Harris Surges, Vance Sinks (feat. Gov Tim Walz)

This episode delves into the evolving dynamics of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, focusing on the contrasting political fortunes of Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance.

1. Donald Trump's campaign lacks a focused narrative against Kamala Harris, resorting to a scattershot approach that may undermine his message.
2. J.D. Vance’s campaign faces significant backlash and internal criticism due to his controversial remarks and public image issues.
3. Kamala Harris's campaign is gaining momentum with a clear and forward-looking message, contrasting with Trump’s often backward-looking critiques.
4. The episode highlights the importance of coherent messaging and strategic planning in political campaigns, particularly in the face of opposition’s weaknesses.
5. Gov. Tim Walz's insights underline the significance of aligning campaign strategies with broader electoral sentiments, emphasizing positivity and inclusivity.

1. Opening Discussion

The hosts outline the episode's focus on the political developments involving Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance. They discuss Trump's erratic campaign tactics and initial reactions to recent political events. Jon Favreau: "Trump's lack of a coherent strategy against Harris is telling of his campaign's disarray."

2. Analysis of Trump's Campaign

The discussion centers on Trump's ineffective attacks on Harris and his peculiar public statements that divert from substantial political discourse. Tommy Vietor: "Trump is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Harris, seeing what sticks without real focus."

3. J.D. Vance's Controversies

Analysis of J.D. Vance’s troubling comments and the internal GOP reactions, including potential long-term damage to his public image and campaign. Jon Lovett: "Vance’s remarks about childless leaders have sparked outrage and are a PR nightmare."

4. Kamala Harris's Campaign Strategy

Examination of Harris’s campaign strategies, her responses to Trump, and her positioning as a forward-thinking candidate. Gov. Tim Walz: "Harris's campaign is surging because it connects with voters' desire for a positive future and effective leadership."

5. Closing Remarks

The hosts summarize the political landscape and speculate on future developments in the presidential race, emphasizing the impact of strategic communication. Jon Favreau: "Effective messaging that resonates with voters can significantly shift the dynamics of a campaign."

1. Stay informed about candidates’ platforms and past actions to make educated voting decisions.
2. Engage in political discussions to spread awareness about the importance of coherent and positive campaign messaging.
3. Participate in local and national elections to support candidates who align with your values and vision for the future.
4. Volunteer for political campaigns to directly influence their success and learn more about the electoral process.
5. Encourage open discussions about political accountability and the impacts of leadership styles on governance.

Donald Trump and friends try out new lines of attack on Kamala Harris as they struggle to confront her momentum—and the new reality of the race. JD Vance still can't figure out how to move past his "childless cat ladies" comments, and Joe Biden introduces a slate of Supreme Court reforms. Then Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stops by to talk about making the case for Harris, what swing voters are looking for, and the state fair foods he can't do without.

People

Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, J.D. Vance, Tim Walz

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Gov. Tim Walz

Content Warnings:

None

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Jon Levett
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Jon Favreau
Welcome to pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Jon Levett
I'm Jon Levett.

Tommy Vitor
I'm Tommy Vitor.

Jon Favreau
On Today's show, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden call for Supreme Court reform, while Donald Trump panders to christian activists and crypto bros. With just under 100 days to go in the 2024 campaign, we are sub 100 boys.

Vp shortlisted governor Tim Wall stops by to talk about going after the weirdos and his theory of progressive messaging. And of course, we're going to get into why the JD Vance debut has been such a disaster.

But first, Donald Trump is clearly upset. He's not running against Joe Biden anymore. He's still out on the campaign trail doing impressions of the president and talking about his golf game. Really focused. He's begun the pivot to attacking Kamala Harris, but so far it's a bit of a kitchen sink approach. Here's a sampling of comments he's made over the past couple of days.

Donald Trump
She doesn't like jewish people.

She doesn't like Israel. That's the way it is and that's the way it's always going to be. She's not going to change. I'm running against a low iq individual. Her, I'm not even talking about him.

Jon Favreau
Her.

Donald Trump
I got a low iq individual. And now that she's in this position, they're trying to make her into a, let's say, Margaret Thatcher. I don't think so. It's not going to happen.

Margaret Thatcher didn't laugh like that, did she?

Jon Favreau
Did she laugh?

Donald Trump
We're not going to let her turn the United States into communist San Francisco again. She has no clue. She has no clue she's evil. I want to be nice. They all say, I think he's changed.

I think he's changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven't changed. Maybe I've gotten worse, actually, because I get angry.

Jon Favreau
Maybe I've gotten worse. So Trump's message is that Kamala Harris is stupid, evil, and I guess hates Jews so much that she married one. I guess that's what, that's what the message is. Trump also posted a digital ad today that's another version of the Harris, in her own words, attack about positions she's taken in the past. Tommy, why do you think Trump doesn't have a tighter argument about her on the stump?

Tommy Vitor
I kind of think he's just emptying the oppo clip, you know, like, he treats these, these rallies as just kind of live fire focus groups, sees what works. He sees what they liked. And you're right. I watched the Minnesota rally. He went back to attacking Joe Biden, I think four or five times. We were making fun of him for walking around. We were making fun of him pointing the golf game, like all of it.

Jon Favreau
I mean, I guess he's still making fun of Hillary Clinton. So what should we expect, right?

Tommy Vitor
We're still locking her up.

Jon Levett
Yeah. I mean, you know, Bruce Springsteen is still placed under road. I mean, you just, you do the hits.

Jon Favreau
That's why you go to the Trump rail.

Tommy Vitor
That's what they want to hear. Yeah, I'm sure the campaign is, like, testing all these messages in a real and deliberate way and that we'll see the most potent messages in the tv ads and in the debates. But right now, he's just kind of having fun with it.

Jon Levett
Yeah. If you look at the turning point speech, first of all, I went to the speech because that's where he says, christians vote one more time and then never vote again. And I was like, all right, let's watch this thing and see it. And I was like, an hour and eight minutes. Jesus fucking Christ. This guy never shuts up.

Jon Favreau
Honestly. That's a short one.

Tommy Vitor
But Minnesota was a buck 20.

Jon Levett
Right. But in that speech, he's at the beginning, he's cast around. He's talking about the assassination attempt and being, talking about bullet versus fragment. He's kind of rambling. He's doing random attacks here and there. But then towards the end of the speech, there's a more tighter policy based hit on Kamala Harris. And you can see, oh, that's where the campaign wants him to be. But he's still doing what Tommy's saying, which is just like, you know, trying out new material on the road.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. He's more of a how's it playing with my fan club sort of guy.

Jon Levett
Yeah.

Jon Favreau
So it's just if the most committed supporters clap, then that's more important than whatever Chris Elcivita and Suzy Wiles are telling him, I'm sure, or putting in ads. What's your sense just listening to these events and just overall, how far along the entire campaign is in pivoting to Harris? They do have a lot of these attacks in ads now.

Tommy Vitor
I mean, if you looked at kind of the Trump Twitter feed today, it was every hour a new video about a new subject area. So it does feel like they're all doing what he's doing. I mean, it's sort of like Trump's the stand up, like at the small club working on his material before he goes on the road. Right. I think they're all in that place, but it does seem like they're focusing on just calling her a San Francisco radical liberalization, which is kind of the oldest republican playbook out there.

