Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Thanks for joining us live on Substack and YouTube. Before we get started, tomorrow we'll be live streaming with Bobby Pulido, the Tejano American musician who's also the newly elected congressman from Texas's 15th district, which registered the biggest swing in the country. We'll discuss how Texas turned blue, what Democrats plan to do with their newfound power, and how they can make the most of the momentum without squandering it. So, tune in live tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
All right, let's bust into it. One of the biggest questions coming out of the Democrats' historic midterm victories was how Donald Trump would respond to a powerful new Democratic majority in Congress. At first, the president seemed to signal he was open to working across the aisle, even floating potential deals on immigration and the economy. But the olive branch didn't last long. Instead, Trump has tapped, wait for it, Stephen Miller, the architect of some of the most divisive policies, as his new chief of staff, ordered the Justice Department to investigate top Democrats, and even floated UFC boss Dana White as his next press secretary, but then said he was kidding. Democrats say Miller's promotion is a clear signal that Trump is doubling down on the very agenda voters just rejected. Trump is now saying the election was stolen. Let's watch a bit of Trump's interview yesterday with 60 Minutes.
Your net worth, maybe it's changed with the stock market recently, but your net worth went up by $3 billion since you returned to office.
Okay, you ready? So, everyone's... my net worth did not go up by $3 billion. I devote almost no time to my net worth. I don't care. I have a lot of money, far more than I ever thought I'd have, and I guess it's gone up. I don't even know.
In two years, someone else is going to be the Republican nominee for president. I assume you're going to endorse someone for that.
Probably. Not necessarily.
Not necessarily. Who would be on the list besides the vice president?
Well, I think Marco's great. I think... is he staying, by the way, as Secretary of State? I think so. I mean, he certainly loves it and he's doing great. He's doing a fantastic job.
I saw James Talarico, the new Democratic senator from Texas. You did occasionally call him 'Talifico.' Yeah, I did. Do you think you could work with the Democrats without insulting them consistently?
I could. You think... I also call many of them Democrats.
You did that just the other day. If it took six months of not insulting the Democrats to get a deal done, do you think he could do it very easily? Huh? Thoughts, Jess?
I have a lot of thoughts. First of all, my biggest thought is that Ross Douthat did a great job. I thought so, too. And yeah, I thought his first 60 Minutes interview was a little shaky, and this felt pretty perfect, honestly. Like he went at him with all of the things that normal people are talking about, all the major currents from the election, and it never got adversarial. And that's very hard to pull off with Trump. And I just thought it was a stellar job. So I assume Bari Weiss and Co. are happy with it. But you can see why this is going to be a good job for him if it's the right assignments, and it's a big one to talk to the president after a, you know, generational shellacking like that.
So that was number one. Number two, that I think is most important, and this is a combination of some of the denialism from the president that we heard in there and who we know him to be: the fact that he posted a few minutes ago, 'Does anybody really believe that this election was honest? How could the polls be so wrong?' By the way, the polls all said this. They actually underestimated the Democrats, but whatever. 'Some early voting dumps were so large that it was impossible to win no matter how many people went to vote.' That's like in Texas and North Carolina that Talarico and Roy Cooper won from the early voting, not even election day. 'It's all about the machines.' This is where it gets even more dangerous, which are far more important than the voter. President DJT. That's the playbook from before, where they said that the voting machines were hacked, that there were some, you know, weird systems through Venezuela, maybe the Chinese. Remember when he floated that this year, they had a big announcement about Chinese interference into our election system. Now, I don't know how many Americans are left believing Donald Trump about this stuff. Like, there are ones, I don't know, 60% or so of Republicans think that 2020 was not completely fair, but I'm curious to see the update on who doesn't think this election was free and fair. And that's the most concerning thing to me right now.
