Good morning. I want to thank President Trump. I know. I feel as if we took the 11th grade debate team coach and said, 'Oh, you're Republican and you have blonde hair and attractive. Let's make you press secretary.' I mean, she's really not the spokesperson. She's the opening act. So, you know, Levitt left to spend more time with her kids. The joke is that Zachariah's taken the job to spend less time with the truth.
Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway
and I'm Jessica Tarlov.
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All right, Jess, let's check in on some of the key races we're watching with just 19 days until election day. Here are where things stand. Cali puts the odds of Democrats retaking the Senate at 62%.
I have trouble believing that number, but anyways.
Well, that's because we're bedwetters.
We are. Yeah.
Yeah. Or that's what I'm telling myself because my bed is wet and I don't want to think of what else is happening there. Just kidding. Maybe cut that out. I don't know.
I get up four times a night unfortunately now to not wet my bed. All right. So you go back to the polls. YouGov polling shows 53% of likely voters in Senate states favor Democrats. Okay. A new Washington Post poll shows Troy Jackson with a narrow lead over Susan Collins. New York Times polling suggests moderates are finding ways to distance themselves from the party's far-left brand. And in deep red Kansas, Couch has the odds of Adam Hamilton pulling off an upset at 37%.
Take us — I would just love some color here. Talk a little bit first. The one I'm most worried about, I don't know about you, is Maine. Talk about Maine.
Yeah. So, this was one of the polls that was favorable for Troy Jackson, but in the majority of them, Susan Collins has a slight lead, which is where I think the race stands. If I had to bet today, I would guess that we don't flip Maine and that we're able to pull off some sort of miracle in like an Iowa or Texas. And that's just pretty insane of a place to be considering the composition of these states. I mean, Maine is a blue state that likes Susan Collins. The other states are red states that haven't liked a Democrat since Barack Obama. So, a little bit concerning. And I meant that about Iowa, not about Texas, who did not vote for Obama. I think Susan Collins continues to be sneaky good. And I just don't think Troy Jackson is connecting with people that well, quite honestly.
You know, there were huge problems with Graham Platner. We talked about that and saw that in the primary. There wasn't a good alternative like a Jared Golden for people. And people were obviously hungry for something to the left of the quote-unquote establishment. But I just haven't seen that excitement for Troy Jackson in the same way that you're seeing for other Democrats across the map. I think that the New York Times chart about all of these candidates being able to run away from the far-left branding is absolutely fascinating. Raging moderates out in the wild, doing well in these races and also doing excellent work in making positions that even, you know, a few years ago might seem like anathema to core voters, independents, even right-leaning independents just feel sane for the moment, like, you know, raising taxes and making sure that people have affordable healthcare. I think that will be the most seismic shift in our politics, that talking about the need for some sort of universal coverage is not as frightening as it used to be.
The Telerico stuff seems like it's died down. Obviously it's been proven over and over and over again that he was not in a mental health facility in Ohio. Now there's Ring cam footage. The New York Times did a whole deep dive. He was home at Austin being sick because the guy has diabetes and got the flu. Lo and behold. So I don't know if lawsuits are going to start flying about that one, but it is curious timing because the Wall Street Journal had a very interesting piece of oppo on Ken Paxton from a couple years ago that he was seen partying New Year's Eve in Dubai with his mistress. I don't know if it's the same mistress that he was in London for the 4th of July with or this is a different one. I don't know if he's like a one-woman mistress man. Is that what you call it? When you're so committed to your mistress or if you just fly around with whoever. But he was there with her and with two fugitives from US law. So that's a pretty interesting one.
And it's funny timing, this whole like 'look over here, James Talarico is getting on a private jet with a Republican donor to go to an Ohio mental health facility.' And the Wall Street Journal comes out with this piece about what a slimeball Ken Paxton continues to be. And also those fugitives donated, I think, $190,000 to the Ken Paxton campaign. The guy is rotten. That doesn't mean that Talarico is a shoo-in to be able to pull this off, of course. But if there is someone deserving of your ethics ridicule, it is certainly Ken Paxton. And another poll today, Gina Ortiz Jones, who we're going to have on Raging Moderates next week, up on Governor Abbott, and it would just be the coolest if she was able to pull that off. Is that going — are there any races I didn't cover that you're wondering about?
I just want to double-click on Maine. I would argue that Troy Jackson has been an enormous disappointment. A couple of months ago he was up around 65% on Kouchi. As of now, Collins is at 44%, Jackson is at 56%.
