7/17/24: RNC LIVE Breakdown w/Ryan And Emily
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Welcome to an unusual evening edition of CounterPoints. I'm Ryan Grimm. We're going to be joined by Emily Jashinsky from Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention. Emily, how are things going out there?

Well, they're going, Ryan. I've been talking to a lot of people about the J.D. Vance pick, which I know we can discuss on this show. Got some interviews with folks. You know, just talk to one woman local. She's selling dresses here. She right when I asked her how things are going, she said the energy is high. She was really excited. They're doing some you can hear they're doing some sound tests behind me. Tom Cotton just recited the Gettysburg Address. So things are proceeding apace.

Well, I thought that we were both going to have our solidarity bandages for Trump. Todos somos Trump. But since you don't have yours, I guess I'm going to.

take mine off here, but I still wish him well in his in his full earful recovery. You know, how are people feeling? I want to get to some of the speeches from last night. We're going to talk about, you know, J.D. Vance's keynote speech tonight. But I want to hear just what what the vibe is among people first around the Trump assassination attempt. What like are you hearing anything different there on the ground than we're hearing just generally from people around the country?

- Yeah, that is really the big question. I think probably the one thing on everybody's mind

is what Donald Trump is going to say on Thursday, because he said so little. He's put out some posts on Truth Social, but he's really taken a back step or a back seat to this, you know, not Trump himself. Everything is about Trump. There's Trump posters everywhere. People I already saw are selling T-shirts of the fist raised in the air moment from Saturday. But him himself, you know, he's really hasn't been in front of cameras doing a lot of talking himself.

And I think that's really intentional. And I think one of the big ongoing questions is how Donald Trump in his big prime time moment is actually going to handle what happened to him. The trauma that just as a human being would affect anybody. And we still don't have an answer to that except for kind of reading body language. He's been, you know, I was watching him last night.

and I was looking right down at him from the press gallery, and he was stoic, I think is the best word I would use to describe him. He wasn't giving a lot of reaction. He wasn't applauding at lines that I felt were written to be applauded at by Donald Trump. He was sitting there stoically, smiling a little bit, but just not giving too much away, and I think it's intentional.

His first entry into the arena, he looked somber and subdued. It's sort of the first time since he's been a national political figure, I think that people are having a hard time reading him. He's the most kind of wears everything on his sleeve kind of person. Is that unsettling to people or are they excited about the possibility of a new Trump? Are they nervous about where this is going? Like, how are people feeling about it?

I just talked to one congressman who said he doesn't want a new Trump, a Republican congressman, Ben Klein from Virginia, who I said, you know, what are we expecting to hear from Donald Trump tomorrow? And he said, you know, I don't want a new Trump. He said, you know, it would change anyone basically or can roll the clip. But, you know, I don't

I think people are unsettled. I think the kinds of people who are coming here to the RNC are the kinds of people who had already seen from their perspective this man be convicted of, what, 34 felony charges. They've already seen him go through hell and come out as they see it on top.

So I think this is the demographic of people that already felt like they had walked through the fire with Donald Trump. So there's more, I think, confidence and there's a sense of weight and gravity to everything that probably wouldn't have been here without Saturday. But this is a group of people that already was, you know, hardcore Trump supporters, lovers, loyalists. And that I

think that's the same as it would have been anyway. And they got to see Nikki Haley bending the knee last night, speaking of Trump supporters. So let's roll a little bit of her speech. I want to hear your reaction to how she was received. President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity. It was a gracious invitation and I was happy to accept. I'll start by making one thing perfectly clear.

Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period. So how was Haley received and how did Haley's how are Haley's delegates interacting with the Trump delegates? Yeah.

I haven't actually seen any interactions between the Haley delegates and the Trump delegates and have seen absolutely no evidence of any rift that currently exists in the Republican Party, except for as I've heard a couple of people talk about J.D. Vance. You know, I had one strategist tell me that in a story that I wrote for Unheard, they had some harsh words, let's say, for J.D. Vance. But other than that,

It has been Trump, Trump, Trump. Not a lot of remaining questions, very different from how things were in 2016, obviously, Ryan, you will remember that. And so Nikki Haley took the stage yesterday. Again, I was watching here in the convention center

booze. It was a mix of booze and cheers. And then the booze were kind of drowned out by the cheers. And she was ultimately quite well received. She started very intentionally by saying that she was here at the invitation of Donald Trump. And she accepted, you know, she didn't want it to look like she had begged for a speaking slot. She wanted it to be very clear that Donald Trump had given her the speaking slot. She was followed right afterwards by Ron DeSantis.

And so let's roll a little bit of Ron DeSantis with his trademark humor. Here's Florida Governor DeSantis. Hello, Republicans. Let's send Joe Biden back to his basement and let's Donald Trump back to the White House.

Life was more affordable when Donald Trump was president. Our border was safer under the Trump administration and our country was respected when Donald Trump was our commander in chief. After all, if not us, who? And if not now, when? Let's make the 45th president of the United States the 47th president of the United States.

