriolic anti-immigration propaganda,

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launch personal attacks against Harris,

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and bubble away on policy issues without any regard for facts.

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This is the third episode of Weird, a global take on the US election.

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You can check the previous episodes of our podcast on our website at

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weirdpodcast.com and on our YouTube channel at WeirdPod or on any of the apps where

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you're getting the podcast from.

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In this episode,

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we will get into the drama of the Harris-Trump debate and dig deeper into the

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implicit meanings and innuendos of the battle of words.

(00:01:34):
and the performative tactics that the two candidates used to appeal to American voters.

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We started with this clip also as a sober reminder that while the spectacle of

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political campaigning goes on unabated,

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and will likely intensify as we get close to the 5th of November election day,

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what is performed on stage,

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a stage that never stops broadcasting,

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the stage of social media where debate bites and rally speeches get condensed,

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interpreted,

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and repackaged,

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in all kinds of ways,

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all these performances have turned politics into 24-7 entertainment,

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have very real effects on the lives of real humans,

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sometimes very destructive effects.

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We've seen this with the UK far-right mob violence against Muslim and asylum

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seekers at the end of July this year.

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And today we will hear more about the town of Springfield, Ohio.

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No,

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it's not the Simpsons,

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but a very real town where immigrants from Haiti have helped revive the local economy,

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but have become targets of fake news,

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scapegoating,

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and neonizing intimidation.

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Trump amplified this horrible situation on national TV with the aim of creating

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thousands of Springfields all across America.

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My name is Vito La Terza.

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I'm an anthropologist,

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political analyst and associate professor at the University of Agder in Kristiansand,

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Norway.

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I'm currently based in Uppsala, Sweden, where I'm a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

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I'm Louis Roemer.

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I'm an anthropologist, media scholar and lecturer at Vassar College.

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where I'm broadcasting from today.

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Let's play another clip.

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Here is Harris at the beginning of the debate talking about the economy.

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Vice President Harris,

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you and President Trump were elected four years ago,

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and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters,

(00:03:23):
are you better off than you were four years ago?

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When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?

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So I was raised as a middle class kid.

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And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about

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lifting up the middle class and working people of America.

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I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people.

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and that is why i imagine and have actually a plan to build what i call an

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opportunity economy because here's the thing we know that we have a shortage of

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homes and housing and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people

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we know that young families need support

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to raise their children,

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and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000,

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which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time,

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so that those young families can afford to buy a crib,

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buy a car seat,

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buy clothes for their children.

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My passion, one of them, is small businesses.

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I was actually – my mother raised my sister and me, but there was a woman who helped raise us.

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We call her our second mother.

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She was a small business owner.

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I love our small businesses.

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My plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses,

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knowing they are part of the backbone of America's economy.

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My opponent,

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on the other hand,

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his plan is to do what he has done before,

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which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations,

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which will result in $5 trillion to America's deficit.

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My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump's sales tax,

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which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month.

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We've got quite a few themes emerging here.

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Of course,

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the economy is the issue that tends to be on top of voters' concerns,

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and this is quite common in elections all around the world.

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But we also know that,

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at least in the US,

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whenever we speak of the economy,

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it almost never goes without a mention of the middle class or workers.

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How does Harris envision these groups?

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What does she imagine or want people to imagine when she talks about an opportunity economy?

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I think,

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um,

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very key here is that,

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um,

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Kamala Harris is using some very vivid images to identify herself rhetorically with

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something that she means small business owners,

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um,

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hardworking people who have aspirations,

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right?

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American dream, um, um,

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Key words that are related to these images are phrases such as the makers, the hardworking Americans,

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It's a type of discourse that very carefully avoids labor politics and more leftist

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coded language around class,

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and instead relies on what is known as producerism,

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which is a type of discourse that defines class in these cultural terms,

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right,

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in terms of

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people who are working hard and who want to contribute to the economy and who have

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aspirations and dreams to prosperity.

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What's interesting about this framing is that in that sense,

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a so-called middle class,

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a hardworking American group really

(00:07:10):
can encompass a quite broad group of people.

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Anything from a fruit vendor, right?

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With dreams of a business to a entrepreneur in Silicon Valley with a new tech startup.

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It has to be said that the GOP,

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the Republican Party has used this kind of discourse for years,

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for decades.

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but also to define certain kinds of working class people as not as the makers,

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not as the producers,

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the hardworking,

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deserving people,

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but as the so-called moochers or takers.

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people who take more out of the economy than they produce.

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Phrases that are common in American politics to talk about this imaginary group of

(00:08:02):
people are the welfare queens,

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so supposed mothers,

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single mothers who are taking advantage of benefits.

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It has to be said also,

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though,

(00:08:14):
that the working class and often the phrase white working class,

(00:08:18):
when it's used in US politics,

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is actually a phrase that is pointing to this producerist coalition,

(00:08:26):
which is this broad cross-class alliance of people who identified as hardworking people,

(00:08:36):
which is not a working class in any strict economic sense.

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Yes,

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and I think just on that,

(00:08:43):
we actually touched on this in the in the episode two,

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in the last episode,

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when we discussed Vance and his attempts at this white working class.

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I just wanted to pinpoint that clearly that basically the white working class is

(00:08:57):
very much a staple of Trumpism.

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I mean, from when he's been there.

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So in a sense, it's also shifts, right?

(00:09:03):
I mean,

(00:09:04):
I mean,

(00:09:04):
again,

(00:09:04):
it's very racialized,

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but it's a shift away from the traditional Republican,

(00:09:09):
almost anti-worker discourse.

(00:09:11):
Yeah,

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I think one of the key ways in which Harris is,

(00:09:16):
you could say,

(00:09:17):
co-opting this type of framing that has traditionally been used by the Republicans

(00:09:24):
is by invoking certain very gendered images

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right,

(00:09:30):
such as buying car seats,

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buying strollers,

(00:09:36):
right,

(00:09:37):
that that divert from the way that the maker is usually coded as male in in GOP rhetoric.

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And often the so-called takers are coded as feminine, hence welfare queens, not welfare kings.

(00:09:51):
Right.

(00:09:52):
So I think that's like one of that's one of the key ways that this is different

(00:09:56):
from what the GOP does,

(00:09:57):
but it stays more or less within this broader cultural reframing of class,

(00:10:05):
which has meant that,

(00:10:08):
for example,

(00:10:09):
a recent poll

(00:10:12):
in May 2024 by the Pew Research Center has found that Republicans are not only more

(00:10:18):
likely to identify as working class,

(00:10:21):
but that they in fact do so regardless of how much money they make,

(00:10:28):
which means that this type of producerist framing has dislodged the phrase working

(00:10:35):
class from its actual economic meaning.

