Minority Rule

Brian Derrick: [00:00:00] Not Howard Stern,

Glennis Meagher: not a room full of White House press.

Brian Derrick: The 2024 election and the future of democracy hinges on vibes. This is Vibes Only, a podcast that checks the vibes of American politics week after week. And the vibes this week. The

Colin Jost: Republican candidate for president owes half a billion in fines for bank fraud and is currently spending his days farting himself awake during a porn star hush money trial.

And the race is tied?

Glennis Meagher: We’re going to discuss a Time Magazine article which lays out some dystopian vibes we can expect should that tie break for Trump in November.

Brian Derrick: We’ll also talk with Cristina Sinsun Ramirez, the president of NextGen America, a progressive organization aimed at mobilizing young voters to get a vibe check on the youth vote and more.

Glennis Meagher: Stick around for It’s Giving, our group chat, and a good vibe goodbye.

Brian Derrick: Okay, Glenis. Yes.

Glennis Meagher: Brian.

Brian Derrick: This weekend, I was with our friend, Keith Edwards, who [00:01:00] we’ve had on the pod before. And we were at this party and it was like a lot of fashionistas. We were, uh, a little out of place. Don’t sell yourself short. The politicos were in the corner nerding out.

And I asked Keith to tell me, I was like, okay, what do you think is going to happen in a hypothetical second Trump administration? Transcribed And he was like, Trump’s not going to win, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, like started listening to the data. I was like, yeah, I know. Like, I see the data as well. I also do this.

I’m asking you to like think past November, what’s, yeah, exactly. And tell me what is going to happen if Trump is in office again. And then we proceeded to like fight for 45 minutes about what a second Trump administration looks like. And. The moral of the story is that none of it was good, but then this very week we saw an almost identical piece come out from Time Magazine about what a second Trump administration has in store for us, and [00:02:00] it’s pretty horrifying.

Glennis Meagher: I saw it this morning on Instagram, and I was shooketh, to say the least.

Brian Derrick: Yeah, and we have to talk about what it includes and sort of like start to paint a picture, but I just want to start it with the disclaimer, I guess, that it could immediately start to sound like fear mongering.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Yes.

Brian Derrick: But it’s a very necessary exercise to try to understand what the two options before us are.

Right. And like, because there is a, there is a scenario where Trump wins and we all have to be thinking about and understanding what that means before we go to the ballot box. And I think that it’s important for us to really lay out based on what he says he wants to do, what his, um, the people that he’s trying to put into power are saying they want to do, what’s official and sort of rumored to be the agenda.

Like that’s all fair game to start to paint this picture. And. With the stakes as high as they are, people deserve to know.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah. And I just want to highlight your [00:03:00] point of this isn’t fear mongering. You know, I posted the time cut down article on generator Instagram and in the comment section, there’s a lot of talk about it being fear mongering, et cetera.

And it’s, it’s not fear mongering. It’s just literally scary. What, what is, what is outlined? So let’s get into it a little bit.

Brian Derrick: So ironically, like the first thing that me and Keith agreed on. And the first thing laid out in the timepiece as well, mass deportations, like a huge shift in immigration policy that would include setting up large facilities to hold and transport immigrants, you could call them camps, detention

Glennis Meagher: centers, detention camps.

Brian Derrick: And so he’s promising to deport. 11 million people out of the United States. I don’t even know where that number comes from, but that is a big deal. That would be a, that would be a really big deal. It would affect everyone.

Glennis Meagher: And within that, he wants to deploy the U. S. military at the [00:04:00] border and inland.

Right to execute on that, which is Gary

Brian Derrick: and that immediately becomes a sort of second theme that we started to tease out as well, which was what does the role of federal law enforcement and the military become in a second Trump administration? Because there are some scary scenarios there, but one of them.

Extremely believable would be in, in the context of immigration enforcement that they would deploy. And

Glennis Meagher: another highlight that he made using U. S. military and armed services is that he would, well, one got the U. S. civil service and he would deploy the National Guard to American cities as he saw fit.

Brian Derrick: Yeah.

It’s something that he threatened to do in his first term was to send The National Guard into cities where he disagreed with their policy choices on how to handle, whether it’s crime or quality of life issues, homelessness, it could be a woke mob, drug use, like, like different cities have different takes on how to address these, these, [00:05:00] these issues.

Issues. You would think that the conservative take would be local control that people should be able to have self determination in their city government as to how they want their city run. But he’s very much threatened and I think would believably deploy federal forces into cities like New York and L.

