Oct 21, 2024
Josh Shapiro Makes A CRUCIAL Error
Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro could not answer how Vice President Kamala Harris would differ on policy from President Joe Biden.
- 13 minutes
Governor, given how unpopular.
Polls show President Biden is.
Has Vice President Harris done?
Enough.
Enough
to distance herself from President Biden?
Kristen Welker repeatedly pressed
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
[00:00:15]
on the question that has become
a huge issue for the Harris campaign.
How exactly would her leadership
differ from that of Joe Biden's?
And I think the way she framed
the question, there was a good way of
framing it, because, yes, this election,
[00:00:31]
of course, is between Kamala Harris
and Donald Trump,
not against Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
However, when you consider the fact
that Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's vice
president, and when you consider the fact
that Joe Biden is an unpopular president,
[00:00:47]
well, she needs to have an answer,
and her supporters and allies
need to have an answer for this question.
Let's see how Shapiro answered it.
You know, Kristen, I think what is
clear is this is a race not between
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, but between
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
[00:01:06]
And on that there are clear contrasts.
Kamala Harris wants to cut taxes
for the middle class and small businesses.
Donald Trump's tariffs
and his economic policies would raise
costs for middle class families.
I think Kamala Harris has a strong
and competent approach to foreign policy
[00:01:23]
to try and calm tensions overseas.
Donald Trump just wants to throw a grenade
in everything and create more chaos
and more, more suffering across the globe.
I think you have a clear contrast
on freedom between those two candidates.
[00:01:39]
Kamala Harris wants to restore Roe.
Donald Trump brags about
how he's ripped away the freedom from
millions of women across this country.
So listen,
I think you have a clear contrast
between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
And voters are going to the polls
literally right now all across America,
[00:01:55]
focusing on that choice, not a choice
between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris does not have
a foreign policy proposal.
Let's be absolutely clear about that.
And all of her statements in regard to the
broadening and ongoing war in the Middle
East has essentially been in line with
what we've been hearing from Joe Biden.
[00:02:16]
So I'm sorry, I can't let that lie stand.
She would not calm the situation
down in the Middle East.
Now, to be clear,
I don't believe Trump would either.
Trump has just been funded by
Miriam Adelson to the tune of $90 million
in order to allow Israel
to annex the West Bank.
But please don't lie about Kamala Harris
allegedly having a better plan
[00:02:35]
on foreign policy.
She does not.
In fact, she can't stand Palestinian
protesters at any of her events and
brushes them off as if they mean nothing.
So that's the reality
of her foreign policy.
I'm not going
to let someone lie about that.
Go ahead Jake.
Yeah, so I agree with Anna on both fronts.
[00:02:52]
First of all, it's not even worth
discussing the foreign policy.
Whenever you ask her, she says,
I know about Palestinian grief.
I've heard about it.
I'm not going to do anything about it.
I'm going to keep sending bombs
to kill your family members.
Yeah, Trump would kill
more of your family members.
[00:03:09]
So you should vote for me.
I'm killing less of your family members.
Know that's exactly Biden's policy.
No difference at all. Zero.
So now, the reason you have to make
a difference between you and Biden
is because Biden is deeply unpopular.
I know that hurts the feelings
of Democratic voters, but it's the truth.
[00:03:25]
But it is the reality.
And he's in the low 30s,
sometimes high 20s, country's going
in the right direction is at 25%.
If you say that, yes, Biden nailed it.
We're going in the right direction.
You're going to lose the election.
[00:03:42]
That is super clear.
So you have to find a substantive way
of saying, this is what Joe Biden did.
I appreciate him.
You don't have to throw him under a bus.
Right. But this is what I'm going to do.
So. One easy way to do it is say and I,
Joe Biden, and I'm going to do
[00:03:59]
this instead of instead of right.
So but they don't even have.
And that is such bad preparation.
And it's really guys.
It's not about pleasing us.
Who cares about us?
You have to make sure that you get
the right message to the voters.
Otherwise they'll think you're the same
as Biden and they'll vote against you.
[00:04:16]
Now let's watch.
And I want to give Kristen Welker credit
because she's one of the few hosts
on these morning shows,
Sunday morning shows,
who actually asks tough questions and
tough follow up questions to both sides.
And I really do appreciate that.
