- 5 weeks ago
This week on The Cameron Journal Newshour, we're talking about some threads related to Cameron's new book, America's Lost Generation. Then we are diving into a long thread about the narrative around Charlie Kirk and how it is all the Left's fault. Then we dive into the Kamala Harris book tour and how it is a much needed reflection for democrats and they aren't liking it.
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00:00:00Thank you very much.
00:02:59My name is Cameron Cowan.
00:03:02This is the Cameron Journal News Hour.
00:03:04That's better.
00:03:06And welcome to the very end of September.
00:03:10It seems like we were at Labor Day just a little bit ago.
00:03:12And now, and now suddenly we are almost to October.
00:03:18I mentioned on the newsletter over the weekend that I was beginning to see the first little
00:03:24peaking leaves of yellow outside in the bushes.
00:03:28And that was a friendly reminder that fall is here, fall is coming, and that was just kind
00:03:44of a friendly reminder that fall is almost here.
00:03:50It's, uh, we're having a lot of fun today.
00:03:53We have a handful of news stories.
00:03:56There's a thread about Charlie Kirk that I, um, that I, uh, didn't read last week when
00:04:03I did my big 45 minutes on Charlie Kirk, and I want to explore that tonight.
00:04:06Because I think it represents kind of where the mood of the country was a couple weeks ago, and I think it will explain kind of where things are, um, moving, moving forward.
00:04:19Um, and, uh, then I also, I'm going into Kamala Harris' book tour, um, and all the, all the things from, from that.
00:04:31Um, there have been some interesting videos around.
00:04:34I didn't pull any video for that.
00:04:36I pulled articles, but we might go grab a couple just for fun.
00:04:40Um, and, uh, and then, um, what else do we have?
00:04:47Oh, yes, and then, um, I have a very interesting, uh, couple things related to millennials and college and whatnot, because my new book, America's Lost Generation, is out now.
00:05:00I actually just, before this show, got the most wonderful email from David Beckmeyer, um, who's a friend of the show, and he was commenting on how lovely it was and how well researched it was and all this sort of thing.
00:05:12I just did a live on Substack with him, um, the shorts of which are on my channel.
00:05:17You can see them right now.
00:05:18Um, and he and I were talking about the issue with Gen Z men, and in the middle of them writing America's Lost Generation, I kind of started slipping stuff in about Gen Z because they were coming of age during the pandemic, so I started talking about how these long-term trends that have started with millennials were affecting the next generation.
00:05:35And so we were having that conversation and was also talking about America's Lost Generation.
00:05:39So it's, um, it's a very fascinating thing.
00:05:42So we're going to get into all of that.
00:05:44Um, it was a lovely day here, not too hot, not too cold, uh, which is really, really good.
00:05:49Um, I would encourage everyone, um, to go subscribe to the newsletter, camerandjournal.com slash newsletter, and if you want to support this channel and this journalism, please, uh, sign up for Camerandjournal Plus at camerandjournal.com slash subscribe.
00:06:01Um, it's $5 a month, which is very lovely, and also, on that same page, if you don't want to subscribe, because, ooh, another subscription, ooh, you can also tip me on Ko-fi, um, and if you're, like, if you're already on Substack, um, and you don't want to, like, subscribe to another platform with another, mmm, if you're already on Substack, already subscribed on Substack, I also do select stuff on Substack.
00:06:25The weekly newsletter's on there, um, interviews from the show are on there, the news hour's on there, all this type of thing.
00:06:30So, if you're already using Substack, don't want to sign up for something else, and just kind of want to add to your existing subscriptions on Substack, I'm on Substack, camerandjournal.substack.com.
00:06:42Um, and of course, on all your favorite social media, weirdly enough, y'all have been talkative today.
00:06:47I have talked to probably five different listeners today, um, who are responding to videos mostly on Facebook, um, which is really exciting.
00:06:54So, thank you everyone who's writing in and asking questions, I absolutely love when people do that.
00:07:00Um, when I started this show, lo, these 11 years ago, um, that was one thing that I always enjoyed, is when people were really engaging, and they wrote in and asked me something, or said something, or had a comment.
00:07:10Um, even the people that say terrible things about me, and they do all the time, too fat, too gay, do everything.
00:07:17Um, and I'm never good-looking, to the haters in the comments.
00:07:19I'm always, I've been called a potato, a spud, Mr. Potato Head was very popular for a long time, Java the Hut, all this sort of thing.
00:07:25Um, uh, I, even with that, I always tell people, thank you for increasing my engagement metrics, but I always love when people are engaging, and I love when people really write in and ask questions, and we get a real conversation going, because that's what is really, really exciting.
00:07:40Um, and I also did forget who today's interview is.
00:07:44The interview for today is, September the 29th, was, oh, Reza Rajabi.
00:07:50Um, he's really cool, he's from Iran, and we talk about everything Iran, which is really awesome, and it's an excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent conversation.
00:08:02Um, and, uh, and it's just really, you know, um, a really wonderful insight to the politics inside Iran, how Iranians feel about things, um, the relationship with the West.
00:08:17Um, it's always helpful, I find.
00:08:19Um, to understand our relationship and our place in the world, when we're looking at countries like Iran, it's not always just our perspective, they have their own perspective, too, informed by their culture, all this type of thing.
00:08:37And I think it's always interesting, um, to, you know, hear that in a real material way from someone who knows it, who grew up with it, all this sort of thing.
00:08:46Um, so, that was really, that's a really wonderful conversation, so, that's out now, um, and without further ado, uh, why don't we get to some headlines?
00:08:55So, let me switch to this, and here we are.
00:09:00That's the inside of my YouTube channel, that's not helpful.
00:09:02Let's bounce over here.
00:09:03Sure. So, um, the first, uh, this is kind of America's Lost Generation related, um, but it says, I really enjoy, this really kind of spoke to me a little bit.
00:09:15Um, it says,
00:09:45And, um, this, the top comment was also interesting. I do like the Zarathustra account.
00:09:53It says,
00:09:53I'll have to track it down, but there was a brilliant post from a retired Ivy League admissions officer years ago describing a quiet policy shift in the 90s.
00:10:00As DEI priorities took hold, the Ivies deliberately stopped recruiting what they once prized as the oddball misfit genius type, those out-of-the-left-field kids, often from working-class or Midwestern backgrounds, who might have had stellar test scores, but uneven grades because they spent their time writing novels, building inventions, or obsessing over arcane pursuits.
00:10:18In pruning away that category, we also pruned away a whole strain of raw, unconventional brilliance that we just don't see anywhere anymore.
00:10:25Oh, someone's commenting.
00:10:28Um, oh, someone's commenting on Twitch.
00:10:31Hello? Yes, yes, hello, hello.
00:10:33Um, thank you for watching. We appreciate it.
