Recorded live on Election Day 2026, this episode of Raging Moderates covers the final stretch of the midterm campaign. Hosts Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov discuss early voting turnout in battleground states, the competitive Senate and House races to watch as results come in, and how gas prices and job losses among young men may shape voting.
They debate what Democratic leadership and a policy agenda could look like if the party wins Congress, the possible congressional scrutiny of Elon Musk, and the stalled Iran negotiations and debate over aid to Israel. Listeners will hear the hosts' predictions and the arguments behind them, along with their reactions to audience questions.
In this episode Jessica Tarlov, Scott Galloway
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We're on the TV, Scott.
Or the computer.
That's right, ladies. Hello. Oh my god. Women's hockey team, Detroit Lions hat. That's right. I'm feeling good, Jess.
Yeah?
I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good.
Just because it's Election Day?
Uh, no. I just feel great. I just feel... I don't know. I'm feeling very American. I'm hopeful. I feel really good. I couldn't sleep last night. I got up.
Well, you guys had a big great show.
We did have a big great show.
At the Beacon.
Yeah, yeah. With Secretary Hillary Rodman Clinton, who was.
I've heard of her.
She literally got a standing ovation. I can't get over it. There must have been, like, every... I don't know. Every... every Democratic woman in New York was there just... I mean, it was just... it was staggering, the reception she got.
I love that she's greeted that way. And any time I see her, I do the same. But when it's happening, I just think, how much would this woman give to trade the presidency for this? Like, have won the presidency versus.
Oh, God. How much would we trade? How much would we give?
Yes.
We got no tariffs, no runaround, no corruption. Confidence in government. No Secretary Hegseth.
Friends abroad.
Our allies would still be our allies. Oh, we'd still be doing a lot of trade with Canada. Gas would be at 3 bucks, not 4.50. Women wouldn't be dying of sepsis in emergency rooms. I mean, there's... there's just a few things that might be a touch wee bit different. She probably wouldn't have let any megalomaniac addict dial back Starlink. We would probably, at this point, be forcing Putin to come to the negotiating table to give back land in the Ukraine. Yeah, things would be just a squoosh different.
Yeah.
Just a squoosh different. Maybe we needed this. Maybe we needed to learn. I like me... what do you think? I like me with the hat on because you saw less of me. I just... I have the hat on and I start thinking I'm reasonable-looking. I take the hat off and I look like me. I am riding very high right now. I've had two cups of coffee. I've had no breakfast. I am super excited about today. I am sick of being cautiously optimistic. I'm... I've got an American surfboard out and I'm going to ride a fucking super tsunami today, Jess.
All right.
I'm going to... I'm going to go deep in the pipe. I am going to shred. For... we're not going for no fucking blue wave or red riptide. We are going for the super tsunami today. How are you feeling, Jess? How are you feeling?
I mean, I feel good, but not like you. I'm just...
Not asking.
Of course, even with the surf analogy, I'm like, what if there's a big Republican shark that's coming to take, like, one limb?
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
And is... have you identified the shark?
I've been spending a lot of time listening to data people because they're the only folks that I can trust in this. And hearing everybody say that they have made corrections to the polls.
To the upside, right?
For the fact that we could be underestimating Republican turnout. And we know people come home.
Really?
No, no. It's a good thing that, like, these models actually are on the more conservative end.
Yeah. One of the strangest things, this is the first election I've ever seen where typically whoever's behind starts to tighten. I've always wondered if that's just the media trying to keep us glued to our phones and our TVs. But everything I've seen saying the Gulf is actually widening. Anyways.
Yeah.
I... we... welcome everybody to our live Substack.
It's Raging Moderates.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I do shit like this, "Hello, ladies. Hello." There's no editing it out. There's no editing it out.
It happened.
You're welcome. I did it last night. And that was the moment that Secretary, Madam Secretary Clinton, thought about the series of bad decisions she had made, the letter to a point where a guy was rubbing his belly. Anyways, before we get started, we'll be live streaming all week to break down the election results as they come in. So make sure to subscribe for all our coverage. All right, let's get into it. Whew. Millions of Americans are heading to the polls today while another 50 million have already voted early, outpacing the last midterm cycle across key Senate battlegrounds. Both parties made their final pitches Monday, but Trump's closing message was anything but conventional.
Shocker. Standing in front of the newly reopened Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, he joked about renaming it after himself, then spent another 20 minutes detailing his renovation projects before finally turning to the economy and the midterms. Just hours before Election Day, the Supreme Court also denied the administration's emergency request to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots in California. Meanwhile, J.D. Vance and Don Jr. went to Ohio, urging Republicans to reject the crazies and get out to vote. Nothing like hearing... hearing you should reject the crazies from Don Jr.
As of this taping, Cauchy has Democrats at a 77% chance of winning a majority in the Senate, with leads in all seven battleground states. Let's take a look at MAGA's closing message.
President Trump, since he came down that golden escalator, has saved America.