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I mean, just for our audience outside the US, they might not be too familiar with acronyms.

(00:10:45):
The GOP is the Republican Party.

(00:10:48):
Right.

(00:10:49):
Just to push on a bit more on what Harris is doing here.

(00:10:53):
What do you think about this identification?

(00:10:54):
So there's her, you know, as a, oh, I was raised middle class.

(00:10:59):
And then there's this story or this small business owner that was actually one of our carers.

(00:11:04):
What do you think about this rhetorical technique?

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Is there some kind of identification or?

(00:11:09):
Yeah, I mean, one of the key strategies is in political rhetoric is this type of identification.

(00:11:16):
I'm one of you, right?

(00:11:18):
So I'm aligned with you.

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I'm loyal to you.

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I will serve your interests.

(00:11:23):
I think Harris here is doing two things,

(00:11:27):
both appealing directly to a kind of group that has historically and even in recent times,

(00:11:35):
gravitated towards the Republican Party,

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aka small business owners,

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sometimes referred to as family capitalists,

(00:11:43):
so people who have a family business.

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This group is what usually is the base of Republican mobilization in rural and exurban locations.

(00:11:55):
So think of the phrase the rich people in poor areas.

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Right.

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So it is people who are might be wealthier in terms of because they own a business,

(00:12:08):
but they might lack or they might feel that they lack status recognition from

(00:12:17):
cultural elites.

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not so much economic elites.

(00:12:21):
So I think that's clever.

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And it's also clever in the sense that this small business category is likely to

(00:12:31):
also be a Republican leaning constituency among minorities such as Asians,

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African Americans,

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Latinos,

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Latinas,

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and also it has to be said Arab Americans.

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Yeah, this was the beginning of the debate.

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And I mean,

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I think we see Harris already in full form,

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not only presenting her vision in very clear and concise terms,

(00:12:55):
but also contrasting it very clearly to Trump's dystopian vision.

(00:13:00):
So there's the tax cuts for billionaires.

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That's what she calls the Trump sales tax.

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She's referring here to Trump's proposal to slap 20% tariffs on all imports,

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regardless of where they come from,

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which would be raised to between 60% and 100% on goods specifically from China.

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And economists,

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of course,

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are agreeing with Harris that this would be pretty dire for American families,

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and it would hugely increase cost of living already in a period of high inflation.

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I'd say from the start that the doubts that Harris would struggle to perform in

(00:13:30):
unscripted context have been proven wrong.

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What would you say?

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Yeah, I think that's true.

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I think there is a little bit of a prejudicial tendency among liberals to catastrophize about gaffes.

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We saw this with Kamala Harris.

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And to be honest, we also saw this with Joe Biden in the past.

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And it's worth mentioning that if we look over to Republican aligned commenter,

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the commentariat that aligns with the GOP,

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with the Republicans,

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this sort of catastrophizing never really happens.

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Trump, if you will, is a nonstop gaffe machine.

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He's always saying improper things, and it's never been actually something that hurts him.

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In fact,

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the thing that the go to tactic as soon as Trump says something that makes some

(00:14:26):
people outraged or embarrassed or feel upset is the immediate pivot to

(00:14:38):
the frame of authenticity, right?

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So what is a supposed gap?

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What is a supposed lapse in perfectly polished,

(00:14:47):
prepped answers to every question is then reframed as authenticity.

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So who's to say that even if Kamala Harris sometimes answers in a way that's not

(00:15:00):
perfectly polished,

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who's to say how it actually gets taken up?

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And I think

(00:15:06):
by framing it as a gaffe or a flub in that way,

(00:15:10):
liberals might be preemptively framing Kamala Harris in harmful ways where Kamala

(00:15:17):
Harris could well,

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or her campaign could well actually also reframe that as,

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well,

(00:15:21):
this is just a moment of authenticity.

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Because remember the famous coconut tree meme, right?

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Which became a meme, which became this moment

(00:15:35):
that made Kamala Harris seem authentic and real to a lot of people was actually

(00:15:41):
supposed to be a gaffe,

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right?

(00:15:43):
That actually was found and disseminated by Republicans in an effort to make Kamala

(00:15:49):
Harris sound inarticulate.

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And there's a lot more to unpack with this notion of inarticulateness and how this

(00:16:00):
tends to be this accusation tends to be lodged towards women and specifically women

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of color.

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But

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For now,

(00:16:09):
let me just say that there is something worth observing here in that it causes a

(00:16:17):
lot of panic among Democrats.

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But in fact,

(00:16:21):
there are opportunities here to pivot and to say,

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no,

(00:16:24):
this is actually a strength,

(00:16:27):
a covert strength.

(00:16:29):
It's authenticity.

(00:16:29):
It's realness.

(00:16:30):
It's just,

(00:16:31):
you know,

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people who are real sometimes will say things a little bit off the cuff that don't

(00:16:36):
always sound polished.

(00:16:39):
Well,

(00:16:39):
on that note,

(00:16:40):
let's hear Trump's response to Harris on the economy,

(00:16:44):
also at the beginning of the debate.

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First of all, I have no sales tax.

(00:16:50):
That's an incorrect statement.

(00:16:51):
She knows that.

(00:16:52):
We're doing tariffs on other countries.

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Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we've done for the world.

(00:17:01):
And the tariff will be substantial in some cases.

(00:17:04):
I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China.

(00:17:07):
In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money they can't.

(00:17:11):
It would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do.

(00:17:14):
They're taking in billions of dollars from China and other places.

(00:17:17):
They've left the tariffs on.

(00:17:19):
When I had it, I had tariffs, and yet I had no inflation.

(00:17:22):
Look, we've had a...

(00:17:24):
terrible economy because inflation has which is really known as a country buster it

(00:17:28):
breaks up countries we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before

(00:17:33):
probably the worst in our nation's history we were at 21 but that's being generous

(00:17:39):
because many things are 50 60 70 and 80 percent higher than they were just a few

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years ago this has been a disaster for people for the middle class but for every

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class on top of that we have millions of people pouring into our country from

(00:17:53):
prisons and jails from mental institutions and insane asylums.

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And they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by

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African-Americans and Hispanics and also unions.

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Unions are going to be affected very soon.

(00:18:08):
And you see what's happening.

(00:18:09):
You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States.

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You look at Springfield, Ohio.

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You look at Aurora in Colorado.

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They are taking over the towns.

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They're taking over buildings.

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They're going in violently.

(00:18:21):
These are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they're destroying our country.

