Trump Furious as MAGA Abandons His Convention!

0:00Donald Trump's midterm convention has a big problem. No one is showing up. Literally, after begging and begging folks to come off the streets, to show up to this Republican midterm convention, they have no one. Empty crowds alike. And it comes as the convention is falling apart even really before it began. See, there is a problem with this convention from the get go. You see, the Trump administration didn't realize. The RNC didn't realize that they put the convention day on the same day as opening night for the NFL. Donald Trump then said, you know how we're going to fix this? We're going to fix this. I'm going to speak on opening night of the NFL. But no one knows who this convention is for, because no one knows that it's even happening. Most Americans don't even realize that there is a whole midterm convention happening in Dallas, Texas today. Major media networks aren't even really touching on it. And right now, inside the arena, it is empty. Empty, empty, empty. And I spoke with Jessica Tarlov today on our weekly podcast about this and a hell of a lot more.

1:00You're going to want to listen. Before we get there, make sure to that subscribe button, get the word out like comment share. Take a look at the arena right now. That's a whole lot of empty seats. I was at the DNC when Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her nomination. I remember when Donald Trump accepted his nomination back in 2024, packed to the brim. Tens of thousands of people in both arenas here. Here, the second and third levels are empty. The first levels in the back are empty. The only places where you really have places that are full are on the floor and in some of the risers close to the stage. And well, I mean, the L has already fallen off the convention stage. Dallas only has one L right now. And they kicked it off with Pastor Jack Graham, who delivered the opening prayer, previously saying, we cannot and will not affirm the moral acceptability of homosexual behavior called for civil disobedience to stop marriage equality. This is the mess that the Republican Party is in.

2:01And why spoke with Jessica Tarla about it and so much more? Take a listen. This is a raging perspective. It is the partners perspective and raging moderates having a proverbial, sub-stack baby every Wednesday today at 1245. Hi. How are you? And if you guys haven't yet bought Jessica Tarla's book, I disagree. It comes out in a matter of day. And less than a week. And less than a week. We are in crunch time. I know. I'm annoying myself. Well, I always annoy myself about this. I actually have like the actual thing sitting here. Looks good. Yeah, it does look good. Let's get into it. Let's do it. Something's happening in Dallas. Yes. A midterms convention. Oh, I thought you were going to say Charlie Kirk's anniversary of his passing. A midterms convention too. Well, that's tomorrow. Yes. And it's also very sad that he was assassinated. So I'm just saying. I'm just saying it. I mean, it's a midterms convention. To be clear.

3:02Yes. It is a midterms convention. Even though it's not actually a convention, because there are no delegates or anything. So Trump, a polluza or whatever is probably the better way to describe it. And it starts today. It's a two day event. A high number of very big deal Republicans, especially those in battleground territory, are skipping the event. The GOP has been offering up free tickets to help fill seats at a time when Trump's approval rating is at an all-time low. And oil hit $100 a barrel again. As the chaos in the Middle East continues to intensify. And we continue to kind of not talk about it. Trump is trying to compete with the NFL kickoff. This actually surprises me from a programming standpoint, because if there is one thing that he does know, it's TV. And why would you do that? I never understood it. I mean, you know what I actually think happened? I think that they royally messed up the dates. Because this year, the NFL, for the first time, is having opening night on a Wednesday, not a Thursday.

4:03Typically, it's every year's on a Thursday. This year, they have one on Wednesday. And they have another game tomorrow on a Thursday, because you have two teams playing on Thursday. So just blowing up both nights of your convention. Correct. So I think whoever scheduled it is not a football fan or is just maybe probably used chat GPT to find the dates. Do you think of beta male scheduled, the Dallas midterms convention? I would not put a past them. Did Mike Rogers schedule the midterms convention? Is he even speaking? No. No, I don't think he's on the list so far. Susan Collins not going. She's in a tough race. He doesn't make it easy for people that actually have to appeal to moderates and independence, let alone put you up lefties. And also he's not doing that hot with MAGA at this moment anyway. What are you hearing about the vibes at the event thus far? Rewarding has been trickling in. I'm sure you also have some sources on the ground.

