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Sept. 24, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:03:34
20240924_scripted-charade-piers-morgan-on-manufactured-kama
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why Harris Can Win 00:14:39
Kamala Harris can try to appeal to Republicans, whether it's the white dudes for Harris videos or try to talk soft when it comes to gun issues.
Take Bernie Sanders' word for it just last week appearing on the Sunday shows saying that she's only moderating her position on a myriad of issues just to win the election.
This administration has always taken a horrific America-last approach to affairs on the world stage.
You can sit there and laugh, but we're as close as we've ever been to World War III.
Joe Biden, he's no longer running the country.
I mean, the idea he takes that call in the middle of the night and has to press a nuclear button.
If I was an American, I'd feel extremely concerned.
Pierce, I think that this is maybe the most disingenuous framing that I've heard from you.
Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs is that Trump made a particular point of saying that and then became meme central.
I really am not a huge fan of trying to actually focus on airlifting some word that someone said and making that the story.
What do you think of what Janet Jackson said and that she's not a real black woman?
The ultimate irony in this is the person who has wielded that like a weapon for her entire political rise has been none other than Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign has so far been a masterclass in control.
Kamala is a manufacturer product of the Democrat machine, not so much a charismatic leader as a series of talking points projected onto a large surface and played on a loop.
That's why it's no surprise to hear that she's skipping the annual Al Smith Charity Dinner, a white-tied gala, which the candidates traditionally roast one another in the final weeks of the campaign.
Trump was in bruising and boosterish form when he faced Hillary Clinton at the same event in 2016.
Hillary accidentally bumped into me and she very civilly said, pardon me.
And I very politely replied, let me talk to you about that after I get into office.
Well, Kamala Harris knows she'd get plenty more of that.
Trump produces insults the way Levi's make jeans, and crowds tend to lap it up.
At a time when both campaigns are trading barbs on whose rhetoric is pushing America to the brink of catastrophe, breaking bread and sharing humor would be a very good look, but the Harris camp doesn't want to take the risk.
Instead, it prefers stage management, a glossy and cynical charade in which even unscripted moments seem, well, scripted.
I know that.
And I thought the race.
Sorry.
Yes, yes.
I hear that.
I hear that.
Probably should not have said that.
But my saff will deal with that later.
Wow, cool, you jets, Rambo's little sister.
We know what Harris really thinks about guns.
Ironically, I probably agree with her about a lot of it.
This apparently charming and spontaneous rebirth as a rooting-tooting Second Amendment superfan is an obvious tactical pitch to get back to the center ground.
She knows progressives will vote against Trump no matter what she says, so she has no problem chucking him under the bus in the pursuit of power, just as she's now abandoned almost every single one of her positions from the 2019 campaign when she pitched herself to the left of Bernie Sanders.
The million-dollar question, actually, it's probably a $100 billion question, is whether it will work.
Can a U.S. presidential candidate make it all the way to the Oval Office without ever really saying what they'll actually do or what they really believe?
Well, I know the answer, and we'll come to it.
But first, let me tell you, I grew up in a middle-class family.
Joining me now is the Democratic Congressman for California, the Harris campaign surrogate, RoCara.
Congratulations, thank you so much for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Well, thank you.
No, I try.
Listen, I try and be fair on all sides.
I try to give everyone an equally hard time, and you'll be no exclusion to that rule.
Look, there's no doubt Carmela Harris has done a much better job in the few weeks she's been the nominee than Joe Biden was doing.
I completely can see that and accept that.
Also, no doubt to me that she won the debate with Donald Trump and I thought played him very skillfully, exposing the narcissistic streak, which always lets him down.
However, she is ducking the media.
She's barely done any interviews.
And now she's even ducking the Al Smith dinner, which I've always loved as an antidote to all the nonsense that goes on in election campaigns.
And particularly this year, when you've had such incendiary rhetoric that two lunatics have actually tried to assassinate a former president, Donald Trump, who's trying to become president again.
I would have thought that we'd never be a better time to have Carmela Harris and Donald Trump swapping jokes with each other in a good-humored way.
Why is she not doing that?
Well, she should do it.
I agree with you that humor can help diffuse tensions.
It's important for us to be able to talk to each other.
And I think she should do more media interviews.
Look, she's had an incredible run.
She gave a phenomenal convention speech.
People make fun of her for saying that she grew up in a middle-class family, but people don't know her.
She has to be repetitive about her biography, but that's gotten to a point of a tie race.
The next five weeks, I believe that she should be out there.
She should come on your show.
She should be all over the place.
And I think if she does that, she'll win.
Well, just to be clear, she's welcome anytime.
I've only met her once.
I met her at a Haiti, ironically, given all the news about the Haitian community in America.
I met her at a Haitian fundraiser in Los Angeles.
I thought she was very nice, very smart, very personable, very charming.
But I have to say that looking with my cold, calculated, journalistic head-on, I see someone who quite clearly, when she first ran for president in 2019, was a progressive left-wing politician and has now moved dramatically as fast as she can, it seems, to clamber to the center to make herself electable in a national general election, recognizing that last time it all crashed and burned very quickly.
People are seeing through the flip-flops.
The big question is whether she can somehow limp over the line without people really holding her feet to the fire about it.
Do you accept that?
Well, I think she ran in 2020 as a pragmatic progressive.
I say this as someone who was chairing, co-chairing Bernie Sanders' campaign.
She was not where Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders were.
But look, I've known Vice President Harris for 20 years.
She is incredibly thoughtful.
She's well-versed in policy.
And what I would say to her is this: your consultants and those folks, they're going to go on regardless of whether you win or lose, and they'll go on to the next campaign.
But this is your shot.
This is your shot at history.
Put it all on the line.
Go out.
Share who you are.
Share your vision.
Take the questions.
I think that the American people will like what they see and respect what they see and don't listen to the consultant class.
I mean, they're going to be fine either way, but this is your campaign.
I completely agree.
And I also think it's important for American democracy, which she talks a lot about wanting to safeguard, that the American people get to see what this candidate is really like.
I mean, that should be the very least that should happen in what is a long campaign.
Now, admittedly, she can't have as long as Joe Biden had, but she still had a, you know, she'll have had four months by the time this election takes place.
That is more than long enough.
I mean, the UK general election lasts six weeks.
So four months seems to us to be like an eternity.
Well, what I tell American politicians is they need to do some of the UK press.
I once did a left-leaning UK press, and they were harder on me than Fox News because I wasn't calling Joe Manchin corrupt.
And I think having a tough press, having tough questions, that's the essence of democracy.
And when you go on, even if people disagree with you, they respect you.
And that to me is, you know, in our country, it's somehow become that everything is about building the base.