00:10:36Um, and so, yes, thank you.
00:10:39Yes, I just started reading, I was in the middle of reading an article, but thank you so much for stopping by.
00:10:42Um, and so that, and it's, the reason I bring this up is because I think there was, because of this, ended up being a lot of sort of downward pressure on young people, um, to, you know, begin to align themselves with this high level of achievement.
00:11:03And that, um, I think that ended up being very damaging, not necessarily for elder or even mid-cohort millennials, but late millennials, early Gen Z, I think felt this a great deal.
00:11:14I think also this idea that the oddball misfit genius type, those out-of-left-field kids born from working-class Midwestern backgrounds, who might have had stellar test scores, but uneven grades because they spent their time writing novels, building inventions, assessing over arcane pursuits.
00:11:26That's the kind of person that our society does not have a lot of use for.
00:11:30Here's the other kind of half of this, is as colleges and universities became less about creating an educated, um, populace, and, um, and more, much more about, uh, creating great workers for big corporations, this also, I think, produced part of that shift.
00:11:53Because the reality is the oddball misfit genius type does not necessarily make the best corporate drone.
00:12:00Um, and that also has heavily affected how higher ed is perceived.
00:12:07And that's one of the reasons why we don't see those types anymore, is because there's not, as kind of Yarvin said, there's not really a place for them in society.
00:12:14We don't know what to do with them.
00:12:16Corporations don't want them.
00:12:18We can't, you know, academia's underfunded, you know, so there's not really any place for them to go.
00:12:24So, so we see much less, um, much less, much less of them.
00:12:29Um, someone in the chat is asking about if I play games or take to one.
00:12:32If you, I very rarely stream gaming content on Twitch.
00:12:36I do on the occasion.
00:12:37And I play Marvel Rivals.
00:12:39I will play, uh, Star Trek Online.
00:12:41And if I ever get it working again, I will stream, I will, uh, stream City Skylines.
00:12:46Um, uh, if you want to watch, honestly, more interesting gaming streaming, I would invite you to follow two people.
00:12:54Um, one is NinjaQ69.
00:12:56He's my co-host on The Living Joke.
00:12:58And the other one is a GreyCrow01.
00:13:00Um, those would be the people to follow for gaming content as, as such.
00:13:07Um, because I very rarely do this.
00:13:08I, right now, on Mondays at 7, do the Cameron Journal News Hour.
00:13:12So we're talking about some news.
00:13:14Thank you so much for watching.
00:13:16I appreciate it.
00:13:16And thank you for the follow.
00:13:18Um, so, as such, um, getting back to this story.
00:13:22As such, the oddball, misfit, genius, creative type is, that's gone, basically, from society.
00:13:28And I would know because sometimes people think that I am that way.
00:13:31And it is true.
00:13:32You spend a lot more time pursuing your artistic pursuits or your inventions or whatever have you.
00:13:38And your grades are not necessarily that great.
00:13:40And you also, there's really kind of nowhere for you to go in society.
00:13:44Anyway, so a lot of those kids end up dropping out and pursuing stuff or starting their own businesses.
00:13:51Or it's a whole other, you know, a whole other track or whatever, whatever have you.
00:13:55Um, and, and this person kind of summarized it very well.
00:14:00And they say, the whole philosophy of those sheep is to succeed enormously by sticking to the plan.
00:14:05Calling out problems leading up to 2008 was against the plan.
00:14:09In other words, they were not really sheep, but people who knew that they would get what they wanted by being sheep-like.
00:14:14Um, and, and also this other comment.
00:14:17I don't think perfect SAT scores, for the reason great science wasn't getting created, it just wasn't getting financially rewarded.
00:14:22Um, and a lot of people, one of the kind of themes that have come out, has come out in recent years, is that we need a return to meritocracy.
00:14:32And I remember when, um, uh, Brett Weinstein, one of the Weinstein brothers, was talking about this a few years ago, when I still more actively watch them than I do now.
00:14:41Um, is that, um, uh, is that, you know, we need to bring back the meritocracy and make it so that, you know, we create a society where you can succeed, but you have to put in the effort to make it happen sort of thing.
00:14:53Um, but nothing about you as a person is going to hold you back from doing very well for themselves.
00:14:58And, um, and that, uh, and that, there's been a call for that.
00:15:05And I don't, that, that is a solution to the problem, but it's not the only solution to the problem.
00:15:11We also have to be open to a diversity of background, geographically, class, all this type of thing.
00:15:19We also have to be very open to, um, you know, a diversity of expert, of expertise and not looking for, you know, those kind of sheep-like conformist sort of thing.
00:15:29Um, but the reality is in any meritocratic system, when you have standards of what you want people to earn in order to do something, which we didn't really have in the 50s and 60s, um, is that you have to set standards.
00:15:44And when you set those standards, they are by their very nature exclusionary.
00:15:49And because they're exclusionary, you're going to lose people.
00:15:51And if you want to raise up oddball, misfit, genius types, meritocracy is probably the worst way to do it.
00:15:58Because we have this idea of, if your work is good enough, then that's all that matters.
00:16:02And there were a lot of millennials, including me, that were told that and was crammed down our throats.
00:16:07And that's not really true.
00:16:09It's not just, do you do good work?
00:16:10Do you do the type of work that people value and hold in high regard?
00:16:14Do you do the type of work that someone's going to pay for?
00:16:17And if the answer to those is no, then meritocracy is not going to get you very far.
00:16:23Whereas in previous systems that emphasized, you know, going into academia or going into, um, uh, or going into anything, anything else sort of thing, um, that, you know, is, um, that those people had somewhere to go.
00:16:42And whatever they did didn't necessarily have to be super profitable or it didn't have to be popular.
00:16:48Um, and you know, you could have someone worrying about the science of insects and they might do a great reason or they might not.
00:16:54That was the beauty of Bell Labs.
00:16:56They spent millions on stuff that never went anywhere, but they also invented Wi-Fi, the cell phone, cell phone towers, um, all this sort of thing.
00:17:05I mean, they, they invented a lot of things on them, but there was also a lot of stuff that went nowhere, absolutely nowhere.
00:17:11And so that, but the reality is that it costs, it costs a lot of money to pay people to invent a bunch of that doesn't work to find one thing that will make you billions.
00:17:23And the ROI is not clear from the beginning, the ROI isn't necessarily obvious from the beginning, but that's what it takes, really, to kind of make it happen.
00:17:36And even dumb stuff like, you know, the original, one of the great things with the MIT labs is one of the buildings they used was basically very cheap and expensive construction.
00:17:46And so the scientists could change the walls, change the floors, cut stuff open, all this type of thing, and, and really do what they wanted to and needed to do in order to create wonderful, amazing sort of things.