Jon Levett
Yeah. I wonder, right? Like, if he knew that Kamala Harris was gonna be the nominee, is he still planning to go to Minnesota? Right. Like, is the, are we seeing the last bits of the campaign as it was envisioned before Joe Biden stepped aside?

I don't know. Also, like, going to things, like, he's still doing things that reflect a campaign that was in a much more confident position, like, you know, going to the crypto conference, like, these are gilding the lily type places to go. So I think my question is, like, does his travel change to some, I don't know, other states?

Jon Favreau
I think there's an obvious, like, opportunity to playing up her old comments. Right. Clearly, they're testing this. I'm sure it is probably more damaging with the voters they need to win the election than some of the really gross stuff that they've been saying and that the larger right wing media universe is saying. I do think there's a risk for them, though, in that it is very backward looking.

And so if their entire campaign and their entire message about her is look at things that she did in 2019 or 2020 or before that, you know, it's useful to them to try to define her before she can define herself. But I think at some point there's a danger there for them if they just do that the whole time. I think.

Jon Levett
Yeah, I think that's right. I think Joe Biden's superpower was that he was so established and so kind of safe that their efforts to paint him as somehow unsafe and dangerous, so you shouldn't even listen to him, were not effective. Right. Like, our in the go all the way back, like, the concerns about Joe Biden in the primary in 2020 was that once he faced the same onslaught as everybody else, his favor abilities and the poll numbers would drop the same way others would. But that didn't happen. Right? That was his. That was his strength. I think the energy, the enthusiasm, the fact that so much of the country is saying they want new and normal. They're trying in this very quickly to try to make her seem not new and not normal, but to try to get to the point where people don't hear her when she lays out the actual plans back and forth. Because we know that if the election is fought on those stakes, Kamala Harris will win. I just don't think they have time. I just don't think they have time to sow, damage her while she is out there making this forward looking case. Right. They just don't have the space.

Jon Favreau
You guys feeling shocked that the new Trump isn't really taking? Not only has the assassination attempt not changed him for the better, but now he's acknowledging it has changed him for the worse.

Jon Levett
It's so funny. It's like I saw my life flash before my eyes and I realized I need to spend more time attacking my enemies.

I'm not petty enough.

Tommy Vitor
There are a lot of days in this job where I feel like it's Groundhog Day and we just have the collective political memory of a goldfish. But even knowing that, it was still shocking to see reporters regurgitating these lines about him responding in a spiritual, subdued way to the assassination attempt, like, come on.

Jon Favreau
I will say, to the credit of the press, it was a lot fewer reporters. There were a few stories this time around. A lot of people have learned. I think most people have learned there's still a few stragglers who were 70 year old men.

Tommy Vitor
Don't change.

Kidding or not.

Jon Favreau
Well, I also think he realized. He noticed at the end of that, he said, well, I'm worse, because you know what? I'm angry. I'm angry. He realizes that anger is way more important to his pitch than unity. Like, he needs to seem like the angry outsider who's mad at the system and wants to tear it down. He can't be all like, let's come together and bring the. That's just not. People will know that's not who he is and that's not his message, you know?

Jon Levett
Yeah, I think that's right. Also, like, if, when he first said, I'm not gonna be nice, it has to start by saying, I can't be nice. You can't. That's not what you need. You need me to be your vengeance. I need to be greedy for you. I need to be mean for you. You need me to be that. Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
I think he has some advisors who were telling him, sand off the edges, like, leave the mean tweets part of your personal personality out of it, and you will reach the voters you need to win this election. I think those people are right. But then there's always going to be Donald Trump, who's like, in 2016, I did a hardcore scorched earth, base only strategy, and I won, and no one can tell me otherwise, and I'm going to do what I know is right.

Jon Favreau
He's always running a primary.

Jon Levett
Well, also, by the way, like, maybe. Maybe playing it safe was more right. I mean, I don't know. It could still be right, but it was more right two weeks ago.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. So he did two events over the weekend worth talking about. On Friday, he spoke to a gathering of christian activists called the Believers summit. And then on Saturday, he spoke to a convention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Here's some of what he said.

Donald Trump
We will be creating so much electricity that you'll be saying, please, please, president, we don't want any more electricity. We can't stand it. You'll be begging me, no more electricity, sir.

Have a good time with your bitcoin and your crypto and everything else that you're playing with.

Christians, get out and vote. Just this time.

You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful christians.

Jon Favreau
So the you won't have to vote again clip. Got a lot of play over the weekend. I think even Cardi B weighed in on Twitter. Every. It's a. It went. It went pretty viral. Levitt, what was your take on that?

Jon Levett
So I think people should be sharing it. They should be spreading it. It does show a total disregard for democracy. He has made a version of this point before.

What he is, what he is in the past when he has done this riff, what he has said is, right now, you have to come out in numbers that overwhelm the ways in which. I mean, I'm just translating that. You have to overwhelm democratic rigging the system. You wouldn't have to vote so hard. All of you wouldn't need to vote if the system weren't rigged and they weren't faking the election results. So if you vote this time and I win, I'll stop all the electoral fraud, and then you don't have to vote as much. That is the generous interpretation of it. But do I think he also enjoys that this sets off a round of he's gonna be a dictator on day one. Like, do I think he is being, like, vague and anti democratic and trolling on purpose? Absolutely. And by the way, what he is saying is obviously false. They're trying to make it harder for people to vote. They're trying to disenfranchise people. And so I see nothing wrong with pointing out that what he is saying here is about the ways in which he poses a threat to democracy, even if it's, I think, a little different than what, the more extreme version of the interpretation. That's my take, Tommy.

Tommy Vitor
Good, strong take. I mean, it could be. It could be a couple things. Could be vote for me or, and I'll fix everything and you won't have to care anymore. It could be vote for me this time and I won't run again and I won't care anymore. It could be him signaling that he's going to end american democracy as we know it. I mean, I'm kind of an Occam's razor guy. I imagine you just kind of making a joke that doesn't mean he's not a threat to democracy. And so I thought, you know, I thought some of the reaction was a bit, a bit high. Dudgeon, over the weekend, I saw a bunch of Twitter users screaming at Kate Bedingfield, who is Joe Biden's communications director, and calling her a fascist and a Trump supporter because she had a more, Jesus Christ, you know, not charitable, but she sort of thought he was, was not signaling that he was going to end democracy as we know it. You know, this is a woman who moved her family and small kids to a city to work for Joe Biden to try to defeat Donald Trump. I think, you know, maybe pump the brakes on attacking the modems of everyone who disagrees with you on this subject. But, yeah, Donald Trump's a threat to democracy. This quote doesn't change it.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. Like, and here's why I think this is worth talking about, because, again, we are trying to persuade voters who don't like Donald Trump but are not necessarily either sold on Kamala Harris or so scared of Donald Trump that they're not going to vote for him. Right?

Clearly, last time, Trump wanted to stay in power so badly that he tried to throw away our votes and incite a violent insurrection. That's, that's just true. And there's no evidence that he's changed in any way. In fact, as he acknowledged, he's gotten worse. So, like, we don't, you don't need to put more spin on the ball than that. Right? Like, that's, that's who he is. That's what he said last time. I kind of landed where you did, Tommy. That it's, he doesn't care. Right? And for, it's, it's so it fits well with the Biden campaign's message and now the Harris campaign's message that Trump doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. Right? He's saying everything to anyone that he needs to just to win right now. And then he's like, in four years, I'll fix everything and you have to worry about me. He doesn't give a shit what happens in politics after four years. He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. Right? He just wants to win. That's all he cares about right now. And, like, what happens when he wins? Anything's on the table, right? Like, after what we saw fucking last time. But I think that's where his mind was.

