Transcript: Panel Discussion on the 2024 US Presidential Election, Episode I

By The Savvy Street Show

October 30, 2024

Date of recording: October 17, 2024, The Savvy Street Show

Hosts: Vinay Kolhatkar and Roger Bissell. Guests: Ruth Papazian, David Harriman, Ed Mazlish.

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

Summary

In this episode of The Savvy Street Show, an invited panel discusses the upcoming US presidential election, focusing on media strategies, voter turnout, and the impact of recent hurricanes on voting. The conversation highlights the differences in campaign strategies between Republicans and Democrats, the challenges posed by electronic voting systems, and the importance of ground game tactics. The panelists also address the role of media bias and the implications of ballot harvesting in the electoral process. The conversation delves into the current political climate, focusing on voter motivation, election dynamics, and the potential disruptions that could affect the upcoming elections and the implications of early voting. They also explore the future of free speech in America and share their dream tickets for future elections, highlighting key figures in the Republican party.

Takeaways

Trump’s rallies are a key part of his campaign strategy.
Base turnout is crucial for winning elections.
Republicans need to improve their ground-game tactics.
Hurricanes can impact voter turnout but may affect both parties equally.
Ballot harvesting is a legal tactic that Republicans should adopt.
Voter disenfranchisement is a self-inflicted issue for some Republicans.
The perception of election fraud can undermine public trust.
Effective communication and media engagement are essential for candidates.
Kamala Harris’s missed opportunities could impact the election outcome.
Trump’s lead appears to be widening, potentially affecting local candidates.
Voter disenfranchisement is a significant concern among the electorate.
Early voting is debated, with some Republicans discouraged from participating.
Potential disruptions to the election could arise from various crises.
The Supreme Court’s role in election disputes is uncertain and politically charged.
A weaponized justice system is a new concern in the current political landscape.
The future of free speech is at risk, with implications for future generations.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Hello and good evening. Welcome to another edition of The Savvy Street Show. Today we have three distinguished guests, and it is exclusively about politics, more specifically the US presidential election, which is now less than three weeks away. My usual co-host is writer, musician, and philosopher, Roger Bissell, who will introduce the guests. Welcome to the show, Roger.

Roger Bissell

Thank you, Vinay. It’s my pleasure and privilege to help with this discussion. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ll start by introducing our guests. The first one, an award-winning science and medical writer, Ruth Papazian, knew she needed a career switch when it became verboten to cover Hillary Clinton’s obvious health issues in 2016. She’s a lifelong political junkie, and she transferred her skills to political consulting, and she works with moderate and conservative Democrats running to unseat progressive incumbents in New York City.

Ruth Papazian

Hi. Thank you for having me tonight.

Roger Bissell

You’re welcome.

Next, Ed Mazlish has been a student of political campaigns since the Reagan-Carter election in 1980. He has run for political office in New Jersey and was a delegate for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016. He currently co-hosts a podcast called The Conservatarian Exchange on the Liberty Block, which is available on most podcast platforms. Welcome to the show, Ed.

Ed Mazlish

Thank you, Roger. Nice to see you all.

Roger Bissell

Good to see you. And lastly, there’s David Harriman. David has worked as a physicist and as a philosopher. He is the author of The Logical Leap. a book that explains the scientific discovery process. He is an expert on the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who was an advocate of individual rights and a passionate opponent of totalitarian government. Welcome to the show, David.

David Harriman

Thanks for inviting me.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, thank you all for coming here. Let me jump onto the first question. I had an observation which I related to Ruth and David before the show. CBS News published a poll of their viewers of the performance of Vance and Walz in the debate, and they admit it’s slightly biased. Vance had an unfavorable rating of 54%, then went down to 47% [after the debate], by seven points, while his favorable rating jumped from 40% to 49% [after the debate], with the rest obviously undecided. He can handle legacy media quite well, it seems. So, here’s the question. If you had been Trump’s campaign manager all along, would you have done more legacy media events with Vance and more rallies with Trump and have had Trump interviewed [only] by [friendlies like] Elon Musk? How about Ruth first?

Ruth Papazian

Trump is going to be Trump and the rallies are his métier. Vance showed us that he is very adept at handling the hostile media.

Well, I think that Trump is going to be Trump, as we all know, and the rallies are his métier. Vance, after he became the vice-presidential nominee, showed us that he is very adept at handling the hostile media. Sending him out to do the media interviews is great. They [the hostile media] try to bait Trump, they try to get under his skin, and sometimes they succeed. He always takes the bait especially if they talk about crowd sizes, things like that. Vance is very disciplined, and he sticks to the topic, and he can actually turn questions around back onto the hostile interviewers. What he did with Martha Raddatz the other day was fantastic. He said, “Martha, are you listening to yourself? Only some apartment complexes have been taken over by Venezuelan gangs?” That was brilliant. It made her look just so clueless and elitist. So, as far as media goes, they should keep doing what they’re doing. However, Kamala Harris has the problem that she still hasn’t locked down her base, so she has to keep campaigning to them, and Trump’s base is pretty tight.