No, I still believe in persuasion.
I still believe in an exchange of ideas.
That's what makes us the greatest democracy in the world.
What did you make of this whole Janet Jackson Furo, where she told the Guardian newspaper here in the UK about Kamala Harris?
She's not black.
That's what I heard, that she's Indian, her father's white.
That's what I was told.
There was then a bizarre thing where somebody issued what appeared to be an apology from her, but turned out not to be her spokesman.
So therefore, we have to assume at the moment she has not apologized for these comments.
What did you make of them?
I think it's a distraction.
I think the incredible thing about America is what Frederick Douglass said in 1869, that we're going to be this composite nation.
Remember, Frederick Douglass in 1869 defends not African Americans, but after being enslaved, defends Chinese immigrants, right, to come to America.
And he says, in the free air of America, what will happen is the best of people's traditions will survive and the worst will be discarded.
And Kamala Harris embodies that, and she's an embodiment of the American dream, and she shouldn't run away from that.
And she should put Donald Trump on the defensive and say, you know, in this country, regardless of your religion, regardless of your heritage, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in the Declaration of Independence, you're an American.
That was Reagan's vision.
So I think what Janet Jackson said is just a distraction.
And a disgrace?
And un-American.
I mean, you know, you know, Piers, Lincoln had this challenge in 1858 when he gave the July 4th speech.
He had to say, how is a German-American, French-American, American if you can't trace your heritage back to the Revolutionary War?
And Lincoln answered it definitively.
If you believe in our principles, you're flesh of the flesh of the founders.
That's what Kamala Harris, that's what the Democratic Party believes.
That's why we believe that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield were helping, as Governor DeWine has pointed out, revitalize that town, is not anti-American.
It is American.
There was an interesting interview with another musician, Pharrell Williams, who told the Hollywood Reporter, I don't do politics.
In fact, I get annoyed sometimes when I see celebrities trying to tell you who to vote for.
There are celebrities that I respect, have an opinion, but not all of them.
I'm one of those people who says, what the heck?
Shut up.
Nobody asked you.
And he said this after Taylor Swift, of course, probably the biggest music star in the world, if not ever right now, came out and very emphatically endorsed Kamala Harris.
Does he have a point?
And the reason I would ask that is I remember Hillary Clinton when she was busy calling half of Trump's supporters a basket of deplorables, but she was also having people like Beyoncé and other superstars up on stage in that last sort of final run of that campaign in 2016, offering their superstar support.
And it clearly didn't work.
In fact, it seemed to have been very anti-encouraging voters in middle America because they looked at these people and thought, we're all just a bunch of rich entitled spoil celebrities.
Why would we want to vote for your candidate?
Is there a danger here with Carmela Hazer falling into that trap that by lassoing herself to Oprah, to Taylor Swift, to these others, that she might be falling into that trap that Hillary fell into?
Well, look, I'd much rather have Taylor Swift endorse me than not.
Donald Trump, let me tell you, he wanted Taylor Swift's endorsement.
He tried to have AI fake it.
But here's the thing: those endorsements can help generate turnout.
They can generate enthusiasm.
But you know what people in Michigan need to hear?
They need to hear about manufacturing.
They need to hear about what are you doing about Stellantis that's shipping plants to Canada and Mexico.
And how is Vice President Harris going to bring back those manufacturing jobs like Joe Biden has done by having government financing of new plants, by having government procurement, by having a reasonable tariff rate?
That ultimately, people need to hear what is your vision.
And the other things is the icing, but it's not the cake.
Donald Trump says if he doesn't win, he's done.
That'll be it.
He won't run again.
A, do you believe him?
And if he does, is that the end of MAGA?
Or would it just be that there'd be a new kid on the block coming through espousing the same kind of stuff?
I do believe him.
And the reason I believe him is he has an eye for television and entertainment.
The apprentice only ran 12 years, and I think he knows he's towards the end of his act.
Someone had once said it's sort of like Elvis at the end of his time.
Not that I'm comparing Donald Trump to Elvis, but the point is, people who are in show business, you know, their acts run out and his act is running out.
That's why I think Kamala Harris can win this campaign.
I also think that the other people who quote-unquote have the MAGA here don't have his showmanship and haven't had his humor.
And I disagree vehemently.
I voted to impeach Donald Trump twice, but they can't pull off what Trump has pulled off.
So I do think it will be a turn of the page for the MAGA movement.
Roy Connor, great to have you on our sensor.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
And put a good word in with Kamala for me for that interview.
I'm happy to.
You were very fair.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Well, joining me now is the co-host of Steve Banner's War Room, Natalie Winters, and the host of No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, which is, of course, Brian Tyler Cohen.
Well, welcome to both of you.
Yeah, I mean, Brian, there's a lot of confidence from a lot of people around Kamala Harris.
I don't think I'd be feeling overly confident right now because although the national polling looks quite encouraging, the swing state polling looks very, very tight.
And I'm hearing that the numbers that we're not seeing suggest the Electoral College is still more likely than not to edge towards Trump.
What's your take on this?
Well, I think that Kamala Harris herself says that she's the underdog in this race.
The Credibility Gap 00:10:12
I think the mentality from day one has been that she's not entitled to anything.
You'll remember, I can't remember exactly where this happened, but she was asked about her support with black Americans.
And she said, just because these people are black doesn't mean I'm entitled to them, which of course stands in stark contrast to what Donald Trump thinks, which is that he's entitled to everybody's vote just by virtue of him deigning to be in that race.
So I think that, you know, from the very beginning, it's been clear that she is going to work to actually get the votes of every single demographic group, regardless of whether they're similar to her by virtue of skin color or political party or whatever it is.
What about when she's on a stage with Oprah Winfrey and suddenly morphs from one of the most anti-gun senators in modern American history to sounding like she's Rambo's little sister?
You come to my place, I'm going to shoot you.
Are we supposed to buy into this incredible transformation from the woman who wants to get rid of guns to the woman who packs one and wants to shoot people that break in?
Well, hold on.
There's a big difference between having a gun in your house for self-defense or thinking like a handgun in your house for self-defense and then thinking that we should just have a proliferation proliferation of AR-15s that are readily accessible and available to anybody over the age of 18 in this country when they're the weapons that are used in mass shootings day in and day out.
And conflating the two is doing a massive disservice to the efforts of people who are actually working to make kids safer in this country.
Well, listen, I don't disagree with you, but I was very surprised about what she said.
I mean, Natalie, were you convinced that suddenly this candidate that you assumed was the big gun grabber in the Senate now wants to proudly talk about her ownership of guns and her willingness to use them?
Absolutely not.
This is just a continuation of the performative activism that we saw, I think, unfold most poignantly at the DNC, where you've suddenly had the Democrats embracing patriotism, the American flag, something that they haven't done for a while.
And frankly, the issue is, and it's why Kamala Harris hides on the campaign trail, is the fact that the same protesters, whether they're outside the DNC, whether they're on college campuses, it's the same donors, it's the same supporters, it's the same dark money network groups that are funding both sides of the Democratic Party.
So Kamala Harris can try to appeal to Republicans, whether it's the white dudes for Harris videos, or try to talk soft when it comes to gun issues or put out things like camo hats, but that doesn't reverse her long track record of not just having policies that don't square with swing state voters, but truly being a radical.
And don't take my word for it, take Bernie Sanders' word for it, just last week appearing on the Sunday shows, saying that she's only moderating her position on a myriad of issues just to win the election.
Yeah, I mean, Brian, I mean, that is surely indisputable.
If you look at her positions in 2019, when she first ran for president and compare them now, the number of not just flip-flops, just open, blatant U-turns is extraordinary.
And one of the reasons she's not doing big interviews, if she can possibly avoid it, is she doesn't want people reminding her of this remarkable journey she's gone on from left-wing progressive to centrist.
Pierce, what she said when she was running a primary campaign in the previous election is not how she would govern now when she's had the experience of four years.
We shouldn't have believed it.
It's that people have their positions when they're running primary campaigns in previous years.
But when was she lying to us, Bri, is my point.
Should we have believed that in 2019?
We're not talking about someone in their 20s.
We're talking about somebody who's 60.
So she was in her mid-50s and an American senator when she put these positions forward in 2019.
Are we supposed to now accept that she was lying then and that wasn't what she really means or believes?
And then that comes to the issue of credibility.
Or do we accept that now she doesn't mean what she's saying now?
She just wants, as Natalie said via Bernie Sanders' interview, she just will do whatever it takes to win.
Pierce, people run primary campaigns and try to figure out their lane in the Democratic Party, and their positions evolve over time when things change in this country.
Right now, she's had the experience of four years as vice president, recognizing how to properly run an economy, how to properly protect healthcare and expand its access among Americans, how to properly make sure that we have common sense gun safety restrictions, how to properly actually pass legislation that Donald Trump pretended he would pass.
You want to talk about evolving positions?
Trump predicated his entire 2015 campaign when he was running as a fake populist on a jobs boom, on passing an infrastructure law, on having a health care reform bill that would make healthy people.
Yeah, but here's the problem.
Less expensive, Pierce.
Hold on.
Less expensive, Pierce, and more comprehensive.
He didn't pass any of that.
Not only did he not pass it, he didn't try.
He used all of his political capital in office, not to do any of those populist things that he promised when he was running for office, but rather to just pass a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.
That's what he actually cared about.
And that's what he did when he actually had the power.
So it's ironic that we're talking about what Kamala Harris said in a few months when she was campaigning in a primary.
Donald Trump had the ability to actually govern that way, and he squandered it.
But you're missing a point.
She's also had that ability because she's been the vice president to Joe Biden for nearly four years.
But the vice president doesn't dictate policy.
She's a senior part of the administration.
She's one heartbeat away from running.
It's just a matter of time.
As we've now discovered.
As we've now discovered, she's one heartbeat away from running the country, which many people think she currently is, given the state of Joe Biden.
I mean, Natalie, how plausible is it that she can continue to duck the media, duck the Al Smith dinner, not really make herself accountable on the flip-flopping, and present herself as a page turner, a new page based on the fact that as if almost she wasn't part of the administration for the last four years?
I'm the breath of fresh air.
I'm the promised land, to which my response would be, well, where have you been for the last four years?
And to that point, I think it's profoundly ironic that we're already going back to 2019 to 2020 to focus on her statements in the primary.
She has four years as a VP with, frankly, not just nothing to show for it, but just botched Afghanistan withdrawals, abysmal policy records on the border.
So even if you want to go to her, you know, post-transformation, apparently she's no longer radical.
If you want to look at her record now, someone who gloats and touts the fact that she was the last person in the room when it came to making decisions on the Afghanistan withdrawal and someone who's so proud of her record on the border, she won't even embrace her border czar moniker.
I don't really think you even have to go back to the primary to look for evidence that Kamala Harris is not a candidate that has a solid track record to run on.
And that's squarely why she's dodging the mainstream media.
And of course, hostile media networks too.
But you're going to see the Democrats continuing to roll out endorsements from out-of-touch Hollywood elites or frankly the national security officers.
It started out with the four anonymous ones that tried to smear Trump as a Russian agent.
Then in the 2020 election, it was the 51 anonymous or the intel officers who said that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
And now it's a couple hundred.
I guess that's how desperate they are, national security officials that they have to wheel out to prop up this candidate who is essentially an empty vessel that is being pushed and shepherded by the most radical elements of the Democratic Party and is only moderating right now because they admit it.
They are engaging in a case of the USA.
So let me ask you why.
Why didn't Donald Trump say all this at the debate when he had the chance with tens of millions of Americans watching?
Why did he get sucked into her trap?
Which clearly were she won that debate, whatever anyone else tries to spin it, I can tell you, categorically, she won it.
And she won it because she played to his kind of narcissism and he wasn't able to articulate all the things you've just said about her own positions and the weaknesses of those.
And I think that was a mistake.
Do you agree?
Well, I mean, it's precisely why I think Trump wanted to have a debate on Fox.
He wanted to have questions that would have teed up actual substantive conversations.
But he could have done it there.
Sorry, what was that?
Well, he could have done it in the last debate.
I mean, everyone knows Trump's a great debater.
All he had to do was whatever question he got asked, he could have just directed his answer straight at her and asked her all the things you've been talking about.
President Trump tried to drive the conversation more towards immigration.
I think he, you know, whether it's trade, immigration, or foreign policy, they're sort of issues that are both on the same side of the same coin, or rather two sides of the same coin.
But I think Kamala Harris did maybe rattle him a little bit by getting him to talk about rally size and crowd size.
But, you know, I think the broader ideas of Trumpism talking about immigration.
And I think for my co-panelists to say that Trump didn't deliver on anything with regard to the populist agenda is just patently false.
I think Kamala Harris is trying to do a cheap astroturfed version of that now.
But that's why Kamala Harris is running for cover, whether it's ABC debate moderators or scared to have debates on Fox News, because if she's actually pressed on her immigration track record, which I guess she's apparently not, the borders are, she knows she can't answer for it.
I mean, Brian, look, it's going to be a very tight race.
Every pollster I talk to says it's going to be right on a knife edge, right to the conclusion here, which is not unexpected given the way the last few elections have gone.
What do you think is going to happen?
I mean, do you genuinely believe Kamala Harris is going to win?
Yes, I do believe that Kamala Harris is going to win.
I mean, look, we all have limited information that we're going by right now.
All we can really look at is the polls, is the momentum.
At that point, you know, we try to learn, glean what little information we can.
But I think that what I said at the top of this segment still stands, which is that Democrats are the underdogs.
Believing in Victory 00:15:27
Donald Trump does have the incumbency advantage to some degree, even though he's not the direct incumbent, but was prior to this.
And I think that it's incumbent on Kamala Harris to do what she's been doing, which is to reach as many people as humanly possible, to continue crisscrossing all of these swing states.
She's done about 35% more rallies, her and Tim Wallace together, 35% more rallies and events than Donald Trump and JD Vance has, which I think may actually be a smart strategic move by the Trump campaign, considering every time he goes out on stage at either a rally or an interview, he decides to open his mouth and insert his foot in the middle.
Kind of interest, Brian.
Who do you think is running the country right now?
Is it Joe Biden or is it Kamala Harris?
Or is it Jill Biden?
It's Joe Biden.
It's Joe Biden.
Well, let me, I'm going to play two clips and ask you that question again.
The first one is where President Biden forgets the name of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, at a press conference at the Quad Summit on Saturday.
He forgets he has to introduce him.
Take a look.
So I want to thank you all for being here.
And now, who am I introducing next?
Who's next?
Distinguished guests, the Prime Minister of the Republic of India.
I mean, completely excruciating, especially given that Modi was standing next to him and is one of the most famous and important and powerful world leaders imaginable.
But the second clip is even more bizarre.
It's Jill Biden apparently taking control of cabinets.
Take a look.
Today at the top of our meeting, Jill's going to give an update on the House initiative, White House initiative to fundamentally change the approach and how we approach and fund women's health services.
So I'd like to turn it over to Jill for any comments she has.
And so you're as kid.
You know, sometimes the White House surprises you.
When Joe became president, I knew I wanted to keep shining a light on the issues that I'd worked on for so many years.
It's just very bizarre, Brian, to watch both of those and not conclude that Joe Biden is no longer running the country.
I mean, the idea he takes that call in the middle of the night and has to press a nuclear button.
I'm sorry.
If I was an American, I'd feel extremely concerned.
His wife seems to be running cabinet and he doesn't seem to know what day it is.
Pierce, I think that this is maybe the most disingenuous framing that I've heard from you.
Having Jill talk about an initiative that she worked on or having Joe not know the exact run of show doesn't mean that he forgot Modi's name.
And it doesn't mean that Jill is taking over cabinet meetings.
And you know that.
Again, this is really bad faith framing.
With that said.
Well, that's what you hang on.
Brian, that's...
Donald, hold on.
You guys said for two years.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me just respond to that.
Let me just say that.
You guys said for two years that Joe Biden was absolutely bang on, whip smart, leading the country, nothing to worry about.
As people like me were writing endless columns and saying stuff on air that he clearly was not up to running the country.
And eventually the Democrats admitted, actually, you know what?
We can't defend it anymore.
The debate was a debacle.
He's out.
They stabbed him in the back.
And now it looks to me like America's rudderless.
But don't tell me that I can't cast aspersions over these clips, given the nonsense that went on for two years.
Given the fact that Jill is talking about an initiative at a cabinet meeting and talking about the fact that Joe Biden didn't know run of show at one of the thousands of people.
Why would he articulate that so loudly?
That's so embarrassing.
Donald Trump in his right mind thought that Tim Cook's name was Tim Apple and thought that Erdogan was the president of Hungary.
So when are we going to do segments on that?
Just because you don't know every single detail.
Here's the thing that, and I know that you don't like to call yourself right-wing media, even though all of your framing is right-wing.
I'm not.
Here's the thing that I don't understand, is that every time is that Donald Trump has done the same thing, if not leagues worse than all of the small mistakes and errors that Joe Biden makes.
But we never talk about those because it's just baked into the cake that Donald Trump is going to say crazy things.
Well, no, it's not that.
It's not that.
And because he's graded on such a curve in both this country and international media more broadly, it just comes and goes like a fart in a hurricane when he says that the president of Hungary is Erdogan, for example.
Yeah, but you're missing the point.
The point about Trump is he's 78, but has the energy, the energy of a 60-year-old.
The energy.
This guy is so brain-addled.
He thinks that Nancy Pelosi was in charge of the Capitol on January 6th.
He thinks that Jeb Bush got us involved in the war in the Middle East.
He thinks that, I mean, he spends most of his rallies talking about what you just said.
He spends most of his rallies talking about Hannibal Lecter, about magnets, about sharks.
I mean, the notion that this guy is in his right mind is laughable.
And yet, 80 million people nearly voted for him in the last election, 10 million more than the first time around.
And they're more than likely.
And even more people are more than likely to be a hard number this time.
Natalie, everybody.
And even more people voted for Joe Biden.
And that's the number of people who are going to be able to do that.
That you still think that President Trump has the incumbent advantage over Kamala Harris, which I think is a tacit, if not outright admission that the four-year track record of the Biden-Harris regime is nothing to actually run on.
Those are your very own words.
And sure, we can just play sound bites or clips.
The incumbency event just means that he was the direct president, not Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris is not a holistic approach that the Biden regime has taken geopolitically.
Sure, Biden might stand up there.
He doesn't know Modi's name.
Whatever.
Even if you choose to overlook that, which I don't necessarily think, again, looking at Biden holistically, how he is health-wise, I do not think he is all there.
That administration has failed time after time when it comes to any region of the world.
We're as close as we've ever been to the brink of World War III.
But specifically with the Quad Alliance, the Biden administration isn't even strong enough to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and say that the reason why we're meeting with the Quad right now is because we want to tackle Chinese Communist Party and China's broader quest for global hegemony in the region.
They won't even say that to Politico.
It's only on hot mic tapes where you hear Anthony Blinken mutter the word China, and that's their framing of the Quad Summit.
Joe Biden can't even stand up there and call out China, I would argue, because he's way too compromised because of the business deals of his son.
But even if you put that aside, this administration has always taken a horrific America-last approach to affairs on the world stage.
You can sit there and laugh, but we're as close as we've ever been to World War III.
And meanwhile, quite literally, yesterday.
You have Zelensky touring ammunition factories in Pennsylvania, which is just a continuation of the Biden-Harris strategy that they secretly announced last year, saying that the way we're going to sell Americans on supporting the Ukraine war is by saying that more aid packages to Ukraine actually boosts the manufacturing base here in the United States, and it's good for American jobs.