Oil prices are plunging now. They're plunging. They'll be down. I hope people realize that when they go into the voting booth.
President Trump took a bullet for you. He bled for you. He faced life in prison for you. And what he needs from you tomorrow is your vote.
Uh, does somebody have those pictures for me? The pictures. So this is what we took out. And this is the pipe inside here.
President Trump loves America. He loves this nation. And he's delivered more for us in two years than any president has in four or eight years.
And by the way, we... we resurfaced the granite. This granite was all resurfaced. And it's... you know, because it's granite, it's gotta.
The Democrat Party has said they do want extremists, pro-jihad, America-hating, 9/11-supporting monsters like Hassan Piker.
They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to make Ohio a state. I don't know how it works, but, you know, they can do these things and get away with it.
You'd still be able to do what you do, work with Democrats, even if they do?
Well, if that happens, I guess I'll become Mr. Vito. I'm not going to let them run. And then at some point, we'll probably make deals. That's what's happened.
Scott, what if we make Ohio a state?
Yeah, I do not share.
What will happen?
They could make Ohio a state.
Yeah.
So this is... this is the campaign speech you give after your Molly dealer is back from Tulum. I mean, this is... And supposedly he's been rumored that they're trying to groom him to be president or to run. I would love it. That might be the first donation I give to a Republican candidate for president. Is it Don? Don, I'm so on team Don Jr. You should absolutely... announce now. Announce now. I'd like to see he and Rahm Emanuel discuss issues at the next...
at the next Davos. Okay. If Democrats... all right. Jess, anything that stands out to you about the final day on the campaign trail? And also, let's talk about early voting numbers. What do they tell us about these races?
The early voting numbers are monster-level. As of 8:30 this morning, Democrats surpassed their entire 2022 turnout in Florida. We're going to talk later in the show about, you know, going by the clock, early signs of what kind of night it's going to be. And some really big races in Florida are going to be indications of that. The North Carolina numbers continue to be the most impressive of the bunch. I have the feeling that Roy Cooper will be jumping ahead on people's lists of someone that they want to have in the mix come 2028.
Michael Watley, a bad candidate. And there has been some good journalism around all of the bad decisions that President Trump made when it came to candidates that put Republicans in this position. Obviously, Ken Paxton being atop that list, but Michael Watley, you know, pushing Darlene Graham to run for the full term in South Carolina versus just being the six-month caretaker after Lindsey Graham passed away.
What are the odds in South Carolina right now? Where does Cauchy have it?
It's a toss-up race. I don't know what the Cauchy odds are. My expectation is that Darlene Graham is going to win that race. But if she wins it by five or less, that tells you something about what people are doing and their willingness to vote for the other team and dissatisfaction with Republicans. I liked this from Lakshya Jain, who's a pollster. He said, "We've updated our model. Senate has 53 for Democrats, 47 for Republicans, House at 239 to 196."
And then he writes, "The data unambiguously says something. It's just that nobody seems to actually believe it. We'll see if that's warranted." And that's what this game has been. I was listening to Nate Cohn as well, Galen Druck, Friend of the Pod, you know, all saying the same thing, which is there's not a lot that you see in the data that you could use to make the case that this is even going to be a decent night for Republicans. But we're all standing... well, not you. You're fine. You're belly out, having a great morning, but everyone else is in the fetal position.
And I was... I was thinking back about Ann Selzer's poll. Remember that Iowa poll that randomly, you know, out of nowhere had Kamala Harris up? And Galen pointed out, which was a good reminder, that the thing about the Selzer poll is that it was an outlier in all of this. There are no real outliers at this point. You look at these high-quality polls, you know, everything from Fox News, New York Times Siena, Wall Street Journal, NBC. The Atlas Intel poll came out, which was, I think, the most accurate of 2024.
It has Dems winning all of the key races that we're looking at. Minnesota with the closest margin, actually, in all of that. So the data is telling us something, but perhaps the most important number for today: a new Election Day record, the highest-ever national average for gas and diesel, $4.12 a gallon for regular gas and $6.28 a gallon for diesel. Putting aside partisanship, which is a very hard thing to do. If people are, like you say, driving by these enormous election billboards every day, which are your gas prices, they are seeing prices that you have never seen before on an Election Day.
Well, in addition, it's sort of the sum of all fears. You have, in a lot of the swing districts, it's where people drive the most. In addition, we've talked about this. The swing voters are men. Men drive, on average, 30% more than women. And then when you look at actual jobs growth, there has been jobs growth over the last two years. The majority of the jobs growth has gone to female-led industries, healthcare specifically, where it's 70 to 80% of the employee growth is women.
And then the industries that have taken the biggest hit and have seen a destruction in jobs are manufacturing and transportation, which tend to be 70 to 80% men. So the most vulnerable, if you will, or the most likely to swing their vote from one party to the other, right? Women aren't as fluid. Young women aren't as fluid in terms of who... young voters in general are fluid, but the most fluid, likely to go one way or the other, have no allegiance, are young men. And this economy has been especially hard on young men.
