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or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website c-span.org. /podcasts. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including charter communications. >> carter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. we are just getting started, building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. >> charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> welcome back. joining us is the cofounder of 24 site news welcome. tell us about 24 site news and

the role and the current media ecosystem. guest: it is an independent news startup that started after i got laid off at my last job. the messenger closed down and a lot of us moved over to the sub stack. it is written in ap style, reported news from the ground. create -- occasional scoops when we get them. it is just me right now and a couple of cofounders. and also the podcast and a daily new -- a daily's newsletter where i take the top seven stories that is impacting the way things are moving and put that together. and it is me on the ground hopping between gas stations, wawa, sheets, and eating gas station food. host: spending a lot of time on swing states.

how are you funded? guest: subscriptions and founding members who have supported us. i will tell you that i love it because it keeps me in the field and keeps me talking with people. i had some work to go to the democratic national convention in chicago. and i spent a lot of time in pennsylvania because that is the keystone to this mass as it were. host: you wrote a piece coming pennsylvania has become the center of the political universe. why is that? guest: in a raw math sense, it is 19 electoral votes. when you look at all of the states in and play, the rust belt and the blue wall and south, southwest, it is the largest number and still very close and depending upon if you are the harris or the trump campaign depending on how you put together that mass, it --

math, it almost all lands with pennsylvania at the center. and it is a short hop up 83 north from baltimore up to harrisburg. so it is easy to get to. and the campaigns love that, they save on air travel. host: a lot of people say that the general public does not really start paying attention until after labor day. guest: yes. host: do you agree with that? guest: i think so. host: even in this campaign? guest: yes. a lot of it has to do with technology and adaptation to technology. if we look at 2016 which i would argue which was peak twitter in terms of influence as the messaging medium and used by political campaigns. now we are in the post-digital space where a lot of people have tuned out.

there used to be a novelty effect and it used to be interesting to have a news alert pop up on the phone a decade ago or two decades ago. now we are trying to get them to stop. guest: and a lot of people have tuned out. obama mentioned this, the gen z kids say touch grass. that is adaptation to technology saying let us put down the phones and have some human interaction. it is ironic because in a way it is returned to form because this is the way campaigns used to be pre-massive digital. so it is almost like a 2004 campaign or 2000 campaign before we had the constant flood of information. host: if you would like to join our conversation you can do so. the lines are democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. and independents, 202-748-8002.

and you can send us a text. that line is 202-748-8003. and we are on social media. i wanted to show you what vice president harris' campaign chair said this. "make no mistake, we a had -- we head into the final stretch of this re as a clear underdogs. donald trumpas a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020. vice president harris will fac trump on the debate stage, wher we expect them to be a formidab opponent. in 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. this november, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor thin." guest: kind of ironic how classic campaign that is. it is been with facts.

the underdog is a spin. and they both want to say that right now. i do not think -- i am not really sure that either one of them is the underdog at this point. it is so razor thin based on on the -- on all the polling that we have seen an early is almost a second presidential race with the tickets finally firmed up. but if you move past the underdog spin that is put out and go to the details, it is razor thin. she mentioned 40,000 votes on thin margins across the battleground states. it is going to be a lot about turnout and i have written about this a couple of times in the 24/7 newsletter. it does feel more like a base election about turning out key groups of supporters and that is true for trump and i would say the maga base.

and while that represents the vast majority of the republican party it is not all inclusive of everyone who identifies and is registered republican. for the democrats and harris it will be women in the suburbs. we see that in the messaging focused on talking about project 2025, talking about the dobbs decision and so, you can see them both trying to amp up who their key teams are. and i am not really sure -- it used to be that you would have candidates pivot to the middle for a general election to try to win over swing voters. i do not know if that is happening and that it will happen this cycle. host: i want to ask you about ad spending and this is npr that got the ad spending -- the red -- the ad spending. the red is trump and the blue is harris. you can see that pennsylvania is

far outspending the next in line, which is georgia and michigan. why is that and what is going on? guest: 19 electoral votes and the next closest one is do not hold me to these numbers and i do not have the map in front of me. georgia is 16 and i think there are two other ones close by and michigan has 16 also. the next nearest number and pennsylvania had more electoral votes. it used to be more akin to texas or new york in terms of its support. and it is the best way to get to 270 electoral votes needed to win the white house. it also has in terms of spending, we think about campaign ad spending and major metro markets, it is anchored by two major metropolitan markets, philadelphia and pittsburgh.