00:17:58And that was because the building was kind of cheap and it wasn't that great.
00:18:03But some of the biggest inventions came out of that cheap, crappy building, mostly because they were able to literally change the building to, to their exact needs, which was really, really quite, really quite amazing.
00:18:16So I wanted to bring this up because this culture and whatnot affected my generation a great deal.
00:18:22And when I talk about that in America's last generation, um, and I talk a lot about, uh, I talk a lot about how, how we got here to, to today.
00:18:34And I, um, uh, I very much, uh, I think it's worth reading and understanding if you're kind of frustrated by why things are the way they are.
00:18:46Um, you want to kind of see what the vision of the future is a little bit because of Japan and what has happened.
00:18:52I get into all of that.
00:18:53So if you want to know what happened to millennials, how we got here and why this sort of lack of meritocracy or this sort of higher ed culture exists,
00:19:02I would highly, highly encourage you to read America's last generation because I touched on a lot of those points and a lot of these things.
00:19:07And that's why I wanted to start with this thread is because it was an excellent kind of on-ramp talking about America's last generation.
00:19:14Let's move on to the Charlie Kirk thread.
00:19:15So, um, bear in mind, we're going to read this most of the way through.
00:19:23Um, and this was posted right after Charlie Kirk was shot.
00:19:26Now, a lot of people don't know about this woman on the left.
00:19:30She was a Ukrainian woman whose name is in the thread.
00:19:33We'll find out what her name is in a minute.
00:19:34She was shot on a subway the day before Charlie Kirk was shot in Utah.
00:19:38And so, again, this is the Cameron Journal.
00:19:42We talk about news narratives.
00:19:43We talk about how these narratives start, where people are getting their information from, what filters through, and what people are looking at.
00:19:48Her death on the subway was a big thing on the right-wing news media that it never touched really a lot.
00:19:53But on the right-wing, it was a huge, huge story.
00:19:55And then Charlie Kirk happens.
00:19:56And so there's this perception that, you know, they're just out here shooting people sort of thing.
00:20:01And he gets into this a little bit.
00:20:02And so he starts warning, long rant, and we'll begin.
00:20:07My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans.
00:20:15Zero clue.
00:20:16I'm not talking about people who are online.
00:20:18I mean regular, everyday Americans.
00:20:20Normies.
00:20:21People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive-thru line.
00:20:26Political moderates who have water-cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts.
00:20:31Not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.
00:20:33Millions of them.
00:20:34Tens of millions.
00:20:34They're logging on, they're engaging, and they're furious.
00:20:37And I'll be candid.
00:20:38They blame you guys.
00:20:39They blame the left.
00:20:41Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you're the bad guys here and they're reacting accordingly.
00:20:46I can already hear some of you racing towards the comment section to start screeching in moral indignation, so I'm going to be blunt.
00:20:51Shut up and listen to what I'm telling you.
00:20:53Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don't develop some small measure of self-awareness.
00:20:57And, absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine, you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.
00:21:02Here's the facts.
00:21:03Fact 1.
00:21:04Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman, a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter, stabbed in the neck by a career criminal.
00:21:13These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.
00:21:18Fact.
00:21:18Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students.
00:21:23Millions of these people knew who Charlie was, millions of them didn't.
00:21:27Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the lyrical spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family.
00:21:36Good people who'd never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.
00:21:40Fact 3.
00:21:41Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram, remember we're talking about regular Americans, not the online Twitter or Blue Sky users,
00:21:50and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime, not just defending it, but cheering it.
00:21:58These are all facts.
00:21:59You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but indisputably they are nevertheless factual statements.
00:22:08And this is why I talk about news narratives.
00:22:09We're going to take it break for a moment.
00:22:10This is why I talk about news narratives.
00:22:12What filters through to people, what people see and perceive, especially thanks to social media algorithms, is vitally important.
00:22:19And when you start understanding that public discourse today is not based upon facts or people taking the time to figure out what it is,
00:22:27but understanding that filtering process of what makes it through on social media, as he says here.
00:22:33Saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, you know, they logged onto Facebook and they saw these videos, all of a sudden.
00:22:37When you understand that's how people are perceiving the world in these narratives, a lot of stuff that doesn't make any sense starts to make sense.
00:22:44And this is why I talk about these news narratives so much.
00:22:47Let's keep going.
00:22:48Here's what it means for you, the Democrats, reading this.
00:22:51These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active.
00:22:56They realize that politics cares about them, even if they don't particularly care about politics.
00:22:59After watching Irina Zarathuska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck,
00:23:03they think their lives and their physical safety of their families, the bedrock of human society,
00:23:07the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.
00:23:11These people are now sprinting, not jogging, not walking, but racing to the right,
00:23:16because they blame you guys, us the left, for everything that just happened.
00:23:19When they see footage of DeCarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death,
00:23:23they don't see just one demon-possessed man.
00:23:25They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik
00:23:29that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the carceral state,
00:23:32or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.
00:23:37They then think back to conversations they've had with their cop friends,
00:23:40their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist,
00:23:44their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals
00:23:47because Soros-funded prosecutors aren't willing to file charges,
00:23:50and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.
00:23:53And they blame you because even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat,
00:23:57your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors
00:24:00that led fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice
00:24:03superseded very real concerns for their family's safety.
00:24:07That's incorrect, but it's his story. We'll keep going.
00:24:10When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk's neck,
00:24:13they don't see just a martyr political activist.
00:24:15They think of every extreme leftist they've ever met who,
00:24:18one, calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist,
00:24:19and two, constantly jokes jokes about punching Nazis and bashing the fash.
00:24:25They realize that they really do exist people who wish to see them dead
00:24:27for their moderately conservative political beliefs,
00:24:29their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin.
00:24:32They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie
00:24:34might one day show up on their own doorstep.
00:24:37And they blame you because even if you're just a center-of-the-road liberal,
00:24:40you lack the courage to police your own ranks.
00:24:42You let modern-day Maoist Red Guards run loose across every facet of society,
00:24:46and what started with social media struggle sessions has now turned into 30-06 bullet holes.
00:24:51When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying,
00:24:55celebrating, glorifying murder,
00:24:56they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best,
00:24:59literally demon-possessed at worst.
00:25:01These people, whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday
00:25:03or only attend with relatives once per year on Christmas Eve,
00:25:06start talking about things like spiritual warfare.
00:25:08They implicitly understand that no normal human
00:25:10casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.
00:25:12And they blame you because even if you condemn Charlie Kirk's murder,
00:25:16they probably haven't seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on.
00:25:19They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers
00:25:22to celebrate death and it repulses them.
00:25:24For all those situations, what has your response been?
00:25:26Nothing but bullshit.