A. And

Glennis Meagher: yeah,

Brian Derrick: other places.

Glennis Meagher: He said he would be willing to fire a U. S. attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, uh, which is breaking with the tradition of independent law enforcement that dates, like, to America’s founding. He’s weighing pardons for, uh, everyone.

Brian Derrick: Okay, yeah, related, related, yes.

Pardons for all the January Sixers.

Glennis Meagher: Exactly. Which, by the way, is more than 800 people who have pled guilty.

Brian Derrick: Right. It’s one of those things where he he’s going to hold up an example of like, look at this suburban mom who was like in the wrong place at the wrong time and is now sentenced to like three years probation or 15 months in prison or whatever because she did that.

And he’s going to make them all seem to be like that person. And then we will all be playing back the [00:06:00] videos of them beating Police officers with flagpoles and other weapons and chemical weapons and all of these things and shattering windows and climbing walls and like

Glennis Meagher: being literal

Brian Derrick: insurrectionists.

Right? And so the idea that those people, I mean, some of those people were convicted for a seditious conspiracy, were sentenced to many years, many years in federal prison. And the idea that they would all just walk free on day two of a Trump administration infuriates me. To know it like, like into my bones

Glennis Meagher: because it’s not just walk free.

They walk free and they’re empowered and supported by the Trump administration. And that’s just going to catalyze them to wreck more havoc on our democracy.

Brian Derrick: You mentioned the attorney general. I mean, we all believe, we all know that Trump does not believe in an independent. Like he thinks that that’s his personal sort of attack dog force.

I have read Stephen Miller is top of the list for attorney general. And if you don’t know Stephen Miller, he’s was in the first Trump [00:07:00] administration. He was the architect of the, Family separation policy at the border, a nightmare. And he has since then formed his own legal group that has raised and spent millions, if not hundreds of millions, a lot of money on trying to overturn elections and weaken voting rights and a lot of really damaging things.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah, so he’s clearly pro democracy. I mean, that’s frightening. Speaking of families, he said that he would let red states, Republican controlled states, monitor women’s pregnancies, prosecute those who violate abortion bans.

Brian Derrick: Do we know what this looks like? I didn’t

Glennis Meagher: Unclear, Brian. Unclear how he would do this, but not good.

Brian Derrick: Not good. Yeah, I think the hypotheticals around Repro are Many fold because we just don’t know exactly how it will play out. We’re still waiting on the Supreme Court to make a decision about Mifflin Pristone, the, uh, abortion [00:08:00] medication. We know that both Trump, who has publicly supported a national ban, and all of the people surrounding him and who are responsible for putting, who were responsible the first time for putting him in office and would be responsible again, should he succeed.

in 2024 want to do absolutely everything in their power to make it as inaccessible as possible everywhere. Like we know without a doubt that that is their intention. And so the exact path that that takes, I think there are many variations of they will be using considerable Energy and resources, including two additional Supreme Court appointments to further restrict and dare I say, criminalize abortion providers, seekers, people who help and yeah, there’s sort of no bottom to how far we can go on that.

Like we have not seen the bottom of how bad that can get.

Glennis Meagher: No, [00:09:00] it’s almost, yeah. And just all of this, again, it’s not fear mongering because we know these things. Are in process and happening on the conservative side because we can’t forget about project 2025, which is this 400 page thesis from the heritage foundation, which is a conservative think tank.

I don’t know how many thoughts are running through that think tank and they are currently interviewing people. That have the same ideologies as them. So if, and when Donald Trump is reelected, they don’t lose time. That’s something that Trump has said before. He’s frustrated that in his first term, they weren’t ready.

They didn’t have the staffing ready to go and they couldn’t transition very quickly to execute on the agenda that he wanted to, you know, make happen. So it’s not like this is just. A dreamland. They’re really organizing their movement so that if he were to win, they can on day one, as he said, be a dictator,

Dana Bash: right?

Glennis Meagher: And to that end, Trump was asked on if there might be political violence around the election. And in true [00:10:00] Trump form, he’s already doing what he can to invalidate election results. And he said, quote, If we don’t win, you know, It depends. It always depends on the fairness of the election.

Brian Derrick: Yeah, it’s super concerning to have a leader of one of the two major parties openly endorsing or tacitly approving of political violence.

We’ve already seen him do that before, right? Even while it was happening, let alone as a hypothetical.

Glennis Meagher: I want to just really anchor in what you started with. This is not fear mongering. It really is not. As a country, we will have a choice to make this year about two different Pass forward that we can take

Brian Derrick: I agree with you that at the end of the day, this is about contrast.

