12/10/25: Josh Shapiro War On Kamala, Newsom Dodges AIPAC Questions, Corporate Lobbyist Vs The Rich

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Black history lives in our stories our culture and the conversations we still have in today I didn't know This Black History Month the podcast I didn't know maybe you didn't either digs into the moments perspectives and experiences that don't always make the textbook Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention Listen to I didn't know maybe you didn't either from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts.

0:411969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Treanor, disappeared from a commune.

1:18It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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2:14Kamala Harris seems to still be set on running for president again someday. The New York Times had a very, very splashy profile of her. Let's put a D2 on the screen, actually. All kinds of interesting stuff in this profile, but her profile recently in The Atlantic caused some trouble. We're going to talk about that in a bit. First, in this New York Times piece, Kamala Harris seems to be pretty eager to run again. She made all kinds of news for a particular quote where she told Shane Goldmacher, I understand the focus on 2028 and all of that, but there will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.

3:02Goldmacher followed Harris around to different book tour stops and really does some some I don't know, does her some favors in this piece by making it sound as though everywhere she went. Everyone was clamoring to see Kamala Harris. Young black women in particular, Goldmacher reports, were delighted to see Kamala Harris, are big fans of Kamala Harris. I'm just skeptical that that's any significant portion of the country in terms of the numbers. But she's getting into trouble. Her profile with The Atlantic, she, I'm sorry, the Josh Shapiro profile in The Atlantic saw him responding to something in her book, 107 Days, which I might have to eat crow on because I was like, this book's not going to sell anything.

3:46Oh, yeah. We both were wrong about that. Compared to what books used to sell, it didn't sell that many, but 600 ,000 copies, according to the Times profile, makes it like the best selling memoir of the year. Some of that could be big corporations having Kamala come speak and buying books, but it's still a big number. I don't know, it's a lot of books. Yeah, maybe people are clamoring for Kamala Harris, right? And we were wrong the whole time. Let's play this clip, though, of Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, responding, a little fun 2028 preview here, to Simone Sanders of NMSN, NMSNOW, I need to correct myself here, asking him if he really said, if he really called some of Harris's claims bullshit.

4:28Here's a quote, and you are describing former Vice President Kamala Harris here. It says, I mean, she's trying to sell books and cover her ass. Sorry, standards. Shapiro snapped, I shouldn't say cover her word I shouldn't say on standards. I think that's not appropriate, Shapiro said. His tone was suddenly collected. She's trying to sell books, period. What were you trying to signal in that moment, sir? You want to parse this out for us? There's no parsing. Look, I stand by what I said. I think the way in which the author described my emotion, frankly, was not accurate. But the words are mine, and I stand by them.

5:07I think what was relayed to me by that author that the vice president had written about me just simply wasn't true. And, you know, I think the vice president and I had very and continue to have very candid conversations. And I think the way in which it was articulated to me, what was said was was certainly not accurate. Shapiro owns it. What do you think, Ryan? It was pretty funny. So, yeah, I mean, he's like, look, I said what I said. And yeah, she she was doing a little CYA. Like, I don't think anybody is going to disagree with that. No. On the point of Kamala Harris being a historical figure, I'm just looking up some of the other historical figures that she'll she'll join.

5:51I see Wikipedia up on your laptop. Do you watch Miracle on 34th Street every year? Not every year. I just learned something right now. One of the iconic scenes in Miracle on 34th Street turns out to be incorrect. When Santa is doing the the wellness check, like the cognitive test that Donald Trump famously aced. where they're giving him the psychiatric evaluation and they ask him who is the vice president under John Quincy Adams because they're trying to get him to fail. And he says, Daniel D. Tompkins. It's one of these classic scene. Turns out that's not true. And I just realized that right now, which I actually I should have known because Quincy Adams is Calhoun was his vice president.

6:40It looks like what happened is this is before Google and Wikipedia. And so the Miracle on 34th Street writers said, who was the sixth vice president? And the sixth vice president was Daniel D. Tompkins. Sixth president was Quincy Adams. Sure. So they were like, oh, they must have been together. They put it in chat GPT. They didn't have they didn't have a book on hand that they could look for. They just had a chart or something of who this, or maybe they just sat around and it was, who knows the six? Or maybe it's a deep joke for people like you. Maybe it is a deep joke. Wow. That is, that is wild.

