Soothsayers guide to the fall election. And so have three soothsayers here who. Probably are not comfortable with playing that role, especially since thats not really focus of their books. So at least two out of three. So well talk about their books and give them a chance, talk about their books and then well lead some questions. They try to connect with the fall election, ill do a brief introduction of the authors and then ill get to the discussions. Ill try encourage some crosstalk because the three books on the panel are really interestingly different. Our first author, franklin foer, is currently a writer at the atlantic and previously wrote for slate, the new York Magazine and the new republic, where he was editor for some time and left with controversy over the takeover of of that media. His set out some intriguing claims as evident and some titles. His recent articles how trump is killing politics, why liberalism disappoints, which is a really interesting argument and Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the west and it looks a lot like donald trump trump. Hes also published three books with equally intriguing titles. And i encourage you to consider them as well. How soccer explains the world in 2000, four jewish jocks and hall of fame in thousand 12 and World Without mind existential threat of tech. We will be discussing his insider account and the hundreds of hours of interviews that he held with biden administrative functionaries. Well, as National Leaders for those for of us who have worked most of our career behind the scene, we know that nothing done without the people behind the scene. And he had conversations with those people as well as the names youd recognize for this book that well be discussing the last politician inside Joe Bidens White and the struggle for americas which came out in 2023 from penguin press. Our second place. Our second author tina nguyen, is a journalist who has written for vanity fair, politico and puck as a College Student was recruited to the conservative cause by a wellfunded network of clubs, paid internships and mentorships. She got her first job working for tucker. Everybodys favorite expert media voice. She became alienated from her maga mentors as she came to how she and other young were being used to promote White National autism and misinformation and he writes, she writes with considerable insight. And and engaging detail about how hard it was for as someone who really characterized herself as coming from a more conservative to recognize that she was being paid and had been supported to kind of promote misinformation including White Nationalism, rather doing the work of journalism, which she had a great love and respect as a journalist. The scene at the capitol on january sixth, she witnessed how these efforts led up to the riots that sought to overturn the 2220 election. And she notes in her book, how many flags south vietnamese flags flew among the rioters that day, which is a kind of detail that i think has really telling power, she recounts. Her college experiences and her early career in the book. Well discuss maga diaries. My surreal inside the right and how i got out, which came in 2024 from one signal publishers. Our final author, patrick ruffini, is a leading republic and pollster and expert on political and demography. He cofounded echelon inside sites, which is one of the highest ranks private, highest ranked private polling firms in the nation. Ruffini has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, 538 the atlantic politico and time and has been on Media Outlets from npr to fox news and entertainment. Patrick began his career working for George W Bushs 2004 reelection campaign. Patrick examines how the Republic Party has been transformed by the make America Great movement. In the book we will discuss today the party of the people inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition remaking the gop came out in 2023 from simon and schuster schuster. So lets start out by having frank, tina and patrick talk about their books and the ways they can help us understand our times and the upcoming election. Frank, your book recounts the countless interviews you had with people in the Biden White House as they worked. Stop the rising numbers of deaths during the pandemic. Seems like ancient history now doesnt. I mean going back to those times, we were cloistered in our homes, just watching millions americans die. You also have talked to people about the historic legislation, the infrastructure bills, the Chip Semiconductor bill and the inflamm inflation act. These are pretty historic development. So tell us about how you came to understand and how you came to understand bidens character and his administration it through these interviews. Thank you thank you for lovely introduction and thank you for not making me soothsayer because i would bet against political prediction that i would make. And can i just say one thing . I just to preface this to the kind of your introduction to the idea of ive thought a lot about i a book about big tech and the threat that poses and one of the things that i that makes me most optimistic about the world is that ten years ago everybody that the ebook was going to kill these things up here and it was treated as like an inevitability, an iron of history, and yet we we still consume books in this form. And to me, these books in a certain way constitute a form of resistance against. These and against all the algorithm nick forces that addict us and compel us to pick up these all the time. So when we about whats going to happen now and november, i like to think about books and to think that there is inevitable in this world. So quickly. I just ive just wasted my time talking about books now joe biden. But when started writing about joe biden in the title of book is the last politician, and youll ask, well, pretty obviously hes not the last politician. There are lots of other politicians to exist in the world. I was thinking about how both barack obama, donald trump in their different ways, people who positioned themselves as anti politicians, they people who came from outside the system, who decried washington, who they were going to lead social movements that were going to shock american politics, into some sort of new, different formation. But when we think about joe biden, i cant think of him as anything other than a lifelong politician. And as he came into he was facing this crisis of american democracy. And he thought about it in a holistic sort of way. There was a crisis, american democracy at home. And he was inaugurated