October 3, 2024 • 34 mins
Robert, Sophie, and Garrison discuss the vice presidential debate between Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Ohio senator JD Vance.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. I just want to start off by saying
I love you.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh God, yeah, yeah, I love you.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I don't think jd Vance should be saying the word
love because it it just makes it clear every time
he does that he's never felt that emotion.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
No, No, there was something particularly unsettling about him saying that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's like when I try to order food in French
and it's like, Robert, you're not fooling anyone, Like you
look this up on Google right before getting to the restaurant,
Like you're not going to impress anyone. No, I guess
let's start with a fuck Mary kill for the guys
that know the Secret Service will get pissed at us
if we do that one.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
No, it could happen here and this is the US
the Shit VP Debate episode.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm so Felix Triven. I'm here with Kirsten Davis
at Robert Evans.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow, what a great use of two hours that was?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That really was?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I am behind this week horribly, still haven't picked the
subject for this week. Desperately desperately behind, and I shared
in love that this was a complete waste of all
of our fucking time, not a complete waste because we
learned something important, which is that the Democrat who seemed
to have the best understanding of how to fight Republicans
maybe just got lucky or or got coached into some
(01:18):
very bad advice by a Democrat who should have known better.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Hey, Robert, I just want to say thank you for
saying that, Like I agree with you. I just want
to say thank you for saying Zoby.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You and I are great friends. Everything you say is
terrible and wrong, but I agree with you on most
of it, And thank.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You and thank you and thank you for saying that.
I just really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, whoever told him that Americans wanted to see
him be friendly with jd Vance was not a friend
of the republic or of him. I think I don't
think it'll work. I've been wrong before. It definitely seems
to have worked if your recollection of like what Fox
and the other anchors were saying, they seem to be
(01:56):
pretty positive on Walls's performance, So it may be working
online media gules.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But that's who watched the VP debate.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
That is who watches the debate.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah right, I mean that is the audience.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, only the fucking sickos. Who are keening on politics
watch the VP debate.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I guess I don't really believe this, but I'm going
to like my devil's advocate would be, maybe it's smart
strategy to accept that only media gules listen to this.
The only real way for the debate to matter is
if you like fuck up. Sure, And there was more
risk of seeming like a lunatic if he went in
there attacking JD as hard as he could and getting
negative press, as opposed to this, which probably is not
(02:38):
going to get him negative press.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I think he probably had multiple strategies, And like if JD.
Vance had come in there and started saying some of
the things that he normally says, which are fucking weird
and creepy, but he didn't an unhinged and fascist, misogynistic,
and I could continue, but then we might have seen
a different Tim Walls.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
But because JD.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Vance's entire strategy was like, hey, I can appear normal
even though I'm not.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well, I don't quite understand the hesitancy to then actually
bring those things just forefront. They were there, and why
not talk about it, Because like my initial takeaway here
is I don't think anyone necessarily clearly won. I think
both of them did just fine. But if anyone comes
out slightly better than what they were going in, I
would say it is Vance.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It's Vance.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I would agree, because somehow Walls was able to humanize
Vance over the course of the debate. They were it
was a very very friendly exchange, and that just serves
to undercut the months of work that Walls has done
to paint Vance as a weird, unhinged extremist, which he is,
and instead making him seem like just a reasonable politician
(03:46):
that although we may disagree on a few things, we
actually agree on a lot of a lot of the
problems and solutions.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We both care about this country. We're trying to help people,
and like no jd. Vance. Like there was that bit
where they were talking about mass shootings and he was like,
I truly believe that Vance cares about these kids. Jadie.
Vance doesn't give a shit about dead kids, never has,
never will. He's not capable of it. And it undercut
one of the more powerful moments that Walls had where
he was like, my son was at a.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Mass shooting, christ have mercy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It was so interesting too, because I know Walls is
and I know that I'm coming into this as the
guy who's generally pretty anti gun control, but I'm just
from perspective of Democratic Party strategy. Number one, this is
something they go after hard, so you can't half asset right.
This is not like the border where they really do
feel the need to lean into the right wing argument.
(04:38):
The dims are very unequivocal about what they about, like
the fact that they want to ban IRA fifteen's. Walls
didn't really commit to that until a little bit when
he was specifically pushed on whether or not he agreed
with an assault weapons ban, and instead his language up
until that point was not very different from Vance's aside
from their disagreement over fortifying schools, but it was all
(05:00):
stuff around the guns, whereas the Democratic Parties line and
the line of most Democratic politicians has been it's about
the guns. And I did find it interesting that Walls
he had to kind of be goaded into really embracing
that by the moderator.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Now, one of the first things I noticed from watching
the debate, which just happened like once or twice, then
I realized this was just like a reoccurring trend across
the whole night, is that each candidate would try to
separate the other, yeah, from their running mate, to be like,
I'm sure Walls or I'm sure Vance agrees with me
on this, but their running mate doesn't and that's the
real problem. And this just kept happening. They kept trying
(05:38):
to like, yep, be nice to the actual opponent in
the debate by separating them out from their running mate.
Who's the real source of the problem. And that's just like,
it just just kept happening, Like what are you doing,
Like you're running on a joint ticket. There's no reason
to do this. And I think kind of part of
what their strategy may have been. Yes, these debates are
probably only watched by freaks, but I think they're also
(06:00):
in freaks who are like weird, like independent centristy freaks,
and I think this is who they were going after this.
This entire debate was focused on appealing to the center.
It wasn't really based on like going heavy into like
each side's own base because people they've already made up
their minds. And I think the the issue for me
(06:20):
at the end of this debate is because both of
them were we're trying to court the center vote. I
think Vans did about just as good as Walls did
going after the center by and and Walls kind of
even even helped them. And in effect, if Vance comes
off as just a slightly better debater when they're going
after the same base, that just leaves Walls with like
(06:41):
not really making any ground where he could have actually
just hit hit Vance quite hard and actually gone more
on like a party line or actually just like gone
more towards like all the reasons that Advance is fucked up,
which he just would she would, she just avoided to do. Yeah,
so my my my main takeaway was like, if they're
both according to the Center and Vance kind of barely edged
(07:02):
him out in some regards, maybe Walls should have just
actually been way more aggressive, and the kind of lack
of aggression really only hurt the Democrats because in the
end it kind of benefits Vance. If you give this
like half assed mediocre performance.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
We'll see where it Because again, this is not being
listened to by average people in the same way that
like the last presidential debate was. This is not I
don't think moves the needle one way or the other.
Because it was so close, I would be inclined to
agree with you that I think Vance did more of
the things he needed to do for this to be
a benefit to him. I'm not sure in a way
that helps the campaign, because most of what Vance did
(07:39):
that probably helps him was stuff that I think would
set him up better in a world where Trump doesn't
win reelection. Sure that would set him up to continue
to have a career and to be re embraced by
respectable kind of politics. The thing that makes me kind
of doubt myself because I think there's a possibility this
comes out as a Wall win. And if that is
(08:01):
the case, it will be entirely because of the last
question on January sixth, Because the way these things tend
to work in popular memory, not again people like us
who sit through the whole thing, all of nearly all
of them are journalists or unusually engaged voters. But the
thing that there's two moments that are most likely one
from each of them, in my opinion, to get clipped
(08:21):
out and go viral. And for Vance it was the
January sixth thing where Walls drilled him, and I think
this was actually one of his few fairly effective aggressive
moments where he was like yeah, forced him to answer,
and Vance refused to answer as to whether or not
he thought Trump had lost in twenty twenty in a
way that was I think kind of embarrassing for him
(08:41):
and is easy, probably pretty easy to clip out. That
might wind up being the big kind of viral moment
of the night. If it's not that, it'll be Walls flubbing.
