• Vice President Kamala Harris laid out what she called her “pragmatic” approach to growing the economy during a speech in Pittsburgh Wednesday. While Harris has been closing the gap with former President Donald Trump, when it comes to which candidate voters trust more to handle the economy, most polls show he still has the edge on one of the top issues in the race. But it’s not like Trump has particularly good ideas for voters who want the economy to work better for them. Among his more hare-brained plans is to appoint Elon Musk to find ways to cut government spending. Long-time tech journalist Kara Swisher explains how Trump and Musk became so close.
• And in headlines: The House and Senate passed a temporary spending bill to avert a government shutdown…for now, a new report from a bipartisan Senate committee detailed multiple Secret Service failures around the first assassination attempt against Trump, and a Missouri man was put to death despite state prosecutors’ attempts to appeal his sentence.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, September 26th. I’m Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day. The show where we’re celebrating the court ordered liquidation of Alex Jones’s conspiracy theory network Infowars. Wait, does this mean we could buy Infowars? Because if so, I have some very creative ideas. [music break] On today’s show, Elon Musk’s rise in GOP politics. Plus, Congress does the least and prevents the government from shutting down for three months. But first, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Pittsburgh on Wednesday to give a major economic address to voters. Pennsylvania is arguably the most important swing state in the upcoming election, and Harris’s message played to centrist voters who will likely decide which way the state goes. She called herself a capitalist and repeatedly emphasized that her plan was rooted in her middle class upbringing. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] I have pledged that building a strong middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. And the reason [loud applause] but let me you. The reason is not about politics and it’s not about ideology. From my perspective, it’s just common sense. [applause] It’s just common sense. It’s actually what works. 

Jane Coaston: But while Harris has been closing the gap with former President Donald Trump on the economy, most polls still show that voters trust him more on the subject. And that’s a problem for Democrats because it’s a top issue this election cycle. And you know the saying, it’s the economy, stupid, but it’s not like Trump has particularly good ideas for voters who want the economy to work better for them. He wants to slash the corporate tax rate down from 21 to 15%, extend the income tax cuts he signed into law in 2017. And he says he’ll balance things out with a bunch of new tariffs, which makes sense because he said on Twitter once, quote, “I am a tariff man.” But like the vast majority of economists and several prominent Republicans, don’t share Trump’s love of tariffs. Here’s Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaking to reporters earlier this week. 

[clip of Mitch McConnell] Yeah, I’m not a fan of tariffs. They raise prices for American consumers. I’m more of a free trade kind of Republican. 

Jane Coaston: And hey, if you’re concerned about how the government will keep running after all those tax cuts, take comfort in the fact that Trump will be looking to Elon Musk to cut down on pesky bureaucratic spending. Here’s Trump speaking earlier this month at the Economic Club of New York. 

[clip of Donald Trump] I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms. We need to do it. Can’t go on the way we are now. [applause] And Elon, because he’s not very busy, has agreed to head that task force. 

Jane Coaston: Very encouraging, especially considering the overall value of X, aka Twitter has dropped about 72% since Musk bought it back in 2022. Maybe the constant retweeting of white nationalists isn’t helping. I don’t know. Unsurprisingly, an NBC News poll released this week shows that only 6% of Democrats nationwide say they have positive feelings about Musk, compared to 62% of Republicans. That’s what happens when you endorse Donald Trump and launch a super PAC to help the GOP up and down the ballot. And then tweet about how you’ll impregnate Taylor Swift after she endorsed Kamala Harris. Huh? Wild. But it wasn’t always this way. Back in July of 2022, Musk tweeted, quote, “It’s time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.” To try to understand what changed between Musk and Trump and how Silicon Valley overall is playing into this election. I spoke with someone who’s been covering the tech industry for decades. Kara Swisher is a journalist and host of the podcast Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher, welcome to What a Day. 

Kara Swisher: Thank you. What a day. 

Jane Coaston: You’ve been following his career pretty much since the beginning. What do you make of Elon Musk’s full throated backing of Trump this election cycle? 