Let's elect Republicans up and down the ballot and let's heed the call of our party's nominee to fight, fight, fight for these United States. Thank you. God bless you. Let's win in November. Thank you so much. So unfortunately, the Florida governor couldn't quite get out of that manly joke without a voice crack. But otherwise, how did his speech land with people?

Really well. He was really well received. No boos at all for Ron DeSantis. Trump looked very pleased. There was one video going around online of Trump very much enjoying the weekend at Bernie's joke that DeSantis made. But DeSantis was very, very forceful.

And people were really loving what he had to say. And again, it was back to back Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis. And it was, you know, in a sense, politically smart that they paired it that way because it looked not just like, oh, hi, we love Nikki Haley. We love Ron DeSantis. It looked like,

here is everybody rallying behind Donald Trump. This is the quote unity show that the Trump campaign was presenting to everybody. And it was well-received just to some booze for Nikki Haley. But like I said, those were drowned out by cheers. And so then Vivek, nobody gives a speech like Vivek. He came out on stage as well. Let's watch a little bit of him. Our message to black Americans is this.

The media has tried to convince you for decades that Republicans don't care about your communities, but we do.

We want for you what we want for every American: safe neighborhoods, clean streets, good jobs, a better life for your children, and a justice system that treats everyone equally, regardless of your skin color and regardless of your political beliefs. Our message to every legal immigrant in this country is this: You're like my parents.

You deserve the opportunity to secure a better life for your children in America. But our message to illegal immigrants is also this: We will return you to your country of origin. Not because you're all bad people, but because you broke the law. And the United States of America was founded on the rule of law. And our message to Gen Z is this: You're going to be the generation that actually saves this country. You want to be a rebel? You want to be a hippie?

So how was Ramaswamy received?

- Extremely well, Ryan. I just keep going down the line here. But everyone is being well received in these primetime speeches. And they've done rewriting. They've clearly done rewriting of these speeches since Saturday. And you could read something really cynical in that, that they had, Trump himself mentioned his speech for Thursday was going to be a quote, barn burner, and he's ripped it up and come up with a new speech, which again, everybody's waiting to hear. So you could say that maybe this was all toned down

intentionally. Or you could say that just, you know, the trauma of what happened on Saturday would obviously change the convention no matter what. So it's probably a mix of both, to be quite honest, given that Trump himself was even saying that. But Vivek, I thought, was really interesting in making a clear pitch that

to millennials and Gen Z. Right after he made his clear pitch to millennials and Gen Z, Lee Greenwood took the stage, just a fountain of youth. And, you know, it was a bunch of boomers kind of dancing on the convention floor to a rousing Lee Greenwood live performance. And, you know, that's to be expected of any political party that you sort of

torn between these two demographics. But I thought Vivek gave a very effective speech. He's liked by a lot of people. He was very well liked by a lot of people. He had a lot of delegates and the like, and a lot of talk that he's going to run for Senate in Ohio too. And is there any chance that DeWine, you think, names him? It seems like if it's left to DeWine, like if he's not under pressure, there's zero chance.

he names it, but might be under pressure. I don't know. What's, what's, what's the read there about that choice or he would just run then, you know, to replace him down the road.

Yeah, so I did see Mike DeWine here yesterday. He's making the rounds. I don't think there's any chance that he would appoint Vivek Ramaswamy to that Senate seat should Trump and Vance actually win. But I would imagine that Vivek would have a very good chance if he ran for that Senate seat.

of winning the Senate seat, even just based on the reaction to everybody here. The Ohio delegation, as J.D. Vance came into the convention center yesterday with all the pomp and circumstance, was doing the OHIO, you know, arm signals and were very enthusiastic about Vance. And Ohio is such an interesting state politically. They really like their own Ohio people. So I would think, you know,

Vivek Ramaswamy, he would seem to have a good chance because he's really been out there about his love for Ohio. And I think people really like him here. People really like him in the conservative movement. Trump people like him. And he's interesting to people kind of across the aisle, too. What about the substance of the speeches, the theme being crime and immigration? What'd you take away from what the politics of that were?

Yeah, so the theme of the first night, as I know Sagar discussed, was, and you were there as well, make America wealthy again. And the theme of last night was make America safe again. We're just kind of going down the line here this week. But what's interesting about that is the safety issue, the crime issue. I mean, they had an incredible speech from a woman who lost her son to fentanyl. I mean, it was incredible.

and real stories of people who had lost loved ones to crime and drugs. And interestingly enough, when we were talking about Trump being sort of, what was the word you used? I really liked it, somber. Trump being somber, stoic, maybe a little lower key than you normally see Trump. He was most animated.

when those average people were sharing their stories and it wasn't even close. So when normal Americans were sharing their personal stories of tragedy and loss to crime and drugs, Donald Trump was, that was by far when he was most animated. He seemed to be enjoying those speeches the most and more than any of the politicians, honestly.