Jon Levett
He's done this. Like, sure, I think he doesn't care. I think he doesn't care who wins next time, either, of course. But I like, again, like, this is just loose Trump having just kind of going back to his back catalog of riffs and, like, this is a riff. Like, there is just a collective. Like, he does all these things before. Like, the people are like, oh, my God. He said, thin people don't drink Diet Coke. He's been doing that bit for years. This is a bit he's done before. He's saying, I'll fix. They steal elections, I'll fix it so that you don't have to worry about it anymore. Like, that. That, I think is like the rift. That is the bit he was trying to do.

Jon Favreau
The christian activist event. I get. Why do you think he put in time at the crypto convention in Tennessee?

Tommy Vitor
I think this one's very simple. It's money in men.

The crypto focus packs are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. There's one that's like, I think, seeded by Coinbase that has raised 200 million some odd dollars. And so Trump wants that money. He knows they spent 10 million against Katie Porter in the Senate race here in California, and he wants to get all their cash. Also, I think the Trump campaign rightly views crypto as a way to reach young men who might not otherwise care about politics. Some of them are at this convention. Some of them just care about crypto and don't want to be regulated. So that's why Trump flip flopped his position on crypto. He left office and he was like, crypto sucks. I don't think it's a good idea. And now he's full on pro crypto because, like, you know, some VC guys in San Francisco had a fundraiser for.

Jon Favreau
Him, not unlike what he did with his position on the TikTok band. Right? Yeah. And this is just, this is back to my point about where the. In four years, it won't matter comment comes in. It's. He's literally, he's just saying anything to anyone he needs.

Like, and you could see that when you could hear that in the, in the crypto comments, like, have fun with your crypto or your bitcoin or whatever he has. He has no idea.

Tommy Vitor
Passion for the.

Jon Favreau
I would like to have someone ask Trump, explain the blockchain. Yeah, tell me about the blockchain, Donald Trump.

Jon Levett
I'd like any of us to explain the blockchain, but I also, this is like the fucking endless perma challenge where it's like, this is also stupid and also ridiculous. But then you think, oh, he's also proposed a bunch of tariffs. You know what would make Trump feel all powerful for four years of president if everybody was constantly afraid that he was about to apply some kind of a tariff that would affect their ability to produce goods of rot. Like, a lot of what he wants to do economically is to put more power in his hands, to, like, choose winners and losers and kind of wield the power of the White House that is always on his mind. There's so many opportunities for corruption in all this.

Jon Favreau
Well, and even if he doesn't decide to, like, stay in power forever, he's gonna want four years of his supporters telling him how he was the most wonderful president who's ever existed. So he's going to let them do whatever they want. This is why the JD Vance stuff and the Project 2025 stuff and all that stuff should be scary to people. Because even if you don't think Trump's into that for the next four years, if he's in the White House, he's gonna be like, yeah, I wanna hear how great I am, so I'm gonna let the people around me do whatever they want.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's who comes along with him in this coalition. That's, we all have to remember.

Jon Favreau
So the other big topic of political conversation has been Trump's running mate, JD Vance, who has yet to generate a good headline for the campaign since he was nominated. The Washington Post has a story about how people in Trump's orbit, including Lindsey Graham, were trying to talk him out of picking Vance right up until the last minute. Now we're on week two of the fallout over Vance's comments to Tucker Carlson that America's run by too many, quote, childless cat ladies who were miserable at their own lives.

And then he went on to specifically mention Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Pete Buttigieg. Vance also said that people without children should pay higher taxes. It's gotten so bad that even right wing media types are starting to wince. Here's former republican congressman turned Fox News host Trey Gowdy interviewing him on Sunday night, because people are calling me who very much would like to support you and President Trump. Doctor Connie Rice does not have children. Neither does my friend, your colleague, Tim Scott. George Washington did not have biological children and neither did James Madison. So I think you will agree with me that direct offspring are not necessary to be fully invested in the future of this country.

Tommy Vitor
Of course not, Trey. I do think that being a parent actually has a profound effect on somebody's perspective, and we should honor and respect that. But there are a whole host of people who don't have children for a whole host of reasons. And they certainly are great people who can participate fully in the life of this country. And that's not what I said, Trey. If you look at what the left has done, they have radically taken this out of context and in fact aggressively lied about what I've said.

Jon Favreau
So people with their children can still exist in America.

Jon Levett
Thanks, pal. Thanks, buddy. Wow. Appreciate the kind words.

Jon Favreau
How about that? First of all, that's compassionate conservatism.

Jon Levett
If you haven't seen the full Trey gowdy clip, it's worth watching. In full. He tells a beautiful and moving story about two women he met and then reveals that they were nuns and how much they were caring and wonderful people. And you have to imagine JD Vance is sitting in a studio somewhere. He's got his fucking ear thing in listening to a full five minutes ripping him to pieces on Fox News. And the question comes, he's like, JD Vance, tell me where I'm wrong. You seem like a huge asshole. Yeah, it was really, really unbelievable.

Jon Favreau
What do you think about this?

Tommy Vitor
I think this is so politically damaging. Some people choose not to have children, and that is totally fine. And that's a valid decision. And to say that they're lesser citizens somehow in this country is outrageous. But there's also countless people who desperately want kids but can't have them for physical reasons, for medical reasons, for personal reasons. They can afford them. And he's telling those people they're lesser citizens too. Like, that is such a rule.

Jon Favreau
He said to someone who's like, of course. Because I think children are so important. People who can't get pregnant or can't have children. Of course I feel for them. It's like, well, that's not what you're. That's not what it's sounding like.

Tommy Vitor
You're saying they're lesser citizens.

Jon Levett
But also, you're not going one by one to every woman in the country being like, now, are you doing this by choice or is there something that you're not telling us? How fucking dare you make assumptions about every person that doesn't have kids. The whole reason you let people mind their own business is you have no idea what's going on in their lives.

Jon Favreau
That was exactly Pete Buttigieg's response to this ridiculous.

Tommy Vitor
Who had two kids, by the way.

Jon Favreau
Which is what he said. He's, I have two kids. And he's like. And we had a lot of trouble and it took us a long time to have these two children. He's like, and I'm sure JD Vance didn't know that, but that's exactly why you don't make guesses and broad generalizations about a whole category of people.

Tommy Vitor
As someone who's struggled to have kids and now does, I cannot tell you how personally cruel and painful those comments are. No one has ever going to forget that if you're a woman who's miscarried and now doesn't have children and you desperately wanted them, and you hear that, that cuts you so deep, it will stay with you for life.

Jon Favreau
He also said that parents should get more votes. Did you see that one where he said that if. He said, what happens is if you should get as many votes as children that you have. So that. But the children shouldn't vote, obviously, until they're a voting age. So the parents now get a parents with three kids get four votes or two votes, and. And then single people don't get that vote. So he literally wants to make people without kids have less of a voice in public life. He has already said that. He also then said he's sympathetic to the idea that federal agents should be able to track down women who travel out of state to get abortions because it is banned where they live. So he wants a federal response to women who leave a state with an abortion ban and try to get an abortion out of state.