The reason that we’re talking about this, the reason that we need you all who are listening to this to be talking about this with people is that people understand choice. I’m on an email list. Where they test the effectiveness of [00:11:00] different political messages every week. Like when a candidate releases a new ad, they do testing to be like, Oh, this moves the race four points in Biden’s favor, three points in Trump’s favor to see how effective different ads are.

And the most effective kind of ad is a contrast one. It’s not negative. It’s not just go negative on your opponent. It’s show the difference. It’s you have to go. This is what this person stands for. This is what this person stands for. Who do you want to vote for is the most effective kind of ad. And, Like that’s just how people’s brains work.

And so we need to be making the contrast for people clear. I think that Biden, particularly since state of the union has been doing a better job of spelling out what his next term agenda looks like. And we’ve talked about that here too. We’ll continue to, but people always like spinning, their heads are spinning, trying to cover Trump.

And we never talk about what happens come January, 2025.

Glennis Meagher: Right. What that actually looks like. So if you’re listening, share this episode, [00:12:00] like we just did the cliff notes for you of the time magazine article. It’s real. Talk about it. Don’t not talk about it. I think the more we’re talking about it, to your point, the more we’re going to be giving people the opportunity to make the choice.

Okay. Brian, I know that we were just gloomy doomy on Trumpity dumpity, but I have hope. To quote the late, great Whitney Houston, I believe that children are our future. And I know that was bad. I do love that song though. Rest in peace, Whitney. And we’re not talking about children here. We’re going to be talking about Gen Z, the Gen Z voting bloc.

Gen Z millennials will be the largest voting bloc.

Brian Derrick: Gen Z will always be children to me.

Glennis Meagher: Well, but they’re not me, no, because you kind of, um, and I have hope. I, you know, I believe that they are an engaged electorate who cares and we have new polling on them. [00:13:00]

Brian Derrick: Yeah. And let’s be clear, every path that gets Biden to a second term includes Significant robust turnout from young people like it is a must and we can say that about a lot a lot of different groups because the democratic coalition is extremely diverse.

And so you need black women voters who are notoriously reliable voters and you need young people and you need jewish people and hispanic people and you Like, like all of these different communities, white people on, we’re both white, like, like make up the democratic coalition. Young people are a pillar.

We absolutely need them in order to get to where we need to go in the battleground states in 2024. And so, to that point, We are super excited to have on a guest who can speak directly to what the current vibes are, particularly for Gen Z, but for young people in general, Gen Z and [00:14:00] millennials like us and what issues are moving people, what their current sort of headspaces around the election and what we have to do between now and November to get the numbers.

That we need to avert catastrophe and all the things that we just talked about,

Glennis Meagher: talked about Christina. Welcome. Welcome to Vibes Only. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Brian Derrick: Before we like really dive into it, we have so many questions for you. We want to understand what’s happening with the youth.

Tell us about Next Gen America.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Next Gen America is one of the key organizations saving American democracy because we mobilize the largest, most diverse, and progressive generation in American history, young people. And we’ve been at it for 10 years and the last three election cycles have seen the largest youth voter turnout in American history.

You’re welcome. Defeating Donald Trump in 2020, you’re welcome for stopping the red wave in 2022 that was promised. All brought to you by young [00:15:00] people that have a really different vision than the Republican party.

Brian Derrick: Period.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Yeah, period. I

Brian Derrick: love it. And so on Vibes Only, we talk a lot about like what sort of steers our political conversation and like the vibes of, of the country.

I know that you all just did a major poll of young voters in this block that you’re talking about that have been so critical in the past few cycles. Can you tell us like what the vibes are? Were like from that poll, they told you. Okay.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: So first off, I’m going to tell you what the poll said, but I want to say what you need to understand that polls give like nuances, temperature check with young people, but young voters attitudes are very different than actual young voter behavior.

So, and this is why if you read any like, New York Times, Washington Post, headline of the last several elections, right before the election, it’s all doom and gloom, young people down on Dems, don’t support Biden, [00:16:00] unlikely to turn out, election happens, young people turn out in record numbers, and they turn out for Democrats, right?

So, our poll showed, not surprisingly, that young people, um, Are not happy overall with either major candidate in a two way matchup. Biden wins the youth vote by 12 points. We would like to see it be more, but that’s in a two way matchup right now. And in a three way matchup. Or a multi party matchup, Biden wins just by nine points.