So, really at this point in the campaign, as somebody who does do campaigns, I am looking forward to election day and towards the early voting period. Trump’s base is solid. Relational organizing should be easy for him. So, at this point, they should be recruiting their unpaid volunteers to go out there into their own communities and harangue their co-workers, neighbors, congregants, everybody they know personally—that’s the relational part—to get out to vote. At the same time, paid staffers should be going down to the hurricane-impacted areas and helping displaced Republicans vote. That might mean giving them information about new procedures. It might mean helping them gather any documentation or forms they might need, even driving them to the polls. They need to get every single voter out. The race looks like it’s tight, and every vote counts. So, right now, if I were Trump’s campaign manager, I would be getting everybody out there to vote, and, in the early voting period. I think at this point in early voting, North Carolinian Democrats have outpaced Republicans by 25%. So, we’ve got to close the gap.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Ed, what would you do differently?

Ed Mazlish

Well, I don’t know where to start. As far as maximizing your votes, I think elections are won by base turnout. The conventional wisdom, especially in Republican circles, is to appeal to the middle and to the moderates, which Trump has done, particularly on the issue of abortion. I think that’s hurt him considerably. I don’t know if it’s going to cost him the election. It doesn’t look like it’s going to cost him the election, but I think that his positions on abortion have not spoken to the base of the party. I don’t think that anybody on the abortion rights side of the spectrum is going to vote for a guy who brags about overturning Roe v Wade, so I don’t think he gained himself any votes. I think that he’s hurt himself, that there are some single-issue pro-life voters that won’t vote for him as a result.

More generally, I’ve been in several states, including North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, and the Democrats’ main issue is abortion. The Republicans have an obvious rejoinder to the Democrats’ pretend defense of protecting bodily integrity, and that’s Fauci and the jabs and the forced medical experimentation, and not a single Republican is using it [the rejoinder]. I can only conclude that that’s coming from the top because Trump doesn’t want to disavow Operation Warp Speed and doesn’t want to take any responsibility for Fauci or any of those decisions. I understand that decision. That’s Trump’s choice. You’re asking me: what would I do differently? I think that [not using the rejoinder] is a mistake. I think that he’s allowed the Democrats to come across as not merely defenders of individual rights, but crusaders for individual rights and bodily integrity, which is an obscene inversion. The Democrats don’t believe in any rights, but particularly don’t believe in bodily integrity. So, I would do that differently.

Trump missed a tremendous opportunity during the primaries when everyone but Nikki Haley dropped out after New Hampshire.

I also think that Trump missed a tremendous opportunity during the primaries when everyone but Nikki Haley dropped out after New Hampshire. If I had been Trump’s manager, I would have told him to pay Nikki Haley to stay in the race so that he could use the fact that there was a live controversy to challenge all of the electronic voting machines that are used in the campaign. He had an opportunity to bring suit then rather than scramble right now and complain about the unfair voting and the unfair counting. The Democrats have been talking about how it’s going to take days, if not longer, to figure out who won, when we all know that they can count the votes in a couple hours or at least overnight. All of us on this panel are old enough to remember when we knew the victor by one or two in the morning. There’s no reason why electronic voting should take longer rather than shorter. If I had been Trump’s campaign manager—and not just if I was his manager, I was saying it at the time—he should have brought lawsuits during the primary to challenge the electronic voting systems during the primary. As long as Nikki Haley was in the race, it would have been a live controversy, and the courts couldn’t have rejected it on the basis of lack of standing or lack of live controversy. So, those are the two things I would have done differently if I had been Trump’s campaign manager.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you, Ed, very insightful. David …

David Harriman

Well, first of all, I want to say that I’m not a political consultant, and I won’t go into that kind of detail. Trump already engages in more rallies and interviews than Harris, so he has put himself out there. Now, he does face an obvious problem, which is the bias of the mainstream media, and so it’s hard for him to get fair interviews. Harris can go on any mainstream media show, and she gets thrown softball questions, and she can just giggle her way through this love fest, and that’s really what it amounts to. So, she has a very easy time with that, whereas imagine Trump going on CNN for an interview. They would just be attacking him like pit bulls. So, he has that problem that Harris obviously doesn’t have.