it is incredibly expensive. the only places that are more expensive is new york and california races. they are getting time in los angeles, san francisco and the bay area. i imagine these campaigns would love if you could win based only on running in north and south dakota and paying pennies on the dollar for these campaigns. but it is very expensive. again, it is very tight. it is very close right now. all of these battleground states, we are still watching for a lot of the movement coming out of the conventions and whether it is the honeymoon or not with kamala harris and tim walz. we will see how that develops. everything is so incredibly tight. host: still within margin of error. guest: absolutely. host: i want to show you two ads that have come out and i want to

discuss it. the first is a pro-trump super pac make america great again attacking vice president harris on immigration. [video clip] >> before she was the most liberal u.s. senator, kamala harris was the liberal san francisco prosecutor, the most progressive in all of california. she let an ms 13 gang member go who murdered a father and two sons. she police that she released a felon who then committed murder and protected illegal alien drug dealer so they could escape deportation. kamala harris, a dangerous san francisco liberal. [end video clip] host: the next ad is new republican voters against trump which talk about former trump voters and why they are not voting for him. [video clip] >> i am living in michigan and i

am a two trump voter and i am not voting for him again. trump is stating that he is running for america and he is not. he is running so he could pardon himself and exercise immunity, so that he can rub shoulders with dictators around the world. i will never vote for trump again. [end video clip] host: your reaction to both of those. guest: different messaging strategies for the trump campaign it is leaning on limit -- on immigrations. they see this as one of their big strengths to make sure that people show up. and it is a weakness for vice president kamala harris. and trump himself might have flip-flopped on a number of other things over the years but he has been very consistent about his position on immigration. regarding republican voters against trump, the testimonials they have been airing what is

fascinating is that this is actually something that a number of the conservatives did last year, way back last year when there was still a republican primary and it looked like ron desantis might have a shot at upending things. this is something that a number of conservatives did as well, this style of testimonials saying i am a republican, i do not support this guy. it does not change my position but i do not support this guy. you saw jeff duncan do that over at the dnc. in the polling republican voters against trump, when they were doing that before they got back on board, they saw this as effective with nikki haley voters, moderates and lifelong conservatives, people who are skittish about where trump stands on things. host: let us talk to some callers. tom in woodbridge, virginia.

republican. caller: this is tom. i was calling in originally regarding the hamas issue, but i love this topic even more. i am deeply involved in politics out here in virginia. most people do not understand why they had to get rid of biden. it was not because he was going to lose the presidency, they had to get them off the ticket because he was going to lose every down ballot race. he was driving so many people away from the democratic party, they never would have voted for him. they would have been decimated in the house and senate races. they had to get him off the ticket and they do whatever it took to do so. here is the message that i would have for everyone out there. not only did they lie to you about biden having dementia. they knew that he did in the

2020 race, they knew that. they lied to you about the hunter biden laptop and russian collusion. they lied to you with the mueller report and impeachments. they lied to you about the border. ok, where they literally opened the border and let in 11 to 20 million immigrants into the country. which the long-term plan is to destabilize the electoral college. host: let's take some of that up. he talked about down ballot races. guest: certainly democrats were very concerned about -- and this is a very typical dynamic. you talk about the top of the ticket having coattails and you want to have good coattails to carry everyone else to make sure that people show up to vote for the nominee. when biden was in there you had almost the inverse happening. you had talk hoping that maybe

people will show up in spite of him being a weak nominee. viously that dynamic has changed. that was a big concern with him, in addition to potentially losing the white house as well. host: josephine in new jersey. independent, good morning. caller: you know, what concerns me we have two states, new prescott and new hampshire and i might be wrong about the other one, where they allowed the electoral college to reflect the number of votes collected meanings that if it is a certain percentage one way or the other it reflects it. i am sorry this business of if you get one vote more, you automatically get the entire state, unacceptable. it is another way of erasing all of the votes that get collected. i am telling you that if it had