on steps of the capitol weeks after the insurrection. He walked through doors that were where the glass had been broken by the insurrection. And below him he could see concrete that had been stained the blood of a body fight that had happened on the grounds the capitol. And he faced the problem of autocracy in the form he thought most primarily of china, but also he was thinking a lot about russia and the way that he thought he could win this war to save democracy was, in effect, prove that politics was the most effective way of mediating the differences of opinion that we have. And society that in a society were not going to agree on everything and nobodys to get what they want all of the time. Thats just the nature of the beast and he set out to prove that all of these things that people had dismissed as antiquated are boring or distasteful. The horse counting the horse trading, the nose counting, the persuading. People who disagree with you, were still effective ways of delivering things for the citizen. And of course, he went about and i think he compiled a pretty impressive record of delivering things for the citizenry in the way that tom just outlined. He did things that are he gets really almost no credit for for redirecting the way that we conduct political economy in this nation. The bills that he described will our political economy for generations, administrations follow will be working within this context that he set up in, the way in which the state is now acting as an investment banker and making these big bets on what will be the commanding industries of future. And were going to have semiconductor plants, a lot of them in arizona, going to have Green Energy Manufacturing plants, electric vehicles, etc. , supply chains that will exist throughout the country because of this. And it represents a real change from the Clinton Obama reagan way of doing things and its incredibly significant, of course, the ultimate of politics is now standing right before us and. So all of that accomplishment, all of the things that he was able to deliver for citizenry doesnt matter if it fails to connect with citizens and if they fail to reelect him. President of the United States. And so when i did the title, the last politician, i always had that that that that passage looming there in front me that that in some sense if we turn in an autocratic direction in you know politics will be very different. Okay frank before, we move on to tina and patrick, a up question. So, i mean, democrats have the environmentalists, frankly, they have nowhere else to go. But this election is going to be determined by. A prop as according to analysis and other analysis by the working class. Why isnt biden and the Biden Administration getting any respect or support for the Economic Impact they have had . I mean, it wasnt more than a year or so ago when we were all thinking recessions coming. What are we going to do about the upcoming recession . The recession that didnt happen doesnt seem to register it with the voters in terms their support for president biden. Yeah, theres theres a whole lot of glory in averting crisis, although thats now the narrative that i think he began to articulate in the state the union that this idea of a comeback that people are very nostalgic for the third year of the Trump Presidency before the pandemic kicked in. Its a hard a hard sell for a couple of reasons. One is inflation is a very painful thing for people to have to live through. And food prices are still pretty high, even though the rest inflation has started to recede. And there is a long tail where people experiences and how they describe economy begin to adjust long after. I a new economic reality has set in. I think is age is a real liability that he has in connecting with voters because so many of the crises that hes experienced, whether its the border, whether its inflation, whether these wars that are happening in other parts of the world make it feel like the world is on fire and something is spinning out of control. And when they look at him, their instinct is, well, hes an old guy. He cant possibly be in control, even though thats not an evidence based analysis. Okay. So, tina, like many Younger Voters in america right now, you dont feel terrible from your maga diaries, at least at first. I get the feeling that you dont feel really comfortable in the republican or the democratic camp. Hmm. I get the sense from the book that dont really identify with either one of those insofar as in in maga diaries you recount, you gravitated toward conservative out of a love of the cons and a belief in freedom. While you have renounced the maga movement, you remain what your characterize as a quasi. Tell us about political odyssey and how it can help us understand the voters you have to identify with in your journey, including the voters 40 who are very likely going to be a decisive force in the upcoming, especially if they decide not to show up. Hmm. So quasi libertarian. Certainly a weird term, but i guess its the one i gave out. So. I would describe it as that one period. When you were in college age where you think men what if people acted according to rational selfinterest from the expectation that were all good people and you know maybe we would all get along that way. Clearly human nature doesnt allow for that. But there was this one glorious moment, 2008, with the ron paul revolution, where enough people thought it would be so. But the repubs akin conservative interest structure and network has existed for decades this point, and they do so by identify in young people at a specific moment in time who lean conservative or lean against prevailing liberal ideology on campuses and go, hey, you know what . Thats a great idea. Heres a whole bunch of. Internships and jobs and Networking Events and a career path. The future that would take those ideals and make them manifest into reality. Years passed however and all of a sudden the party that you grew up in is no longer the party you exist in is no longer party you grew up in. But this is still your job and your livelihood and your and the Younger Generation who come in are now believing something completely different and it goes. It just kind shifts along with the times. But the overwhelming impetus that this network must survive all costs and it will change with the times and youre just going to have to go along it because this is where you live now. And the reason i broke away from it was because the way that i entered this world was through libertarian, conservative leaning journalism programs that were funded at that point by the