Yeah, a couple things. One, just in terms of technology. Technology traditionally loves scale, and that is one of the advantages of implementing a static system across a company: is you get scale, and it's one software program, one operating system, and it becomes more efficient, right? I would say technology loves scale: pick one expense software, one workflow software. What's fascinating about our electoral system is that we purposely have sort of 50 separate decentralized systems, and you think, well, that's wildly inefficient. You know, here, some states it takes three days; other states, it's literally when the polls close they report the results. And one of the reasons we continue to do that is that it creates an additional layer of security. And that is, if for whatever reason one system gets hacked, it's one of 50. And so they purposely have decided not to create one technical platform across the entire nation. They've decentralized the way votes are counted. And it kind of makes sense.
The other thing here is that, I mean, the size of this win. Well, what I've also noticed, and I don't know if you've noticed this as well, is that right-wing media has been much more remiss to start picking up and spreading and endorsing and legitimizing any calls of election fraud or election tampering, based on quite frankly what happened to Fox News. They're saying that, I think that $750 million judgment when they started spreading that information about Dominion voting machines and Chavez, that I think that is looming. I think the majority, especially the bigger cable networks, have said, be careful. There was a three-quarters of a billion dollar judgment or settlement, not even judgment, settlement levied against a network that decided to run with these rumors, if you will. Have you felt that? You've been on a lot of cable news lately. Have you felt that sense that there's just, one, the size of the win is sort of like too big to be rigged, and two, I think that is an overhang, if you will.
It's definitely an overhang, and you see this across the board. Like even some anchors that, you know, would follow Donald Trump to the ends of the earth, like on a Newsmax or an OAN, for instance, will come on with disclaimers if a guest has said something that's super crazy. And you obviously can't ignore the implications of 2020 in that sense. But I do think it was also important that the president wasn't saying that it was fraudulent. I mean, he started off the first few days after the election being pretty nice about Democrats, saying, you know, they had a huge win, and then talking about his ballroom and the arc to Trump. And it wasn't until Friday when he put Stephen Miller in as his chief of staff that you started to go like, you know, where are we descending to? And it's interesting the contrast between President Trump says on 60 Minutes, yes, immigration went too far, it was too tough, and you have Stephen Miller in place who is the architect of this immigration policy.
Can we have a second for the Dana White situation? Because the fact that he's trying to spin it, that he absolutely knew that the recommendation that Susie Wiles left was for a Dana White who is like a normie Republican who's worked in the State Department before, and a woman, not a man, and then he puts out the Truth Social post, which happened on Saturday while I was at Crooked Con, the Pod Save America blue tsunami festival of the day where everyone was just going bonkers for this, and then he's like, 'No, it isn't that.' And that it was the anniversary of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, I believe. And in honor of it, I wore my Four Seasons Total Landscaping sweatshirt. Do you see a little... Okay. Well, I'm not like revealing my stomach like you, which is significantly less hairy, but anyway, I just wanted to have a little fun myself.
There is crazy the part about his net worth, which I thought was so interesting. And that he says, 'Well, you should have had stocks, too.' And they go through this back and forth where Trump says, 'All the presidents do it.' And he's like, 'No, not all the presidents do it.' And you think about Jimmy Carter putting his peanut farm in a trust. And I think that is the one message that they have not received, that the grift and the corruption is the problem, even if folks like Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson are speaking out about it.
So, one of the things, the biggest swing group, and we've been talking a lot about this: number three, Hispanics; number two in terms of groups, young people, 18 to 30, 30-point swing, hands down biggest swing from red to blue, young men, 38 points. And what was interesting in exit polls, they talked about Iran, about half of them, they said, why did you vote blue? 50%, something like 50%, Iran, another like up there, tariffs, and then at 89% was affordability, right? And that's what we've been saying, that this group, the swing voters, care more about economics than bathrooms or Ukraine. They're just focused on how do I get a job, a mortgage, and a spouse. But at 90%, this was what was most shocking about those exit polls amongst the swingest of swing voters, and 90% was concern around corruption, which I found really fascinating, that that seems to be getting more purchase amongst young people than I had anticipated.