So nice to know that Zelensky is now a de facto surrogate for the Harris campaign, but their foreign policy approach has never been about American people.
That's why it's so woefully unpopular.
So when Joe Biden stands up there and forgets the prime minister of Modi's name, the reason why it resonates so soundly with American people is because we're tired of being lectured by the so-called elites and experts in the room, all those very same people who told us that if President Trump became president, the world, the new, you know, the world order, the kind of neo-globalist world order would just automatically collapse.
It didn't.
That's what happened.
It was all projection.
That's what's happened under Joe Biden.
Brian.
I think it's rich.
I think it's rich, first of all, for somebody aligned with Donald Trump, who has been kowtowing to the world's autocrats and dictators to lecture anybody on the left about the world order.
If Donald Trump gets in power, the first thing he's going to do is cower in the way that he did in his first term to Vladimir Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and any of the other autocrats who he can have pet him, because that's what he likes to do.
Second of all, I think it's also ironic that there's this claim that, for example, the Biden-Harris administration hasn't governed effectively in this country.
We have 16 million jobs added.
We have the strongest economy in the entire world.
We have the lowest unemployment rate in half a century.
We have a record high stock market right now.
And all of the legislation that the Biden-Harris administration was able to pass stands in stark contrast to what Trump was able to pass.
But why is it the American Rescue Claim, the inflation reduction?
Why is it gun safety law?
Why is it right?
Why is it when she was asked at the debate, question one, are the American people better off after your term in office with Joe Biden?
She didn't answer the question.
And the reason for that is that the majority of Americans in all the polling do not feel better off because the raging inflation throughout the administration, their four years in office, the raging administration, I don't blame them for all of it, of course, but the raging inflation has made the cost of living for millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Americans extremely difficult.
So when they keep hearing the boasts about jobs and the economy and best in the world and blah, blah, blah, actually what they think is, I can't afford to feed my kids.
And that's why there's a disconnect between what the rhetoric coming out about, we're so great for your economy, when they're not feeling it.
And that could be what in the end swings it to Trump.
Which is, I mean, you just answered your own question.
The reason that she's not bragging about the economy, even though I'm content to, because I think it's important that Democrats do that, because while Donald Trump was bragging about losing 3 million jobs and a 6.3% unemployment rate and a 3.4% economic contraction, I think we do need people out here acknowledging reality, and that is that we have a stronger economy, league stronger than when Donald Trump was in office.
She was very right to go out there and say and not beat her chest over what the Biden administration has done, the Biden-Harris administration have done economically, but instead say that there is so much more work to do that people are still hurting.
There's only one reason.
Brian, come on.
There's only one reason why a presidential candidate of an incumbent party presidency, in other words, a Democrat nominee this time, there's only one reason she wouldn't boast about the economy roaring away in the euphoric way you talk about, and that's because she knows people don't believe it.
I mean, are you saying that people don't believe the facts that I just said about the economy, that we have 16 million anti-judgmental?
By your own admission, she won't boast about it because she knows that is not what people are feeling in their own lives.
The majority of Americans are really struggling with the cost of living crisis.
So there's a massive which is why it's important to talk about what she's offering for the future.
That is why she's not going to be able to do that.
But she has nothing, though.
I've watched her interview.
She says it.
She just talks in word-salad nonsense.
There's no actual concrete policy.
She says, I'm from the middle class.
I know people are going to be a political policy.
She came on.
She came on.
She said, I know people who like their front lawn.
Well, we all know people who like their front lawn, are proud of their lawn.
But all she says is, I'm proud of being middle class.
I'm going to make all your lives better.
And by the way, it's going to be joyful.
Well, I'm sorry, but if I'm struggling to feed my kids, right, I don't want to hear this word-salad stuff.
I want to hear concrete policy.
And whatever you think of Trump, there is a belief amongst his supporters that their lives got better economically, notwithstanding the pandemic, which ravaged the end of it.
But certainly before the pandemic hit, Trump's economic policies had a material effect on many Americans where they felt they were better off.
And that's the difference.
Peters, a $50,000 tax credit for small businesses that have created a $25,000,000 to first-time homebuyers going after price gougers.
I mean, there are actual policies here.
Meanwhile, if you ask Donald Trump what his thoughts are on childcare, you're going to get a two-minute rambling diatribe where he strings together words that alone may have some meaning, but together just sound like the unhinged, incomprehensible screeds of someone whose synapses may be fighting buttons.
I'm going to bring Natalie in.
I'm going to meet them on the other side.
Natalie, I mean, it's interesting to me because on the one hand, you've got a candidate who's been in office with the president for four years now, but doesn't want to boast about the economy's performance.
And on the other hand, you have a candidate who was president who very happily boasts about his economic record when he was president.
Again, notwithstanding the once-in-a-generational pandemic.
Could that in the end swing it Trump's way?
I've got a feeling it might, especially in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, these kind of places, where a lot of working class people and middle-class people are really feeling the economic pinch.
They don't think the economy is roaring, but they believe Trump might get it going again.
Well, I'm just curious if the numbers that he's referencing are pre- or post-revision, because it seems like the Biden-Harris administration really has a problem when it comes to the Bureau of Labor statistics coming out, showing that I believe it's the last six or so job reports they've had to revise down most sizably, what was it, the 877,000 jobs that they had falsely reported that never actually existed.
And if you actually drill down into these numbers, again, I think why you see American people actually flocking to the Trump economic policies, so many of these jobs have actually gone to non-citizens or people who are green card holders and not actual American workers.
So it might not be outsourcing directly to other continents, but in some ways it's a continuation of sort of that establishment decades-old policy of doing that.
But it seems like the Harris campaign, the best thing that they can do is do cheap rip-offs, you know, sort of intellectual property theft of the Trump campaign, whether it's the tax on tips or anything to that out.
But I think the question remains, like we've been talking throughout the entire thread of this discussion, if all of these ideas were so great and they wanted to implement them right now, why hasn't Harris done anything?
Why didn't Biden ever task Harris with doing anything on the economy?
The only areas she's ever allegedly been deputized to enforce have been the border, which she failed abysmally on, rolling out internet programs and broadband.
There's absolutely nothing to show for that.
The only track record she has a solid, I think, performance on is wasting taxpayer dollars.
So I don't trust her to be advocating or negotiating on behalf of American families when she can't even secure the southern border.
Okay, well, we're going to find out.
Interesting debate.
Thank you both very much.
Brian, I've got to leave it there.
Hold your thought for the next time.
There will be a next time.
And again, I'm not a right-wing media guy.
I honestly want to hear both sides go at it.