So I think, you know, you're still hearing this. The themes are just not compartmentalized because they're so on message, right? They're so on message about Bidenflation and Biden migrant crime.

every day. And so the compartmentalization is almost an afterthought because right now Republicans are trying to be kind of transcendent and almost uninteresting, right? Like now Biden is kind of the chaos candidate and they're trying to just stay on message, which is kind of a quick turn of events. There was a little fun chaos,

on the floor this week. Didn't want to leave this segment without playing this clip that we've been graced with of Matt Gaetz taunting Kevin McCarthy, who was trying to do a News Nation interview, which is embarrassing enough in its own right. Let's roll this. You would get booed off the stage. Shut up, Gaetz. You know.

So if I'm a not Gates, I don't know if you could hear it there, but at one point he says to this guy who's telling him don't be an a-hole, he says, I don't even know who you are, which is one of the most like jerk things to do. Like,

Who are who do you think you are like to say I don't know I don't know who you are doesn't matter who you are you just come on get out stop with this but otherwise kind of funny what night are you speaking Kevin what night are you speaking really wanted to kind of rub salt in the wound what did you what did you make of that.

You know, Matt Gaetz is really well liked here. Really, really well liked here. He was, I believe last night, actually in the Trump box with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, socializing with Trump's inner circle. So he's not relegated to the fringe here. That's for sure. He's someone who gets chased when he is out at the convention. People want to talk to him. People want to shake his hand, get selfies and all of that. So I'd

Would probably argue that Matt Gaetz is more popular than Kevin McCarthy here, to be quite honest. Although I think at least with people that aren't just the the hardcore Republican demographic, Kevin McCarthy probably got the best of that exchange. If you saw the viral videos online of McCarthy just kind of batting him away like a gnat.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new scandal.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. Welcome.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Let's talk about some of the people you spoke with while you were out there. Anybody you want to cue up?

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that we talked to Congressman Ben Klein from Virginia, sort of an ascendant member of Congress, who mentioned he doesn't want a new Trump. He likes the Vance pick. I wanted to talk to people about J.D. Vance because he's the focus today, really. He's speaking. It will be the first speech that he's given. And conservative movement people here, not just new right people, but conservative movement people here are really excited about J.D. Vance.

There's a ton of enthusiasm. His wife is speaking tonight as well. People haven't heard a lot from her yet, and they're excited to see her on stage and to kind of meet a new person, meet the new sort of family face of the Republican Party's future, as a lot of people see it. So

I was interested to hear that from Congressman Klein because reporting in places like Politico from some old GOP hands as they're sourcing is that there is a divide. The Wall Street Journal has had some harsh words, unsurprisingly, for J.D. Vance. But among regular people here, to the extent you can be regular if you're at the Republican National Convention, there's just a lot of excitement about J.D. Vance. Terry Schilling, who's been on the show before,

Big ally, big ally of Vance. He runs basically a family values group that spends a lot of money on things like women's sports and those really red meat cultural issues. He's very excited that Vance was the pick. So talk to him and talk to a local woman who's here selling dresses and felt the energy was really good, felt the attention on Milwaukee is really good. So let's take a listen.

Everyone's feeling good, having a good time here so far. Everyone's excited about Trump and J.D. Vance. I would just say the energy here is just so amazing. Everyone's excited to be here. The security has been amazing. And there's no place you'd rather be than here this weekend. Some reporting is that people aren't, not everyone is excited about the J.D. Vance pick, but you feel good about it. I do. I think J.D. represents the future of the party.

And Trump has great policies that represent the working man and JD Vance is going to continue those and help to put those into place once Donald Trump wins the White House. He is a champion, not just for families, but for working Americans, for everyday people that just want a voice, that want to know that they matter, that they're not just run by a bunch of elite clowns in Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street, and in Hollywood.

We are a great nation. We have a great people here. And J.D. Vance understands that. He knows that it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. Anything you want to underline about any of those interviews?

It's, you know, it sounds like a GOP talking point, Ryan, but it's actually true in this case. You know, not all talking points are false. There's just a lot of unity here. And were you at Cleveland in 2016? I actually wasn't there, but I think it's worth highlighting just how dramatically different that is because there were actual fights on the floor. You know, people like Dan Cuccinelli, I think maybe even Ted Cruz at the time. Ted Cruz was getting booed relentlessly. Yeah.

Ted Cruz didn't even endorse Trump in his speech and was booed throughout the entire second half of it.

There's just none of that. And there's no underhanded comments along the lines of like what you would see if you talk to the Wall Street Journal editorial board about Vance populism and statism or, you know, Trump being such a joke or unfit. Like there's there's no reluctance about Donald Trump anymore. I think that's what I'm really trying to say is that there's just not people who are kind of begrudgingly

aboard the Trump train. Like just about everybody here is, and maybe this is actually different if Saturday didn't happen, that maybe you would still hear some of the grumbling over Trump, but there's absolutely none of that anymore. And 2016 also had Clint Eastwood, which perhaps they're going to. No, that was, that was 2012.

