nothing i can do for you, you have to leave the state. or that doctor is worried about their license, their criminal exposure if they treat you. that's not who we are as texans. if there's one thing i know about us, it's that we believe in freedom, and this is not it. it's fundamentally an issue of freedom. those providers are telling the truth. they're saying what their experience is. we're also going to see an issue of not having enough providers going forward. >> congressman allred, i know you have a tough campaign ahead. it's a close campaign. great talking with you about so many issues. that does it for me tonight. i will be back this weekend with a special edition of inside with jen psaki. we've got a great lineup of guests, including transportation secretary pete buttigieg and california senator laphonza butler. that's sunday at noon on msnbc. but first alex wagner tonight starts right now. hi, alex. >> you are burning the midnight oil, sister -- >> so are you.

>> -- yeah, well, i mean, kind of. i mean, i am. i'm going to take a yes on that, but i just want to say thank you for focussing on down ballot races, because the senate and the house matter very, very, very, very, very much in the 2024. >> and the supreme court, which i know you talk a lot about too, and it's so important for people to know and understand what's at stake there as well, so. >> it is all interrelated. thank you for a great show as always. >> thanks, alex. >> okay, when president joe biden announced he was running for re-election last year, he decided early on that the theme for his second campaign would boil down to just one word. >> freedom. personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as americans. there's nothing more important, nothing more sacred.

>> that was how president biden's re-election effort began, centering freedom as the fundamental american value that would drive his campaign, a concept that united all the major fights in this election, including the fight for democracy and the fight for bodily autonomy. it all came down to free tom. when president biden gave his widely praised state of the union speech earlier this year, freedom was once again the central theme. over the course of his one-hour speech, biden used the word freedom more than a dozen times. and now president biden has passed the torch to his vice president, kamala harris. well, today vice president harris released her first solo campaign ad for the presidency and just like joe biden did in his first ad, kamala harris is putting freedom at the center of her message. this time with a little help from beyonce. >> in this election, we each face a question, what kind of

country do we want to live in? there are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate, but us? we choose something different. >> kamala, kamala, kamala. >> we choose freedom. >> freedom, freedom, i can't move, freedom cut me loose. freedom, freedom, freedom where are you, because i need freedom too. >> the freedom not just to get by but get ahead, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to make decisions about your own body. >> the harris for president campaign is now operating at full tilt and has its first sign of real lift. a new poll out today from "the new york times" shows kamala harris in a statistical tie with donald trump, trailing him by one point within the margin of error among likely voters

nationwide. by way of a comparison, trump led biden by six points in that same poll earlier this month. today vice president harris spoke to one of the country's biggest teachers unions, the american federation of teachers, which is one of the first unions to endorse her campaign. and she used that speech to take the fight directly to her opponent. >> donald trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed trickle down economic policies, back to union busting, back to tax breaks for billionaires. donald trump and his allies want to cut medicare and social security, to stop student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public servants. and i say to aft, they even want

to eliminate the department of education. >> now, that was a preview of what we might see in a future debate between kamala harris and donald trump, but whether or not they actually debate, whether trump actually says yes, i will debate kamala harris, that is an open question. trump had previously agreed to a second debate with president biden, hosted by abc news in september, but after it became clear that vice president harris might succeed joe biden as the democratic nominee, trump started to walk back his commitment, saying he wanted to have multiple debates hosted instead by pro-trump right wing news outlets instead. on her way back to washington this afternoon, vice president harris had this to say. >> i'm ready to debate donald trump. i have agreed to the previously agreed upon september 10th debate. he agreed to that previously, now it appears he's back pedalling, but i'm ready. and i think the voters deserve to see the split screen that

exists in this race on a debate stage, and so i'm ready, let's go. >> i'm ready, let's two. the trump campaign has since responded by pointing to comments trump made on tuesday saying he intends to debate vice president harris, but they have also said, just an hour ago, that they won't finalize details until democrats formally decide on their nominee. so we shall see. put a pin in that one. in the meantime, harris' supporters are mobilizing on the heels of sunday night's wildly successful black women for harris organizing call, harris supporters held two more organizing calls this evening, one for white women who support the harris campaign, and another for men from all walks of life who also support the harris campaign. next week vice president harris will head to georgia where the campaign is hoping to keep up that momentum from the standing room only event they held in washington earlier this week.