5:04Vibes are sad. I mean, it's a bit of a kind of people just don't understand why they're doing it. And folks on the ground, in a way, there are just as many Democrats on the ground for counter programming as there are Republicans going to this convention. And it just doesn't make much sense, Trump's calling it the greatest thing ever, the biggest rally ever. I mean, he's doing his thing. But I'm going to be honest with you, I think these ratings come out tonight. And I think it's going to be so bad. I don't know who's watching it. I don't even know who knows that it's happening. Most people don't even know what's happening. And then the people that know what's happening aren't watching it. I'm not staying up until 11 p.m. watching him speak. Not going to happen. Well, so. If I'm staying up, it's because the US Open insists on cramming all of the matches into... I have so many thoughts on that. I'd rather... I'd rather yell about that. I was really sad to miss the show match. Yeah. I can't like, 330 ending though.

6:06Yeah, I mean, the US Open... I mean, this is not new. You know that. It's been happening. I know, but it's worse. Yeah. Then, I mean, I rarely... I don't know if there has been a 330 end. Anyway, it was very exciting. No. And this all... All American male semi is pretty cool. What? Okay, so this is about Trump. And now the midterms is fully about Trump. And that's how he wants it. He says he's going to go to 35 swing locations. At the same time, that swing state Republicans are literally stripping him off of their websites. How do they play this? Because I live in perpetual fear of whatever the October surprise might be. That's coming. And, you know, I never want to count chickens before they hatch. I know that Democrats still have problems with voters. There's still not a lot of enthusiasm for them. And what we're offering, a lot of it is just, I hate this guy.

7:11So I need to go in a different direction. And you guys are the vessel for that. So what do you think? I imagine it's just like greatest hits at this rally. But how do you expect the next six-ish weeks to play out? It actually doesn't feel like the election is only six weeks away. It's 55 days. It's crazy. To me, it feels like this election is like months away. It does not feel like it's right around the corner. And it is. I mean, I think that I've set it from the beginning. I still think it's going to be a closer election than many people realize. At the end of the day, like, the country converges as we get towards election day. It's very rare that you see it become even a bigger split between voters between today and November. And I think that you'll see them kind of come closer. I think Democrats will win the House of Representatives. I don't think they'll have an issue doing that. But I think the Senate's going to be a much, it's a harder challenge. I still think. I've said this on, I think, almost every single live we do is that people like James Talleriko, they have to run like their underdogs because they are underdogs. Yeah. Ken Paxton is still the favorite in this race.

8:13And people are going to say, well, look at polls. I don't really look at these polls, especially in Senate races, because every single, if you look at, especially like, for example, the Fox News poll, which is rated as an A poll, every single summer shows Democrats leading in all these states. And then every single fall Democrats lose in every single state. And so I don't look at polls. I look at what's happening on the ground and on the ground right now. I think everyone, I think Democrats need to put in the work to win. Yeah. I mean, I don't doubt that. I totally agree. And James Talleriko is running like he's behind. And I mean, really he's just within the margin of error anyway. I do wonder if this Dallas situation will give Paxton a lift that he needs. Or if really everyone is just like, please open up the piggy bank. That's all that we care about at this point, because the money that's leaking out, it's very small amounts. If you think about how much it costs to run these races, where they're like, oh, amazing. Like dear leader is handing out money from Maga Inc. and it's like $4 million, which James Talleriko can raise in a tweet.

9:14Well, I don't know if you saw, but Ken Paxton, you know, he's like really worried. So number one, he talked about women in a positive way on Twitter. And he's getting completely flamed for that. Like, what do you say about us? So there was a report out that said that in the last last month or whatever, women made up about 95% of those who were hired in the job market. Oh, yeah. It was. And Ken Paxton said she was like, oh, wow, thanks to President Trump, women are leading the charge. And the internet, the Republican party blew up on him. They're like, how dare you like this is sexism? Like you are support. It was crazy. Like genuinely like crazy. But so that was number one. I was like, okay, interesting. He's like talking nice about women. That's how I know there is a issue there. But then I saw this tweet last night and now again this morning, he's giving out seven million free eggs to Texans. The office of Ken Paxton, the attorney general's office, the official account found seven million eggs and they're giving them to Texans free eggs. You don't just give away free stuff in an election year, six weeks before an election.

