Pick your poison: Over the weekend, depending on your political flavor, you could have chosen between listening to a comedian hurl insults on stage at Madison Square Garden as part of a campaign rally; watching a sitting U.S. representative and a vice-presidential contender play video games and talk about scrapping the filibuster via Twitch; hearing a presidential candidate’s thoughts on whale psychology; or listening to a vulnerability researcher (?) and a presidential candidate gab about birth order.
Our sharpest political minds these are not.
It’s almost like everyone is avoiding talking about the actual issues—things like how to reduce inflation, how to bring government spending under control, how to make Social Security solvent, how to create an orderly and just immigration process, or how to improve the quality of our schools. The podcasting industry has, between the last election cycle and now, taken a glorious wrecking ball to cable news, creating a whole bunch of scrappy independent upstarts that presidential candidates (and their political consultants) finally understand to be an important way voters are receiving news and commentary. Unfortunately, the candidates themselves appear to have their heads filled with little more than fluff.
First, a predictable scandal: Tony Hinchcliffe, an insult comedian known for his off-color jokes, took to the stage to open for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden yesterday. He made jokes about the Clintons, Diddy, and Latinos “making babies” and how they love to “come inside“—”just like they did to our country!”
He also said, “I don’t know if you guys know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” This became a political scandal, possibly jeopardizing Trump’s ability to win Puerto Rico’s electoral college votes. (Oh, wait…)
“When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage,’ know that that’s what they think about you….It’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a response livestream with the Democrsats’ vice-presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. (They’re apparently quite chummy now, or so they want voters to believe.)
“Can’t get over this dude telling someone else to change tampons when he’s the one shitting bricks in his Depends after realizing opening for a Trump rally and feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd does, unironically, make you one of them,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “You don’t ‘love Puerto Rico.’ You like drinking piña coladas. There’s a difference.”
Can’t get over this dude telling someone else to change tampons when he’s the one shitting bricks in his Depends after realizing opening for a Trump rally and feeding red-meat racism alongside a throng of other bigots to a frothing crowd does, unironically, make you one of them. https://t.co/kr82avveYs
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 28, 2024
Were Puerto Ricans in attendance at the rally offended by this? Not really, or so it seems. But this whole saga is actually pretty emblematic of how this whole election has gone: We’ve almost entirely neglected to talk about actual issues. The Trump campaign keeps courting controversy, again and again and again, while the Harris/Walz campaign frequently defines itself in opposition to the Trumpists, reactive and apoplectic but rarely proactively defining what it is they would actually do.
Trump did Rogan: The most unhinged, meandering, and occasionally entertaining presidential candidate met his match in the most unhinged, meandering, and occasionally entertaining podcaster, and it was wild. Donald Trump and Joe Rogan talked about whale psychology. They talked about how Trump staffed his administration. They talked about the CHIPS and Science Act—which aimed to reduce reliance on Asia-manufactured chips, handing out subsidies for companies to produce semiconductor parts here at home—which Trump called “put[ting] up billions of dollars for rich companies,” saying he instead favored slapping large tariffs on the companies to try to boost growth of American manufacturing capacity. He explained his comments about the “enemy from within” and how he takes it to mean that there are “people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.” He, at times, got quite catty toward the ladies on The View.
Meanwhile, you have J.D. Vance—ostensibly the policy guy of the Trump campaign—talking about globalization on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast. Vance said “London doesn’t feel fully English anymore,” while “New York of course is the classic American city. Over time, I think New York will start to feel less American.” (Is he saying that large cosmopolitan cities are adopting a certain sameness over time? What exactly is he predicting or talking about?)
Between Trump’s protectionism, Hinchcliffe’s off-color jokes, and Vance’s unclear issues with globalization, it all comes together to paint a portrait of a campaign with very different values and priorities than, say, what I have.
Then there’s Kamala: The Democratic presidential candidate went on vulnerability/empathy/shame researcher Brené Brown’s podcast and it was…kind of full of nothing. Brown asked Harris plenty of questions about her background—birth order! Harris’ nickname given to her by her sorority!—but never did they ever get to anything serious. They talked about the core values of “daring leaders.” If you had been playing a drinking game where you take a shot every time someone says “lived experience” or “Venn diagrams,” you would be face down on the rug.
Maybe we don’t deserve better from our leaders. Maybe our politics were always fated to be ground down to this. But boy is it depressing to see it all laid out before you, via hours and hours of longform content on different podcasts, consumed by polar-opposite portions of America who increasingly seem to believe they have very little in common with one another.
Scenes from Miami: I’m in Miami for an event run by Founders Fund, and I went to a Catholic Church yesterday that is coming out in full force against Florida Amendment 4, which would add abortion protections to the state constitution, including the text: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” (More on Amendment 4 here.)
Currently, Florida outlaws abortion after 6 weeks, and doctors and activists have been engaged in a campaign to draw attention to edge-case stories where women have been forced into medically difficult situations because the law purportedly does not make it clear that doctors are allowed to abort in life- and health-threatening circumstances. Proponents claim Amendment 4 will clarify this. The bishops of Florida, on the other hand, write: “We urge all Floridians of goodwill to stand against the legalization of late-term abortion and oppose the abortion amendment. In doing so, we will not only protect the weakest, most innocent, and defenseless of human life among us but also countless women throughout the state from the harms of abortion.”
QUICK HITS
On Saturday, Israeli fighter jets hit multiple “air-defense systems, missile-making facilities and launchers” in Iran, reports Bloomberg, in response to Iran’s attack on Israel earlier this month. The attack was not extremely damaging in terms of lives lost—four Iranian soldiers have been reported killed—but it showed critical vulnerabilities in Iran’s weapons and nuclear-development infrastructure. An American military official, “speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said President Joe Biden’s administration had worked with Israel to come up with a ‘proportional’ response and urged Iran not to retaliate again,” per Bloomberg. On a campaign stop in West Philadelphia, Kamala Harris “announced a plan to boost Puerto Rico’s economy and power grid,” again per Bloomberg. “Egypt has proposed an initial two-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange four Israeli hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners, Egypt’s president said on Sunday as Israeli military strikes killed 45 Palestinians across the enclave,” reports Reuters. Interesting trend piece on how younger women are eschewing wearing their engagement rings and wedding bands daily; as a surfer, I am precluded from wearing mine for much of the summer, but I didn’t realize all the others were copying me. This “coach in chief” New York Times article is the most cringe thing I’ve read in a long while. Consume with caution.
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