or sorry, wisconsin earlier this week. we expect vice president harris will choose a running mate in the next two weeks ahead of the virtual nominating convention. so buckle up, everyone, because this thing is just getting started, and there are only 103 days to go. joining me now are dan pfeiffer, former white house senior advisor to president obama, and ashley etienne. i'm eager to get your thoughts on how you would like to see this campaign unfold, but dan, let me ask you about this polling. vice president har his has made up some ground, but there's obviously still more to do. i wonder where you think she should be focussing geographically on picking up that support. there's a pretty big debate about whether it's opening up the map or focussing on the so-called blue wall states of wisconsin, pennsylvania, and michigan. >> i think it is and/or, right? the -- it is no question that

for any democrat, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, are the clear eest, quickest path to 20, but because of her strength with younger voters, black voters, latina voters, where she is performing at five, six points where president biden was performing, georgia, arizona, nevada should be back in play. and so we are back to where we thought this campaign would be a year ago, which is with these six battleground states, possibly north carolina, coming into play. she's got to open up as many paths as possible to the presidency. >> ashley, can you talk about the sort of new paths forward, the resurrection of what is called the obama coalition but will inevitably be something else, but an it will be the harris coalition. but the inroads that you think are possible in communities of color and specifically with communities that have shown a sort of interest in donald trump lately that would be hispanic men and black men, how do you think, you know, how do you think she is best positioned or best position herself to bring

them back into the democratic tent. >> there's this whole issue of black men and hispanic men supporting donald trump. it's just been a bunch of hype. it's not bearing out in a real way that's a threat to kamala harris in the numbers. i was just recently talking about the usa today poll that they poll black men who support trump and they ask them would you support trump if he put a black man on the ticket, if he chose a black man, and they actually said no, they wouldn't. it just sort of reminding me of my favorite harriet tubman line, which is i would have saved more had they known they were actually enslaved. there's always going to be a percentage you're going to lose. but the reality is, the one thing i think that makes kamala harris the right leader for this moment is something she used to tell us when i worked for her in the white house, and that was when you go into these rooms, the oval office, you take people into though rooms that don't

even know that the rooms exist. she would always say that she sees people. she said that today when talking about the israel/palestine issue. she sees people. and i think that's very unique to black women in particular, because we're the lowest on societal totem pole, so we're often considering other people before our own selves. it's consistent with who she is, the way she was raised by two immigrant parents in a multiracial neighborhood. you know, her first memories were of her in a stroller marching for freedom for all people. and so you know, her ethos is to see people. what she's doing, she has to do more of it. be authentic, engage black men and hispanic men where they are on the issues that they care about, and tactically you've sign her do this. she did the quavo event on criminal justice reform. i think she needs to do more of that, and i know she will. that is her secret sauce as a leader, she has an ability to see and hear people in a way

most leaders don't. i've worked for everybody from president obama to speaker pelosi, and i think that is really what makes her unique. i think if she can do more of that, which they are proving that they are, yowl see gains. but if you also look in the campaign's internal polling. you know, she's plus maybe 45 among african americans over donald trump. so i don't think that this is a huge issue. i think that there's clear energy and momentum. you said it at the top of the show, people are engaged and excited about kamala harris in ways that even more so than they were barack obama. so this is going to be a pretty exciting race. i think she's transformed not only the map but possibilities to build that -- build on that biden coalition. >> yeah, it's such a good point, dan, that there's so much new and invigorating about the harris campaign. and i guess to what extent do you think the campaign needs to be thinking strategically about the old problems that bedevilled the biden campaign and specifically immigration and inflation.

