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That's From the Free Press, this is Honestly, and I'm Barry Weis.

A week and a half ago, few people outside of the Beltway and niche media circles had ever heard the name Tim Walls. At the risk of embarrassing myself, two weeks ago, one of my producers mentioned his name, and I literally said, Who is that? Now, I covered my ass by saying, I'm sure I'll hear his name 100 more times today. And well, that's exactly what happened.

She has narrowed it down to either Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh or Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

Whoever she picks, they will be- Almost overnight, this relatively obscure governor from Minnesota started to gain traction, all thanks to a viral clip.

Three days ago, the nation found out what we've all known in Minnesota.

These guys are just weird.

That's where they are. It is much- Don't give them the power. Look, are they in threat to democracy?

Yes. Are they going to take- Now, whether Do you agree or not with his classification of MAGA Republican politicians, particularly JD Vance, as weird, the fact is this. It resonated with a lot of people. For many, walls came across as direct, plainspoken, and affable. And all of a sudden, Tim Walsh was the name on everyone's lips.

This is an NBC news special report.

Good day. We're coming on the air with breaking news.

Sources inform NBC news that vice President Kamala Harris has selected Tim Walsh as her running mate. Harris is now- Two days ago, on Tuesday, August sixth, Tim Walsh became a household name when Kamala Harris, after a supposedly agonizing night of decision making, officially announced the Minnesota governor as her running mate.

Hi, this is Tim. It's Kamala Harris.

Good morning, governor.

Good morning, Madam Vice President.

Listen, I want you to do this with me.

Let's do this together.

Would you be my running mate and let's get this thing on the road.

I would be honored, Madam Vice President. The joy that you're bringing back to the country, the enthusiasm- Now, the conventional wisdom was that Kamala, as a progressive, would pick a moderate Democrat to balance the ticket.

Is Walls that guy? Is he a moderate? Because if you go online, there's a split-screen reality about who Tim Walls actually is.

Everybody in America knows somebody like Tim Walls, and he's the guy who is always there to help you, whether it's changing your oil, whether it's fixing a lawnmower, or whether it's helping to fix our democracy. He is always there for us. At the same time, everybody in America knows a JD Vans, but we stay away from him because he's weird. Tim Walls is always there, and he's not a politician. He's a teacher.

He's a veteran. On the one hand, He's a Midwestern nice guy, a 60-year-old who grew up in small town, Nebraska. He's a veteran of the National Guard. He was a high school teacher, a football coach, and before being a governor, was a congressman.

This is a guy from small town America who has played by the rules, high school teacher, 25 years in the National Guard, and he is not an elite.

He is somebody that you could visit with at the hardware store.

He's somebody who, I bet, knows how to make a good hot dish casserole in Minnesota.

To top it off, he's a gun owner. And did we mention he likes to hunt? Policy-wise, he's worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments. He cut taxes for working families. He passed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesota families. So that's one story about who Tim Walls is. But others are painting a very different picture.

This is clearly the most radical, left, progressive ticket that we have ever seen in American history. I am amazed that Kamala Harris doubled down once again on her radical left ideology to pick a soulmate for the ticket. This is a guy who has soft on crime. This is a guy who has open borders. This is a guy who loves inflationary spending. He's one of the most left-wing members of Congress, and I think that they are doubling down on every single position that we've seen.

Tim Walls is a left-wing radical who actually has turned Minnesota into a liberal wasteland.

This guy, he's a gift to Republicans.

Trump's press secretary wrote, Tim Walls is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris Walls' California dream is every American's nightmare. What is she referring to? Well, here are some policies that Tim Walls also supported. During the pandemic, he set up a phone line so that Minnesotans could report on their neighbors for violating COVID rules. He also allowed Minnesota's Health Department to ration COVID drugs based on race. He made Minnesota a trans refuge state, signing a law that allows the state to take custody of a child whose parents refuse gender-affirming care. He also established a council to implement DEI training in statewide agencies. And after George Floyd's murder, as riots were overtaking Minneapolis, he said this, My administration will use every tool at our disposal to deconstruct generations of systemic racism in Minnesota. Then, of course, there was the fact that people, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and Conservatives, were shocked that Tim Walsh was actually the guy. Not because of anything Walls himself has said or done, but because of who he isn't. Up until the announcement on Tuesday, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro was the clear front runner, an obvious choice. He's charismatic, he's handsome, and he's a moderate governor from a key battleground state that the Democrats have to win.

So why wasn't he chosen?

Josh Shapiro very clearly supports a Zion Zionism, political Zionism.

He very clearly supports the genocidal war in Gaza. He's been actively and vocally supportive of Israel's war on Gaza since October seventh and prior.

Kamal Harris is thinking about having Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, as her vice president, and we need to be very, very, very loud about the fact that she should not do that because Josh Shapiro fucking sucks. The man's a fucking monster.

And how much of the decision to choose walls over Shapiro was about anti-Semitism. You also have anti-Semitism that has gotten marbled into this party.

You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there, and there's some disquiet now, and there has to be how much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts in the party. So that's going to have to get worked out.

To explain all of this today are three of my favorite writers and thinkers. Free Press contributor, Batya Anger-Sargon, Free Press Senior Editor, Peter Sivadnik, and Free Press columnist, Jonas Serra, or as he likes to be called, our in-house liberal. Today, who is Tim Walsh, moderate midwestern Werner or radical lefty? Why did Harris choose him? What does this choice say about the state of the Democratic Party and in the race to the White House? And in the race to the White House, and we are 88 days out from the election. Does the vice President even matter in the end? You won't want to miss it. Stay with us.