Ed Mazlish

Do you really see that as a problem though, David? I think not only Trump, but anyone—it’s much easier to shine if you can defeat the interviewer doing that than it is to just answer softball questions. I don’t think Harris does herself any favors by answering softball questions. Nobody thinks she’s any better for answering softball questions.

David Harriman

Yes, but if they were to ask her the hard questions, she wouldn’t be able to answer at all. She would just be up there stuttering, which wouldn’t look good.

Ed Mazlish

Right. But Trump looks good when he answers the hard questions, I think.

David Harriman

I don’t think it does him any good to go on NBC or CNN.

Yes, I do, too, but I also think there’s a limit to what he gets out of that. The constant, unfair, biased questions about topics that aren’t even that relevant, it’s not what he should be talking about. {Ruth: Yes, January 6th, 2021.} I think he is right to focus more on the rallies and try to get interviews, but with more objective media. I don’t think it does him any good to go on NBC or CNN. So, he has that disadvantage.

Ruth Papazian

Also, every time Trump does a media interview, he might be losing some independents, whereas Vance is gaining them. So, I would keep sending Vance to do the interviews and Trump to do the rallies. They have a nice little division going there.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Yes, multiply and win [as against divide and conquer] more that way. In Australia, I stood for the federal by-election in April [2024] for the Libertarian Party, when the [former] prime minister resigned his seat—I got 6%, which was a nice result—[one concept my campaign manager introduced me to; she] called it “the ground game.” Here in Australia, everyone has to turn up with their [photo] ID—driver’s license or passport—to show at the voting booth. It’s all done manually. It’s counted twice. We’re all allowed to have cross checkers. Each party is allowed to have someone crosscheck each poll booth’s results manually. So, is there something the Republicans can do—that’s the next question—and I’ll go to Ed first—to ensure that the ground game is up to scratch or is as good as the Democrats’ one?

Ed Mazlish

Is there anything we can do? No, because the Republicans don’t cheat, and the Republicans don’t ballot harvest the way Democrats do. If we were going to try and have fair elections—Republicans tend to fight the last war, and they’re fighting the last war when it comes to voter ID. Of course you should need an ID to vote, but under the Motor Voter law, which has been law in the United States for over 30 years now, the illegals all have IDs. When you get a driver’s license or a state registration card, the states are required by federal law to offer a voter registration to that person, and those people are all being registered to vote. Most of them don’t understand voting; and to the extent they do understand voting, they know that they have to stay away. So, when you combine that with ballot harvesting being legal in a lot of states, Democrat operatives are registering these people, taking them to get identifications, registering them to vote, and then they know they’ve got a whole list of people that they know are going to stay as far away from voting as possible. That gives them the opportunity to ballot harvest and submit ballots in favor of their preferred candidate. Basically, they have legalized cheating, and it’s impossible to catch them. The Voter Motor law is really the culprit here, and it needs to be repealed or, if not repealed, seriously amended. No Republican is talking about that. No Republican really understands that, so that’s the big issue on the ground game.

Republicans tend to seek out the mushy middle, thinking that the elections are won in the middle.

Do the Republicans know how to make phone calls? Yes. Do the Republicans know how to do advertising and speak to the voters? Yes, kind of. As I mentioned in my previous answer, Republicans tend to seek out the mushy middle, thinking that the elections are won in the middle. Democrats, if you look at them, tend to motivate their base. When they put Walz up there instead of Josh Shapiro, they picked somebody who was going to appeal to their base rather than somebody who would appeal to the middle. Trump actually did a good job picking Vance because he [Vance] speaks to the base, but Republicans as a general rule tend to look towards the middle, and I don’t think that’s a smart ground game.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay. David, what about something Ruth said: Go out there into the hurricane hit areas, recruit those people. Anything else you would do with the ground game?

David Harriman

You mean, before we get to hurricanes? Well, yes. The ground game? I agree with what Ed just said, which was the Democrats are much better at cheating than the Republicans, and for the Republicans to win an election, they just need to win by a margin that’s big enough to overcome all that cheating. In a fair election, of course, the Republicans could be ahead by 1% and win the election. That’s not the way it is now. I think realistically, the Republicans have to win by several percent in order to actually win the election.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Ruth, any changes in the ground game?

Ruth Papazian

I want to address something Ed said and something David said. As Ed correctly pointed out, ballot harvesting is legal, so if it’s legal, it’s not cheating. Republicans are about 10 years behind the Democrats in terms of campaigning and technology in campaigns and just across the board. So, that’s the first thing I want to say.