like we've heard, you know, the campaign's four days old, right? but in those four days, there has not been a lot of talk about those two issues. and i wonder if you think actually there needs to be. how directly does she need to come at those issues head on? >> she will. she'll have to get there, but the most important thing to do right now is to introduce herself to the nation. all of the polling and photo scripts i've seen shows that people who who she is, but they don't know her story. they don't know her values. they don't know her record. there is a race to define her now between -- the question is, who's going to win that race? is it going to be kamala harris and the dem contracts, donald trump and the maga media? to get people to believe you're going to say what you to, they have to know who you are. they have to know your values to believe you. step one is to reintroduce herself to the nation and do it in this new context of her as a presidential candidate, the

democratic standard bearer. >> you know, adrian, do you mind if i add to that? the story's being told for her, not from her. and the story is that republicans had a deal on the table. it was a bipartisan deal. it was the most conservative deal ever cooked up. a lot of concessions democrats made to get this bill passed. they walked away from this bill because of donald trump. joe biden took action. she and joe biden took action. they made investments on the border -- protect the border. border crossings are down 40%. she's got to also tell that part of the story. i don't disagree with dan, but i think what we have to do is lean into the issue, not line out of the issue. then she also has to invite republicans into the conversation. she's got to remind people that the president can't solve such a major problem that's, you know, has baffled us for so many years and so many presidencies. has been around for such a long

time. she's got to actually invite the republicans in to remind people that it's only going to happen one way. if we do this in a bipartisan way and through legislation, the president cannot do it alone. so i think those are, to add on to what dan said, i would say those are two additional things she needs to do. >> you know, dan, and i mean, as we talk about the introduction and going on offense, probably happening to some degree simultaneously given the fact there are 103 days left in this race. you talked in your newsletter the organic pro-harris content and how you would be hard pressed to have found that for joe biden, not because he wasn't a very competent leader and someone with an incredible executive and legislative record, but just because the culture wasn't where the biden campaign was. that has all changed now. i wonder how much stock you put into things like -- it sounds ridiculous to say a meme could swing an election, but in terms of helping people understand this woman and how she is different and culturally

relevant, how much does it matter that beyonce is giving they are muse snick how much does it matter that charlie xcx is saying kamala is brat, what is the weight we should attach to that? >> i would attach a ton of weight to it. politics is information warfare, and we have been getting hammered throughout this entire election, because there is this entire apparatus on the right. it's powered by fox news, but there is a ton of right wing influencers on facebook, particularly on tiktok, who are part of this maga culture that is -- that really dominates that platform. for the first time in this election, with kamala harris we have a candidate who connects to the people who tower algorithms on tiktok and instagram reels, right? you are seeing organic content, because it's so hard to reach people in this media environment. people aren't listening to my podcast or watching your show, how do you reach them? social. tiktok, you cannot buy ads. you cannot buy attention on

tiktok. people's algorithms, they're flooded with positive, funny, charming, culturally connected content about her is incredible. it lets people get to know her and the election. i think it's hugely important. and we now actually have a chance to win the information warfare in this election. if you do, that you got a chance to win the election itself. >> dan fifer and ashley etienne, great to hear from you both, please come back and talk at great length with me about all of this again. thanks for your time tonight. >> thanks. coming up, trump's vice presidential pick jd vance has some really weird ideas about families and children. we're going to take a look at why he might think what he thinks with the reporter who went deep in the vance archives. but first, how kamala harris might navigate the very, very big tent politics of the democratic party. congresswoman and progressive caucus chair pramila jayapal joins me on that coming up next. joins me on that coming up next.

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ever since vice president kamala harris became the de facto democratic presidential nominee, conservatives have tried to suggest that kamala harris is way outside the mainstream. except once you leave the right wing bubble, it's clear that way outside their mainstream is really just sort of smack dab in the center. here are some of the on-screen headlines that newsmax aired during vice president harris' first campaign speech in milwaukee this week. harris facts. supports massive corporate tax hike. shh, don't tell newsmax that polls show most americans, regardless of party affiliation, want corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share.