Young male college graduates, their unemployment rate is actually quite high. Unemployment is sort of at a historical average, even slightly below if you go back far enough, except for young male college graduates. So the voters who are most likely to swing their vote or the most fluid are the ones actually being hit hardest. And in what is an incredibly unlucky and lucky piece of data for Republicans and Democrats respectively is the gas prices seem to be having the greatest impact in exactly the wrong states for the Republicans, the swing states.
Yeah.
So what kind of Democratic leadership are we likely to see if the party takes back Congress? Or what changes in leadership do you think we'll see if things go our way today?
Well, obviously, you'll have Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries. He's laid out pieces of the agenda. It's all focused on affordability, which is, I think, a good thing. Robert Garcia, who will be the oversight chair, put out a statement about focus there and will dive in and looking into the Trump family. I almost wish that those things would not be said out loud yet because I feel like that's actually one of the strongest arguments for a partisan Republican to either come home and vote for Republicans or to get off the couch if you say...
I mean, it's not impeaching Donald Trump again. I think we've definitely learned our lesson about that. But even the Ward investigations, you see how much it shows up in speeches that President Trump is giving at these rallies. You know, they're going to come after me. They're going to come after me. And there are a lot of folks who felt that that was an animating factor in their vote in previous elections. And so I would like to focus on the, are you better off today election versus, you know, what are we going to do with our gavel in oversight?
Though I obviously think it's important to dig into Epstein file cover-ups, all of this money that they've been making, even, you know, Trump being out there at the Reflecting Pool. It's a choice. I mean, he's a builder and he loves those stories. I would add, though, that there were only, I don't know, 60, 70, 80 people that were out there with him. And he spent very little time actually focused on the elections. Hakeem Jeffries, again, it's affordability. I would still love my three bumper sticker policies to be released where you just say, this is what a Democratic agenda looks like.
This is how we'll be able to enact it. If we get this kind of margin in the House, if we, you know, hope in a prayer, if we are lucky enough to have the Senate, maybe we even have a couple of extra votes. And all of these governor's mansions and state legislatures, there are enormous opportunities for trifectas in a lot of right-leaning states that we're not even paying attention to. That's how you actually get these agendas through. And I would like more, but I understand that with this particular election, when the incumbent is so unpopular and it's a referendum on what the Republicans are doing, that maybe it's enough to just say, we're not those guys and we're going to try to reverse as much as possible.
That's putting a strain on your wallet. Do you see anything floating around in the kind of the policy area that's exciting you about what Democratic control could look like? I mean, obviously, Trump will turn into this Mr. Vito, but it's still worthwhile to put things out there. And if the margins are big enough, you might actually get, you know, some Republicans to side with you. And who knows, maybe there's a miracle to be had.
Yeah, I think they need to outline their agenda. Even if it doesn't get through, they can start to outline stuff, start to debate it, start to socialize it amongst the American public. Something around the idea of a Medicare option for everyone, something that moves us towards some sort of relief around the ACCA subsidies. And also... and also it gives people a sense that at some point we're going to address the fact that 40% of American households have dental or medical debt. And that's not to say to absolve those people of that debt, but to move to a more universal coverage model.
And it might be incremental, but something that outlines that we are moving away from the privatization and the concentration of hospital systems and verticalization that has essentially monetized healthcare much to the stress, anxiety, and lack of well-being amongst the American public. Something along the lines of tax reform and alternative minimum tax for companies. As a percentage of GDP, labor wages have never been lower. As a percentage of GDP, corporate profits have never been higher. So that means we probably need to readjust or reverse the flows of capital and prosperity from the owners or from the earners and the consumers to the earners.
And we need to reverse those flows. I would propose a series of fairly serious antitrust, talking about removal or modification of 230 such that we no longer have a profit incentive of the biggest companies in the world to create a series of shared lies. I would throw out there things like mandatory national service, commissions to talk about how do we take advantage of asymmetry around warfare and potentially take our military budget from a trillion and a half to $900 million, $700 billion, while maintaining the most lethal fighting force in history, recognizing that our platforms are expensive and have to be manned, and we're just not willing to...
The B-1 bomber used to be a symbol of intimidation. Now they're intimidated and having to leave certain places because of a fear of a lawnmower with C-4 attached can take them out. There's a ton of things, something that would codify Roe v. Wade. It will get vetoed. It won't pass, but put it out there. Basically outline the agenda for a Democratic administration and say, this is a preview. Don't you want to see this movie in '28? And this is how we improve affordability through antitrust.
This is how we are going to create a more responsible fiscal program that will bring down interest rates on your credit cards, your mortgage. But basically occupy the space you command and get Trump to veto something that helps people get medical coverage. Get Trump to veto something that says we are going to get money out of politics. I mean, so fine, but outline your agenda. We need to move... The theme here is we need to move from the party of indignance to the party of ideas.