7:14It might be. There's a little Easter egg in Miracle on 34th Street. Ryan Grimm just discovered this. And maybe this is a widely known thing among Miracle on 34th Street heads. But anyway, so Daniel D. Tompkins, Martin Van Buren, he became president. Richard Mentor Johnson. vice president um george dallas okay millard fillmore oh he's a classic billy king john breckenridge hannibal hamlin this is fun abraham lincoln's vice president uh skylar colfax also has a bust in the capital so as does henry wilson william wheeler rutherford b hayes's vice president there you go kamala harris what more could you ask chester arthur garfield he became president.

8:00Are you watching the new James Garfield series on Netflix? It's fantastic. I didn't even know there was one. I'm very excited for that. Yes, you'll love it. Garrett Hobart. These are the esteemed ranks of men Kamala Harris will join with her bust in the Capitol. Maybe she'll be right next to Garrett Hobart. She might. And that, again, what more could you ask for? Or maybe Chuck Fairbanks. Maybe Chuck Fairbanks. Jim Sherman. So do you, Tom Marshall, I know a lot of history. Like half these people, I'm like, Wikipedia could be totally lying to me. It seems so, yeah, that's true. We could have just done a lot of fake news.

8:36Charles Dawes. It seems so obvious that nobody. That was Calvin Coolidge's vice president for those who are not up on their history. It's like what we're going to be saying about that was Joe Biden's vice president. 200 years from now, someone's going to be explaining that to someone, Kamala Harris, that was Joe Biden's vice president. And they'll still be failing to pronounce it accurately. Yes, yes. But Josh Shapiro, love him or hate him, feels a lot more like the future of the Democratic Party than Kamala Harris does. And also the past, which is also impressive. Because he's Obama-esque. Yeah.

9:06Right. Same cadence. Should we move on to Gavin Newsom? I think we might as well. Let's do it. All right. So, Ryan, Gavin Newsom got a question about his relationship with AIPAC. Let's go ahead. This is from Jack Cacciarella. Do you know who Jack Cutcher owns? I don't either. He follows me, so maybe he watches. Okay. Shout out to you, Jack. Good question. Let's roll the clip. A little bit ago, you did an interview, Higher Learning, and the question of AIPAC came up. Oh, yeah. And it wasn't really necessarily a question of AIPAC. It was just a random, I thought about AIPAC, because I've never received any money from AIPAC.

9:44It was sort of curious. Kind of raised. AIPAC, DMFI, the Israel lobby at large. This has become a big conversation. Yeah, I know that. And someone like myself. And I think at this point, a broad majority of Democrats are saying, we don't want candidates who are taking money from AIPAC. We don't want candidates who are beholden to the Israel lobby. When you look at what you were able to accomplish with the groundswell of support financially from people who said, I want to back this. I want to back fighters. I want to back people who are independent of an establishment. How do you think about AIPAC now?

10:16And maybe someone like Seth Moulton who said, I want to return this money. I'm not taking it anymore. Or how do you think that AIPAC should be involved or shouldn't be involved? Well, they've never been involved with me. I've never received a dollar from them in my entire political career. So that's sort of absolute. So I've had an opinion on that going back decades now. I don't take tobacco money, oil money. I've never taken AIPAC money. I mean, there's certain absolutes that are the lines that have been drawn for decades for me. And those will continue. And to the extent they need to evolve because of the devolution of certain interests.

10:46And we're experiencing that in real time along the lines of what we've been talking. Perhaps that will even grow. But the small dollar has become just the lifeblood for me. Okay, Ryan, sign of the times for sure. We can also put this next element up on the screen, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Let's run this. Yeah, this is the Marjorie Taylor Greene with the track APAC graphic saying, I am America first. Thank you for your attention to this matter. shows her taking zero dollars from APAC and Trump taking, what is that, 230 million, upwards of 230 million dollars from APAC. So Gavin Newsom has landed on this answer.