then there's harris backs tax-funded medicare for all. which, again, for literally years now, polls have shown a majority of americans actually support. and then there's harris, wanted to cap rent and utility payments. okay, here's the thing, we are in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. rent has jumped an average of 30% since the pandemic. a rent and utility cap is probably popular. the shocking radical left agenda is actually mainstream economic populism. and then there's donald trump who has literally gone behind closed doors and told wealthy donors you're rich as hell, and we're going to give you tax cuts. joining me now is washington congresswoman pramila jayapal, who serves as a congresswoman on the progressive caucus. i found myself chuckling somewhat in disbelief this was sort of an attack on vice president harris, policies that are broadly popular. do you think that the right wing

understands how much they've uncalibrated what centrist economic policy is? >> no, i really don't. and i hope they keep showing those screens, because that will win us the election. we have a real contrast here. we have donald trump who is literally bowing down and kissing the feet of these fossil fuel billionaires and selling the destruction of our planet off for some money for his campaign. we have donald trump who wants to rip away our freedoms and wants to have total control over our bodies. we have donald trump who actually believes that his trump project 2025 where we get rid of all checks and balances, where we have a complete takeover of the government with his political appointees in every single place, that is the donald trump that i believe that

americans will find too extreme, because you know what, he is too extreme. and then we've got kamala harris, who is now going to be able to really take the case and the contrast directly to the people. she has been an incredible advocate on abortion and reproductive freedom, a very important issue, and on this populist, working class, economic agenda, that is the biden/harris administration agenda, and that is the biden/harris 100-day agenda, which is now the harris presidential campaign agenda. and so you can see it in the enthusiasm across the country that has just exploded in the last several days. >> i want to focus on the economic piece of this a little bit, because, you know, there hasn't been that much talk about it in recent days, and we know it bedevilled the biden campaign to some degree, inflation and

his stoourdship of the american economy. if you think vice president harris is positioned considerably belter to articulate the case for her agenda, the harris/biden agenda, and specifically i wonder if you think she can do it better with the asian american community. it is critical in several swing states. and as, you know, a representative to aapi community, i wonder if you think she'll do better. i think biden was losing eight points among asian american voters from his numbers in 2020. obviously, this is not a monolithic group of people, but i wonder if you have thoughts about it. >> no, absolutely. first of all, i am thrilled we are going to, i believe, have our first black and aapi woman president of the united states, and i think the reason that's going to happen is, as i've said on your show, alex, i've always believed that it is our base of aapi voters, of black voters, of

latino voter, of women voters, of young people, of working class and poor people who aren't always feeling like they're engaged in a campaign. that if we can get those folks to come out, that is actually how we won in 2020. it wasn't just the suburban swing voters who are important, but it was also that we had this incredible turn out of the base, this fragile coalition that came together so that we could win. and i do think having been on an aapi call yesterday, there's several more happening tomorrow. i'm going to georgia, where i will be with young voters, with aapi voters, black voters, women voters, that there is this incredible sense of seeing ourselves in the agenda. it is true that women of color, for example, and aapi women as part of that are disproportionately burdened by the unfairness of our economy.

and so whether you're thinking about domestic workers, child care workers, moms, across the board you see that that is where there is a lot of pain and suffering for the economy, a lot of injustice. and kamala harris is uniquely positioned to talk about that. she is actually the lead sponsor of my domestic workers bill of rights in the senate when she was in the senate. and so she understands what this means. and i think she can call people in in a very different way that is authentic to her identity, to her skills, to her experience, and to her legislative acumen which she has just continued to sort of develop over the course of her term as vice president. >> you know, when you talk about the ten, i think it bears mentioning that this has been a huge week in terms of foreign policy, with prime minister netanyahu's address to a joint session of congress.