I'm Peter Sivodnik, and I'm a senior editor here at the Free Press. Over the past 25 years, I've written for Vanity Fair, GQ, Harpers, The New York Times, and a bunch of other publications. I've brought all of those experiences to my role here at the Free Press, where I work with reporters on long-form investigations, profiles, and essays on politics and culture. The Free Press believes in journalism as it ought to be, built on ideals like honesty, doggedness and fierce independence. We publish stories and commentary about the world as it actually is with the quality once expected from the legacy press and the fearlessness of the new. At the Free Press, we don't shove some precut narrative down your throat. We follow our curiosity and seek the truth. When you subscribe to the Free Press, you're supporting a whole team of writers, editors, producers, interns, and business people who are building a new media company outside of the mainstream. If you believe in our mission and want to support us, go to thefp. Com to subscribe.

Hi, honestly, listeners. I'm Olivia Reingold. In June 2022, after hearing Barry on this very podcast, I sent a cold email to the Free Press and told them how I was sick of working in mainstream media, where it felt like reporting amounted to calling a Democrat to get a bad quote about Republicans and then calling the Republican to do the same. A few months later, I was hired. My first assignment for the Free Press was the Twitter files. And since then, I've traveled to Kentucky to attend a religious revival, to Montana to spend time with members of the Crow Nation, to Idaho to report from a homesteading conference, and all over America, from the Bronx to Austin to Miami. At the Free Press, we focus on stories and places that are ignored or misconstrued by the mainstream media, left and right. For us, curiosity isn't a liability, it's a necessity. Our audience of 550,000 subscribers is made up of free thinkers of all stripes. To support my in-depth and on-the-ground reporting, and that of our entire editorial team, subscribe today at thefp. Com. That's T-H-E-F-P. Com.

Batia, Peter, Joe, thank you Thank you so much for joining me today on Honestly.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Happy to be here.

Okay, well, Tim Walls is a name that most Americans didn't know until a few days ago. I think the big debate right now, well, there's several debates, but one of the biggest debates is about who he actually is. Is he a moderate? Is he a radical? Does he bring balance to a ticket where Kamal Harris is situated as a progressive, or is he more of the same? I want to just begin by asking Who is Tim Walls? Joe, maybe let's start with you.

He is a liberal Democrat who has proven over and over in the course of his career to connect really well with working class Whites, rural Americans, and other constituencies that the Democrats have largely let go of. As a congressman, he breezed in a very conservative district until Still, Donald Trump ran for election in 2016. Even in that case, which Trump won his district by 15 points, Tim still managed to tweak out a victory. Then he's been a very popular governor for two election cycles. There's no doubt that a lot of his policies are liberal, bordering on progressive, but a lot of them are also policies that people like. People like young kids being able to have free breakfast and in school. They like stronger worker protections. They certainly like the fact that under his administration, after Roe was overturned, Minnesota became the first state that enshrined abortion rights in his statutes. There are definitely people in Minneapolis, my father-in-law being one of them, who view him as a crazy radical. But there is a lot of other people who think, Okay, he's got liberal progressive policies, but they're not crazy. He's in the lane.

Joe, one of the things you wrote in your column today in the Free Press, which was called Tim Walls is No Radical, is this. You said, Call me crazy, but I think a lot of voters will find this progressive extremist and socialist agenda attractive. I think that there's a split screen story on Tim Walls right now. You look at one side of the screen and you see folksy, neighborly, Midwestern, all-American guy. He was a high school teacher and he looks like one. He was a football coach. He owns no stocks, which is unbelievable. I don't know if you guys saw that news today. The consummate guy next door, person you'd want to eat a corn dog with at a fair. But then you look at the other side of the screen, and this is the one, at least, that my Twitter algorithm is certainly feeding me right now. I see a guy who is, at least this is what I'm being served. The story is Tim Walls may look like a 60-year-old high school teacher, and that might give you the veneer that he's approachable and moderate and normative. But hold on. This is the guy who allowed undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses.

This is the guy that made Minnesota a sanctuary state for gender-affirming care, so-called gender-affirming care for minors. This is a guy whose wife gave an interview where she talks about how during the BLM rioting that obviously took place in Minneapolis, that she left the windows of their home open so she could smell the burning fires, which is a pretty astonishing thing to say. So maybe, Batia, I'll kick it to you. Which one is it? Which one is the real Tim Walls?

It gets to a deeper problem in American politics today and threaded through this entire election Selection Season, which is the vast gap between vibes and policy. So you look at Tim Walls and the vibes are great. He seems exactly like what his biography says he is, somebody who was a a teacher and very grandfatherly, and all of this stuff. Then you look at the policy and you've got trans health care up the wazoo, bills allowing the state to take children away from parents if the parents don't want to help them transition. You've got illegal aliens getting free health care and driver's licenses and college tuition. You have the rationing of COVID medication based on race. You have the COVID snitch line, right? Let's just pause.

Explain what that is.

He established a phone line for neighbors, right? He talks about socialism being neighborliness. He established a phone line for neighbors to report on their neighbors if they were violating COVID lockdown rules, okay? And so So you have this yauning gap between the vibes of this cuddly, neighborly guy and then the actual policy. And the same thing is happening, Barry, on the right, to where you have JD Vans and Donald Trump who both give off, if you believe the media cycle, the narrative is that their vibes are extremists, that they are far-right, that they are weird, that they don't reflect- It's very like American carnage vibe, and the other people are having a fun party.

Exactly.