00:25:28In response to Irina Zarutska bleeding out from the floor of a train,
00:25:31you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime
00:25:33when everyone who's ever been to a major urban center in the last decade
00:25:36knows that the actual crime has skyrocketed,
00:25:38only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops
00:25:41that don't have the manpower to respond
00:25:43and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible
00:25:45to misdemeanor citations.
00:25:47In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family,
00:25:51you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.
00:25:53What about January 6th?
00:25:55And he gives an answer.
00:25:56What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter
00:25:58about some guy masked in Minnesota?
00:26:00What about Paul Pelosi?
00:26:01What about regulations on assault rifles?
00:26:03In response to teachers, healthcare workers,
00:26:04and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie's murder,
00:26:06it's nothing more of a bullshit misdirection.
00:26:08It's not that many people celebrating.
00:26:10Yes, it is.
00:26:10Everyone's seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.
00:26:13I thought you guys didn't support cancel culture.
00:26:15All bullshit.
00:26:15Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit.
00:26:18Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don't like how it smells.
00:26:21You probably don't like hearing this, but you need to hear it.
00:26:23Because I'm right, and as you reflect on this, you know I'm right.
00:26:25The ranks of my political movement
00:26:27gained millions of righteously angry new members this week.
00:26:29We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again,
00:26:32and that's exactly what we're now going to do.
00:26:33If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so,
00:26:35you better clean house and start policing your own.
00:26:40And I wanted to explore this.
00:26:49This is from Robert Sterling.
00:26:52One, because I think he's correct on much of this.
00:27:05Directionally correct.
00:27:06And I think people kind of forgot that in the aftermath of all of this,
00:27:21there was a lot of people who condemned the shooting.
00:27:34Every mainstream Democrat certainly did.
00:27:36I certainly did in my initial message, and I did again last week sort of thing.
00:27:41I, again, was barely aware of Charlie Kirk.
00:27:45Kirk was happy to see him continue on.
00:27:48I lamented last week, I wish he were counter-programming me tonight.
00:27:53And I don't condone political violence in January.
00:27:56I warned that we were heading into an age of political violence,
00:27:59and I was very, very worried about that.
00:28:00And I was worried not just for what it would do to the country politically,
00:28:04but I was also worried for what it would do to people,
00:28:07because there are, you know, political violence, there's a body count.
00:28:11And I think the, he's advocating for something the Democratic Party
00:28:22is maybe coming around to the idea of, but unlikely will not do.
00:28:28And that is, he wants to reject all of the far left, all of the progressives,
00:28:39anyone who's not, who's not, you know, basically Republican-lite, as one might call it.
00:28:51For those that look at what's happening in the world and see fascism and authoritarianism,
00:28:57you can complain, but it shouldn't, you know, you should never, you know,
00:29:01you know, joke about anything violent, all this sort of thing.
00:29:05Although the left's not the one forming militias, but that's a whole,
00:29:08a whole other conversation.
00:29:10The militias existed long before this, that's a whole other conversation.
00:29:13When it talks to people talking about and joking about violence,
00:29:16there's lots of opportunities for lots of people to do that.
00:29:19That unfortunately does lead eventually to violence happening.
00:29:23And this isn't even necessarily new.
00:29:25You know, when we had the protests and shows, well, that man drove down people with his car.
00:29:29People, you know, there's been different violent acts over the last several years.
00:29:33And these are all terrible things because, one, you cannot have a civilized society with political violence.
00:29:38Can't.
00:29:40It is fundamentally uncivilized.
00:29:42That's the first problem.
00:29:43Second problem is he, he wants them to completely disassociate themselves with the most,
00:29:50he wants Democrats to completely disassociate themselves from the most fringe end of the party
00:29:56who's talking about these things, advocating for these things, talking about it that way.
00:30:00And Democrats will never do that.
00:30:02And I will tell you why.
00:30:04Because that's where the main political energy of the party comes from.
00:30:07Um, it unfortunately very rarely turns into votes, which is a huge problem.
00:30:12Um, and it oftentimes, narratively speaking, is a PR disaster.
00:30:16Let's remember to fund the police.
00:30:18Um, and all the whinging and complaining about mental health and carceral state and all that type of thing,
00:30:26those things are real.
00:30:27Especially if you're poor.
00:30:29You know, even poor white communities know how, if you're poor, the police, you know,
00:30:33any sort of legal interaction can destroy your whole life.
00:30:36And there are dozens of small legal interactions that happen all the time when one is,
00:30:41and that's a conversation about class, not race.
00:30:43And we're always struggling to have those conversations on class in this country.
00:30:48Um, and so, um, but the, yes, I mean, he, as far as how the narrative works, how the narrative goes,
00:30:55and how people are thinking about this, especially, it's been a couple weeks,
00:30:59people have had a time to calm down, all this type of thing.
00:31:02I think directionally he is 110% correct.
00:31:05Um, I do not see the Democratic Party eschewing themselves from these people in any meaningful way,
00:31:14simply because, for better or for worse, a lot of the fringe views and fringe ideas have gone quite mainstream.
00:31:23And the reality is when you, again, when all you know about Charlie Kirk is a clip you see on social media
00:31:32that the algorithm has presented to you, that becomes your impression of them.
00:31:39And I see this all the time.
00:31:41My most viral videos are never the ones on the important, serious stuff that I would like them to be.
00:31:46It's always on really dumb stuff, and I can only imagine what some people's thoughts must be.
00:31:51Um, you know, sort of, I mean, this is how it, this is how it, how it goes.
00:31:55I think directionally he's correct.
00:31:57The country's in a very conservative mood anyway.
00:32:00Um, but I think this has also really been a radicalizing moment and act for a lot of people.
00:32:09I think it's interesting that it's been a little bit, and we have not heard word one from the shooter Tyler Robinson,
00:32:14who's very much alive.
00:32:16Although I did hear a rumor today, um, about him being Mormon and having some issues with the Mormon church,
00:32:22which I thought was an interesting rumor.
00:32:24I won't get into it because it's a rumor, but an interesting rumor.
00:32:26Um, and so, uh, you know, that was, um, you know, that was also, uh, you know, an aspect of it as, as well.
00:32:38We've not really heard anything.
00:32:39It would be interesting to hear, hear more about, you know, why Charlie Kerser, I think.
00:32:44Um, and I think, as someone put it, the shooting is memetic, it's, and it's a shitpost.
00:32:51It's not ideological, it's not going to fit in an ideological box, which I think is very interesting and probably true.
00:32:56But the reality is, narratively speaking, Robert Sterling is right.
00:32:59The narrative is already, and, and the Trump administration did an excellent job of saying the narrative.
00:33:03The narrative is, he was some crazy leftist who killed Charlie Kirk.
00:33:09Charlie Kirk's not been officially martyred.