10:15That just doesn't just happen. No, and at least make it something more substantive like an entitlement. Like give people back their Obamacare subsidies. They would like that more than some eggs. But it is interesting, you know, as a comp too, because James Talleriko is doing this big grocery drive as his counter programming. So maybe Paxton is trying to get in the fridge if you know what I mean. I know what you mean. Okay. Well, it was pretty obvious that one. Okay. It is the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the 9-11 attacks this Friday, which feels very surreal to me. New York City mayors are on on Donnie is releasing more than 170,000 pages of city records documenting the government's response to 9-11 and its aftermath, launching the city's first public portal dedicated to 9-11 records. But as the commemoration begins, we're also seeing controversy. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani says he doesn't want mom Donnie at Friday's ceremony and just yesterday Trump falsely claimed that firefighters carried him away from the site of the attacks.

11:17We have been going back and forth about Trump's free wielding story. But I want to start with the release of these city records, you know, just up front and for people who don't know this about me, I grew up near the Twin Towers. My family was evacuated after 9-11 and my dad passed away from a 9-11 related cancer. And so getting these records is incredible and deeply personal for lots of people, not just, you know, folks in the first responder orbit, but there were millions of people affected by this, you know, commuters that were sent back to their offices that weren't safe. Obviously, the people who lived in the area and then relatives of those folks. Since the news of this broke, was it Tuesday night, the Monday night that it came out, you know, people have been flooding the 9-11 victims site to register because there's,

12:18you know, going to be a whole new wave of people that they're going to want to track and follow their health outcomes. Because we know, obviously, what happened to older people that were living within the zone that had these unhealthy levels of asbestos that Christine Todd Whitman and other important officials said were safe for us, but now tracking what happens to the children of 9-11. So, you know, people in my age bracket and even younger, I was, like I said, a senior in high school. And so I think that this is a huge win for transparency and for the 9-11 community and the, you know, seeing that this is what Mamdani is doing when there were several mayors before him who would have had the opportunity. I'm not saying maybe the 170,000 that are coming out now and apparently there are more still to come, but something because this community and John Stewart was talking about it with Mamdani standing behind him, this community has been begging for answers.

13:22And if they're scared about the money that they're going to have to shell out in the lawsuit, it's like, that's coming for you anyway. And there already is a fund for people who were affected by the terror attacks in this way. I don't know. It feels like a big, you know, people against the elite's moment and that there's some silver lining or shimmer of light for the people. Oh, 100%. I mean, listen, I think that this should have been done a long time ago. These files should have been released if the mayors had them. And I think shout out major props to Mamdani for doing it. I think the officials who knowingly withheld information back in 2001 from the public, I mean, I think that they lawsuits, I mean, to the extent that there is a criminal prosecution angle, I'd be open to that. I mean, like, you need to significantly investigate the folks in charge on 9-11 and in the aftermath after 9-11.

14:23And those first couple of comments. And you need to look at those kinds of appeals and the complaints that folks that identify with real estate benefits at 11. Really what comes about in the folks and then they come to this average poll that are at 12. Maybe look at the bad ones. The complaint that was born in 2014 is not about the right financial aid individual laws, or a shipך roll. ullary right. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm glad that there's some transparency. Quick interruption because this episode is sponsored by chapter. I've worked with chapter for a long time. It's a great company right now. Prices are too damn high for a lot of Americans. And where prices are really high? Healthcare. Healthcare prices are high because people aren't on the right Medicare plan. Well, chapter compares every Medicare plan nationwide for free to recommend coverage based on your doctors, prescriptions, and budget. Call 212-200-3531-212-200-3531 or visit chapter.com-bakslashpartners and take a look.

15:30And if you're on the right plan, they'll keep you on the right plan. If you're not on the right plan, they'll help save on average up to $1,100 and switch you on to the right Medicare plan. So take a look. I highly recommend. What do you think of the group of 9-11 families? And it is in no way a majority opinion, but they are victim's families who don't want mom Donnie there and councilwoman Vicki Paladino has been all over TV talking about how he shouldn't be there. What's your feeling on it? Well, listen, I think that the families of survivors or families of victims on 9-11 have every right to feel however they want. And I think that it's in a similar vein that you oftentimes have, for example, in mass tragedy events where you have a mass shooting at a school, you'll have families going after elected officials who think that the elected officials don't do enough. So families have every right to feel however they want. Vicki Paladino, that's a very different story.