And that 20 percent of the youth vote looking right now at a third party candidate choice. And the other big takeaways are that young people still have questions and concerns, no surprise, about a two party system, a two way matchup. However, they are very, very concerned when they learn about the threat that Donald Trump poses about Donald Trump and who he is and what he represents, and overwhelmingly oppose the worldview, the policy positions of Donald Trump and the Republican [00:17:00] Party.

Glennis Meagher: You mentioned how the youth are exhausted with the hyper partisan. nature of the political system that we operate in. How do you think we can best communicate to them about the accomplishments of the Biden administration? You know, you, you mentioned, and we talked about this earlier on the pod, that there is going to be a choice, a very clear choice that voters have to make this cycle.

The Biden administration has done some really remarkable things, whether it be the IRA, which we all know is the largest climate bills ever. Be passed in the history of this country. What do we need to do here? How do we need to like, start having that conversation more with Gen Z voters? Yes. I think what’s

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: interesting, right.

Is that young people are registering their dissatisfaction, their want for more, which is, it’s fine. I think, like, I think we get freaked out about this, but I think actually, if you look at voting behavior and what young people care about, right. Young people, when I say they are the most progressive generation, right.

I think a lot of some of the myths around the youth vote is that Democrats Have overwhelmingly always taken the youth vote that they’ve all, they’ve always been more progressive. And that’s not true. So Republicans and Democrats used to pretty [00:18:00] evenly split the youth vote up until about the Bush years.

And then Obama just took a big, huge chunk out and the Republicans have not been able to win it back. So that’s one is to understand that. So young people care a lot about progressive policy and their behavior is saying. We are putting our bet when we vote on the Democratic Party about the vision that we can make for our country.

And so what I tell young people that say they want more, it’s like, hell yes, you want more. And look what turning out in record numbers for Democrats has already gotten you. It got you the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest investment by any country on the planet to tackle the climate crisis.

That was not It was you voting and you organizing gun safety legislation happened because young people organized and elected the right people to make it. So student debt cancellation that happened because young people turned out in record numbers and made it so like, so it’s about, yes, marching, protesting, posting on social media and voting.

You need voting. All of those powers to come together. And if you like that legislation that’s passed, which by the [00:19:00] way, is the most progressive policy that I’ve ever seen passed in my lifetime, then yeah, you want four more years to get a lot more done. And then it’s about, you know, I’m an organizer for a long time.

It’s about figuring out. Power wise, who can I move the most to get one done? So if you want more done and it’s not enough, absolutely. But guess what? There’s only one choice and one candidate. You’re not getting anything fucking done with Donald Trump. You’re resisting. I prefer to be fighting for something than fighting against something.

A

Brian Derrick: hundred percent. It’s so well said. And I just want to dive in a little bit more there. to what you’re talking about being this sense of doom that a lot of people feel about young people and the gap between that sort of attitude and what the behavior reflects. And you’re talking about this pattern of seeing polls and like voter sentiment, survey data ahead of an election, and then seeing who actually voted and what are the results.

Talk to us about why, because I know that a lot of our [00:20:00] listeners like. See that and it scares them, right? They’re online. They’re like either that themselves, their kid, their friend are saying like, I’m, I’m over it. I’m done with this. I can’t do Joe. And people are really worried about the young people. And so talk to us about how we can make sense of those two things coexisting at the same time.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: So one is to understand, I’m going to explain our poll and how we, why we did our poll. We did our poll, not just to be like, where are we at? But we did our poll to say, where are there opportunities and challenges with the youth vote that we need to. Dig in and and actually persuade this universe, right?

We know that young people are overwhelmingly progressive We also know that even though I’ve said we’ve had the three highest youth voter turnouts in American history the last election That’s like a quarter of the eligible youth electorate that turned out and that’s still like that means we’re just still scratching the surface in with that the youth Vote was so overwhelmingly progressive that it canceled out the Republican boom, boomer vote, even though they make up a larger share of the electors.

Like just take into account how progressive this generation is. [00:21:00] Right. So our poll showed us two things. One, the youngest voters, that 18 to 24, that there are opportunities with them. Because if you were 10 years old, you’re 18 years old now, you were 10 years old when Donald Trump. got elected, okay? You’re in elementary school, and if you had Oh my god,

Brian Derrick: horrifying.

And

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: if you were good if you had good parents, you may not they may have shielded you. You probably didn’t hear the sounds of crying babies being ripped from their mother at the border. They probably didn’t let you see the sight of Heather Heyer being run over by white supremacists in Charlottesville that our president called some very good people, right?