But if you look at the actual policy that Donald Trump represents, especially with his very public, very vocal sidelining and humiliating of the Project 25 people. His agenda, his policy, every item that Donald Trump has chosen to run on has at least 65 % approval rating among the American people. And that's whether it's his view on abortion at 15 weeks, he's pro-gay marriage. His view that we should be engaged in mass deportation of illegal immigrants, 60 % approval rating among Americans. He's courting unions, he's courting Black voters. His views on trade reflect where most working class people are. And so this gap between vibes and policy is really coming for me to define American politics today, the election more generally, but also the stranglehold that the liberal media has. And of course, who gets to vote on vibes rather than policy? It's people who have the economic privilege to do so. And so we're really seeing the logical endpoint of the political realignment of the Democrats representing people with a college degree who have a lot more leeway to vote on vibes, and then the Republicans representing the working class who are really stuck thinking about kitchen table issues.

Peter, I just want to stay on that for a minute at the point that Batcha is making that this is an election based on vibes and not based on policy at all. You've been covering this election. You were at the RNC. You're about to head out to the DNC in Chicago, which would be really exciting and chaotic. We have a lot of insurance. Don't worry. I'm wondering if you agree with that. Do you think that this is a contentless election Or is this an example of us thinking that something is new? But really, politics, and maybe American politics, has always been a show and has always been based on vibes.

Yeah, I think that's correct. I think it's mostly that we superimpose on the candidates, on their campaigns, what we want to believe about them or what we don't want to believe about them. We create caricatures out of them. With regard to Walt, he might be the guy you had the corn dog with at the fair. He might also be a radical who just looks like a high school teacher. I don't really know. I think that it's obvious why they chose him. He's the obvious counterpoint to a presidential nominee who reeks of coastal elitist culture. It's ooosing from every one of her pores. With him, He is so middling. He's from a middle-sized town in the middle of America, went to a middling college that nobody has ever heard of, has been just very, very smack in the middle. Everything about him is the middle. Whether that translates into to papered over bolshevism remains to be seen. I tend to think that a better way of looking at Tim Wallace is that he's a democratic functionary who is going along with where the tides of the party and the culture have led him. Does he really believe deeply in gender fluidity?

I have no idea. Probably not. But at the moment, that was the thing that you did. When it's not the thing you do anymore, he won't do it. It's not because he's completely unprincipled, but because he's a successful politician, and that's what one does to get ahead.

Joe, I saw you shaking your head when Peter was talking about Bolshevism there. The headline, again, of your piece today in the Free Press is that Tim Walsh is no radical. Tell us why calling him a radical is incorrect, given the policies that he has supported as a governor.

Well, first of all, what's really going on here from both sides is this definition game. Literally within moments of the word being leaked that he was the nominee, there was a whole bunch of attack that you found on Twitter about His military record was fraudulent and this and that. It's just an instantaneous effort to frame him as the most evil radical in the history of the world. It's nuts. It's nuts on the right when the right does it, when The left does it with Trump, who I'm not sympathetic with at all, but I do think a lot of what's said about him is overstated. I think it's the same thing on the left. In terms of actual policies, Batia talked about how Trump is in favor of the working class. Well, you know what? The left is in favor of the working class, too. As a general rule, one of the things I really admire about the Biden administration, which will obviously continue with walls, is his support of unions. America desperately needs the union movement to revive. With the consolidation of corporations and with the power that companies now have, the decline of unions has really hurt workers a great deal.

To me, is that a radical policy? No, that's not a radical policy. That's an American policy. I agree with actually a fair amount of what Peter just said about where he stands on transgender. I think the same thing is true of COVID. My guess on COVID is that, to my mind, the only Democratic governor who handled COVID properly was Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island, who refused to keep the schools closed and then even threatened to sue the city of Providence if they didn't open their schools. Every other governor just fell in line with Fauci and the idiots in public health who said, Follow the science, but didn't actually know what the science was. I think Peter had it exactly right. It's like, Oh, we're Democrats, we're on the left. If Trump says this is bad, then it must be good. If Trump says this is good, it must be bad. So that's the COVID policy we'll follow. And he did that, too. No question about it. Am I, as a liberal, willing to forgive him for that? You're damn right I am.

I just have I wanted to jump in very quickly. There was one other governor who did a really good job on COVID and bucked the Democratic trend and opposed vaccine mandates and lockdowns. And guess what his name was? Josh Shapiro.

Okay, we are going to get to Josh Shapiro in a second. Because that's a bigger conversation for this group. Bajia, I wanted you to respond, if you would, for just a moment, because it's really your core issue. On the point Joe is making here about the Democrats appeal to the working class, your main argument, the argument that you make in part in your book, Second Class, which is right over your shoulder for those who have not bought it, is that we've lived through this dramatic political realignment over the past several decades. We woke up all of a sudden, and Democrats that had been the party of this multiracial, multi-ethnic working class, all of a sudden, it was the Republicans instead. What do you make of the points that Joe was making there? And do you think Tim Walls is actually going to be able to appeal to those people, those voters that you talked to in that book?

So I totally respect everything that Joe said. The Democrats are very pro-union. The problem is that only 6% of the private sector is unionized. And when you talk to working class people about why they're not unionized, they don't actually say because of union busting, which is the fantasy on the left for why they don't belong to unions, it's because they fundamentally don't see unions as the pathway towards the middle class. Now, we could disagree agree about that. I'm super pro-union for sure. But it's not my view that you tell people who have much less than you who are struggling to make it the best way for them to get ahead and support their families. It's my view that we listen to them, and they're very clear about that. There's been a radical realignment of the multiracial, multi-ethnic working class away from the Democrats and towards, first the Republicans, but now very specifically, Donald Trump, who's made massive inroads with Black working class men and Hispanic working class, both men and women. And so the voters are voting with their feet about who they see as supporting them the most. And I think there's this view on the left that the way to support the working class is through unions, so through the Pro Act, through all of these ways of forcing the issue through the unions.