16:31She's what I feel like she's weaponizing what these families are saying for political gain. She's a very known Republican congresswoman. She's also said some very, very bad things in the past. So I separate the two. Once politics, one, the families can say whatever they want. They can feel whatever they want. It is fully their prerogative whether or not they want the mayor there, but at the end of the day, he is the mayor of New York City. And he himself has not, at least that I'm aware of, done anything to degrade what happened on 9-11 in terms of the terrorist attack of itself. Yeah, it feels a little Islamophobia to me, which I don't like to see. And Mamdani didn't interview where he seemed genuinely pained in thinking that there are 9-11 families who don't want him there and said, you know, I love my city and I love my country. And I wish that they didn't have this other layer of upset on top of the pain that

17:35they are already experiencing and have experienced for 25 years at this point. It feels like a very difficult thing for them to be wrestling with. And also there is an ugliness to it. Paladin knows politics about it, but to also turn this into the argument against the DSA left and did he ever stand with Hassan Piker and whatever? 9-11 just isn't about that. Well, I also think history is really repeating itself. And people often say history repeats itself, but in the post 9-11 era, Islamophobia became very rampant. I wasn't really cognizant back then to realize what was happening. I mean, I was a 34 years old. Now knowing what happened back then and hearing from folks who were hearing from my elders who were my age back then. Okay, we don't need to be party elders now. We're just millennials.

18:35No, what I'm saying is it really is unfortunate how we are seeing another rise in Islamophobia today. We are now another forever war in the Middle East. It is history repeating itself. I know that we have other stuff to get to, but I really want 9-11 to mean something to younger generations. I understand this is how life works and with the passage of time, every generation has the thing that happened to them. But it feels like we have to make more of an effort for 9-11 to be a present part of American history and American existence. And for people who are younger in your generation talking about being mired again in another Middle Eastern war, they don't necessarily know the intricacies of how we ended up in that position that we were even going into Iraq and Afghanistan, the WMD report that wasn't.

19:41And I think there's obviously a tremendous amount of heartbreak and sorrow and tragedy out of 9-11, but there is also so much good in terms of the American spirit and this sense of patriotism that came out of that tragedy where people from all over the country just got in their cars and started driving. And we saw some of this with COVID as well. But I know like for our family, we opened up our home to first responders who were traveling and didn't have some order to go to the bathroom. We delivered meals to first responders from the restaurants in the neighborhood. And it was the first time that I really felt like I was a part of American fat brick. I wasn't just a New Yorker. So I want to ask you, yes, then, how do you, what is your recommendation for that? Because I find it very difficult to talk to young people, even people like my age. I was literally two years old when 9-11 happened. I don't remember where I was on 9-11.

20:41I don't remember. You were at daycare. Right. I mean, exactly. And so how do you tell a younger generation to care about what happened on 9-11 when they don't actually know what happened on 9-11? Like they didn't live through it. I mean, I think that contextualizing your experience using it as a reference point, because like you said, history is repeating itself to some degree and there are knock-on effects from 9-11 that are present today, like how the global world order works. I mean, part of the dismantling of all of these alliances, everyone goes back to the fact that when we said jump, everybody said how high with us. And yes, people from other countries were on those planes. But in general, it was because we were all part of something united by these values. And I get it that that's why some people who didn't live through these things kind of glaze over when you talk about the importance of the World War II alliance or what NATO means

21:44or what it looked like as a unified fighting force after 9-11, even though a lot of it was obviously predicated on false information. But I think that drawing those connections to today is really meaningful. And I guess the real world affects it, not just your feelings about it, because it is hard to get people to care, especially with such short attention spans. Like with the Holocaust, I think about how many millions of hours of footage people have consumed about it, where they would actually want to go into those listening rooms and visit those museums. And the 9-11 Memorial Museum is one of the most important monuments that we have in this country. If anyone who is watching this has not been, you need to go and not just visit the reflecting pools, but go through that museum. And it will change you. And it will connect you to other Americans in a way that you didn't expect. So I think more education that way, more trips, obviously through that museum.

22:46But the contextualization of our experience today with the parallels of them, but also the knock-on effects of the 9-11 era, I think is a way to do it. Just talk about it more. It's like a loved one who passed. Right. And here if you don't talk about them. And in a non-political way. I mean, I think that's really important. Like it's apolitical. Actually, yes. I mean, you can name that at Bush, but it is, yes, it was able to, it was like the events of 9-11 apolitical. You can talk about Bush after 9-11, but what happened on 9-11 to me is an apolitical event. Yeah. Came for everybody, no matter how you voted. Now for a story that seems almost unbelievable. Trump's giving some of his White House aides very generous Christmas gifts. New disclosure saw that he gave three young staffers $45,000 each, including Natalie Harb, who was rarely more than a few feet away from the president. A former White House ethics lawyer says the payments may violate federal law and the

23:49White House insists they were simply holiday gifts. I get the shittiest Hanukkah gifts. Let me tell you. Really? Well, I mean, it could be $45,000, I guess. No, I know. Can I talk to the other guy? No, I get lovely gifts, but like, what is going on here? In the list of corruption and grift out of this White House, I actually put this at the lowest possible grounds. Of course, it's not like world liberty financial or something, but it's fucked up. No, I even think like Trump having a hot dog obsession is higher than this. Did you not hear about that? So this is actually to me an even bigger grift because at his Trump National Golf Club, right outside of Washington, DC, he has an open balance for hot dogs that he buys for himself, secret service, and anyone who's golfing with him charges it to taxpayer dollars. And then collects all of that taxpayer dollars because it goes right back to his club. And he specifically does it because he loves the hot dogs at his club.

24:50That actually feels so personal to me. I don't think you know this about me, but hot dogs are my favorite food. They were also my pregnancy food. And my husband would come home from work. It was dead of wonder because I had Cleo, my older daughter in December. And he texted me like, where are you? And I was like, I walked to Katz's to get hot dogs. And like, she like eight, nine months pregnant. I would be the only one in line with all of like the Uber Eats drivers essentially doing pick up like that and just house them, like walking back. And I do not live on the lower east side. It is, it is like a 40 minute walk she got from my house. And that was also my exercise while my body was breaking and service to my beautiful children. That is a fantastic story. Imagine you have $45,000. How many hot dogs you buy? They're pretty expensive now, but that's a lot of dogs. You're right on the first scale. It's cool. And it's also like I also my other thing, I don't like how the media is like,

25:50oh, it's going to Natalie Hartford. It didn't just go to Natalie Hartford. But actually went to three of his officials, including Margot Martin and one other person. So like, yeah, he's giving them out. Okay, he's giving them out of bonus. Like, great. Thank you. Like, Mary Christmas. Have your bonus. Move on. Could a violate federal ethics laws? Actually, it could. I mean, you can get any lawyer to say on the record that's something violates federal ethics laws. I don't think this will violate federal ethics laws. If it is purely a gift, he can give a gift. Like if he gave Caroline Levin a $45,000 trying to set for the birth of her daughter. Fine. I mean, like, is it odd? Sure, but is it legal? Sure. I mean, like, I think there are so many more important things in this world. Has anyone ever told you that you're no fun? I mean, what do you want me to say? Do you? Oh, how about this? Lake Natalie. Do you want me to say like what did Natalie Hartpad to do? You think that $45,000 from the president? I'm not going to go there. But that is what that is what people on Twitter say. And I don't do that. I say above the fray. At the partners perspective, we're above the fray. OK. I, we have to go to question soon.

26:51But we have to talk about the AI apocalypse situation. The one senior, it's not just one senior. This is just the most recent warning. The sky posted that he quit and says that he now believes that there's more than a 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade. And he's not alone. Several anthropic researchers are publicly warning that AI could become uncontrollable. I don't know how to seriously take this stuff. I know the IPO is what is it like two and a half weeks away as well. Like what is going on here? Are we going to live to you more hot dogs? I don't know. I mean, so I actually initially thought when I heard this, I thought of the IPO. And I was like, my first thought was like, well, this is a marketing ploy. Right ahead of the IPO to bring attention to anthropic. But then on the other end, if this dude actually resigned, what she did, he was an employee, he resigned. He just lost a ton of money just by resigning. Because if you resigned before the IPO, you're going to lose out on a lot of money that the company is going to get when it goes public.

27:52And so he doesn't actually, he has an incentive to stay post IPO. To me, I think he's just saying what everyone has been thinking for the longest time. Like we are in another a sky net. Like this is sky net in real life. Like terminator is rising. Like we are seeing all the alarm bells going off. And it's not just like they're talking about it. But we're seeing it in action. We saw a chat GPT hack into a hugging face. We saw in Germany thousands of AI LLM swarmed together and create a wiki page and talk to each other about how to bypass human regulation. Like we see this happening in real life. Yesterday, AI was able to completely beat all 48 of the, I'm not a robot games. So we no longer need that. It is terrifying. Because I have been signing the alarm about this for the longest time. We are injecting GROC, Elon Musk's AI into the Department of Defense and into other government agencies. Imagine if GROC was able to get into our nuclear program and just say,

28:54click, click boom. And then we have a nuclear weapon taking off. Like I would add to the mix since you did so many classic films, minority report. Because apparently anthropic is also working on this pre-crime surveillance system. Yeah, I'm on control with all of it, but mostly that it would be GROC. I know that they had the anthropic fight. So N-Clawed got the target wrong that killed all those school girls and Iraq and around the initial strike that was at 178 school girls, which nobody seems to care about anymore. All right, questions from the audience. Kate, what's your opinion on getting rid of the filibuster if Democrats regain control in 2029? I mean, I think it's bound to happen. What is my opinion on it? I think that if one side does it, the other side will do it. It's going to happen. Like they're going to do it with it at some point. It's just a matter of time, whether it's Democrats or even potentially Republicans before 2029.

29:57So for me, this is one of those topics that I've had to change my perspective on or kind of moderate how I think about it. Because I was too mushy, I guess, and like, too into traditions and the rules. You have to fight fire with fire. And I think it is inevitably coming as well. And I think all the 2028 nominees are going to be running on it as well as, you know, expanding the core DC and Puerto Rico, etc. Ms. Handled wants to know, is there a particular question you wish journalists would ask Trump that they usually don't or avoid asking? So one question, it's the way they ask questions. So I think that you got to get Donald Trump on his back foot. So for example, with the whole candidate tariffs thing, I would have loved if a journalist in the Oval Office was like, you know what, you just renamed Lake Ontario. Did you know Ottawa actually voted to rename Trump Avenue Taco Avenue? Like, give him the pointed questions that he doesn't want to answer and get him on his back foot.

30:59It may seem trivial, but those are the questions where you're going to get the best reactions out of him. And you actually will hear what he truthfully has to say. Most of these journalists are like kind of like walking on eggshells around him. And it doesn't really, you don't get anything out of him. Well, I happen to think that also if you ask him a point of question, you're not going to get anything out of him anyway. Sure. Because he has no problem looking you in the eye and going exactly to where it is that he's more comfortable. Foreign journalists do a fantastic job. You see that at all of these summits where I don't know. I mean, I'm very into building bravery. It's a lot of what I disagree as about. You are there. But I watch some of these journalists and I'm like, you are such a bad ass that you just stood up like at the G7 and unloaded like that. Okay, Zach asks, what are your thoughts on the newly announced Elizabeth Holmes documentary, the Nathan Fielder one? I'm so ready for it. I'm so. I can't believe he lived with her. I'm so crazy.

32:00She is such a creepy person. I am so ready for this documentary. And I love the fact that she's not going to profit a penny off it. I saw there are a bunch of AI versions of it. But Brian, my husband showed me one where it's AOC's face and the fat JD Vance with the curly hair is Nathan Fielder. Like as she is like, why would I lie to you? Anyway, I was really good. I saw this one this morning that was Sam Altman as Elizabeth Holmes. Hey, folks. Thanks so much for watching. Feel free to add this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you watch for the latest breaking news and daily hits. Throughout the day, make sure to follow, subscribe. See you soon for more.