Then, as far as the kind of massive cheating that David’s talking about, I take a contrarian view on this. (I have to say that, just as an aside, I’ve been a Democrat, I’ve been a Republican, now I’m an independent, so I’ve been all over the place, but I am now an independent to stay.) But as far as this [isn’t] too-big-to-rig and stolen elections and things like this, I really don’t believe that that is possible because it would take a massive conspiracy of thousands and thousands of people to flip key districts in swing states to swing the whole state. Now, human nature being what it is, somebody is going to start bragging to their friends. “I helped Trump lose North Carolina, I did this, and I did that.” Maybe to try to impress a woman or maybe from getting drunk at a party, but somebody’s gonna blab, and the conspiracy is going to come out. I just don’t think it’s possible to keep something that massive a secret. So, I really don’t believe that elections are stolen per se.

I do believe, though, that Republicans should do a better job of ballot harvesting, chasing ballots, getting out the vote. One thing they can do, for example—you notice that, in New York state, we have Proposition One, and elsewhere, similar propositions that all of a sudden are not only enshrining into the state constitution abortion rights, which means until the head crowns, but transgender rights and gender-affirming care and all these very controversial issues are becoming put onto the ballot as ballot proposals or propositions. Why do they do that? They do that to drive the vote. They do that to get out their base. Republicans should be doing more of that. See, you get them out to vote for the proposition, but while they’re there, they’re going to vote for all the candidates. There are so many things Republicans don’t do and should do.

Roger Bissell

Agreed. I’m going to, if you pardon the expression, transition to the next question. Full disclosure, I am an independent; I have libertarian-leaning views. I agree with Ruth’s analysis or opinion about cheating, et cetera. I put it a little more bluntly. I think Republicans are creatures of habit, and they’re lazy. Maybe that’s not fair to some of them, but in general, “ground game” to them sounds like a football game, and it’s something that they don’t do. They’ll send money, maybe they’ll work at the polling place, but Ruth also mentioned going to the hurricane areas and helping out. Well, you might consider that as part of a ground game, and how many Republicans are going to roll up their sleeves or take time off to go do that door-to-door, community type of work? So, this leads to a question that I had, and I thought it might be passe by the time we had our podcast, but I heard on the news tonight, they’re still not able to get their plumbing and water going in some of these areas. Hopefully they’re getting food and some drinking water. But here’s the question: Is the aftermath of these hurricanes going to disrupt voting so much, especially in the rural areas, like in Georgia or North Carolina or South Carolina, that what should be a Trump/Vance victory in those States is in jeopardy? Along with that, is the fact that Biden and Harris have been so lackluster in their response going to hurt them in those areas? How do you think that’s all going to cash out in terms of how it’s going to move the results in those two states in particular? Let’s start with David.

David Harriman

I don’t think that hurricanes will have a major effect on the election, but I do think that Kamala Harris missed a major opportunity there. When there’s a national disaster and it’s not handled well, it usually hurts the incumbent, not the opponent; and the fact that when Hurricane Helene hit and was roaring across those states, wiping out towns and killing people, Kamala Harris was partying in Hollywood with friends—that doesn’t help her. She came across looking really bad. Her campaign manager should have gotten her out to the hurricane areas, should have put kittens up in trees, had her climb up the tree, rain pouring down on her, branches of the tree whipping around, and then showed her rescue that kitten. They missed that opportunity, and I think the campaign manager should be fired.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Something Walz would do, I think [showing off false valor].

Roger Bissell

David, I think that’s so true. I think she’s got this gated community kind of mentality. You remember when she went down to the border, so-called, but she didn’t go anywhere near the border. She was just in El Paso, and she didn’t actually go down and even look at what was going on. She’ll show up at the airport, or she’ll go to the city hall or something, but she doesn’t go where all the dirt and grime and flooding and damage and suffering are.

David Harriman

Yes, and that’s a big contrast with Trump. Trump goes right to the border. He talks to all the border patrol agents. If you asked all those border patrol agents who they were going to vote for, I’m pretty sure it would be 90% Trump. Kamala Harris is part of this elite. She’s at home at Hollywood parties. She’s not at home in these other places.

Roger Bissell

Okay, Ruth, you’re next.

Ruth Papazian

If Republicans are going to have problems voting in these hurricane-ravaged areas, so will Democrats.

I think that if Republicans are going to have problems voting in these hurricane-ravaged areas, so will Democrats. The question is, what do the campaigns do about it? Right now, as I said before, 25% more North Carolinian Democrats have voted early than Republicans. They were in the hurricane too. What are they doing that the Republicans aren’t doing? That’s the first thing. But I do think that it will have some effect on Kamala Harris’s popularity because it showed that she can’t handle a crisis. It also showed that Democrats like to portray themselves as the party that cares, they’re people oriented, and they help everybody in need, et cetera, et cetera. She was so callous throughout this whole thing, just didn’t seem to be caring at all, not even about appearances. She was completely unconcerned about the plight of those people and didn’t know what to do to help out.

