Now that we’re entering the home stretch of the presidential campaign, millions of Americans are wondering why we still aren’t hearing the candidates ACTUALLY talk about issues. Both Trump and Harris have a few “proposals,” but they don’t come with any specifics at all. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Now that we’re entering the home stretch of the presidential campaign, millions of Americans are wondering why we still aren’t hearing the candidates actually talk about issues. God, we talked about, have you heard any issues from either side? I swear to God, I sat there with both of them and I’m thinking, well, for example, he’s talking, well we gotta do something about tariffs. Right? Okay. Well if you do something about tariffs, Mr. Trump, how does that affect the economy? Does it affect consumers? You got Harris talking about we need better education for younger children. We need all of these social issues, which we granted due, but how do you pay for it? It was this feel good kind of message. It panders to us, doesn’t it? But then the economists are saying, what the hell, nobody’s telling us how we’re actually gonna do this.
Farron Cousins: Right. And we are as, honestly the HuffPost of all places put it, we’re headed to the first campaign where issues don’t matter. And I know some people are probably watching this maybe from either side saying, no, Trump has policies on this, or Harris has policies on this. And listen, let me explain it.
Mike Papantonio: Have you found them? Announce ’em right now if you’ve found ’em because I haven’t.
Farron Cousins: What they have, what both folks have is talking points. Not policy. And there is a world of difference between the two and I want people to understand that. Harris has said, yes, we have to increase housing subsidies to get people housed.
Mike Papantonio: How do you do it?
Farron Cousins: That’s great. Yes, exactly. You gotta have the second part of it. Trump says, we’re gonna put tariffs on every good coming into this country and I’m gonna deport 25 million people.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. What’s the result of that?
Farron Cousins: That’s gonna kill the economy.
Mike Papantonio: You know, they actually have a name for it. This new thing that’s developing this election cycle, it’s called, vibe based politics. I want to get a vibe going. I want to say something that everybody goes, my God, that’s brilliant. Oh yes, I would love to have that too. But at the end of the day, they don’t have any plan. They have zero plan. I think you could go to both sites for these people and ask, well, what’s the analysis of the plan? There is no analysis.
Farron Cousins: I’ve done that.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, you have?
Farron Cousins: I’ve been to both campaign websites.
Mike Papantonio: What did you find?
Farron Cousins: Last I checked, actually, Harris did not have a section on her website at all. Trump had a list of I think 14 or 15 talking points that you couldn’t even click. They were one sentence, I want to do this, I want to do that. So nobody actually has concrete plans laid out in a policy paper that says, okay, listen, I want to increase the child tax credit to $6,000, which Harris says she wants to do, which is good. But then how do we do it? Where does it come from? Where do we make up the money? There’s plenty of places to make up the money. But you’ve gotta lay it out for us, because people are going to start asking more than just what are you gonna do? But how are you gonna do it?
Mike Papantonio: Do you remember when Obama went on the stage and he talked about, I have a plan for healthcare in this country. He laid it out. You could go to his site and he could say, here’s how I’m going to do this. It wasn’t vibe politics. There was a vibe to it, but he had an explanation about it. I mean, my god, even think back to George Bush for god’s sake. That freak, he had policy ideas that were backed up with an underpinning of how he was gonna accomplish it. That is not the case with either candidate right now. And it’s so bad that they actually had to come up with this term vibe driven politics.
Farron Cousins: Well, and even with Biden, when he was running, the infrastructure bill was the big thing he was campaigning on. So they put out the specifics of the infrastructure bill, we’re gonna do this, that, the other thing. Here’s where we’re gonna pay for it. Here’s how we allocate it.
Mike Papantonio: You could go to the site and read it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: Go to her site right now. Oh, you did. I’m sorry.
Farron Cousins: But it really, it is disappointing because I’m enjoying watching this Harris surge as everybody that watches the channel regularly knows. I’m loving this. But we’re kind of at the point now where it’s like, okay, let’s temper down now and start to get into the nitty gritty.
Mike Papantonio: I know you love it. I know you get angry with me. I think it’s still a sugar high. I really do. I think they’re keeping her out of the light for a reason. She needs to jump back in. She needs to tell her handlers, hell no. If you don’t think I can handle this, then we’re gonna find out and jump in and get in front of a camera and talk like a candidate. That’s just my take on it. I just think, I talked to a very good friend of mine and he’s called ’em a lot, Jackie Ryan in South Carolina, and he says, look, if they don’t put her out front, if they don’t let her talk on her own without a teleprompter, where she’s answering questions that he says this is gonna be, she’s gonna win popular vote, but she’s gonna lose the electoral college.
Farron Cousins: Well, I do think, I will say, first of all, the corporate media is so bad in this country, and the reason they’re mad she’s not talking to them is because they want the ratings. So I got no love lost for the corporate media b*tching about that.
Mike Papantonio: I know, you’ve said that before. You said that.
Farron Cousins: But she is not like Biden in 2020 where he wasn’t, she is at least still going around the country and she is talking to crowds. So she’s not hiding-hiding the way that Biden kind of did in 2020. She’s talking to people, which is good. So she’s talking to the people that make the actual decisions, not the people who are just looking for the clicks and headlines. So she can’t do it forever, obviously, a good sit down interview, 60 minutes, something would be good.
Mike Papantonio: Well, the best thing we have is Trump on the other side, can’t keep his mouth shut.
Farron Cousins: I know.
Mike Papantonio: And the guy, my God, just when you think, okay, somebody’s told the goof to stay quiet for a little while, just when you, and he sounds like he’s quiet. The next day it’s some outrageous statement. And you go, what the hell was that about?