We should talk about the China question now. Yeah, but
I don't think the China question that Walls flubbed is
on an issue that like Americans overall care about, which
is Tim Walls now maybe exaggerating when he talked about
his vacation in China one time in the eighties.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah, let's take a quick break and then let's dive
in a little bit on that.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So, first off, everyone in this debate pronounced China correctly,
which is a step forward from the ones that have
involved Trump the last couple of cycles. The downside is
no one knows how to say it on not a
single person.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And not a single mention of Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Oh yeah, well that was interesting to me, That is interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, not one moment where we talked about Ukraine, which.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
They kind of blazed past foreign policy really quickly, which
is a little surprising. Considering the events of this morning.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
There are literally missiles landing in Tel Aviv right now,
like people are talking with I think some reason as
to whether or not Israel might consider it nuclear response,
Like shit is legitimately a problem.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I mean, And this is how they started the debate.
They started by talking about how this was going to
be like a debate focused on how presidents or these
vice presidents will handle like America in a sudden crisis
as we've seen with the hurricane this weekend and now
escalating or in the in the Middle East. And although
(10:23):
that was their kind of opening framing, they really got
over those hurdles quite quick and then started talking about
extremely boring shit for the rest of the hour and
a half.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The very first question was basically, you know, Iran's bombing Israel,
which like I don't know with the Israel do anything
to fucking Lebanon right before that, like interesting context from
the journalist there, But Iran's bombing Israel. If you're in
the situation room, Tim Walls, what do you tell the
president if you're the last voice, should he let Israel
carry out a strike on Iran? And his response was
(10:54):
a carbon copy of what Kamala has said every time
she's been asked on it, Israel has a right to
defend itself. October seventh was horrible, but you know, civilian
casualty is bad too, So it was a non answer,
but it was the same non answer that the campaign
has always given, So I was not surprised by Well,
it was exactly what I expected from him.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Started off a little shakey, certainly sounded nervous. I think
this immediately kind of gave Vance a head up.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
His first like three minutes, he was clearly uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
He got better, especially because like Vance has like a
debate kid energy, right, But Walls did start getting better
as soon as he pivoted away from this question to
just attacking Trump, which is kind of his strong suit.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I think Vance's responsor is interesting. So Walls gave
He was a little shaky, I think just because they
had started because he got better on that, But he
gave what has become the standard non answer answer for
the campaign. JD. Vance started his answer on the question
of what would you tell the president if he was
asking if he should allow potentially, you know, a massive
(11:53):
escalative strike by Israel and Iran. What would you tell
him if you're the last guy in the situation room,
and Jdvan started the response to that by summarizing the
book He'll Billy ellig That was in fact, the bulk
of his response was him talking about who he is
and where he comes from and then being like, yeah,
I guess it's fine if Israel does whatever. It was
an incredible response, and it struck me as the response
(12:16):
of a guy who doesn't think his partner is going
to become the president. Again, I thought that was very odd.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, he was positioning himself for future jobs.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, I mean, he was different kind of than the
other answers. Maybe it was just they were both a
little bit off their game. First question. You know that
happens to everybody in a debate.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
They both were nervous.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and this is this also when
Vance deployed his one of his reoccurring catchphrases is a
peace through strength. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh, I hated that. I hated that because it's also
I mean, that is very close to the quote from
the Brotherhood of Nod and Command and Conquer and JD. Vance,
you are no Kine. You know who lives in death?
Speaker 3 (12:56):
By the way, in general, I think vance painted Trump
is having like a provable track record of proving him
as like, like Trump is going to end the chaos
that we've faced as a nation in the past four years,
whether that be economic or with war.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
He was extremely consistent on that.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And he's trying to point to, like was your life
better under Trump? Especially economically, and like everyone's brains were
completely fired by twenty twenty, so we actually no one
remembers what twenty seventeen was like at all, So you
actually can't recall that because whatsoever, let alone kind of
Trump's mishandling of the pandemic led to like the biggest
recession in modern history, which also for some reason Walls
(13:36):
just never brought up.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Now, well he does it. He did a little. He
said that, like he talked about how when they came
in they were dealing with a massive recession.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
The second thing they talked about was climate change, which
was Jesse Waters of Foxes was very mad that that
was the second thing they talked about.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Were framing through Hurricane Helene.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yeah, he was very he was very upset about which
is okay, sir.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That's oddly, you know, quickly accepted the climate change framing
for the sake of the argument, talked about how moving
energy production from the quote unquote dirtiest parts of the
world back to America, where we are the cleanest, would
be one way to help.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I think it would have worked on my dad that response,
like the whole you know, well, we'd cleave, so we
just got to bring back manufacturing. You know. It was
not a bad answer in terms of doing what he
needed to do. It was obviously nonsense, and the moderator
called him very well on that, like by just being like,
by the way, like there's no argument among scientists about
(14:42):
like how carbon impacts global warming. I think overall a
tire maybe slightly favoring walls that whole section. Yea, Like
he did not, Oh, I don't think he did badly there.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
No, I think Walls did a good job. Connecting the
economy to the environment. Yeah, how as the environment gets worse,
the local economy gets worse, especially for like farmer. It's
not like fly yeah green New Deal Democrats, but for
like everyday farmers. And again pivoted very quickly to just
attacking Trump and Trump's climate denial. I tried to press
vance on Trump's climate denial, and Vance kind of, you know, again,
tried to just blame for manufacturing, saying that Kamala's like
(15:15):
rhetorican record does not match her actual actions, which are
increasing foreign manufacturing in general. Advance kind of fell back
on a whole bunch of like nationalistic framing regarding the
environment and regarding like the economy, especially manufacturing. That was
one of his reoccurring talking points.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so we are getting to see some of the
times as spent in real time where they just published
Ross Duthat's article Vance's dominant debate performance shows why he's
Trump's running mate, And the url of the article shows
that it was initially put into the CMS about a
week ago on the twenty fifth, and they dropped the
article about halfway through the debate.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
So cool.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That said, it's kind of unclear to me how the
rest of this is going to shake out.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
They also could have just written two articles, one where
Vans did well and one where Walls did well. Yeah,
but that is still that's funny.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I don't know that that'll matter either. We'll see where
people land. It was interesting to me Walls did do
something that I liked twice. Neither time did he give
it enough force. But he pointed out twice that a
big part of the housing crisis is vcs buying up
affordable housing, jacking up the price, jacking up the price
of rent, that that is like a massive issue. He
brought that up. He said housing shouldn't be treated as
(16:27):
a commodity, which I never expected to hear from a
candidate in one of these debates, but he brought them
both up like like a guy on a debate who
is like just kind of throwing out a side point
so you don't forget to say it as opposed to
someone emphasizing it. And the thing to do with jd
Vance is to point that you are one of those
venture capitalists. You are one of the people who was
hollowing out this country. And you know, Walls was good
(16:50):
at trying to repeatedly say it's not migrants who are
ruining like housing in this country, but he failed to
connect enough and he had the pieces there to be like,
it's guys like you, Yeah, it's fucking it's fucking white
dudes in suits and earpieces who have made housing expensive.