koch network and they identified me early on as someone who was pretty gung ho about these causes to begin with and then in exchange for giving me, jobs in journalism and was 29 after the recession and newsrooms were collapsing and i didnt have money to go to jschool was here is your job but heres what you have to do the job do it or do it and shut up and dont really question things. My first job at the daily caller, i realized maybe a month in that the editor whod hired me wasnt actually hired by the company. He was an outside comms person. And i covering tech policy at the time. And the i brought that up all of a sudden there was no more financing for my job and now were sorry, but were going have to let you go. They were Tucker Carlson was very lovely about it, which is a topic i grapple with in the book. But the network that id mentored be started connecting me with other job opportunities. These groups in madison that were about to start a state bureau. But they wanted me to specifically cover terrible teachers. Unions were and this was 2011 if you remember what happened between scott walker and the Teachers Union then that raised a lot of alarm bells and the job that actually like made me go what am i doing here . I am a chess piece, a place called the colorado observer. And they were looking for a washington stringer to file copy out of the capitol on Colorado News and moment i took on this job. This guy, my editor, started putting these stories in front of me specifically like digging into democrat the democrats from colorado in washington and the assignment they gave was something i forget exactly what it was but i looked the republican and i was like the republicans doing the exact thing. Why are we so mad at the democrat . And he starts telling me that its all about hypocrisy and that we have to cover every democrat, even if the republicans doing the same thing. Because the Washington Post going to be attacking the republican more than the democrat. And at this point ive been people from these Interest Groups have been leading me astray and im like, no, where is this guy from . Turns out hes never been an editor in his life and his first and the job that he had before that was at americans for prosperity, which is the Koch Brothers network. Prior to that, he was the chief of staff for tom tancredo. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. This is a congressman who in colorado was speaking at like pro confederacy events and the moment. And theres a difference between idealism and what are asked to do for the sake of that idealism. And i was definitely pro i thought freedom was at the time but i entered this world to become a journalist and what the network asked of me was not do journalism and i could not reconcile the two. So when i say broke from the conservative movement, that is what i broke. So as journalist, as you know, sometimes have to challenge your audience. And so i want to follow up on your comments to challenge you the audience a bit. The next question in maga diaries, you note how you are often asked about why you continue to write about the right since you have moved beyond it. You responded, first of all, the left is incompetent to quote you observed that progressives think they can set out a plan and just it into action. They have no idea about the mountain that lies between the here and the there. They intend to go, as you put it. I dont think the left or the regular card carrying republicans whos wondering why everyone went back over the last past five years, understands that even now, the scale or geography of the mountain, thats in the way. So tell us about what liberals, progressives dont understand about the maga mountain. If you go back to the very of the conservative movement which is very different from the maga movement. At the core of conservatism, american conservatism at least comes from the idea that if you move Society Forward too quickly, its going to destroy social fabric and everything will fall into chaos. The idea comes from this 18th century politician, philosopher named edmund burke, who saw the french revolution occur. And it was like a well, i mean, wonderful that you want all these liberties. But in the process of doing so, youre beheading aristocrats. I would rather maintain institute actions that are backwards in order to keep stable. Then try to move forward at all. And american conservatism in the 1950s took that argument, made it the basis for their mission. And in this case, the french revolution was communism. And over the decade, the entire idea has been we standing athwart history, stop, dont move forward. Lets try to remain right here so we dont like spiral into ruin and it is much easier keep a Movement Together when everyone is on the same page and knows like, all right, were not changing. Thats easy. Were all in agreement. In the democrat and progressive. However, there are there a Brighter Future that they would like achieve . The question is, how do want to do it . Do they want to do it slowly . Do they want do it immediately . And they just cannot agree on it, which is why theres just more infighting and less of a network in the way the republicans have one. With that being said, id conservatism as a network thought they were protecting a very set of ideals, a shorthand would be the reagan revolution. Everything that came from their and they believed that they had the ability to choose who was going to be figurehead and their leader and put forward ideals. When donald trump in however and goes, hey what have we did . Populism and autocracy. And then the Republican Base the conservatives took for granted was like, wait, actually, we kind of like populism, autocracy, the movement and the network comes into this existential question of we had this set of ideals as our basis, but also want to maintain our and our money and our very, you know, social, our social networks do we go with our ideals and then lose everything . Or do we put those ideals aside, maintain our own status quo . Increasingly, youre seeing its option to thank you. So, patrick, your book fits the soothsayers frame better than any others in so far as youre looking at demographic trends and youre looking at some of the stuff that tina was just talking about two thirds of working class whites in this country feel like this is not the country grew up in. They feel this country has changed. So much, that it is no longer america. So in your youre tracking of the demographic trends follow from that the movement of the White Working Class to the Republican Party was a big story. Of 2016. You argue that