But first of all, the head of the Teamsters Union, my personal hero, Sean O'Brien, gave a stirring, stirring speech at the RNC, the most progressive speech to be delivered at a national convention, Democrat or Republican in probably decades. Decades. And so he is responding to the Teamsters in his union who 50 % or more are voting for Trump. And so that's, to me, the future of unions. If they want to remain relevant, they should not be wedded to one party or the other. They should be wedded to what their members want. Now, on the other hand, you have the UAW, which is very hostile to Trump. But you have to keep in mind about the UAW that a quarter of UAW members are university workers. And I'm not talking about janitors. They're grad students and adjunct professors and and so forth. So they've patted their ranks with white collar workers, if you will. And so that's what we're seeing the class divide, even within the union membership. There's a huge class divide between rank and file in labor unions and then the national leadership, which is much more pronouns in the bio and so forth.

At the end of the day, and I'll just end with this, there were two models before Trump showed up on the scene for the economy. You had the left, the Democrats, which believed in raising taxes and then redistributing contributing that. And that was how you helped people at the bottom. And then you had the Republican model, which was you slash taxes, free trade for everybody, and then this myth that it will trickle, the trickle down, right? That you give everybody at the top a lot of money, a lot of tax cuts, and it will trickle down to the bottom. And it turns out that neither of those represents what working class people want and what they see as the best way for them to achieve the American dream in a middle class life. What they want is a protectionist model where you You think about immigration and you think about trade, and you think about corporations and corporate policy vis-a-vis workers, and you think about unions through the lens of protecting the labor of the American worker. They don't want more welfare. They don't want handouts. They want the fruits of their labor to reward them with the most modest version of the American dream.

And many, many, many working class people, the majority in America now, see Trump as having offered that in a very substantive way in his first term.

I think you're being a little too nice to Trump in the sense that you didn't I'll use the word elites, but really what's happened over the last 30 or 40 years is elites in both the Republican and Democratic Party has embraced a free trade ideology that has been terribly, terribly damaging to the working class. Part of Trump's appeal wasn't just, I'm going to fix trade and I'm going to protect your jobs. It was, Look at me. I say, Screw the elites. That's what I'm going to do. If you want to screw the elites, you should vote for me. I also think Biden turned his back on the elites, at least in terms of trying to get jobs back in America with things like the CHIP Act and thinking hard about trade. From my point of view, you can't have a totally protectionist economy because that is in and of itself a destruction of the economy. It's a balancing. I don't think Trump has that balancing, but I don't think the Democrats have that balancing right either.

We should have a longer conversation about which side appeals more to the working class and the failure of our elites. I want us to go back to Walls for a moment and the question of who he appeals to, because our Eli Lake had a story this morning that was like, all of the wrong people are celebrating this guy. He was talking about people like Elon Omar, Jamal Bowman, a member of the squad who lost in New work. He denied that there were rapes that happened on 10/7 in Israel. He's a guy, charmingly, who has flirt with 9/11 conspiracy theories, people like Lena Turner. So they all were celebrating that it was Tim Walsh on Tuesday. Fine. But Then so did Joe Manchin, who wrote this, My friend Governor Tim Walsh, will bring normality back to the most chaotic political environment that most of us have ever seen. All of the candidates were strong, and any of them would have been a great pick. But I can think of no one better than Governor Walsh to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic Party. Peter, which is it? Is this basically a white cisgendered, quiet member of the squad, or Is he, as Joe Manchin says, normal?

I think Joe Manchin is on balance, correct. I think to return to a distinction that Batia made earlier in the conversation between vibes and policy. In politics, that's a distinction without much of a difference in the sense that you are conveying a message, a feeling, and the policy that emerges out of that is going to come out of innumerable conversations, debates, et cetera, in the White House, on Capitol Hill, among interest groups, et cetera. I think that what Walls does is he speaks American in a way that most Democrats in charge do not. He sounds authentically of the country in a way that Kamala Harris cannot. I think Democrats will say, Well, that's a matter of race or gender. I actually think it's not that. It's a matter of geography. It's a matter of- Wait, so San Francisco necessitates speaking in word salad? I got to tell Nelly. I think being a pretty vapid, middle-of-the-road intelligence, ambitious Democrat in California requires word salad. I think that if you want to get ahead in Minnesota, Nebraska politics, you have to speak plainly and with a concreteness that isn't going to alienate people who aren't going to take to metaphor and your extemporaneous wanderings about culture and the meaning of why we are here and all the nonsense that we now take for granted with Kamala Harris, who basically her MO is she's asked the question, then she repeats the question over the course of a minute or two minutes with an eye, obviously, toward eating up-time, and then moving on to the next question that she can't actually juggle.

With walls, it's the opposite. It's very concrete. He's actually, I think, to his credit, he's very human in this way. The reason that the weird thing works so well is that he got at this feeling that I think a lot of voters feel with certain segments of the MAGA right or the America first right, which is there is a weirdness about some of the politics and some of the culture. He zeroed in on that, not with a policy-wonkish or a particularly erudite way of framing it. Nothing theoretical. It was just very human, very gut instinct. This is weird. But the subtext of that is there's something wrong with these people. There's something I'm not right with them. I wouldn't trust them with important decisions. He says it in a way that is more palatable and relatable and also in a very smart way, less antagonizing.

Going back to the squad just for a second. The squad? Not diplomatic. They say what they want. Why are they celebrating this guy so hard?

Just because the other people were for Shapiro. That's it.

Really?

I think so. I think they view this as Because they're obviously not looking at the substance of their positions. As has been noted, walls is probably friendlier to Israel than Shapiro was or is. What they like about it is that all the wrong people in their eyes were for Shapiro. Therefore, if Shapiro loses, all the wrong people lose. I think it's that straightforward.