It is not people coming here from fucking Honduras, like
it's people like you who need to be rained in
(17:12):
by the government, and he just wasn't willing to commit
to the answer that he clearly had in his pocket.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
No, he just never went on the attack. And it's
just odd because he kept he was probably coached on this.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But like I think it's coaching.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
He did not do any of the things that gave
him this job in the first place. He didn't play
to any of his strengths. Instead, Vance was able to
play to Vance's own strengths, and Walls was able to
just be a slightly less polished moderate, Which why are
you trying to frame him as a slightly less polished
moderate going up against a debate kid like Vance. Walls
(17:47):
needs to be like on the attack. He actually needs
to show like a strong resistance in order to actually
like make a large impact in the debate. And that's
why I think this kind of largely swung towards Vance.
Yes by the end, if they're both trying, if they're
trying to court this same like moderate vote. Now, as always,
the immigration section of these is always frustrating. No one
talks about how fentanyl was largely brought in via citizens.
(18:10):
No one feels the need to bring that up CBS
did have a little fact check, or not a fact
check necessarily, but like a little comment talking about how
the majority of Americans pulled are in favor of deportations.
But they specifically asked Vance, like, how is your military
deportation plan going to work and willly separate like children
(18:30):
that are born in the United States from illegal immigrants,
And Vance just refused to answer that question repeatedly to
try to get him to answer multiple times, he continually
refused it, instead saying that, like kommlass, border policy is
already a child separation policy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
There was a great moment there where he got angry
at them for fact checking, fact checking specifically on his clims.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But illegal immigrants in Springfield.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, because those migrants in fact had legal status.
And he was like, you guys said you weren't going
to fact check.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
No, no, no, he didn't say, he shouted.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, he yelled the rules were that you were not
kind of fact checked that. He just explained how immigration
like works, how legal immigration works.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
They were like, thank you for explaining how immigration works.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Thank you for explaining the legal process of immigration. This
has been one thing that Vance has been doing on
the campaign trails just explaining the legal process of immigration
and just saying I'm still gonna call this illegal because
I wanted to be illegal, and you're like, okay, you can't.
Like I guess, I guess we could just use words
to read whatever we want. Sure, why not?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
M Yeah, if this comes out in the public opinion
being in Wolves's favor, it'll be because of those moments. Yeah,
that one at the end, in those moments where Vance
was like yelling and they cut out his mic at
one point. Yeah, like that kind of stuff. I don't think.
I don't know. Again, I don't think anyone's going to
really listen to this beta debate enough for there to
(19:56):
be it to make much of an impact. But those
were not great moments for him.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Yeah, but those are the kind of things that get
clipped out and spread across the internet. Yeah, so we'll
see and so the people that didn't watch the entire thing,
well some of them will see clips like that.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I think the immigration section certainly showed kind of walls.
In his stronger moments, talking about how the past year
we've actually seen a decrease in opia deaths, he continued
to talk about how Trump killed the bipartisan, a conservative
immigration bill, which we're probably not fans of, but he's
trying to make it play well electorally. And then pivoted
to Springfield and said, how like the Republican mayor came
(20:34):
out and said none of this stuff was true, but
Trump and Vance kept viewing it. State law enforcement had
to escort kids to school. But even in this like
Springfield section, which Walls was the first one to bring up,
Vance was the big driver of this lie. But even
in Walls's mention of this, he tries to separate Vans
from Trump. He primarily blamed Trump for this and totally
(20:55):
just like ignore Advance's massive contribution to this, like big
this information campaign that led to these bomb threats. You
just let Vance get off easy, and I think this
part was saved. Kind of buy this little fact check
and Vance's little meltdown over this legal immigration comment. But
still it kind of showed a little bit of Even
(21:15):
in Walls's stronger moments, he refused to like really harp
on Vance for being weird.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, speaking of people who watched the debate, I don't
think our sponsors did because they have real jobs.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Hello, we are back now. One of the biggest issues
for me in this campaign is how much time exactly
did Walls spend in Hong Kong. This is like really
one of the primary issues impacting my vote.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
There were one hundred and fifty thousand people in the
streets in New York City today demanding to know whether
or not to Walls was really in China during the
Taneman Square uprisings.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You know, thankfully CBS News is on the case.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yes, we didn't have a second for Ukraine, not one second.
There was at no point any questions asked about the
loss of life due to the genocide in Gaza, not one.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
But by god, this this was really goofy. Basically, they
asked Walls with this comment he made in twenty fourteen
about being in Hong Kong during the Tanneman Square massacre,
when kind of reporting shows that he only arrived in August,
basically like two or three months later. And I don't
know if either Walls just misunderstood the question or purposely
(22:41):
avoided it. But instead of talking with this, you know,
summarized his entire career, both as a school teacher and
in politics, and then emphasized that although he spent time
in China, he is he is loyal to the United States,
And it was just really odd and like you can
even see events like slowly like smirking the longer. Walls
(23:03):
just kept going on about his career, and at the
end of his like weird like non answer about his
commitment to the United States, the moderators asked again, They're like, well,
were you there for the massacre? And then he very
quickly clarified. I was like, uh, I mean, yeah, I
might have. I might have misspoke. I don't understand why
you wouldn't just very clearly say yeah, I misspoke. I
(23:25):
was there for the aftermath of the massacre. I was
there during the uprising.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
More I got misquoted. I was there the year of
the uprising. Yeah, he was there.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
During some of the uprising, but he was but he
arrived in the aftermath of the massacre. I don't know
why I can just say, yes, I arrived the aftermath
of the massacre. I misspoke ten years ago. Like it's
very simple. Your weird, long, two minute avoided answer just
makes you like look like weak and unnecessarily slimy. It
doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It just is weird, because of course were gonna ask
that question, why, Why did you not have a prepared answer?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I mean, this only became a new story today, like
this this, this only became a new story like like
a few hours ago.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Still have some kind of a prepared generic answer.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I'm sure he did. My guess is that if I
was debate prepping him, I would have assumed they were
going to ask one of the questions about his service
based on all of like the different sort of like
totally right wing shit coming out. Everything about his performance
was the result of a guy who was over prepared
and prepared by people whose focus was on him not
upsetting the apple cart and embarrassing the campaign, not on
(24:32):
him winning. That is how he was coached, and he
was well prepared as a general rule for the most part.
When JD. Vance would like make a claim about you know, Fittanel,
he had a counter fact right that he could bring up,
and he did that reasonably well. He seemed confident about
the information he clearly put in the work, but none
of what he was prepared for was hurting Vance. He
(24:54):
was entirely prepared to not make an easy fuck up,
which maybe is the smart move if you're just like
we just don't want this to upset anything, because there's
no way it'll help. Like, my guess is that he
was told going into this by his handlers this debate
is not going to win us the election, but it
could lose us the election. So what we need to
(25:16):
make sure happens is that you don't fuck anything up
or seem too mean or seem too weird yourself. So
we are going to like train you to be as
boring as possible, and they did that.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
And like, as a follow up, Vance was asked about
his previous like anti Trump like Hitler comments and specifically
was asked, like if he can be trusted to actually
like give Trump good honest advice and not just to
say whatever he thinks Trump wants to hear, which Vance
gave us similarly avoidant answer and just talked about tariffs.