shifts of minority voters to the gop will make it a multiracial working class majority party. Tell us about why you think this is true and how you think the trends that you are tracking will impact the fall election. Sure. So in 2012, barack obama, nonWhite Working Class and we define working class and, you know, modern times as people without a College Degree because that is really the fundamental whether have a College Degree or not. Turns out be the fundamental dividing line our Politics Today and thats that was true among white voters 2016 but it started to become true as well among nonleague. Theres been a lot written over the last several years about. How the Democratic Party is just on a completely different a completely different orbit from you know these White Working Class voters in places like michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin. But less appreciation for the fact that though those nonWhite Working Class voters were also not on board with a Democrat Party that was seemed to be moving a direction that was more, lets say, simpatico, the White College educated liberal elite that, you know, really was focused, this sort of existential threat to democracy, existential threat of donald trump, where for of those voters, actually donald trump was a better version, a republican than a mitt romney would be than john mccain would have been for those growing segments, the electorate. So you had a starting in 2012 where, you know, barack obama actually won a decisive i mean, just won 80 of nonwhite voters in america. And republicans freaked out about this. You know, i mean, they conduct an autopsy. Theres an unusually public process to selfrefer in that in post 2012. And they come to the conclusion that we need to support things like comprehensive immigration to not and alienate latino. And initially you had somebody one Business Leader come forward and say, you know, mitt romney had this mania, a policy of selfdeportation which is going to turn off all the latino voters, is going to turn off all the asian voters. And everybody who is inspired to come into this country. That persons name is donald trump. So he said that he saying that as late as 2012, in 16, he announces a campaign, descends the golden escalators by mexicans, immigrants, them, rapists, calling them, and i assume are good people and, goes in the opposite direction and wins. And not only does he win the primary to everyones shock, he and surprise, including probable his own, he wins the general election. So this wasnt simply, you know, the brand of politics that he represented was not simply one that, lets say maxim i support within the Republican Base. It also had a thread of support. Swing voters with swing voters in particular in the midwest, who voted for barack obama and shifted to trump, largely based on you know, partly on immigration, but a large part of it was trade policies, living in very industrial losing parts of the country and feeling like trump was really the only candidate from a republican perspective had ever come around. I write about story of him visiting one of the First Campaign stops, the flint auto plant in flint, michigan in august of 2015, where everyone at the time, remember, was focused on his comments. John mccain saying, i liked you. You know, like people who werent captured and saying hes a hes out of the race as this his is its over before it. But at the same time, he was going to places like flint and saying, im going to bring your jobs back. And you had no other who could credibly say this to those people. And you had mitt romney four years earlier who was the candidate socalled lets let detroit go bankrupt, you know, of laying off workers and, you know famously had that New York Times op ed, which the Obama Campaign made huge of. So this was something very different. And he reaps benefits in that fall election. Hes about 20 points better in flint than he does than mitt romney did. Now turns up again in the 2016 campaign because of the policies of flint water crisis. So you had only a lot of nonwhite have not only a big population of you know people of typically White Working Class voters formerly employed in the Auto Industry but no longer, but you also had a huge miner population and you had a huge drop off in turnout in those community. And you also saw the margins start to shrink now in 2020. Look, the polls pretty unambiguous that. Biden had a decisive advantage going into the election. In fact, led in the final polling averages by eight points. He only ends up winning the election by 4. 5 Percentage Points and really more technically accurately, 42,000 votes in three states. You know wins him that. So its a lot actually a lot closer than people expected and what really was decisive factor in that was you had places in states like florida a huge surge of latino support for donald trump in places like south texas, particularly the nonwhite vote moved very strongly in its direction. So you really have, i think, a political and political dynamic where i divide the electorate into three groups. And, you know, i you have white voters with College Degrees who have been trending left. Theyre about 30 of the electorate. Theyre going to stay about 30 of the electorate for the foreseeable. You have White Working Class voters who are 40 to 45 of the electorate and their numbers have been shrinking, but they still the Largest Group and they are majority in those midwestern battleground states. And then you have nonwhite voters and a my argument is nonwhite voters really are the battleground. And i think that their political preferences are not settled, that there is sort of been this you know, they are growing as a share of the electorate. But youve seen in 2020 and it looks like in the 2024 polls, trump into those margins and i think the point i really want to drive home is, you know, we really need to spend a lot more time understanding the actual of it within these communities rather than both the liberal conservative stereotypes, but the liberal kind of racial and social justice stereotype of of you actually appeal to those voters. And, you know, some of the ideas in, the past of saying, well, we really dont win any of those voters. So, you know, we can kind of safely write off and try to win in the suburbs. And that suburban path is getting whole lot more narrow and, you know, i would say, yeah, it absolutely, you know, whether or not can win really hinges on how well he does in those communities. Okay. So lets dig in on that line of analysis, patrick. You know when you talk about the voters of color in the United States, you