[00:04:32]
So she wasn't happy with Josh Shapiro's
answer, so she tried again and again.
Let's watch.
I understand what you're saying, governor,
but polls do show that more Americans feel
as though President Biden's policies
have hurt them rather than help them.
[00:04:49]
So can you name one key policy difference
between Vice President Harris
and President Biden.
How would her administration
look different?
You know, I've been really encouraged
by the amount of energy
that Kamala Harris, vice President Harris,
has put into focusing on how she
[00:05:06]
will cut taxes for small businesses.
The focus on child care,
tax, credit expansion, that's something
I've done here in Pennsylvania.
We've seen that work
to ease the burden on families.
I think a focus on those kinds of things
is particularly important, and those are
[00:05:23]
the kinds of things I think Kamala Harris
has brought specifically to this race.
Those aren't necessarily
differences, though.
They're an expansion or a tweak
to some extent to what's been done.
Can you name one policy difference?
Well, listen again,
the contrast I am focused on Kristen
[00:05:41]
is between her and Donald Trump.
And on that I think it
is clearly different.
So just to reiterate,
the reason why this question keeps coming
up for the Harris campaign
is because Biden's unpopularity could be
[00:05:58]
a real liability for her in the election.
In fact, in mid-September, the Democratic
Research and Polling initiative blueprint
conducted a national poll that tested
various potential statements that Harris
could make about herself and Biden.
[00:06:13]
Those that performed best, the polling
found, were those that displayed
a clear break between her and Biden,
while those that performed worst
were those that portrayed
a future Harris administration as building
on the accomplishments of the Biden era.
[00:06:30]
But any mention of Biden.
The polling found, led to less support,
even if the position it
had Harris taking was the same.
Yeah, so Biden is toxic.
That hurts Democrats feeling so,
so much that they want
[00:06:47]
to say nope, nope nope nope.
It's not.
I never believe any numbers.
If they come out against us.
I don't believe you guys.
You're going to lose the election
if you don't recognize the reality.
So let me give you suggestions
as to what she could do
because we always try to be constructive.
The first start with the thing that she's
not going to do, even though it would,
[00:07:02]
I think it would almost
guarantee her the election if she said,
hey, listen, we Israel killed every leader
of Hamas and every leader of Hezbollah.
If they don't, if we withdraw now from
Gaza, I'm going to, and sign a ceasefire.
I'm going to stop the the funding.
[00:07:18]
If she did that, she'd pick up about five
points and she would lock in Michigan.
She would win.
But she won't do that because she thinks
following her donors commands are more
important than winning this election.
And that's a God.
You should hold her accountable for that.
That is unbelievable
that she's making that decision.
[00:07:34]
But every politician in America,
unfortunately, does that.
They've lost their minds, if you ask me.
So. Okay.
But put that aside
because she's not going to do it.
Then you go to immigration.
You could be honest.
And this is a real risky strategy because
politicians don't like being honest.
But you can say, hey, listen,
we tried a certain thing on immigration
[00:07:51]
and even though we did this, this and
this right, and we had the right intent,
it wound up causing a lot of
new immigrants into the country because of
the turmoil that was going on in Venezuela
and some other Central American countries.
But we've learned that lesson.
So what I would do differently
than Joe Biden is what I'm proposing now
[00:08:07]
about how to control immigration.
And the good news
is that the Republicans agree.
It was written
by a Republican senator from Oklahoma.
The only person who doesn't agree
is Donald Trump, and he's the one
that blocked that legislation.
We're trying to fix what went wrong.
You should act.
[00:08:23]
You should be happy that we're doing that.
And that is different than what we did
in the Biden administration
in the middle that caused the problems.
That is me learning from it
and being a better leader because of it.
But all of our consultants will tell her,
no, no, no, don't be honest.
Don't don't admit
that you did anything wrong.
[00:08:39]
Don't ever say
that Biden did anything wrong.
Let's all pretend that everything
is great, but that's not credible.
Look at the polling we showed
you earlier in the show.
Immigration is one of the top reasons
that people are going towards Trump
instead of Kamala Harris.
Imagine if she was honest about it.
But even if you don't want
to take that risk,
[00:08:56]
I can give you a thousand other ones.