And then the moderators did not follow up with Vance
(25:49):
no about his avoided answers, So there you go. The
abortion segment is basically a rehash of what happened in
the in the Kamala Trump debate, with like Vance talking
about a billin Minnesota who that he claimed like leads
to the death of like babies who were aborted, Like
after birth or like some kind of odd thing that
just isn't true. That was pretty silly. This was one
(26:12):
of the issues where he was weakest, and I think
we were also maybe slightly upset that Walls again was
kind of was kind of hands off on this. Historically,
Vance has made some a lot of crazy comments on
podcasts about this topic, and neither the moderators nor Walls
really pressed him super hard on it. Advanced himself tried
to largely be on the attack with this like late
(26:34):
term abortion, killing babies after birth thing that Walls just
tried to easily kind of brush aside as just not
being true. Speaking of healthcare, Vance oddly tried to claim
that Trump like saved Obamacare. At this point in the debate,
things just kind of started getting a little bit boring.
I don't think this debate had as many like good
questions as the last one. It was a very like
(26:57):
twenty twelve style debate. It just it just it was flat.
It didn't feel kind of like present. So they talked
about Obamacare, how Trump saved Obamacare, and Walls talked about
how Trump hurt Obamacare. Just kind of boring back and forth,
and then finally the last question was about like democracy
in January sixth, election denial, that kind of stuff. Vance
(27:18):
opened by saying, like, we have other issues to solve
beyond election denial. He said that we should we should
have like open debate about the issues of the twenty
twenty election. He then downplayed January sixth and emphasized instead
the bigger threat to democracy was Facebook censorship and how
people are like ending friendships over political disagreements, and this
(27:42):
was bizarre. I think this was Wall's strongest moment. He
talked about how there was one hundred and forty police
officers assaulted on January sixth, some who later died. He
mentioned this other story about how, like on January sixth,
there were similar protests in a whole bunch of different states,
and he mentioned one in Minnesota whre people threatened to
like march to his home and his kid and his
(28:03):
dog need to be like escorted out by police because
people were like threatening to go to his home saying
that there might be casualties. I thought that was maybe
that was that was a pretty good moment for Walls
brought up how people in January sixth tried to kill
Mike Pence, which everyone seems.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
To forget it's not talked about enough.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I mean, yeah, look that's one of those things where
like my issues, so there are political not about the
specific ads.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Vans tried to be like, hey, you know everyone does
a little election denial. In twenty sixteen, there was Russia Gate,
and I think Walls did a pretty good follow up
by saying, like January sixth wasn't about Facebook ads, It
wasn't like that wasn't the problem. The problem was the
people storming the capital trying to kill everyone inside, like
that was the real issue. And real censorship is stuff
(28:51):
like book banning. First time we had a mention of
any of that. But even in this section about Jay
six he still like thanked Vance for having this conversation
and then asked him if Trump lost the election, which
Vance just avoided avoided answering, instead asking Walls did Combalesce
censor Americans on Facebook? Which is just great, Yeah, just
(29:12):
a great equally important problems.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, these two, these two issues, and unfortunately Walls's initial
response was like I don't run Facebook, which just say
he's lying, Like, just call him a liar to him, Yeah,
he's a liar.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It's wild that like we're talking about like January sixth,
and Advance's biggest concern is people being banned on Facebook. Like,
I think that's not going to play well for him.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's not going to play well. But also, yeah, it
was just a missed opportunity. There were a lot of those.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
The entire debate was a missed opportunity.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
RT. Yeah, and like Walls is I think slight fumble here.
You can point to his like closing statements saying like
I'm surprised that we have this coalition from like Bernie
Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift. You're like, yeah,
that is that is a little surprising. Maybe that's the
bit of the problem.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Oh, that was a nightmare line for.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Me, Of all the names to drop Dick Cheney.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift hand in hands.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Well, because like even among moderates, do you think Dick
Cheney's popular?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
That was my last straw.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I was like, who who prepped him? Who did his
debate prep? Who agreed that statement?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Someone who really likes fucking Dick Cheney? Was it Carl Rove?
Did they get Carl Rove again? God damn?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
It was Hillary involved with this debate prep.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Like shoot, like, I know the Clintons were involved with
with commwa's debate prep.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Were they involved with with Tim Wallas's debate prep?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I'm not sure, but I think this kind of
underlines I know, this is kind of a larger issue
with like the Democratic Party in the year twenty twenty four,
but I think this also underlines, like the my issue
with Walls's performance here is, like this debate, both candidates
were going after the Dick Cheney voter. They were going
after like neo cons and independence.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
The literal devil yes, and like for that base.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think Vance does appeal to them more in this debate.
I think Vance did a better job appealing to those
people in this debate, which left Walls coming off is
just slightly worse and not really giving him any like
standout like performances. I think if if Walls actually like
emphasized all the reasons that Vance is a freak and
is bad, I think that may have showed him to
be more of a unique candidate. Instead, they both came
(31:19):
off as just kind of boring moderates, which just doesn't
make sense because that's like the opposite reason that both
of these men were picked for their chops. They were
both picked to represent this slightly more extreme wing of
the party, with Walls being a bit more progressive and
Vance being a bit more fascist. Now it makes sense
that Vance is going to go after the moderates. I
just don't think Walls needed to agree.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That's kind of all my all my thoughts on this
riveting to our debate.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I have to say me too, man, m Well, we've.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Got a flash poll from CBS News forty two percent
for Vance, forty one percent for Walls sixteen percent set
a tie.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Great, Yeah, that was the general. That was the general.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
That was the general vibe.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, Fox Fox News was Walls was good enough. Vance
did just fine.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
No, the moderator's obnoxious moderators smug and arrogant bias, but
that's just typical.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I think the moderators were fine. I think overall, it
wasn't a very well laid out debate. I think the
fact that Vans was able to be humanized with the
assistance of Walls makes Vance kind of the winner in
the way that like this did more to benefit Advance
than it did to benefit Walls, and the fact that
Walls kind of acted counterintuitively to his whole line of
(32:32):
messaging from the past year is a fundamental mistake that
I think I hope that Democrats would like reevaluate going forward,
but they're the Democrats.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
So just interesting, interesting take that I've seen online, and
also a take for my Midwest moderate Democrat mother is
She said to me, just remember Tim is from the Midwest.
In Minnesota is the most Midwest there is. It is
not it is nature to be anything but polite. Not
what we're used to seeing in a debate. But it
(33:02):
was a little refreshing, So okay, So I'm.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Just saying, yeah, if you went into this already liking Walls,
this won't make you dislike Wall.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm already My mom definitely already liked.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Right like and like. That's why I think this is
largely just largely inconsequential. Even e Vance got a little
bit of a lake up, it is largely inconsequential.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Do you know who the winner of the debate was?
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Minnesota sounds like a great place to live, got great
pr tonight, I guess.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So Walls was clearly doing the best here when he
was like just talking about how nice Minnesota is.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
It's great here.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
And Tim. We all know what the winters are like there.
You're fool You're not fooling anybody like come on, sir.
That said, if you live in the Portland area, or
really anywhere in southern California, move to Minnesota. Just just
get on out of here. You'll love it. You're gonna
have a great time. Everyone in Minnesota is gonna love you.
People love Californians when they move other places, it goes well.
(33:58):
It's always happy, always is always a good time. So
if I had any advice to end on, it's people
who are currently in Los Angeles. Move to Minnesota. You
will be beloved. People will want to listen to your
policy ideas. It'll be great.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
You listen to podcasts. You can now find.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.