11:25What does that tell us, Ryan? And what was the answer, that he might in the future, that he's never taken APAC money and he might not take it going forward? Is that the... He said this is a line he has drawn and he will continue not to take money from APEC. I thought he was saying the line that he drew was on tobacco and that he might draw a line on APEC in the future if he feels that that's necessary. Should we run it again? If you're watching this, you're in luck. You can just scroll back and go listen to him again. I thought he left himself for a little bit of wiggle room. I mean, that wouldn't be out of the question for Gavin Newsom.

12:09he said, I don't take tobacco money, oil money, and I've never taken APAC money. Notice the change in tense. Right, yeah. I don't take this, I don't take that, and I've never taken that. And to your point, here's the next sentence. There are certain absolutes that are the lines that have been drawn for decades because of the passive tense. Yeah, and then he says, and it might in the future, that line might have to change to include APAC. God, this guy's slick. Yeah, yeah, he is. So yes, what he is saying is that he's never taken it before, but he doesn't have a policy against taking it yet. But he does have a policy against taking tobacco money and this other stuff.

12:50But in the future, if he's under enough pressure, he might draw a policy that says, I will not take it. Yes. Which would actually genuinely be a remarkable political development if the like a leading like establishment candidate for the Democratic nomination just straight up said I'm not taking APAC money. That would actually be a seismic shift. So the fact that he's like leaving open the door for it even and trying to make you and I think that he said it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He almost got us. Well, it's slick in the like. Did he get you? A legalistic sense, like how the language is slick. It's not slick in a sense that I think a lot of people see that and they're like, just say no.

13:31Just say no. But let's do a survey in the comments. Did he get you? Did you think that he said he was not going to take AIPAC money? You always got to see the transcript. Sometimes you have to see that to be like, what's he doing here? And we'll also see how this plays out. We talked earlier in the show about the Texas Democratic Senate primary. I'm very curious to see how the AIPAC questions play out, given Jasmine Crockett and Tallarico both. Talarico has an existing relationship with Miriam Edelson said basically about gambling by the way which is another reason. It's funny I took Miriam Edelson money to support her gambling empire not not for Israel.

14:09And also by the way I am the evangelical Christian which is true in this race which is insane another reason. And he did vote to support the gambling stuff so like that it all checks out. Yeah a little transactional there but yeah I mean that's another again just another reason that when the DC people see him referencing scripture, it doesn't, it's not going to land with evangelical Christians because it's, it's a totally different like language, the way that he, um, frames his faith-based approach to politics. Like evangelical Christians are still like the readouts. That is like the holdout in gambling.

14:43That is the one area of the culture where there's all gambling holdout. Uh, so anyway, we'll see how all of this plays out in, in that primary. I think it'll be very interesting. We were talking about Goldman and Lander. We'll also be the Israel question to policy towards Israel. That'll be interesting in that race as well, because I'm sure it's going to come up. Yes, indeed. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get to Sam Godaltig. Ryan, this is going to be pretty interesting. Excellent. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

15:19have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

16:02And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

16:43Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune.

17:28It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around here and my wife.

18:04Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:17Joining us now is Sam Godaldig, a big shot Republican lobbyist here in Washington with the firm CGCN, who has focused for decades now on the class divide when it comes to advocacy around Congress and the divisions between and within the parties. Sam's firm has a fascinating new report out. So we're excited to welcome him back. Sam, how you doing? Doing great. Good to see you guys. Excellent. So the new report is called Class Dismissed. And there's a lot of kind of interesting insights about our current politics that we want to walk through here. But sketch out for us, like, where this comes from.

19:01And people are going to be, like, already asking themselves, why is a lobbyist, like, care about this? How is this useful to advocacy for the corporate clients that you have here in Washington? So we've known this for a long time because we go into a lot of offices. And it's kind of instinctual once you start visiting with members of Congress. in your head, you characterize a Freedom Caucus member, a Problem Solver member, a Black Caucus member, a Hispanic Caucus member. The feel in every meeting is a little different. You walk out after, for me now, 20 years in the business, thousands of meetings, and you can start to see a pattern.

19:52There's a pattern recognition that goes along with it. And you realize that the members that represent the wealthier congressional districts also have the best reputation in Washington, D.C., among think tanks, journalists, other lobbyists. So there's this unconscious bias towards calling the people that represent the wealthier parts of the country reasonable, thoughtful, productive. and there's the same pattern recognition when it comes to members of the Freedom Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and there's a caucus that is not as well known called the Anti-Woke Caucus. And that pattern recognition leads you to believe that those members are destructive, problems, not productive in any way, not worth lobbying.