00:33:11Um, and, uh, and it's going to be an excuse for more.
00:33:16Crackdown's going to be an excuse.
00:33:17You know, Antifa got branded as a domestic terrorist group, which isn't even an official, isn't even an official organization or designation.
00:33:24Um, all this sort of thing.
00:33:25But I think, for the average person, they're looking out at all of this and being like, yep, it's the liberals that are the problem.
00:33:33And you're going to see a lot more people sort of distancing themselves from liberal views and liberal narratives, um, simply because it's become unfashionable, and some would even argue dangerous, to be liberal, sort of thing.
00:33:50Um, and the comment section on this really reflects this, um, and, uh, and it, you know, and people, you know, are cheering him on and all this sort of thing.
00:34:07Um, there's no, you know, no really kind of any, any pushback, um, from anybody.
00:34:16No one really argues, uh, against it, um, it is, you know, it's a very difficult, um, it's a very difficult thing.
00:34:28Um, and I think just because, again, um, there's not a lot of, uh, this probably didn't reach a lot of accounts like this, but I wanted to talk about it.
00:34:39And I should have brought it up last week, but I kind of got into my own thing and thoughts and all this thing.
00:34:45But I, I really wanted to kind of go through this and bring it up because I think it is a, I think it's very mind, I think it's going to tell, I think it's a gateway.
00:34:52It is a, it is a lens into what will come in the coming weeks and months as we begin to move on from this moment and through this moment and where people are emotionally.
00:35:06The emotional response to Charlie Kirk was visceral, as it should be.
00:35:11It was a very terrible thing.
00:35:13And I will always say it was a terrible thing.
00:35:16Again, I didn't have any hate for the man, one, at all.
00:35:20I vaguely knew of him, I kind of knew what he did, and I was happy for him to continue on doing it.
00:35:26Um, I first came across him with, about Turning Point USA back in the day.
00:35:31Um, someone took issue with, I said that he spent most of his time on political activism, and I said, well, he spent half of his, his, his life, his time on earth doing it.
00:35:39Um, and Charlie Kirk said a lot of terrible things.
00:35:42Just because those things are true does not mean someone deserves to be shot in the neck for it.
00:35:46Um, quite frankly, I don't think that Tyler Robinson is a terrible leftist.
00:35:51We'll find out how much of a terrible leftist he is.
00:35:54I don't think he's a terrible leftist.
00:35:55But here's the thing, is, this is going to be a situation where it may be that I am correct, but it won't matter.
00:36:02Because the narrative has already been set.
00:36:04And when it comes to the narrative and how people perceive this situation, Robert Steeling is absolutely correct.
00:36:09However, his solution, well, his non-solution, um, is to, quote-unquote, clean house and start policing our own.
00:36:18And that's not going to work.
00:36:19And that's not going to happen.
00:36:20Um, so, my, my guess is, is that, you know, any sort of liberal person politically in this country is going to continue to be marginalized.
00:36:30Um, today I just saw a map in Missouri where they reduced their congressional seats down to just one, which is basically the city of St. Louis.
00:36:39Um, and I retweeted and I said, yeah, they're locking the other party out of power structurally.
00:36:45And it will be decades, years up to decades, that it ever gets fixed.
00:36:52And it may never be, sort of thing.
00:36:55Um, you know, other than to simply, you know, find the least red districts and try to win people over.
00:37:02But it's, it's structurally speaking, there's going to be a desire in every way possible to basically lock Democrats out of power.
00:37:12And we've seen this playbook already in places like Wisconsin, where thanks to redistricting, Democrats at the state level are locked out of power.
00:37:20Numerically, they cannot get a majority in the Wisconsin state legislature.
00:37:24Um, North Carolina's pretty close to that already, and they're about to finish the job.
00:37:28Um, this is what's going to be happening moving forward, is Democrats are going to be, not even just politically, structurally, mathematically, the way the system works will make sure Democrats don't win.
00:37:42Because of everything we're saying, anyone with a liberal idea is going to be marginalized in this country.
00:37:49Um, and I think this, I, and I, and it's, it is because, I'm not happy about this, obviously, but it says, if you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you better clean out as a place on your own.
00:38:01That's not going to happen.
00:38:02And so because of that, this structural lockout, which is already happening, already in place, and indeed is emboldened by this, um, is going to continue.
00:38:11And that means, you know, minority party for a long time.
00:38:16Um, I had lamented after the election last year, and we're going to talk about the precinct by precinct, uh, data here in a moment, um, is that, uh, um, you have, uh, this kind of, you know, situation where after the loss, I said, this is not a, just a rejection of liberalism.
00:38:35This is a full surrender and retreat.
00:38:37This is a complete, you know, break sort of thing.
00:38:42And things keep happening that break that, make that break worse, wider, more difficult, and more profound.
00:38:51And that, um, and that is a, a very, um, you know, and even here when he's talking about, you know, people talking about Paul Pelosi or gun regulations or Mike Lee or January 6th, all this type of thing, um, all of those retorts are all marginalized.
00:39:12It's like, you know, Dems at Lawfare, again, Paul Who, um, you know, all this sort of, I mean, any of the standard responses, again, summarizes at the end, you know, stale, mid-grade, low IQ bullshit.
00:39:28So, there, there's nothing the left can do.
00:39:32We're at fault.
00:39:33We're the ones who are wrong.
00:39:36Nothing will change that narrative.
00:39:38And certainly no efforts being made by the DNC or anyone else changing the narrative, but nothing will really change the narrative.
00:39:43And I think Robert's right.
00:39:44They need someone to blame.
00:39:47It's us.
00:39:49It's that simple.
00:39:51And many other things will follow that will keep reinforcing this narrative.
00:39:56And, uh, it's not a fun time to be a left-leaning, you know, person in this country.
00:40:03Um, it's really not fun to be doing this job from the left right now.
00:40:06Um, and some, and it's a struggle.
00:40:10It was a struggle tonight for me to come here and do this.
00:40:14Um, and it's a struggle to continue to want to do this given where the country is going.
00:40:19Um, but I'm also buoyed by people's wonderful comments and things that I write in and say.
00:40:24And it encourages me to keep going in a time when my mental health is not in necessarily a place to do it.
00:40:33So, anyway.
00:40:35Let's move on from this.
00:40:37Um, in related news.
00:40:41Um, as you know, uh, not that I were going to dig into the story, although I might in the newsletter on Saturday.
00:40:47Uh, last week, RFK announced that, uh, they were announcing that Tylenol taken during pregnancy is a leading cause of autism.
00:40:54And a lot, there's been a lot of other changes within Health and Human Services and within the CDC, um, that have changed vaccine recommendations.
00:41:02There are changing vaccine recommendations for children under four years old.
00:41:05Um, a lot of changes about our health and how the federal government regulates and promotes our health at the federal level.