So speaking of...
Wait, can I say something about that before we.
Of course, thank you.
Go more indignant? What will be very telling is what leadership does with all of these, hopefully, knock on wood, winning candidates. Because there are folks out there running either as Democrats or independents that have, if it goes as it is projected to, been able to persuade people of all political stripes to support them because they're talking about the issues that matter to them and have put forward solutions. So there's this great opportunity to take parts of the agendas from all of these amazing candidates and make that into your platform.
This doesn't have to turn into a smoke-filled room like, you know, what do you think we should do? Should we take a bit of this or a bit of that? Like, go to the big winners. If, you know, Zack Dembo flips Kentucky 6, which is a Trump plus 15 district, and it will be one of the earliest races to be watching tonight, go take a look at what he's been talking about on the campaign trail. Ask, you know, how do you think we could get this done and make it part of the agenda? And you can do that across the line. You can do it with House races. You can do it with these gubernatorial candidates. You can do it with these Senate candidates.
And I think it's an amazing opening for Democrats to actually be able to show off the candidate quality in a deeper way to say, we see you and we hear you because Democrats are still 10 points less popular than Republicans nationally. And every time I see that poll question, I'm hoping that it ticks up a bit more. And it doesn't really move much at this point. They like their candidates. They don't like the party brand. And part of the problem with that is obviously a messaging problem.
It's what Republicans are saying about the brand, but it's the fact that they don't hear substantive stuff out of leadership that makes them think that we've got a clue as to how to drive the country in a better direction. So I crowdsource this baby from all of the good candidates that we're seeing out there.
Yeah, this is... Look, this is a lease, not a mortgage. They've agreed to date us. They're not marrying us.
Yeah, maybe just one-night stand. Like 2028, it'll be here fast.
Yeah. So they need to get on this and outline a bold vision and definitive agenda and just say, we're going to workshop it. And if the Reflecting Pool guy wants to veto it, we're 24 months away from telling people this is our agenda. Our agenda should be pretty well sketched out by the time the presidential race kicks off, which will be, quite frankly.
Mara.
Yeah. And put Republican candidates on their heels and have them defend, well, why aren't we going to get rid of or rescind the Republican tax cuts on corporations and start to pay down the deficit? Why aren't we going to have something resembling universal healthcare or restore child tax credits? Why aren't we going to rein in our military budget while embracing new technologies to create a more lethal fighting? I mean, put them, have them...
As you said, I love what you said when you're explaining you're defending or you're losing.
You're losing.
And I don't even think we... I think immediately they draft these pieces of legislation and have votes on them and they'll pass and then let the president veto them.
Hi, I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of The Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
We pulled all that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic has now passed human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.
This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
This series is presented by EY.
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Support for the show comes from USA Facts. I've interviewed countless politicians, and if there's one thing we all find disconcerting is when they butcher the facts with some biased half-truth. Give us a break already. So when I had the chance to debate conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, our natural response was, bring it on. Why? Because it was sponsored by USA Facts, and each debate segment started with a presentation of government data and facts: employment, government spending, income data, housing, and more. The topic, the American dream, is it still within reach?
We argued, we found some common ground, we actually debated, and there were no personal attacks. Watch the full debate on the USA Facts YouTube channel. We think you'll find it unlike any other debate that is entertaining and informative. We hope you check it out.
Let's move on. Democrats already have their sights set on one of Trump's biggest allies, Elon Musk. If they take back Congress, Musk could face a wave of investigations into his time leading Doge, mass federal layoffs, government contracts, and his potential role in Ukraine, specifically throttling back Starlink, which put Ukrainian citizens and their army at undue risk. Trump, meanwhile, says he'll protect his allies and has even floated pardoning Musk. How serious... What do you think of this, Jess? What is your kind of prediction around what happens with respect to Elon Musk post a Democratic wave, assuming it happens?
Oh, he's going to have a rough time vis-à-vis the investigations. I do not think that this should be about, you know, litigating, giving SpaceX stock to kids, even if it's linked to Trump accounts. Like, if you're talking about taking money away from Americans that way, you are losing. And by and large, people think the Trump accounts are a good idea. I hope that it's not about that. I hope it's about the substantive potential, at least ethical violations.
I don't want to say crimes necessarily that Elon Musk has committed. So everything from what he did with Doge, firing all of the inspectors-generals that were looking into his companies, exploring his government contracts, you know, potential monopolies there, and what went on with Starlink and Starshield is a really big deal. And there are lawyers who think that you would have a case if you were exploring what exactly Musk did, what the DOD did that ended up resulting in loss of life in Ukraine.
And obviously accidents happen, but it seems like from very good reporting, you know, not from left-leaning outlets, you know, from the Wall Street Journal, that there were pointed decisions made or actions taken. And I would love to get to the bottom of that. I think, you know, the fact that we have a system where a single individual can pump this much money into an election is a broader conversation about campaign finance reform.