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They're dangerous.

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They're at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out.

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We have to get them out fast.

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I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country.

(00:18:39):
I'll do it again and even better.

(00:18:42):
Yeah, that's Trump responding to Harris' accusations on the negative effects of the tariffs.

(00:18:49):
If one doesn't listen carefully, he really seems to be just babbling away, right?

(00:18:53):
We talked about this in episode one.

(00:18:55):
I referred to it as a stream of consciousness political communication technique.

(00:19:01):
Novelists use the stream of consciousness.

(00:19:03):
It's a technical narration where basically the narrator,

(00:19:06):
often from the point of view of a specific character,

(00:19:08):
who's going about their lives and experiencing and thinking various things as a

(00:19:12):
garble of different stuff that is not necessarily coherent.

(00:19:15):
You know, think about when you just walk around and go about your things and think about stuff.

(00:19:19):
It's the unconscious mind, right, that just does its work in the background.

(00:19:23):
So one can't really interpret the content of what Trump is saying in a conventional way, right?

(00:19:28):
So you try to find a structure.

(00:19:30):
some coherent argument that links inflation to immigration, to tariffs.

(00:19:36):
What we are seeing here, it's really the evocation of certain images and feelings.

(00:19:41):
In the middle of these streams, we have a few recurring themes that immediately frame the world

(00:19:47):
seen through Trump's eyes.

(00:19:48):
And that,

(00:19:49):
sadly,

(00:19:49):
on many of his supporters who have been exposed to this kind of talks for more than

(00:19:54):
eight years now.

(00:19:55):
Tariffs as a way to get to the world,

(00:19:57):
you know,

(00:19:58):
to get the world to pay back for America's service since the end of World War II.

(00:20:02):
That's one of the themes, you know, pay back, you know, this kind of tough economy stance.

(00:20:06):
Inflation and finally immigration.

(00:20:11):
Yeah, there's something here that

(00:20:15):
about Trump communicating less anything that has referential meaning.

(00:20:22):
And with that, I mean, referring to

(00:20:25):
things in the world, real things that one could verify.

(00:20:29):
And instead he is really more indeed invoking images impressionistically,

(00:20:37):
but he's also using phrases that communicate his emotional stance and his judgments

(00:20:46):
about things often with these adjectives,

(00:20:49):
terrible,

(00:20:51):
you know,

(00:20:52):
adjectives and adverbs,

(00:20:54):
terrible economy or he'll label things.

(00:20:56):
It's a disaster.

(00:20:57):
It's the worst, right?

(00:20:59):
And I think that connects to the point you said before, right?

(00:21:02):
That I think perhaps is a mark of their authenticity attempt, right?

(00:21:06):
I'm a real person.

(00:21:07):
I'm just a person who says what comes to my mind.

(00:21:10):
I'm not staged.

(00:21:12):
Yeah, exactly.

(00:21:12):
That actually makes him sound real.

(00:21:15):
It's a type of language we see more in conversational discourse rather than in

(00:21:22):
in oratory,

(00:21:23):
like official speeches,

(00:21:25):
we often will find these kinds of appraisals,

(00:21:30):
judgments that usually come after or in between segments of narration.

(00:21:37):
like say you're having a conversation with a friend during dinner time and then a

(00:21:42):
person will respond to you and be like,

(00:21:43):
oh,

(00:21:43):
that's so terrible.

(00:21:45):
Oh, that's really great.

(00:21:46):
Whatever that is, that's the stand staking.

(00:21:49):
It is that sort of feeling that he's trying to evoke with those

(00:21:55):
superlatives, those assessments kind of just tossed in in between the stream of consciousness.

(00:22:02):
And another another sign that he doesn't really care here about any verifiable

(00:22:09):
information about reality is that he uses pronouns in this kind of

(00:22:14):
impressionistic, loose way.

(00:22:16):
It's unclear what the antecedent is for some of the pronouns.

(00:22:21):
He keeps saying they, they, they.

(00:22:23):
And you don't know if they refers to immigrants.

(00:22:26):
Is they the other countries?

(00:22:28):
Is they Kamala Harris?

(00:22:34):
Who knows, right?

(00:22:35):
It's we, they, it's all out in the ether.

(00:22:39):
I mean, at the beginning, it's very unclear.

(00:22:41):
If you don't listen to it several times,

(00:22:43):
It just talks about the tariffs and it's not clear if the dates in China,

(00:22:47):
the Republicans or the Democrats is like,

(00:22:50):
but it's just going very convincingly or looking very convinced of what he's saying.

(00:22:55):
Very confident.

(00:22:56):
It's just going about it.

(00:22:57):
Right.

(00:22:57):
I think there's also perhaps that part is always sounds very confident when he does

(00:23:02):
this kind of stream of consciousness technique.

(00:23:04):
It's like this almost like mad lib improv.

(00:23:07):
So he has this like stock phrases that he goes to and he just kind of improvises

(00:23:14):
until he finds his footing.

(00:23:16):
And when he finds his footing is when he's able to pivot away from talking about

(00:23:22):
economic policy details where he has very little of to his narrative about the

(00:23:29):
others that are invading the barbarians supposedly that are at the gates here and there,

(00:23:34):
and that he is going to build the greatest economy,

(00:23:38):
as he puts it,

(00:23:39):
by shoving them out.

(00:23:41):
There is no attempt to even establish a logical

(00:23:48):
a logical argument,

(00:23:50):
but just in terms of narratively sequencing it in this way,

(00:23:54):
he tries to create this idea that there's some kind of narrative logic that ties

(00:24:02):
chasing out immigrants with the greatest economy,

(00:24:06):
right?

(00:24:06):
It's actually, it's a non sequitur.

(00:24:09):
There's no logical cause effect relation here,

(00:24:12):
but the narrative ordering creates this illusion that there is one.

(00:24:18):
Let's listen to him on immigration because basically all throughout the debate he

(00:24:22):
just kept on returning to the point over and over again.

(00:24:27):
President Trump, you call this the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country.

(00:24:31):
You say you would use the National Guard.

(00:24:33):
You say if things get out of control, you'd have no problem using the U.S.

(00:24:36):
military.

(00:24:36):
With local police.

(00:24:37):
You also said you would use local police.

(00:24:40):
How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants?

(00:24:43):
I know you believe that number is much higher.

(00:24:46):
Take us through this.

(00:24:47):
What does this look like?

(00:24:48):
Will authorities be going door to door in this country?

(00:24:50):
Yeah.

(00:24:51):
It is much higher because of them.

(00:24:53):
They allowed criminals, many, many millions of criminals.