One of the takes that I saw swirling yesterday, which Eli also mentioned in his piece for the Free Press, is that it's not just the leftist side of the Democratic Party, exemplified by people like Jamal Bowman, who are celebrating his pick, so is Team Trump. A lot of the messaging coming out of people like Kelly Ann Conway and other right-wing pundits was, wow, thank God it wasn't Josh Shapiro, because Josh Shapiro, way more formidable than Tim Walls. Tim Walls is going to get demolished by JD Vance. And beyond that, Tim Walls' actual substance, when people dig into it will alarm them. Bacha, what do you think about that?

I agree with you. I felt yesterday like everybody except me was very happy that it was Tim Walsh.

Meaning everyone on the political right.

Everyone was so happy that it was him, including a lot of American Jews, which we could have a separate conversation about that, Barry, at a later date. But I totally agree with you. Yeah, the Trump team definitely definitely feels like this was a total gift, a total misstep. They cannot believe that they gave up Pennsylvania like that. Of course, Josh Shapiro, 61% proof of writing in Pennsylvania. So you had the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, which was very anxious to show Dems in Array, Dems unified, not to lose that momentum that they've had since they forced Joe Biden off the ticket. And then you had the far left who, of course, motivated by anti-Semitism, were thrilled that the Jew was not chosen and stick it to all the Jews in the party. And then you had the entire Trump team and everybody on the right. Fox News was positively jubilant. So everybody, it felt like, was pretty excited about this pick. I agree with you. There was this weird thing happening where all of the stars aligned.

Well, we should distinguish between what the Trump team says and what they believe. So of course, they say that they're thrilled that it's not Shapiro, that it's Walls. If it had been Shapiro and not Walls, they would have said they were thrilled that they went with a cultural elite and not someone from the middle of America. That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to say, no matter who it is, you're supposed to say, We are absolutely thrilled that Kamala Harris in her first big move made a Big blunder.

Peter, I feel like you can tell when Trump is compensating and when he's genuinely... I feel like we've all become accustomed to being able to read the tea leaves on this front, and I feel like... But anyway, we don't have to.

Joe, jump in and then let's get to Josh Shapiro. Go ahead.

Well, I was actually going to get to Josh Shapiro. Josh Shapiro has the most natural talent of any politician in the Democratic Party right now. There's not even any question about it. If you watch this guy get a 61 approval rating in a Purple State, it is astonishing. I will say this. I watched Tim Walls last night with some trepidation, and I was pretty pleased. I love a guy who says, What's our golden rule? Find your own damn business. That's going to have appeal. I think there's no question. Obviously, the right and the Trump people are going to try and portray him as the progressive of progressives. But people are going to watch him and they're going to hear what he's going to say, and he's not going to talk about transgender, and he can make himself seem very appealing. I think that's going to matter a lot. So it really comes down to who wins the definition war. What are you laughing? What did I do?

I'm laughing because you're saying he's going to lie, and therefore he's going to win. That's what you're saying.

Oh, excuse me. I forgot. Jd Vance and Donald Trump never lie. I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. Oh, my goodness. What a terrible, terrible mistake I just made.

More with Peter, Batia, and Joe after the break. Stay with us. I'm Susie Weis, and I'm a reporter at the Free Press. I've been around since the beginning, and we've gone from a single newsletter that we put out a few times a week to a full-fledged media company, with an editorial team, a video department, two offices, and most importantly, merch. I'm so proud of the work we've done at the Free Press, from our reporting on Twitter to our podcast, our news-breaking investigations, and whistleblower testimonies from within the country's most powerful institutions. A few of my favorite stories to report include a profile of one of America's richest communists, a look into the trend of Western women converting to Islam after getting the idea on TikTok, and an investigation into the booming and international surrogacy industry. Here at the Free Press, curiosity isn't a liability. It's a necessity. When you join as a subscriber to the Free Press, you'll find debates, scoops, provocative commentary, and live events. I promise you won't agree with everything we run, but that's the point. To join over 550,000 Free Pressers, subscribe today at thefp. Com. That's T-H-E-F-P. Com.

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Let's talk about Josh Shapiro. The story that we keep circling around, and maybe the most interesting story here, is not who was picked, but who wasn't. Before Walls was named by Kamala Harris, the consensus, not just on Polymarket and every betting site, but just there was a video leaked out of Philadelphia that named him, and perhaps it was a strategic leak, was Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor. Peter, before Walls was chosen, you wrote this, Shapiro is the obvious running mate. He's popular in Pennsylvania and might actually be able to deliver the state for her, a must win for any Democrat. He's smart and capable. Walk us through, Peter, why? Why did she go with Tim Walsh, in your view, over Josh Shapiro?

I think that in the last week or two, he performed really badly, frankly, on the Jewish question. That's the big question at the center of all this. Do I think that the Kamala Harris and her inner circle are anti-Semitic and they decide from the outset that they didn't want a Jew on the ticket? No, I think that's nuts. For one thing, she's married to a Jew. For another, I just don't think they think like that. I think that he had a performance he had to deliver and he did badly. I think it would be helpful, elucidating here to consider an alternate reality or parallel universe in which Josh Shapiro, five days ago, instead of giving the Craven pathetic speech he gave about, Forgive my Zion his youthful indiscretions, gave the speech that he gave yesterday in Philadelphia, where he spoke very, very powerfully, very compellingly about his family, his faith, his party, his country. Had he given that speech, I think you would have seen a large number of voters rally to his cause, and there's a very, very good chance that he would be on the ticket right now. Had he given that speech, had he said in effect to the anti-Semites in his own party, I'm not going to be cowed by the likes of you, we'd be in a very different place right now.

I think the problem is that when it mattered most, Josh Shapiro chote. He provided this very illuminating window into how he operates under pressure, and he didn't operate well.

