Cheng Yuger, Professor Alan Lickman, Harry Sissim, Juan Williams, and Kyle Kalinsky dissect the Democratic defeat, debating whether economic neglect, "woke" identity politics, or disinformation campaigns drove voter shifts. They critique celebrity endorsements like Oprah Winfrey's $2.5 million event and suggest figures like Jon Stewart could unify the party. The panel also analyzes Trump's cabinet picks, labeling them "virulent neocons" chosen for television appeal over policy expertise, ultimately arguing that internal fracturing and a failure to address class anxiety allowed Trump to consolidate power despite Senate rejection mechanisms. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why Democrats Are Angry00:03:49
I think Kamala ran basically the platonic ideal of a non-woke Democratic campaign.
What's the future of the Democrats?
Who would you like to see run the party then?
Jon Stewart.
Honestly, a controversial charismatic celebrity might make all of the difference.
Possibly the loss would have been worse if Taylor Swift and folks like Oprah weren't working with Kamala Harris.
Although Taylor Swift is popular, obviously she's not that popular because she did not move the needle.
Alan, you deserve a tall glass of shut-up juice.
You live in a total world of denial.
I read your own followers' comments and they all trashed you.
I mean, brother, I said what was going to go wrong.
It did go wrong.
I was right.
It's not that you see a post-democracy this week.
You should not be taking cheap shots at me and I won't stand for it.
Hey, Alan, shh.
The inquest into the shock death of a Democratic Party has so far proved inconclusive.
The only clear message emerging from the ruminations, as with the campaign itself, is that the orange man is still bad.
Just about nobody on the left can agree on why the orange man therefore won by landslide and what should happen next.
Here's just a snapshot of views from the masterminds who were wrong about, well, almost everything.
It is time for the Democrats to say, okay, and you and I have talked about this before.
A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with black candidates.
Right.
Align with other Hispanics.
Exactly like each other.
The working class of this country is angry.
And they have a reason to be angry.
I don't respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families.
That's where we are.
Elon Musk is a, I don't know how many hundreds of billions he has.
He has been the director of misinformation.
And this idea that, like, oh no, the economy is actually good or crime is actually down, or this is all just Fox News.
Like, shut the fuck up with that.
Like, talk to some people who live near you.
I mean, this really was an historic, flawlessly run campaign.
She had Queen Latifa never endorses anyone, but she came out and endorsed it.
I got bad news for you.
They don't have a monopoly on stupid.
You wear queers for Palestine t-shirts and masks two years after the pandemic ended.
And you can't define woman.
I mean, person who menstruates.
Exactly.
Whatever the prescription should ultimately be, the diagnosis is surely crystal clear.
Trump has made commanding inroads with working class voters, black voters, Latino voters, urban voters, and young voters.
It's a veritable rainbow coalition of disaffected people who were Democrats have traditionally relied upon and more recently taken for granted.
So what drove them away?
Was it government-funded operations to transgender illegal aliens?
Was it prioritizing SNL and 60 Minutes over Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughan?
Was it the warm embrace of Liz Cheney and a hawkish, even conservative stance on the wars in Israel and Ukraine?
Was it gas tunneling America into believing Joe Biden was so sharp he could slice concrete and meant ousting him for a simply dreadful candidate in Kamala Harris?
Maybe it was all of the above, delivered with a customary liberal serving of supreme self-confidence and the firm belief that everyone who disagrees with them is a moron or a bigot.
We're joining me for an uncensored battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, the host and founder of Young Turks, Cheng Yuger, presidential historian and pollster Professor Alan Lickman, Democrat influencer Harry Sissim, and author of New Prize for These Eyes, a senior political analyst of Fox News Juan Williams.
Welcome to all of you, one in particular.
Long time since I've spoken to you.
Great to have you, I think, making your debut on our census.
So thank you very much.
This is Blue on Blue, chaps.
So you can rip into each other to your heart's content.
The Big Story of the Election00:02:16
And hopefully out of it, we may get some form of consensus over certain ways that the Democrats can go.
Well, let me start with you.
When you look at the election and you look at the thumping win Trump got and who he won it with, do you think this whole campaign by the Democrats to portray him as racist, sexist, transphobic, Islamophobic, and Nazi, blah, did they just over-egg the devilment souffle and just in the end play into his hands?
Well, I think they thought, based on the numbers, that this was going to be an effective form of attack.
And I think it was for the base of the party.
But I think that there were a lot of people who were attracted to other parts of Trump.
And I think the whole macho man thing, it worked.
You know, you were talking about a rainbow coalition.
No, it wasn't a rainbow coalition.
But I think that you saw white men still go big for Trump.
You saw the Latino men.
And I think that's the big story of the election.
Latino men suddenly went towards Trump.
And there were some black men.
I think it was a male thing.
And I think, again, the idea that he said offensive, vulgar things about women, the fact that he is, you know, says he wants to be an authoritarian, that's all true.
But I think a lot of the men said, you know what, we like it.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I mean, Professor Lickman, you correctly forecast result of nine of the past ten U.S. presidential elections, but not this one.
Like most pollsters, I have to say, very, very few people predicted a big win, other than I might, if I may be so modest.
I did.
I went on Fox News 10 days before with Brian Kilby and said, I think he's going to win big.
But actually, most people thought we'd be incredibly tight and it could go either way and so on.
But it wasn't that at all.
Why do you think Trump is so difficult to poll?
Which is clearly the conclusion I would draw from this.
Well, you know, I am forthrightly willing to admit I missed this election.
I still think I actually had 10 out of 10 before.
I think I was right about 2,000.
Inflation and Disinformation00:03:45
But we're not here to litigate that.
I still think it's a pretty good record.
Now, I think two things are operating here.
Number one, I was incredibly critical at the time of the spineless, cowardly Democrats openly and viciously trashing their elected president and their elected nominee right out there in the open.
I have never seen that before.
And I've studied American politics since the founding.
And that tainted any nominee.
And they're now taking no responsibility for that.
They're blaming everybody else.
Until they look in the mirror, the Democratic Party is going to be in trouble.
Secondly, why did my keys miss?