That's how I see these debates.
And if you can convince me, good on you.
Thanks, Pierce.
Reviving National Identity 00:05:03
Well, join me now as the former Republican candidate for president and the author of new book Truths, The Future of America First, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek, how are you?
It's good to see you again.
How are you?
I'm good.
Last time I saw you was in Las Vegas in a massive glitzy ballroom.
You were the rising superstar of the presidential race.
And I want to play a clip.
This is where I asked you about whether you would end up being a Trump advisor.
And you said this to me.
I look forward to working with Donald Trump when I hope he's my advisor, frankly, my mentor in my first year in office.
That much I will take.
But that's how I think this is going to play out.
You managed to say that you thought Donald Trump would be your advisor as president with a straight face there, Vivek.
I do.
I think he's somebody who has a lot of experience.
I don't want to start with a standing star.
I want to build on those four years of experience where he left off.
Just to explain the agenda to the next level.
No, no, I can see why you would want him as an advisor.
It's just the idea of Trump playing second fiddle to anyone, I think, is highly unlikely.
I couldn't help but notice that you weren't wearing a tie in that interview, and I no longer wear a tie.
So I want to thank you for the sartorial guidance that you gave me, even without spelling it out.
But secondly, I actually like your answer there because it showed real confidence.
I said to you at the time, and I meant it.
I thought you were a breath of fresh air in the campaign.
But right now, we're talking within hours of Trump announcing in an interview that if he loses, he won't run again in 2028.
Are you seeing this as the moment, perhaps, given that he's gone public with that, where your own aspirations turn to potentially running in 2028?
Look, it's one of the things I've found, Pierce, in my life is that every time I make a detailed career plan for myself, it never goes according to that plan anyway.
But when you're guided by your true purpose, the plan tends to reveal itself.
And so for me, I'm guided by the same purpose that led me to run for president in the first place.
I do think we're in the middle of an identity crisis as a country.
I think we have badly lost our way.
A crisis of national pride that runs deep, especially in the next generation.
And so my mission is to fill that vacuum however I can.
I'm working hard to make sure that Donald Trump's elected as the next president and that we're able to hopefully revive not just our economy and fix our border, but revive our sense of national identity too.
So yes, there's the next four years and then there's the long future after that.
I'm actually pretty optimistic that Donald Trump is going to take the White House.
So the scenario he was asked about, I don't think is actually going to be one, if things continue to go the way they are, is going to be the one that transpires.
But regardless, I'm guided by my purpose.
And that's a big part of why I wrote this book as well.
For me, writing is one of the things that actually helps me reflect, and that's part of why I put this book together.
And we're taking things step by step.
There are 10 chapters.
They're all truths.
And you cover a wide-ranging series of things from religion to climate change to the border crisis to the gender debate to how government should be formed, the nuclear family and the importance of that, racism, you talk about reverse racism being racism, and why nationalism isn't a bad word.
So a very wide-ranging book, and you always articulate yourself extremely effectively, I think.
When you finish the book, did you conclude that there are more things good about America than bad?
In other words, yes, there's a lot to be fixed.
But at its core, is America still the number one country in the world for you?
The answer to that question upon reflection on the other side of writing this book, Piers, is actually yes.
And the beauty of the United States of America is that we are a creedal nation.
We are a nation founded on a set of ideals.
And that's what's different, I think, about American national identity versus the national identity of most other countries.
Japan, Italy, other great countries have a national identity founded on their ethnicity and their shared heritage by way of even a genetic lineage.
In the United States, it's a little different.
We're bound by that common set of ideals.
Do we fall short of those ideals?
And have we fallen short of those ideals for a long time, Piers?
Of course we have.
But I would rather live in a country that has ideals and falls short of them than a country that has no ideals at all.
And that to me was the common thread throughout all of the chapters in this book.
It is sprawling in its scope of different individual subjects we cover.
But the thing that ties them together is that the United States of America is still founded on a set of ideals that even to this day, even in this supposedly divided environment, actually still unite most Americans.
The other thing I realized through writing this book and through my presidential campaign as well is that myth of national division is really just that.
It's a myth where 80 plus percent of people in this country, I've discovered, actually share the same value set in common.
Unfiltered Open Dialogue 00:03:03
But the problem, Piers, is that they're afraid to talk about it in the open.
And so one of the things I try to do with this book is to help overcome that culture of fear, to arm everyday Americans with the type of arguments and facts they can bring to the dinner table in their conversations with their friends.
And yes, I do say the word friends on the left, be it their family members or their friends.
That's how I think we get our country back is actually through unfiltered open dialogue.
And this book hopefully gives, especially people on the American right or center right, the ability to have that courage argumentative toolkit that I've gained to use it.
Listen, Vive, I totally agree with you.
I think the bedrock of any free democratic society is the ability to debate things with your fellow Americans or Brits, wherever it may be, in a passionate way.
And at the end of it, shake hands and go and have a drink or cup of tea or whatever you want to have.
But I am looking at what's happening in America.
And I think a lot of it's fueled by social media and the tribalism that goes with it.
But I see a real toxicity in the debate where people are just, families are being split in two by their political beliefs.
We've now seen one of the two candidates, Donald Trump, have two assassination attempts on his life in the space of two months.
This is pretty terrifying.
And it just says to me that this toxicity I see on social media all the time is filtering down to people who have maybe disturbed minds and they are prepared to act on it and to actually put a bullet in a candidate's head.
That's scary.
It is frightening.
And the reality, the most frightening part about it, Piers, is that how normalized that's quickly become.
After the first assassination attempt a month later, it wasn't in the news.
After the second assassination attempt, 40 hours later, it wasn't in the news.
It was staggering.
And so the fact that that has become...
I mean, the fact that we have become anesthetized to responding to the extreme itself is, I think, one of the greatest concerns.
On the other hand, a careful study of American history shows that we've been through tough, and dare I say, even tougher times before.
You know, think about where we were in 1968.
You have JFK having been assassinated.
Then you have Robert Kennedy assassinated, Martin Luther King assassinated in the thick of the Vietnam War, loss of faith in our country, and yet we emerged stronger as we have so many times on the other side.
So I don't believe in fake optimism, but I do believe in a true optimism that our history teaches us is real in a nation founded on those ideals.
I tried to bring that to the fore in my presidential campaign.
There's a million things I would do differently.
I ran as the youngest person ever to run for U.S. president as a Republican.
Learned a ton from the experience.
Part of this book was synthesizing a lot of those learnings with the benefit of some distance from that campaign, but while it was still fresh, to lay out why I still actually do believe, not in a fake politician way, but in a true way, I actually do believe that our best days can still be ahead of us.