One thing I would like to say also, just to go back to the stolen vote situation: if you are a Republican who passes up 10 chances in a row to vote early, because most early voting periods are about 10 days, you passed up 10 chances to vote, and you are saying, “I’m going to vote on Election Day,” but then something happens to keep you from voting on Election Day, you have disenfranchised yourself, and if you want to worry about a stolen vote, go look in the mirror because you just stole a vote from all the candidates you support. There’s your stolen votes right there.

Roger Bissell

Couldn’t put it better.

David Harriman

I do want to come back to a point that Ruth mentioned earlier when she said it would be impossible to conceal massive vote counting fraud. I don’t think it has been concealed. I think it’s come out in a lot of ways. In [Dinesh] D’Souza’s 2000 Mules movie, there were all kinds of controversies about what was shown on video cameras, [such as] the shutdown of polls on election night in Atlanta. They claimed they had to clear everybody out of the building because there was a major plumbing issue. It turns out there was one overflowing toilet. There was a truck driver that drove a bunch of ballots from New York to Philadelphia, [he] said he did it, whole bunches of ballots, and then his truck disappeared. There were interviews with lots and lots of people who were saying there was fraud going on. In regard to the media, you can look at Project Veritas. They catch these left-wing politicians all the time. An executive at CNN was in a meeting where they caught him on camera saying, no, we’re not going to cover that Hunter Biden story; no matter what comes out, we’re not covering it. They caught another executive at CNN saying, look, our whole motive here is not to present the candidates as they are and give a fair treatment of the election; our goal is simply to get Biden elected. They’ve caught people on camera saying these things, so it’s not completely hidden. That’s the only point I was making.

Roger Bissell

Ed, I do want to hear what you have to say about the hurricanes before we move on.

Ed Mazlish

Well, in full disclosure, I wasn’t actually in the line of Helene, but I do have a house that was in the line of Helene, about 45 miles east of Asheville. I split time there. I was there over the summer. I’m familiar with North Carolina generally, because I lived there for almost four years before moving up to Michigan where my son goes to college. I don’t think the hurricane is going to impact voting too much, for the simple reason that the people I know in North Carolina are all very motivated to vote. I don’t know anyone in Asheville, but in my town, which is Morganton, a lot of people were flooded out. The town was flooded pretty badly, and schools were closed for about a week. Power was out for a long time. It wasn’t quite as bad as Asheville, but it was pretty bad in my town. But the people I know are all very motivated to vote. Even though early voting has started, they might be getting to the polls late, but they are going to vote. I don’t think … I know that people know or believe that they are being targeted. There’s a concerted effort to make sure that such efforts fail. People in Morganton that I’ve talked to, a lot of them say, “We know that they’re not trying to help us, and they think that it’s going to hurt the Republican turnout.” I don’t think it will, but that said, a couple of other points…

I agree with David that Kamala Harris missed a great opportunity.

Number one, I agree with David that Kamala Harris missed a great opportunity, but I will also say that the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, has been in the process of imploding for a couple months now. He is going to drag down the ticket in North Carolina. I don’t know if his implosion is going to be sufficient to drag Trump down and give the state to Kamala Harris. It seems to me just over the last week or two that Trump is widening his lead, and that Trump seems to be pulling away, not just in North Carolina, but generally. But to the extent that Trump might not win North Carolina, I think it’s going to be much more attributable to the implosion of Mark Robinson’s campaign than it will be to the hurricanes. I’m less familiar with what’s going on in Georgia, so I don’t really want to speak to it other than to say that I think that the mentality is going to be the same there as it is in the part of North Carolina with which I’m familiar, namely, I think people know that they’re not going to be, that they don’t want to be disenfranchised.

Just one other thing, as far as Ruth was saying, I can tell you, at least in North Carolina, there are a lot of Republican activists that have actively encouraged people not to vote early because they believe that Democrats are going to cheat and that by voting early, you’re giving the Democrats information as to how many votes they need to cheat. I have been solicited by a few well-known activists to not vote before about 2:30 or 3:00 on Election Day. I think Ruth’s advice is exactly right, that you never know what’s going to happen on Election Day. You could be sick, you could have a storm, your kid could be sick, who knows? I personally don’t like early voting. I think elections should be a snapshot in time. But as long as there is early voting, it makes sense to go vote while you can. I can tell you that a lot of Republicans in North Carolina are being not just advised, but strongly encouraged not to vote early because there’s a belief that by voting early, you’re giving the Democrats knowledge and information about how many votes they’re going to need to turn the state.