But if you are to talk about investigations early, which I guess Robert Garcia and Democrats are, Elon Musk is one of the names that I think is definitely worthy of putting at the top of your list. Do you want to aggravate him more? Maybe he could say that he's going to put you in jail.
Well, my prediction is we are going to be watching, and it's going to make for great C-SPAN TV, and Elon Musk doing this as he'll look like a... He'll look like someone, a worker from Hot Topic who uses ketamine every day to get through the day, sitting in a congressional hearing with congressional staffers constantly handing representatives or senators pictures of kids or mothers in Africa who died because they didn't get their HIV medication or people who have been killed in Ukraine because Ukrainian defense drones could not launch because unexpectedly the guidance systems on their defensive drones were cut off.
I think we are going to have that image. Now, the interesting thing will be if he... His lawyers will advise him to take the 5th, but there's some question that if he's in fact pardoned by Trump, if you're allowed to take the 5th, because the 5th is meant to exonerate you from self-incrimination. If there is no self-incrimination because of the pardon, there's some legal question as to whether you are allowed to take the 5th when testifying in front of Congress when you have been pardoned. And also a pardon, it absolves you from federal prosecution.
My understanding is it doesn't exonerate you from state prosecution, and I know it doesn't exonerate you from prosecution by authorities in the UK or Canada. I think that the West is coming to recognition or realization that the idolatry of innovators that infects the United States has created an atmosphere where these individuals are held to an entirely different standard because of their wealth and because they're perceived as innovators, which is the new means of saying a spiritual person.
What the Taliban and Al-Qaeda look to for someone in spirituality as being a blanket for being a good person and exonerating you from what I feel are not good actions. In the US, our new religion is technology, and we exonerate people from standard norms of behavior if they're seen as an innovator. I think that is going away, and he is going to be held to the same standard as, like I said, the CEO of Northrop Grumman that decided that our Ohio-class submarines should not be patrolling the South China Seas and fox with their guidance systems.
I think that person would be held in front of Congress and would be severely questioned, and there would be talks of legal action against that person. I think that is coming. I think the worm has turned on Mr. Musk. And just as data centers have become a vessel for the anger around income inequality as it relates to AI, I think Mr. Musk is about to become a vessel for anger at income inequality around this notion of the protopia in technology where these guys think they get to live by a different set of standards than the rest of us.
I think he is about to become a vessel that will be filled with anger, a lot of it justified about what's gone on the last four years.
Do you think Trump sticks by him? I know in the pardon sense, but there have been a few instances where Trump has done things that have really upset Elon Musk, like provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill, for instance, where they fell out over that for several months. Do you see them like staying on the love boat as we go forward towards 2028, or it's going to be a bumpy breakup?
I have no idea. I'm not certain either way. I think Donald Trump has absolutely no loyalty to anybody.
Yeah.
I mean, the guy doesn't get along with his wife. She doesn't... She's not even living with the guy. He has no loyalty to anybody. He's purely transactional. If he sees... If he can convince Trump, I wouldn't be surprised if Musk says something like, just give me my pardon, I'm going to go buy $5 billion of Trump coin and you'll be able to sell this when you're... I mean, there's so much backroom dealing here. Or at the same time, you may go, remember when you said, when you tweeted that I was in the Epstein files, motherfucker? Well, I'm not. I'm not going to pardon you.
That still sticks to my craw. So who knows? I don't think anything is a given with this guy other than pardoning himself and his family. I don't think he has any sense of real, what you would call real enduring loyalty. Okay, so beyond the midterms, another major question is what Trump will do next in Iran. The US military struck Iran's Kashim, I believe, island on Monday, the latest in a series of small-scale attacks in recent weeks. Some officials described them as defensive measures to prevent Iran from targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
But Trump is downplaying the prospect of a return to war, telling reporters we haven't been doing any fighting for months. He says he's in no rush to resume strikes as negotiations continue through Qatari mediators, but his advisors are divided. J.D. Vance is pushing for a diplomatic deal while Netanyahu and Pete Hegseth want to resume fighting. Others are urging Trump to stick with economic pressure. Here's Trump talking about the Middle East this morning on a call to Fox.
But what's going to happen after the election day, after today? What's the next move?
Well, we'll see. Look, I'm not looking to, you know, kill lots of people, but if we have to, we'll have to. But I'm not looking to do that. And the Hormuz Strait, we have total control of it with the Navy blockade. I mean, everything's going good. Everybody respects us again. I'm at 99% approval rating in Israel. Can you believe it? In fact, if people ever got tired of me in the US, I'll move to Israel and become prime minister. Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, but it gets cut off at the end of the year.
Why?
Why? Because they don't need it, Brian. I mean, I asked them because they don't need it and because why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayyad when they don't need it? It's a bad talking point.