But it starts by speaking the truth in the open.
It starts with actually allowing every American, regardless of their political belief, to express themselves.
Lessons from Springfield 00:06:50
Because I do think the path to truth, but also the path to peace in America runs through more speech, not less.
And that's a big part of what this book gives people the permission to do.
The things I say in here back in the 1990s when I was growing up in the Midwest, I would have told you in the 90s, don't buy this book because the things in here are too obvious.
They're too boring.
You don't need to read them.
Today, the problem is actually the opposite.
Many of the things I say in the book, the same things, are too controversial in today's environment.
But the way we get there, and I've learned this, is people are just hungry to be heard.
I went to Springfield, Ohio just a few days ago.
It's close to where I live, and I spent a lot of time in Springfield growing up.
I just said on social media I was going to show up.
We had a room full of not only 350 people, we had about 2,000 people RSVP, hundreds of people literally lining the street outside.
It just tells me there is a hunger for people to be heard, to feel.
What is the truth, Vive?
I was going to ask you about Springfield.
You're unable to do it.
Well, I mean, given the fact you grew up around there, and you know it very well, you went down there.
And my take on it, for what it's worth, is that there are obviously a legitimate series of concerns.
When a local area like that suddenly has a situation where 20% of another community are basically propelled into there in a very short period of time, that's going to have an impact on any society anywhere in the world.
We've seen similar things happen in the UK.
But actually, Donald Trump and JD Vance to an agree, that Trump in that debate, by going on about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs with no real evidence to support any of that, certainly not on any widespread scale.
When in fact, there's a much more nuanced debate to be had about the benefits of the Haitian community in Springfield.
Obviously, many of the local business people talk about them very favorably and about some of the negatives perhaps of the way you integrate that volume of people from a community into an area like that.
How do you feel?
I mean, you're from there.
You've heard the local people.
I mean, do you agree with me or disagree?
So look, I learned a lot just by showing up.
And that's one of the lessons I would advise anybody in politics or anybody in life.
Show up for yourself.
There's no substitute to actually facing people in a room without TV screens in between.
During that trip, I actually met with Haitian community leaders in Springfield.
I met with city officials.
Then we had that town hall where, I mean, the response was overwhelming in terms of people wanting to be heard.
I'll say a couple of things about the media, all right?
I do think that the media has a relationship with Donald Trump where what they do is they love it.
They like to pick one thing he said around the periphery of an issue and to use making the story about that word he might have chosen to sweep under the rug the substance of the actual issue that we otherwise would not have been talking about, which is the influx of large numbers of people to the United States to places like Springfield under temporary protected status, but staying in a way that was never actually imagined.
I actually have an entire chapter about this in the book.
It felt funny going to Springfield because I had written the book before, the book just came out this week.
about the effects of temporary protected status on heartland communities like Springfield.
It's funny having written about that to see it play out in real life.
But what I'll also say is if we're going to apply that same standard of airlifting what somebody has said, it's interesting, Pierce, how that same media has not, for example, fact-checked Kamala Harris, who in that same debate and afterward has said things like women are bleeding in parking lots, unable to get access to abortion.
There isn't a single example of a woman bleeding out in a parking lot in a healthcare clinic.
And so if the media wants to play the game during politics under heated moments where someone's going to say something and airlift that and make that the story, at least apply the standard.
But no, listen, I don't disagree with you.
She was not fact-checked nearly enough for my liking in that debate.
You know, when she started talking just about stuff, like him saying that all white supremacists were good people, all this kind of stuff that there was going to be a bloodbath if you didn't win.
When everyone knows he was talking about the car industry, all that kind of stuff was incredibly disingenuous.
But I would pick you up on one thing, which is the reason people focused on the migrants, Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs is that Trump made a particular point of saying that on that stage with no evidence to back it up and then became meme central around the world.
I mean, you can't go on social media for five minutes without it.
So he was his own worst enemy there, where there was a legitimate issue in which he's been very strong in many people's eyes about the southern border, about the influx of illegal migrants and so on and so on.
But when you start banging on about migrants eating cats and dogs, you lose a lot of the independence that you might be trying to persuade to vote for you in November.
That would be my point.
Yeah, here's my perspective on it, Pierce, is that we aren't talking, and nobody was talking about a major problem in an American city that's close to my heart.
I spent a lot of time there as a kid and I live less than an hour away now.
Now the nation, at least, because of a lot of efforts, I tried to show up there and others who have at least now paid attention to what's happening in Springfield, we have a chance to talk about the actual issue.
So whether it's from the left or the right, I really am not a huge fan of trying to actually focus on airlifting some word that someone said and making that the story at the expense of missing the actual story.
When I'm in Springfield, that is a story of what's happening in America.
And it is nuanced.
You're right.
It's not just about illegal immigration of people sneaking across the southern border.
These are policy decisions that the Biden and Harris administration have made.
I'd rather they defend the policy decisions because at least then we could have an open debate saying that the compassionate thing to do after the earthquake in Haiti was to bring those people here.
What impact is that having on the community?
I actually met a Haitian man whose story was particularly compelling.
I spent some time with Haitian community leaders.
He's a physician.
He went to medical school for eight years in Haiti.
He was actually the target of kidnapping plots by local gangs such that he had to leave.
His medical license is invalid here.
He paid and put himself through nursing school and he's now actually a nurse and working hard in Springfield.
That's an important story.
And with those Haitian leaders, I had an interesting exchange, Piers, where I shared with them a view that I thought was provocative, but it is my view, that I don't think even through legal immigration, the United States should allow anybody into the country if they're likely to be consumers of the welfare state, if they're likely to be the recipients of government aid.
I told flat out to a room full of Haitian leaders in the community of Springfield that that was my belief.
And I'll tell you what their response was, at least for those community leaders, was they thought about it and they said, okay, that's at least that's a reasonable policy perspective, which is actually what many on the American right, along with me, believe.
But we don't get there unless we're able to have that open dialogue.
And so we each have a role to play in saving the country.
The way I'm trying to play mine is to spawn those open conversations and honest conversations, not fake unity, not kumbaya fakeness, but real, difficult conversations.
An Alternative Vision 00:08:17
It's a big part of my motive for not only the way I ran my campaign, but also for writing this book and hopefully continuing that chapter.
And there's been a lot of in a different way.
On divisive issues, been a lot of chatter about whether Kamala Harris is a black woman.
Janet Jackson came out and said to the Guardian newspaper, she's not black.
That's what I heard.
She's Indian.
Her father's white.
That's what I was told.
What do you think of what Janet Jackson said?
And what do you think about those on the right, and there are some, who fuel this idea that she's not a real black woman?