vice president harris met with president netanyahu today and came out of that meeting saying israel has a right to defend itself but also urging the need for a ceasefire and saying we cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering of palestinians,ly not be silent. do you think she's going to take a meaningfully different stance on this issue than president biden, and do you foresee that changing the dynamics internally in the democratic party? >> -- for tougher u.s. policy towards netanyahu, i think that's why you see this incredible new group of voters registering to group, 18 to 34. 38,500 people in just 48 hours, which the last -- it surpassed the last record when taylor swift last september told people to go out and register. this was authentic. it was sort of -- it happened naturally with people feeling like perhaps there's more hope that she will be empathetic,

sympathetic to the suffering of people across gaza and to the families who are here. and i also think on this particular issue -- and i've had a chance to talk to her at length, actually, about 45 minutes a couple of weeks ago -- that she also understands it isn't just palestinian american, muslim americans, arab americans, who care about this. it is the black clergy. i mean this is one of the top issues in the black community is ending the war on gaza and changing u.s. policy. seven major labor unions sent a letter days before netanyahu's visit saying this was important to the labor movement. and so i think she is much more innately tuned to the suffering of palestinian people and of israelis. and i think she is going to have to walk that line carefully. i don't think it's going to be easy, because obviously we still have a president, his name is joe biden.

and we also have a vice president. she is also the nominee for the democratic party. i think it will be complicated. i think she is sending some signals that she would like to have some shift. i can't say what that is, and i think our movement has to continue to make it clear to her that this is a critical issue and everything from, you know, her statements that she makes, the fact that she wasn't at netanyahu's speech yesterday to her choices that she makes down the road, including with her vice presidential pick, these are all going to be critically important to signalling what direction she's going to take on the economic agenda, on gaza, on all of these issues. >> congresswoman pramila jayapal, there's always a lot to talk about, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you, alex. still ahead tonight, sam stein joins me to put betting odds on the harris veep stakes contest. but the origin of jd vance's deep disgust for house cats and

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there's a clip from ohio senator jd vance's old senate campaign going around. have you seen this yet? >> we're fectively run in this country via the democrats, via our corporate oligarchs by a

bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. it's a basic fact. kamala harris, pete buttigieg, aoc, the entire future of the democrats is controlled by people without children. they've played their entire lives to win a status game. they're obsessed with their jobs. and they hate normal americans for choosing family over these ridiculous d.c. and new york status games. >> since donald trump picked jd vance, a 39-year-old first term senator who seems pretty obsessed with his career, since trump picked vance as his running mate, several of vance's past comments on family and jend ver resurfaced. comments that have been called weird, which is probably an understatement. >> i want to take aim at the left. specifically the childless left. because i think the rejection of the american family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has

done in this country. what you find consistentsly that many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults. >> women taking care of cats instead of kids is apparently everything that is wrong with america and something that exists entirely because of democrats. now, beyond being a really weird belief, vance's view here has a distinctly authoritarian bent. vance has praised this policy from hungary's authoritarian dictator, one that encourages native hungarian mothers, native ones, to have four or more children. the idea is to populate with white christians instead of muslim immigrants. hmm. jd vance also thinks if you don't have children, your vote shouldn't count as much as those who do, which is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy of conservative domination,

assuming all childless cat ladies are democrats. >> give votes to all children in this country but let's give control over those votes to the parents of those children. when you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power. you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don't have kids. >> vance has also advocated for creating an economic system that reinvigorates jobs specifically for american men. because according to jd vance, families suffer more when men are em ployed than they do when women are. >> the decline of manufacturing hit male employment harder than female employment. and one of the things we see consistently is when men are unemployed it's hard for them to

maintain, build families themselves. this makes maybe some people uncomfortable in the audience, the fact that we lost a lot of stable male employment was a catastrophe for the american family. >> throughout his political career, jd vance has pushed for an economic populism premised on men working and women being married and staying married and having children whether they want to or not. >> the question really to me is about the baby. we want women to have opportunities. we want women to have choices. but above all we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life. this is one of the great tricks that i think the sexual revolution pulled on the american populous, which is this idea that, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally, they were maybe even violent but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that's going to

make people happier in the long term. maybe it worked out for the moms and dads. i'm skeptical, but it didn't work out for the kids of those marriages. >> i have a lot of questions here. but two of them are, why is jd vance like this and are donald trump and the republican party at all concerned that this guy is on their ticket? our next guest, jessica winter, has a new piece out in the new yorker that goes a long way towards explaining. stay with us. long wa towards explaining stay with us hi. i use febreze fade defy plug. and i use this. febreze has a microchip to control scent release so it smells first-day fresh for 50 days. 50 days!? and its refill reminder light means i'll never miss a day of freshness. ♪ this land is