That's a big deal. And I know that they flirted with this, but saying it publicly, and Bibi did not want that out in the ether when he was running for reelection just last week. I was like, oh, excuse me. And because he's and then acknowledging we want to take away this talking point from candidates like Abdul.
I actually agree with him on this. I mean, first off, 99% approval rating is... I'm going to go out on a limb here. I haven't looked at the data, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that President may in fact not be telling the truth.
You're good.
But I agree with him. I think we should cut the aid to Israel. When we first started, I think they were a $40 billion economy. Now they're $700 billion. They have their own money. And also, to be clear, that $4 billion, we don't show up with dollar bills and give it to Netanyahu. It's money that is used to purchase US weapons. It's basically a stimulus payment for the purchase of US arms. At this point, the Israeli economy is one of the strongest economies in the Gulf and in the world, and they can afford. It's just not worth it.
It's not worth the controversy. It's not worth the talking point. The president is right. I think it's better for Israel if we don't give it to them. It takes away the talking point of people who are, you know, pro-Israel as I am. That is okay. The argument of that should be spent on American kids. Okay, just stop. They can pay for their own. They can pay for their own social services and their own weapons. I actually agree with him in this.
And we don't get bananas from there. I mean, just going back to the commercial, the Rebellion Pack commercial, you know, you don't have an egg or a banana problem because of this, but.
There you go.
It's also a big deal that this just started getting reported that we had been doing these, you know, quote-unquote small-scale attacks, and there was enormous reporting from the Wall Street Journal and the AP about the damage to US bases across the region. It was something like 24 structures across seven countries that had been severely damaged by the Iranians and raises the question like, well, what can we actually do now and what does the future of our participation in the Middle East look like?
I mean, we're not going in and rebuilding these bases in the same way. So at the same time that we're constantly sending more and more troops to the region, not being massively reported, they're taking out our bases across the entire region. Like, what's going on here? And how have we not heard about this for the last, I don't know, three, four weeks? I feel like it has not been prominent in the discussion. I get it that it's election time, but this is a real election issue.
When you ask people why they're going to vote, they're talking about cost of living issues, which are directly tied to the war in Iran.
Also, there's been a general consensus in the media that I, or at least in the progressive media, that we're going, we, the US and Israel, are going to be, are going to resume military attacks against Iran immediately after the midterms. Have you heard any more on that?
No, just that's the expectation. But I feel like this is the slow build into that, right? Like talking about this just a little bit and making sure that he gets in the Israel point, which is important and I'm sure going to aggravate a lot of his strongest supporters, like the Mark Levin's of the world, even if Bibi is saying that it's fine, you know, that it's not something that they need and that they're in good position. But I think that this is a big deal and an indication that things are going to ramp up right after.
And if he is a wartime president, then he feels like he's on safer footing.
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Okay, Jess, before we get to audience questions, let's talk about the results coming in tonight. There are a few early bellwethers worth watching. Polls closed in Indiana and Kansas at 6:00 p.m. Eastern, followed by Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina at 7:00. It's important to be aware we might not have results by tonight. In 2022 and 2024, it took eight days to call which party would control the house. I don't want to vex you, but I think we're going to know earlier than that. But Jess, what races or districts will you be watching most closely? What could give us an early indication of the broader national picture?
Yeah, well, I wanted to say already in a very hotly contested toss-up race, New York 17th, Westchester County, Mike Lawler, sitting Republican with Kate Conley as the Democratic challenger. Westchester County is already having trouble with their ballots. So the ballots are too thick for the machine to count. So that is going to turn into a hand count. They say, you know, no one is yelling fraud or anything like that, but that is already one issue in a toss-up race that is already happening.
I mentioned Kentucky 6th with Zach Dembo, super cool background, Navy JAG prosecutor, ninth generation Kentuckian. He seems like the type of candidate who could pull this off. And Ralph Alvarado, who's the Republican, is really bad. He's one of the ones who started taking Trump off of his website and tried to go from like America First to, you know, conscientious independent thinker types. 6:00 p.m. closing. That's a Trump plus 15 district.
If Dembo pulls that off, big indication that it could be a good night for Democrats. I already mentioned a little bit about how important some of these Florida races are. This is where they did a big gerrymander that might only net them potentially one seat. So in Florida's 14th, if Kathy Castor can hang on, and Florida's 25th with Jared Moskowitz, and my expectation is that they will be able to. So that turns into a dummy mander. Obviously, South Carolina would be super interesting, the results there.
Even if Darlene Graham wins, what does that margin look like as a harbinger of things to come? A lot of action in Virginia. If Democrats flip Virginia's first, which was Trump plus 5, and then Virginia 5th, which is Trump plus 12. People also closely watching Virginia's second. There was gerrymandering in North Carolina too. North Carolina first, the Republicans actually started pulling money out of there. So I'm curious as to how that turns out and what these early vote trends portend for actually Election Day.