And I've said, people keep asking what does the next two years look like. I'm not as scared as other people because I think there's just going to be more guardrails. I also think up and down the food chain or the chain of command, if Trump says go after these people, he's threatened to prosecute congressmen and their staff if they decide to initiate investigations. That's basically what he's saying. And my sense is I'm not as worried as I would have been a couple years ago because I think the supply chain or the command chain is probably thinking, all right, do I really want to set myself up for a subpoena in 23, 22, 21, and 20 months? I think they're going to be in a little bit. I think these guys are finally going to have some guardrails around not only the number of Democrats who are now heading these committees and have subpoena power, but I think his own base is going to say, 'Okay, he's going to pardon himself and walk out of here in the short term, and I'm going to be stuck trying to explain why I decided to take these orders, which were clearly wrong.' The other thing that just shocks me is that when they did the debrief, when they went into a room and they had, you know, their best and brightest, and they said, 'All right, what's the takeaway here and what do we do?' They decided that the singular decision, the way they should respond to this blue tsunami was more Stephen Miller. It just, okay, how did they interpret that as the right thing to do? It just absolutely struck me.
So, the midterm wipeout isn't just creating problems for Donald Trump, it's also throwing JD Vance's political future into question. The vice president had been widely viewed as a front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination. Kalshi still has his odds at 33% to be the nominee, but after Republicans suffered the worst electoral drubbing since Watergate, some of his own allies are privately questioning whether a Republican can even win the White House in two years. Yeah, you think in fact Vance's political future is so uncertain that some of his confidants have floated alternatives, returning to Ohio to reclaim his old Senate seat, to even running for governor. Vance has rejected both ideas, but the conversations underscore just how much the political landscape has shifted. Just what do you think this says for Vance's presidential aspirations? As we all know, you know, two years is a long time. What happened to his prospects last Tuesday?
No bueno, for sure. I think that there is so much to tie him not only to the bad administrative decisions, but the morally bad decisions that they made. I think that his doubling and then tripling down on the Vance ad is something that will be really haunting, especially since Ohio is home for him. And you see how many voters had that in their mind when they went to vote. I don't think Walz was like a great candidate anyway, but there's no question that something that's so void of decency and something so disgusting to retraumatize a woman who was raped by her stepfather and to do it in such a public fashion is going to have blowback on you. I think, and I don't know how I feel about this because both should have had huge implications, but the ad is way worse than 'the Haitians are eating the cats and the dogs' somehow.
You know, that people were like, 'Oh, actually, I'm kind of cool with this, but this is beyond the pale.' And I don't think that long tweet that he posted about what went wrong, even though President Trump said some variation of, you know, 'JD had some points in there that are definitely right,' I don't think that helps him. But what was most interesting to me in D.C., I was talking to a friend, conservative, very into Donald Trump, MAGA movement. She's a journalist, an opinion writer, I should say, more than a journalist. And she said that nobody should run in 2028 because it's just going to be a wipeout, and that that is going to become the thinking, that you would want to hold your powder for 2032 versus getting in there again. And I don't know how that affects like a Ron DeSantis. He already ran, but I feel like no one really cares about that or thinks that it was a bad stamp on him because Donald Trump was so the leader of the party at that point. But I wonder if folks like a JD Vance or a Marco Rubio will sit it out and wait for clearer skies rather than going in '28 when the map is going to be brutal for Republicans. Like this was our bad year for the map. 2028 is the Republicans' bad year.
I don't even think in terms of GOP. So what you said about a lot of Republicans who would be viable saying there's just no way here, I'm not going to do it. Ambassador Haley has basically said that when asked about the presidency, she's been very straightforward. She said, 'No, this is a quixotic venture to run as a Republican in '28 at this point.' What is more obvious though, distinct of this election or the map, if you will, the momentum, the blue momentum here, and a lot can change in two years, is that Trump is political Chernobyl. No one gets to hang around the core and not get leukemia and ultimately die a slow but certain death, political death. Go through every one of his cabinet members from 2016. Where are they? What's happened to Rex Tillerson's career? Anyone. He sent a Duck Dynasty mob with a noose after his then vice president, and then Vice President Pence, who deserves a lot of credit for standing firm to the Constitution. What would have happened if Pence had been the kind of sycophant that some of these guys are? That we could have really had a constitutional crisis. But still, he got infected, he got radiated. Anyone near this guy does not get out alive.