00:41:11As a result of that, um, some states have banded together, um, to join in their own regional public health coalitions.
00:41:20Um, this sort of thing started during the pandemic.
00:41:24Um, where during 2020, when the Trump administration wasn't really taking the pandemic seriously,
00:41:28different parts of the country decided to form their own coalitions and do their own thing.
00:41:33Um, this is an example of these regional public health coalitions.
00:41:37So you have the Northeast Public Health Cooperative, which includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York.
00:41:43Interestingly, no Vermont and New Hampshire, but also Maine.
00:41:46And then on the West Coast, California, Oregon, and Washington.
00:41:50Um, and it says the collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health, um, records.
00:41:57And it was announced by Kathy Hochschel and other people, um, along, along the way.
00:42:03Um, it does say that, uh, um, apparently Vermont is, has joined, um, as part of the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.
00:42:12So this map's a little bit incorrect.
00:42:13We'll add in Vermont right there, um, as well along the way.
00:42:18So I guess here's the updated map.
00:42:19So no New Hampshire.
00:42:21Um, but we do have Vermont.
00:42:22So that's, that's, that's working, that's working well there.
00:42:25Um, and, uh, and it says that, I just want to acknowledge that Delaware previously said they would join the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.
00:42:35And the New York Times mentioned Maryland in their story.
00:42:37So both states are likely part, but waiting for an official follow-up announcement since they weren't in today's press release.
00:42:42So it may even go so far south as Maryland and Delaware, which is right there.
00:42:47Um, so it's a very, um, I mention this story only to say that as a reaction to the federal government taking a step back, states will continue to step forward.
00:43:01Now, if you're a big federalism person, this is great news for you.
00:43:05Um, if you're not such a big federalism person, and I tend not to be, I think federalism was a double-edged sword.
00:43:10Um, then, uh, then, you know, this is a symbol of breakdown.
00:43:17This is a symbol of, you know, we're not so united, we United States.
00:43:20Now are we?
00:43:22Um, and, uh, and I, I, it's moments like these where I'm reminded of what I tell Europeans when they ask,
00:43:29what is wrong with your country, why does it not be my marriage?
00:43:31I said, your country is a top-down structure.
00:43:34I said, our country, we are 50 somewhat independent Republicans who are roommates.
00:43:39And sometimes we're all in agreement, and sometimes we're not so in agreement,
00:43:44and sometimes we go off and do our own thing.
00:43:47And this is an example of certain groups of the 50 roommates,
00:43:50which includes Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, all this sort of thing,
00:43:54deciding to kind of go do their own health thing that doesn't include the other roommates,
00:43:58because, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:00So, um, it's, uh, it's a tough, it's a tough thing.
00:44:06You know, it's a very tough thing.
00:44:07But, um, yeah, big day for federalism on the health front, anyway.
00:44:12Um, and the states are trying to go their own path rather than always answering to Washington, D.C.
00:44:18So, um, yeah.
00:44:20So, uh, I also wanted to, uh, VoteHub released the first, um, precinct-by-precinct map of the 2024 election.
00:44:32Now, obviously, why did it take so long?
00:44:34This data poll is crazy.
00:44:38Um, the one that I thought was most interesting was looking at Alaska.
00:44:42Um, if I were Democrats, I'd be kind of like, how do we get, how do we turn this into some senators or governorship
00:44:49and maybe a, you know, and get the house reps or anything?
00:44:52You have so much, so much blue.
00:44:54Um, oh, that precinct only has eight people living in it for a total of 18.
00:44:58Huh.
00:44:59Uh, that's how rural Alaska is.
00:45:00But, I mean, that's central Alaska.
00:45:01There's nothing there.
00:45:02There's eight people.
00:45:03Um, they're probably all voted in a small cafe.
00:45:05Um, and so, I know, some of these have very few votes.
00:45:11Um, but, uh, there's very, very few people in some of these places.
00:45:16Um, but it, so, looking at the precinct-by-precinct data, you kind of see, you know, why President Trump really put it over the line
00:45:25when you look at, you know, how much red there is, how much deep red there is, especially in what I call the Big L,
00:45:33starting with Louisiana and going straight up the Midwest, um, and looking even on the East Coast.
00:45:38And people were digging into these at the level, you look at, like, Staten Island, and that's Long Island, um,
00:45:44where you look at some of these places, and you kind of start to see where, um, you know,
00:45:49President Trump really just cleaned up, uh, Philadelphia suburbs, um, here in Delaware, um,
00:45:59parts of, you know, even in Northern Virginia, West Virginia, deep, deep right in West Virginia.
00:46:04Yeah, and you, you look at all these places, and a lot, a lot of the blue dots are literally towns and cities,
00:46:10except for some parts here in the Mid-South.
00:46:12Um, but you, I mean, a lot of your blue dots are, um, I'm surprised they didn't include the data for South Florida.
00:46:19Um, a lot of the blue is cities, um, although not always quite true in Arizona or New Mexico,
00:46:26but, like, Denver, that's Denver metro area, um, so, you have all these, that actually was my parents' precinct
00:46:33before they moved. Um, but you get in Denver, Fort Collins, uh, Greeley, obviously, you know, a handful of people.
00:46:44Um, so, is there even a blue, yeah, yes, the university, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, blue,
00:46:49you have a handful of blue voters in what's otherwise deep Redwell County.
00:46:53Um, it is very interesting sort of data and things, um, for what there is, but it, yeah, when, when you look at it,
00:47:00you know, precinct by precinct on the big map, you really see how President Trump voted over the line,
00:47:06you know, for 312 over 226 in electoral votes, but even also looking at vote totals,
00:47:11you have a nice 2 million vote gap, um, that amounted to about 1.5%,
00:47:16and you really see, like I said, here in the Midwest, in the South, even out West,
00:47:23where, yeah, that's where they picked up a lot of votes, a lot of votes,
00:47:28and some of them, even at the precinct level, are quite, quite close, especially in some swing states
00:47:32and everything, but, yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, he just won everywhere, and when you look at it,
00:47:36even precinct by precinct, yeah, he won everywhere, you know, um, even, you know, even when you,
00:47:43at in Alaska, Hawaii was already very blue, but, I mean, even with Alaska and everything, it's like, yeah,
00:47:47he won fucking everywhere, and it shows, you know, sort of thing, but, so, if, I would encourage you,
00:47:53if you want to check this out, go to votehub.com slash 2024 map, um, and, uh, and take, take a look
00:48:01at it, at it all, um, and, uh, I was looking at different parts of the country where I've lived,
00:48:07and kind of looking at how people voted in different ways, and all this sort of thing, and, um,
00:48:13yeah, if you check out your own area, it's a lot of fun, um, you know, for kind of precinct by precinct
00:48:20level, but, yeah, a lot of red, a lot, a lot of red, and even within cities, you know, looking at
00:48:27the vote totals, and it's just, again, if you're an election data nerd, it's very interesting,
00:48:33um, but, yeah, so go check that out. Tonight, I'm going to close on Kamala Harris's new book tour.