Jon Levett
This is all like, and I talked about this a bit with governor walls, but also, he's also not in the party that's trying to make sure people have prenatal care, people have pre k, people have healthcare and access to affordable education, all the rest. So it's like, what is the only kind of incentive that they want to provide to have children? The fear of their moral judgment is a big piece of this, but it's also just this. It speaks to the real mistake in JD Vance, which is he is really kind of letting the world into a very small niche. Right wing conversation around family, where they've.

Jon Favreau
Been talking, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk now are part of this.

Jon Levett
And it is a kind of combination of right wing christian judgmental policymaking on top of a kind of patriarchal idea of what the family should be, what people should do, what's the right way to live, telling people how to live. Once it gets just a little bit of light in there, everyone's like, what the fuck are you people talking about?

Jon Favreau
It's not even, they say it's not even christian, frankly. It's like, as you mentioned, the story about the nuns, and it is an extreme ideology that is somewhat new in the last several decades. Right. Where, like, this. It's. I mean, AOC tweeted that it sounds like fucking incel culture, which, you know, there are a lot of parents. Exactly. It's totally.

Tommy Vitor
He is like a right wing blog's comment section became a person.

Jon Favreau
Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
You know, and, like, you're right. He's going in some weird intellectual circles. It's like heritage, Peter Thiel, the Claremont Institute, even Portis Yarvin. Yeah.

Jon Favreau
People google him.

Tommy Vitor
And those guys are happy to debate some very out there political ideas because they don't have any consequences because they're not running for anything. But JD Vance kind of, like, dabbles in that, and he leaves this long paper and audio trail. And you got to wonder, like, how much of this did the Trump campaign to find or vet?

Jon Favreau
I'm sure not all of it. I really like. I also. So he says that childless people, quote, hate normal Americans for choosing a family. And now his defense is he's like, well, Kamala Harris is anti family. The Democratic Party is anti family, anti children. There is bipartisan legislation, to your point, to extend the child tax credit that's stuck in the Senate, where JD Vance works right now, because Republicans did not want to give Joe Biden and Kamala Harris an election year win on the issue. This passed the House overwhelmingly. Republicans and Democrats. It got to the Senate. They were like, oh, it's April, it's spring. It's getting too close to the election. We want to cancel. So they care about rewarding families with kids and giving families with kids a break so much that they just, like, stuck this thing that they're for in the Senate because they didn't want. Same thing with the fucking immigration deal.

Jon Levett
It's just, it also, by the way, like, it just also just goes to, like, the judgmental, invasive kind of politics this is because one thing that JD Vance has talked about is that how much like, he is more in favor, according to his own words, a child tax credit than he is to universal childcare, right? Because universal child care subsidizes parents who work. Right. And that he would rather subsidize. He would be still stuck in the Senate because Republicans. But that, like, oh, he wants to encourage a traditional structure, right? So, like, universal childcare is a kind of, like, way of appeasing kind of the left and, like, liberal people, especially liberal women. And it kind of just gets to this, like, kind of worldview about the left that he's kind of unable to stop himself from espousing what does the.

Jon Favreau
Trump campaign do about JD Vance? Like, what?

Tommy Vitor
JD's in a tough spot because, like, the number one rule for Trump is you cannot back down and look weak. But, boy, should he be backing down, conceding some things and being like, I messed up, that I was wrong about this, but he's just bulldogging ahead. And like, like Lovett mentioned earlier, like, you have Republicans like Trey Gowdy basically begging him to clean this up. You've got Ben Shapiro criticizing him. You've got Dave Portnoy, the head of barstool sports, being like, who is this idiot? How the hell did this guy get on the ticket?

Jon Favreau
And, like, Fox and friends, Brian Kilmeade was saying it, too.

Tommy Vitor
They just, they can't seem to fix it. So it seems to me like they're just going to attack Harris, wait for the next news cycle, hope it all moves on. But, man, like, this guy is getting defined. JD Vance is getting defined in this first couple weeks, and it's entirely negative. And we're not even having a conversation about how the. He is manifestly unqualified for the job.

Jon Favreau
And the fact that it got to. The reason I brought up Fox and Friends is, you know, Trump is seeing this now.

Tommy Vitor
Oh, yes.

Jon Favreau
He is seeing some of this criticism. And the only thing that has surprised me, we're recording this on Monday, is that we have not seen a leak yet. Me, too.

Tommy Vitor
Me, too.

Jon Favreau
That Trump is pissed to a donor.

Tommy Vitor
To a friend, and then he'll be at a rally.

Jon Favreau
You know it's coming. Right. Like, I'm shocked that we haven't.

Tommy Vitor
Don Junior is getting some calls for sure.

Jon Levett
Yeah. The other problem, right, is that, okay, so there's all these recordings that are floating out there. He's then doing a bad job of cleaning them up. When he's doing a round of interviews, you could maybe say, all right, no more interviews. We got to get this guy on the stump. He's doing a bad job on the stump. Like, the fact that his convention speech was so disappointing, the rally speeches he's been giving, they are plodding, not very well done. He's just not that great. He moves too slow. So what you would say is just get this guy out there. Get him with a 1015 minutes tight, good stump, with a few new sharp hits on Kamala Harris or whoever the VP pick is. But, man, like, I just, it's hard for this guy to run from this when he's just so unappealing in every setting.

Tommy Vitor
He's also doing a lot of training wheel stuff. He's, like, doing interviews with Trump. What a waste of time.

Jon Favreau
I know. It's also the challenge of the Trump Republican party trying to rebrand itself as, like, the Workers Party, right? Even if you decide to pivot from the tax cuts for the rich and the deregulation agenda and all that bullshit, they are so obsessed with the, like, weird cultural shit that even if they have an economic populist story to tell, like, JD Vance ostensibly does and has in hillbilly elegance since then, like, it's just gonna get lost because they have all these other crazy ideas on cultural issues that are so out of step with mainstream America that that's gonna get the attention. Right? And so, like, JD Vance could go give some stump about, like, how, you know, President Biden and Kamala Harris overlooked Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin and look at all these, like. But it's not gonna get any attention because he's written all these things and said all these things in the past that just make him fucking weird.

Tommy Vitor
He's a weirdo.

Jon Favreau
He's a weirdo pod.

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What's that?

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Jon Favreau
Let's talk about our democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. On Monday, she endorsed President Biden's brand new proposal for Supreme Court reform, which includes 18 year term limits for justices, an enforceable ethics code and a constitutional amendment that would strip away criminal immunity for former presidents. The Harris campaign also needled the Trump campaign over their refusal to commit to the debate they had already agreed to, and the campaign put out a statement saying Harris will be at the ABC debate on September 10, whether or not Trump is there. Clearly, the energy and enthusiasm for Harris is unlike anything we've seen in politics for a very long time, which is great. They've raised over $200 million. They're reportedly going up on the air this week, and Harris will be on the campaign trail in Atlanta Tuesday for the first time since she was in Milwaukee last week. What's your sense of how the overall strategy is coming together?

Tommy Vitor
I like that they're going on offense.

The original frame was kind of prosecutor versus convicted felon. I think the bigger picture message is future versus the past, which is incredibly refreshing to hear. And obviously, for obvious reasons, Joe Biden couldn't really credibly be the one delivering that message. But he also wasn't great at laying out the second term agenda, and she has seized that mantle and done so very quickly. Now both she and Biden are talking about this court reform stuff that I love because who doesn't support an 18 year term limit and a binding ethics code?