(00:24:57):
They allowed terrorists.

(00:24:58):
They allowed common street criminals.

(00:25:01):
They allowed people to come in, drug dealers to come into our country.

(00:25:04):
And they're now in the United States and told by their countries, like Venezuela,

(00:25:10):
Don't ever come back or we're going to kill you.

(00:25:12):
Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down?

(00:25:18):
You know why?

(00:25:19):
Because they've taken their criminals off the street and they've given them to her

(00:25:23):
to put into our country.

(00:25:25):
And this will be one of the greatest mistakes in history for them to allow.

(00:25:30):
And I think they probably did it because they think they're going to get votes.

(00:25:33):
But it's not worth it because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done.

(00:25:41):
Here is pushing a conspiracy theory that supposedly sees Venezuela and other

(00:25:45):
countries sending their criminals to the U.S.

(00:25:48):
to bring their crime rates down.

(00:25:49):
And the Democrats are supposedly taking them to increase their votes.

(00:25:53):
The reference here is,

(00:25:54):
of course,

(00:25:55):
to Democrats' focus on pathways to citizenship for migrants who are already in the U.S.

(00:26:00):
But it gets worse.

(00:26:01):
Let's listen further.

(00:26:04):
what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of

(00:26:08):
people to come into our country and look at what's happening to the towns all over

(00:26:13):
the United States.

(00:26:13):
And a lot of towns don't want to talk.

(00:26:15):
It's not going to be Aurora or Springfield.

(00:26:17):
A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it.

(00:26:20):
In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

(00:26:25):
They're eating the cats.

(00:26:26):
They're eating...

(00:26:28):
They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

(00:26:32):
And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame.

(00:26:38):
Before we go further, let's provide some context.

(00:26:43):
Trump's vice presidential pick, J.D.

(00:26:45):
Vance,

(00:26:46):
ex-CEO Elon Musk,

(00:26:48):
and other Republicans have been spreading false rumors that in the blue-collar town

(00:26:52):
of Springfield,

(00:26:53):
Ohio,

(00:26:54):
Asian immigrants have been killing and eating people's pets.

(00:26:59):
This fits into a wave of anti-immigrant hate and racism in Springfield,

(00:27:03):
where immigrants from Haiti form one of the biggest groups and have been

(00:27:07):
contributing positively to the struggling local economy,

(00:27:10):
but have also become the increasing target of discontent by other locals.

(00:27:14):
Neonazi marches threatening and intimidating this group have also taken place.

(00:27:19):
Now that we clarify the facts, we need to dig a bit deeper into what is going on here.

(00:27:24):
These are statements that are so extreme and wild to border on the absurd.

(00:27:29):
One thing I think that is particularly chilling is how Trump cynically uses

(00:27:33):
these TV opportunities to produce raw and gross images that stick, right?

(00:27:37):
So you can have this one hour and a half long debate,

(00:27:40):
but in the end,

(00:27:41):
people's attention and the media will focus just on a few moments of,

(00:27:46):
you know,

(00:27:47):
inverted commas,

(00:27:48):
entertainment.

(00:27:49):
And that drives engagement on social media, keeps in the spotlight.

(00:27:53):
But OK, something doesn't quite add up here.

(00:27:57):
This is not really entertainment, is it, Louis?

(00:28:00):
No,

(00:28:00):
and it's actually the entertainment,

(00:28:05):
the framing of it as play,

(00:28:08):
which is happening in and around the commentary on this debate,

(00:28:14):
is in fact something that contributes very much to the spreading of the false

(00:28:22):
information

(00:28:24):
about Haitians in Springfield.

(00:28:28):
There is also something that is very noticeable in Trump's rhetoric is that he's

(00:28:34):
inoculating his audience against

(00:28:39):
contrary information.

(00:28:41):
He's telling his audience they're lying.

(00:28:44):
Their facts are not real.

(00:28:46):
I don't trust them.

(00:28:47):
So he's already basically not only spreading false information,

(00:28:53):
but he's also trying to create a kind of closure

(00:28:57):
among his audience by telling them, don't believe what the other side says.

(00:29:01):
Of course, they're going to say, I'm lying, but they're lying, right?

(00:29:04):
It's a perfect mirror accusation.

(00:29:07):
They're doing the thing that I'm doing.

(00:29:10):
So accusing your opponent of the thing you're doing.

(00:29:14):
And yes, there's also this politics of irony, this extreme humor, which actually

(00:29:22):
can mobilize people to do real violent things.

(00:29:26):
And in fact,

(00:29:27):
framing these things as play as just a little bit of fun is part of what lets the

(00:29:33):
guard down,

(00:29:34):
right?

(00:29:34):
Like it's a good excuse.

(00:29:36):
It's a good way of saying, well, I was just joking or, well, calm down.

(00:29:41):
It's not such a big deal, which is then gives people that sense of permission to indulge in this extreme,

(00:29:49):
rhetoric and this extreme behavior, right?

(00:29:53):
Through that frame of play, well, this is not serious, serious.

(00:29:58):
It has to be said that in the past,

(00:30:01):
this aesthetics of grotesqueness,

(00:30:07):
of play,

(00:30:08):
of humor and irony was also something that was used by groups such as the Ku Klux

(00:30:16):
Klan in the South.

(00:30:19):
And so this turning hate and violence into entertainment, into play,

(00:30:24):
into mimicry, mockery is a well-worn path in the US, unfortunately.

(00:30:33):
And on Sunday, a few days after the debate, actually, J.D.

(00:30:36):
Vance,

(00:30:37):
the vice presidential nominee for the Trump ticket,

(00:30:41):
made an incredible admission on this,

(00:30:43):
exactly about,

(00:30:44):
you know,

(00:30:45):
truth and reality or truth and fake news,

(00:30:48):
to Dana Bash on CNN regarding these rumors that have been spreading about Springfield.

(00:30:55):
Let's listen to Vance.

(00:30:58):
You again started this in part by saying that at which Donald Trump repeated on the

(00:31:04):
debate stage that he didn't say anything about the policies that you're talking about.

(00:31:08):
He just said Haitians are eating dogs and cats.

(00:31:12):
Can you affirmatively say now that that is a rumor that has no base basis with evidence.

(00:31:23):
Dana, the evidence is the firsthand account of my constituents who are telling me that this happened.

(00:31:28):
And by the way,

(00:31:30):
I've been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,

(00:31:33):
and the American media ignored it.

(00:31:34):
There was a congressional hearing just last week of angel moms who lost children

(00:31:39):
because Kamala Harris let criminal migrants into this country who then murdered

(00:31:43):
their children.