Paid family leave public option and you
could say, hey, Joe Biden, I'm sure he
had the right intent when he proposed
the public option on the campaign trail,
but unfortunately, he ran out of time
and he never proposed it as legislation.
I will propose it as legislation
because you need to at least have an
[00:09:13]
option that isn't private health insurance
that lets you die
if you don't have health insurance.
God, that would be
an incredibly popular message.
Look at all these layups
and they're not taking any of them.
Now, finally, I want to get to
what she's been doing in her campaigning
[00:09:29]
and also how she's been recently
answering that question,
because before Welker started grilling
Josh Shapiro, she actually played a clip
of Harris getting asked the same question
how are you different from Joe Biden?
Let's watch how she answered.
[00:09:44]
My colleague Peter Alexander asked
the vice president if she would have done
anything differently than President Biden.
Take a look at that exchange.
Going forward, there is no question
that I bring my own experiences
and my own life experiences.
Is there a policy that stands
out to you in particular either?
[00:10:00]
Sure. I mean.
My approach to what we need to do around
Medicare, covering home health care,
born out of my experience
of taking care of my mother.
My priority on housing one,
because I know what it means.
Affordable housing
and the ability to buy a home.
[00:10:18]
That wasn't bad.
I thought that was pretty good.
I mean, she mentioned very specific things
like Medicare, covering home health care,
which is incredibly important,
especially for what's now being referred
to as the sandwich generation.
So it's millennials who are raising
children, but their parents are also
[00:10:33]
aging, so they're required to take
care of, you know, both sets of people,
which is incredibly stressful,
obviously can be very costly
and without support from the government
can really be a nightmare.
And so I like that she mentioned that.
I think that if she really
emphasizes that messaging,
[00:10:50]
it could work to her advantage.
She also repeatedly stated
that her administration would seek more
input from Republicans than Biden has,
and has been continuing
her campaigning with Liz Cheney.
In fact, she's been campaigning
with Liz Cheney, specifically today
[00:11:06]
in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
I don't think that's
helping her campaigning.
I don't think that neo cons
really have much of a constituency at this
point in the country, but nonetheless,
she's moving forward with that.
Yeah, so I like that answer, too.
By the way, please get all your surrogates
to learn that answer,
[00:11:22]
because at least it looks like
it's helping the average person.
And it is a difference
between you and Biden.
Great.
It's a it's a small example,
but I'll definitely take it.
And they should all say it,
but please add more like give me three.
Right.
So for example,
here's another winning one.
[00:11:37]
Joe Biden wanted to move
the corporate tax rate up to 28%
because Trump brought it down to 21%,
which is way, way, way too low.
But I don't think 28% is enough.
I'm going to bring it back
to where it was before Trump gave
trillions of dollars in tax cuts
to the richest people in the country.
[00:11:54]
I'm going to move it back to 35.
I don't believe she'll do that at all.
And and the CNBC would flip out. Good.
You want CNBC flipping out
and telling everyone oh my God,
she's against the corporate CEOs.
Can you believe that she doesn't want
to make the richest people even richer.
[00:12:10]
Oh, boo.
She's trying to help the average person.
Remember the poll we showed you earlier in
the show? 61% of Americans say raise taxes
on the rich and on corporations
because of what they did in inflation.
Why don't you just it's a poll
that shows you how to win the election.
Why don't you say, yeah, God damn right,
I'm going to raise it to 35%,
[00:12:29]
because look at all the trillions
they made during inflation.
And did they share that with us?
No, they're never fair.
They never share.
All they do is raise your prices.
Raise your, the prices on the goods
you need for your family.
Well, I'm going to fight back
for you guys.
[00:12:45]
Come on, man, this isn't that hard.
But the reason they don't do that
is because all of their donors
would yell at them.
So, for God's sake,
there's two weeks left.
You already got the donor's money.
Now turn to the voters.
Voters?
[00:13:02]
We have to explain this
to Democratic leaders, because at least
the Republicans, they're liars.
They're worse than the Democrats
on every issue.
But they understand. Oh, right.
We're supposed to appeal to voters,
so we'll pretend to be populist.
We'll pretend to be.
[00:13:17]
For the average man,
you could do better than them.
You could actually be for the average man.
I know that's asking a lot of Democrats,
but that's how you win an election.
Thanks for watching.
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