Raging Moderates — VP Showdown, Harris’s Border Visit, Mayor Adams Indicted, and Hogan on the GOP's Future

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1:27in New Jersey and Florida. Installed by independent contractors. Exclusions apply. See Lowe's.com for more details. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Jessica, where are you today? What are you up to? What are you doing? I'm at my mom's house, like all good 40-year-old women who need a quiet place. So they go to their mom's apartment to escape a potty training toddler. I think the way you're supposed to do it is you have mom come over and watch the kids and you go to the spa or go to your friend's house and eat. ice cream and smoke cigarettes. I'm making a bunch of gender stereotypes here.

2:01I get it. I'd like to continue with that, though, to add to it that when my mom started dating again after my dad passed away, when we were going to put her online, the joke was that her tagline should be not that kind of grandma. So she would not be the one coming over to take care of the toddler. She's not into that? No, I mean, she's into it, but she needs assistance. She's not a solo rider when it comes to that stuff. But I'm appreciative of the apartment. Today, in today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're previewing the VP debate, Kamala Harris's trip to the border and her new economic plan.

2:37We're going to talk about it. We're going to discuss NYC Mayor Eric Adams' indictment. And to wrap up the episode, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan joins us for a quick discussion on how the Republican Party feels about the election and what it takes to govern across party lines. All right, let's light this candle. The VP debate is here. J.D. Vance and Tim Walls are going head-to-head with just a month to go before Election Day. Vance has been reviewing footage of Walls' previous speeches and studying his past policies. Meanwhile, Walls spent the weekend hunkered down in debate camp in Michigan with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg playing the role of Vance in mock debates.

3:13Jess, what's your take here? What should we expect on stage? And is this really going to move the needle? Does it matter? I think that it could matter. I mean, historically, they don't matter as much. But there are a few instances where I think people really got the message, including the Joe Biden debate with Paul Ryan, where I feel like really solidified things for the ticket there in 2012. You think he beat Paul Ryan? I do. Yeah. I think Paul Ryan came off as wonky and detached and Joe Biden was wonky and attached. which made a big difference. But I think this, similarly to the first debate, I think this matters a lot more for the Democratic side than it does for the Republican side.

3:57I think that folks that are dug in and they're voting Trump Vance are voting Trump Vance, and there's a lot more room to grow on the Democratic side in terms of getting to know this ticket. And something that I think Politico covered it, but that has just been kind of ruminating in my circle, is that one of the main reasons Walls was picked was that he was really good in interviews. Remember, he was the first guy to say, they're just really weird. I think he was on with Stephanie Ruhle. And he was constantly on air. And he was on our air, on Fox, he was on CNN, he was on MSNBC doing every radio show.

4:30And he's disappeared a bit. People haven't seen him really since he became the VP in the same way. And so I think that this is a big opportunity for him to remind people, like, I'm good at this. I may not be as wonky, but I know my shit. I can talk to you about my record. And I don't think he should apologize. I know that the summer of the Black Lives Matter riots is going to come up and Minneapolis burning, et cetera. I think he can make a really clear case for why he's been a great governor. You know, he won reelection in 2022 by an even larger margin. He can talk about all of that. But I think that he needs to remind people that we are the normal ones, he can do the job, and that they're ready on day one for this.

5:14And someone smarter than me said to me, if you look at the transcript after the debate, don't be surprised if it looks like J.D. Vance won, but in reality, Tim Walz did, which I thought was an interesting way of looking at it. What are you expecting? And are you going to stay up through the middle of the night to watch? What time is it? Is it 9 p.m.? 9 p.m.? I don't know why they do this all so late. It should be like a 730 start, but. Well, yeah, but there's this terrible thing called California with 35 million people in it. So it's 6 p.m. I think it's the best they can do. And I'm not sure that I'm not sure they're catering to the like angry, depressed people that relocated from Delray Beach to London.

5:53Yeah, I don't I don't know if we're that critical here. Anyways, I was going to this a bit. I think J.D. Vance is very intelligent. I just think fundamentally he's a misogynist and also quite strange and has very fucked up views on the relationship or the intersection between government and civil liberties and women. I think there's something off there. At the same time, if you've read his book, I think the guy, I just don't think there's anything around it. I think the guy's brilliant. I think he's very intelligent. Also, there's a certain sociopathy that he has demonstrated, given just how poorly he's done, given that he's probably the least, I believe he's the least popular VP pick in history at this point in terms of his negatives.

6:37It doesn't seem to have phased him. I bet he's thinking this is a chance for me to really kind of go hard and pick apart on arguments. I think he's going to be a formidable debating opponent. Now, I would imagine if I had to project or speculate, my guess is a lot of people are going to tune in because they're hoping for a total food fight. But I just wouldn't. I think Senator Vance as strange as, I mean, we had Anthony Scaramucci on the Prop G pod and he described Steve Bannon as one of the smartest people he knows. And there's something wrong there. I think Steve is, I can't even figure out how he's gotten to the place he's gotten to in terms of what he believes about America and being an apologist for the insurrection.

7:19I think J.D. Vance is cut from that cloth. He's one of those people that you know is just so bright, but you can't quite square the circle on why he would decide to say that our country is run by a bunch of people in New York living in$5 ,000 a month, one-bedroom apartments who are childless and deeply unhappy. I mean, I'm sure those people exist in New York. Most of the people I know in New York are loving life, are pretty happy. And it's like, where does he get this stuff and what happened? If there's more of that, Wells will win. But I think he's more disciplined than that. I think I think walls right out of the gates needs to do with Vice President Harris did and try and put him on the on the on his heels and talk a lot about some of just ridiculous things he said.

8:06What are your follow up thoughts? I think he's taking the culture war too far. And people who tend to live and die by the culture war, it often doesn't marry up with actually being super smart. And that's where J.D. Vance is right. The intersection of that. But he's obviously wrong about New York and I grew up here and most people here are what you describe. But if he manages to rise above the fray and I feel like Walls will be throwing a lot of this childless cat lady stuff at him, the eating the cats, eating the dogs, they're going to be met with a very different response than Trump, who will who just starts sputtering whatever he's seen online or what he's seen from his favorite commentators.

8:50and it is a bigger uphill battle, I think, than it would be in a debate with Trump. And during the vetting process, apparently Walls voiced concern to Harris's team that he's not a great debater. He did say, you know, I can do it. I have done it. I don't believe it's one of my key strengths. And it'll be interesting to see how nervous he is. I mean, this is by far and away going to be the biggest night of his political life. And he's the governor of a major state, Right. The sixth best state in the country to do business. And tomorrow night is going to be even bigger for him. So I hope he just goes ahead with his game plan.

9:29I think Pete Buttigieg, you know, knowing J.D. Vance, like he's got his number. Right. He knows exactly who he is. Both have served. You know, talk about the same kind of values with Pete Buttigieg actually living them versus J.D. Vance, you know, purporting to live by them. And, you know, I think they will talk about really personal stuff like immigrants with J.D. Vance married to the child of Indian immigrants, talk about religion. He was out over the weekend with a Christian nationalist on his tour, the Courage tour, someone who has said that Kamala Harris is possessed by demons. I think that all of these kinds of themes will be coming up.

10:08And if J.D. Vance can steer clear of a lot of it, I think his favorability will still be negative 13, but nothing will be hurt. All the room to gain is really on Wallace's side. Yeah, I think the surprise issue here, everyone's expecting them to bring up immigration, kind of the two eyes, immigration and inflation. I think the third eye is going to play perhaps a surprise role here, and that's Israel. And there's been so many, in my view, really positive developments around debilitating, defenestrating, decapitating, kneecapping, whatever other terms I can come up with for the largest terrorist organization in the world.

10:43And I wonder who's going to bring up Israel, and I think they're going to try and out-Israel each other. I think both think, okay, I need to be to show anomalous to the support or lack thereof or milquetoast language we've heard out of the White House regarding support of Israel. I think they're both going to be trying to out-match each other and show even more and more resolute support for Israel. What are your thoughts? I wouldn't be surprised. It probably will be a question as well, just since it's so in the news with dismantling Hezbollah. And last night, I went to Douglas Murray, who's a conservative commentator and journalist, has something called the Save the West tour.

11:27And he was at the Beacon Theater. And my husband and I went to see what it was all about. And I disagree with a ton of Douglas Murray's beliefs, especially when it comes to Islam. But he did go and embed in Israel right after 10-7. He was embedded with the Ukrainians as well after Putin invaded. And he's done a lot of really interesting journalistic work. And I could do hours on my takeaways from it. But what really stuck out to me is that this room that was full of Jews and Jewish allies as supporters of the state of Israel really needed to be in a place where they didn't have to counter their feelings about the Israeli offensive with, of course, any loss of innocent life is a tragedy or where they wouldn't be called genocidal for supporting Bibi's actions.

12:20And I felt that very strongly. And he made one comment, you know, whether you lean left and no one really said anything or whether you lean right. And there was booming applause. Now, that does not mean New York is going for Trump or that Jews are going for Trump, but you can see a desire on the behalf of people who support Israel to not have to sugarcoat things, especially in this moment, to just be damn proud of the IDF and what they've been able to pull off. You know, people wearing T-shirts that say, bring them home, saying, I want to talk about the hostages every single day until these people are back with their families.

13:00It was moving in that respect on a very deep level. And I saw something that I had kind of read about firsthand and was very thankful for the experience. I do think that what I'll call the precise, I mean, I would argue what's happened over the last couple of weeks is the most precise anti-terrorist action taken in history. And I do think that the Gulf nations, the world do respect strength and that kind of expertise and that kind of unapologetic defense. And I'd like to think that this weird anti-American, anti-Israel sentiment largely or kind of the tip of the spear has been the zombie apocalypse that's taken place in my industry on campuses or the zombie apocalypse of useful idiots.

13:46I would like to think that it's bottomed, that people see, okay, they are taking out people who were killing Americans and thousands of Syrians and thousands of Lebanese and have just invoked and created so much despair and tragedy across Lebanon. And there were people celebrating in the streets across the Gulf at this guy's death. So I'm hoping this is a turning point. And just to bring it back, I'd be shocked if it didn't become a pretty significant piece of content tonight. Yep, agreed. And I will say I thought that Kamala's statement on the murder or taking out of Nasrallah was very strong.

14:27She called him a terrorist in the opening line. And that's exactly the kind of spirit that we need to take to this fight. and a crazy couple of weeks. But I think that everyone is moving in the same direction, to your point about what's going on on the campuses, what commentators are saying, et cetera. And, you know, BB has kind of said, I'm going to do this no matter what. So are you coming with me? You know, I'm going to take out someone that killed, was it 250 Americans have been murdered by Nasrallah too, so. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was a U.S. ordinance. It was a U.S. missile. They took out Hezbollah headquarters.

15:07Okay, so anyways, we'll be back after a quick break.

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16:32This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation. Moving on, Harris made her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming her party's presidential nominee. This was only her second time there as vice president. During her visit, she criticized Trump's immigration efforts. Let's have a listen. He made the challenges at the border worse. and he is still, and he is still fanning the flames of fear and division. The visit comes at a time when polls show voters trust Trump and Republicans more on immigration, and to no one's surprise, Trump called it a political stunt, saying it's too little, too late.

17:15Jess, is there any truth to that? Should Harris have made this move earlier, or is this, you know, good campaigning? I think it's both. I think that she has missed numerous opportunities to be stronger on the border, to appear stronger. And we can't change the fact that we're a visual species. And seeing somebody at the crisis point is different than hearing somebody talk about it in an air-conditioned room in D.C. or Michigan, wherever else you might be campaigning. So I think there are missed opportunities. I think it is also good policy for her to do it. And we're seeing like the latest Quinnipiac poll, Trump's advantage on immigration is down to eight points.

17:56So you're getting closer and closer to a jump ball on the issue. And I think that what she has been able to do is not only emphasize the bipartisan border deal, which Trump personally destroyed. Right. He said, I want to campaign on this. And Mitch McConnell said it publicly that he did this. James Lankford, Mitt Romney. But she is also offering people a bit of an offering where we say it's OK to like some of the things that Trump is supportive of, but you don't need to pick Trump in order to get there. So I will talk to you about more agents. I will talk to you about more border wall, something that she used to be very opposed to, if it means that you will take this kind of more humane approach to our immigration policy.

18:38Like tough but humane, I feel like, is the tagline. What did you think about it? I couldn't decide if it was a good move or a bad move. I don't know how many people who believe she's been bad on the border are going to be swayed by her going down to the border, or if she's just bringing attention to an issue that she's fairly or unfairly considered weak on. If I were her, I would just be hammering around inflation at this point. I think at the end of the day, I think most people or a lot of people go into the voting booth and says, who's going to put more money in my pockets? I'm fed up with government.

19:06I just want to know who's going to keep prices down and get my salary up, what have you. And I think his weakest, the soft tissue or his Achilles heel is a combination of tariffs and this weird anti-immigration policy is just going to absolutely bring inflation roaring back. I would be doing that 25 hours a day. And it's, I don't know, it just felt to me like I saw it down there and I thought there's going to be a lot of eye rolls. All right, Jess, let's pivot to something, I would say it's less serious, but compelling. We're going to talk about New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He's been indicted on federal corruption charges.

19:45The feds are accusing him of taking bribes from Turkish officials to push through permits for their consulate, even though the building didn't pass inspection. Plus, he allegedly scored massive discounts on business class flights to Turkey. I mean, it's like, you know, when they say academics, the reason we're so vicious with each other is because there's so little to fight over. If you're going to go down, You're going to go down over business class seats. Anyways, I'm making light of something. These are heavy charges because they are, in fact, corruption charges. What is your read on the situation?

20:18Well, with the amount of buildup, the number of phones that have been seized from his top lieutenants, I think it's up to six people, six aides that they have their phones and how long we've been talking about this. I did expect bigger numbers, I guess, for the scale of corruption. But clearly the Southern District wanted to air all of his dirty laundry because they didn't have to put everything in the indictment. It was 56, 57 pages long, including text messages, you know, note to self. Obviously, if you're going to be doing crimes, don't text. Like, let's do a crime now with a smiley face, those kinds of things.

20:56But they definitely wanted – they want him, right? They think that he is somebody who has been doing this for a very, very long time. And I was thinking back to July when the fire chief randomly resigned. She'd only been in the job for a couple of years. And she just kind of popped up and was like, I'm out. And I thought, well, that's kind of weird, right? Because the indictment story had been swirling and they had been looking into people in Adams' orbit. But there was nothing about her. And now, I mean, maybe it's not a straight line. I'm not sure between the Turkish building that they wanted the fire assessment to be changed on, right, that wasn't up to code and this woman saying, you know, I'm tapping out.

21:44But clearly something sinister was going on. And I think as a New Yorker, what my main focus is, whether he goes or not, and, you know, Hochul is not doing it as of today. Like, what does the next iteration of the New York City mayoralty look like? So if there's a special election, Cuomo is eyeing that. So then you're going to have someone that a lot of people see as well as a gangster, but an effective one. And is that the line now? Like, we're OK with corruption if you're good at your job. But when you're not so good at your job and you're corrupt, we're not having it. And I'm curious if you were paying attention to this angle.

22:24You know, Adams had spoken out against the Biden administration for the migrant crisis, and he gave a very stirring speech where he said, like, help us out. You can't just do this. You can't saddle us with billions of dollars in resources that we have to spend without giving us the aid that we need and also stopping this crisis. It's not just on the border. It's all across the country. And do you think that that was part of this? Because a lot of people do think they're linked. The worst call you can get in the world, other than obviously something regarding the health of loved ones, I think would be from the person who runs the Southern District.

22:59They're just so smart and so fucking scary and so aggressive. And I think that part of what they do is one of the reasons you prosecute people is obviously justice. They'll uphold the law. But also I think the Southern District is really big on sending messages to people in the finance industry. They go after, they pick a target and they're unafraid, they're unrelenting. It's just a call you don't want to get. But when I read through it, I quite frankly thought it was pretty underwhelming. And it takes me to a couple of places. One, his mistake taking money from a group and then using that to influence government actions that favor them is kind of how the U.S.

23:43government works. For a small amount of money you give to a senator, to a representative, you get access. And if you need help getting something approved, they're there for you. It's always struck me with just a little bit of money in Washington, how much access you can get. Even with foreign influence, though, I feel like that is a line of the sand with this. You stole my thunder. You stole my thunder. I give it back. The problem here is you're not allowed to do it from foreign nationals. That is a bright red line, especially a place like Turkey where a lot of people would argue that they're not an ally of the U.S.

24:22Even though he wasn't spying for them or he wasn't influencing, this was fire safety at their consulate. But nonetheless, you are not supposed to take money from a foreign nation, much less a foreign nation that we're on sort of strange terms with. So that's where, quite frankly, that's where he really fucked up. Where it takes me, though, is that this is a guy who grew up son of a single mother. Never, you know, police chief, probably made a good living, but living in Brooklyn probably never had, you know, a ton of money. And I think it's very easy for these officials to be seduced and start to rationalize.

25:01I'm not excusing it, but I can see how this happens. Oh, it's a plane fare. I get to stay at a nice hotel. I'm not going to do anything that damages America or the city, but oh my God, fire safety? Fuck yeah, just get it done, right? They're going to create jobs or whatever. We want to be welcoming. I can see how in his mind, he rationalized this. And I'm not entirely sure. When I read about this corruption charges, Southern District, I thought it was going to be a lot worse. And where I go though, is that I think we should adopt Singapore's model. And that is, I think we should pay our elected officials a million to$2 million a year.

25:38and have much tighter standards and just say, look, because the bottom line is they don't make a lot of money. So I believe the mayor makes around$258 ,000 a year. Do you think we should increase the compensation for our elected representatives? I'm worried. Let me preface this by saying I'm worried that the mayor of New York and other places is basically going to be these freakishly anomalous, remarkable people focused on public service and millionaires and billionaires. And there'll be no one in the middle. Yeah, I think that this is something that you would get, you know, one of those 90 percent approvals for.

26:11And the people who often say that elected officials are not making enough have their own axe to grind. And it's not really about understanding what the job entails and how important it is. And I'm always struck by the fact that tons of members of Congress in D.C., they have roommates. They share apartments. You know, this is one of the most important jobs in the country. And I'm not saying it isn't fun to have a roomie, but you should be able to afford your own studio apartment near Capitol Hill and also be able to afford to get home to do your constituent work. And you're totally right. Like, Dan Goldman is my congressman.