Because my keys are based upon the proposition that a pragmatic, rational electorate decides whether or not the White House Party has governed well enough to get four more years.
That was exploded this time by a new wave of disinformation that we've never seen before.
In addition to the usual sources of disinformation, we had a huge change this time.
A 300 billionaire, a guy who's richer than most countries of the world, who controls X, spreading vast disinformation.
According to reports, billions upon billions of viewers saw his disinformation.
People have a completely distorted view of his family.
What was the disinformation?
Inflation is going to be.
Let me ping you down on that, though.
You say Elon Musk was spreading disinformation.
Like what?
Yes, he is spreading vast disinformation that's sunk in.
Even people who think their own financial situation is pretty good think inflation is going up when it's been cut by 75%, that unemployment is still inflation.
On that point, see, it's interesting.
You would say that's disinformation, but the point is that inflation is still not zero.
Therefore, prices are still going up.
Therefore, people are going to be able to get the city.
The only way you get information is recession.
Yeah, but here's my point.
Obviously.
Here's my point.
Yeah, but here's my point.
Democrats kept telling the American people rather arrogantly, I thought, you know, the economy is in really good shape.
Meanwhile, inflation still exists.
In other words, prices have continued to go up and up and up, albeit not at the same rate they were going up.
But if it wasn't zero, and it wasn't, it was like 2.5% or whatever by the end, that is still inflation.
So it's not disinformation to say that zero is a recession, is deflation.
That's ridiculous.
Inflation has been cut by 80%, but it's not just inflation that people are wrong about.
But do you accept inflation means prices are still going up?
Do you accept prices were still going up?
Of course.
Right, so that's always true in the recession.
That's not disinformation.
That's ridiculous.
By Elon Musk.
And that's disinformation about every other aspect of the economy as well.
Disinformation about undocumented immigrants, like their bloodthirsty killers.
They are the most law-abiding segment of our society.
According to numerous studies, including by the Libertarian Cato Institute, they commit crimes, including violent crimes, less than half of that of Native Americans.
And they don't drain our economy.
They are the mainstay of the agricultural, construction, personal service, hospitality industries.
Studies show you will drive the economy into a recession if you go through large-scale deportation of immigrants.
And you will sweep huge numbers of U.S. citizens because all the databases used to identify undocumented immigrants are fundamentally flawed.
Missing the Whole Point00:03:20
You can't have a pragmatic electorate under these conditions.
And the mainstream media is utterly feeble.
It spends 20 times more time on meaningless polls within the margin of error than it does telling truth to power and indicating the consequences of this election.
But it is not billionaires.
Okay, I'm going to come to Cheng.
I mean, Cheng, you know, the biggest deporter in American presidential history was Barack Obama, who deported over 3 million people.
This idea that Trump is going to become some outlier in terms of mass deportation, the great mass deporter was actually a Democrat president, Obama, by a long way, by the way.
So this idea of disinformation, I think some of it was disinformation, but it's, you know, the idea that this election was only won through right-wing disinformation, I think I'm afraid I view that as a total delusion by the Democrats.
Again.
Yeah.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with Juan and Professor Lickman.
Don't blame the voters.
I think, look, we could get into this discussion, but Juan, I think you're blaming the voters.
I think that's a terrible idea.
And look, I debated Professor Lickman before.
I told him his theories about the keys were absurd.
I was right.
He was wrong.
I said he'd lose his keys.
No, you wouldn't.
Couldn't find him before the election.
I was wrong.
And that's a cheap shot, and I won't stand for it.
Who wants to go?
You should not be taking cheap shots at me.
Who wants to make you literally totally denial?
I read your own followers' comments, and they all trashed you, every one of them, and supported me.
Yeah, come find out again.
Make whatever point you want.
Don't make it.
You don't know anything.
You don't know anything.
You attacked me personally.
You're so deluded.
I've only been a professor for 51 years.
In this program, I've never been able to finish this.
How many books have you published?
No, because you're personally attacking me again.
Say whatever you want, but I'm not explaining.
Brother, you got it wrong.
You were preposterously and stupidly wrong.
So, okay, all right.
Can I just finish the goddamn stupid ever on this show?
No, not if you're personally out.
I admitted I was wrong.
I don't need you to call me stupid.
Okay.
I'll just say it's nothing.
I'm taught you manners.
It's lovely to say you're watching elections.
You're not damn coin.
Alan, shh.
Hey, Alan, you deserve a tall glass of shut up juice.
So can you just shut up for a second and let someone who knows what they're doing?
So personally, let me do what you want.
I will not sit here and say for personal attacks for blasphemy against me.
You don't need to do that.
You don't blasphemy against you?
Who the hell are you?
Are you Jesus Christ, you loser?
Okay, can I just give the correct answer for once?
Okay, here we go.
So guys, you're blaming disinformation.
There was this information.
There was the cats and the dogs nonsense.
The points you're making about undocumented immigrants, I agree with Alan, okay?
But that didn't cost the election.
The main disinformation was about how the election was going to be rigged.
And it wasn't rigged.
It was dumb.
They won easily.
There was no need for that disinformation.
Identity Politics Led to Disaster00:15:24
You guys are missing the whole point.
The people who are at fault are not other people.
It is the candidate, Kamala Harris.
The previous candidate, Joe Biden, Democratic Party, Democratic leadership.
You guys don't want to admit that they're the problem.
They're the cancer in the Democratic Party.
So you blindly lash out at the voters, at information, at social media, and you want to shut down anyone who disagrees with you.
That's not the correct answer.
There are three wings of the Democratic Party.
There's the establishment wing that the great majority, almost everyone on television supports and kisses the ass of and does propaganda for.
That wing has led to disaster.
They lost to Donald Trump twice, nearly lost to him, three times.
And then the other wing is called the progressive wing, but those are two different sets of people.
In the progressive, so-called progressive wing, what you have is the identitarian left, the people who do what the right wing would call woke politics and identity politics, and that is disastrous.
That's what the trans ad was at the end, and it cost us.
The most popular part of the Democratic Party is the populist left.
That is the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign.
That part says, let's do super popular economic proposals like paid family leave, higher minimum wage, universal health care, public option.