Roger Bissell

Right. It is the month of October, and we’re actually more than halfway through the month , and we always wonder, is there going to be an October surprise, whether it’s a good thing, a bad thing, even a disaster. We’re going beyond hurricanes now. What about something that might be so huge that it could delay or really seriously impact the election, even how the election is conducted? Like a war. Just today, the Israelis took out the leader of Hamas, so maybe there will be a peace settlement soon, maybe not. But what about war, there or [in] Ukraine? A pandemic? An attempt on Donald Trump’s life that succeeds? What are the chances for something of that sort to be used, and who do you think would try such a thing, and could it succeed? Could it succeed to the point where they would declare a national emergency and say, well, we’re just going to have to postpone the election? Ruth, I want to hear your thoughts on this first.

Ruth Papazian

I just cannot conceive of something like that happening. You just can’t have millions of Americans disenfranchised on the whim of a governor or a secretary of state. So, if any state either curtails, postpones, or suspends voting for any reason, I think that the Trump campaign should immediately file an injunction and take it to the Supreme Court if necessary. You don’t suspend elections in this country. And if, God forbid, Trump should get assassinated, he’s still on the ticket with Vance, so Vance would take the oath of office, I believe. I’m not a constitutional attorney, so I don’t know that for sure.

Roger Bissell

Well, that sounds right. Ed, how about your thoughts?

Ed Mazlish

Well, you have to remember that we don’t have one national election. We have fifty state elections plus the District of Columbia. I can’t really conceive of anything that would lead to all 50 or 51 jurisdictions trying to cancel or postpone the vote, especially given that Republicans’ control of a good portion of those states. That said, are there things that I think could disrupt the campaign? Sure. It’s obvious that they’re trying to either assassinate Trump or, at a minimum, if the Democrats aren’t the ones behind the assassinations, they’re certainly encouraging them and they’re certainly not doing anything to discourage them. Assassinating Trump wouldn’t cancel the election, but it would certainly disrupt it, which was your question. I don’t think the Democrats need to disrupt. They’ve told us what they’re going to do. They’ve told us that we’re not going to have a winner on November 6. I don’t think that there’s any reason why we can’t have the votes counted on the night of November 5 or [by] the morning of November 6, unless there’s funny business going on. I think that they’ve told us that that’s what their intention for an October surprise is. There have been signs of tension between Harris and Biden that make me think that Biden wouldn’t be cooperative on any kind of October surprise to benefit Kamala.

Roger Bissell

Well, maybe not an October surprise, but what about a January surprise? Like, if Trump does win and has a clear electoral victory, who is it that certifies the electoral vote?

Ed Mazlish

Well, it would be Kamala Harris, and the ironic thing with that is that they passed a statute that they think would tie Harris’s hands so that she would have to be engaged in this ministerial act to certify the election. I personally think the statute is unconstitutional. I don’t think your listeners know that I’m an attorney. I’ve done constitutional litigation, but I obviously didn’t litigate the 2020 [issue]. I don’t think that a statute can amend the Constitution. First of all, I don’t expect the Democrats to care. The Democrats don’t care about the Constitution anyway, but insofar as they had to litigate it, I think that they have a decent constitutional argument that the statute that purports to tie Kamala Harris’s hands is itself unconstitutional. But in the end, I don’t think they care. They only use the Constitution when they think it benefits them. If it doesn’t benefit them, they ignore it.

David Harriman

I agree with Ed. Obviously, the whole pandemic thing is—that ship sailed. The war would have to be a full-out nuclear war involving the United States. That’s not going to happen. So, what it comes down to is two things.

First, assassinating Trump—it’s a real possibility, I think, that another attempt could be made. There’s already been two failed ones. The first one failed really by a fluke, him turning his head at the last moment. So, that’s a real possibility. The Secret Service is doing very little to try and protect him. So, it’s obvious to me that Democrats would love it if Trump got killed.

The other thing Ed said that I think is good is that, in a sense, the Democrats have already announced that they’ve postponed the election by saying that it’s going to take us a couple of weeks just to count the votes. So, until the vote counting is done, the election isn’t done.

Roger Bissell

Right, and Jamie Raskin said that if Trump did win, they were going to use the 14th Amendment against him and declare him unqualified by reason of [inciting an] “insurrection.”

Ruth Papazian

Which he was never charged with. I think the Supreme Court might say something about that.