know, the most Important Group for the swing that youre talking about is the hispanic voters. Black voters are still voting 85, 90 democratic according to the midterm elections and the swing in the hispanic population been significant. Its double digits and you focus on it a lot. Now you do some cherry picking of your data when focus on places like Little Havana and little saigon, because those are obviously populations that have had recent experience with social ism and have fled it. And you can make the arguments that hispanics decided the election both in 2016 and in 2020 with the cuban vote in florida being a decisive vote and the mexican vote, mexicanamerican vote in and some other southwestern states being decisive. So when we dig in, as you just suggested at the end of your question into this minority vote, what dont liberal democrats get about the shifting vote of hispanic voters . Latino latina voters in america . Yeah. So, i mean, i feel like to me the research ive done on it and i think this is something both parties dont understand. The research ive done on it really suggests i think theres a common, particularly on the right, that, you know, these people are religious and conservative and have very tradition conservative values. And i think to an extent that is true, but the real you know, i went down to the Rio Grande Valley for my book and you know what you hear from folks there and the republicans there is not fire breathing mad, right . Its not it and its not the sort of traditional kind of social conservatism. It is. You know, the fact that they were told growing up and you had multiple people me this democrats, the party of the poor, were a very poor place and we need the Democratic Party to really stand up and represent interests and really the response back to that was, we dont have to be poor. Right. And you really this sort of mentality of mobility, bootstrap, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. You saw in particular during the trump years this area got a lot better off economically in terms of the economic between that region and the rest of texas in the United States. Narrowed pretty substantially, particularly in the last couple of years of the trump trump trump era. So i think that, you know, i think we are seeing right, hispanics in particular really moving into the mainstream americas economy and society in many ways occupying many of the same neighborhoods that, White Working Class people occupied in previous generations. You go to south milwaukee. Milwaukee. It was a place where George Wallace held a Campaign Rally in 19, i think it was 19. Would have been 1972, right and this was touted as an example of, you know, the appeal of this sort of, what we would now call trumpian politics in these northern states beyond the south. That neighborhood is almost completely hispanic now. And so i think that, you know, i think the democrats have counted on i think they were hoping on latinos in particular being a block of voting bloc like africanamericans that were solidly based on group identity. But it is a very diverse voting bloc. And i dont, you know it hasnt really worked out that way for them. So, frank, you working class joe was supposed do something about this. It seem that its working out quite terms of the appeal to the working class voters. Is he going to do it for us and is he going to do it for democrats in the 2024 election . Is he going to thought you promised me i wouldnt have to be a soothsayer. So i think that its its interesting because hes i hes actually when you take a look at the White Working Class vote, i think hes probably had less erosion there. And hes in you look in the industrial midwest, hes polling stronger there right now than in other states like georgia, arizona. And i think its probably indicative of a couple of. One, he actually has talked about these populist that donald trump made the essence of his 2016 campaign and said would define him. I think when we look back at the Biden Administration and its relationship to the trump administration, trump like this bull in a china shop who came in and started to say sorts that say things that were maybe not that were heterodox for a long time. Were going to impose tariffs china we need to talk about manufacturing coming back to the United States. But the joke about donald trump was that it was always infrastructure week during his administration and. I think joe biden was the guy who actually implemented the infrastructure, which will have many consequences for the Economic Development of the country. Going over generations, i think you could say that biden his way took a lot of the ideas that trump had that broke with this long consensus that existed in american politics since the reagan and he implemented them in kind of a mature responsible of way and now the state a very different role in economy than it did four years ago and its its a and and so i think that and he was also the first president to walk a union picket line. Unions which had had declining prestige and membership for a long time now starting to see green shoots that suggest sort of rebound. Trump talked a lot about the problem of big tech and monopolies but the Biden Administration has remade the guidelines for mergers and had started to address this problem in a meaningful sort of way. So i dont think its really i mean, theres always debate about is it economic anxiety that trump pulling on or is it cultural questions that is that racial questions that are the source of his appeal. And i think a lot of what biden has done suggests that maybe the part of it is the main source of trumps appeal. So tina, we talk about africanamerican and hispanic Latino Latina voters. We wouldnt want to overlook the Fastest GrowingMinority Group in america, which are asianamericans. You wrote in maga diaries bit about how kind of maga republican perspective has been appealing to some of their voters that you identify in vietnamese communities. I dont know if youre comfortable speaking broadly about asianamericans, but how how do you understand the sort of appeal of maga, a version of republicanism playing out in the Vietnamese Community that you identify with . I think id be comfortable speaking with broader among the asian community, asianamerican community broader. Patrick made really good point in his book about how there is a very tangible connection in the Vietnamese Community, specifically to socialism and how it completely upended immigrant. They fled to america literally escape socialism whenever they hear the word socialism they connect it with democrats and biden