Jon Favreau
I bet those poll through the roof extremely well through the roof at a.

Tommy Vitor
Time when the faith in institutions is going down, including the courts. Like, it's a great idea. She's also, I think, very quickly walking back some positions from the 2020 primary that her team feels like are too progressive or too liberal, and that's going to bum out some democrats, but it's probably a necessary move.

Jon Favreau
I just sketched that shit.

Tommy Vitor
You have the best position for the general election, but it's smart to do that quickly. Just rip that band aid off.

Jon Levett
Yeah, we haven't, I don't know, it's just like, been a, it's been a week. I know, and I just, we've said it. What's happening is extraordinary. The, like, sophistication and, like, of the campaign, the amount that they've been able to mount, the, like, the videos, the digital strategy, the speeches. She's giving the tone, the fact that it feels like a coherent national campaign with, like, a clear overall message like, that is an extraordinary achievement. Like, we're watching unfold and, like, I just, I think, like, all right, you know, two weeks ago, this enthusiasm was not there. Right? Like, how do we make most of that enthusiasm in this moment, right. Not just with fundraising, but, like, there's some, you know, we were talking about this before recorded, but just that all of a sudden, like, there, there's all these people on, like, places like TikTok talking about how, like, hey, you know, we may not agree with her and everything, and yeah, she may be walking back some of these positions, but we're all coming together to do this in November, we can protest in January, we can be frustrated. But anybody that's not getting on board this train right now is not understanding the stakes. And, like, what is the vibe shift worth? I don't think we know yet, but it's just been so reassuring to even see that change.

Jon Favreau
You know, I've seen a few comments, like, people being nervous that they're not up on tv yet or, like, is she not on the road more and stuff like that. I've just seen a few of them here and there. Not much. But I, like, I don't think people understand, like, no one has ever built a plane in the air like this with less than 100 days to go on a campaign, a presidential campaign. Like, usually in a presidential campaign, when you just start out your campaign, which she did as the presidential candidate. You do like, months of meetings with strategists and advisors. That's why you're not on the road. You're not taking vacation. Like, you're sitting there with, and you road test a stump speech, right? And then you refine the stump speech, and that takes, like, for Obama, that took us between, I don't know, February of 2007 to October to get it right.

Tommy Vitor
Oh, and he was bad for a while.

Jon Favreau
Terrible.

Tommy Vitor
He was really bad. There was at one point where Paul Tewes, our state director, was like, maybe we shouldn't have him back in Iowa for a while because this is not going well.

Jon Favreau
It was awful.

Jon Levett
Remember that? We were all in Iowa. You guys were obviously for Obama and, but both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were giving these 1 hour meandering stump speeches, 1 hour plus, because they were getting questions and they're trying to answer every question in their long speeches. So maybe there's some advantage to not having.

Jon Favreau
I know you have to test a bunch of ads right before you just do the ads. You want to test them to see if they work, to see if they resonate, if you're going to spend that much money. I mean, there's so much to do. And the fact that they have done this much with the help of everyone else being really excited in a week's time is just mind boggling. It's mind boggling. So it's like, you know, I do think on the Supreme Court reforms, those are great. People should just know that it is very unlikely to happen without 60 votes in the Senate or a democratic House or 51 senators who are willing to get rid of the filibuster for these reforms. I do think the constitutional amendment to get rid of criminal immunity for former presidents, which is now there, thanks to the Supreme Court, is, I mean, constitutional amendments are like, the bar is so high, it's two thirds of both houses of Congress. It's three fourths of the state legislatures. You know, that's. But good for Joe Biden run on it for, like, laying down this marker, which he had said he was going to do before he left the race. And, you know, good for Kamala Harris to lay down the marker. Cause, you know, filibuster reform started years ago when we only had a few senators saying they were willing to do it. And now it's like everyone but Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. So that's, that's what you do. Back to your, the point about enthusiasm and donations. How much do you think that matters right now?

Tommy Vitor
I think the money and the volunteers are very real. And I do like I with you that it's silly, I think, to criticize them for not being on tv right now. But I do hope they're up soon because we are in a race to define Kamala Harris before republicans try to define her their way. And so you can get a bunch of tv ads on, you can get these new volunteers at the doors to backstop those ads with conversations with people. Most people just don't know much about Kamala Harris. I mean, that's the truth. She's the vice president, but a lot of people won't know much about her. So getting ahead of these negative attacks is hugely important.

Jon Levett
I also like there's been so much value to having a candidate who is not just like we have now have some of that as kind of taking the fight to Trump. And I do think that in ways that are very hard to measure, I think that's inspired a lot of people to just say what they think more. Right? Like, yes, there are people out there auditioning to be vice president. You're gonna hear from one in a minute. But I also just think there's been a kind of collective realization that all of us, I think because of a feeling of concern, a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of, I don't know, being dispirited, all of us were collectively not fighting hard enough. And I think that that's incredibly valuable. And another point that the governor makes is just about why are we losing some of these disaffected people. Well, some part of it is that people just want to be part of a winning team, a team of people that are excited to be on that team. And that enthusiasm gap was real. There were people that are extremely excited for Donald Trump, and we just didn't have that on our side. And now we do. We'll see what the ultimate value is. But, man, is it, is it nice to see.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. I mean, you can make an argument that an enthusiastic voter and an unenthusiastic voter, both of them voting for your candidate, the vote counts the same. Right, I get that. But we were in a situation with Biden where the polls consistently showed that younger voters, especially younger black and brown voters, were just not enthusiastic and maybe weren't ready to back Biden. And the Biden campaign's argument was, you know what? But they're not enthused now, they will come home in November, maybe. Right. But in a close race, we were in a situation then where there was a legitimate case to be made that a low turnout election might help Democrats, because if it looked more like a midterm electorate or a special electorate, then it was gonna benefit Joe Biden. I don't think we're in that situation anymore, because now democrats can actually focus on registering and turning out excited voters who otherwise may have stayed home. And having this many volunteers means you can have that many more conversations with people, people who, like, weren't going to vote for Kamala Harris or weren't going to vote for Donald Trump, maybe weren't going to vote at all. And now you can have more conversations and they see that their friends are excited and they're like, oh, I want to hear more about that. It does build, especially in a close race.

Tommy Vitor
I think if we're being honest, the 2020 election was an anti Trump coalition that came together to defeat him. It was not a pro Joe Biden coalition. Maybe we could have brought back that anti Trump coalition this cycle. But I think, frankly, we're in a much better position because we're giving people something to be for and something to be excited about. And that's what was missing.

Jon Favreau
We talked about how she should respond to Trump's attacks. We talked about it last episode. How do you think she should be going on offense and what do you think the campaign should be doing between now and when they announce the VP, which will likely be next week at some point, according to their timeline?

Jon Levett
Yeah, it's a good question.

You sort of look like what's sort of breaking through and the renaissance of their weird. Has been interesting to watch. A kind of new take on. Like, the challenge, right. Is like Trump, even when he says something terrible, it's very, it's almost always something terrible. He said some version of before. It's like, how do you make Trump feel new and interesting to be covered? I think new language like we've seen has been doing that. I think having all these different VP candidates vying has been doing that. I think as she's hitting the road, like, you know, we talked about, you know, one, what she's not been able to do, or she, like, you know, they're, they're currently working on a convention speech without the year of trying stuff, just trying different versions of riffs, trying different versions of attacks, trying different versions of lines. But the plus side of that is every time she speaks and tries something new, it is new.