And you probably didn’t hear the president saying he liked to grab women by the pussy. Like, your parents probably were like, wow, this guy is not good for you to hear or see what he thinks. And so you don’t know yet a lot of it. And I think that surprises just even just like by a few years, this, that was what we saw in this cohort.

That youngest cohort really needed to learn more about who Donald Trump was and also what Joe Biden [00:22:00] had done. But when they learned that they were quick to say, Oh no, I’m with Joe Biden. I’m with the Democrat. So that’s, that was very clear. The second one where what we call double haters, people that don’t like either candidate and some of them were older, but the.

Good news is the majority of them voted for Joe Biden in 2020. That means they’re with us and they don’t like Donald Trump. They see Trump as very dangerous still. So they just need to be convinced and turn them out. And so I think those are the real opportunities that we saw from the youth. So, and the second thing is.

When we started 10 years ago, starting registering and organizing young people with the premise, if we can organize young people to scale, we can tackle the greatest crisis of our time, the climate crisis and make government move. People were like, that is such a waste of time and money. Young people are never going to turn out 10 years ago.

And politicians are never going to do anything. That’s 10 years later. Not us by ourselves, but in part because of us and others. Largest youth voter turnout in American history. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. So, when you invest in young people with the right [00:23:00] messages and messengers, they do turn out.

And the proof is in the pudding.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah. To, to pin down on that a little bit more. Do you think that the value is in persuading these young voters that their vote matters and or that because of their vote? And I mean, in the singular sense, like the margins of these elections and seeing that some of these races are won and lost on 200 votes, or, and is it, they need to be communicated about the wins of the Biden administration, about how attorney generals in the state are extremely important because of the power of prosecuting, right?

Prosecution. Did you pull or see any of that in your working groups as to like what the persuasion has to be? Yeah. So we tested

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: message key messages, right? And we did both hitting Trump and Republicans, and then talking about the positives of Biden and Democrats. And what we saw is we really needed you to do both.

Now for some cohort, the double haters, it was more persuasive to talk. About the dangers that Donald Trump posed for the younger [00:24:00] generation. It was, it was that, but they also needed to hear about the positive messaging about what Joe Biden and his administration had delivered on the issues that young people care about.

We did see abortion, no surprise, top motivating issue for Trump. you know, millions of young people of reproductive age that would like to decide when they make a baby and what happens with their own body and health. And that actually was for both young men and young women. We started to see as like, I think as soon as Roe was overturned immediately.

Millions of women, mostly women, were understood the consequences of it being overturned. And what we’ve seen is it’s taken a little bit of time for men to catch up and be like, oh shit, it’s really going to affect me too. And so that has started to increase. We saw a difference in this polling from 2022 to now in 2024.

And that reflection, the economy, another top motivating issue for young people. But I do think there are ways, like I think. A lot of pundits will say, [00:25:00] don’t talk about the economy because Republicans win on the economy, which I think is total bullshit because their economic vision is really for the top 1 percent and not about middle and working class people, which is most young people.

And the other issues are just like the threat to democracy. Those are all within the wheelhouse of where Democrats win what young people care about.

Brian Derrick: Let’s double click on the economy for a second. We saw a clip recently. Uh, on Fox News claiming that the economy is why young people are, air quotes, abandoning Joe Biden.

Let’s see the clip.

Steve Doocy: As we have been talking about for months, the numbers are, a lot of the numbers are good for the administration, but it just doesn’t feel like it. And that’s one of the reasons why young people are abandoning Joe Biden.

Brian Derrick: The numbers are good, but it just doesn’t feel like it. Vibes. We call that vibes.

So how do you feel like young people are currently responding to the economy? It again, feels like there’s a disconnect between like [00:26:00] headlines, best jobs report ever, like inflation down. Unemployment down, like all these things and what we hear from our friends or our younger friends, can you talk to us a little bit about how, you know, I guess the

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: news agency is this core demographic is like 65 plus.

It’s not really where I’m going to get my news source for how young people are feeling about anything to do with the economy or policy. But, you know, I think young people understandably Do feel the economic pinch, right? Like they feel the economic pains of an economy that doesn’t feel like that was built for them.

And that isn’t a product of the Biden administration. That is a buildup of policies over years that have, you know, looking at back at Occupy Wall Street, right? It was young people at the forefront saying, we are angry about an economy that feels that we’re really also the first ones to even before Bernie to talk about the growing gulf of inequality was young people in front of that saying, it feels like wall street.

It feels like big banks and the top 1 percent are really benefiting. Actually the conversation, the top 1 percent really came from occupy wall street. Right. [00:27:00] And that has only grown, right? This generation rent is really high. Housing costs are high. Young people have less assets than older generations. So.