and with the immigrant communities they are more targeted with disinformation and misinformation. Campaigns that are more right wing because. Theyre written in chinese and vietnamese and fill in tagalog. And its its more it is where right wing content is more easily available to them and more understood than something comes from like the Washington Post, New York Times, which just simply does not translate those things over. So generationally, there is a split between younger Asian American kids who grew up here who speak versus their parents who. Listen to like king vu on youtube and ask me like, is it true that malia and hunter biden are dating real . I have gotten. But theyre but ultimately at the core of that is this generational where an like where immigrants see what they escaped and equate that with what could happen in the u. S. Under joe biden like it is deeply traumatic remember the fall of saigon. It is where everything you thought you knew just disappeared. And you fell into environment where your money going, your social. Your social placement was gone. I remember, my family literally ate nothing. Pumpkins and rice for two years straight. And so my aunt has aversion to anything squash related. Now but thats pretty awful. And the idea of returning back to that time is just so deeply ingrained. And in immigrant communities the that like is a much better option in that case. I remember pretty distinctly. January six, i had arrived there early because i thought there was going to be some sort of street violence. But i saw all Chinese People with signs in mandarin saying joe biden was the devil controlled by the ccp the south vietnamese flags marching against that corruption. Im marching against idea of corruption. Joe biden and, they truly do believe that joe biden is controlled by the ccp because something hunter biden, something and. And if the democrats come into power, everything that theyve had nightmares of for decades will be coming back. And thats not the thought process to get there may be convoluted and not quite understandable, but that fear is very real. So as a journalist you work in that. Da da da da. Data between hunter biden and the ccp. So you try to help people and make connections and dispel the misinformation. What do you what do you think journalists can actually do to break into that . Those unstated assumptions that really undergirded the of misinformation. Thats a question that ive been thinking about for a really long time. I started covering disinfo as a facet of my work in 20 during covid. My job was my title was White House Correspondent for politico, but the more that trump started relying on things that he read online shape his policy, the more i my job literally was okay. Where did this thing he just read come from . And the more i dug into it, the more i realized it was because peoples Information Media diets had grown like smaller and smaller and smaller, and the places they trusted were just like down to the level of, oh, my god, youre sending this to me. You are kind of liberal. Therefore, i dont believe what youre sending me. I interview carlson later in the book and i ask what his media diet is, and he says literally, i dont use my email anymore. Im literally just reading things that people text me. So to get beyond that, barry youre really requires a level of trust that is hard to implement right now, just because of the economics of, the news industry. But i truly believe that if you can find some way to get inside someones media like information diet, as someone whos not trying to the ultimate beliefs system of someone but because its like, all right thats interesting that you believe that. Why do you believe that . Here is maybe something that could challenge that assumption, but also i dont want to like say that you are a bad person. That could be very helpful. I can go in just for a second, which is i think that this election, i think to me, has the makings kind of the ultimate media apocalypse that weve all been afraid of, that were sleepwalking into something 2024 and so many people getting such low quality. If manipulated, dangerously manipulated information through their social media feeds that i think it will have a palpable effect when. I talked about the achievements of the Biden Administration. Its kind amazing. How so little of them connect with people that they would have known about from watching the nightly news or reading about in a local paper. And so i think the question, how do we deal with this . I would say you have actually a little bit of ability to do this in your own lives, which is to be actual benefactors of media that you deem to be high quality because the whole media is struggling right now and for a long time people just consumed this firehose of free information that they were able to get in this brief era of the internet when everything wanted information, wanted to be free, that there were no paywalls in the like. So please subscribe. And and secondly, there are there are policy things that could be done to remake the news industry, the problem of the way in which Media Companies became so dependent on facebook is now coming back to destroy media industries. Media made this in giant misguided bet to get in bed with silicon that they were going to make a lot of money by getting these massive audiences facebook and twitter and the like and in the course of doing so they handed all of this power over to facebook and twitter, to twitter. As it turns out, once it becomes not in facebooks interest to promote political news, they stop promoting political news and then they choke, strangle the lifeblood of journalism, industry and government actually has the ability to do something about that, which is that these monopolies need to be broken up. So we have come to that moment where we turn to your questions. So if you have a question, please come up to the microphone. I would like to have the first question directed to patrick. So if somebody has a question from patrick, i have plenty more questions for him. But if somebody has a question for patrick, well with that. Do you have a question for patrick . Yeah, i do. Since this was about soothsaying and youre the guy with all numbers youve already identified did you that the minority that may decide this election. Id like to hear some predictions on what will happen and why. You know, based on a prediction on the percentage of there are certain things happening, we know its not 100 . I would ill look yesterday i said i was asked this question. I said i wouldnt take the bait maybe maybe i have so often that a little bit but i think look i think the election leans leans towards donald trump at the moment things could change. I wouldnt put more than a 55 probability on that. Theres a Long Campaign ahead of us. I think joe biden has just started to campaign. I think theyre trying, at least in first, you know, in a state of the union, which effective at calming democrat concerns and democratic nerves, whether he could actually continue in this campaign. So hes cleared that low bar seems like so. But you know it seems to me look we have a weve had a pretty consistent lead in the polls for about six months, which is pretty extraordinary because at no point in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, did donald lead in the National Popular vote app . No polling average. I got no point maybe maybe yes a week in 2016, but that was it. And he also because of this education, part of that is he seems to have an Electoral College advantage. So, you know, of the last election biden almost lost despite winning the popular vote by 7 million because of the electoral how the Electoral College votes were distributed and fact that in these swing states have more working class voters. So some theres some talk of thats going to diminish, but its biden does not just need to get back to even right in those in those votes he probably needs to be beating him by at least a couple points. So its a its a harder hill to climb at the moment than it might appear just from looking at those polling averages. Thank you, patrick. I encourage our panelists to be pointed in their responses and id encourage our questioners to ask a question. Question kind goes up at the end. I statement kind of rolls on forever so pointed questions from our questioners, from our panelists, and we can get to everybody. I think were coming over here now. This is for patrick. You name three groups of voters. And im looking ive been at several of these and everybody here is seems to be over 50 years old. What the youth and what about the youth what are they reading and how do you think theyre going to vote . I think its a big question right now because obviously know in during barack obama and barack obama was president and when was elected we had an electorate that was very strongly polarized on grounds. You know he he was somebody who represented a demographic generational change in the country we not have that dynamic in this election at all in any way. So its a very different political dynamic what than what were used to. I think ultimately question of of young voters is is one you cant really separate from the racial dynamics because, you know, frankly, youve got a majority of American Youth or close a majority of american you americans under 40 who are nonwhite. Weve almost reached the point where the majority of births in the United States are nonwhite. So at the same time, you have an older generation that is predominantly white. So think that this if if trump better among voters of color in this election thats almost certainly going to mean he will have done better among younger and there was some evidence and particular that those are the voters really up for grabs in both in 2020 and 2024 because you know, historically they havent voted before and they havent either democrat or, republican before. So i think that hes hoping he can grab some of those people. He i saw he was at the ufc fight in miami last night. You have very young audience for that. A young male audience for that. But hes going to start with men, young black men. Hes not going to probably be able to tackle the entire black vote at once, but hes going to with younger black men who have less of generational attachment to the Democratic Party over here. Okay. We keep getting told that eight months out, polls dont matter. Are we spending so much time, effort, money and media on something that matter or the democrats ignoring something thats really important important . Frank, you want to answer that . Well, i think that theres theres so much anxiety about this election. I mean, the polling reflects that anxiety. And i think it has to do with the stakes of the election. I think that theres a lot of people in this room probably who wish cast that. There was some other candidate than joe biden who is running against donald trump, who is younger, more charismatic, that they wish there was a different president on the ticket. And so were the polling is ending up, stoking a lot of this conversation. And i got to tell you, joe biden is going to be the democratic nominee. Hes not going to throw Kamala Harris out as vice president. Theres never any discussion about that and the nature of politics is that its a choice and those choices are not always the choices that we dream about, but they are the choices we have to confront. One last question over here, and then we have one, someone over here as well. We have time for both. This is a question for patrick. Im curious your views about. Excuse me, third party candidate. Theres no kennedy. You whatever it may be. And which way do you think that cuts out . So theres a disconnect right now, between the third party. The Third Party Efforts that can get on the ballot, which no label has gotten on the ballot but has no candidate because nobody wants to. I think its a very establishment hairy and, you know, type of vibe over there. And so yeah, theyre talking to the former Lieutenant Governor of georgia, you know, who is the antitrump republican. But i doubt that someone like that will be able to excite very many people. And hes a very nice on the other side of the spectrum, you have rfk, who, you know, is somebody who actually more appeal to the maga. Right than he does to the Democratic Party, where he started running and where his family is from. However, the real peril for biden in the third party, you know, in i think any increased elevated level of Third Party Voting, which i think were going to see a certainly much more than in 2020, is that his base is simply less enthused at the moment. And so that is a vector for defection in the same way that you know, the sanders in you know most of them ended up voting for clinton but you know a fair amount of them voted for Third Party Candidates or even for trump. So i think that more Third Party Candidates hurts biden on the margins. The question will be, you know, the biggest vehicle for a Third Party Voting right now, rfk jr can he get on ballots . Does he have the organization or are they just going to you know, they they blew 8 million on a super bowl ad, you know, which doesnt really help you get on ballots in some of these challenging. Okay. Well