Let's do all of these things.
And the establishment goes, no, our corporations don't want that.
Our donors don't want that.
So we'll just do identity politics.
And maybe identity politics will unite the left.
But it didn't.
Identity politics led to disaster.
It was a poison within the Democratic Party used, ironically, by the establishment Democrats because they didn't want to talk about popular proposals that we have because their donors hate those proposals.
Okay.
Let me bring in Harry.
Now, Harry, you tweeted or posted on X on November the 6th.
Carmela Harris's speech was amazing.
Graceful, strong, hit the right tone.
She's a fantastic leader and a great role model.
No idea how she lost to Trump.
You're a bright young guy, Harry.
I've interviewed you several times.
You know why she lost.
And that speech, in a way to me, was the perfect illustration.
She basically said nothing.
She talked about billions of stars and the moonlight and shining lights and all that.
There was nothing there.
There was no meat on the bone, no substance.
And that was her problem throughout the whole campaign.
She had 100 days to show America, here's how I'm going to fix all your problems.
Instead, she did the Hillary Clinton playbook after promising us joy and sunshine, immediately pivoted to Trump's a Nazi.
They're all fascists.
They're all disgusting.
And by the way, here are all my rich, famous entertainment friends who are all going to surround themselves on me on stages.
Didn't work for Hillary, didn't work for Kamala.
And at some point, young guys like you who are the future of the Democrat Party, you've got to wake up and spell the cappuccino.
You need a candidate that can resonate.
I mean, Chen's right.
The Democrat candidate who has most resonated with the public was Bernie Sanders, right?
You'd have done better with him running a miss election.
But you guys don't see it that way, do you?
Well, I think that since the election happened and sitting with it for a couple of weeks, I know why Kamala Harris lost.
You know, I think that what I said was premature.
And I think it's a combination of what all the gentlemen around me are saying.
I think that's like a middle ground in life, which I think is often the case, which is I think Professor Lickman is right that it was a lot of disinformation pushed by a lot of bad actors in the right wing.
But I think that Chenkin never...
Hang on, Harry, Harry.
There was disinformation from the left as well.
When you keep calling him a Nazi...
It's not disinformation.
Hang on, hang on.
Let me finish up.
When you keep calling Donald Trump a Nazi and a fascist and all these things and his supporters, Nazi sympathizers, all that is total disinformation because he hasn't murdered 12 million people and he's not going to.
And by the way, you all know that.
So the disinformation is on both sides.
I disagree.
I disagree with calling Donald Trump a Nazi or calling him Hitler.
But I want to be clear that it was his own former advisors who called him that and likened him to Hitler.
Kamala Harris never got on a stage and said, oh yeah, Trump's Hitler now.
She just alludes to the fact and brought up the fact that his own former advisor said that.
But I also want to make the point that I think that Chenkin, the gentleman from Fox News, is right when it comes to the economy.
I think we were not great when it came to messaging the economy.
The benefit that Trump had is that he could put his slogan on a yard sign.
He could say, Kamala Harris, Democrats, high prices, Trump and Vans, low prices.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, was tasked with explaining, okay, here's why inflation went up.
Obviously, it's not Joe Biden and me.
It's because of external factors.
Here's why gas prices went up.
Obviously, it's not me.
It's external factors.
You know, if you're explaining you're losing, as the famous saying goes.
So that was the uphill battle that we had.
And I think there was kind of a perfect storm that led to Donald Trump being elected.
And I think that I disagree with you.
But you're missing something else.
You're missing something else, which is all the culture war stuff that we kept being assured by the left nobody cared about.
No one cares about the trans debates, right?
Nobody cares that biological men are wrecking women's sport.
Nobody cares that they're invading women's personal spaces and so on and so on.
No one cares that kids are being put through mutilating surgery before puberty.
And we kept being told, nobody cares about this.
Leave them all alone.
It's transphobic.
I'm not transphobic.
I wanted trans people, as I still do, to have fairness and equality in their lives exactly the same as all of us on this panel.
But when you keep telling people it is fair, on the one hand, Democrats said we protect women's rights on abortion.
On the other hand, we're absolutely fine for women's rights in sport to be traduced at this ridiculous altar of biological men who are now trans women competing against women and beating them.
You can't be both.
So the public went, this is, and you're shaking your head, but look, the New York Times did a report about that ad, which the Trump campaign did so successfully and repeatedly.
You know, Carmel is for they, them, Trump's for you.
They reckon it moved the needle by two and a half points.
It was the most successful and effective 30-second ad in modern political history.
So people did care.
And the Democrats were just too deluded, it seemed to me, because most of them, you must realize this issue of trans athletes in women's sport is wrong.
You all know it's wrong.
For some reason, you wouldn't get off that train.
And that delusion was one of the reasons that you lost so badly, I believe.
But Pierce, to Professor Lickman's point, that ad in and of itself contained misinformation.
The ad was saying, oh, Kamala Harris wants to pay for prisoners' transgender surgeries.
All right.
I said it a few years ago, but she's a good person.
But wait, hold on.
In the New York Times also reported this, that this took place under Donald Trump's presidency as well, because depriving a trans prisoner the right to get gender-affirming care is, yeah, Shank, it's a law, it's the Constitution, is against the Constitution of the United States, preventing cruel and unusual punishment.
Because if somebody is deemed medically necessary to receive care, no matter what that care is, and you ban it or say, no, you can't get it, that absolutely falls under cruel and unusual punishment.
So Donald Trump did the same thing.
And that's an example of the disinformation or at least the lack of context.
So Trump's campaign.
Do you accept Harry?
Do you accept that this is a problem?
Yes, Shank, I'm sorry, yes.
But do you accept the so-called cultural stuff that I would frame as a kind of very, very far-left progressive woke stuff?
That I've seen a lot of Democrats in the more centered part of the party coming out now and publicly saying what I was saying for a long time.
Apparently, Bill Clinton kept warning them internally.
David Axrald has come out and said, we've got to stop this.
Joe Scarborough did a big monologue about it on Morning Joe.
At some point, you've got to recognize that most average Americans just found all that stuff complete bullshit.
And that's one of the reasons you lost.
And you've got to move on from it.
If you come back with another woke progressive platform in four years' time, you will be out of office potentially for four more, eight more, maybe 12 more years.
I promise you.
Take it to the bank.
Pierce, I agree to a degree, but not in the way that you're framing it.
I think that we do have to move on from a lot of the culture war stuff.
I don't like the word woke, but I understand the context of you're using it.
I think that, yes, and to some degree, we have to move on.
But by moving on, we shouldn't throw people under the bus.
We shouldn't say, oh, you know, trans people are the reason why, or LGBTQ plus people are the reason why.
That's not the reason why.
It's just that the culture war stuff came off as very kind of gross to some Americans.
They really didn't like it.
So I agree to a degree, but not in the way that you're framing it.
Okay.
One, let's talk about race because it seems...
Let me get in here.
Well, one sec, Jenkins.
One.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
One thing.
I'll come to you, Chaney.
One, on the issue of race, many people found it extraordinary that a guy who a lot of people think is racist beat a black woman and that a lot of people that helped him win turned out to be a lot more black men voting for him than first time and a lot more Latinos voting for him than the previous times.
How important, if at all, was race in the end or was it actually a case of?
A lot of black and Latino people went, we don't care about all that stuff.
What we care about is jobs, cost of living, illegal immigration and so on.
Well, I think everybody cares about jobs, cost of living, inflation, and so on.
And by the way, I don't think you're right about those numbers.
I think there were more black men than black women who went towards Trump.
But remember, they're still a small segment of the overall electorate.
The big shift, actually, as I said, Latino men was a huge shift.
And they're also not that big a section of the electorate.
The big electorate in this country still is white people.
And overwhelmingly, white men went for Donald Trump.
And white women, who I thought, and I think a lot of pollsters thought, given the abortion issue and the success of abortion as an issue that favored Democrats in 2020, but also after the Dobbs decision in 22 and all the referenda, white women again voted for Trump.
But so it, you know, you talk about is this a race issue.
The race issue may be that white Americans were overwhelmingly in support of Donald Trump.
And if you look at black America as overall, overall, black America supported Kamala Harris.
Overall, Latino America supported Kamala Harris, even Latino men who had that big shift.
So to me, race is a part of the story because, you know, in America, the demographics are creating anxiety.
And I think the anxiety is most evident in terms of white America seeing that there are more black people, but also Latinos as the second largest group in the country now and rising number of Asians.
It plays out in so many ways.
And I think Donald Trump is just expert at exploiting that racial anxiety to say to people, oh, these Democrats are playing identity politics or whatever.
I think the identity politics overwhelmingly is played by Donald Trump with white America.
Chenk, you wanted to jump in?
Yeah, so look, I'm going to address what Juan's saying too.
But first, Harry, I know that the same policy was under Donald Trump, but that's not disinformation.
That's for our candidate to go out there and clarify that and to fight back and to make her case.
But she refused to make her case.
She barely did any interviews.
They were all incredibly structured to protect her fragile ego.
All she did was talking points.
Donald Trump's out there, sometimes like a maniac, but a lot of times looking like a real person at McDonald's and with the garbage truck.
And our side goes, oh, that's terrible.
No, it's not terrible.
Those are great photo offices.
When our guy or a person is a corporate talking robot, that is not helpful.
We are misdiagnosing the case here.
So when on these the Republicans set traps.
No, hold on.
The Republicans set traps for us.
So the great majority of the country is in favor of trans rights.
And I'm 100% in favor of trans rights.
And I bet you that the entire panel, including Pierce, says that as well.
But when you go beyond rights and you say, hey, they dug and dug.
They tried to find, hey, how about banning them from the military?
Trump tried that in the beginning.
It wasn't popular.
Banning them from bathrooms, not popular.
But they dug until they got to sports.
And that was winning ground for them.
And what I said is, guys, get out of there.
It's a trap.
You don't have to fight on that.
You're falling into their trap.
And what happened, as Pierce can attest to, is everyone else on the left screamed, transphobe, fascist, Nazi.
Let's dig in on our least popular position.
That was terrible policy.
I totally agree with it.
I love you, brother, but it ain't about race.
It ain't about race.
You know what?
Latino men didn't vote for.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Latino men didn't vote for Donald Trump because all of a sudden they like white people or orange people.
They voted for him based on economic issues.
Democrats only think in terms of identity, but that's not working anymore.
The one number one identity people care about is not Latino, black, or white.
It's class.
Are you going to do something for the average man or are you going to sit there and play identity politics so you avoid the more important questions that your donors don't want to talk about that actually helps the average guy like paid family leave and higher wages?
Okay, Professor Lickman.
No, I don't get it, Singh.
I don't get it.
You know, the reality is, like, Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, they stood up for Obamacare.
They stood up for fair pay.
These are populist issues that the heart of the Democratic Party.
You go after Democratic Party donors and the establishment, Democrats.
Democrats stood for those issues, brought them to the table, and won.
And Democrats, if you look at what Joe Biden did in terms of bailing people out during the virus and saying that we have to have infrastructure and building, that helped, that helped working people in this country.
But a lot of lies were told about that history.
Yeah, you can.
Yeah, Professor, I know you've got to leave us.
So just, you wanted to jump in there.
Yeah.
First of all, let me add a quick fact.
There was no massive switch of black voters to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump got 13% of the black vote, 11% the last time.
That's 2% of a very small segment of voters.
So that's one of the big myths of this election.
Second big myth is that hindsight is 2020.
We have a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks who, after the fact, are telling us what Harris should and should not have done.
And you know, half of them are saying she lost because she was too progressive.
She was too open to the charge of being a radical, a socialist.
The other half have said, of course, she lost because she wasn't progressive enough.
Debunking Black Voter Myths00:04:42
We heard that from Schenk today.
It's all sports talk radio without the entertainment.
There is no way to know after the fact what she should or should not have done.
If she had only done this or that, it would have made a difference.
That's just hot air with absolutely no proof.
The difference that I bring to the table is a track record of successful prediction based upon how American presidential elections have previously worked as pragmatic decision-making on whether or not the White House Party has governed well enough.
And then my analysis is based upon what's changed, what's shattered the pattern of 160 years of history.
So I have a base for my analysis.
I'm not just doing Monday morning quarterbacking.
Jank, you need to learn some manners.
Your act is getting really fat.
I mean, brother, I said what was going to go wrong.
It did go wrong.
I was right.
You were wrong in this election spectacularly so with your so-called keys.
And now you come and tell us not to money.
And unlike you, I'm willing to admit what I'm wrong.
Are you ever going to learn the lessons?
Can I just ask, can I just ask you to go?
Hang on, hang on.
Just ask, for those who have no idea what the key thing is all about, why are you flashing keys?
Okay, because this brother said that he had these keys and they were going to determine the outcome of the election.
And all the keys were rigged in favor of incumbents.
And I tried to explain to him, no, there are things outside of the keys.
We literally had a debate and I asked him, what if Joe Biden, this is back when he was defending Joe Biden, which now seems unconscionable, that what if Biden came and punched the baby every single day?
Would your keys still hold?
And he said yes.
Okay, well then you're an unreasonable person.
I was right.
But what I'm most worried about is not in the past.
I mean, why?
I was wrong.
Listen to him about Biden.
You have no idea how absurd you sound.
Okay, but guys, the most important thing is not between me and Professor Lickman.
God bless you, brother.
I know you did a lifetime's worth of work, and I feel a little bit bad about it.
The reason I'm saying it is not to rub it in now.
It's because I'm worried that in the next primary, you're going to tell people to vote for the establishment Democrat, that all of you on this panel are going to go, oh, no, vote for the corporate robot, vote for the corporate robot, and that's going to destroy this party.
That's why I'm so aggressively.
Give me a name.
No, vote for the populist left.
Give me a name.
Well, in the old days, it easily would have been Bernie Sanders.
Now is it now?
So, look, I would start considering Sean Fane, head of the UAW, Sean O'Brien, head of the Teamsters, Jon Stewart.
Go outside of politics.
Almost everyone in politics is already corrupted.
Find someone who is for the average man.
Harry, you're shaking your head, but I mean, Jon Stewart, if he could be persuaded, I would imagine could be very good as a candidate, couldn't he?
No, I don't take objection to Jon Stewart.
I just think we have some people in the Democratic Party who are very talented right now who could be the Democratic Party.
Democratic, Governor Shapiro won Pennsylvania by like 20 points.
Governor Wesmore in Maryland, how much more connected to people do you need other than like Wes Moore, who's great?
Raphael Warnock from Georgia won a swing state and is a senator from a swing state.
Gretchen Whitmer, who had a trifecta in Michigan for the first time in a long time.
There's really talented people in the Democratic Party who are elected officials right now.
And Shank can shake his head all he'd like, but these people are winning in swing states overwhelmingly.
Who would you like to see?
I think any of the people I just mentioned, I'd love to see.
And there's plenty more, but I think we're going to have to go to the next one.
Because I'm pretty sure, I would lay good money now that JD Vance will be the Republican nominee in the world.
He, in direct contrast to Mr. Waltz, who I thought was a total disaster, I thought JD Vance started with a lot of negativity, but became a real force for Trump, particularly in getting young men to come out and vote for him.
So I suspect he'll be the nominee.
We'll see.
Professor Libert, we're going to say goodbye to you.
Thank you very much for joining us.
I appreciate it.
In a moment, though, we're now going to be joined by, to add to our panel, the Ohio State Senator Nina Turner.
And first making his uncensored debut, the host of the Kyle Kalinsky show, Kyle Kalinsky.
Carl, welcome to our center.
We're trying to get you for a long time.
Let's have a little chat with you before we get reaction from the panel.
But why did the Democrats blow it so badly?
And what do they do to avoid this happening again in four years?
I mean, the simple answer is that Kamala Harris kind of codes as a technocratic status quo manager and Trump codes as a change agent.
And so, I mean, to sum it up as simply as possible, voters just thought he's going to deliver more change.
Woke Ideology vs Change Agents00:02:46
She's more the same, and they broke for him.
Who would you like to see run the party now?
I mean, what's the future of the Democrats looking like to you?
Jon Stewart.
I've been pushing that since the day Trump won this time around, because what we need is, honestly, a controversial charismatic celebrity might make all of the difference, but it's that mixed with Bernie Sanders' policies of actually delivering social democracy for people, raising their pay, getting them health care.
I think that's the magic stew.
And honestly, I think it's a shame that more people aren't talking about the controversial charismatic celebrity portion of Trump being so successful, is that you can't keep the cameras off him.
He's entertaining.
Love him or hate him?
You can't stop watching him.
And so we need to sort of mirror that on the left.
And I think the way of doing that is Jon Stewart.
But I would add to that what Bill Maher's been warning for a long time to liberals, speaking as a liberal himself.
And I'm pretty much where he is politically, I think.
I feel the same way.
And I know you've been keen to say, look, Carmela didn't mention any of these woke issues or whatever, but she's very much associated with a lot of those woke issues.
She's certainly voted in line with a lot of the more progressive stuff, like allowing transgender athletes in women's sport and so on.
So she's seen to be a progressive who then moved rapidly to the center when she got the nomination.
And it was all too much of a screech for people, probably on both sides.
But this whole woke ideology, I don't mean the original woke ideology of raising awareness for racial and social injustice.
I mean, the way it's become a kind of new form of fascism where the far left just basically want to cancel, shame, and humiliate absolutely anybody who disagrees with them about anything.
Do you accept that that has become a problem, a stick to beat the party with, which actually really damages them electorally?
No, I think Kamala ran basically the platonic ideal of a non-woke Democratic campaign.
She never mentioned race.
She never mentioned gender.
She never mentioned trans people.
She never mentioned pronouns or Latinx or cancel culture.
She repeatedly stressed that she was going to represent all Americans.
She ran to the right on the issue of the border.
She talked about owning a gun.
She ran on freedom and patriotism.
And so when you put all that stuff together, I simply don't know what people are talking about when they say she's not going to be able to do that.
Well, they're talking about those things at the same time.
Well, hang on, hang on.
They're talking about her record as vice president of the Biden administration, where they never stopped talking about this stuff for nearly four years.
So you can pretend when you get the nomination, whoa, I'm a centrist and I'm a gun-toting Rambo, by the way, as well, to all you Second Amendment people.
But actually, if you judge her on what she said and did in four years, she was a progressive left person.
Celebrities and Media Ratings00:15:42
And to pretend otherwise is to just ignore what went on in that period.
What I'm much more concerned about is not Democrats being woke or Democrats censoring speech.
I'm much more concerned about Trump's record on those things.
So, for example, Trump said he wants to punish flag burning with a year in jail.
That's against the First Amendment.
He sued CNN for $475 million for calling election denialism the big lie.
Before he was president, he sued Bill Maher for $5 million over a joke.
He said he wants to open up the libel laws.
He called for jailing journalists who report on the Supreme Court abortion ruling early before the decision.
How many of those things did he do in his pro-Palestine protesters?
How many of those things did he actually do in his first term?
Because it seems to me another problem, and he does this brilliantly, by the way, with the left.
He sucks you in because he just shoots somebody here, but he says stuff that crosses his mind or whatever.
And rather than pick him off on stuff he actually does, you all go completely nuts every time he opens his mouth and says something a bit crazy.
And if I was advising the Democrats, I'd be like, stop, stop doing this.
You're literally playing into his trap every time you do this.
Just pick him off on the stuff he actually does.
Then you got a better chance.
All right, I'll do that.
Here, ready?
He gag-ordered the EPA from telling the truth on climate change.
That's deeply anti-free speech.
He arrested and charged six journalists with felony rioting.
He did not pardon Assange.
He did not pardon Snowden.
He did not pardon Daniel Hale.
He wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. to deploy our own troops against George Floyd protesters.
These are all things that are actually on the record, things he actually did.
And the thing that I find incredibly frustrating is that nobody talks about it.
Trump magically gets a pass for things he actually did.
He doesn't get Democrats to get held to a super high standard.
Come on, he doesn't get to hear that.
How many times have you heard people say those things I just had?
Wait, wait, wait.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Let me honest to you.
Trump has had the most unrelentingly hostile media from a mainstream media that is largely staffed by liberals.
We know this because of the way they all go nuts when their paper wouldn't come out and endorse Kamala and all resigned.
So they reveal their true colors.
Cable news, the same.
MSNBC, CNN.
You can fire a harpoon around their newsrooms and you wouldn't hit a conservative, right?
So let's just get real about the way mainstream media is made up.
I've worked in it.
And there are very few conservatives.
And that is part of the problem as well.
And I just think that ultimately, if a Democrats are going to try and make themselves electable, they've got to move wholesale on now to a far more effective way of campaigning.
And it can't just be every time Donald Trump speaks, mass hysteria, shaving your head, you know, going on TikTok and posting videos of yourself screaming and saying you'll never have sex with a Trump supporter again.
All this stuff is insane.
How about just telling the truth?
Wait, How about just telling the truth?
That's a radical idea, right?
When was the last time you heard? that Trump arrested and charged six journalists with felony rioting.
Who talked about that?
Did CNN talk about that?
Did MSNBC talk about that?
Did you talk about that?
Nobody talks about it.
And the fact of the matter is Trump attacks Democrats four times as hard as they attack him.
So if anything, the lesson to take away is the opposite.
Democrats should get more arrogant.
They should get more aggressive and they should tell the truth more.
Come on, Carl.
You know that would be utter silence.
So that's the truth.
You know what?
You wouldn't be as good at it as he is because he does it with humor.
You lot all do these incredibly straight-faced, virtue-signaling, I'm outraged by everything faces.
And it's like, if you all just chilled out a bit, have a bit of cool read, have a bit of a laugh.
I said Jon Stewart.
Death by McCracken.
Well, actually, you're right.
Jon Stewart gets exactly the right tone.
On that, I agree with you.
That's right.
Yeah.
I agree.
I agree.
Let's bring in Nina Turner and the rest of the panel.
Nina, you floated that Rah Emmanuel as a new DNC chair would be a good signal that the Democrat Party is only there for the donor class.
Many other people would say that Rah Emmanuel's a very effective political operator.
But actually, the Democrats need a bit of that muscle now.
Appears very effective at a cover-up.
As we know, as mayor of the city of Chicago, he covered up the police murder of LaQuan McDonald.
He closed many schools in the black community.
Certain segments of the black community are very outraged by him.
He is more of the same and should be as far away from the DNC as possible.
Now, if the Democrats want to lose again and get handed again like they just did in 2024, then go ahead and have Ram Emmanuel there.
But if they want to do a new thing and answer to the working class people of this country from all backgrounds, then they need to have somebody there, primarily who's going to say no more dark money in Democratic primaries.
Ram Emmanuel is an absolute no.
We know that the Chicago Teachers Union feels the same way and many others will come out against him if he decides to run for that.
Okay.
Let me bring you back in because MSNBC is now at war, which is always entertaining to watch, because Joe and Mika from the morning show went off at a reveal this morning to go and see Trump in secret at the end of last week after bombarding him with abuse for years and years and years, having originally been great friends of his.
But another MSNBC presenter, Katie Fang, has now tweeted normalizing Trump is a bad idea, period.
So clearly there is an internal fracturing going on, which I suspect is going on in the Democrat Party at large, because I would urge them to be more collegiate with Trump.
I've always felt that he's one of those guys, he's a natural pugilist.
If you read his book, The Art of the Deal, he says, if you punch me, I'll punch you 10 times back.
Actually, if you go and hang out with Trump, and I've criticized him as much as I've praised him, he can take criticism if he feels like you're not just unrelentingly abusive.
So I actually thought that Joe and Mika, we'll play a clip from what they said this morning, but I thought this was a good move on their part.
Let's take a look.
Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump.
It was the first time we have seen him in seven years.
Now, we talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents, and media outlets.
We talked about that a good bit.
And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so.
What we did agree on was to restart communications.
Well, what do you make of that?