And so the notion that Vance... In addition, almost all of our presidents, I would say since Nixon, have had one thing: they're all likable. You know, you may hate their politics, but you know W was a very likable guy. They've all been exceptionally... People say about Trump, he's incredibly likable. He's got incredible charisma. He's got great political instincts. JD Vance has none of those things. What is really interesting is who will be elevated all of a sudden. You know, I would argue that as much as we don't like his policies, DeSantis held on to the red seats. He did a good job as a Republican. I think the state is well-run. If you are honest and look at any measurable objective, he has benefited from the greatest migration trends in history, specifically people leaving cold, high-tax states and moving to warm, low-tax states, Texas and Florida being some of the biggest beneficiaries of that. But the state has done well in education. You know, I just think if taking politics aside, he has been a competent executive. I also think that running, my guess is running a presidential campaign means your machinery is sort of, while it's, you know, the bike is in the garage with a tarp over it, but you do have a bike. I would think he's learned a lot. I don't think, you know, my money would not be on him, but I still think all of a sudden you're going to see on Kalshi his odds begin to rise.
A couple ramifications or a couple additional thoughts on the Republican side. One, I think the number one most likely is TBD. And here is just some past Republican candidates or aspirational candidates at about 12 or 18 months out from the election. So say in six to 12 months, this is where the number one polling candidate on the GOP side at that moment. Rudy Giuliani, he was polling number one. Herman Cain, remember him, Jess? He was polling number one. Passed away, unfortunately. And then my favorite, Fred Thompson from LA Law was polling number one. So when someone asks who's the GOP candidate, really, really nobody knows. And then my final comment is I think there's a non-zero probability. I'm curious if you've seen any reporting here that Secretary Rubio comes up with a reason to resign to get some distance from Trump.
I would be running for the hills at this point. Agree. I mean, especially if you're thinking like Pete Hegseth is going to be one of the first quote-unquote accountability targets from Oversight Chair Robert Garcia. I heard him speak over the weekend as well in D.C. And you're embroiled in a war that President Trump is saying that he would do it again. Now, there are folks who, you know, think it's important obviously to ensure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. The question is, why wouldn't you have kept the JCPOA or maybe tried to beef that up versus whatever it is that we've done now? So, if I were Rubio, yeah, I would be thinking about the nearest exit and a way that I can do it with some degree of elegance where it doesn't feel like you are jumping from a burning building. But I wouldn't want to be around for all of that. And I think that right now he has probably the best reputation of anyone in the administration. Even when I talk to, you know, center-left people about 2028 and, you know, that process you go through, like if I went to bed and I didn't know the results, what degree of nervous would I be to what I was going to wake up to? And a lot of them say I wouldn't be losing my mind over a President Marco Rubio. I would still vote for the Democrat, but I think that folks think that he's a pretty competent guy and he definitely has a field of expertise and he has changed obviously in the Trump era, but that we knew a lot about who Marco Rubio was. Maybe you didn't love all of it. What's going on certainly in South America and Latin America are his dreams, and I don't know what we're going to do with Cuba. That feels like that could just pop up on us and suddenly we're going in there and doing, you know, some form of regime change. But he should get out of there fast.
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So, let's talk about the Democrats. They're already having their own conversation about the party's next generation of leadership. Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin isn't ruling out a bid for Senate leadership, and she's making clear that Chuck Schumer shouldn't assume he has her support for another term as majority leader. Slotkin says Democrats have a mandate for generational change and a need for an actual plan for the first 100 days in power, focused on the cost of living and improving Americans' lives. And this morning, Senator Chris Van Hollen says he's also open to mounting a challenge. Jess, you were at Crooked Con over the weekend where Slotkin discussed this. How are Dems feeling about Schumer staying as leader? It seems like, just to be blunt, it's going to be Speaker Jeffries, but the unknown here is leader or soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Schumer. What do you think the actual odds are of someone unseating him?