I think the other argument you could make, though, is that the window that it gave us is not into Josh Shapiro and his actual convictions, but a window into what he felt was necessary to say in order to appease the base of his party. A base that I think Van Jones, of all people, said a day or two ago on CNN that anti-Semitism has now been marbled into the Democratic Party. Bata, you have a really powerful column up today at the Free Press called America is Ready for a Jewish Veep, But the Democrats Aren't. I just want to read the top of it to set up this question for you. On Monday night, Vice President Kamala Harris had narrowed her search for a running mate to two men, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh. Each had pros and cons. In Walsh's favor, he had the distinction of applying the term weird to JD Vance, a word that the entirety of his party's elites then picked up and ran with. Against Walsh was the fact that Minnesota is not a swing state, and Walsh himself is a progressive, like Harris, making it unclear what he would add to the ticket.

In Shapiro's favor was a 61% approval rating in a must-win state for Harris and a history of working across the political divide and choosing moderate popular positions on everything from school choice to COVID-19 restrictions to degree requirements to corporate taxes. But working against him turned out to be something insurmountable. Josh Shapiro is a proud Jew. Well, say more about that for us.

That's some damn good writing right there.

I mean, I agree.

Who wrote that?

It was. It is.

Thank you, Joe. First, I want to address this video of him that was shared so widely of him allegedly denouncing his Judaism and what have you. I didn't think he did that. There was a screenshot from that clip from Fox News, just a still that went viral that people were sending to me. That said, he says, I was 20, about this column he wrote in which he said, The Palestinians are too battle-minded to ever self-govern or something along those lines. And the screenshot made it seem like he was apologizing for those views. But if you watch the actual presser, he simply reiterates that he supports a two-state solution, that he has always supported a two-state solution. And when the reporter said, Well, what about this article you wrote in college? And he was like, You mean the article I wrote when I was 20? I was 20. And honestly, I think that's a really fair thing to say about something you've written when you're 20. We've all had this, especially us who talk and write for a living. There's embarrassing stuff we've written, certainly me, Barry, less you, because you get there before everybody else.

But me, certainly, I've written some really embarrassing stuff.

No, I'm just boring, and I've never been.

So I didn't see that as a self-denanciation or as choking. He's a very proud Jew. He's very proudly attached to his heritage. He keeps kosher. He's not one of these Jews who only trots out their Judaism to give cover to anti-Semites. Many of those, certainly around these days. And to me, it just seems like it was so clear the reason that everybody thought that he was going to be the pick was because of everything he brought to the ticket. We're talking about COVID, right? Can you imagine what it took to be a Democratic governor and to be good on COVID? Everything that he brought to the ticket would have been enough. Like, Dianu, if he wasn't the governor of Pennsylvania, but then he was also the governor of Pennsylvania.

Does Joe need Dianu translated or do you understand from context of this?

He does. Yes, he does.

It would have been... It's a Passover song, and the refrain is Dianu.

It would have been enough.

It was almost like gifted her on this platter. Then, of course, two weeks ago, we were all there. We all saw it. The progressive started to say, We will not vote for this person. And their excuse for it, of course, they couldn't say because he's bad on Israel, because he's not bad on Israel. He's identical to every other contender on Israel. And so they made up dumb thing about the way he handled the campus protests. Guess what? The vast majority of Americans agree with him that these campus protests needed to be put down in a very aggressive way. What was his big crime? He said, We wouldn't tolerate members of the KKK, people dressed up like the KK KK, hurling anti-Semitic slurs, and we shouldn't tolerate it on the other side, and yet we do. So his big crime was saying, We must call out anti-Semitism on both sides wherever we see it, which, of course, we all know, all four of us, I'm sure, firsthand experience, that the one thing you're never allowed to say on the left is that there is anti-Semitism here, and we have the right to call it out as proud Jews.

And so to me, the idea is she passed on him. I agree with you, Peter. Kamal Harris is not an anti-Semite. That's absolutely a ridiculous, ridiculous accusation. She's married to a Jew and so forth. But she caved to the anti-Semites in her party in a very, very big way. It was the only reason to even second guess that Shapiro, who could have handed her potentially the presidency, that they went in another direction.

Peter, I want you to wait. Do you agree that this was her caving to the anti-Semites in her party?

No, no. Look, I think, Bati, the problem that you're running up against is that you want Kamala Harris to be somebody she's not, which is a good person. I don't mean that she's necessarily a bad person, but she's like all successful politicians, which is to say she's amoral, she's fundamentally reptilian, and she has to be. We've known this since fifth century Athens, since Plato's Republic. If you're incapable of telling 10 million noble or not so noble lies every single day, You're going to lose. They looked at Shapiro and they said to themselves, he's a distraction. He's a problem. He's going to create a conversation that we don't want to have. Remember, what is the first role of the running mate? It's to do no harm. Then also the logic, remember, behind Shapiro was, Well, he's going to deliver this must-win state. If you look at every single successful running mate going back all the way over the past few decades, that's never been the calculus. If we're talking about Harris, we're talking about Pence, we're talking about Biden, Dick Cheney. The last time, arguably, that any presidential nominee tapped somebody with an eye toward winning that running mate state was Bill Clinton in 1992 with Al Gore when he picked up Tennessee.

Even then, it was not so much about winning Tennessee as about creating this impression of bold, youthful idealism. I think the logic behind the Shapiro pick is compelling, but it's not nearly as strong when you take into account in recent political history.

But isn't it notable that without getting into whether or not Kamal Harris is the DEI candidate, Joe, we could have a two-hour conversation about that.

Excuse me. What is Tim Walsh and Dodd Shapiro, if not a DEI pick? She needed a white man on the ticket. That's gender and race. That's DEI. Yes. But because they're white, nobody calls them DEI. That's what drives me crazy.