When I saw the debate, I mean, maybe he just needed to show up with chest hair and not be, you know, not be accused of rape. Maybe that's enough. I thought she cooked him in the debate. I thought he came across as really like brightening up a room by leaving it. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I thought his line about road salt was good. And, you know, spurred a lot of memes and we know that memes matter. But votes matter more and we have, you know, I feel like we're just trying to prop this up as something that perhaps it isn't and people should be focusing their attention, you know, in Maine, of course, but looking all over the map, making sure that Peggy Flanagan is good in Minnesota. Sarah Longwell and I were talking about that last night. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. The way that the GOP is spending their money indicates that they see the writing on the wall in North Carolina. In Georgia, apparently Democrats are also pulling their money out because they're that confident in Jon Ossoff. And last night, Keisha Lance Bottoms running for governor — the Republican Rick Jackson didn't even stand up. We had an empty podium situation, which doesn't bode well for him if he doesn't even want to stand there for an hour and answer questions. But I would largely agree with you about Maine and it's disappointing because that's a blue state and you should have blue representatives if that's where the populace is.
Well, hopefully he's a, you know, just an okay candidate, gets elected and ends up being a great —
a great lawmaker. Who knows? I was shocked. I thought she actually looked — I mean, I think I've created my own image in my mind that, you know, she's essentially Dianne Feinstein from Maine at this point. But I thought she came across — I actually thought the debate — that she won the debate. Let's just do a quick swing through Michigan where Elissa Slotkin has him at 67%.
So two-thirds likelihood that Slotkin is going to pull this off. Your thoughts?
I mean, it's what the prediction markets are saying. The polling, you know, has him up most cases within the margin of error. It's a swing state. Alyssa Slotkin only won by 22,000 votes. Granted, that was a big Trump year. This is a very different environment and Mike Rogers is running away from a lot of poor positions,
like saying the tariffs are okay, voting for the war in Iran. It's going to come down to consolidating the support that was backing Haley Stevens. And you have an event that was going on this morning. I was just looking at footage from it with Black voters from Detroit who are backing Slotkin talking about how Mike Rogers has never cared about them and doesn't care if their right to vote is preserved. So, you know, Haley Stevens is working her butt off. Alyssa Slotkin, Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson, who's doing very well performing at the top of the ticket. She's running for governor against John James, who I don't think is a particularly strong candidate, but I would imagine a close-ish race. And yeah, I would give the edge to Slotkin right now for sure.
I don't think I've ever seen a candidate as strong as Talarico. I mean,
He really is. I think he just acquits himself with such dignity and generosity and grace and his ability to weave his spirituality into politics without — I mean, it's just so — he's just reminded us that the Bible didn't say anything about abortion or, you know, basically cutting off welfare. And he's like, 'This just couldn't be more —' A, the Bible doesn't talk about abortion, and B, you know, it talks about loving thy neighbor, and he just is able to just flip the Bible dramatically towards, I think, a really compelling vision of what Democratic politics are, you know, at its best supposed to represent. What if you were to try and give two races that you think will shock people, like your — you know, just Harbaugh shows up, shows to the Five, just glowing and just like in your face and spikes the ball on the desk. What would those two races be that we have an outside shot? And I think you mentioned a couple things before that you didn't think that it would just really send a chill down the spine of the GOP.
Well, I think what's going on in Iowa, with obviously Rob Sand, who's just like a miracle candidate, and then Josh Turk — I mentioned this yesterday when I was podding with Sarah Longwell — that Josh Turk actually cut a border ad, like got border chiefs in Texas to support his candidacy. And it shows that he also understands the way that these issues work. That you have folks inland that have been fed some degree of lies about, you know, how Democrats think about immigration and that we would just leave the border wide open, but also the reality that there are people who have crossed this border that have gotten into the country illegally and then have committed crimes against American citizens and that that's unacceptable. So, I absolutely love that from Josh Turk. I think that would be, you know, a big chill down your spine situation. Also, I saw that Republicans are pulling money out of Iowa's first congressional race, which is a big deal. I don't think that we talk about Roy Cooper enough in North Carolina, the kind of normal campaign that he is running. But Mary Peltola, I guess, would be my other chill down your spine, winning in Alaska.
So, I'd go Iowa and Alaska, you know, Texas because we already talked about Texas. Anyway,
it does feel like the Republicans are reaching when the kind of campaign strategies they're implementing right now are to accuse people of liking women's basketball or being in a mental institution. It does feel like they're kind of — they're grasping right now.