Also media. I just want to start off by saying
I love you.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh God, yeah, yeah, I love you.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I don't think jd Vance should be saying the word
love because it it just makes it clear every time
he does that he's never felt that emotion.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
No, No, there was something particularly unsettling about him saying that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's like when I try to order food in French
and it's like, Robert, you're not fooling anyone, Like you
look this up on Google right before getting to the restaurant,
Like you're not going to impress anyone. No, I guess
let's start with a fuck Mary kill for the guys
that know the Secret Service will get pissed at us
if we do that one.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
No, it could happen here and this is the US
the Shit VP Debate episode.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm so Felix Triven. I'm here with Kirsten Davis
at Robert Evans.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow, what a great use of two hours that was?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That really was?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I am behind this week horribly, still haven't picked the
subject for this week. Desperately desperately behind, and I shared
in love that this was a complete waste of all
of our fucking time, not a complete waste because we
learned something important, which is that the Democrat who seemed
to have the best understanding of how to fight Republicans
maybe just got lucky or or got coached into some
(01:18):
very bad advice by a Democrat who should have known better.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Hey, Robert, I just want to say thank you for
saying that, Like I agree with you. I just want
to say thank you for saying Zoby.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You and I are great friends. Everything you say is
terrible and wrong, but I agree with you on most
of it, And thank.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You and thank you and thank you for saying that.
I just really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, whoever told him that Americans wanted to see
him be friendly with jd Vance was not a friend
of the republic or of him. I think I don't
think it'll work. I've been wrong before. It definitely seems
to have worked if your recollection of like what Fox
and the other anchors were saying, they seem to be
(01:56):
pretty positive on Walls's performance, So it may be working
online media gules.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
But that's who watched the VP debate.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
That is who watches the debate.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah right, I mean that is the audience.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, only the fucking sickos. Who are keening on politics
watch the VP debate.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I guess I don't really believe this, but I'm going
to like my devil's advocate would be, maybe it's smart
strategy to accept that only media gules listen to this.
The only real way for the debate to matter is
if you like fuck up. Sure, And there was more
risk of seeming like a lunatic if he went in
there attacking JD as hard as he could and getting
negative press, as opposed to this, which probably is not
(02:38):
going to get him negative press.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I think he probably had multiple strategies, And like if JD.
Vance had come in there and started saying some of
the things that he normally says, which are fucking weird
and creepy, but he didn't an unhinged and fascist, misogynistic,
and I could continue, but then we might have seen
a different Tim Walls.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
But because JD.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Vance's entire strategy was like, hey, I can appear normal
even though I'm not.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well, I don't quite understand the hesitancy to then actually
bring those things just forefront. They were there, and why
not talk about it, Because like my initial takeaway here
is I don't think anyone necessarily clearly won. I think
both of them did just fine. But if anyone comes
out slightly better than what they were going in, I
would say it is Vance.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It's Vance.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I would agree, because somehow Walls was able to humanize
Vance over the course of the debate. They were it
was a very very friendly exchange, and that just serves
to undercut the months of work that Walls has done
to paint Vance as a weird, unhinged extremist, which he is,
and instead making him seem like just a reasonable politician
(03:46):
that although we may disagree on a few things, we
actually agree on a lot of a lot of the
problems and solutions.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We both care about this country. We're trying to help people,
and like no jd. Vance. Like there was that bit
where they were talking about mass shootings and he was like,
I truly believe that Vance cares about these kids. Jadie.
Vance doesn't give a shit about dead kids, never has,
never will. He's not capable of it. And it undercut
one of the more powerful moments that Walls had where
he was like, my son was at a.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Mass shooting, christ have mercy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
It was so interesting too, because I know Walls is
and I know that I'm coming into this as the
guy who's generally pretty anti gun control, but I'm just
from perspective of Democratic Party strategy. Number one, this is
something they go after hard, so you can't half asset right.
This is not like the border where they really do
feel the need to lean into the right wing argument.
(04:38):
The dims are very unequivocal about what they about, like
the fact that they want to ban IRA fifteen's. Walls
didn't really commit to that until a little bit when
he was specifically pushed on whether or not he agreed
with an assault weapons ban, and instead his language up
until that point was not very different from Vance's aside
from their disagreement over fortifying schools, but it was all
(05:00):
stuff around the guns, whereas the Democratic Parties line and
the line of most Democratic politicians has been it's about
the guns. And I did find it interesting that Walls
he had to kind of be goaded into really embracing
that by the moderator.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Now, one of the first things I noticed from watching
the debate, which just happened like once or twice, then
I realized this was just like a reoccurring trend across
the whole night, is that each candidate would try to
separate the other, yeah, from their running mate, to be like,
I'm sure Walls or I'm sure Vance agrees with me
on this, but their running mate doesn't and that's the
real problem. And this just kept happening. They kept trying
(05:38):
to like, yep, be nice to the actual opponent in
the debate by separating them out from their running mate.
Who's the real source of the problem. And that's just like,
it just just kept happening, Like what are you doing,
Like you're running on a joint ticket. There's no reason
to do this. And I think kind of part of
what their strategy may have been. Yes, these debates are
probably only watched by freaks, but I think they're also
(06:00):
in freaks who are like weird, like independent centristy freaks,
and I think this is who they were going after this.
This entire debate was focused on appealing to the center.
It wasn't really based on like going heavy into like
each side's own base because people they've already made up
their minds. And I think the the issue for me
(06:20):
at the end of this debate is because both of
them were we're trying to court the center vote. I
think Vans did about just as good as Walls did
going after the center by and and Walls kind of
even even helped them. And in effect, if Vance comes
off as just a slightly better debater when they're going
after the same base, that just leaves Walls with like
(06:41):
not really making any ground where he could have actually
just hit hit Vance quite hard and actually gone more
on like a party line or actually just like gone
more towards like all the reasons that Advance is fucked up,
which he just would she would, she just avoided to do. Yeah,
so my my my main takeaway was like, if they're
both according to the Center and Vance kind of barely edged
(07:02):
him out in some regards, maybe Walls should have just
actually been way more aggressive, and the kind of lack
of aggression really only hurt the Democrats because in the
end it kind of benefits Vance. If you give this
like half assed mediocre performance.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
We'll see where it Because again, this is not being
listened to by average people in the same way that
like the last presidential debate was. This is not I
don't think moves the needle one way or the other.
Because it was so close, I would be inclined to
agree with you that I think Vance did more of
the things he needed to do for this to be
a benefit to him. I'm not sure in a way
that helps the campaign, because most of what Vance did
(07:39):
that probably helps him was stuff that I think would
set him up better in a world where Trump doesn't
win reelection. Sure that would set him up to continue
to have a career and to be re embraced by
respectable kind of politics. The thing that makes me kind
of doubt myself because I think there's a possibility this
comes out as a Wall win. And if that is
(08:01):
the case, it will be entirely because of the last
question on January sixth, Because the way these things tend
to work in popular memory, not again people like us
who sit through the whole thing, all of nearly all
of them are journalists or unusually engaged voters. But the
thing that there's two moments that are most likely one
from each of them, in my opinion, to get clipped
(08:21):
out and go viral. And for Vance it was the
January sixth thing where Walls drilled him, and I think
this was actually one of his few fairly effective aggressive
moments where he was like yeah, forced him to answer,
and Vance refused to answer as to whether or not
he thought Trump had lost in twenty twenty in a
way that was I think kind of embarrassing for him
(08:41):
and is easy, probably pretty easy to clip out. That
might wind up being the big kind of viral moment
of the night. If it's not that, it'll be Walls flubbing.
We should talk about the China question now. Yeah, but
I don't think the China question that Walls flubbed is
on an issue that like Americans overall care about, which
is Tim Walls now maybe exaggerating when he talked about
his vacation in China one time in the eighties.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah, let's take a quick break and then let's dive
in a little bit on that.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So, first off, everyone in this debate pronounced China correctly,
which is a step forward from the ones that have
involved Trump the last couple of cycles. The downside is
no one knows how to say it on not a
single person.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And not a single mention of Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Oh yeah, well that was interesting to me, That is interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, not one moment where we talked about Ukraine, which.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
They kind of blazed past foreign policy really quickly, which
is a little surprising. Considering the events of this morning.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
There are literally missiles landing in Tel Aviv right now,
like people are talking with I think some reason as
to whether or not Israel might consider it nuclear response,
Like shit is legitimately a problem.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I mean, And this is how they started the debate.
They started by talking about how this was going to
be like a debate focused on how presidents or these
vice presidents will handle like America in a sudden crisis
as we've seen with the hurricane this weekend and now
escalating or in the in the Middle East. And although
(10:23):
that was their kind of opening framing, they really got
over those hurdles quite quick and then started talking about
extremely boring shit for the rest of the hour and
a half.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The very first question was basically, you know, Iran's bombing Israel,
which like I don't know with the Israel do anything
to fucking Lebanon right before that, like interesting context from
the journalist there, But Iran's bombing Israel. If you're in
the situation room, Tim Walls, what do you tell the
president if you're the last voice, should he let Israel
carry out a strike on Iran? And his response was
(10:54):
a carbon copy of what Kamala has said every time
she's been asked on it, Israel has a right to
defend itself. October seventh was horrible, but you know, civilian
casualty is bad too, So it was a non answer,
but it was the same non answer that the campaign
has always given, So I was not surprised by Well,
it was exactly what I expected from him.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Started off a little shakey, certainly sounded nervous. I think
this immediately kind of gave Vance a head up.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
His first like three minutes, he was clearly uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
He got better, especially because like Vance has like a
debate kid energy, right, But Walls did start getting better
as soon as he pivoted away from this question to
just attacking Trump, which is kind of his strong suit.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I think Vance's responsor is interesting. So Walls gave
He was a little shaky, I think just because they
had started because he got better on that, But he
gave what has become the standard non answer answer for
the campaign. JD. Vance started his answer on the question
of what would you tell the president if he was
asking if he should allow potentially, you know, a massive
(11:53):
escalative strike by Israel and Iran. What would you tell
him if you're the last guy in the situation room,
and Jdvan started the response to that by summarizing the
book He'll Billy ellig That was in fact, the bulk
of his response was him talking about who he is
and where he comes from and then being like, yeah,
I guess it's fine if Israel does whatever. It was
an incredible response, and it struck me as the response
(12:16):
of a guy who doesn't think his partner is going
to become the president. Again, I thought that was very odd.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, he was positioning himself for future jobs.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, I mean, he was different kind of than the
other answers. Maybe it was just they were both a
little bit off their game. First question. You know that
happens to everybody in a debate.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
They both were nervous.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and this is this also when
Vance deployed his one of his reoccurring catchphrases is a
peace through strength. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh, I hated that. I hated that because it's also
I mean, that is very close to the quote from
the Brotherhood of Nod and Command and Conquer and JD. Vance,
you are no Kine. You know who lives in death?
Speaker 3 (12:56):
By the way, in general, I think vance painted Trump
is having like a provable track record of proving him
as like, like Trump is going to end the chaos
that we've faced as a nation in the past four years,
whether that be economic or with war.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
He was extremely consistent on that.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And he's trying to point to, like was your life
better under Trump? Especially economically, and like everyone's brains were
completely fired by twenty twenty, so we actually no one
remembers what twenty seventeen was like at all, So you
actually can't recall that because whatsoever, let alone kind of
Trump's mishandling of the pandemic led to like the biggest
recession in modern history, which also for some reason Walls
(13:36):
just never brought up.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Now, well he does it. He did a little. He
said that, like he talked about how when they came
in they were dealing with a massive recession.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
The second thing they talked about was climate change, which
was Jesse Waters of Foxes was very mad that that
was the second thing they talked about.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Were framing through Hurricane Helene.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yeah, he was very he was very upset about which
is okay, sir.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
That's oddly, you know, quickly accepted the climate change framing
for the sake of the argument, talked about how moving
energy production from the quote unquote dirtiest parts of the
world back to America, where we are the cleanest, would
be one way to help.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I think it would have worked on my dad that response,
like the whole you know, well, we'd cleave, so we
just got to bring back manufacturing. You know. It was
not a bad answer in terms of doing what he
needed to do. It was obviously nonsense, and the moderator
called him very well on that, like by just being like,
by the way, like there's no argument among scientists about
(14:42):
like how carbon impacts global warming. I think overall a
tire maybe slightly favoring walls that whole section. Yea, Like
he did not, Oh, I don't think he did badly there.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
No, I think Walls did a good job. Connecting the
economy to the environment. Yeah, how as the environment gets worse,
the local economy gets worse, especially for like farmer. It's
not like fly yeah green New Deal Democrats, but for
like everyday farmers. And again pivoted very quickly to just
attacking Trump and Trump's climate denial. I tried to press
vance on Trump's climate denial, and Vance kind of, you know, again,
tried to just blame for manufacturing, saying that Kamala's like
(15:15):
rhetorican record does not match her actual actions, which are
increasing foreign manufacturing in general. Advance kind of fell back
on a whole bunch of like nationalistic framing regarding the
environment and regarding like the economy, especially manufacturing. That was
one of his reoccurring talking points.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so we are getting to see some of the
times as spent in real time where they just published
Ross Duthat's article Vance's dominant debate performance shows why he's
Trump's running mate, And the url of the article shows
that it was initially put into the CMS about a
week ago on the twenty fifth, and they dropped the
article about halfway through the debate.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
So cool.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That said, it's kind of unclear to me how the
rest of this is going to shake out.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
They also could have just written two articles, one where
Vans did well and one where Walls did well. Yeah,
but that is still that's funny.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I don't know that that'll matter either. We'll see where
people land. It was interesting to me Walls did do
something that I liked twice. Neither time did he give
it enough force. But he pointed out twice that a
big part of the housing crisis is vcs buying up
affordable housing, jacking up the price, jacking up the price
of rent, that that is like a massive issue. He
brought that up. He said housing shouldn't be treated as
(16:27):
a commodity, which I never expected to hear from a
candidate in one of these debates, but he brought them
both up like like a guy on a debate who
is like just kind of throwing out a side point
so you don't forget to say it as opposed to
someone emphasizing it. And the thing to do with jd
Vance is to point that you are one of those
venture capitalists. You are one of the people who was
hollowing out this country. And you know, Walls was good
(16:50):
at trying to repeatedly say it's not migrants who are
ruining like housing in this country, but he failed to
connect enough and he had the pieces there to be like,
it's guys like you, Yeah, it's fucking it's fucking white
dudes in suits and earpieces who have made housing expensive.