Well, I'll say one thing is I haven't heard of Janet Jackson's comments.
Here's the deeper issue when it comes to this issue of racial identity and identity politics in America.
The ultimate irony in this is the person who has wielded that like a weapon for her entire political rise has been none other than Kamala Harris, favoring racialized policies.
Even on that debate stage with Joe Biden, making up really what was an artificial tale that she was somehow the person who was the brunt of segregation in America, standing up to Joe Biden as part of America's racist past.
She's the person who's actually weaponized this issue of identity politics.
And my view is the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race in America is to stop discriminating on the basis of race in America.
John Roberts, the Supreme Court justice, said it well.
I agree with him.
And so I'm dead set against identity politics, whether it be from the right, from the left.
I don't want victimhood politics, identity politics, period.
Move our nation forward.
And I do think that part of the reason you're seeing these debates consistently swirl around Kamala Harris over the years is that when you weaponize your race and gender to use that to actually create, in the name of anti-racism, more racism, it's no surprise that she finds herself at the center of controversies relating to more identity politics.
Conversely, if Kamala Harris had never made that a core part of her political rise or her political vision for the country, favoring racialized policies that she's favored in the past, then I don't think that she would be at the epicenter of this controversy either.
So it is another one of those instances where the actual real debate we need to be having is about the policies of affirmative action and group quota systems and whether we want to embrace identity politics in American politics.
I don't.
People like Kamala Harris do.
But using some sort of on-the-periphery statement that Janet Jackson or Donald Trump or whatever said on a given day to substitute for the real debate, which is whether or not we believe in colorblind policies in America.
I do.
Kamala Harris apparently does not.
And that's a debate we need to be having.
You told Fox News we railed against the Democrats, but without offering an alternative vision of our own.
I'm very worried we're going to be in for a rude surprise this November unless we fix that starting right now.
Do you feel the same today?
I mean, do you feel it's really important that the Republicans get their policy ducks in a row and offer a genuine vision for the country that's going to be the thing that gets you over the line?
I do think that's a requirement for us to win decisively.
And that's why I've been so vocal about this.
I think the reason we did not have a red wave in 2022, peers, wasn't just because of Donald Trump or abortion or the issues that they tried to blame.
The real reason I think we didn't have that red wave is that we have to articulate our own vision of who we are and what we stand for, not just what we're against.
We can't just be running from something.
We got to be running to something.
And I said it before that we're in the middle of this identity crisis as a country.
This is an opportunity for the conservative movement to step in and fill that void and say, this is what it means to be a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous citizen fighting climate change somewhere, but a citizen of the United States of America, that we believe in meritocracy, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color, that you don't apologize for excellence, that you get to speak your mind.
We talked about that, free speech and open debate.
We believe in the rule of law.
I say this is the kid of legal immigrants to this country.
Your first act of entering this country cannot break the law.
Self-governance, that's a radical American idea with due respect to your side of the pond on this, right?
The people we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government.
These are beautiful, distinctly American ideals.
And I think the conservative movement has an opportunity to fill that vacuum with our own alternative vision.
If I'm being honest, I think we still yet have a better job left to do.
And if we do, I think we're going to win this country back.
But if we're looking back in January, God forbid, and saying, oh, we blew it just like we did in 2022 with a red wave that never came, I think that will be the lesson that I think we'll be having to have learned again, is that we have to offer not just criticism of the other side.
You got to do some of that in politics, but that is insufficient.
It's not alone enough.
We got to offer our own vision for the future of the United States of America.
And for my part, I'm seeing this in Donald Trump's rhetoric today, even relative to years ago.
If you listen to him carefully at the rallies, he's doing a great job of identifying not just making America great again about going to the past, but this is the vision I certainly favor.
We want to make America greater than it has ever been, to make America greater.
That is part of American exceptionalism.
That's the character of our country.
And the more we're able to not only speak to that, but to be able to deliver then the policies that are going to get us there, that's what's going to lead us to success.
And I'll give you my promise as I'm traveling and crisscrossing the swing states of this country, really all the states of this country as best I can.
You know, I think that reaching that next generation is also a big opportunity.
So one of the things I'm trying to do with this book has some controversial elements in the book, no doubt.
But if you're speaking truth or at least speaking your mind, you're going to walk into some controversy from time to time.
But I actually think that actually allows us to really heal our bonds through at least authenticity and honesty rather than sweeping that under the rug.
Final question.
In July, you weighed up the possibility of filling potentially the U.S. Senate seat of Senator JD Vance, who, of course, if Trump wins, may well become vice president.
And you said, to be frank, I would certainly consider it if I was asked to serve.
But I also want to have a serious conversation with President Trump about the other ways that I could have an impact on in the country.
Would you rather serve in his administration at a senior level or be a senator in that eventuality?
Look, I think there's a few different paths open.
What you'll mostly hear people speculating about for me are things I'm being recruited for by people bottom-up is everything from the governor of Ohio to being the senator of Ohio that still fills JD Vance's seat, if that becomes vacant all the way to a senior post in the administration.
I'm planning to turn to that soon after November.
As I said earlier, if we're plotting and making plans for myself, it's probably not going to go exactly according to that plan anyway.
But if we're guided by the purpose, and right now there's a very defined milestone of winning the election, focused on not just helping Donald Trump and JD Vance, which I am, but also senators and down ballot candidates where we need lasting majorities in the House and the Senate if we're actually to govern.
And I do think a lot of those Senate candidates really need to catch up to Trump, who's overperforming them in their respective states.
That's where my focus is.
It's about 45 days till the election.
So achieve that goal after we've done it on November 6th when we wake up hopefully to a victory.
We'll turn to pretty quickly to what my next steps are.
But we're waiting for that.
No point in spinning my wheels in advance.
But multiple of those paths are open and I'm looking forward to exploring them in another month and a half.
Well, I think you would be a very effective senator.
I think you'd also be a very effective person at a high-up level in the Trump administration, if there is one.
I think you're good for politics, Vivay.
I said this to you last time.
I think it now.
I think young people in particular, I think you resonate with them.
You talk in a language they understand.
And it's an interesting book.
I don't agree with all of it.
You wouldn't expect me to, but I found it provoked a lot of interesting thought processes in my head.
And it challenged some of the things I believe.
That is the point of democracy.
So more power to your elbow.
Thanks for coming on.
That's what I'll say about I love about our conversations too.
I've learned a lot through our exchanges, heated at times.
And that's what makes our country beautiful.
So thank you too, man.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate that.
I'll talk soon.
I'll talk to you the day after the election.
See what you're going to do.
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it.
Thank you.
Vivek.
Great to talk to you.
All the best.
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