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, in March when I my book came out, I said this on I think Jen Psaki’s show, he’s going to back Trump. And I got attacked by his people. He, you know, they went Kara doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It just seemed inevitable that he would head this way, one, for self-preservation, because he’s, you know, in a Harris administration, he’s facing SCC possible charges that are obviously out there. But there’s others there’s, you know, the question of his national security status around Space X and everything else. I don’t think he’ll get hurt. He’s a rich guy. He’s not going to really get hurt in any administration. Rich people always do well. But his interests lie with Trump because Trump will overlook everything in order to get that backing. 

Jane Coaston: Is Musk’s shift to the right part of a bigger change among the Silicon Valley elite? 

Kara Swisher: No, it isn’t, because if you look at the list of people who are, look, Vinod Khosla is just in a big fight with him online, so is Mark Cuban. Reid Hoffman, the list of people who are more blue and I wouldn’t say they’re utterly blue, they’re just more not crazy essentially is much longer. And if you and is full of accomplished people. Right. And the list on the right is more, you know, like the Winklevoss brothers and, you know, a couple of VCs who want attention to themselves and want to suck up to Elon. So it’s like a group of people who want to suck up to Elon, so they can get in on the Space X or the Grok, you know, X AI uh iPO. So they’re just greed. Then there is sort of middling entrepreneurs like David Sacks who figured out you can buy politicians at a very cheap price and has thinks he has something to say about every topic under the sun. And then you have, you know, kind of like ugh like the most important entrepreneurs on that side are Peter Thiel, who’s long been there, by the way. This is not a shift for him. So in that way, it’s sincere. And Elon, who is he those are the two significant entrepreneurs. 

Jane Coaston: Most recently, Donald Trump has been making claims that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told him he couldn’t vote for a Democrat after the first assassination attempt, though Meta has denied he said that. And it sounds like one of those classic Trump stories. But in your view, what has changed about Trump’s relationship with Zuckerberg and more importantly, to me, Zuckerberg’s relationship with Trump? 

Kara Swisher: I think Mark is a very practical person, he doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of anybody, right. He’s never been a particularly political person. He’s not where Elon’s gone or, you know, Reid Hoffman will be the other side, very liberal, always been very progressive. Um. Mark has had no political opinions that I have been able to pick up, except I want to make more money and steal your privacy some more. And that’s not really political. He’s a business person, not unlike Bill Gates. You know, Bill Gates. I never knew his politics one way or the other. I mean, I guess tolerant socially, maybe. I don’t even know to this day what his politics are. But, you know, Mark is in a pickle because Donald Trump has threatened him many times with prison. It’s really heinous. You know, whatever you think of Mark Zuckerberg, you know, that’s some Russian leadership crap going on there with the oligarchs. You know, I’m going to jail this oligarch and favor this one and etc.. Um. So I think Mark’s trying to thread a very difficult needle around trying to stay out of it, which is his way, and then sort of being vaguely supportive of everybody. You know, that seems to be his M.O.. 

Jane Coaston: You mentioned Peter Thiel a little bit earlier at an event with Fortune magazine. You said that J.D. Vance hates women. And one of JD Vance’s biggest supporters is Peter Thiel. What’s your view on the five years Vance spent in Silicon Valley working as a venture capitalist and the people around him there? 

Kara Swisher: He seems to hate women. Let me fix that. Um. He seems to not be able to. I mean, he seems to hate himself more than anything else. That’s my takeaway. I think that he was quite unsuccessful. I don’t think he stood out in any way. Um. He made some shitty investments and he sucked up to richer people. I always call him, you know, Rachel Maddow kind of had it best, which was Peter Thiel’s unsuccessful intern. And I think, you know, he got pushed up by Peter quite a bit for whatever reasons Peter had, and he didn’t have any success. Nothing I noticed was particularly big. And honestly, if you couldn’t make money during that period, he was in Silicon Valley, you know, it was pretty low bar. A squirrel could make money during that time and this squirrel didn’t. So I think he was unsuccessful. Yeah, that’s what he does things for five minutes and then pretends expertise. 