Oh, 2012 with Mitt Romney, right? Yeah. You're getting old, so you're mixing up your conventions. Yes, that's right. That's right, because he was saying that he was interviewing Obama in a chair, but there was actually nobody in the chair, but he was saying it was Obama. That's right. Yes, I am mixing up my conventions. So no Clint Eastwood this year, but just give us a little preview of what people are expecting from Vance tonight. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I think they're expecting a very polished J.D. Vance who talks about the red meat issues like immigration. I think they're expecting to hear that for sure about elites, about that kind of us versus them dynamic. And one thing we could probably put a tear shoot up of this that I think is worth highlighting, not just in the context of J.D. Vance,

But when we're talking about Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, I wrote for Unheard this morning that as Democrats, I mean, there's that AP-NORC poll that came out today. Joe Biden did his Lester Holt interview on Monday. Democrats right now, it's like two thirds of them in that poll

want someone other than Joe Biden. It's suddenly after Republicans were hammering this for years about Biden's frailty, suddenly Democrats are paying attention and listening and Republicans aren't talking about it at all here, fascinatingly. And, you know, some of the people I talked to said, you know, the Democrats right now are like the Soviets in Afghanistan. They're

Republicans are letting the wildfire burn on its own. Another said that after Saturday, it was just a matter of a source said, everyone understanding it's us versus them and Biden is not up to the job. So you don't have to be talking about that. So I actually wouldn't expect, you know, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley each had like a line about it. And it was just alluding, kind of joking, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose speech was, I would say the most well-received of the principal speeches last night,

like she people she got a massive applause but they got massive applause too but sarah huckabee sanders was

has clearly endeared herself to this crowd. People absolutely loved her. She had one line about it too. I'm not expecting to hear a lot about it from Vance. I'm expecting to hear something that's, you know, typical J.D. Vance, a little bit more intellectual, focused on the future and absolute elites versus everyone else. So the kind of business class, the Wall Street Journal, the Republican establishment types that are upset by the J.D. Vance movement,

pick are certainly going to be watching it closely to see if they get any olive branches thrown their way. I know there are definitely some Republican consultants who are nervous that Vance opens Republicans up more to the Democratic Roe voter who surged out in 2022 after Roe was overturned. Do you expect that Vance will make olive branches in either of those directions, either to

um people concerned that he's too extreme on abortion rights or to uh the the republican kind of wall street journal class or like it do you expect more of a kind of populist uh red meat speech and what would be what would the cues be what would the clues and the cues be that we should look for to see kind of uh where where he came where he decided to come down on the based spectrum

That's such a good question. I was actually, you know, as somebody who's followed Vance very closely and knows a lot of people in the Vance circles, as Sagar does, and as you probably do too, Brian, I was very surprised by his myth of perstone answer on the news

before he, well, he was still trying out auditioning for the VP slot, where he said basically he supported the policy as it was about Memphis Perstone. It was shocking to people in the pro-life community who also felt rather shocked by the Trump platform. That's the abortion medication for people who are not familiar. Yeah, yeah. Right. Go ahead.

Right. Yeah. And they really they toned down. They took out, you know, the the part about that. Now, again, they actually truncated the whole platform. But you'll hear a little bit of this in the or you heard a little about this in my interview with Terry Schilling. But, yeah, there was people really felt slighted in the anti-abortion community about how things have transpired over the course of the last week. Trump is obviously trying to moderate on that.

And so I would expect really not to hear much about life from J.D. Vance, even though it's a huge issue that everyone talked about before the last trip has sort of changed that just the last month, to be honest. So I wouldn't expect to hear that. I would expect to hear this kind of intellectual case for populism. And probably like you, I've been going back and reading a lot of old interviews that J.D. Vance did just in the last five years.

even back when he was touring for Hillbillyology. And he's talking about like Rene Girard. He's talking about like these super high level intellectual stuff because that's the kind of guy he is. And so, you know, I would, I still think J.D. Vance, how he presents himself tonight,

the mystery of how Donald Trump presents himself tomorrow will partially be solved. So like to some extent, I don't know what Trump wants to see from JD Vance because Trump hasn't said a lot about what he wants to see from JD Vance, except for his original true social posts. The first thing that he said about JD Vance is that he's a Marine.

Part of me really thinks that what Donald Trump likes about J.D. Vance more than the red meat, more than the policy, is that he is a Marine with a good looking young family, a good looking, you know, young family of like with immigration involved. That sort of allows J.D. Vance to talk about immigration in an interesting way. And he's loyal. So part of me thinks that we'll see a J.D. Vance.