David Harriman

Well, first of all, you mean what the mainstream media called the worst insurrection since the Civil War, roughly equivalent to the Civil War, supposedly. Now, they arrested a bunch of people that were guilty of disturbing the peace and trespassing and stuff. Those people, without trial, got held in prison for a year. So, the Democrats are taking political prisoners for the first time in our nation’s history, and that is the travesty of justice here, not what happened on January 6^th. What happened in the aftermath was 100 times worse than what happened on January 6^th.

Ed Mazlish

I just wanted to add that I’m not confident that the Supreme Court would step in, Ruth. They might, and I think they should, but I think it’s 50-50. I think that they could easily decide that this is a political question, that the political branches have to decide. Even the case that they decided in favor of Trump a while back, ultimately, they said that this is a political question that Congress has to decide and, without Congress having decided, that they weren’t going to let the States override Congress. If Congress goes and affirmatively says “We’re not certifying Trump, we find Trump to have been an insurrectionist …”

Ruth Papazian

Yes, but if they cite the 14th Amendment, it becomes a constitutional issue. If that’s what they’re hanging the whole …

Ed Mazlish

Trust me, I agree with you, and if I were on the Court, I would take the case. I would say that it’s not a political question, and the Court should resolve it. But I can see the Court saying, “If Congress speaks, we defer to Congress, and if that’s what Congress does, that’s a decision for Congress.” That might not even be the wrong decision, even though Congress would be wrong. Under our system, I don’t think that the Court is supposed to overrule Congress. I think it’s an open question. I’m not as confident as you are that the Court would intervene.

David Harriman

But then we might have civil war. If we’re talking about a case where Trump wins the election and then they say, “No, you can’t take office,” there are a lot of people in this country that would have a big problem with that.

Ed Mazlish

I agree with that, David, but you know what? If we were to look back five years before now, and if you were to tell me in 2019 all the things that have happened in the last five years, and you asked me “Is there going to be a civil war?” I would have said we’re going to have a civil war long before we got to 2024. And we haven’t been close to it.

Ruth Papazian

Well, okay, but if Trump gets elected, so does Vance, and if Trump can’t serve for whatever reason, there’s Vance.

Vinay Kolhatkar

He [Vance] succeeds [takes the Oval Office], right. So, they don’t achieve their goals.

Roger Bissell

And then the Deep State trains their weapons on him.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Potentially, but it can’t go on. He [Vance] would have a [new] VP.

Well, we’re into the short questions now, four short questions, kind of a yes-no, maybe small elaborations. David first: if Harris wins, will free speech and the economy be lost for good?

David Harriman

These next four years will be a disaster if Harris gets in.

They will suffer major damage, but I do not think they’ll be lost for good. You can’t say they’ll be lost for good. There’s always a chance for a comeback. What will happen is the Democrats that advocate global totalitarianism are going to entrench themselves, and they’re going to get much more powerful. They already control the bureaucracy, the alphabet agencies. They control a lot of the media and the schools, and they’re going to consolidate that control along with a lot of disastrous economic policies. So, I see it as a real uphill battle to come back and for America to fight to be a free country again. These next four years will be a disaster if Harris gets in.

Ruth Papazian

Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction.

Well, I’m going to tackle the free speech part because, obviously, our economy is already in free fall, so we know that’s not going to come back. If you remember what Ronald Reagan said: freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction; it must be fought for, protected, and passed on to the next generation. This generation has been indoctrinated in school to equate free speech with violence. So, who’s going to protect our freedoms once we get them back? I think that the pandemic showed how completely and quickly the government can deprive people of their fundamental rights and control them through fear and through government might. So, I’m thinking that if Ben Franklin were alive today, he would say that we don’t deserve liberty.

Ed Mazlish

No battle has ever been permanently won or permanently lost. Republicans don’t seem to understand that.

No battle has ever been permanently won or permanently lost. Republicans don’t seem to understand that, especially because when they win battles, they think that they’ve won them permanently. They defeated Hillary Care in 1994 [and they thought that they had won the battle against socialized medicine and didn’t have to worry about it], and they weren’t prepared for Obamacare sixteen years later in 2010. That said, I think that if Harris wins, she’s going to do an enormous amount of damage. How long it’s going take us to recover, I don’t know. We had a thousand-year Dark Ages. I don’t expect to live for a thousand years, so for all intents and purposes, it might be for the rest of my life. But all we can do is all we can do, and you just have to fight the best that you can.

David Harriman

I agree with you, but Ruth makes a really good point that the key obstacle, maybe, is free speech. If the Democrats can shut down free speech, it’s going to be really hard to fight. People can want to fight; they can have the courage to fight. If they’re not allowed to speak, we’re in real trouble.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, we have time for just two more short questions from Roger.