00:48:39She has been out and about. She was speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus this weekend in a
00:48:43lovely purple sequined gown, um, and Democrats are unhappy, and I told, I mentioned this in the
00:48:51newsletter on Saturday, I did a piece called Meditations on Kamala Harris's book tour, and
00:48:55she is pointing fingers and naming names. I'm talking Joe Biden, the Obamas, Nancy Pelosi,
00:49:00Hillary Clinton, everybody has gotten something out of Kamala Harris's book, and so Politico talks
00:49:06about it here. Kamala Harris's media bliss is doing little to temper the frustration bubbling
00:49:10among Democrats over her retelling of the 2024 election. Over the last 24 hours, the former
00:49:15Vice President insisted she isn't burning bridges in her own party, rejected the idea that her
00:49:19infamous interview on The View tipped the 2024 election, and didn't roll out another run for
00:49:22political office. Quote, in an era where Democrats need all hands on deck in the fight to protect the
00:49:27country and the Constitution from the lawlessness of the Trump administration, she had a real
00:49:31opportunity to be a critical voice in the resistance, said Michael Hardaway, a Democratic strategist
00:49:35who served as a senior advisor at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Quote, this book seems to be
00:49:39unhelpful and divisive in a way that makes it hard for her to be the face of the party as we look
00:49:43to the future. And I disagree. I said this in the newsletter on Saturday. I think this is what the
00:49:48Democratic Party needs right now. I think it needs someone, an insider, with a lot of pull who literally
00:49:54last year was almost president, to come along and say, y'all, we got some issues. Let's talk about
00:50:03those. And here they are, one, two, three, four, five. I think this is, I think this is what needs
00:50:08to happen. I mean, so it's like, okay, so she's not going around and making everyone feel good.
00:50:15Don't. There's no reason to feel good. And if you want to know why not to feel good, go back 20
00:50:20minutes in this broadcast and listen to what I'm talking about with Charlie Kirk. Like, there's no
00:50:22reason to feel good right now. We're on the ropes. Let's continue. More than six months after her losing
00:50:29election, with Harris now back in the spotlight, her book, 107 Days, has reopened wounds in a party
00:50:35still divided over who or what is primarily to blame for their sweeping losses and President
00:50:38Donald Trump's return to the White House. Harris, for her part, argued on ABC's The View on Tuesday
00:50:43that though there were many factors, ultimately, we just didn't have enough time. It's not the first
00:50:47time a political memoir has prompted eye rolls. Hillary Clinton's book tour in 2017 triggered a
00:50:51collective groan among infuriated Democrats, including one top donor who told Politico at the time,
00:50:56unquote, she should just zip it, unquote. Biden, struggling to sell his post-presidency legacy,
00:51:01is expected to release his own White House memoir. Democrats privately worry the parade of
00:51:05scab-picking, backward-looking books isn't helping the party move on, especially as its brand sinks to
00:51:10new lows in public polling. At a time when people are looking for a vision in leadership and want to
00:51:15see leaders rise to the level of threat facing the country, it's pretty crazy she chose to write a
00:51:19gossip book that prioritizes the pettiness of her politics, said an advisor to a potential
00:51:242028 candidate granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. It's embarrassing for her and
00:51:29for all Democrats, considering she was the leader of the party less than a year ago.
00:51:33During her interviews this week, Harris clarified some of her more candid assessments from her book,
00:51:37including her decision that it would be too risky, as she wrote, to put former Transportation
00:51:41Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a gay man and her preferred running mate, on a ticket headed by a black woman
00:51:46married to a Jewish man. It wasn't about any prejudice on my part, but we had such a short period of time
00:51:50when the stakes were so high. Harris told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night. I think America is
00:51:55and would be ready for that, but when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know,
00:51:58maybe I was being too cautious, but that's the decision I made. Buttigieg told Politico last week
00:52:03that he found Harris' comments surprising and believes in giving Americans more credit. On Biden,
00:52:07Harris told co-host of The View on Tuesday that she has, quote, a good relationship, unquote,
00:52:10with the former president, who she praised is a highly capable president who accomplished great things.
00:52:15She described her own refusal to criticize Biden in her now infamous appearance on the same show
00:52:18in October 2024 as symbolic of the issue. I'm a loyal person, and I didn't fully appreciate how
00:52:23much people wanted to know there was a difference between me and President Biden, she said. I thought
00:52:27it was obvious, and I didn't want to offer a difference in a way that would be received or
00:52:30suggested to be criticism. In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday,
00:52:34Harris said she regretted not confronting Biden over his decision to run for re-election,
00:52:37calling it reckless. Harris made a similar assessment in her book when she said the stakes were simply
00:52:41too high and it should have been more than a personal decision for Biden. When asked about her own
00:52:46future political ambitions, the former vice president demurred. I'm not focused on that
00:52:49right now. I'm really not. A member of Harris' inner circle till political last week that her
00:52:53book was not intended as a burn-the-boats exit from politics. For some Democrats outside of Harris'
00:52:57orbit, the books suggested otherwise. If this was intended as a campaign launch, I don't think
00:53:01it got off the pad, said David Axelrod, a longtime senior advisor to former President Barack Obama.
00:53:06Well, David Axelrod can go suck it. If it was intended as a catharsis, only she can know if it was
00:53:12successful. Well, David Axelrod can go suck it. I'll say that. Like, he just, I have no concern
00:53:17with what he has to say. A former Biden and Harris campaign staffer granted him to discuss the issue
00:53:22candidly said that if voters, like those watching a round of media interviews this week, start seeing
00:53:26her as a sore loser, that's the risk for her politically. Some recent public polling found
00:53:30the former vice president's favorability rating has dropped since October of 2024. Harris is not
00:53:34without supporters. Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who worked with Harris in her 2020
00:53:38presidential campaign, praised Harris for speaking her truth, even though that truth is
00:53:41uncomfortable for people. I think if we had more difficult conversations as a party over
00:53:45the last couple years, he said, we would have been in a much stronger position to win the
00:53:48election last year. Thank you. Someone understands. No, this needs to happen. Like, people, names
00:53:58and fingers need to be pointed. The lack of Obama's early support, Nancy Pelosi being like, we need
00:54:03to have a process, all this type of thing. Like, someone needs to come out and say, it's
00:54:09not good. This isn't working. And I think she's the right person to do it. Someone's finally
00:54:17saying it. No one listens to me. So glad that someone who they will pay attention to is saying
00:54:24it because the president is untenable. And I think her finally being like, no, we shouldn't
00:54:30let Biden run. And, you know, yeah, I kind of got screwed up. Like, finally, someone is saying
00:54:37it. And I kind of laugh because the New York Times did a whole article about this, and
00:54:43especially how the Biden White House didn't even support her, particularly this portion
00:54:47that said, she said, quote, during all those months of growing panic, should I have told
00:54:52Joe to not consider running? Perhaps. She wrote an excerpt. But the American people had
00:54:57chosen him before in the same matchup. Maybe he was right to believe they would do so again.