Yes. Which might not actually be true because then he go to Ohio, not Yale. He's Ohio state, but then he went to Yale law. Yeah. Right. Right. And he enlisted first and then went back to school. But yeah, so I think I would expect to hear a lot about J.D. Vance's personal story and that populist sort of us versus them as opposed to, you know, kind of a policy grocery list. Yeah, I bet that's right. Like he, and he's a good writer. So he's going to tell, he'll probably tell that, uh,

The same story that people are familiar with if they read the book. But this is his chance to be introduced to millions of people who have no idea who he is. And this will be their first encounter with him. So looking forward to seeing how that goes. Up next, we'll talk about Elon Musk deciding he's going to cut regular $45 million checks to help Trump and Vance stick around for that next.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new scandal.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to you're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So not long after President Trump was nearly assassinated, Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, was

posted on Twitter. We can put up this tweet with the VO in the background, uh, post on Twitter, quote, I fully endorse president Trump and hope for his rapid recovery. Unquote. There was really no question at that point that Elon Musk was, was behind Trump all the way. This full endorsement, um,

is now coming. We learn via the Wall Street Journal, we can put up C2 here. Elon Musk plans to give $45 million a month toward a super PAC that is backing Trump. It's an enormous sum of money by political standards for a single individual to be throwing in. Emily, what's your read on how much this will boost Trump?

Well, I'm curious what you think. Personally, I think this is a very significant bump because we've also seen...

Bill Ackman say on Twitter that he's planning to roll out a significant Trump endorsement. And Elon, or this is actually Vivek, posted a long list of people from the tech community to X yesterday, actually, that had suddenly kind of got on the Trump bandwagon. The Winklevii, each member of the Winklevii twin pod has given a million dollars in crypto to the Trump campaign.

This is a significant amount of money, especially as we interviewed, Crystal set up a great interview with Abigail Disney. What was that, two weeks ago now? There's still Democrats who are refusing to give more money to the party as Biden's at the top of the ticket. The money actually, you know, Hillary Clinton massively outspent Donald Trump.

back in 2016 and he still managed to win the electoral college. So it's not everything, but Donald Trump has a lot of legal battles, although those seem to be perhaps petering out in the next, maybe the fungibility of money over the next couple of years is a benefit in that case. You can put some money into the campaign right now that may have immediately been used elsewhere. But money does obviously make a difference. And especially when there's a disparity, it can make a big difference.

Ryan. So I also think it's significant that it's going to change the Trump administration's crypto and AI policies. There's just no question. And obviously there's a divide in the sort of

uh, EAC community that Andreessen is literally the leader of, um, about whether AI is good or bad. You know, Elon Musk himself kind of seems to go back and forth on the dangers of AI and crypto. Um, but I think, you know, this is the Trump administration is now going to be all in on crypto. That seems to have been, I'm actually curious what you think of that too, Ryan. It seems to be like writing is on the wall. This is

Everyone's sort of all in on crypto and that's going to clash, absolutely going to clash. The AI and crypto policies are going to clash with the quote new right that feels like it just had a massive win with JD Vance here in Milwaukee.

Yeah, certainly compared to Biden's SEC, which has been aggressively pursuing crypto and kind of pushing crypto companies to begin to register as securities, which I believe they are and would in many ways be the end of an entire industry. So I think you're right. It will change. And it seems like the Silicon Valley is...

seeing that it's headed in that direction and trying to ride and push that wave. If we can put up C3, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz famously, Andreessen Horowitz, just absolute kind of iconic figures in Silicon Valley are also making donations to Trump's reelection effort. And people might not understand quite how much this matters because the

The campaign press coverage almost never talks about the amount of spending that's going on between the two different campaigns. And because everybody already knows who they are, we assume that spending doesn't actually influence voters that much. But that's not generally the case. Like there are still people out there.

who when they get blasted with enough advertising information, you're able to move the needle. Biden really kind of unloaded the cannons in June. And that's a really undercovered story. He was outspending Trump in these battleground states, 100 to 200 to one. And yet Trump is leading in all of those battleground states. And for Trump to be leading without having started his own avalanche of spending is

portends disaster for Democrats. And it's something that isn't being incorporated into the conversation that Democrats are having about how bad the race is for Biden right now. Like people understand that Biden is in deep, deep trouble. But when you layer on top of that, that he has been massively outspending Trump in an almost unprecedented way. You almost have to go, you know, other than say Hillary and Trump. Hillary outspent Trump massively as well.

And then you realize that he hasn't been able to make up ground despite the fact that he's outspending him so heavily. And now you've got, you know, this massive spending coming from tech bros. It's, you know, couldn't look worse for Biden, I think.

Well, it also becomes a big question for Donald Trump. And, you know, obviously these policy questions right now are taking a backseat and often do. You know, it's not new at all. I was going to say to the vibes because we're in such a post vibe moment this week because of what happened on Saturday. And I don't use vibe to cheapen it. I actually mean, you know, to Trump's benefit, you know, getting up after that and, you know, putting a fist in the air and saying,

hell of a vibe. And it has, I think, inspired a lot of people. We even saw like Jeff Bezos calling him our president, you know, reacting that way to what happened on Saturday. But I really do think that, you know, Trump's one of his biggest specialties in 2016 was railing against corporations and railing against all of that stuff. You know, one source told me after J.D. Vance was picked that it puts

quote, the CIA and K Street on notice. And a big chunk of K Street right now is Silicon Valley. And so some of these Silicon Valley guys kind of fashioned themselves as outsiders, even though Silicon Valley over the course of the Obama administration, as you've reported for a long time, became the art...

the ultimate insiders, they're positioning themselves as outsiders on cultural questions. But Andreessen in particular, as the head of the accelerationist movement, he has those sort of libertarian sensibilities, maybe that people like Peter Thiel and Trump have had before.

But that is so unsettled right now because there's so much cultural fear about, you know, remember when Google's AI came out and it was, you know, everyone was like, yeah, it's DEI AI. Like, this is a pretty genuinely interesting tension within the kind of anti-establishment Silicon Valley establishment. Okay.

And it also seems in tension with this new affair that Trump is starting with other elements of corporate America. You know, you had that famous meeting with the oil companies where he brought them all in and he's like, I need a billion dollars. Give me a billion dollars and then tell me what you need. In one of the most staggering quid pro quos with an entire industry that you could even imagine and reports that he's- But so Trumpian. Yeah.

It is very Trumpian. Give me a billion dollars and just tell me what you want. And I don't care if people report it. Yeah, which... Explain to me how he is able to package that with his populism. I think...

I think people that the populism is the transparency. You know, it's not about I think with with with Trump, he's had he's been right in that his policy has been anti establishment on things like forever wars. The media, basically a policy plank of his at this point. And, you know, all of those immigration and trade issues.

But the specifics of that policy, it's not as though people are demanding of him a certain level tariff. It's never been like that, and presidential politics rarely are about the specifics of policy. And so I think it's just whether people misunderstand about why regular Americans like Donald Trump is because it's that sense that he is paying attention to them and in a way that is empathetic.

And so I think the transparency makes that seem, you know, when he's sort of openly saying, you know, X, Y, and Z, that he made the perfect phone call with Zelensky. Those sorts of things like actually make people feel like he's real and endear him to them in a different way. Although with that one, he kept it secret until it was exposed. But then when it was exposed, it was like, perfect call. It was perfect. Perfect blackmail call. Yeah, he owns it. There you go.

So what are people expecting out of Trump third Thursday night? Like, are they or what? And what are people hoping that they're going to see? I think this is the biggest question. And I know we talked about this earlier in the show, but like even just as I'm here reporting things out for unheard, that's the thing I keep coming back to all week. It feels like a reality television show because truly I'm.

Maybe some people think they know what they're going to see from Donald Trump, but I really don't know that that's the case because how he reacts to this is still a totally open question. There's some reporting and there's been memos from his campaign from Chris Lasavita and Susie Wiles telling people to kind of

of bring their own temperatures down. We know that speeches have been rewritten, including Trump's speech, to be kind of more grandiose and to not be that, quote, rip-roar that he mentioned. But his body language has been different. He's been different. And yeah, I mean, he caught a bullet in the head just a few days ago. So nobody knows what to expect. And that, with

With Trump, you know, everybody kind of knows to expect the unexpected. But now it's just like, do we expect the unexpected or is this going to be a totally new, like predictable on script Donald Trump who uses this sort of soaring and lofty rhetoric that is positioned to make him sort of have centrist appeal? I don't know. I don't think we've actually had too many clues in that direction so far.

One little side note, I've seen some of our Pakistani viewers start comparing Trump's arc to that of Imran Khan. And it is actually quite fascinating. Like both of them were kind of womanizing celebrities, you know, throughout the 80s and 2000s, who then got into politics as bombastic populists.

Both of them were then subject to assassination attempts. Imran Khan was shot. It was very lucky that he survived. He came out of it kind of born again Muslim. He reads the Quran all the time. Now, he was born Muslim, but he was...

he was a London cosmopolitan figure. Like he was not at all. Yeah, it's like Trump 2 Corinthians. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So it would be amazing if that arc continued and all of a sudden Trump becomes born again. But we should, for Trump folks should study the Imran Khan arc and see if they think they see any of that coming. But we'll see. Can't wait for tonight. What time does J.D. Vance go on? Do you know?

He's the last speaker. So he'll be on. So it's whenever other people get done. Yeah. Yeah, it's expected to be around 10. Cool. Looking forward to that. And then also Trump tomorrow. But stick around. We'll update on Israel-Palestine next.

Masmerizing.

And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal.

Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. Welcome.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ex-Blackwater CEO Eric Prince, the international mercenary baron, spoke at the Heritage Foundation recently, made a rather remarkable confession. Let's take a listen. The Navy has been ineffective in Yemen.

The U.S. has given very bad advice, very mixed advice in Gaza, preventing the Israelis from finishing it or even preventing from ending that war in a clever way. I provided the Israelis a fully funded, donated ability to flood Gaza with water, with seawater, to flood the 300 miles of tunnels blocked by the Pentagon. We have a leadership apparatus that is truly the most sclerotic,

and literally obese. We have as many general officers today as we did in World War II when we had 14 million men in our arms. And so in an era of video conferences, emails, and instantaneous communication, we have a super bloated, super top-heavy, and clearly not very effective security apparatus. Thank you.