Do a sea of Republicans turn out or if these Democratic candidates are just so good and the Roy Cooper of it all. Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick's district. So he's one of the only conscientious Republicans, I would say, is out there, you know, voted against signature legislation of the president. It's always on him about actually abiding by the Constitution. That's Pennsylvania's first. If he is defeated, that certainly signals a broader wave coming our way.
I also am very interested in Pennsylvania's eighth, Paige Cognetti's race, you know, Paige against the machine, mayor of Scranton. There are toss-ups in Michigan that everyone is also watching closely in the seventh and the 10th, and then 8:00 p.m. Texas. What happens, obviously, with the Talarico Paxson race, but these house races, especially in the Rio Grande, where they tried to gerrymander this. So Johnny Garcia, Bobby Polito, et cetera. So those are some early in the night trends that I'm paying attention to.
But keep in mind that counting can take forever. And I think it was sad about, you know, in Michigan, you know, Detroit comes in last. That's where they always start screaming fraud. They're like, oh, how did this happen? We were doing so well.
Go Lions.
Go Lions.
Go Lions.
Yeah. I'm very curious as this story, the Haley Stevens brouhaha continues, what the numbers actually look like in Abdul and Mike Rogers' race. I have seen little indication besides a few random voters that were interviewed that demonstrate that Haley Stevens had a positive impact for Mike Rogers and that it actually is just, you know, about her at this point, that the folks who felt the way that she does were already voting for Mike Rogers or leaving it blank.
But, you know, there could be a bit of a surprise there, but the numbers are just so big to have New York Times has Abdul up 11 and it would have been 16 in the old formula, the old methodology for the New York Times poll. So they have, you know, taken, gone to great lengths to make sure that they are not oversampling Democrats and might even be weighting it a bit to the right. What are you watching? How are you? Well, you have a show.
Yeah, we're in Toronto today. There's something actually quite comforting about being in Canada on Election Day. I'm in New York right now, but I'm headed to the airport soon after. But what could be a surprise, I don't know if you've heard, but Haley Stevens has threatened to endorse a Republican every day until all her demands are met. Little hostage humor. Little hostage humor from the dog at Election Day. All right, let's move on to our fans' questions, or maybe not our fans, listeners. Ad Heather Sharp asks, will Vance abandon Trump if the tsunami yields 57 Senate seats for Democrats?
By the way, that would be called a super tsunami. Vance abandons Trump. What do you think?
No. Where would he go? Who is Vance without Donald Trump?
That's right.
Well, who is Vance with Donald Trump?
He's Mike Pence.
No, not even. And I'm not like an enormous Mike Pence person.
Like, anyone heard from Mike Pence? That worked out for him.
Every once in a while he writes an op-ed. And he had a book.
He seems so reasonable now, doesn't he?
I know. And I'm like, oh my God, I dream of like a George Bush, Mike Pence, I mean, really just a Mitt Romney one. That's the one that I kind of hate myself for.
All of a sudden everyone loves a Romney.
I know.
Okay, Nord wants to know, if Trump loses the swing states hardest hit by his tariffs, will he retaliate by targeting Canada with further tariffs? That's an interesting question.
What do you think your, do you guys have a guest tonight? Are you not announcing it?
We have, yeah, I think we have either the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime. My guess is we have a hockey player. I'm going to go out on a limb and just assume it's something to do with hockey. By the way, of the seven cities we're in, Toronto sold out in 24 hours. We're big in Canada, Jess.
It's awesome.
We love Canadians and Canadians love us.
Well, I hope you have Mark Carney and you're just being coy about it because enormous fan, obviously. Yeah, I think he's going to blame everyone, but he's probably most of all going to blame these candidates and say, like, you were all just really shitty and I gave you everything, right? I was last man standing, had all of these rallies for you, and you couldn't seal the deal against the communists.
Well, as I was thinking, I don't know the answer to that question. As I think it through, I think most likely he might try, but I think with the types of numbers the Democrats will have in Congress and the lame duckness of the president, you might find enough Republicans to get in the way of this tariff nonsense. I think there's a lot of Republicans who are free market people who are pretty early and often voice concern, and they might just even find their backbone even stiffen more once the midterms are over and the momentum is swiftly turned against the president.
So if I had to guess whether the tariffs get worse or better, it would be that they either stay the same or get better. Let's go to question three. Grapes and Goose asks, Grapes and Goose, good for you. Assuming the polls are correct, how likely does impeachment seem to you if the Dems take the House and 52 plus Senate seats?
Zero. Impeachment of Donald Trump.
Yeah.
Impeachment of Pete Hegseth.
Yeah, very high.
50, at least 50-50.
Oh, really? See, I think it's higher than that for Hegseth. I think it's almost, I agree with you. I think it's almost zero for going after the president. Because the argument in the solid argument would be one, it's a distraction. And two, let voters decide in 23 months if they want to repudiate his policies or whatever. It would be a huge distraction.