Let me finish the thought, which is in this case, though, and I think that this is Peter, you might disagree, and Joe, I think you'll certainly disagree. To me, the decision to not choose Shapiro was that his identity was a demerit against him, as opposed to Kamala Harris's, where it was a huge boon for him. To me, it exemplifies a thing I've written a lot about and that we debate about and publish a lot on in the free press, which is that this exemplifies amplifies the reality of intersectionality and of the new woke hierarchy, where it's some people are essentially chosen for their identity, and some people cannot be chosen because of their bad identity.

You're absolutely right, Barry. But I don't think this is about just the Democratic Party. Let's remember, we're in an illiberal moment. The Republicans just held a convention at which they showcased, among others, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, both of whom have built their audiences in no small part by trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes and mythologies. I didn't hear anyone, at least in the convention floor, any of the delegates I spoke with, any of the office holders, office seekers, voice any reservations about listening to him. I asked them explicitly, Do you have any problems with someone like Tucker Carlson? You being front and center at the RNC? They loved him. They love it. I think, look, we are in a moment in which anti-Semitism in general has crept across our institutions and into the culture. Do I think that it's a very, very big problem, a cancer that has gripped the progressive left? Absolutely. And has it seeped into our institutions and been marbled, to use Van Jones' term? Yes. But I think that we run the risk of losing sight of the bigger picture here, the illiberalism of America right now and the ways in which that corresponds to a ballooning, proliferating anti-Semitism.

I actually agree- Joe, what is your... Oh, yeah. I was just going to ask, Joe, what is your take on the... Do you agree that there's a problem with anti-Semitism the left, or do you feel like that's also being overstated?

Oh, God, no. It's a terrible problem.

Look- We pay him to say that, Butta.

I'm a 72-year-old Gentile, and most of my life, I thought, Oh, anti-Semitism is pretty much gone. It's pretty much been taken care of. I don't hear about it anymore. Nobody seems to make a big distinction, whether a Jewish person has a particular job or Or not. Then all of a sudden, for me, I started to really notice it in 2016 when Trump first ran for President. You saw it all over Twitter. You saw horrible things over Twitter, and it's been going on ever since. I am very disappointed, by the way. Despite what I said about walls and what I believe about walls, I'm very disappointed that Josh Shapiro didn't get the nod.

So Mark LeMonde-Hill, one of my favorite people online, posted this yesterday. Kamala Harris choosing walls is very significant. It is a reminder that we can and must use our voices to get the outcomes we want. It also signals, he said, that vice President Harris is listening to the voices of young grassroots pro-ceasefire and other voters. This is very encouraging. Peter, is he right? No. Did activist Democrats...

Okay. No, of course not. Look, she's online too much. That's obvious. And so is her staff. They're probably too young, and they're on Twitter or X or whatever, Instagram, Snap, whatever, TikTok constantly. And they were probably moved a lot by the social media discourse around Shapiro. But is it a victory for anyone? No, because I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that Kamala Harris is devoid of principle. She's devoid of anything substantive or meaningful. I don't think it's a victory for anything or anyone. It's a victory for her quest for power. It's about doing what she thought was necessary to, as she put it, continue the honeymoon. She's probably right. Maybe. I don't know. I agree with Joe, and I think with Bautia, I would have loved to have seen Shapiro on the ticket because I do think he's very talented and very smart and compelling. But I also see the political utility in walls.

Just staying on the- Peter- Yeah, I'm sorry, Joe. Go ahead.

Just I was surprised that Peter agreed with me. I was happy about that.

I agree with lots of things you say, Joe. I and Bhaja, you too.

You've been agreeing with me this whole time in the tone of voice of disagreeing with me. We're saying the same thing, and I'm so mystified that you keep saying we don't agree, but we do. We're both agreeing that there was a Jewish problem. You're just saying that it was a calculated move, but I'm agreeing with that. I don't see where the daylight is between us.

No, look, it's absolutely the case that beneath this conversation, we should have a conversation about why it is that so many Democrats took issue with a possible Jewish running mate. The question is, how many? It's mysterious.

It could have been anything, really.

How could we ever find out?

How will we get to the bottom of it? You guys are agreeing. Peter who cares just a cynic and says, this is pure real politique. Who cares why you're surprised? And Batia, who has love and optimism in her heart, is saying, we should be outraged and shocked, and we shouldn't give in to that cynicism. Nailed it.

I wouldn't call it cynical. I think it's... Look, I don't think it's cynical. Anyone who has spent time on the campaign trail with candidates knows just how frenetic and craze and deeply irrational the American electorate is. And so from the vantage point of the candidate, you're constantly bombarded with just a slew of crazy. That the same people who well up listening to JD Vans talk about how a million cheap tosters isn't worth a single American job will then go to Walmart to buy a cheap toaster. The reality that the politician faces is having to keep it bay, all this, and make people feel something and feel positive and good about them, their brand, their name, their look. And so Tim Walls helped fill that out by being middle America, boring high school teacher, dad, whatever. All the particulars, I think to the Kamala Harris people, are beside the point.

But it's like a normie in the streets, but squad in the sheets. It's like he could do both.

He's the Midwestern corndog guy, but then he gets freaky with the ceasefire crowd.

I'm looking at this image, guys. Someone just sent to me. Harris and Walls are set to speak in Eau Claire, which I believe is in Wisconsin. There is a line of cars to get into the rally that is at least two miles long. There is something happening here. And whether or not you agree or disagree with these candidates, whether or not you think that they believe in nothing and are empty vessels and will say anything to get elected or not, you can't objectively look at the opening rally that they had last night and think like, wow, there's a profound energy and a positive energy that's happening here.