Jane Coaston: If Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, you mentioned a little bit about Musk’s concerns about Harris. What impact would her administration’s policies have on Silicon Valley? 

Kara Swisher: Well, there’s a bunch of current investigations going on with the SCC around Tesla. I think that could be problematic. You know, there’s lawsuits galore going on. I think people would be, if Trump won, would be more loathe to sue Elon. Um. He’d obviously have his fingers in the government in some way if but by the way, in the end, they’re going to break up. They’re going to it’s going to be a spectacular breakup between the two of them because it’s like Highlander. There can be only one, except it’s kind of a toxic highlander. Ultimately, I would bet on Musk over Trump any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But, you know, under a Harris administration, he’ll face normal laws. That’s what would be my take. Um. But I suspect she’s quite friendly to to growth of innovation. And in fact, we had many arguments. I was like, you’re too nice to these people. And when she was senator um and attorney general, I was like, let’s put on some let’s put some pressure on these people. And she was always very considered um I would call her not conservative, but she certainly wasn’t radical. She wasn’t for me. I was sort of like, let’s go, let’s go. AG, let’s do some privacy legislation and stuff like that and some lawsuits. So um she’s always been tech friendly but not tech in the tank. I guess she she’d be friendly. She’d have to be to be a senator from California. 

Jane Coaston: Kara, thank you so much for joining me and thanks for your time. 

Kara Swisher: All right. Thank you, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Kara Swisher, host of the podcast Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. We’ll get to the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Watch it on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Mike Johnson] Well, good afternoon, everyone. Um. Our legislative work before November has uh has now been officially done. And today the House did the necessary thing. We took the initiative and passed a clean, narrow three month C.R.. 

Jane Coaston: That was House Speaker Mike Johnson claiming that Republicans were the heroes by passing a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open while blaming the Senate for not giving them anything to negotiate over. And sure, if that’s the story he’s going with, whatever. The government will now be funded until December 20th and the bill doesn’t have the God awful Save Act requiring voter ID this election that Donald Trump was demanding. What a brave little soldier Johnson is. 

[clip of Mike Johnson] Um. As as part of this effort, we are providing Donald Trump with the protection that he needs in the face of dangerous threats of would be assassins and terrorist regimes like Iran. 

Jane Coaston: The bill has $231 million in it for the Secret Service dedicated to the protection of U.S. leaders and presidential candidates. So maybe that’ll help Johnson with Trump, I don’t know. Now, normally the Secret Service doesn’t grab a lot of headlines. But today we’ve got two. And that’s not good. Just days after the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a Senate bipartisan committee released a report on Wednesday detailing multiple communications failures in the Secret Service’s coordination with local law enforcement prior to the July 13th shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. The report also demands that Congress take a closer look at the agency’s budget. The Secret Service is also investigating allegations that an agent sexually assaulted a member of Vice President Kamala Harris’s staff, Real Clear Politics reported on Wednesday. The incident happened during a scouting trip for potential campaign locations in Wisconsin. The agent allegedly groped the staffer while intoxicated after a group dinner in front of several witnesses. The agent has since been placed on administrative leave. [sound of wind rustling a mic] Israel is continuing its airstrikes on the militant organization Hezbollah. Hitting nearly 300 targets in Lebanon. Over 600 people have been killed in the country since Monday. Hezbollah also fired long range ballistic missiles towards northern Israel Wednesday, many of which were intercepted by the Israeli military. One of the targets Hezbollah aimed for was Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. This marks the first time the group has ever fired a weapon towards the city. Israel does not seem to be de-escalating anytime soon. Israel Defense Force Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told troops Wednesday, quote, “The goal is very clear. To safely return the residents of the North. To achieve that, we are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots will enter enemy territory.” Now, starting a ground offensive in Lebanon could mean all out war in the Middle East. A Missouri man was put to death on Tuesday despite state prosecutors attempts to appeal his death penalty sentence. Marcellus Williams was executed by lethal injection. Williams was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of a reporter back in 1998, but always maintained his innocence. According to a filing by his attorneys, the crime scene was covered with DNA evidence, but Williams was ruled out as a possible match. Despite this information, the United States Supreme Court denied a stay on Williams’s many appeals. Here’s Trevor Foley, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections. 