All right, well, first of all, Emily, I think I'm going to take his word on his assessment that the Pentagon is probably a little bit bloated at the top and that the individual figures in the Pentagon are themselves a little bit bloated. That seems to track with my understanding of our current Pentagon. But the ruthless war crime he claims that he had funded and seems to suggest that he got approved by the Israeli government...

but was blocked by the Pentagon is rather shocking. There was some discussion in Israeli press about flooding these tunnels with seawater.

But for a variety of reasons that kind of faded away, what do you make of Eric Prince acknowledging that or claiming because, you know, we should say claims because, you know, we didn't provide evidence that he had actually gotten the funding for this and pushed it forward. What do you make of the claim that he had gotten funding for this and that the Biden administration blocked it?

I mean, I'm not in any way surprised that it was blocked because even and this is why he's sharing the story. I mean, it kind of confirms his point about the Pentagon. I know I sent this when he wrote it. I think it was a couple of months ago for I'm 1776. That website, he this this piece went pretty viral and kind of new right circles, conservative circles when he was talking about just the lack of.

at dexterity, the incredible lack of dexterity in American foreign policy and innovation and inventiveness and creativity. And actually he mentioned flooding the tunnels in that point, in that article back at the time. And I think that's why he's being sort of

greeted warmly in Heritage Foundation circles, because as people are kind of craving some type of ingenuity and flexibility in American foreign policy and are so eager to bash the Pentagon in the sort of aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Trump

moment on the right, which has become really opposed to forever wars in the midst of the Ukraine conflict. I think that's why Eric Prince is kind of being invited warmly into those circles because he speaks to something with specifics that a lot of people are like, yes, that makes sense. Why aren't we doing these like different ideas? It's because of the K Street and the lobbyists and this massively bloated Pentagon. So it's not surprising to me at all. And I guess it's probably not surprising to you, Ryan, either.

I guess the idea seems to run into, even for supporters of Israel, the obvious problem of, well, aren't or weren't the hostages being kept in those tunnels? It seems counterproductive to getting the hostages released, if that is your actual goal, to drown everybody involved. Unless you have intelligence suggesting that...

We get conflicting reports on what the intelligence is actually telling people, but that, you know, they have some idea of where people are and they're not whatever. But hostages that have been recovered have said they felt like the bombing was indiscriminate and that they they could have been killed, that they didn't know, that they did think that they were just saved by sheer luck and actually expressing discomfort with the IDF's bombing from that vantage point.

And all of this comes as ongoing bombing campaigns in Gaza continue to kill dozens of people a day, up to hundreds in recent weeks, while the Israeli economy seems to be badly suffering from this kind of escalation.

endless situation as uh Netanyahu seems kind of hell-bent on making sure that these ceasefire talks that are that are underway and it seemed to be accelerating um never make it but meanwhile I wanted to talk about one of the uh one of the economic implications you can put up this this next element here uh this is from Middle East monitor headline Israel says a lot port bankrupt

After months long Houthi naval blockade, there's the lead of the article. The Israeli port of Eilat has officially declared bankruptcy because of a sharp decline in commercial activities and revenues due to the naval blockade imposed by Yemen's Houthis on Israeli linked cargo ships since last November, a senior official reported.

has confirmed quote it must be acknowledged that the port is in a state of bankruptcy explained the CEO of a lot port Gideon Gulber only one ship has come here in recent months the Yemenis have effectively shut off access to the port unquote you know this is while this is while the Israeli economy is seeing is taking a massive hit kind of across the board tourism has plummeted to virtually zero the entire kind of low-wage workforce which was made up of

of residents of the West Bank and Gaza who would travel to Israel and work those jobs. That has been completely shut off.

At the same time, you have the tens to hundreds of thousands of people being called up out of the Israeli economy into the war economy to serve in Gaza or in the north or in the West Bank, which has left firms across Israel going bankrupt or

or running extremely short staffed. So I guess it's not terribly surprising that this port is now bankrupt, but it seems like quite a projection of power for a group of people, the Houthis, who kind of were derided as kind of just nuisances a few months ago.

Right. And it kind of also explains, I think, some of the domestic pressures that are going to mount on Netanyahu. And we've been saying that, obviously, since basically October 8th, because Netanyahu is not operating in the way that the American media sometimes portrays him.

It's so myopic, American coverage of Israel. It's all about the, and it should mostly be about the war, of course. It's obviously the most important issue for the media to cover, but there's never any context. There's just so, it's just a lack of domestic context, I think, explaining why people either are rallying behind Netanyahu or realizing why their support may be fading

for Netanyahu. And I think this is one of those pieces of that puzzle that we so rarely hear about.