It is not people coming here from fucking Honduras, like
it's people like you who need to be rained in
(17:12):
by the government, and he just wasn't willing to commit
to the answer that he clearly had in his pocket.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
No, he just never went on the attack. And it's
just odd because he kept he was probably coached on this.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
But like I think it's coaching.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
He did not do any of the things that gave
him this job in the first place. He didn't play
to any of his strengths. Instead, Vance was able to
play to Vance's own strengths, and Walls was able to
just be a slightly less polished moderate, Which why are
you trying to frame him as a slightly less polished
moderate going up against a debate kid like Vance. Walls
(17:47):
needs to be like on the attack. He actually needs
to show like a strong resistance in order to actually
like make a large impact in the debate. And that's
why I think this kind of largely swung towards Vance.
Yes by the end, if they're both trying, if they're
trying to court this same like moderate vote. Now, as always,
the immigration section of these is always frustrating. No one
talks about how fentanyl was largely brought in via citizens.
(18:10):
No one feels the need to bring that up CBS
did have a little fact check, or not a fact
check necessarily, but like a little comment talking about how
the majority of Americans pulled are in favor of deportations.
But they specifically asked Vance, like, how is your military
deportation plan going to work and willly separate like children
(18:30):
that are born in the United States from illegal immigrants,
And Vance just refused to answer that question repeatedly to
try to get him to answer multiple times, he continually
refused it, instead saying that, like kommlass, border policy is
already a child separation policy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
There was a great moment there where he got angry
at them for fact checking, fact checking specifically on his clims.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But illegal immigrants in Springfield.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, because those migrants in fact had legal status.
And he was like, you guys said you weren't going
to fact check.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
No, no, no, he didn't say, he shouted.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, he yelled the rules were that you were not
kind of fact checked that. He just explained how immigration
like works, how legal immigration works.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
They were like, thank you for explaining how immigration works.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Thank you for explaining the legal process of immigration. This
has been one thing that Vance has been doing on
the campaign trails just explaining the legal process of immigration
and just saying I'm still gonna call this illegal because
I wanted to be illegal, and you're like, okay, you can't.
Like I guess, I guess we could just use words
to read whatever we want. Sure, why not?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
M Yeah, if this comes out in the public opinion
being in Wolves's favor, it'll be because of those moments. Yeah,
that one at the end, in those moments where Vance
was like yelling and they cut out his mic at
one point. Yeah, like that kind of stuff. I don't think.
I don't know. Again, I don't think anyone's going to
really listen to this beta debate enough for there to
(19:56):
be it to make much of an impact. But those
were not great moments for him.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Yeah, but those are the kind of things that get
clipped out and spread across the internet. Yeah, so we'll
see and so the people that didn't watch the entire thing,
well some of them will see clips like that.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I think the immigration section certainly showed kind of walls.
In his stronger moments, talking about how the past year
we've actually seen a decrease in opia deaths, he continued
to talk about how Trump killed the bipartisan, a conservative
immigration bill, which we're probably not fans of, but he's
trying to make it play well electorally. And then pivoted
to Springfield and said, how like the Republican mayor came
(20:34):
out and said none of this stuff was true, but
Trump and Vance kept viewing it. State law enforcement had
to escort kids to school. But even in this like
Springfield section, which Walls was the first one to bring up,
Vance was the big driver of this lie. But even
in Walls's mention of this, he tries to separate Vans
from Trump. He primarily blamed Trump for this and totally
(20:55):
just like ignore Advance's massive contribution to this, like big
this information campaign that led to these bomb threats. You
just let Vance get off easy, and I think this
part was saved. Kind of buy this little fact check
and Vance's little meltdown over this legal immigration comment. But
still it kind of showed a little bit of Even
(21:15):
in Walls's stronger moments, he refused to like really harp
on Vance for being weird.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, speaking of people who watched the debate, I don't
think our sponsors did because they have real jobs.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Hello, we are back now. One of the biggest issues
for me in this campaign is how much time exactly
did Walls spend in Hong Kong. This is like really
one of the primary issues impacting my vote.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
There were one hundred and fifty thousand people in the
streets in New York City today demanding to know whether
or not to Walls was really in China during the
Taneman Square uprisings.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You know, thankfully CBS News is on the case.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yes, we didn't have a second for Ukraine, not one second.
There was at no point any questions asked about the
loss of life due to the genocide in Gaza, not one.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
But by god, this this was really goofy. Basically, they
asked Walls with this comment he made in twenty fourteen
about being in Hong Kong during the Tanneman Square massacre,
when kind of reporting shows that he only arrived in August,
basically like two or three months later. And I don't
know if either Walls just misunderstood the question or purposely
(22:41):
avoided it. But instead of talking with this, you know,
summarized his entire career, both as a school teacher and
in politics, and then emphasized that although he spent time
in China, he is he is loyal to the United States,
And it was just really odd and like you can
even see events like slowly like smirking the longer. Walls
(23:03):
just kept going on about his career, and at the
end of his like weird like non answer about his
commitment to the United States, the moderators asked again, They're like, well,
were you there for the massacre? And then he very
quickly clarified. I was like, uh, I mean, yeah, I
might have. I might have misspoke. I don't understand why
you wouldn't just very clearly say yeah, I misspoke. I
(23:25):
was there for the aftermath of the massacre. I was
there during the uprising.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
More I got misquoted. I was there the year of
the uprising. Yeah, he was there.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
During some of the uprising, but he was but he
arrived in the aftermath of the massacre. I don't know
why I can just say, yes, I arrived the aftermath
of the massacre. I misspoke ten years ago. Like it's
very simple. Your weird, long, two minute avoided answer just
makes you like look like weak and unnecessarily slimy. It
doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It just is weird, because of course were gonna ask
that question, why, Why did you not have a prepared answer?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I mean, this only became a new story today, like
this this, this only became a new story like like
a few hours ago.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Still have some kind of a prepared generic answer.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I'm sure he did. My guess is that if I
was debate prepping him, I would have assumed they were
going to ask one of the questions about his service
based on all of like the different sort of like
totally right wing shit coming out. Everything about his performance
was the result of a guy who was over prepared
and prepared by people whose focus was on him not
upsetting the apple cart and embarrassing the campaign, not on
(24:32):
him winning. That is how he was coached, and he
was well prepared as a general rule for the most part.
When JD. Vance would like make a claim about you know, Fittanel,
he had a counter fact right that he could bring up,
and he did that reasonably well. He seemed confident about
the information he clearly put in the work, but none
of what he was prepared for was hurting Vance. He
(24:54):
was entirely prepared to not make an easy fuck up,
which maybe is the smart move if you're just like
we just don't want this to upset anything, because there's
no way it'll help. Like, my guess is that he
was told going into this by his handlers this debate
is not going to win us the election, but it
could lose us the election. So what we need to
(25:16):
make sure happens is that you don't fuck anything up
or seem too mean or seem too weird yourself. So
we are going to like train you to be as
boring as possible, and they did that.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
And like, as a follow up, Vance was asked about
his previous like anti Trump like Hitler comments and specifically
was asked, like if he can be trusted to actually
like give Trump good honest advice and not just to
say whatever he thinks Trump wants to hear, which Vance
gave us similarly avoidant answer and just talked about tariffs.