(00:31:44):
The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.

(00:31:50):
If I have to... But it wasn't just a meme.

(00:31:52):
create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering

(00:31:57):
of the American people,

(00:31:59):
then that's what I'm going to do,

(00:32:00):
Dana,

(00:32:00):
because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.

(00:32:04):
You had one interview with her.

(00:32:06):
You talk about pushing back against me, Dana.

(00:32:08):
You didn't push back against the fact that she cast the deciding vote on the

(00:32:12):
Inflation Reduction Act,

(00:32:13):
which is why a lot of Americans can't afford food and housing.

(00:32:16):
You just said that you're creating a story.

(00:32:17):
We ought to be talking about public policy.

(00:32:20):
Sir, you just said that you're creating the story.

(00:32:22):
What's that, Dana?

(00:32:24):
You just said that this is a story that you created.

(00:32:26):
Yes.

(00:32:27):
So the eating dogs in the past thing is not actually... We are creating...

(00:32:34):
It comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents.

(00:32:37):
I say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it.

(00:32:41):
I didn't create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris's policies.

(00:32:47):
Her policies did that.

(00:32:48):
But yes,

(00:32:49):
we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this

(00:32:54):
story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris's policies.

(00:32:59):
I mean,

(00:33:00):
it's quite incredible here because he reduces basically incredibly xenophobic,

(00:33:05):
violent propaganda that is scapegoating certain people to the point of leading neo-Nazis,

(00:33:10):
intimidating and all kinds of aggression and hate speech,

(00:33:13):
especially online.

(00:33:15):
And he reduces that to cat memes.

(00:33:18):
then he says he's making up stories and then he kind of denies it later but he's

(00:33:23):
basically saying we're just gonna make up stories whatever you know whatever it

(00:33:26):
takes to grab media's attention and basically pursue our own petty campaign goals

(00:33:33):
yeah it has to be said that um

(00:33:37):
he basically just says that, yeah, we're doing this to get attention.

(00:33:44):
And he attempts to pivot by doing the usual,

(00:33:51):
just asking questions routine,

(00:33:55):
the,

(00:33:56):
well,

(00:33:56):
I'm not saying it,

(00:33:57):
but some people are saying it,

(00:33:59):
right?

(00:34:00):
All of these types of strategies of disavowal, where he is basically just admitting that,

(00:34:07):
It doesn't matter if it's true or not, right?

(00:34:10):
What matters is that we feel a certain type of way about certain type of people, in this case, Haitians.

(00:34:17):
It has to be said.

(00:34:18):
And then I don't think I have anything else to say about this.

(00:34:25):
But the last thing I'll say about this is that there's been some good reporting in

(00:34:32):
The Washington Post by Aaron Blake

(00:34:34):
that has looked into some of the polling on this um haitian migrants stealing cats

(00:34:44):
libel does it work it doesn't seem like it's really working at least not among the

(00:34:50):
people that uh

(00:34:53):
Trump might need to swing the election their way,

(00:34:56):
because it's so it seems like among independents,

(00:35:00):
they disbelieve this more than two to one.

(00:35:03):
Right.

(00:35:05):
My sense is that also just this thing,

(00:35:09):
right,

(00:35:09):
that's I don't think I have any more thing else to say about this because it's

(00:35:13):
already annoying me just how much attention we have to pay to this nonsense.

(00:35:20):
He is basically getting us to focus on something that is just not even worth talking about.

(00:35:30):
That's really the problem here.

(00:35:33):
By having to rebut this,

(00:35:35):
we are being put in this situation where we're not focusing on what Trump said or

(00:35:42):
was unable to say about his economical plans.

(00:35:47):
Yes, and I think it goes back a bit to what we said in episode one.

(00:35:50):
I mean,

(00:35:51):
our skepticism,

(00:35:52):
right,

(00:35:53):
beyond,

(00:35:53):
of course,

(00:35:54):
the clearly inhumane tactic and the awful propaganda that these people are pushing,

(00:35:59):
and they continue to push,

(00:36:00):
especially as they get closer and closer to Election Day.

(00:36:03):
But the question is, is it really going to work?

(00:36:05):
Okay, we know they're speaking to their base.

(00:36:07):
We know that there's been a large group of Americans,

(00:36:10):
as it happened in many other parts of the world,

(00:36:12):
who have been listening and buying into this

(00:36:15):
awful kind of thinking and feelings for a long time.

(00:36:18):
But, you know, is it going to be enough to win an election?

(00:36:21):
So I think it's still quite open on that.

(00:36:24):
And perhaps,

(00:36:24):
you know,

(00:36:25):
Harris' more inclusive message,

(00:36:27):
a more open message,

(00:36:28):
you know,

(00:36:29):
might be working much better at creating a much broader consensus than this

(00:36:34):
incredibly aggressive,

(00:36:35):
incredibly extreme,

(00:36:36):
as Harris says,

(00:36:38):
you know,

(00:36:38):
throughout the debate rhetoric that Trump and Pence use.

(00:36:42):
Let's see how Harris responds.

(00:36:44):
to this Springfield speech.

(00:36:49):
I just want to clarify here,

(00:36:50):
you bring up Springfield,

(00:36:52):
Ohio,

(00:36:53):
and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.

(00:36:55):
He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed,

(00:37:00):
injured,

(00:37:00):
or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.

(00:37:03):
Well, I've seen people on television.

(00:37:04):
Let me just say here, this is the... The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.

(00:37:09):
So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

(00:37:13):
I'm not taking this from television.

(00:37:15):
But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

(00:37:20):
Again, the Springfield City Manager says there's no evidence of that.

(00:37:22):
Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you've heard.

(00:37:26):
You talk about extreme.

(00:37:29):
You know,

(00:37:30):
this is,

(00:37:31):
I think,

(00:37:31):
one of the reasons why,

(00:37:32):
in this election,

(00:37:34):
I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans who have formally worked with

(00:37:41):
President Bush,

(00:37:42):
Mitt Romney,

(00:37:43):
and John McCain,

(00:37:44):
including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember

(00:37:50):
Liz Cheney.

(00:37:51):
And if you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is,

(00:37:57):
if you didn't make it clear already,

(00:37:59):
just ask people who have worked with him.

(00:38:01):
His former chief of staff,

(00:38:03):
a four-star general,

(00:38:04):
has said he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States.

(00:38:08):
His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit.

(00:38:13):
His former Secretary of Defense has said the nation,

(00:38:17):
the republic,

(00:38:17):
would never survive another Trump term.