Of course, they’re going to feel the pinch of economic pain first, and the policies that the Biden administration, the Democrats have moved on, really speak to young people. 88 percent of young people support labor unions in this country, 88%. That is a high, high watermark. So that actually includes Republicans in there, just to be clear.

There is only one party in this country that supports labor unions, and that’s Democrats. Young people overwhelmingly believe in taxing the rich their fair share. Only one party, one candidate believes in taxing the rich their fair share. Only one party and candidate believes in a living wage versus a minimum wage.

And we talk about equal pay for women and only one party, one unit. So if you talk about those policies, hands down, Democrats win. And young people. Also, while there’s still more gains to be made economically to address like [00:28:00] 30 plus years of growing the growing gulf of inequality in this country, young people have made the greatest gains wage wise since workers have been getting raises just over the since post COVID.

Those are the workers that have been making the greatest gains and making the greatest demands as they should.

Glennis Meagher: You know, oftentimes a lot of these movements are, you know, you’re protesting or you’re organizing around the system. The capitalist system, the late stage capitalism that we operate in. And when you look at what party, again, even though the hyper partisan nature of our system is exhausting for many people, what party is going to advocate for, for the working class and the middle class?

It’s the Democrats. It’s not the Republicans. And to your point, it sounds like if we message it that way, we can really land the message with the youth vote.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Yeah. And I think, um, so I’m a grandma millennial, so I’m old enough to remember like, You know, we weren’t the Democratic Party that was right on criminal justice reform.

We weren’t the party that was right on gay marriage, and we were definitely not the party like when it came, you know, in the [00:29:00] 90s to talking about taxing the rich their fair share. It was all like still trickle down economics for both political parties. And so I think what’s happened, even though you talk about hyper partisanship unless it can be challenging, I think the Republican Party has really revealed who they actually are working for, right?

It is. white supremacy. It is for the top one, not even the top one percent, like 0. 1 percent of this country and then you have a democratic party that’s saying like We’re going home to the labor movement. We’re going home to raising wages for working people. We’re going home to the idea and concept that who built this country are working people and they deserve their fair share.

And so I feel like it’s, it is a very clear calculus about if you believe in social justice, if you believe in equality, if you believe in fairness, there’s only one party. That’s it. Should there be multiple parties? You can debate that there should be. But given what we have and what’s at the forefront, I think the choice is very clear.

Brian Derrick: Boom. Cut that. Put it in a TikTok. Put it on blast. [00:30:00] I think the other thing that people are seeing as they’re listening to this, like the context of this week in particular this month, is that we’re seeing young people engaged on college campuses. In a really big way, making a lot of news this week in particular.

And I’m hoping you can help us interpret some of what that means for the 2024 election and sort of how you see the current college campus protests around. Israel policy affecting the the election in November.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Yes. I mean, I think the the protests have erupted Or the the stage at which we’ve seen them spread here in the United States and across the globe, right?

It’s just within some of them in the last 48 hours last 24 hours even So I don’t think we have exact polling on where it’s at now, but what we can see From other people’s polls. We looked at another poll where around this time in 2022, when young people were asked in a poll, how [00:31:00] important foreign policy was for the upcoming election.

You had, and that was like, when Ukraine is at the forefront, you had 4 percent of young people say foreign policy and is an important issue in this upcoming election. Most recent poll? 84 percent of young people set foreign policy specifically in relation to Gaza was an important issue in this upcoming election.

Now, it doesn’t register for the majority of young people in their top issues, but there is, and this has been, you know, our message to the administration, young people are really critical. To the administration winning. We want the administer. I want the administration next gen wants the administration to win because we know the consequences of them not winning and also what we can gain and win.

But clearly young people are dissatisfied or not in alignment where the administration is on their position on Gaza and Palestine. Will that be the majority of young people that vote on that issue? Probably not. However, in a Michigan, a Pennsylvania or Arizona, you don’t need that many young people to decide to vote for third party or sit out to have an impact.

And [00:32:00] so. Because we’re like, you talked about some of these races are really going to be nail biters and one on the margins. And so we think it’s important that the administration listen to young people. And also my message to young people that say, I don’t want to vote because I don’t want to vote for Joe Biden because of this, this issue is that Donald Trump is so much more dangerous.

on this issue than Joe Biden. And I believe that you elect the person you think you can push the most to deliver what you want. And if we look at student debt, if we look at climate change, if we look at criminal justice, also Joe Biden was like opposed to marijuana reform for years. And he was opposed to student debt cancellation.