And before we go, I did want to highlight one piece that my colleague Jeremy Scahill did over at Dropsite News. We can put that other element up. So this is an exclusive in-person interview that he did with the second-in-command of Palestinian Islamic Jihad with Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi. Now, Al-Hindi has basically never since the 1980s given an interview to a Western journalist, and it's

The whole thing is revealing and startling in a number of kind of fascinating ways. We published it as a Q&A that you can find over at DropSiteNews.com. And there are a couple of kind of funny moments in it as well. When...

Al-Hindi starts talking about kind of the American election. At one point, he says, you know, we would we would prefer a candidate other than Joe Biden. And I was joking on Twitter that like Biden has even lost Palestinian Islamic Jihad at this point with, you know, following on the heels of Adam Schiff bailing on him. But so P.I.J. is a.

is a kind of an ally of Hamas, but PIJ was created before Hamas, but as an armed resistance group, kind of exclusively aiming at

uh aiming at liberation uh rather than getting into politics and governance like like hamas does so they don't participate you know they basically negotiate um al-hindy is the kind of lead negotiator for pij but they they have basically given their proxy to hamas uh they and what he told um when he told jeremy take it with a grain of salt because it's you know it's not it's not confirmed but this guy would know uh that they

They had, they had, they had, there was zero coordination around October 7th that PIJ was not involved with any of the planning and basically only learned of it, you know, as it started happening. It had been reported for months that October 7th was this joint operation between Hamas and

and these multiple other factions, including PIJ. But he said no, that they saw, just like everybody else saw, that Hamas had busted through the fence and was launching this operation known as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. And they quickly scrambled to join in with them, but were not actually part of the operation.

the planning or the strategy behind it. So the whole thing is, the whole thing is totally fascinating. And it's insight into the mind of a guy who was actually listed by the state department as a, as a terrorist, which I guess, you know, it makes, he said it makes it difficult for him to get like a U S bank account, but otherwise yeah.

So far has not caused him significant problems, though. Most people in his position eventually do end up getting either assassinated or drone struck. Or walking across the southern border. Is that a boomer joke? Speaking across the southern border, looking for work, seeking asylum.

You know, there were when Nikki Haley spoke yesterday, there were Israel flags being waved by a couple of people. Nothing, I mean, it wasn't a huge amount, but there were a couple of people who were waving those flags. I saw them a couple of times yesterday and actually on Monday had a chance to speak with protesters who had a honk for ceasefire signs right outside the convention. Obviously, security is really tight here, but right outside the perimeter of

Protests have not been huge. She does say that there were thousands of people. They came out from Minneapolis. So that's a decently long bus ride, probably took about six hours or so and got here marching in the heat. It was hot when they did it and making their presence known. It has been the security situation. There was security.

issues with a man who was shot by police outside. One man was taken into custody after he came near the perimeter with apparently an AK-47 pistol just yesterday. But inside the perimeter, things have felt quiet and calm, except for those two incidents which happened beyond the perimeter and the protests are beyond the perimeter too. So not much outside noise.

That incident where the police shot somebody, right? It was two people that seemed to have some personal beef, right? Had nothing to do with the convention. It seems that way as of right now. Yeah, it does seem that way as of right now. Now, the guy who was arrested with a screen mask. Yeah, if you're going to have personal beef that involves guns or knives, don't do it anywhere near a political convention within days of an assassination. Yeah.

That is a pro tip. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. No, that's just, you know, the, it really has been, uh, again, like we were talking about this earlier, but not a lot of infighting inside the convention and any of that stuff that's happened outside of it has remained outside of it. There hasn't really been any, uh, you know, people have quote respected the perimeter. Now it's another boomer joke to the same segment, uh, to quote Ashton Kutcher in cheaper by the dozen. I guess that's not boomer. I guess that's like a,

cringe millennial joke, but the perimeter has been respected. And I can confirm that from Milwaukee. I suspect that will not be the case in Chicago. But you and I will both be out there covering that. So we're looking forward to that perimeter, undoubtedly not being respected. There will be plenty of tension inside whether Biden stays on the top of the ticket or or if he doesn't, either way, it's going to be rather raucous. That's right.

all right well that'll do us that'll do it for us today uh thanks for everybody for joining us this is a special evening edition of counterpoints rnc emily enjoy the rest of uh your time there uh emily's gonna join me on my my drop site podcast uh deconstructed so

So check that out later. You'll get her fuller insights into her time out in Milwaukee and the rise of this new populist right, which if there's got to be a right, this is the one I'd rather see rising, I'd say.

Very interesting. I think, hey, I think that's right. But, you know, it's always Reaganites. Give me this one. See, but this is where, you know, maybe we can talk about this on Deconstructed tomorrow. I don't think there's as much daylight between Reaganism and Vanceism as people think there is. So we'll save that for another conversation. But, you know, I'll be checking back in with Crystal and will be eager to come back to D.C. and chat with everyone about what happened here next week. Thanks, Ryan.

All right. See everybody tomorrow.

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