All right, let's get into the regular news. Trump is continuing to defend his decision to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel despite the action causing division with our allies in Europe and with many Republicans back here at home. The plan has Russia immediately supplying around 300,000 tons of diesel followed by increasingly larger amounts in part depending on the condition of Russia's refineries. The total amount proposed over the next six months would cover just about nine days' worth of US diesel use. Jess, this is interesting, right? Some Republicans have actually broken from this. What do you think ends up happening here?
Well, I think that we should pause to first reflect upon the fact that in a best-case scenario, this is a few days of relief and that no serious analyst thinks this is actually going to affect the price of diesel. So, this is a big PR stunt, which is Trump's favorite thing. You know, 'I'll give you $5,000. I'm going to sign all the checks in huge font and I'm allegedly, you know, going to make it easier to be a trucker or a farmer in America.' But none of those things are going to happen. The Republicans that are pushing back, they're the ones that you would largely expect. You know, you have the strongly worded note from the seven senators and it's like the Tom Tillises of the world. I'm sure if Lindsey Graham were alive, he would be hopping mad and pushing back as well. The idea though, which seems to be correct, and that this bipartisan group of senators is pushing forward to say — Susan Collins is in there as well, obviously in a tight race — is that it's illegal to do this and that because of the sanctions ban against buying Russian energy started in 2022, that you can't — you literally just can't do this.
And I'll be interested to see if they get anywhere with this because there have been a lot of things that a few members of the Senate and the House have said, 'Oh, you're not allowed to do that.' Like, 'You can't tariff people just because it's Tuesday.' And, you know, 'You can't take us into war and then keep us there without any sort of re-upping of congressional authorization.' And Trump has basically just plowed through all of that and said like, 'I don't give an F what you've got to say.' This one might be so unpopular that they could get somewhere with it. And something that stuck out to me that I wanted to mention to you, and I didn't know this before I started researching for the show, that Putin actually just released Russia's 2027 budget, and there's a 27% increase for the military. And when Trump is out there saying, 'Oh, this war's got to end. This is what everybody wants. It's, you know, it's Zelensky that's standing in the way of all of this.' And you look at a 27% increase in the military budget from the Russians. Like, you got to think like these guys are going for as long as physically possible and even perhaps beyond the bounds of what's physically possible considering the axis of evil that they're involved in. They'll just keep importing people from other countries that don't care about their people, you know, as little as the Russians do. So I thought that was interesting and I hadn't seen that or known about the Russian budget.
Yeah. So I'll bring this back to me. Right out of business school, I started a strategy firm and we used to do scenario planning where we would take a board or a management team offsite and my job, being angry and depressed as a function of my resting life, was to come up with risks. Like, what are the risks to the business? There's risks — you know, the fun stuff is risks to the upside. How can we triple the market cap in five to seven years? And I would talk about risks to the downside and things you need to be mindful of. And typically the risks to the downside are things you never see coming, right? We didn't see two planes slamming into the World Trade Center. We didn't see a pandemic. The risks I see right now, or a big risk we're not talking about, is Russia's economy right now is unsustainable. Its rates are at 14%. Their GDP is shrinking. War spending is about 20% of the budget. I mean, that's just striking. And the thing about these dictators or autocrats, when they fall, almost no one's expecting it. No one thought Assad was going to fall. No one saw Gaddafi fall. It's like how Mark Twain described going bankrupt: slowly, then suddenly.
And if Putin — if there were to be a power struggle and Putin were to find a window on the ninth floor, we don't know what would happen there. This is a — you know, this nation has the second most nukes. You don't know what hardliners would potentially take over. The potential for tumult at the top or an attempt to consolidate power and maybe a tactical nuke if all of a sudden — what happens when Ukraine lights all of Moscow on fire and Putin feels like he's losing his grip because there's no democratic election or I don't think there's a nice retirement home for him in Odessa or in Paris. I think his losing power involves a window for him. So I think that is a fairly big risk. Also, as an October surprise — and it would be a good thing globally, but it would be weird for the election — I think there's a non-zero probability that before November 3rd, something happens in Iran.
I mean, the purchasing power of Iranians has gone from $320 a month to $80 a month. The sanctions are actually taking a really heavy toll on Iranian citizens. And while the IRGC is this kind of distributed octopus that grows new tentacles when one is cut off, I think we're underestimating the likelihood that that regime could fall. So there are just so many, so many risks. Back to your point about just how symbolic this is — about the whole six-month deal amounts to about nine days of US diesel. We are a diesel exporter. We're the largest producer in the world of diesel. Second, a distant second, is Russia. This whole deal is about one day of global demand.