(00:38:22):
And when we listen to this kind of rhetoric,

(00:38:26):
when the issues that affect the American people are not being addressed,

(00:38:31):
I think the choice is clear in this election.

(00:38:35):
I think Harris is very good here.

(00:38:37):
You know,

(00:38:38):
she takes Trump head on,

(00:38:40):
as she does in other parts of the debate,

(00:38:43):
especially when he goes rogue with this kind of statement.

(00:38:45):
And she shows people that he's unfit to be president.

(00:38:49):
But most importantly,

(00:38:51):
she shows that he's not addressing the real needs and concerns of people,

(00:38:56):
that his wild statements about immigration or other topics are just a diversion.

(00:39:01):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.

(00:39:05):
Trump is lacking here anything other than the same scripts, right, at this point.

(00:39:14):
We have seen them play out many times before and Harris is quite good here at balancing both a kind of

(00:39:28):
mocking tone,

(00:39:29):
so not inflating him too much by rebutting him in an overly serious tone of like,

(00:39:37):
look how dangerous he is,

(00:39:38):
because that actually might help him,

(00:39:40):
might help him seem more terrifying,

(00:39:43):
which he wants in some sense.

(00:39:45):
He wants to do this.

(00:39:46):
It's an assault on the truth is a way for him to show his power.

(00:39:54):
I'm right because I say I'm right.

(00:39:56):
It doesn't matter.

(00:39:57):
Facts don't matter to me because whatever I say is true because I said it.

(00:40:02):
But

(00:40:05):
She's also throughout the debate emphasizing the fact that this is passe and cliche,

(00:40:13):
and we've seen this before,

(00:40:15):
right?

(00:40:15):
So in this segment,

(00:40:17):
she talks about how people who are Republicans have our warning and are identifying

(00:40:25):
and are naming.

(00:40:26):
So I think that's a very good tactic to just name what it is he's doing,

(00:40:31):
but also at the same time,

(00:40:33):
you know,

(00:40:34):
using her signature laughter to show that, oh, well, you know, we know what this is, right?

(00:40:42):
in a way appealing to the audience's sense of skepticism by saying,

(00:40:46):
okay,

(00:40:48):
audience,

(00:40:48):
haven't you seen this before?

(00:40:49):
Are you going to buy, are we gonna buy into this again?

(00:40:54):
It's playing into that sense of skepticism without actually offending the audience

(00:41:02):
by saying,

(00:41:02):
look,

(00:41:03):
you're gullible if you believe this.

(00:41:05):
She's not doing that, which I think is a very clever way to threat this needle.

(00:41:09):
How do you convince people who may have been duped by Trump in the past without offending them now?

(00:41:18):
Anyway, immigration was definitely not the only topic where Trump was unhinged.

(00:41:23):
Let's listen to this clip about abortion.

(00:41:27):
Vice President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of abortion

(00:41:32):
because you've changed your position so many times.

(00:41:35):
Therefore, why should they trust?

(00:41:37):
Well,

(00:41:37):
the reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is,

(00:41:40):
as you know,

(00:41:40):
the vote is they have abortion in the ninth month.

(00:41:45):
They even have and you can look at the governor of West Virginia,

(00:41:48):
the previous governor of West Virginia,

(00:41:49):
not the current governor,

(00:41:50):
is doing an excellent job.

(00:41:52):
But the governor before, he said, the baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby.

(00:41:58):
In other words, we'll execute the baby.

(00:42:00):
And that's why I did that, because that predominates.

(00:42:03):
Because they're radical.

(00:42:04):
The Democrats are radical in that.

(00:42:06):
And her vice presidential pick,

(00:42:08):
which I think was a horrible pick,

(00:42:10):
by the way,

(00:42:10):
for our country,

(00:42:11):
because he is really out of it.

(00:42:13):
But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.

(00:42:19):
He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born, is OK.

(00:42:27):
And that's not OK with me, hence the vote.

(00:42:29):
But what I did is something for 52 years they've been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states.

(00:42:37):
And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that.

(00:42:47):
Now, I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

(00:42:51):
I believe strongly in it.

(00:42:52):
Ronald Reagan did also.

(00:42:54):
Eighty five percent of Republicans do exceptions.

(00:42:57):
Very important.

(00:42:58):
But we were able to get it.

(00:42:59):
And now states are voting on it.

(00:43:03):
Roy v. Wade was the landmark U.S.

(00:43:06):
Supreme Court decision in 1973 that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion.

(00:43:12):
This was also reversed also by the U.S.

(00:43:15):
Supreme Court in 2022.

(00:43:17):
Since then,

(00:43:17):
13 states have banned abortion in America,

(00:43:20):
and several others have imposed serious limitations on this right.

(00:43:25):
This has been a big issue for women and is known to have tipped many women towards Democrats,

(00:43:30):
hence Trump's attempt here at justifying his position as some kind of democratic

(00:43:35):
return of the issue to the states and with wild false allegations that Democrats

(00:43:40):
want abortion on the nine month or that they are in favor of,

(00:43:43):
quote,

(00:43:44):
executing babies.

(00:43:45):
Let's hear Harris on the same issue.

(00:43:49):
Let's understand how we got here.

(00:43:52):
Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with

(00:43:56):
the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v.

(00:43:59):
Wade.

(00:44:00):
And they did exactly as he intended.

(00:44:03):
And now in over 20 states,

(00:44:05):
there are Trump abortion bans,

(00:44:08):
which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care.

(00:44:14):
In one state, it provides prison for life.

(00:44:17):
Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest, which understand what that means.

(00:44:23):
A survivor of a crime,

(00:44:25):
a violation to their body,

(00:44:27):
does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next.

(00:44:31):
That is immoral.

(00:44:34):
And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree.

(00:44:40):
The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

(00:44:47):
I have talked with women around our country.

(00:44:50):
You want to talk about this is what people wanted?

(00:44:53):
Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term,

(00:44:57):
suffering from a miscarriage,

(00:44:58):
being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid

(00:45:03):
they might go to jail and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot.

(00:45:07):
She didn't want that.

(00:45:09):
Her husband didn't want that.

(00:45:10):
A 12 or 13 year old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

(00:45:17):
They don't want that.

(00:45:21):
This is really one of those existential issues that can truly define an election.

(00:45:26):
Many polls are showing that there is a strong gender divide,

(00:45:29):
with more women leaning towards Harris than Trump and more men leaning towards

(00:45:34):
Trump than Harris.

(00:45:35):
Harris is very convincing here,

(00:45:37):
and she's not just speaking sense,

(00:45:39):
but speaking with a good deal of emotion.