It's a new attack. It's a new take on Trump. It's a new way of her campaigning. And I think that's a cool thing about this moment.

Jon Favreau
It is. I mean, you hate to make any campaign about just winning the news cycle. Cause it's about bigger than that. But with less than 100 days left, the reason the JD Vance stuff is so valuable is because now we could have had a week about Kamala Harris and her, you know, the Trump campaign attacking her. And instead we had a week about JD Vance.

She also has, remember, at the beginning of a campaign, in a general election campaign, you do all of your policy rollouts if you're the candidate in the spring. And so. And she hasn't done any of that yet. And look, a lot of her policy will be similar to what Joe Biden has already proposed, but she's gonna get to eat up some news cycles, propose, and get some attention proposing new policy. So she'll have that. She'll have the convention. And I do think to the point about needing new information.

If she can pivot to. Because she's got to go on offense against Trump. If she can pivot to talking about what Trump will do in the second term, that's new information for voters. And I think that she. If she wants to make news about Trump, you're going to have a better chance making news talking about what he's planning than talking about everything people know about Trump already and his character and all that.

Tommy Vitor
I also think one thing that Obama was really good at in 2007, 2008, Washington delivering a hit as a joke or with humor generally, to, like, soften it and also make it more interesting. And, you know, Biden, I think, struggled to do that recently. You know, he seemed defensive and angry at times. Kamala Harris is very good at delivering a hit while laughing.

And I think the calling republicans weird narrative just perfectly folds into that. Just, they are weird. Project 2025 is weird. Calling the Jan six insurrectionists hostages and playing their song is weird. Qanon is weird. Bringing that all up is worth it.

Jon Favreau
I even think that when she does the prosecutor versus felon riff, there's a way to do that where you sound like your fingers pointing angry kind of thing. And when she delivered. I know his type.

Jon Levett
Yeah, really?

Jon Favreau
It was the exact right tone.

Jon Levett
I wonder, too, just good old fashioned Donald Trump said at an event over the weekend that I'm not going to have that we're not going to have to vote anymore. Would you want to have the vice president at her next stump be like, did you see this? Here's what Donald Trump said, that this is gonna be the last election because he's not gonna have you vote anymore. Like, that's because he's a scared of your vote. Like, would you be out there kind of like, trying to make news cycles out of the weird new things you can kind of grab? I think the answer is yes, for sure.

Tommy Vitor
Definitely. I also think there's just a broader point. Like, Trump is a celebrity. He's larger than life. He's still this kind of, like, New York character from the Apprentice in some ways. But electing him empowers people like Speaker Mike Johnson, who sends his son a weekly update on his porn viewing to prevent masturbation. That's a real thing that happens in this world. That's weird.

Jon Favreau
It's weird.

Tommy Vitor
No one wants that. No one wants that person to be empowered. And part of this governing coalition, JD.

Jon Favreau
Vance, is the embodiment of Project 2025. Right? Project 2025. It's been landing with voters. And I talked to Sarah Longwell about this wilderness over the weekend. It's been coming up organically and focus groups, and part of it is this conspiratorial nature. We've talked about this. Now you have JD Vance, who, like, everything about him is Project 2025, including all of the weird shit. And it just makes it easier to, I think, effectively communicate the stakes of the election and what's going to happen. Because you're like, Trump, whether he cares or not about this shit. JD Vance is going to be the vice president, and he's gonna be sitting there implementing all the crazy Project 2025 shit.

Jon Levett
Yeah, it's like the villain from the DaVinci code, wearing a tech vest. Like Elon musk. You put that guy in the tech vest. It's the worst of old, revanchist, traditional mores and laws to control people and the tech. Fucking bureaucratic, technocratic control. Put those fucking things together. Got a pretty gross, dude, get that.

Tommy Vitor
Guy on the psychiatrist couch, you know?

Jon Levett
Hey.

Tommy Vitor
Learn a lot of things.

Jon Levett
He's like, I'm having trouble concentrating. Cause of the couch.

This is an attractive couch.

Jon Favreau
Anyway, I'm gonna cushion those remarks with some.

Jon Levett
Hey, hey. You going? Yeah. So, so close. Sofa.

Tommy Vitor
We should pull out of this one.

Jon Favreau
About Trump, Tommy, and how he's like, the celebrity well known. Everyone knows everything about him. And also your point about past versus future.

I think in mocking Trump, a little bit of like, aren't we sick of this by now? The sexual act is getting old. Did you see the, like, the Trump act is just getting old.

Tommy Vitor
Did you see the rally the other day when he was like, they made fun of me, and I hate getting made fun of.

Jon Favreau
Yes, he does.

Tommy Vitor
He tells us everything.

Jon Favreau
And you know what he hates the most about in terms of getting made fun of is irrelevance. The idea of irrelevance. Or that, like, he's not cool or that he's yesterday's news.

Jon Levett
He's boring.

Jon Favreau
He's boring. He's old, annoying. It's not like this the Trump is senile thing that everyone's pushing around on Twitter. I don't think that people buy that as much. It's like the guy. It's just we're so tired of this. It's like the same blah, blah, blah. Like you said, the same hits, the.

Jon Levett
Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jon Favreau
We're gonna get the shark thing, we're gonna get the Hannibal Lecter thing. And we're not like, upset about. We're just like, enough with this, the.

Jon Levett
Drama and just the endless noise.

Tommy Vitor
Shay's and Shay's are the same speeches.

Jon Levett
Yeah, no, it's just, it's.

Jon Favreau
I keep someone in the.

Jon Levett
Did you look up synonyms for cow?

Tommy Vitor
I did, yeah. Chad chief, of course.

Jon Favreau
Someone in one of the focus groups who's a swing voter.

Trump, Biden. Swing voter. He was like, you know, the problem with Trump is it's just like, we know what we're gonna get. It's just a rerun for four more years. And I'm like, yeah, someone should use that. That's a good line. It is like a rerun.

Jon Levett
It is like a rerun.

Jon Favreau
We're getting fucking celebrity apprentice reruns for another four years.

Jon Levett
We have rewind something new and it's not new to us.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's my thing. All right, speaking of EP picks, when we come back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with Governor Tim Walls. Before we get to that, though, a pitch from us. Look, when we started doing this show, we wanted it to be a home for everyone who wanted to be part of a progressive conversation. We want you to join in and help us invite more people to do the same. If you haven't subscribed to our podcast yet, now's the time. Follow us on Apple help juice, the algorithm to get the pod in more people's ears. If you've got 20 seconds, please share your favorite episode with your friends, families, undecided voters you've matched with on hinge, or anyone else in your life who could be more engaged, active, and hopeful for democracy. When we come back, Tim Walz.

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Jon Levett
Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well, from roof repair to emergency plumbing and more. Done well. So the next time you have a home project, leave it to the pros. Get started@angie.com. dot beyond serving as governor of the great state of Minnesota and chair of the Democratic Governors association, our guest today is also rumored to be under to serve as Kamala Harris's vice presidential pick. Welcome back to the show, Governor Tim Walz.