I mean, you know, I actually feel America's been so toxic in the way it's become so tribal, and they've been part of that, no question, on one side, and Fox have done it, I guess, on the other and so on.
Should we encourage both sides to come together a bit more, like they used to in the old days?
Sure.
I mean, look, I'm all for people working together, building bridges, kumbaya.
I'm all for it because I think, you know what?
If you look at the Congress of the United States, totally polarized, they're also totally paralyzed.
They're not getting anything done.
We need to get things done.
And on the world stage, I could go on and on.
But I think that with Joe and Mika, and I watched that show, so I'm no critic of it in that sense because I subscribe, if you will.
But let me just tell you, it looked to me like their ratings have gone through the floor.
They have, yeah.
And I think that when people talk about Trump, you talk about Trump.
He's a celebrity.
People have said you can't take the camera off him.
I think for them, it's like, you know what?
This is a way to get back in the media ratings game.
You know, the idea that we're connected to Trump.
People like to advertise on shows they know the president might be watching.
They would love to get Trump to, instead of watching Fox and Friends, to watch some of Joe and Mika, Morning Joe.
But, you know, to me, that's a, you know, it really calls into question, have they been authentic when they were saying that this guy is so harsh when it comes to women, so harsh and racist when it comes to blacks and Latinos, and has an authoritarian, even, as we were saying, fascist streak.
So were they sincere about that, or are they now falling in line with others who find, you know what, I want to get on the bandwagon because Trump has just been re-elected and won the popular vote.
To my mind, you got to be straight about your authentic sense so that the audience can trust you.
And I think they put that at risk today.
Well, it's interesting, Cheng, because the journalism professor and author Jeff Jarvis has accused them, Joe and Mika, of inflicting a, quotes, betrayal on their colleagues, democracy, and us all.
He treated this a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.
Yeah.
So I have a different opinion than everybody here.
My first question would be, what are we agreeing on?
So if you want to go to Trump to get him to agree on things that we agree with, like an anti-war position, fantastic.
Of course we should be open-minded to that.
You'd be nuts not to be open-minded to that, right?
If he were to actually do anti-corruption, which he always promises but never does, right?
And you can get him to be open to that, fantastic.
But why are Mika and Joe going there?
To push for, you know, the public option?
No, they're going over there to get access.
And so they seem like utter frauds.
Like, if they could show me policies that they care about that Donald Trump agrees to, or they have a strategy to get Donald Trump to do good and decent things, great.
I'm super open to it.
And look, I would want to do that.
I got no problems with me meeting with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or anything else along those lines.
But what I'm not going to do is compromise my principles and my ideas just to get access.
So like, for example, I mean, we see the Democratic Party instantly going in the wrong direction.
Rah Emmanuel is the biggest dog for corporate donors.
Picking him could be the worst possible thing you could do.
Do you know that Rahm Emmanuel lost a thousand seats on his watch when he was at the DNC nationwide for the Democrats?
There isn't a bigger loser in the Democratic Party.
So look, we need a populist like Jon Stewart, which I actually, if you remember, Piers, I tried to get him into this race.
Yeah.
But John, call me.
This guy never wants to get, he doesn't realize how intensely popular he could be.
By the way, another candidate for president could be Nina Turner, a person who actually fights for the average person, has always been right about the populist left, and then going for class instead of always being worried about identity politics.
So there's so many options here.
Yeah.
Kyle, a lot of people now say, including John Fetterman, that Nancy Pelosi should go.
She's the godmother, the enforcer.
Now she's blaming Biden.
You can't have it both ways.
I think it's really ironic.
You have a woman at age 84 and she's still hanging on.
Why not give a younger generation an opportunity to occupy that seat?
I mean, Nancy Pelosi, it does seem to me they've got to move on.
Haven't they got somebody younger, fresher, new ideas?
I mean, I'm totally in favor of cleaning house, but at the same time, that 100% would include the genocidal maniac that is John Fetterman.
So he's part of the problem that he thinks he's calling out here.
He's one of the worst of the worst.
But on the broader point of just bringing in new leadership, bringing in fresh ideas, bringing in people who believe in social democracy and Bernie Sanders' agenda and they're willing to fight, 100% on board for that.
Harry, celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, where it's now been revealed that she and her company got paid closer to $2.5 million rather than the original million dollars as thought for the event they put on with Kamala Harris.
Every single time out comes Oprah putting her arm around whoever the Democrat candidate is.
Then you see Beyoncé, then you see that they all come out.
I feel that's over, that Trump has barreled his way through that.
And his people like Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and others, they're not really conventional celebrities.
They're tech people in a tech world really, or interviewers or journalists.
Do you think this idea of the Democrats constantly being associated with super rich celebrities, singers, pop stars, actors and so on, is that over now?
Because it seems to have backfired this time.
No, I don't think so.
I think the people you're describing, like Joe Rogan, are celebrities in their own right.
Joe Rogan, his base of viewers just happened to be the people that Donald Trump wanted to get out to vote.
The people who watch Oprah, the people that listen to Taylor Swift happen to be the Kamala Harris's biggest.
But they didn't get their people out to vote.
Women did not go out in the numbers that people expected when Taylor Swift was.
Well, women still voted for Kamala Harris overwhelmingly.
Yeah, but I love Taylor Swift, for example, but everyone thought that would really change the needle.
Half a million people apparently registered to vote extra in 24 hours when she made her endorsement.
But none of that was reflected in the polls.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't effective.
Who's to say that it didn't actually get out more people to vote?
And that possibly the loss would have been worse if Taylor Swift and folks like Oprah weren't working with Kamala Harris.
These people have, you know, they're famous.
They have a lot of notoriety.
So when they're doing something with a candidate, that speaks to people who are low propensity voters, people who don't pay attention to politics like everybody else does here, right?
We want to get those people out to vote.
And a lot of those people line with Kamala Harris.
And if they see Oprah standing next to Kamala Harris, they're like, oh, yeah, that looks cool to me.
So I don't think that was a mistake.
I don't think it like, quote unquote, backfired.
Maybe there's a way to do it more strategically in the future.