not been for this electoral college the women would be voting against roe v. wade. i am telling you. i know you are all predicting things that i am telling you for three years i've been saying this, it is going to come back to the republicans. they are going to lose in an avalanche. thank you. host: what do you think? guest: close with new hampshire. it was maine that is the other one. it is by congressional district and there are anomalies in the map. and this is why you saw a couple of months ago and i am glad the caller asked that. i should check the status of this. i had on the podcast a couple of months ago the editor of " washington monthly" and we talked about nebraska's second districts because there are scenarios where you could have kamala harris and donald trump both having 269 votes and it

could can -- it could get kicked to the house by a vote by the delegations which is the john eastman and donald trump plan on january 6, which is what they are shooting for. oh, this cycle, i do not expect any kind of blowout. there are no reagans this time around. it could come down to one congressional district. it could come down to omaha, the second district out there in nebraska. if you look at the democratic convention what is so funny is that you have the positioning of the different state delegations with prime seating on the floor and here's a little pocket of nebraska with the cornhuskers right off to the side of the stage. so, it is usually important. host: the caller also mentioned abortion. how big of an impact do you think that will have? guest: massive.

we talk about pocketbook issues and we talk about the economy and things that you see data in and out. for a lot of people they say this day in and out and they live it. especially women. also for father's with daughters -- fathers with daughters going through that. so, these are things -- and often times you will hear about and i used to cover militant -- maryland politics years ago. you would hear long ago william donald schaefer the old governor used to say the thing that he loved about being mayor rather than governor was that you could touch and feel it. you pick up the trash and keep the streaks -- streets clean and politics. this is a thing that motivates voters. it is not an abstract concept

but something that they witness and they take that with them to the ballot box which is hugely effective and important. host: tim in rochester, new york. democrat. caller: good morning. i want to tell a story. two years ago i was working with someone and he trotted up to me about politics and he said i do not see a red wave and the media overhyped things this and that and i said i do not see it really because i told him abortion is going to kill them. sure enough it did not happen. this time i think they are hyping up trump. and i think over the covid a lot of republicans died over that and i do not see him getting the vote. one more thing, back in 2016 people were not talking about james comey and what he did two weeks before that to hilary. i am not going to say it will be

a landslide, but i think that trump is going to get smoked. host: lee in new york. republican. good morning. caller: good morning. , lucero -- kamala harris said that her job was to find the root cause of illegal immigration and that was welcoming people with grandiose promises. many voted what she done about the 300 million missing children that are believed to be set -- sex trafficked and prisoners. guest: to the first caller i will say forecasting.

and i do not particularly enjoy political forecasting myself. i think it ultimately does a disservice because we are going to find out what the results are. there is an election, and the pole is the -- the poll, the final one is election day and that is what matters. that said there has been a massive increase in the amount of polling that we have had, publicly available polling. some of it is good and some of it is not so good. it goes into these aggregates that we see. and i do not know. we all as reporters, we all got stung after 2016. i was working at cnn back then. and we will are -- we were all watching the fivethirtyeight.com i'll that went from 80% chance with hillary -- the 538 dial

that went from 80% chance with hillary to 80% chance with trump and we watched it real time. those are imprecise and not a good measure. and we miss things. we as reporters, it is impossible to identify every single person and give an exactly correct answer. i give it better and this is what i am trying to do with 24sight news is to go out and talk to people and say what are you concerned about? host: and you can talk to people right here on c-span. and lee wanted to know about the border and root causes. guest: i think that is the fascinating thing. what she said about emotions especially. you can see the campaigns playing on that. you can see harris and her team really working on that. the border, that is something