I think it's going to be Majority Leader Schumer as well. Chris Van Hollen had said he wasn't going to run. This just changed this morning. He has floated the idea that he would be open to running for president. That's why I think he wasn't talking about majority leader and thought I should just figure out my presidential campaign. It does feel like a bit of a talking point for people. And I understand that they promised this on the trail. They've been all of the new senators. And by the way, I love the photos and footage of them walking into the Capitol, like Senator Talarico, Senator Alsobrook, Senator Annie Andrews. And the new Congresspeople like Sam Forstag, the smokejumper, is all over social media in his cute Montana outfit, the bolo tie, I think it was his wife's grandfather's, and just saying, you know, new crop of people, young folks, we're going to be covering all of this on social, which I think is fabulous. But they all talked about needing new change on the trail, but then you show up and there's the brass tacks of actually how you're going to do this. And AOC did a big video about how you actually would get a new Speaker of the House versus having Hakeem Jeffries, who she's backed and Jayapal's backed and Ro Khanna's backed. So, the idea that you're going to be winning some challenge when there isn't even anyone running, but all the progressives are getting in line, I think is just for your social media base at this point. And the question will be, how can these leaders meet the moment for people that want this big change, but still in the same leadership package? And what Chuck Schumer could do, and I imagine he will to some degree, my guess would be he's not going to run again in 2028 and kind of pass the torch so that he's not in an ugly primary anyway. You know, you make yourself a caretaker leader or something like that. But when people say to go from we are celebrating the biggest wins that we've had since 1974 to we've got to throw out all of our leadership who did a lot in terms of candidate recruitment and certainly financial support. Same thing with Ken Martin, who we were knocking on him, right? Saying this guy sucks, it should have been Ben Wikler from Wisconsin. And I don't know, the DNC and Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer pulled off something pretty spectacular. I'm not thinking they made every choice right, but I don't know, it looks pretty good right now. We have blue Texas for God's sakes. What do you think?
I mean, first off, it's obvious Speaker Jeffries is going to be seated as the speaker. He's going to get the gavel. With respect to Schumer, I think you're probably right. I think he'll probably create some whispers and say, 'Come on, I've done a good job here. You got to give me some credit for this. I'm going to be 77 or 78, so I'm going to step down when my term ends.' And I think he's probably earned enough goodwill that people really don't want to have this be the exclamation point on his career or whatever you want to call it. I don't, you know, he clearly is a competent person. One of the things that struck me when I've been looking at these great montages of the people are outgoing versus incoming is the average age differential of Democrats replacing Republicans. I think it's 13 years. I mean, this really was, we've been talking about this a long time, for the need to shed the skin and have Congress look more like America, and this was the biggest step towards that ever. You know, a Native American governor. We've only had three Black governors in the history of America. We now have five seated. First openly gay senator, first Black female governor. Strange to think you'd even say that at this point, right? I didn't realize we'd never had a Black female governor. And also youth. They really have, you know, a number of, you know, even going to the local election out here on the West Coast, the mayoral election in Los Angeles. I don't think this was a mandate on socialism. I think it was a mandate on Karen Bass, who didn't lose to Rick Caruso. She lost to the Palisades fire. But I think Nithya is 45 and Mayor Bass is 72.