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in a new piece titled jd vance's sad, strange politics of family, new yorker contributing editor jessica winter unpacks vance's newly resurfaced concerns about childless cat ladies by taking a look at vance's own family. winter writes, a close read of vance's grandmother's plight reveals striking similarities between vance's guardian angel and the ideal matriarch who emerges from vance's political platform. their place is is at home. their job, which they have no choice whether to quit, is to have babies. what results is a blinkered, grotesquely narcissistic vision of the social contract and identity politics of one grown child. joining me now are jessica winter and sam stein, managing editor of the bullworth. i wonder if you could explain

the way in which jd vance's grandmother's story is in a way the rosetta stone for his political agenda and cultural outlook. >> absolutely, and thanks for having me on the program, alex. so yeah, jd vance talks about his grandparents as the best things that ever happened to him and that they rescued him from being a statistic. you know, jd vance's mom struggled with drug abuse. the household that he was raised in was often unstable. she cycled through a lot of boyfriends and husbands. and she was at times neglectful or even abusive. and his grandparents, his grandmother in particular, provided him with a refuge from that chaos and that instability. and what's funny about that is that his grandparents had also created a very volatile,

sometimes violent, very unstable household for his own mother. so there's kind of a generational trauma that's being handed down. but i think what's really interesting and what comes into sharp -- in one of the clips before the break, is there's an essential difference he sees between his grandparents and his mother, which is that his grandparents stayed married. and i think that because his grandparents were so important to him, because they saved him from being a statistic, as he has put it, i think he's inscribed a lot of importance in their marriage and how they stuck it out through thick and thin. i think that's gone a great deal towards shaping his idealogy, his politics, and even some of his policy preferences. >> yeah, his idea that people should stay married no matter whether they're violent relationships or not. toy want to ask, though, jessica, in terms of the way he thinks of marriage and, you know, childbearing, he thinks of the family as kind of a uniquely

conservative phenomenon. i mean, his wife worked for a san francisco law firm until like two minutes ago, does he not understand that democrats have children and families too? it seems very asymmetrical to be euphemistic about it. >> yeah, absolutely. he absolutely sees the traditional, nuclear family of the mid-20th century where dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids and everyone's getting by on a single income, that is the ideal that he wants to strive for. and the notion that, you know, a mother, a woman, would want to work, would need to work out of economic necessity or perhaps would just want to work for her own, you know, personal fulfillment at a white shoe law firm, perhaps, that doesn't really enter position when it comes to his political views and his economic outlook.

>> sam, i am struck by how far outside the mainstream jd -- we, i think people have paid some attention to jd vance or people interested in senate politics have, but the more you hear from this individual, the more -- weird is the word being used to describe his views, but you know, he's someone who said universal day care -- this is right before he announced his senate run -- universal day care is class war against normal people. i just want to make the point that his wife and he have three children and at her law firm they offer 12-hour on-site day care. the like disconnect, do you -- i mean, do you have a thought about this? >> i have multiple thoughts about it. i would say a couple things. one is it wasn't always this way. if you look at his biography when he was a law student at yale, for instance, and he was writing on his little blog -- he had a personal blog back then -- but he was also writing for

conservative sites. the glimpse you get of jd vance is a different person. it's someone who's more socially liberal, more moderate in his republicanism. it's not that he's cosmopolitan or anything, he wrote his memoir, but he wasn't projecting this type of persona. i think what happened was, if i had to guess, that he began to get more involved in national politics and he saw the way that the wind was blowing, he recognized that the sort of heart of the party was with this idealogy. and that's been sort of personified not just in his -- but what you've seen on tucker carlson's show for the while, the nuclear family is central to america and is being sort of rabidly deteriorated by democrats. that's where he's coming from, it's part political ambition. i don't think it's all political ambition. i do think he believes in some