But to say that, oh, yeah, no, we shouldn't work with Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star on earth, I think that's, I think that's foolish.
You know what, Harry?
Harry, nobody cares, Harry.
Nobody cares about celebrity endorsements.
I don't think they do.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, nobody cares about celebrity endorsements.
Here, let me give you one example.
If Democrats, for example, passed Build Back Better, the original Build Back Better that Biden and Bernie were trying to get through, that included paid family leave, child care, universal pre-K, free community college, expanding Medicare, higher minimum wage, lowering all prescription drug prices, expanded child tax credit.
If you got that through, I think this election very well may have been different and Democrats would have won.
And I don't think dragging out Taylor Swift or Beyonce or whoever else is going to make much of a difference because people like them for what they like them for.
They like them for the singing.
They like them for the dances.
They don't really want to hear their thoughts.
Yeah.
I mean, 100% agree.
Let me bring, I want to bring, I want to bring Nina back in.
I agree.
I agree with Kyle on that.
And I want to say, Jane, thank you for that presidential endorsement.
Who knows what 2028 will hold?
But they overplayed their hand with celebrities.
It's not that you don't want celebrities, but celebrities motivate the base that you already have.
What this campaign did is they put too much stock in those celebrities.
Those celebrities, just like my colleagues on this panel, just like myself, they only have one vote to give.
Yes, they have influence, but you know who could have been a better influence on that race?
It's everyday working class people standing by her side.
Everyday working class people talking about how under the Harris-Waltz presidency, things would be different for them, that the minimum wage would be increased, et cetera, et cetera.
That did not happen.
So although Taylor Swift is popular, obviously she's not that popular because she did not, did not, absolutely did not move the needle.
And this is no shade to her.
It is just celebrities are good for the base.
They are not necessarily good to move those undecided votes.
Who Could Have Influenced the Race00:04:52
The way they did it, too.
The other thing I was saying.
The way they did it.
It was a very elitist way.
You know, it was the way they did it.
No, I agree with you.
There's a different issue with Trump's picks, nominee picks for the cabinet.
I think I see a consistent pattern here.
The one running theme of all of them is they're all good on television.
Trump understands the power of television like no political candidate I've ever seen.
He absolutely gets it because he's a TV guy.
I did his Celebrity Apprentice show.
I saw him at firsthand.
He loves the camera.
The camera loves him.
And he's great at the power of television.
If you look at R.F. Kay Jr., you look at Tulsi Gabbard, you look at Marco Rubio, you look at even Matt Gates, look at all these people.
What's the common theme?
They're all good talkers.
They're good on television.
Whereas if I think, yeah, but of course, everyone can have their view about world politics, but they are good performers on television.
If I try and think of a lot of Democrats in that camp who are good at articulating policy on television, I start to really struggle.
I do.
I think it's a problem.
But why are we giving Trump credit for optics right now, Piers?
Piers, the thing about all of his picks is that they're virulent neocons.
He picked Mike Huckabee, who's an end times fundamentalist Christian, to be ambassador to Israel.
This guy thinks the rapture is going to happen and Jesus is going to come back in his lifetime.
You know why he picks in Hook?
You know why he's in the State Department?
He picked him because Trump's a neocon.
That's why he picked him.
He picked him because he can, because he has such a thumping mandate on November the 5th.
But Nina, but do you criticize that?
But wait, wait, wait.
Do you criticize that, though?
Are you against that?
I don't think it's any surprise.
It does not have a mandate.
It may be the craziest talking point I've heard.
Well, hang on.
Well, hang on.
My point is the Democrats had such a terrible campaign with a terrible candidate.
You reap what you sow.
You've allowed Trump to do what he wants, right?
So I'm afraid he's not going to be able to do that.
Do you criticize his neocon mixing?
Do you criticize him?
Here's what I say against the Nina.
It doesn't matter what I think, because the truth is...
It does.
Trump was very pro-Israel the first time round.
He was always going to be very pro-Israel this time round.
And you guys have allowed him to win with a thumping mandate.
So the real point of this.
He does not have a thumping mandate.
The real point of this has been for you to show some self-awareness that you've allowed all this to happen.
I mean, Nina, I want to come back to you just briefly.
Well, self-awareness.
He is picking Nina Wands.
Are you going to criticize him?
He's picking them because he's allowed to.
He can pick Nina.
He's allowed to, but are you against it?
Are you against the case?
I'm against some of it.
You have nothing but criticism for Democrats.
And you have no smoke for Trump, apparently.
Listen, oh, I regularly criticize Trump.
I would not get that right now.
Let me answer the question.
Come on.
I would personally not have picked Matt Gates to be the Attorney General pick.
I think it's ridiculous, right?
I wouldn't.
He won.
So to the victor goes the spoils.
We all can agree with that.
The man won.
The Democrats left the door, the windows open.
They didn't open the door.
Come in, burglars.
There is a however to this.
Yes, he does get to nominate whoever he wants to nominate in his cabinet.
If the Senate is so upset with any of those nominees, then they can reject those nominees.
That is likely not going to happen.
The other side of this is true that some of the people that he is picking, and let's use Congressman Matt Gates for the prime example.
He wants a yes man in the attorney general's office.
That is it, because Congressman Matt Gates has shown clearly that he will do every single thing that president-elect Donald J. Trump.
You know what, Nina?
I have one question about.
Regardless.
Okay, I have one question.
Regardless of whether he's right or wrong.
Here's my point about that.
Trump's being attacked for choosing loyalists, to which my response would be: should he have actively chosen disloyal people?
I mean, seriously.
I'm not, listen, I'm not attacking him.
Who would I if you're president of the people that might be that?
You got to call this what it is.
Come on, Pierre.
I feel like there's little chance of why we're attacking him.
I'm not attacking him.
I said he has every right to pick these people, and we have every right to weigh in on his picks.
But the Senate has the final question.
Okay, that is true.
That is true.
We've got to leave it there.
Brilliant panel.
Thank you all very much.
Blue on blue.
Blue on blue was good, but I do feel like blue on blue have to.
You've got to keep talking to each other because out of this unholy mess, the reality is you've all allowed Donald Trump to get back in with even more power.