(00:45:43):
Yeah,

(00:45:43):
it's quite interesting to me that the abortion debate has mobilized quite a broad

(00:45:54):
coalition of people opposing

(00:45:58):
the position that Trump is taking.

(00:46:01):
And I also want to mention here that the killing babies accusation is redolent of

(00:46:12):
blood libel,

(00:46:14):
which is a classic antisemitic trope,

(00:46:17):
right?

(00:46:17):
This notion that supposedly there are mysterious cabals

(00:46:22):
um killing babies for some nefarious purpose and this kind of rhetoric was already

(00:46:29):
circulating in 2020 um about the democrats um before so this isn't all this isn't

(00:46:37):
news but i think the way that harris responded to it through this reappropriation

(00:46:44):
of freedom the woman's right to choose

(00:46:47):
Donald Trump doesn't have a right to tell women what to do with their bodies.

(00:46:51):
I think we talked about this previously in other episodes.

(00:46:57):
I think that was also a very clever way to pull the rug from under the Republicans on this issue.

(00:47:06):
Yes, for our audience, if you haven't listened to episode one, you can go back there.

(00:47:10):
We did quite an in-depth analysis of how basically the Harris-Walls ticket

(00:47:15):
reappropriated freedom from the grip of the far right.

(00:47:20):
Let's move now to foreign policy and foreign issues,

(00:47:26):
also around the military conflicts and war,

(00:47:28):
and here Harris on the Palestine-Israel conflict.

(00:47:34):
Vice President Harris, in December, you said, quote, Israel has a right to defend itself.

(00:47:38):
But you added, quote, it matters how, saying international humanitarian law must be respected.

(00:47:44):
Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.

(00:47:47):
You said that nine months ago.

(00:47:49):
Now, an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead.

(00:47:52):
Nearly 100 hostages remain.

(00:47:55):
Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there's not a deal in the making.

(00:47:59):
President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate.

(00:48:02):
How would you do it?

(00:48:04):
Well, let's understand how we got here.

(00:48:07):
On October 7,

(00:48:08):
Hamas,

(00:48:10):
a terrorist organization,

(00:48:14):
slaughtered 1,200 Israelis,

(00:48:16):
many of them young people who were simply attending a concert.

(00:48:21):
Women were horribly raped.

(00:48:23):
And so absolutely, I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself.

(00:48:28):
We would.

(00:48:30):
And how it does so matters, because it is also true.

(00:48:34):
Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, children, mothers.

(00:48:40):
What we know is that this war must end.

(00:48:45):
It must end immediately.

(00:48:47):
And the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out.

(00:48:53):
And so we will continue to work around the clock on that.

(00:48:57):
work around the clock also understanding that we must chart a course for a two-state solution.

(00:49:03):
And in that solution,

(00:49:05):
there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and in equal measure for

(00:49:10):
the Palestinians.

(00:49:11):
But the one thing I will assure you always,

(00:49:14):
I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself,

(00:49:18):
in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose

(00:49:24):
to Israel.

(00:49:25):
But we must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza,

(00:49:30):
where the Palestinians have security,

(00:49:33):
self-determination,

(00:49:34):
and the dignity they so rightly deserve.

(00:49:38):
We have discussed in episode one the lack of engagement of the Democrats with the

(00:49:43):
Gaza protesters at the Democratic National Convention in August.

(00:49:47):
And of course, it's quite a key topic of debate now on the left.

(00:49:51):
What is Harris' position?

(00:49:53):
To what extent is Harris' position different from Biden?

(00:49:56):
I think this statement does show the difference between Harris and the current US President Biden.

(00:50:02):
The stance on Israel perhaps is not that different.

(00:50:04):
And what I mean is basically U.S.

(00:50:07):
military support for Israel.

(00:50:09):
But she's clear about the recognition of Palestinian suffering and the right of

(00:50:12):
Palestinians to self-determination.

(00:50:14):
What do you think?

(00:50:16):
Yeah,

(00:50:17):
I think there is a rhetorical shift,

(00:50:21):
certainly from last year,

(00:50:23):
where there were memos that circulated among the Democrats saying that the word

(00:50:30):
ceasefire was not to be uttered at all.

(00:50:34):
So we should not lose sight of that shift.

(00:50:39):
But I don't think the shift will be

(00:50:43):
sufficient to really persuade people who feel apprehensive given the amount of of

(00:50:53):
of violence and the the the the sheer disregard really for the Palestinian

(00:51:01):
situation that is common both on the left,

(00:51:04):
the center and the right in the United States.

(00:51:07):
Right.

(00:51:08):
Because when, for example, Kamala Harris says far too many Palestinians have died,

(00:51:13):
it brings up the question.

(00:51:15):
So there is a number that is sufficient.

(00:51:19):
Let's hear Donald Trump, her opponent on the same issues and other foreign policy matters.

(00:51:27):
President Trump,

(00:51:28):
how would you negotiate with Netanyahu and also Hamas in order to get the hostages

(00:51:33):
out and prevent the killing of more innocent civilians in Gaza?

(00:51:37):
If I were president, it would have never started.

(00:51:40):
If I were president,

(00:51:41):
Russia would have never,

(00:51:43):
ever,

(00:51:44):
I know Putin very well,

(00:51:45):
he would have never,

(00:51:46):
and there was no threat of it either,

(00:51:47):
by the way,

(00:51:47):
for four years,

(00:51:49):
have gone into Ukraine and killed millions of people when you add it up.

(00:51:53):
Far worse than people understand what's going on over there.

(00:51:57):
But when she mentions about Israel, all of a sudden, she hates Israel.

(00:52:01):
She wouldn't even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech.

(00:52:07):
She refused to be there because she was at a sorority party of hers.

(00:52:11):
She wanted to go to the sorority party.

(00:52:13):
She hates Israel.

(00:52:14):
If she's president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.

(00:52:19):
And I've been pretty good at predictions, and I hope I'm wrong about that one.

(00:52:23):
She hates Israel.

(00:52:24):
At the same time,

(00:52:25):
in her own way,

(00:52:27):
she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up.

(00:52:33):
Arabs, Jewish people, Israel.

(00:52:37):
Israel will be gone.

(00:52:38):
It would have never happened.

(00:52:40):
Iran was broke under Donald Trump.

(00:52:43):
Now Iran has $300 billion because they took off all the sanctions that I had.

(00:52:48):
Iran had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different

(00:52:55):
and they are spheres of terror, horrible terror.

(00:52:58):
They had no money.

(00:52:59):
It was a big story, and you know it.

(00:53:01):
You covered it very well, actually.

(00:53:03):
They had no money for terror.