of these things genuinely, but now that it's in front of a national audience, it just lands differently, right? audience, it just lands differently, right carlson. this is a national audience and not just women, but men kind of recoil at the idea that if you are childless somehow you are lesser. >> not only if you are childless, stepmom's aren't truly moms. women should be staying in esn marriages even if they are ge violent and universal daycare is for people who are not normal. i just think, you know, jessica, when we talk about how he came to these views, you go back to hillbilly elegy. there seems to be an interim period where he was somewhat tethered to the reality that the country lives in, which is that people need daycare, but it almost seems like a self radicalize a sand with the

added incentive of being on fox news with tucker carlson. do you have a sense of how deeply felt these ideals are? >> you know, just to add on to what sam was saying, if you go back to around the time hillbilly elegy came out, an interesting artifact from that general period is a ted talk that he gave and in that ted talk he talks about how he got out of the terrible situation t that he was in and that we should be affording more chances to more kids like young j.d. vance to get a great education. reach the heights, aspire to the heights that he had obtained even at that point in his career and he is pretty explicit about the fact that he does not have policy solutions, that he is posing questions and trying to start a conversation, but he does not have the answers. i think by the time he reached his senate campaign, he had

found some answers. whether or not they were earnestly held. whether or not they sort of were exaggerated of feelings he already had, i can't really speak to that, but there was definitely a period where he was searching for where he wanted to land on these issues. >> well, he has landed in a very interesting place. sam stein, stick around, i have more questions for you. jessica winter, thank you for the great reporting. it is a great read in this week's new yorker. thank you for your time tonight. sam, when we come back we will talk about the democratic veepstakes that are in full ve swing. stay with us, we will be talking about that next. it acty shields the enamel to defend against erosion and cavities. i think that this product is a game changer for my patients. it really works.

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the moment i met him i knew he was my soulmate. "soulmates." soulmate! [giggles] why do you need me? [laughs sarcastically] but then we switched to t-mobile 5g home internet. and now his attention is spent elsewhere. but i'm thinking of her the whole time. that's so much worse. why is that thing in bed with you? this is where it gets the best signal from the cell tower! i've tried everywhere else in the house! there's always a new excuse. well if we got xfinity you wouldn't have to mess around with the connection. therapy's tough, huh? -mmm. it's like a lot about me. [laughs] a home router should never be a home wrecker. oo this is a good book title. normally, major party presidential candidates spend months vetting running mates.

this is not a regular election cycle. kamala harris has until august 7, less than two weeks from now, to pick her vice president. the good news is she has a deep bench to pick from and her opponent has picked j.d. vance. sam, where do you think we are in the horserace that is the democratic running mate contest? who do you think is at the top? >> well, it depends. obviously the instinct is to go for a somewhat moderate, male, white governor. on the shortlist there is only one female, gretchen whitmer. what is interesting is we had a piece from someone deeply involved in human rights for decades and decades. she made the case that kamala harris would be better off going with a male. this is, to be crude about it, and election with a lot of masculinity overtones to it and kamala harris should not ignore that or do so at her own peril.

that said i think it would make sense to go to witmer because it would create this contrast, leaning into what your opponent is going to target. just lean into it almost like how clinton shows gore. at this juncture i think the betting money is probably on a governor or on mark kelly, who is getting a lot of buzz because he is from an important state, arizona, former astronaut and has been not to settle about j.d. vance in the past couple of days. >> can we talk about j.d. vance for a moment because i know you have more to say on j.d. vance from our last block. there is a think bubbling discontent emanating from trump world over their choice. the more crazy, bonkers take on j.d. vance. you think he is at risk here? >> no, i don't think there is risk, but i do think there is discontent. if you talk to republicans

outside of that, not too far outside, but i think they would admit this is been a rocky start, honestly. the convention speech was a little bit low energy, but it was fine. people in the crowd tend to like it, but he has not done much media. he did a show with don junior today, which is an interesting choice and does not expand the audience that much. others are about cats and childless women. it is creating this aura around him that is, frankly, for lack of a better word that is weird. i think that is beginning to stick and one ways to get around it is to do more media and do more publicly, but he has been focusing on fundraising mostly. >> all i have to say of the strategy to get a more normal is to have them do a podcast with donald trump jr., think again trump campaign. sam