00:55:01The former president described herself as in the worst position to make the case that he
00:55:03should drop out of the 2024 race because she believed Mr. Biden would view such entreaty
00:55:07as disloyal. At the time, she and others extended grace in allowing Mr. Biden and Jill Biden,
00:55:12the first lady, to make the decision on their own. But now she wrote she's come to believe
00:55:15it was a mistake not to speak up. And it also kind of comes down here and says that
00:55:22she denied she believed he was incapacitated. If I believed that, I would have said so, she added.
00:55:27As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.
00:55:29Mr. Harris also wrote about feeling undermined by unspecified numbers of Mr. Biden's team,
00:55:34but didn't take aim at the former president himself. However, in recalling an 11-minute
00:55:37speech he made from the Oval Office, she wrote that her staff noted she was mentioned only
00:55:41fleetingly in the eighth minute. And that was it. I am a loyal person. She lamented that throughout
00:55:46her time in office, Mr. Biden's team didn't defend her against right-wing attacks about her
00:55:49competence, including a drumbeat of conservative commentary about her laugh nor pushback on media
00:55:53stories that she said reported unfair or inaccurate accounts. She also accused his White House aides
00:55:57of helping fuel negative narratives. And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president's
00:56:01inner circle seemed fine with it, she wrote. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be
00:56:05knocked down a little bit more. She specifically cited stories about high staff turnover in her
00:56:08office in the chaotic nature of her first year as vice president, and how the White House
00:56:12communications team didn't help her effectively push back against Republicans' mischaracterization
00:56:15of her role as border czar, a role that Mr. Biden assigned her. The former vice president does not
00:56:21name those she felt wronged her. But she was clear that she believed many in Biden's inner circle
00:56:24were not invested in her success. Their thinking was zero-sum. If she's shining,
00:56:28he's dimmed, the Harris wrote. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That
00:56:32given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It
00:56:37would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something
00:56:40happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him. His team didn't
00:56:44get it. Kelly Scully, a Biden spokeswoman, declined to comment. I'm sure she did. I did see the
00:56:53story about Harris saying we're dealing with a communist dictator, and it was a very interesting
00:57:05kind of comment that she made, a little bit offhand, and that was an interesting sort of
00:57:17thing. It says, former Vice President Kamala Harris bashed President Trump on Monday night
00:57:20saying the United States is dealing with a communist dictator in the White House. Harris
00:57:23wrote in her memoir, 107 Days, which was released Tuesday, that she predicted how Trump would
00:57:27act in a second term, but she didn't expect the level of capitulation from the private sector
00:57:30towards him. She was pressed on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show about why she didn't anticipate
00:57:34such action, and responded that she believed titans of industry would be guardrails for
00:57:38our democracy. And one by one, they have been silent, they have been feckless, Harris said.
00:57:42It's like they're going to lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons. Democracy sustains
00:57:46capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And right now we're dealing with, as I called
00:57:49him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant, she said, referencing a rally last year on the
00:57:53White House Ellipse in Washington. We used to compare the strength of our democracy to
00:57:56communist dictators. That's what we're dealing with now in Donald Trump, and these titans
00:57:59of industry are not speaking up. I like this for her.
00:58:04Weirdly enough, I like this for her. And I'll kind of tell you why. I like this for
00:58:11her because I think weirdly a lot of mainstream Democrats want someone with teeth to say crazy
00:58:18things right now and be entertaining, and she's doing that. And I also think she's causing
00:58:22the party to reflect on what went wrong. And all the ways in which them not bolstering
00:58:27her and seeing to her success, she's linking that to the failure in 2024. And also saying
00:58:33the party has some problems. I think this is good and healthy. I'm sorry, David Oxelrod,
00:58:38go suck it. This is healthy. This is good. We need reform at the deepest levels of the
00:58:43party, which is kind of the theme tonight. But no, this is very much necessary. And those
00:58:48who are claiming that it isn't, it's not, there's a problem, there's a problem, there's
00:58:50a thing. Again, shut the hell up.
00:58:52Like, this is good. This is necessary. Obviously, I'm sure she's said some things in the book
00:58:58that I wouldn't agree with or not endorse, so don't pretend this is a blanket endorsement
00:59:01for everything on her book that she's talking about. I'm sure I could find something to disagree
00:59:06with. I haven't finished reading it yet. I'm sure I could find something. But for the way
00:59:11this narrative is showing out, this is needed and very necessary. For the way this is moving
00:59:17through the media ecosystem, this is good and necessary. And I think very important.
00:59:24And I, for one, I for one appreciate it. So, that's the hour, everyone. My name is Cameron
00:59:32Cowan. This is the Cameron Journal News Hour. You can find me online at Cameron Cowan on Instagram
00:59:38and Twitter, at Cameron Journal on TikTok, and also on LinkedIn. Don't forget to help for
00:59:43the newsletter, CameronJournal.com slash subscribe. You can see me on Substack.
00:59:47CameronJournal.substack.com. And you can also find me on Facebook. Just look up my name,
00:59:53Cameron Lee Cowan, or it's Facebook.com slash CameronLCowan, if you want to put in that much
00:59:57work. And yeah, this is the Cameron Journal News Hour. I'll be back next week, Monday at
01:00:037 p.m. Eastern, on all your favorite streaming platforms, YouTube, Twitch, blah, blah. Don't
01:00:09forget to join us for The Living Joke, Wednesday at 4. Will and Connor will be here, and we'll
01:00:13talk about something. We haven't really worked out this week's show yet.
01:00:16We'll talk about something. And yeah, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter, CameronJournal.com
01:00:24slash newsletter. Oh, thank you to everyone who went and watched me at Unleashed AI Summit
01:00:29and got a bunch of free gifts and things. I saw a lot of you were clicking and getting
01:00:33my free gifts. If you want to get a hold of some of the free gifts that I gave to the
01:00:40Unleashed Summit AI people, now that that event is over, shoot me an email. Email at
01:00:45CameronJournal.com and I will send you the link, which means if you're listening this
01:00:50long and paying this much attention and you email in, I know that you will have seen this
01:00:54show. So, otherwise, my name is Cameron. I'll see you next Monday. Thank you so much,
01:00:59everyone. Good night.
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