He got there because we organized and pushed him to get there. You can organize, if you disagree with this administration and get them to where you need them, want them to be, I believe, because they actually are willing to listen. This is a movement that just started and people are building the political muscle.

They, if you want to move an administration on this, there’s only one administration you’re going to be able to move. And so you should vote for the people you think you [00:33:00] can move.

Brian Derrick: I love that framing. I think that that’s exactly what I will be telling younger people in my life, for sure. Well, thank you so much, Christina, for being with us.

You’ve dropped some serious truth bombs and a lot of wisdom. So we appreciate the perspective, the hope, and we really would love to have you back on as the electioneers.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: For sure. And where can folks find you online? Yeah. So you can go to nextgenamerica. org and also people plug for volunteering. You can volunteer with us from anywhere in the country.

Um, cause we send tens of millions calls texts. We even do some fun dating app organizing where you can search by geography, political persuasion, of course, gender, and then slide into people’s DMS talking about the big D democracy. And I love it. Amazing. So join us, um, in any of

Glennis Meagher: those formats or ways. It’s giving.

It’s giving. It’s giving. Okay, Brian, it’s giving. Lindsey Graham, he was confronted with David Pecker’s testimony outlining catch and kill strategy for Trump in 2016.

Dana Bash: [00:34:00] David Pecker, who ran the National Enquirer’s parent company, testified that he paid to catch and kill stories about Trump specifically to help his presidential campaign.

You don’t have any concerns about that?

Lindsey Graham: You know, apparently a lot of people do this. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods. No, I think the whole thing is a crock.

Dana Bash: Tiger Woods is not running for president and the allegation is about, at least not yet. No, I got it. Yeah,

Lindsey Graham: I think the whole thing’s BS. It’s

Dana Bash: giving go to bed,

Glennis Meagher: Lindsey Graham.

Like you’re, you’re good.

Lindsey Graham: It’s also giving

Glennis Meagher: Oh, he’s had work. He’s had

Brian Derrick: WORK done. He’s got

Glennis Meagher: fillers. Wow. For, for listener only vibes community, his face looks like Death Becomes Her. He’s giving Death Becomes Her. He’s

Brian Derrick: giving nip tuck. Like, yeah. Wow. I almost didn’t recognize him.

Glennis Meagher: Well, I thought in the beginning he was stroking out, and it was just that he had no, like, his facial muscles are all in paralysis from all the Botox.

Brian Derrick: Yeah, it’s definitely giving, [00:35:00] like, Desperate Housewives. He doesn’t look

Glennis Meagher: good. This is like, just go enjoy your Botox at home in South Carolina.

Brian Derrick: And on the substance, it’s absolutely bonkers, um, for Republicans to try to dismiss it out of hand when you know that if the shoe were on the other foot, they would be losing their minds.

Glennis Meagher: Okay. Group chat. Brian, this is trigger warning. We’re going to be talking about dogs and the death of a dog. The murder, a murder, a murder of a dog. I love animals. I am a dog whisperer. I foster animals and anyone in New York city. If you want to foster DM me, I’ll connect you to some great organizations.

Dogs are creatures of God. Like do not shoot them.

Brian Derrick: No one knows what you’re talking about. If you have not seen yet. South Dakota governor and potential Trump or formerly potential formerly VP pick Kristi [00:36:00] Noem is releasing a book and she thought that this book was good. This book tour was gonna go so well and it’s gonna like get her the VP slot and she releases us an excerpt from the book and it’s a story about her murdering her own dog because it killed her neighbor’s chicken.

Glennis Meagher: Not even that. She’s a hunter. She has hunting dogs. Hunting dogs are, they need to be highly trained. They’re highly active. Like she had this new dog, a puppy. It was like 14 months. So like an adolescent, she brought this dog on a hunt and the dog was not properly trained. The dog was super excited and started killing a neighbor’s chicken.

So she took the dog, which is like, That’s bad. Like, dogs should not be killing other, like, your neighbor’s livestock, but, like, an untrained dog, who’s, like, a hunting dog, might do that. She takes the dog, instead of saying, okay, let me, like, re home this dog, it’s not working with my pack, let me bring this to, like, a better trainer to try and work this out.

She takes the dog, in her words, To a gravel pit and shoots it. And then she [00:37:00] proceeds to say how much she hated the dog.

Brian Derrick: Like it’s bonkers. Like, okay. Kathy Bates, like nobody wants this puppy murder lady, the vice president. I can’t believe when I first saw it. Cause I first saw it as, as a text in, in a group chat.