come over here and then over here just. So the the war in gaza obviously has been going on already for five months. But if were to step up and really assert a much more forceful stance to the government of israel and fundamentally change course in that, how might that the electorate at this point. Tina like to direct that to you because i think its particular early an issue with Younger Voters who would rather. Cool. It really depends on where the young people are getting the news of that change. My colleague thurston at park had this article and that he articulated to me the reason that younger people are sympathetic to the palestinians is because they are literally getting footage on tiktok of all of these humanitarian disasters and horrible stories coming out of gaza and theyre just seeing it over and over and over again and has kind of pushed them in the propolice direction. Now, if was a way that biden were able to remind them or like make his stance clear to them that he condemns israel and this is the direction hes going in and he can somehow put it in a. 30 seconds soundbite with a lot of images that show what hes doing that could probably change things. It is at this point issue of messaging and reaching that generation where can comprehend that policy change. Thank you. And over here, this is for you, tina. Im a mexican. I have relatives came from mexico and. I have also family members from the philippines. It blows me away that they love trump because they were once. It is my personal opinion and im just wondering what you think is that that he appeals to the American Dream that he appeals to the the helicopters, airplanes, the hotels and thats all they are tuning into because really, they dont understand that doesnt really care about them because they once immigrants. So im just wondering if if you agree with me on that thats definitely a huge factor that i found whenever i i dont know if i could like feasibly speak to the hispanic appeal trump has but certainly for voters the narrative that he is built in the image that hes built of wild in something as tangible as construct in real estate, rather than something thats kind of imaginary, like, i dont know, private equity is its an easier story to to understand and maybe this is just me making a joke about my own people, but the like gaudy, esthetic is pretty, pretty appealing among asian immigrants and the filipinos about are really successful in real estate and they are in love the trump towers and all that. I think were on the right. Before we take our last question and i know you will walk out on her, but you if i said ive got some acknowledgments i do want acknowledge that in these two days that weve had these wonderful discussions, weve relied on our volunteers in blue shirts to help us get this. And id like to them for their time. And id also like to thank the people. And i know a few of them. And i know how much love and time they put into it, who made this event possible identifying these authors recruiting them a range seeing these panels hundreds and hundreds of hours went into arranging this program and identifying these authors. Id love to have them stand up but i know several of them would be too embarrassed to do so. So please. A round of applause for. All of those who are involved in organizing. So are one. One more minute. And i hope theyll still stay for this right. So remember that bookshelves area and author signings be at the sales and signing area. The other bookstore, ten on the mall. Stay safe, be well and stay keep reading but well go to our last. Before we let you go. Please. Then a bit astonished. No one has mentioned women or ro hello hello. Thank you. Thank you for that observation. And it an important observation. We have a couple of minutes. Who would like to jump in on that. Responding to that, how do you think will womens when theres an election they happen to be the single demographic and they had they decided that 20 election will they decide election and on what basis basis let me start i can start it with a stab on that, but definitely throw some numbers my way and out there. In the past couple of special elections and referendums have focused on abortion and womens rights clearly across the ballot, voters were like, no, do not take away our rights when. You go into a general election. The issue is like how many people will out for this vote . Who do they believe will protect womens rights versus not . And also, is that going to be a priority for them . And one of the things one of the concerns ive heard coming out of my sources on the right and in maga was the issue was put on the ballot, was very clear and say, like ohio, it was like, do you believe that there should be . What was the question. I mean, was the ballot question. If you remember. Remember. But i think it was the opposite kind of what . Yeah. So the idea is so the idea that the right has is, okay, were going to have to if were going to put this on the ballot, were going to have to kind of obfuscate it. A couple of issues over a number of weeks verses, like when versus something as as like is there right to abortion. So it could drive out the woman like female voters. But you do to pay very close attention to how that choice appears on the ballot. One thing i would say is that is certainly that democrats have had an advantage or the prochoice ad has had an advantage in these referendum fights, particularly when they can be scheduled in off the off off season primaries and and lower turnout where you can really shape the electorate if one side is more energized than the other. The ability to do that in a president ial general election where turnout is already going be very high for both president ial is a little bit more limited. The other thing i would look at is, you know, trump is, you know, some ways he you in 2016, he was the candidate was kind of moving the right away from the social issue agenda. Right is three times married you know person and you know he is shifting the cultural debate towards issues like immigration and largely ignoring social issue questions. But to the point where he has to appease and the right and promises to put these Supreme Court justices based on a list and that worked, you know, almost too well for him. But has signaled that, you know, personal stance will be, you know, 16 weeks, a very and he has kind of pushed back during the primary race against six week bans and really went after ron desantis on that and didnt suffer any consequences for that so i think hes going try to muddy the waters as much as possible possible. Thank you all for