[clip of Trevor Foley] No jury nor judge has ever found Williams innocence claim to be credible. Two decades of judicial proceedings and more than 15 judicial hearings upheld his guilty conviction. Thus, the execution, the order of execution has been carried out. 

Jane Coaston: Williams’s execution was one of five scheduled for this week across five states. An unusually high number. Three of the five have been carried out thus far. And if the final two occur, the Death Penalty Information Center says that this will be the first time in over 20 years that five executions were carried out in seven days. The final two are scheduled for today in Oklahoma and Alabama. And that’s the news. So something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the musician Chappell Roan, not her energetic bops, but how she’s being forced to talk about politics like so many celebrities. And then getting yelled at for talking about politics. Recently she said in an interview with Rolling Stone that she won’t be endorsing Kamala Harris, but also made it extremely clear that she’s not voting for Trump, something that the outrage mongering headlines failed to include, shocker. So she went on TikTok Wednesday to respond again to the backlash. 

[clip of Chappell Roan] Endorsing and voting are completely different. I don’t agree with a lot of what is going on with like policies like obviously fuck the policies of the right, but also fuck some of the policies on the left. That’s why I can’t endorse. That’s why I can’t, like put my entire name and my entire project behind one because there is no way I can I can stand behind some of the left’s completely transphobic and completely genocidal views. 

Jane Coaston: There’s a lot going on there. First, you have rabid fans continually projecting their fantasies onto someone they don’t even know and then trying to cancel her for not meeting expectations she never agreed to and that they projected onto her. Then there is a media apparatus that thrives off pissing people off and benefits from purposefully misleading and extremely shareable social media headlines. But also, Roan is facing an issue a lot of young progressive voters face. And at 26 years old, she’s facing it publicly in front of millions of people. See, she absolutely doesn’t want Trump to win the presidency and will gladly vote against him. She’s happy to vote in down ballot races that affect her community, but she has a lot of criticisms of the very people she’s being told she has to outwardly support. That’s key. Outwardly support. People want her to endorse the candidate, not just vote for them. We’re living in a weird time to put it lightly because, yeah, on the one hand it seems like a really obvious decision to vote for Harris over Trump. But like Roan and maybe like you, there are some stuff the Democratic Party has done and endorsed that suffice it to say, I am not jazzed about. But with Trump and J.D. Vance looming over us like creepy dudes at a bar. It feels like any squabbling over policy positions is just wasting time. And I’m not Chappell Roan. I don’t have millions of people demanding I share my opinions on TikTok and then posting about what a terrible person I am for sharing my opinions. If they don’t match up exactly with what they want my opinions to be. So what does it take for a candidate to earn your vote? Are there any single issues that make or break your support for a candidate? We want to hear from you. Email us at hey@crooked.com or if you’re a friends of the pod subscribe, hit up the What a day Discord. And if you’re not a subscriber, head to crooked.com/friends to join. This is a complicated time and politics is actually complex. It’s allowed to be even if you’re super famous. One more thing before we go. Are you ready to watch Minnesota governor, former football coach and iconic dad Tim Walz take on cat lady hating, birth rate obsessed, very weird guy, Senator J.D. Vance? That’s right. The vice presidential debate is finally upon us. Join us this upcoming Tuesday, October 1st at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, 9 p.m. Eastern Time, for a subscriber live chat on our Discord server. Join the fun as it all unfolds. Watch the debate live, chat with fellow Crooked listeners and laugh in real time. And as JD Vance says, keep those cat memes coming, but not like how he means it. Not a friend of the pod yet? Sign up now at crooked.com/friends. That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a review. Feel free to keep blasting Chappel Roan and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just stress reading national polls like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and see you at the Infowars fire sale. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded by Jerik Centeno and mixed by Bill Lancz. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Tyler Hill, JoHanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Collin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

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