Yeah. So there was definitely, I mean, obviously the best thing you could have next to your name was a big blue square, but also age, I think, did play a role here, and that is people wanted change, and youth is synonymous with change. And then the other one that's just more practical around leadership, I think being awarded the gavel, to me being a senator would be much cooler than being a representative. Representatives feel like there's just a mix of insurance salesmen or people who like give hand jobs in theaters. Whereas senators, there's just more vetting. You can be a little bit, you can demonstrate a little bit more of your values, even if it's not populist, because the Senate was initially constructed or envisioned to be something that wasn't as responsive to the populace, such that they didn't give into populism. They could take time to say, 'No, this is wrong, and even if my constituents don't like it, I'm going to vote for it because I got another four, five, six years to see how good decisions play out.' So I think being Speaker of the House is one of the few things that's cooler potentially about being leadership. Whereas I wonder if Senate, I feel like Senate Majority Leader, quite frankly, it's just a shitty job. It feels like a job where you're sort of invisible until you mess up, and then everyone's all over you. I mean, you have, in addition to trying to make a good senator representing your state, you have all this admin. You're just, it strikes me, you're just putting out fires all the time, and no one notices who you are until something goes wrong. In other words, I wouldn't be...
surprised if a lot of people say, "You know what? I'm not sure there's a lot of upside to this." Yeah. They're managerial positions with little limelight possibility and everyone is crapping on you all the time.
Yeah. And I mean, I think especially with Speaker of the House and Hakeem Jeffries, it means a lot to me that Nancy Pelosi handpicked him, groomed him.
And is happy with him because I don't think that she would sacrifice the fate of the caucus for somebody that she just has a lot of affection for, right? Like she got Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential primary.
Or the presidential race, I should say. Like she would push out Hakeem Jeffries if she didn't think he was up to the job. And these testimonials that are coming in from folks that are running all over the country about how much Jeff showed up for them, and you know, for the ones who needed him standing side by side, needed money, the ones who needed the space to be able to run against leadership. And that was something that was really core to the way that she did the job and why she was so effective, where she said, 'You want to hold hands with me? Right. You want to call me the devil? That's fine, too. Just win your seat.'
Um, I want to say on the age front, um, because you're right, like we have a, this is a youthful and beautiful Congress coming in. There is a seniority issue though that still needs to be addressed. And that's the question that I think folks need to ask. Like I was thinking back to how AOC ran to challenge Gerry Connolly and he won and then he passed away unfortunately like six months later or something like that.
And you think, I'm not saying it has to be AOC, but this is somebody who's obviously a great representative of the party. She is actually hugely popular even with Republicans, has great relationships especially with like a Tim Burchett, for instance, who's a very conservative member of the House. And we need to think about how we treat younger members when they try for leadership positions within the party, because it's one thing to have a younger caucus, it's another thing to actually elevate them to positions of power within it. And I'm going to be interviewing Hakeem Jeffries on Friday, actually, and I definitely want to talk to him about this because there are a lot of committee chairs that are part of the old guard and are in their, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s. And you look at this Congress and we're all swooning over their social media savvy and these incredible things that they were able to do. Like I love all of these young parents, right? It feels like they're living the same parallel life that I am.
And they're going to show up and still be bowing down to a 75-year-old. And that's where I think the rubber really meets the road in terms of what kind of change we could see.
It really is exciting. We have former veterans, admirals, pediatricians, prosecutors, you know, mothers who are also teachers, teachers who are total ballers just looking at their background. It's just incredibly bright people. Last night we interviewed the mayor of Denver and he's a former high school principal, and we keep interviewing and I look at this guy. He's something out of central casting to be in the Senate someday. He's so impressive. And then yeah, it's really, quite frankly, it's sort of just, I'm still sort of processing it and it's a bit overwhelming. Speaking of people who are not having a great week, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, soon-to-be Speaker Jeffries, says he's a hard yes on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of abusing his power, mishandling the war in Iran. Republican Thomas Massie is expected to force a House vote this week and even some Republicans say they're open to hearing the case. Wow, this feels like he is on the green mile. Jess, what do you think the odds are he gets impeached this week?
Well, I want to, we have some audio from Ted Cruz on this that I want to play before we chat about it.
All right, let's do it. Roll tape.
Hit it. Listen, one of the reasons the House has been out of session for a couple of months, and the reason they've been out of session is because they didn't have the votes to stop a Hegseth impeachment back in September.