(00:53:05):
They were broke.

(00:53:07):
Now they're a rich nation, and now what they're doing is they're spreading that money around.

(00:53:13):
Look at what's happening with the Houthis and Yemen.

(00:53:16):
Look at what's going on in the Middle East.

(00:53:18):
This would have never happened.

(00:53:20):
I will get that settled and fast, and I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended.

(00:53:26):
If I'm president-elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president.

(00:53:33):
That was Donald Trump.

(00:53:35):
Of course, in his usual style, he moved quite far away from the question.

(00:53:40):
And so he didn't just talk about Israel and Palestine.

(00:53:43):
It's a complete lie that Harris hates Israel, as Donald Trump claimed.

(00:53:47):
But I think the word hate here is also very dangerous because it somewhat implies

(00:53:51):
that Harris might have anti-Semitic tendencies.

(00:53:55):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting that Trump is doing both the attempt of saying she hates Israel.

(00:54:05):
Under her regime, under her rule, Israel will cease to exist, right?

(00:54:10):
So on the one hand,

(00:54:13):
he's playing that rhetorical strategy,

(00:54:18):
but he's also playing the opposite one at the same time.

(00:54:22):
Very classic Trump.

(00:54:23):
She's also, in her own way,

(00:54:25):
She also hates Arabs.

(00:54:27):
So I thought that was a very,

(00:54:29):
actually a very smart move on him because he's trying to drive the wedge on both

(00:54:37):
sides of the issue,

(00:54:40):
both for the people who sympathize with Israel and among people who are sympathetic

(00:54:48):
to Palestine and feel repulsed by

(00:54:52):
really what was a lack of even showing basic empathy towards the Palestinian cause

(00:55:00):
by President Biden in the first months of the war.

(00:55:07):
So that was a very interesting thing to observe,

(00:55:10):
the hate,

(00:55:11):
the use of the accusation of basically a covert accusation of anti-Semitism,

(00:55:17):
she hates Israel,

(00:55:18):
which actually was pre...

(00:55:22):
prefigured, anticipated by that blood libel accusation earlier.

(00:55:26):
So there's an interesting kind of incoherence there of he is himself using

(00:55:34):
antisemitic tropes while accusing Kamala Harris of antisemitism.

(00:55:38):
This is a go-to GOP tactic around these times.

(00:55:46):
Yes,

(00:55:46):
and of course the other interesting thing here is that Trump makes again these

(00:55:51):
statements where he's trying to almost posit himself as the guy who's going to end

(00:55:57):
the Russia-Ukraine war.

(00:55:58):
We discussed this fiction of the anti-war Donald Trump in episode one,

(00:56:03):
but just in case somebody has any doubts basically about where Trump stands and how

(00:56:08):
pro-peace in general he might be,

(00:56:11):
it's pretty clear about the rationale of his foreign policy in this clip.

(00:56:16):
Viktor Orban, one of the most respected men.

(00:56:18):
They call him a strong man.

(00:56:20):
He's a tough person.

(00:56:22):
Smart.

(00:56:23):
Prime Minister of Hungary.

(00:56:24):
They said, why is the whole world blowing up?

(00:56:27):
Three years ago, it wasn't.

(00:56:28):
Why is it blowing up?

(00:56:30):
He said, because you need Trump back as president.

(00:56:34):
They were afraid of him.

(00:56:35):
China was afraid.

(00:56:36):
And I don't like to use the word afraid, but I'm just quoting him.

(00:56:39):
China was afraid of him.

(00:56:41):
North Korea was afraid of him.

(00:56:43):
Look at what's going on with North Korea, by the way.

(00:56:45):
He said Russia was afraid of him.

(00:56:49):
I mean,

(00:56:49):
here he's using the endorsement of an autocrat,

(00:56:52):
you know,

(00:56:53):
Hungary's prime minister,

(00:56:54):
Viktor Orban,

(00:56:55):
who,

(00:56:56):
like Trump,

(00:56:56):
has also been known for pro-Putin sympathies.

(00:56:59):
But also Trump,

(00:57:01):
what he's doing here is stressing that not anything,

(00:57:04):
nothing that would suggest that he's a pacifist of sorts.

(00:57:07):
Rather, his focus in foreign policy is to incite fear.

(00:57:11):
So people will be scared of him.

(00:57:13):
And for that reason, there will be no wars.

(00:57:15):
Right.

(00:57:17):
And in his, also his recipe for how he was going to end the war in Gaza

(00:57:24):
and also in Ukraine, he is presenting this narrative of, you know, the sheer standstaking.

(00:57:32):
It's because he's willing to say that it's so horrible, you know, it's horrible terror, right?

(00:57:40):
As he puts it, he can just will it to end because he's just that willful, right?

(00:57:46):
There's that narrative, which I think really appeals, this kind of muscular vision

(00:57:54):
muscular masculine vision of foreign policy.

(00:57:57):
If you if you just sneer loudly enough,

(00:58:00):
if you just condemn and loudly enough,

(00:58:03):
if you just take a strongest possible stance of disapproval,

(00:58:08):
that will create deterrence.

(00:58:10):
And we know that,

(00:58:12):
though,

(00:58:12):
in practice that this usually ends up sparking or intensifying or escalating

(00:58:19):
conflicts rather than the opposite.

(00:58:22):
We've gone through quite a few moments,

(00:58:24):
at least some of the key moments of the debate between Harris and Trump.

(00:58:29):
So if you had to do some, you know, final wrap up.

(00:58:31):
So who won?

(00:58:34):
Well, and I am good company saying this.

(00:58:38):
It seems that Harris did a better job than Trump on this front.

(00:58:44):
Yes,

(00:58:45):
in fact,

(00:58:45):
an ABC News Ipsos poll that was released on Sunday,

(00:58:50):
15th of September,

(00:58:51):
shows that 58% of Americans believe that Harris won the debate,

(00:58:55):
while only 36% think that Trump won.

(00:58:59):
This is a major reversal of the June debate between Trump and Biden,

(00:59:04):
where 66% of people,

(00:59:06):
of Americans,

(00:59:06):
thought that Trump won versus 28% for Biden.

(00:59:10):
But what we know is that this remains a tight race,

(00:59:12):
so it will be interesting to see how things unfold over the next weeks as we head

(00:59:17):
towards Election Day on 5th of November.

(00:59:20):
We have come to the end of the show for today.

(00:59:22):
Please make sure to subscribe to our channels,

(00:59:24):
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(00:59:29):
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(00:59:30):
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(00:59:34):
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(00:59:41):
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(00:59:48):
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(00:59:50):
Bye.