20:44They're crazy. They're whatever the word might be. that, you know, and I'd love to see like a grouping of focus group boards amongst like the elites in Washington, how they describe the members that come from the poorer parts of the country. And, you know, after 20 years, you start like it opens your eyes and you're like, holy shit, everyone here is a classist. So you ask why a Republican lobbying firm went to the effort to document all this. And it's honestly because we're trying to teach our corporate clients what they're dealing with and how to be successful in Washington. It also is meant to get them to reframe an unconscious bias that they have against those members.

21:31Those members are dealing with horrible issues, and we documented in class dismiss too. They're more likely to die of opioid deaths. They're more likely to serve in the military. They're more likely to be unemployed. They're more likely to live less long than the wealthier constituents in wealthy districts. So it kind of makes sense. It's like, why is everyone hating on these people that have such a sorry story to tell? And once you look at it that way, you can't unsee it. It's almost like you go to Spencer Gifts as a kid, and they put one of those posters in front of you, and they tell you to unfocus your eyes and you can see it.

22:08And it's like once you see it, you can't never see it again. So I feel like a little bit like we're screaming into, you know, a void, just telling everyone what we see. And more and more people are starting to see it. Trump certainly awakened that like pundits and the way mainstream news media cover Trump's win in 2024. They're starting to recognize it. But class dismissed, like walks you through just how hard it is for a lot of constituencies in America, Dem and Republican, and why their representatives might be framed as not productive because their voters are angry and they want change. Right.

22:48In Washington, it's strange to see people come to town acting like their hair is on fire, whether they're from the Freedom Caucus or their AOC. But what your report shows is that they're coming from places where their hair should be on fire. It would be irrational for them to not be furious at the system and focused on overturning it or fixing it or changing it, however you want to say. But let's put this graphic up on the screen. You found the 30 wealthiest districts. Seven of them are GOP representatives, are represented by Republicans, and 23 are represented by Democrats. similar breakdowns just in other metrics that you guys looked at, Sam.

23:32But this is kind of the you're putting numbers to the realignment. What has kind of maybe Trump was the first to really recognize it in modern political history, but the underpinnings, quantitative underpinnings of the ideological realignment. Do you see it that way? Is that how you talk about this when you're going into, you know, meetings with people who, corporate clients that may have been used to sitting down and having a pretty open ear in Republican offices. And that's not always going to be the case this time around. Yes, 100%. So that's the purest distillation of the data. And we go really deep into other metrics, but the 30 poorest and 30 wealthiest proves the point that, you know, there's an old conventional wisdom that Republicans will reflexively help the business community, and maybe specifically the Fortune 500.

24:24And more and more, the Republican rank and file, the meat of the Republican Party represents constituencies that have had a really tough go of it. And those voters in those congressional districts are not as reflexively, ideologically pro-business as the party was, say, during the George W. Bush years 20 years ago. So politics has evolved. Republican voters have evolved. Democratic voters have evolved. And what's very interesting is the fact that the Democrats have not lost their anger or heat towards corporate America. but Republicans now are fighting for the same constituencies that Democrats once completely commanded a long time ago.

25:11And I've never seen it in the 30 years I've been here. I was a staffer for about 12 and now I've been lobbying. Both parties consider working class voters the base of their party. And I'm not sure who's right. I mean, maybe we'll find out in the midterms. Maybe we'll find out in the 2028 election. I think they're almost completely up for grab. And if you look at how Trump did with Hispanic men, he won 52 % of Hispanic men nationally. That's an insane progression from the Bush years when we thought we reached the pinnacle of success when we had marginal success with Hispanic voters. So I feel like the mainstream media, the people that cover Washington, whether you're a professor or a journalist or a think tank fellow, So they kind of resort back to this lazy conventional wisdom that's definitely not true anymore.

26:07And I think it's our job to tell our clients how to successfully win and how to frame up arguments that used to work but no longer do. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated. And Black America was at a breaking point. rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying.