Welcome, Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
Before we get started, we'll be live streaming all of next week, Monday through Friday, during election week to break down the results as they come in and help you make sense of everything. Make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss any of it. All right, let's get into it. With election day a week away, both parties are bringing out their celebrity firepower. Nicki Minaj is backing Trump and MAGA candidates and is reportedly being considered for press secretary. I did not see that coming.
Oh no, I did not see that coming.
Blinded by her butt, and so you couldn't think of anything else.
I did not see that coming. Meanwhile, Obama is out campaigning for Democrats, mocking Trump's gold-heavy White House renovations. But beyond the celebrity cameos, around 30 million Americans have already voted, and Democrats are making up a larger share of early voters in key Senate races. At the same time, Trump is suing states over election rules, threatening election officers, and offering $1 million for tip-offs that lead to voter fraud convictions. In Alaska, where Trump personally directed a DOJ lawsuit, 538 gives Democrat Mary Peltola a 75% chance that she wins the Senate seat and a 63% chance that Democrats take back control of the Senate. Let's watch Obama's viral video and Trump's response.
I don't know if you've noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations.
He should be on HGTV, and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.
You have to remember the White House. We have to explain that to Obama because he doesn't understand it, because he's not a smart guy. Let me tell you, in my opinion, he's not smart at all. Because the way he ran the country, only a stupid person would run the country like that. Guys like Obama don't see it. You don't see dirt. He doesn't see filth. And for you to say it's a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president.
So to be clear, I don't think it looks like a Cheesecake Factory. I think it looks like an Iraqi White House. Your thoughts, Jess?
Well, my thought today, since I already explored the Cheesecake Factory dimension and whether it's elitist to say something like that since the right is feigning outrage, I've now moved on to the fact that it is very strange that they don't take offense to the Saddam Hussein comment and they're only focusing on the Cheesecake Factory part.
Yeah. Well, to compare his decor to a quick-service restaurant is much more upsetting to him than to be compared to a murderous autocrat, which he aspires to be. He probably kind of thinks of Hussein as a martyr. How so could have been pals.
Moving to the substance here, the people want to know, Jess, how are you feeling one week out? How safe? How does this feel right now? How is the momentum as we're sitting here on a Tuesday?
Nothing is safe, but everything's looking pretty good, right?
And as days go by, because we haven't talked, we were together in Virginia on Friday, which was awesome. We had such a good time at the UVA Center for Politics and had a great conversation with Larry Sabato. And I would say that I was more nauseously optimistic than I am today. I'm still nauseously optimistic, but I'm not like actively throwing up. And that's because we now have even more early voter data coming in, and you know, it has slowed down from peak levels. You see the D number, but I mean, the numbers are enormous, right? Talking about like D-plus-20 advantages in some of these places, but watching the trend lines in Nevada and seeing the marriage between the early vote and the mail-in ballots that are coming in. John Ralston, who's the guy for Nevada, tweeted out last night that it's looking blue. So that's a good thing. Obviously, what's going on in North Carolina, these Texas numbers, still love to see this. If it's younger voters, Latino voters, low-propensity voters, that's really going to be the story of this election, which it very much was the story of the 2024 election, just in the reverse order, you know, breaking for President Trump. So I haven't seen anything that is concerning at this point. Obviously, there's another week of voting to go, and stuff can change. They could have the most monster election day in modern American history, but right now it does seem like their base is just not interested in turning out in the same way. And people who are on the ground like Dana Loesch, who is a conservative commentator, hosts a radio show, she was posting about Tarrant County saying like, where are you guys? Because Republicans can't hold Texas without that. And the Ted Cruz campaign continues to feel good about what they're seeing in the nauseously optimistic part. The one thing that I will say that's different, you know how I have my best friend Sam who's always like, where should I send money? Am I wasting money? She just loves to keep hitting ActBlue, you know, like where should I be giving? And she was giving to Dr. Annie Andrews for a long time, who's running in South Carolina against Nancy Mace. And I've been saying to her, I mean, I don't know, like it's South Carolina, right? And Jaime Harrison lost by 10 points in 2020. So it wasn't losing by 20, 30 points for a very conservative state, but still. And now South Carolina seems fully in play.
Internal polling looking like Annie Andrews is at least tied, ahead in some cases. People are, she got this really important endorsement from two former governors of South Carolina, one Democrat, one Republican. Though I was saying to a colleague that if Nikki Haley came out for her, that would be like the real nail in the coffin. But South Carolina, not a waste of your money. Mississippi, not a waste of your money. Evan McPherson is incredible. I mentioned him last week talking about that ad about pick another protein. He just continues to be fabulous. He's out on the campaign trail with Kamala Harris, who seems to be lighting up crowds down there in Mississippi, which has the largest Black voting population in the country. So we're going to say Kansas, Mississippi, not a waste of your money. There was another really good one, Alaska obviously, but Mary Peltola up to a 75% chance is something. I'm curious about what happens with the lawsuit and what they're going to do with that, because I brought it up yesterday on The Five and I got a considerable amount of pushback for saying that this was obviously them prebutting the fact that they're going to lose, and that the way the ballot is, it's so clear who the Dan Sullivan is, who's the Republican, and who the other Dan Sullivan is. And my colleagues jumped down my throat about it, and even Dana Perino, you know, so this wasn't Greg or Jesse was saying, you know, come on, this has to be a setup from the Democrats to have another guy with exactly the same name. So I'm curious to see where all of that goes. But in general, I'm feeling pretty good and feeling a bit better about Maine, actually.
Why do you feel better about Maine?
A few more high-quality polls have come out. But it just looks like the country is trending bluer at this moment. And Maine is a blue state that has just reelected Susan Collins 57 times. And so maybe if this is just the nationwide trend and Troy Jackson isn't lighting the house on fire, that people will just be like, 'This is fine.' You know?
What do you think? Well, it does feel like the thing that surprised me is that typically what you find is when one party has momentum, it starts to tighten at the end, that there's this center of gravity around which both parties circle and then ultimately they kind of both get pulled in closer towards the median. And what seems, and granted maybe my algorithm is selecting the things I want to hear, but it feels as if it's not tightening. If anything, it feels like the Democrats are expanding their lead, and you know, places like Kansas are in play. Trump's inflation approval is at 22% versus Biden's at 29% heading into his own bruising midterm. That's the stat that kind of jumps out to me. If you were to try and apply the cleanest apples-to-apples decline in modern midterm data, it's the number that actually predicts turnout, not the gold ballroom jokes. When celebrities get involved, it motivates and tickles the sensors of the base, but it doesn't switch the minds of swing voters. And Reuters Ipsos found that 69% of Americans think Trump's policy decisions are influenced by his private business dealings. That's essentially basically saying we no longer trust these folks. And it's not a policy critique, it's a trust erosion. Once two-thirds of the country assumes self-dealing as the default explanation for governance, or specifically this administration's governance, you've lost the normal mechanism of persuasion.
And something I do think is a bit of a tailwind for Democrats is there seems to be a feel that the West is gagging on far-right autocrats, with a mix, with a dash of corruption and a whole smattering of inflation rubbed over it. It feels like the world, if you will, of the West is pushing back on it. I think it's been overstated because I think in Brazil, while you know he's in charge of the house, every room is now occupied by conservatives, and actually LatAm has gone more conservative recently. The polls in Serbia, or the election in Serbia, was very much a student-led turnout.
Yeah, it'll be very interesting to see if youth shows up. You know, we keep waiting for youth to get more engaged. We'll see. I hope that's the case here.
But what I do think the underlying trend across all of this, now obviously these issues around Iran, tariffs, but I do think the underlying issue that's going to face not this election but really be kind of a day-one issue is what's going on in France, and that is the West has basically been weaponized by old people. You know how there's this whole statement on the left of eat the rich? It's not. It's eat grandma. And again, the stats I just can't help but go to in France, and it's where we're headed, folks. We're on the same trajectory. We're just a decade behind. French retirees on average have greater incomes than people who are working in France. And one-third of the education budget is spent on teachers who no longer teach. Old people voting in more old people who vote themselves more money at the cost of young people. Basically, young people around the West for the last 20 years have been presented with a check to a dinner they weren't even invited to. And I think it's starting to bubble up, and I think you're seeing all sorts of anger. The more immediate issues, obviously, affordability, and some people would argue accountability, but it'll be a real interesting test. Now, the difference is when young people in other nations get angry, they vote and they riot. In our nation, they play video games and they trade crypto on Robinhood. It doesn't appear like this rage is translated yet into voting. That's what I'll be watching for at this election.
But on the Alaska election interference, I think you would have to say while the Supreme Court is in the back pocket of Trump and is largely a conservative court now, the judiciary, or the courts more broadly, have done what I would call their job. They've been a backstop for democracy and the Constitution. And just as when I was trying to renovate a house in Florida and my neighbor decided he didn't want construction while he was living there and just showed up to local review board meetings and hired lawyers and basically delayed my construction by six months, eventually it happened. Eventually, I think you are going to have a Democratic senator seated from Alaska. They can delay it. They can make noise. They can create even greater distrust around our institutions. But I do think that seat, if you will, is going to hold, and all that nonsense is going to go away. Any thoughts?
That has been what history has shown us. And our election lawyers are the best. Marc Elias and Norm Eisen and a whole cast of characters, but those two in particular. So I'm not necessarily sweating it. I just think that it is a harbinger of their attitude that they're going to be taking towards elections, and that there's going to be a lot of time spent in a courtroom that I would rather spend popping champagne bottles, having, you know, Mary Peltola be the Democratic senator from Alaska. So fingers crossed for that. I want to say on the youth front, definitely right about what's going on in France, and you're seeing unrest also in Italy. You're seeing it in Albania, which is a little bit more complicated than France and Italy, because this process actually started pushing back against this deal that Jared Kushner made with the Albanian government to develop, I think it was a $4 billion resort that Ivanka called, you know, this incredibly special project. But the underlying message is we're sick of corruption. And you see this everywhere, and you see this in our elections, too. And I think from the dueling Michigan rallies, so you have Obama, who I want to note on that because you mentioned it, and talking about, you know, Cheesecake Factory and Saddam Hussein. But he's out there to rally the base because that's what Kamala needs at this point. She needs to shore up Jewish voters and Black voters. And President Trump is also out there to try to rally the base who are sitting on their couches thinking, I don't have a tremendous amount to show up to vote for, especially without Trump's name on the ballot. But on this corruption point, you know, we're all paying a lot of attention to Donald Trump's obsession with Joni Ernst's ass or Nicki Minaj's ass and the weird short circuits where he makes those noises and just goes like, and then we're supposed to ignore that it happened. But the most important thing I think that he said was, 'We're making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars.' But my people said, 'Please don't mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher. That number is going to come way down. But what we've done for this country, we're making money like this country has never made before.' No, I could just see the fake headlines. President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We're making a freaking fortune. Our country is getting stronger and stronger all the time.
And this happened at the same time that his trade filings came out, and he owns $81 million in oil and gas stocks. He's placed more trades than all 535 members of Congress combined. And the stat for everyone who loves to, you know, rag on Nancy Pelosi and what she's done, you know, she has her own Nancy Pelosi stock trader account that's mocking her constantly online. He placed more stocks in a single day than she has in 12 years. People are noticing this, and they are demanding action across the board. I really liked Rahm Emanuel's full package of ethics reforms because he understands that this is a Democratic problem too, that the perception is everybody in these positions of power is doing this, but Donald Trump is doing it to a level that we have not seen before, you know, making $3 billion. But the fact that he is coming out there and just telling you to your face, I don't give a damn, if we can't make something of that, if you can't convince people to vote for you, especially young people, you know, inspire in them the idea that maybe we could be the change, that we could fight for a better future for them that is fair and where they can get ahead, then I almost feel like we should pack up our toys and go and are not worthy of being on the ballot in this way, because this is silver platter stuff, gold platter stuff, I guess I should say, to use the Saddam comparison. So yeah.
There's a dangerous trend in America, and it really kind of defines an autocracy, and that is people who ascend to power begin monetizing public assets. And we have done it more elegantly and thoughtfully and wrapped it in regulatory capture and shareholder gains here, and this notion that how's your 401k and everyone benefits and workers are people. But essentially we've monetized incarceration. We've decided to make them for-profit. Probably the greatest level of anxiety in the United States is vis-a-vis the monetization of our health care system, where we've decided that 17% of our GDP is really there to serve as nutrition for shareholders in the top 10% wealthiest who get the best health care in the world. We are now monetizing legislative or political power, monetizing the White House. Now, granted, we've been doing this for a while, but it's been kind of AAA ball. And Trump basically said, 'Why are you corrupt for millions of dollars? I'm going to be corrupt for billions.' But when he said, I thought he generally has pretty good political instincts. When he said at that rally, 'We're making a ton of money.' Well, who is we, white man? My dad doesn't work at Exxon. I don't own Chevron stock. I'm trying to figure out a way to pay my rent. And every day or once a week, I get this punch in the gut. When I go fill up my SUV, it's 180 bucks, and I'm just reminded that something is going wrong. Every day people pass a giant billboard that is essentially a report card on the current administration called gas prices. And they're everywhere. You can't drive anywhere without seeing a reminder that this is not working. And for him to say, I mean, to be fair, American oil companies are making a lot of money. ExxonMobil's making a lot of money. It's a transfer of wealth from every American citizen. Supposedly 20 to 30% of the cost of every item in the grocery store is what it costs to get it there. So obviously diesel fuel impacts absolutely everything. That came across as just so, you could even see the audience looking around like, well, okay, no, nobody here is making a lot of money. We just know we're spending a lot of money.
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Let's turn to elections abroad. We referenced the elections in Brazil. Meanwhile, Israelis are heading to the polls in a pivotal election that could end Benjamin Netanyahu's decades-long dominance. His biggest challenger is Benny Gantz, a former army chief who lost his son in Gaza and has emerged as a serious threat to Netanyahu, whose handling of the security failure surrounding the October 7th attacks remains central to the race. Jess, any thoughts on what a potential change in leadership for Israel's approach to the war, or regarding Israel's approach to the war and regional security?
I am so excited for there to be a change and hopeful Gantz can pull this off. You already see Netanyahu is out there saying that there are irregularities. They're trying to steal the election from us just eight hours after the polls opened, and he's freaked out because this is monster turnout, right? Like we've been talking about how excited we are about our early voting. The turnout in Israel's election is staggering. It's reached its highest level on record at the midway point, with 3.3 million people, or 45% of eligible voters, already casting ballots by 2 p.m. local time. I don't know if you've been watching the videos from airports of Israelis coming home to vote because you have to vote in person.
What is it, 63,000 of them? I've been crying watching these people come back to their land to save their country.
Yeah. And an Israeli, I was so taken with this. She said, 'Any moment now, they'll head back home. I'll probably never know who they are, but they came to give us a chance at a better life here.' And that seems to be the feeling on the ground, that this is finally, and you know, the first election since October 7th. People have a lot of feelings about what has gone on over the last three years, and it feels really optimistic. I saw Gantz was accompanying a former hostage to his polling station near Oz. The kibbutz, 25% of its residents were either killed or kidnapped on October 7th. And you know, people talking about this is the first time that they feel like maybe there is some daylight on the precipice because they could turn the page on this. Bibi's dependence on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, I think, has destroyed his prime ministership. I mean, his natural character also a big problem. But when you have these guys out there constantly talking about how you can just level Gaza, that they could go somewhere else saying, let's just send them to France, that would be fine. That's the kind of stuff, even if you are prone to like Bibi or maybe think that he has carried out the response to October 7th in a way that you're supportive of, you just think there is no future peace. And they're also looking at what's going on in the West Bank and that the Netanyahu government is doing nothing about this. And I think the story of the American Washington Post journalist, 64 years old, who's beaten up by Israeli settlers a couple of weeks ago, who's been doing a ton of interviews, is really shaking people.
And they see that their global reputation is in the gutter because of this stuff, because of what's gone on in Gaza, because of Bibi Netanyahu, because of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, because of what goes on in the West Bank. I'm optimistic that there will be a change. And I think, you know, the numbers obviously in turnout, the big jump in Arab turnout as well. And I hated this. I saw Ambassador Huckabee posted, you know, Israelis and Arabs alike will head to the polls, and people are noting Arabs are Israelis. Stop talking about this as if it's some other country, right, that's invaded Israeli space. They're Arab Israelis, and you can see already the lines being drawn in the sand for supporters of Netanyahu. And I, you know, Trumpian to the bone, scared of what he will do when a result gets called that he doesn't like. But I'm very emotional today. I think it is a very good thing to see all of these indicators that maybe change is coming.
Yeah. Regardless of your views on October the 7th or the response to it, I think most Jews in the diaspora at least really feel like it's time to turn the page here.
And again, I think a lot of it comes down to age. Netanyahu is 77, Gantz is 66, and I think Netanyahu, similar to Trump two years ago, is running to stay out of prison. And the diaspora, it has gotten so hard for Jews in the diaspora right now to defend the actions and aggressiveness of the Netanyahu government. And as I said before, when I went to Israel to go to the Nova Music Festival memorial, and I went to the affected areas, thinking I'd feel sadness and horror, of which I did feel, mostly what I felt was rage. I looked across the open field separating where these kibbutzim were in Gaza. I know enough about technology and motion sensors and defense equipment. I just can't figure out how the helicopter gunships weren't out there in seven or eight minutes. This was arguably one of the greatest defense and intelligence failures in modern history. And Israel has a very honorable reputation of having a reckoning across the board. This is how Golda Meir came to power, is the generals before her, the leadership before her was held accountable for failed defense actions there. And his deal, Netanyahu's deal with the public was always, you may think I'm too conservative, but I'll keep you safe. Well, he didn't keep them safe. And so I really, and in addition, what they don't realize, long after Netanyahu is dead, the 75% of young Americans who think Israel is a bad actor, whereas 75% of my people my age think they're a good actor, the former is going to be in power soon. And if Israel doesn't begin acquitting itself with a little bit more, you know, restraint, it's going to lose the support of all of the West, because at some point guys like me who think of Israel as the good guys and think of Entebbe and Munich, we're going to be gone. And it's going to be people who just see, okay, that Gaza has the greatest concentration of child amputees, who just see that this guy manipulated a fairly feeble-minded president into going to war with Iran, which seems to have destabilized the entire region and has put targets on our air bases instead of them being seen as shields, and has totally disrupted the global economy. So if you care about Israel, and I've been very, like, reticent. I was asked to come on some podcasts, and I thought, I don't want to be a Musk figure who's exporting political division. I realize I have a fraction of the footprint of him. So I just said I care a lot about Israel and think it's time, as it is in the US, I think it's time to turn the page. The issue is that we in the US, election day is profound. Election day in Israel is meaningful, but it's not profound. Because then the real maneuvering begins, and that is even if Gantz gets more seats, if you will, in parliament, he still won't have a majority and will have to create coalitions. And there's a chance that the person can lose on election day and still win control. There's a lot of chess playing and there's a lot of wheeling and dealing post the election day to try and create coalitions. And Netanyahu has been, you know, he has been, um, you know, who's that amazing chess player? He's been Bobby Fischer or whoever the, or...
Garry Kasparov or Magnus or whoever the new nine-year-old is that keeps beating everybody. He has been amazing post-election at forming coalitions and quite frankly making deals with uncomfortable bedfellows to maintain and cling to power. So very much hoping, very much hoping there's a change here. All right. Any thoughts on Brazil?
Yeah. So this was a surprise that Lula was able to hold on to power. The last couple of weeks have been a big turn. Huge grassroots mobilization effort. You know, Lula is 81 years old. So, you know, we talk about the old guys a lot. And Flavio Bolsonaro obviously much younger, but also connected to his very corrupt father. But I loved listening to Claudia Sheinbaum talking about how Lula's victory is a breath of fresh air for Latin America, and Latin American countries except for Brazil have been drifting in the right-wing or rightward direction in their elections as of late. So this is really defying the odds. There's some talk of election interference, of course, from the right, but that doesn't really hold up. Only 34,000 votes came in after the original deadline, and Lula won by 4.4 million votes. But I thought this was so interesting because I was struck by a debate moment with Bolsonaro and Lula last week where Bolsonaro brought up how Lula was winning a majority of votes of people in jail, and Lula snapped back, 'I want 100% of them, including your father,' which I thought was such a great, you know, quick witty retort. But I hadn't paid attention to this. So he called Lula nine fingers, and the story behind that is Lula lost a finger at 17. He was a metal worker, so he lost it at work, and Lula was able to spin that into an attack against Bolsonaro for growing up in a gated community, not knowing what real work is. You know, being part of the elite cabal, the corruption narrative that we're seeing all over the world, and that had a real impact on the outcome. Just a really interesting framing for this election as well. I didn't know about the nine-finger thing. And I was thinking about Jon Tester, who also, you know, the former Democratic senator from Montana, who also lost a finger in a farming accident, not as a metal worker. And the funny story about how he knew that an ad against him was AI because he had 10 fingers in it. All of these elections seem to be coming down to the same themes. And it appears that the remedy to bad outcomes is more people voting. And so I would just implore everybody, if you want change wherever you are, show up and vote. And miraculous things can happen, like in Serbia as well. I mean, we don't even know that much about the student list and what their policies are going to look like. But you can take down autocrats and you can bring on good outcomes like what happened in Hungary. By the way, did you see that there's talk of Viktor Orban for UN Secretary General?
That's it. I mean, just like the idea that you would put Viktor Orban in any sort of important position of power, let alone in an international organization which is meant to hold people like him accountable, kind of blew my mind. I'm sure that'll be, you know, Trump's pet. The head of the UN Humanitarian Commission from Iran. I mean, the...
The good thing about the UN is it tries to involve everyone and gives everyone a chance, a seat at the table. The bad news is it gives everyone a seat at the table regardless if they should be at that table or not. I mean, this is both the strength and the weakness of the UN, isn't it?
Fine. All right. Well, I just forget that point. No, no, you're right. I just saw the headline and I was like, come on. Like, can't we just let Viktor Orban disappear? But what do you think about the nine fingers?
A powerful nine fingers. I think it is. I think it is.
I blew your mind with that one.
I'm totally, I'm totally blown away.