that she oversaw. i do not know if it is at the level as what the trump campaign said but that is part of her portfolio. and if she can make a good case that you did not do a good job managing this then that becomes effective. i do not know the details on the unaccompanied minors but that is something specific that you can dig into. host: ryan, wisconsin -- rhinelander, wisconsin. independent line. alan, you are next. caller: i want to talk about an issue that the polls do not pick up. student loans. there are 49 million people with federal student loans and another 500 with student loans. more than half of these people are republican and independent. what is most important is that the overwhelming majority are underwater on their loans and distressed. that is something like 40 million people are seeing the

balances go up and not down. and around 37 million people are not paying at all. so this is a huge number of voters. and the worst hurt states are states like georgia, michigan like north carolina and pennsylvania. you know, the red wave did not happen because of student loans. the republicans are idiots who keep filing the lawsuit's trying to stop any kind of relief and they are fighting for the department of education. and meanwhile the democrats are fake on the issue. the democrats are just faking it but the rhetoric is good. if the republicans want to have any chance and i truly mean this. i do not see trump winning those four states. the republicans have to at a minimum tone it down there rhetoric and quickness -- quit

stabbing their finger into the eyeballs of student loan borrowers particularly, the majority of whom are republican and independent. but they need to return bankruptcy protections to student loans. in congress jim jordan can get a bill up and maybe through tomorrow. this is a conservative thing to do. and if they do not do it, i do not see trump having any chance for the republicans. host: what do you think? guest: it is a potential animator as issues go. you know as the caller was talking about that i was thinking about the demographic movement of this. we are now in a moment where millenials -- thank back to c-span playing this clip very often of the macarena in 1996 at the democratic convention which was played at a time when it was very popular for the dominant

boomers as a voting demographic. this was clinton, don't stop thinking about tomorrow. very similar now, almost three decades ladle -- later, money deals, my group -- lineal's -- millennials are ascendant and they have parents who have kids and finances are important. student loans, especially the millennial gigantic bloc of voters feel directly and also something you feel day today. now biden tried to stop it and the supreme court said he could not. they are fighting it out in court. but it touches a lot of people. host: roseann in wisconsin. democrat. caller: yes. i think the elephant in the room is the electoral college. it is the united states of

america and it should be the popular vote, i feel, when an election comes down to four states and they pour so much money into four states as to the outcome of the election i feel like the entire country is not being represented. there has never been an impetus to get rid of it and mitch mcconnell had set on the senate floor if not for the electoral college the republicans would never win again which is why you have gerrymandering and all of these things going on. i do not feel that the country is being represented as a whole. and i do not think people understand as having the president give -- being the supreme leader. you have the house and the senate and everyone is supposed to be working together, not just one person who decides the outcome of the entire country. thank you for taking my call. host: what do you say to roseann? guest: there have been movements

to move to a popular vote and that is tough because the electoral college and the way we elect a president is a foundational compromise and how we are here. you know the bargains between the bigger colonies and the smaller colonies and the big and small states to make sure the balance when this was all being drawn up two and a half -- we are coming up on 250 years since the declaration. when this was being drawn up this was one of the compromises to ensure that all the states would come together so you have some balance of power. it is not a tear any of the majority so there is some minority say. there have been efforts to do that before but it has to go through a constitutional process which is hard. host: youngstown, ohio. republican line. dan, you are next. caller: kamala harris current entire life took the position of

the liberal position on just about every single issue. suddenly before the election she is tough on the border and stealing trump's idea about pacs. social security taxes. the democrats always want to tax people. suddenly she is tough on crime after she supported sanctuary cities her entire career. so for this guy to say that nobody is running to the middle, what are you talking about? the democrats will do anything and lie about anything in order to maintain power. she is the liberal that she has been her entire career but weeks before the election suddenly she is tough entente -- tough on crime, give me a break. guest: a good point.

the messaging on this is now playing into her background as prosecutor and you do wonder. this is why we report on the campaigns and try to get harris to come to a sit-down interview is what will you actually do? this is as they say the world's longest job interview for the most important job in the world. and that is a good question like ok, would you be a hawk on the border? would you try to build the wall or finish building the wall? or the fence, how would you handle this. what harris had said is that she wanted the james lankford bill which trump helped kill in the senate which was a compromise which was to hire more agents and create legal pathway to citizenship. i mean it is ironic because this has been going on for 20 years.