And I was like, wait, what, what good oppo? Someone got this incredible oppo. On Kristi Noem, how did they find out she murdered her dog? Little did I know, she published it herself! And boasted about how much

Glennis Meagher: she hated it. And I think she honestly thought she was gonna get like gun props for it.

Brian Derrick: Right. And

Glennis Meagher: it’s like, I’m sorry, left, right, center.

People love dogs. We don’t like puppy killers in America. Totally.

Brian Derrick: People love dogs so crazy. What else was in the group chat? Did you see the clip of Vice president Kamala Harris on Drew Barrymore’s show.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah. Okay. So Drew Barrymore, for those who don’t watch the show, like [00:38:00] one of her sticks is that she sits like super close to you, like definitely within your, your, your circle.

Like, you know, when you’re a kid and you’re learning about like how to set boundaries, your personal space, your personal circle or my personal space, the vice president, God bless her almost cracked up. You could see it in her face. Because drew was like up in her grill and like the vice president’s body language couldn’t be any more like, we’re good.

And she’s like, we, and okay. I will say drew’s not wrong, but she was like, the nation needs a mamala. You’re our mamala

Brian Derrick: because that’s what her kids call her her. Yeah. Kamala’s kids. I think they’re all daughters, stepdaughters call her mamala. Like that’s their nickname for her. And so that was like a call back to be like, Oh, America, America needs a mamala right now.

Drew Barrymore: We really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now. But in our country, [00:39:00] We need you to be Mamala of the country.

Brian Derrick: I thought the clip was funny because Drew Barrymore is like, always very over the top and like very sincere. And I appreciate her for it. It just, the whole thing was a little, a little crunchy.

And for the love of God, can Kamala’s team please figure out opportunities for her. To be the same person that we fell in love with when she was on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like those are the moments that I feel like she was at her strongest. When she was pressing a witness or someone who was testifying, like as a former prosecutor, she seems to be most in her element when she is trying to make a really strong case for something more so than trying to be this motherly figure, which is I feel like the trap that Hillary Clinton got.

Pushed into and it doesn’t work.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah, I’m for all of it. I love her on the judiciary committee. I love her when she’s talking [00:40:00] about coconut trees. I want her to come and grill me on vibes only. Yes. Like, we could give her any topic.

Brian Derrick: Truly.

Glennis Meagher: Insert, like, I want her to come and grill Brian on New York City dating.

Brian Derrick: Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, scary. Wait, I’m already shaking in my boots.

Glennis Meagher: Team Harris. If you’re listening, this is an open invitation for the vice president to join us on vibes.

Brian, a good vibe that came out today from the Biden administration is that the DOJ department of justice plans to reschedule. So like reclassify marijuana as a lower risk drug.

Brian Derrick: That’s super exciting. A long time coming. I know people have been actually looking for the Biden admin to do this. Marijuana has long been scheduled as like the most dangerous kind of drug, which hearkens all the way back to the war on drugs, [00:41:00] like decades ago, even before that, even before that.

And now moving it down means that there’s going to be more infrastructure in place to support like the burgeoning marijuana industry. I think that this means that there’ll be more banking resources available, that there’ll be more, like, regulation and sort of, like, standards around it. It does not legalize it at the federal level yet, but this is a big step in the decrim movement.

Glennis Meagher: Yeah, it’s now a Schedule III substance, which, uh, is like Tylenol with codeine in it, you know?

Brian Derrick: Yeah, I think that Celsius is in there.

Glennis Meagher: I’m pretty sure Celsius is in there. Oh my God. Those are all the vibes this week. A big thanks to Christina Sinsoon Ramirez for joining us and tell us how things are looking for the youth vote in this coming election.

And thanks to you all for tuning in. If you’ve been with us for a while, thanks so much. If you’re listening for the first time, reach out, tell us what you think, what you liked, what you didn’t. You can [00:42:00] email us at vibes at career newsroom. com. You can also send us a note. If you have any questions, story suggestions, or Or want to chime in in our group chat.

We’re happy to answer your questions on the pod until next time. I hope your vibe is high. Get it.

Brian Derrick: Vibes Only is a production of Courier, a civic media company that protects and strengthens our democracy through credible fact based journalism and seeks to create a more informed, engaged, and representative America.

Vibes Only is produced by Devin Maroney with support from Courier’s Kyle Tharp, Arcee DeMezzo, and Daniel Strasburger. Tara McGowan is founder and publisher of Courier.