Well, I think that still flows from Biden stepping down or stepping aside. I mean, the relief, the powerful sense of relief, palpable relief, when Kamala stepped up. And then it turns out, whenever you think of her, energy, smiles, laughter, which, of course, Eli mocks, but that's a whole other story. Then Walls, yesterday, saying, What she's bringing to this campaign is joy, a sense of joy. I think people really feel that. I think that if you're on the left, you're just so happy now. It's not Biden. We've got a chance. We can't wait for Kamala to debate Trump. We can't. Walls is going to eat JD Vance a Live. That's the feeling that there is in the party right now. Whether it's correct or not, that's the feeling there is in the party.

Obviously, in the past three weeks, the most boring presidential election has become the most exciting, the most dramatic, the most must-see TV crazy. I'm obsessed, as I know all of you are, too, as political junkies and news junkies. But in the end of the day, I wonder, does it really matter? We're talking about JD Vance. We're pouring over things that he has said about Cat Ladies. We're looking at Tim Wall. Someone just sent me a clip where he said something unbelievable on MSNBC a few years ago about disinformation and hate speech needing to be censored. I'm sure that will drive a lot of news today. We'll go on and on and on like this for the next, what is it, 88, 89 days until the election. But in the end of the day, does the vice president really matter? Joe, I wondered maybe as the 72-year-old in the conversation, to start with you, are there examples? Looking at American history and looking at presidential elections, can an unbelievable pick or a catastrophic pick actually determine an election?

I really can't think so. Dan Quale was vice president. I would actually say there is one example, Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin really, really damaged McCain, and he might well have won with a better vice presidential candidate. That was a terrible, terrible mistake. But that, to me, is the exception to the rule.

I think I more or less agree with Joe. I don't think it matters that much when it comes to the campaign. It does matter very much when it comes to politics, because, of course, if you're vice president, then you're poised to run for president. But yes, I think in general, it has negligible impact.

A few last questions. The Democrats are heading to Chicago, just as they did in 1968 for their convention. Everyone was talking about including people like James Carville, we were going to have an open convention. Everyone, we're going to have this blitz of a short primary and then an open convention. No, Kamala Harris anointed, named on a Zoom call. It's done. It's locked up. What are you guys expecting heading into the convention? Because there's been a lot of concern and speculation that it's going to be a repeat of 1968, and there's going to be a lot of violence and protests, not about the war in Vietnam, but about Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. What are you guys expecting going into, I believe it begins on August 19th?

I don't think it's going to be anything like 1968. I think that the fundamental difference between the Democratic Party then and now is that the Democratic Party today is like the old Republican Party. It is the Presbyterian managerial class. If we've learned anything about the Democratic Party over the past few years, it is that it is fundamentally corporate in nature. It wants stability and calm and predictability. The reason there was never going to be a compressed primary, even though I would have loved that, it would have made the process democratic, it would have actually lent whoever the nominee became some legitimacy, it would have made the convention a lot of fun to cover, is that that's much, much too unscripted. There's no way any CEO would ever have allowed for that very public dispute or conversation, precisely because it's too democratic, lowercase D. I think that what we're going to see in Chicago is a very well-produced Hollywood-level story, and it's going to be evocative, and we're going to tear up, and we're going to be moved, and she's going to get a little bump, and then that's going to disappear, and we'll be back to where we are now.

Kamala Harris is ahead in the polls right now. She's not given a single interview, not been asked a single hard question. Can she actually just run this entire campaign that way and sail into the White House based on good vibes and joy and Beyoncé songs?

If there isn't some scandal that is uncovered that she has to then deal with, I would say the answer to that is yes. I don't see any reason why not. I mean, everybody knows now that politicians don't have to deal with the press or have to answer hard questions. They can go right over the press on social media. They get all the free media, as they say, as they call it, when they make speeches and so on. They've created all this energy within the party. Yeah, it's completely plausible that she could pull this off.

It's plausible, but it's not likely.

Joe, would you be happy with a President Kamala Harris?

I'd be a lot happier than a President Donald Trump. I'll tell you that. Life is a compromise. Life is a compromise.

Bhaja, none of us are in the business of making predictions here, but you think that Kamala could pull this off?

You always ask me to predict on this show, Barry, and I always tell you the same thing, which is- I have to. Everything I predict turns out to be the opposite. So I'm not even going to say. I will say right now the vibes seem very good. It's really astonishing. I will say, personally, when you tell me there are these lines for miles lining up to see her, I don't really understand what they're there for. I understand what the Trump voter wants out of Trump.

Do you think they're there for not Trump?

No, because I- And relief that it's not Biden. You can't get energy and excitement out of not X. But Kamal Harris herself, we know that she was unable to get a single vote. I mean, she dropped out of the 2020 primary before a single vote was cast. And so it's so strange to me. What are they excited for and about? Because she hasn't answered any questions. We don't know a single policy item that she's running on because she has not been asked about that, and she's flip-floped on every major issue. So I'm excited for Chicago because I want to understand what people are in this for. I do think there's going to be a real split screen there between inside the convention and then outside the convention, which I anticipate to be full of Kymani James', the know nothing they/thems of the party being out there having their say. But I'm excited to find out from people what they are excited about and what they are in this for, because it's very hard to understand that for me personally at this moment.

Batya Angr-Sargon, Peter Sivadnik, and of course, Jonas Sarah, in his first Honestly appearance, we are so grateful that you I'm so grateful that you joined us. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much, Barry. Thank you.

Thank you, Barry.

Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, if it made you think differently about Tim Walsh, about the Democratic Party, and about this election, and whether or not it's based on something real or just vibes, well, share this episode with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. Last but not least, if you want to support Honestly, there's just one way to do it. It's by going to thefreepress's website at thefp. Com and becoming a subscriber today. We'll see you next time.