Tim Walz
Hey, John, thanks for having me. Good to be back on.

Jon Levett
Great to have you. Governor walls, no disrespect here, but a matter of days ago, you were basically unknown on the national stage. Now a good chunk of the Internet knows what rides you went on at the state fair last year. Where the fuck have you been?

What?

Tim Walz
Doing my job out here? I'm just plugging away and just plugging away. Yeah, just doing the work.

Jon Levett
So vice president gets dangled in front of you suddenly like one of the best messengers in the party where we needed you?

Tim Walz
Yeah, I was coaching those football teams. Plugging away? No, get some observations. Look, there's joy all over the place. The vice president blew the lid off this thing, and it feels like a spell's broken. So I'm excited.

Jon Levett
Yeah. So you said that as part of this new joy and enthusiasm that your kids, who were 17 and 23, told you TikTok was on TikTok. I'm 100 years old. That TikTok.

TikTok is on fire with enthusiasm. Are they your Gen Z whisperers?

Tim Walz
They are. They are. My daughter especially. She's a good one, I'll have to say. She's out in Montana, social worker, but she's in tune to it. I listen to her, I get her work ethic, the things she cares about. And look, these guys have been through a lot, quite seriously. When they were kids, they went through the great recession. Their Covid babies missed out on things there. And then they're coming out of this and they're seeing Trump bring back this horrific message and they're done with it. I think I'm feeling it. This is their first time to really feel a campaign that's enthusiastic. That's what I see.

Jon Levett
So speaking of the seriousness that they've experienced, you have talked about changing your views on gun safety in part because of the urging of your daughter. Are you worried at all about the accusation of being in the pocket of big children?

Tim Walz
Yes, my kids are influencing me. I got, the other day, got asked, I'm a horrible progressive because our children eat breakfast and lunch in school. We just got to embrace the things that make this country great, but no seriousness on that one. And I'm friends with David Hogg. He and I have talked about this, I think an evolution on this. I grew up, and I know this is a small towner, but I put my shotgun in my car at school or in the football locker to go pheasant hunting afterwards. That was a reality. But we weren't getting shot in school.

We didn't have Ars in school.

I said it was, for me, both a reckoning and an embarrassment. I was one of the people who took the meeting with 23 sets of parents from Sandy Hook in my office, and they thanked me for taking the meeting.

That's a reckoning. And then to just listen. Their kids would have been my son's age at 17, so I appreciate all the people who've worked on that and we're seeing that move. So there's reasons to be optimistic. These kids have seen a lot, but they're ready to end it. Boy, when you see the numbers flipping and how much they engaged, and I don't, don't make light of TikTok in terms of really connecting. My daughter talks about that a lot. You avoid us at your peril of getting the message out.

Jon Levett
So one part of this new enthusiasm has been a kind of collective realization or moment of attention on the ways in which republicans are not only a threat, but to use your words, kind of weird.

Tim Walz
Yeah.

Jon Levett
You actually used that term back in February. When you were on this show about gubernatorial candidates like Mark Robinson, the Harry's campaign is now running with it. I feel sometimes there's this challenge, right. Because we've got to make sure people understand that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, that what they're proposing is extreme and dangerous and something to be terrified of. At the same time, we want to not allow that to build Trump up into some kind of a strong man figure. Right. Being strong, as DeVille Clinton famously said, being strong and wrong is better than being right and weak. So how do you, how do you, how do you think about putting those things together?

Tim Walz
No, that, that's exactly it. I think on big problems, climate change, homelessness and things, if it becomes just an aspirational goal, people don't understand the steps you can make to actually get rid of it. And that becomes, then they just kind of fade away and we don't get it done. You have to have touch points. And the thing you're talking about is, as you lift this guy up, yes. He's a threaten global democracy and global peace, in my opinion. I think your constitutional rights are under threat. That becomes almost overwhelming, and it's not inspirational. And I think taking them down to what this is, this weird thing is not an insult, it's an observation. And people saying, well, Governor Wallace came up with this. No, people are telling me this. My republican friends are telling me this. Because when you look at it this way, who's asking for some of this stuff? Who's asking for health care to be taken away? Who's asking for birth control to be taken away?

Who's asking you? Picture some guys, you know, they always do. The, oh, the guys sitting in Racine, Wisconsin, in the bar. You know, what's really concerning them, I damn sure guarantee you it's not banning animal farm. They're talking about, God, it's too damn expensive to pay for childcare or I'd like to do this. So I think the thing is that this spell, and you listen to him, there's nothing there. And it opens up a huge space. If you can shrink him, shrink the message, and then really start to focus on that. Because, look, I say this all the time. Those folks who are at that rally in St. Cloud, they're not going to vote for me, but I'm going to make sure they get health care. I'm going to make sure the women who are at that rally are going to get access to birth control. And there were people there with signs that said Somalis for Trump. We're very proud of our immigrant population. We have a large somali population here. But I'll be the guy making sure I'm pushing back on his muslim ban or the denigrating words he used against that community. I think you get it to where people are listening. And I want people to be very clear. I'm not talking about republicans being weird. I'm talking about that dude.

My point on this, he's making fun of Kamala Harris laughing. I got a bet out there and he'll never collect on it. He will not laugh in public. He's incapable of it. And that's just strange.

Jon Levett
It is strange.

Tim Walz
Yes.

Jon Levett
The not laughing in public thing is so strange.

Tim Walz
Yes.

Jon Levett
What kind of a person never has an authentic moment of laughter in the public eye? The guy's been in our faces for 50 years.

Tim Walz
Yes, yes. So how do you. Yeah. Picture and you tell me no matter how conservative you are, that's somebody you're going to be around. Like I'm telling my team. I'm not. I just keep pointing out that, why this guy? Why this guy? You come home from work, you throw the frisbee to your pup and he gets it. He comes over, you give your good boy a belly rub. Picture that guy doing anything normal like that. No way. No way. And I think when people start thinking about this, my republic, my family who are in this, they're concerned about taxes, maybe. You know what they don't want? They don't want the public schools cut so you can give a tax cut to the, to the wealthiest.

There's a conservative mantra that has been taken over and these, I'm just going to say it, these weird ideas of, like, JD Vance, the only people that can vote and benefit are people with kids, and then their kids are going to get a vote or whatever, and we're going to do all this.

It's ludicrous. And I think what's happened is the spell's been broken and now we need to step into it with some positive ideas.

Jon Levett
So let's talk about that one group of people. So Trump's campaign manager told the Atlantic team Alberta that their target group of voters are disaffected young men, a majority of whom, at least in some polling, show an affinity or an openness to Trump and to Republicans. How do you make sense of this shift amongst young men? And what's your pitch to bring these men back into the fold?

Tim Walz
Look, if it weren't so serious, Trump is funny. If he weren't involved in some of this, he's a buffoon. And some of it is like when he's doing his shark thing or whatever, I'm laughing, but this guy is a danger or whatever. And I think when you're a young guy, you're on the edge. Look, it's the prefrontal lobe stuff, there's some of that, I was that guy, man. I know the glass house I lived in, and you got this guy out here wild, breaking the rules, saying this stuff crazy, all this, it's attractive or whatever. I think what you're seeing now is we don't have to be like that, but we can give them something. Thats why you see TikTok with a younger generation, you see Vice President Harris engaging, understanding, listening. Look, I dont understand everything about Gen Z, but I love them. I guarantee you this dude doesnt.