What this is is symbolic. This is us saying — or this is the president saying — I'm supporting Russia over — I'm supporting the invader as opposed to the nation that is bravely fighting off an invader. It's ineffective. It's symbolic, but it is powerful in the sense that America is seen as giving comfort to our enemies and betraying our allies.
Vladimir Putin with his sanctions relief. Yeah, it's a huge puff up his chest moment, right? Where everyone is out there talking about what a bad guy he is. You know, we're all like, all eyes on Mark Carney, you know, this beacon of democracy and freedom and leadership and defending his people. And then Vladimir Putin's like, 'Oh, your old friend actually — like, he's in my back pocket, not in yours.'
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So, moving on. Ukrainian drone strikes over the past week have hit multiple data centers belonging to Russian internet giant Yandex, knocking them offline after Cloudflare showed a drop in Yandex bot traffic. This is my favorite story of the week because I feel like it's validation for my paranoia over the last three years, which doesn't mean I'm wrong. Some people suggested that the strikes caused a drop in Russian social media bot activity, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a European member of parliament whose tweet went viral. But experts responded that the lost traffic largely came from automated search crawlers, not Kremlin-linked disinformation bots. I'm going with the bots going up in smoke. Troll farm operations were unaffected and experts warned that suggesting otherwise could create a dangerous false sense of security ahead of the midterms.
All of a sudden the Alberta separatist site went dead. Yandex, Yandex go boom. Alberta separatist — a very divisive issue in a western economy. They go dark. Anyways, any thoughts on this, Jess?
Well, I think that the point about how we need to make sure that we stay alert to what's going on is what's most important here and that we don't want to be lulled into this false sense of security that maybe like things are better online and
And there are so many conflicting reports going back and forth. There are people with enormous accounts and huge amounts of influence, people, you know, with great experience working in the region who have gotten this wrong and then issuing public apologies about it. So, I think that we need to remain vigilant and know that we are dealing with an enormous amount of bad actors who would love to see us in complete chaos come election day and certainly in the aftermath when Trump mounts all of these various lawsuits. And I think that there are three or four more Yandex data centers that Zelensky could target after this. And it was a real shot across Putin's bow. I did not realize how many essential services are linked to Yandex. So basically the banking system gone. So people can't access their money, having trouble withdrawing funds, making payments, carrying out transactions. The taxi drivers and couriers are all on this system as well, so stuff isn't moving around. Restoring these data centers, they're expecting it'll take six months or more. And there is an enormous amount of data that is just permanently lost. And I was reading about the implications for the crypto industry with that as well. Like when you have fake money and then the information system gets blown up, you might not have access to that money anymore. So this is a really big deal. I was talking to a friend of mine who worked in Russia for a long time. I believe one day he'll admit it, that he was also in our intelligence services while he was living over there, and he said, 'I cannot even begin to explain to you how much of Russian society runs on Yandex and what a big deal it is that Zelensky went after them in this way.' So those are my two cents.
Yeah, imagine if Uber went down, ride-hailing apps went down, and when you logged into Wells Fargo or BofA or JPMorgan.com and it showed your account balance as NA. I mean, this is a big deal to your point. And it was — you referenced this earlier and I hate to admit it, but you're right. Or I'll just say you're right. This is basically — you have a bad mailman and you got him fired, but the arsonist is still working. And the most dangerous thing in security is not a threat. It's false confidence that you don't believe the threat exists any longer. And the, you know, these troll farms would like nothing more than for us to believe that the war is over.
I think this war comes to an end if at key moments there's a drone strike against Grindr servers and Republicans are stressed and decide to actually fight this war and support Ukraine. I think taking out the Grindr servers would be a real disruption to the GOP at this point. All right, let's move on.
Wait, can I mention something that —
No, not about — I haven't been on Grindr since I last saw you. So, nothing to update there.
You can use my account anytime.
I mean, my kids use my Netflix. My co-host can use my Grindr account.
But there was this other insane story about the hackers who hit France and forced the temperatures of the fridges and freezers in French supermarkets up to 122 degrees, causing fires and spoiling food. So this is one of the bigger cyber attacks that they've experienced. And I thought like looking at both of these stories and the, you know, the shutdown of Russian society or huge segments of it as a result of the strikes on Yandex, what these hackers are doing in France. And you're always saying this, that warfare is changing faster than we can keep up with. And I don't know, I just found it really striking. A lot of disruption going on around us.