And then the moderators did not follow up with Vance
(25:49):
no about his avoided answers, So there you go. The
abortion segment is basically a rehash of what happened in
the in the Kamala Trump debate, with like Vance talking
about a billin Minnesota who that he claimed like leads
to the death of like babies who were aborted, Like
after birth or like some kind of odd thing that
just isn't true. That was pretty silly. This was one
(26:12):
of the issues where he was weakest, and I think
we were also maybe slightly upset that Walls again was
kind of was kind of hands off on this. Historically,
Vance has made some a lot of crazy comments on
podcasts about this topic, and neither the moderators nor Walls
really pressed him super hard on it. Advanced himself tried
to largely be on the attack with this like late
(26:34):
term abortion, killing babies after birth thing that Walls just
tried to easily kind of brush aside as just not
being true. Speaking of healthcare, Vance oddly tried to claim
that Trump like saved Obamacare. At this point in the debate,
things just kind of started getting a little bit boring.
I don't think this debate had as many like good
questions as the last one. It was a very like
(26:57):
twenty twelve style debate. It just it just it was flat.
It didn't feel kind of like present. So they talked
about Obamacare, how Trump saved Obamacare, and Walls talked about
how Trump hurt Obamacare. Just kind of boring back and forth,
and then finally the last question was about like democracy
in January sixth, election denial, that kind of stuff. Vance
(27:18):
opened by saying, like, we have other issues to solve
beyond election denial. He said that we should we should
have like open debate about the issues of the twenty
twenty election. He then downplayed January sixth and emphasized instead
the bigger threat to democracy was Facebook censorship and how
people are like ending friendships over political disagreements, and this
(27:42):
was bizarre. I think this was Wall's strongest moment. He
talked about how there was one hundred and forty police
officers assaulted on January sixth, some who later died. He
mentioned this other story about how, like on January sixth,
there were similar protests in a whole bunch of different states,
and he mentioned one in Minnesota whre people threatened to
like march to his home and his kid and his
(28:03):
dog need to be like escorted out by police because
people were like threatening to go to his home saying
that there might be casualties. I thought that was maybe
that was that was a pretty good moment for Walls
brought up how people in January sixth tried to kill
Mike Pence, which everyone seems.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
To forget it's not talked about enough.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I mean, yeah, look that's one of those things where
like my issues, so there are political not about the
specific ads.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Vans tried to be like, hey, you know everyone does
a little election denial. In twenty sixteen, there was Russia Gate,
and I think Walls did a pretty good follow up
by saying, like January sixth wasn't about Facebook ads, It
wasn't like that wasn't the problem. The problem was the
people storming the capital trying to kill everyone inside, like
that was the real issue. And real censorship is stuff
(28:51):
like book banning. First time we had a mention of
any of that. But even in this section about Jay
six he still like thanked Vance for having this conversation
and then asked him if Trump lost the election, which
Vance just avoided avoided answering, instead asking Walls did Combalesce
censor Americans on Facebook? Which is just great, Yeah, just
(29:12):
a great equally important problems.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, these two, these two issues, and unfortunately Walls's initial
response was like I don't run Facebook, which just say
he's lying, Like, just call him a liar to him, Yeah,
he's a liar.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It's wild that like we're talking about like January sixth,
and Advance's biggest concern is people being banned on Facebook. Like,
I think that's not going to play well for him.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's not going to play well. But also, yeah, it
was just a missed opportunity. There were a lot of those.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
The entire debate was a missed opportunity.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
RT. Yeah, and like Walls is I think slight fumble here.
You can point to his like closing statements saying like
I'm surprised that we have this coalition from like Bernie
Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift. You're like, yeah,
that is that is a little surprising. Maybe that's the
bit of the problem.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Oh, that was a nightmare line for.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Me, Of all the names to drop Dick Cheney.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift hand in hands.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Well, because like even among moderates, do you think Dick
Cheney's popular?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
That was my last straw.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I was like, who who prepped him? Who did his
debate prep? Who agreed that statement?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Someone who really likes fucking Dick Cheney? Was it Carl Rove?
Did they get Carl Rove again? God damn?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
It was Hillary involved with this debate prep.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Like shoot, like, I know the Clintons were involved with
with commwa's debate prep.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Were they involved with with Tim Wallas's debate prep?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I'm not sure, but I think this kind of
underlines I know, this is kind of a larger issue
with like the Democratic Party in the year twenty twenty four,
but I think this also underlines, like the my issue
with Walls's performance here is, like this debate, both candidates
were going after the Dick Cheney voter. They were going
after like neo cons and independence.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
The literal devil yes, and like for that base.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think Vance does appeal to them more in this debate.
I think Vance did a better job appealing to those
people in this debate, which left Walls coming off is
just slightly worse and not really giving him any like
standout like performances. I think if if Walls actually like
emphasized all the reasons that Vance is a freak and
is bad, I think that may have showed him to
be more of a unique candidate. Instead, they both came
(31:19):
off as just kind of boring moderates, which just doesn't
make sense because that's like the opposite reason that both
of these men were picked for their chops. They were
both picked to represent this slightly more extreme wing of
the party, with Walls being a bit more progressive and
Vance being a bit more fascist. Now it makes sense
that Vance is going to go after the moderates. I
just don't think Walls needed to agree.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
That's kind of all my all my thoughts on this
riveting to our debate.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I have to say me too, man, m Well, we've.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Got a flash poll from CBS News forty two percent
for Vance, forty one percent for Walls sixteen percent set
a tie.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Great, Yeah, that was the general. That was the general.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
That was the general vibe.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, Fox Fox News was Walls was good enough. Vance
did just fine.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
No, the moderator's obnoxious moderators smug and arrogant bias, but
that's just typical.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
I think the moderators were fine. I think overall, it
wasn't a very well laid out debate. I think the
fact that Vans was able to be humanized with the
assistance of Walls makes Vance kind of the winner in
the way that like this did more to benefit Advance
than it did to benefit Walls, and the fact that
Walls kind of acted counterintuitively to his whole line of
(32:32):
messaging from the past year is a fundamental mistake that
I think I hope that Democrats would like reevaluate going forward,
but they're the Democrats.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
So just interesting, interesting take that I've seen online, and
also a take for my Midwest moderate Democrat mother is
She said to me, just remember Tim is from the Midwest.
In Minnesota is the most Midwest there is. It is
not it is nature to be anything but polite. Not
what we're used to seeing in a debate. But it
(33:02):
was a little refreshing, So okay, So I'm.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Just saying, yeah, if you went into this already liking Walls,
this won't make you dislike Wall.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm already My mom definitely already liked.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Right like and like. That's why I think this is
largely just largely inconsequential. Even e Vance got a little
bit of a lake up, it is largely inconsequential.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Do you know who the winner of the debate was?
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Minnesota sounds like a great place to live, got great
pr tonight, I guess.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So Walls was clearly doing the best here when he
was like just talking about how nice Minnesota is.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
It's great here.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
And Tim. We all know what the winters are like there.
You're fool You're not fooling anybody like come on, sir.
That said, if you live in the Portland area, or
really anywhere in southern California, move to Minnesota. Just just
get on out of here. You'll love it. You're gonna
have a great time. Everyone in Minnesota is gonna love you.
People love Californians when they move other places, it goes well.
(33:58):
It's always happy, always is always a good time. So
if I had any advice to end on, it's people
who are currently in Los Angeles. Move to Minnesota. You
will be beloved. People will want to listen to your
policy ideas. It'll be great.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
You listen to podcasts. You can now find.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
Sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
Today’s Latest News In 4 Minutes. Updated Hourly.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.