And the Republicans, everything theyre proposing is anti against them. This generation cares about their neighbors, they dont give a damn about race. They truly are much more inclusive and they do care about climate change. So I think these young men are looking for something there. It's the Trump spectacle. Here's what I think is really getting him. Kamala Harris is becoming a phenomenon and that's what he was. And her politics are good and wrapped around that. She is starting to gain and you're going to see that it starts to shift, and the enthusiasm level amongst that age group is shifting hard. And they are gettable. They are gettable if we bring them back. Look, I coach these kids in football for years, they want to be part of winners. I'll tell you the fastest way to get them on there, they don't want to be with losers.

And that's my point, with him, you're hanging with the wrong dude.

Jon Levett
So shifting gears, in the late nineties, you were teaching and coaching at Mankato, you volunteered to be the gay straight alliance's first faculty advisor. As governor, you signed an executive order protecting the right to gender affirming care for trans kids, and you signed a bill out long book bans. My question is, for being such a friend to the queer community, why don't you dress better?

Tim Walz
It is true, you gotta have the ally that looks like this dude, the old white dude. But I'm proud of that work, cause look, I was the football coach and it was the thing, you know what I'm proud of? I'm proud of the students there who understood that. I'm proud that we were starting to get past this issue and a lot of it was just, you know, just it's ignorance a lot of times. And we got through that. And so, yeah, I gotta do better on this, but I, you know, I'm trying.

Jon Levett
No, I think, look, I noticed this over the weekend. There are people seeing you with. You're given a press conference and it's not clear whether you were. This is not my joke. Whether you were gonna run for vice president or maybe fix a radiator. Listen, but in all seriousness, I do think that we talked about young men. It does seem like attacking trans people. Making this a debate about masculinity is a kind of way to kind of peel off some of these young men. That's why they kind of target trans people. Scapegoat. Trans people try to make this something about being against men.

What do you think about that?

Tim Walz
Yeah, that's that toxic masculinity. There's something about embracing this, about doing good. Look, I'm proud I played football, but I also help do the set at the plays.

There's being a well rounded person and understanding. You can do these things. It's about being part of your community. And the thing is, they try and do that. This is the thing. John, too. They're all the tough guys at toxic masculinity. We used to have a trap shoot in Congress.

We'd go out and we would shoot 25 sporting clay, 25 ski, 25 trap or whatever. I'd be top gun. I can shoot these guys. So I'd ride back on the bus. How does it feel to get out shot every year by a liberal gun? Most of these guys have never been around guns. It's just like a Persona. It's like they pick up that look, you know, it. I've been talking about JD Vance or whatever. That's not my small town. That's not where I was from. That's not how we talked. And I think part of it is, is letting them know it's okay. You're right about round cars. I'm proud that I can do some things around a car. I fix it or whatever. But there's a whole wonderful, you know, rainbow of things that people can do. But I do think you're right that it's targeting. They turn scapegoats into punchlines. You know, they make people scapegoats.

We need to embrace, and that's what we've done. And it's okay. But that toxic masculinity is a scary thing.

Jon Levett
So let's say you're on a debate stage with, say, JD Vance, and he accuses you of being a big government liberal who's attacking our families, making life worse for our families, doesn't share our values, doesn't care about families like yours. What do you say to him?

Tim Walz
Yeah, first of all, it was up to him. I wouldn't have a family because of IBF and the things that we need to do. Reproductive kids were born through that direct, you know, that way. And also, I make sure that I'm the guys and our folks are investing in prenatal care. We're the ones that are there for universal pre k. We're the ones that are providing school meals at this. I'm not going to back down one bit on this whole family values thing. And it's us that construct that he's putting out there is absolutely untrue. We're making it more affordable to have children by having paid family and medical leave so that you can go home when your kids are sick and take care of them or if you're a dad. I don't have to go right back to work five days later after my wife had a c section because our insurance wouldn't pay for it. We're boosting those things up. There's nothing pro family other than having women be incubators for their vision of this. And I don't know. Once again, it's weird. I don't want JD Vance talking about my family. I certainly don't want him talking about my daughter or my wife. It's none of his damn business. But I said the one thing is we need to talk about how we've invested in families. We have the most generous child tax credit, and it's what Vice President Harris is proposing for the country, that people are poor because they don't have money. And when kids don't have the money on the front end, all of the things that a chain reaction of can't learn, can't go on.

So I'll challenge him on that. Where is JD Vance's pro families forcing people to have, you know, not be able to have medical care if they have a bad pregnancy or something? We need to. We need to stand in front of that. And again, you don't need me to give a sermon, but try and live. Try and be decent. Try and help your neighbors. Try and invest in those kids.

Jon Levett
Before we go, I do want to talk to you about something that is quite depraved that you're not only involved in, but a huge proponent of. And that's the Minnesota State fair.

Now, I'm actually coming to the state fair this year. I am actually dating a Minnesotan and I wanted to ask you, first of all, is there any kind of dispensation or government provided lactate that can be provided at various stations just for the safety of the people involved and the amount of dairy and the rides you're putting in such close proximity to each other? What about safety? What about public health?

Tim Walz
Well, I'll go over and be there. You can eat chocolate or regular. $1. $1, all you can drink. So you got to picture this. You're out there, it's 90 degrees. You can have unlimited amounts of milk, and then you go do the slingshot. It's a rite of passage, but it's a good one.

Jon Levett
Now, one hard question here.

I want to ask you about four different food options, and one's got to go. One is no longer going to be available. All right, here are your four choices. Fried cheese curds.

I think we have a photo for you. The corn on the cob. That's famous.

A bucket of sweet martha's cookies served by the bucket. And a pronto pup, which seems to me some sort of amalgamation of corn dogs. Pancakes.

Tim Walz
No, different. Different. I'm teen corndog. Cost me lots of votes, but I'm clearly clean corndog. You bailed me out on that one.

Jon Levett
I did.

Tim Walz
I'm throwing the prono pup and sticking the other corn dog.

Jon Levett
Wow. And now my understanding is the bucket of cookies, it can't be closed until you've eaten several families worth of cookies.

Tim Walz
And this is when there was a simpler time in 2018. I bought my bucket, and the Republicans, I'll give them this. Old school Republicans. Smart.

Their booth was right next to the sweet Martha's booth. Smart. And I bought one of these and I walked through the booth and nine out of ten people took them from him and goes, I'm not taking anything from you. And I'm like, oh, that's fine. And the lady next to me says, well, I'm not voting for him, but I'm taking the cookie. Sweet Martha's is the ultimate, is the ultimate bipartisan entry point. So, yeah, I can't. You get about a dozen before you get to the bucket.

Jon Levett
That's sick. You people are sick.

Tim Walz
We walk on water half the year. We have to do something. So.

Jon Levett
Governor Tim Walls, thank you so much for your time. Really great to talk to you.

Tim Walz
Thanks, John. See it? State fair.

Jon Levett
Yeah. See at the fair.

Jon Favreau
That's our show. Show for today. Love it. And Stacey Abrams will be back with a new show on Wednesday afternoon. Wow.

Really? We're going big for our guest hosts these days.

Jon Levett
Yeah. Pretty exciting.

Tommy Vitor
Stuff.

Jon Favreau
All right, everyone, we'll see you then.

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