Roger Bissell

Okay, context is always very important, and as the sainted Donald Rumsfeld reminded us, when you’re in a war, you don’t fight the war with the army you’d like to have, you fight the war with the army you do have, so the candidates that are on the ballot for November 5th are the ones we do have. But let’s drop context for just a minute. Think of your dream ticket. I want to start with Ed. Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever—who would you like to have been on the ballot for November, and for whatever reason? Let’s keep these short answers, and we’ll just go around the circle.

Ed Mazlish

Ron DeSantis, hands down. Just in the last two weeks, he single-handedly ended the longshoreman strike. He also did a heck of a job with Hurricane Milton. He shut Kamala Harris down from trying to grandstand on Hurricane Milton. DeSantis has shown himself to be an amazing executive. I think that he ran an awful campaign. He was afraid to attack Trump in the exact same way that Ted Cruz was afraid to attack Trump in 2016. I supported both of those men in 2016 and 2024 [respectively], and it was very dismaying to me to see both of them afraid to attack Trump. My dream ticket would be DeSantis and, frankly, Vance. I think Vance is a great candidate for vice president. The only real drawback is that he doesn’t have experience. But to me, I think that’s as much a positive as it is a negative. I don’t really want somebody who’s got a lot of experience. So, that would [have been] my dream ticket this year, and hopefully, that’ll be the dream ticket for 2028.

David Harriman

Trump, without a doubt. I’m going to surprise people here. I actually regard Trump as one of the 10 best presidents in the history of the United States. I am a huge fan of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and so on. They lived in a very different era. James Madison would have no idea how to handle today’s political climate and today’s world, whereas I can easily envision that Trump, when he’s in these meetings with foreign leaders, he’s pushing them around, they’re not pushing him around. I actually regard his character, which most people pick on—most people are put off by the character, but they say, “Well, I’ll vote for him because I like some of his policies”—I actually think the character is his advantage. You can easily imagine him sitting down at a conference with Xi of China and kicking his ass, basically, whereas I can’t see that with these other candidates. So anyway, Trump is my man. Now, as far as others, I like Vivek Ramaswamy very much. He seems passionate, very intelligent. I also like Rand Paul. He’s a fighter.

Ruth Papazian

I think Trump was the only choice to be the Republican nominee because both he and MAGA Nation believe that there’s unfinished business. He’s got to finish his second term. I love Vance, but before he was chosen and I got to see his mettle, I was thinking that RFK Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard might be good choices because they would have shaken up the Deep State. But now that they’re on Trump’s transition team, they’re going to make sure that his second administration is not stuck with Deep Staters who try to undermine him every step of the way. I think for 2028, I would like to see Vance/DeSantis. That would be my dream ticket—12 years of steady, competent leadership. Who could ask for anything more?

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, so we still have the dream ticket question for 2028 for Ed and David.

David Harriman

As I said before, Vivek and Rand Paul—I like both those guys a lot. Rand Paul was the only one that really fought Fauci and all the lies about COVID, which was a very big deal. I mean, that had to happen. Somebody had to stand up and do it, and he was the one. Vivek is obviously intelligent, very articulate. To me, he doesn’t seem like a compromiser, and this is my number one criterion when it comes to choosing Republicans, because they have a history of these moderates being compromisers that end up just giving in to the Democrats all the time. The last thing we want to do is end up with someone like [George W.] Bush again. Bush was one of the worst presidents in history. He was as bad as Obama, in my thinking. So, we need somebody who sticks to the principles and can’t be turned.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Ed, dream ticket for 2028?

Ed Mazlish

Vance, DeSantis, and I’m not sure on which order, but those two on the ticket.

Roger Bissell

I’ll throw in my two cents’ worth. I like any of those four, and it’s hard to pick from them. I was very impressed with DeSantis, for all the reasons that have been stated. I really admire Rand Paul greatly and Ramaswamy for how he speaks on his feet—and Vance, same reason. I think they’re all very strong and very principled. They don’t cave, they stand up, they’re articulate, and they’re on the side of freedom. So, those are all good reasons.

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you. I’ve been impressed by Ted Cruz, who stands up [for] the fossil fuel lobby, Rand Paul for standing up to Fauci. They’re both very open. Vivek Ramaswamy, as well. Vance is growing on me. And in the media, Megyn Kelly; [she] is very intelligent and articulate.

Anyway, that brings us to a close. Thank you all for being here. We’re going to meet again in two weeks’ time, and we’re going to have all the panelists give us their [electoral college] predictions, and we’ll see how you go.

To all the listeners out there, and the viewers, thank you for tuning in to The Savvy Street Show. That’s how you become more savvy. So, good night and good luck.

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