It's retiring and the Supreme Court's given him like immunity for everything. And you're still, you're just not going to get Republicans to do this because then it would be a betrayal of the base even more, right? Like they've suffered enough at this point. I think it'd be a big waste of time. But it's interesting seeing that Pete Hegseth is apparently poking around for the Tennessee Senate seat if Marshall Blackburn becomes governor, which is the expectation. So maybe he wants to, you know, take himself out of Dodge before it gets really hot.
But obviously, if there are hearings, he has to come back for all of that.
That's interesting. Would he have a shot at that Senate seat? I just don't have a feel for Tennessee politics.
Yeah, there's some stress between him and Marshall Blackburn. He wanted to run for a Senate seat there before, but he hadn't lived in the state for long enough because they moved down to Nashville a few years ago. But you could see a case for it. You could also see a case for Marshall Blackburn going with someone who she's closer with, you know, and doesn't necessarily have the warmest relationship with Pete Hegseth. So it's an interesting subplot to follow.
Right. And our last comment comes from Brandon King and it says, love the energy Scott is bringing. That's right. This was the wrong morning to give up math. Everybody, Jess, everybody wants a bad professor that'll be good to you. All right, let me balance that out with a closing comment. A lot of young men listen to this podcast. What the Democrats have been awful at and what the Republicans have been amazing at is the Democrats are seen as the identity politics, more socially conscious people who don't understand growth in the economy.
And the Republicans have been amazing, amazing at attaching their brand to economic growth. Young men are the swingest of swing voters and they basically vote incorrectly or correctly on who and what is going to put more money in their pockets as they try and form families. And I've said this before and I'm going to say it again. I went back to 1980 when we pivoted from a manufacturing to a service and technology economy, largely seen as the pivot point when we became the modern economy that is the wondrous U.S.
economy and pulled away. China was supposed to beat us. Japan was supposed to beat us. Now we have left them both in the dust, I would argue, economically. I went back and I divided Republican and Democrat presidential administrations. There's been 12 administrations, six and a half Republicans so far, coming up on seven and five Democratic. I looked at GDP growth, I looked at job growth, and I looked at deficits and averaged them across Democratic and Republican administrations. Across Republican administrations, we've averaged an additional 1 million jobs per year.
Under Democratic administrations, we have added an average of 2 million jobs per year. We've added double the number of jobs when a Democratic administration is in the White House over the last 48 years. Now, with respect to growth of the economy, on average during Republican administrations, we have grown GDP by 2.1%. Under Democratic administrations, we have averaged, get this, Jess, a growth in the GDP of 4.1%. The economy has grown on average almost twice the growth of Republican administrations.
They think, well, okay, tax and spend liberals, it's juice growth that is running up to deficits because they're irresponsible tax and spenders. Actually, the percentage that we have added, we being Democrats, to the deficit has averaged 2.1% per year of GDP. Under Republican administrations, they have averaged an increase in the deficit of 2.8% of the GDP. So let's summarize. When you have Democratic administration and policies of a more progressive tax rates on corporations and the wealthy that gets reinvested in technology, infrastructure, and education to support the middle class, which is the engine, the engine of economic growth, you end up with more jobs.
You end up with more economic growth and lower deficits. So if you're like me when I was a young man and you didn't want to save the whales, you weren't concerned really with social policy. And I saw that sounds terrible, but that's who I was and that's who a lot of young men are. I wanted bank, I wanted to splash the cash, I wanted to fling the bling such that someday I could have a family and have economic security. If you're that guy like me, then this is an easy one.
Vote blue. More prosperity, more opportunity, more growth, lower deficits. Jess, I'll give you the final word.
I think that's it. I'm good with it. As a former young man myself who did want to splash the cash and fling the bling or whatever.
That's it.
Yeah. Vote blue. Let's have a great night. And I'll be on Fox from like 8:30 to 1:00 a.m. So tune in. Hopefully I'll be happier than I was in 2021.
I'm hoping you're just gloating. I'm hoping you're just sitting there smiling, looking at everybody like, yeah, what happened to Michigan, guys? Let's tune in. Oh, really? Oh, wait. Hold on. South Carolina is close. Oh, really? Let's talk about that, Jesse. Oh, Greg, wait, wait, hold on. Hold on. It's looking like the polls are similar to your posture, like collapsing, collapsing. Anyway, sorry, couldn't resist.
You never care.
All right, Jess, we're going to leave it there. We'll be back tomorrow live on YouTube and Substack at 1:30 p.m. Eastern to review all the results we have available. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with our coverage. And most importantly, get out and vote if you haven't already. We have been here before. There's been times in America when 1% of the population and slave people controlled the government. We bounced back and came back harder. There were moments in history where we were in turning people into concentration camps, good American citizens because of their Japanese heritage.
We knew we fucked up, so we came back even stronger and we strengthened our democracy. That happens here and today. What does it say here? What does it say here, Jess? What does it say here? Get out, vote. Our nation, be the democracy. Let's do this. Let's go.
That coffee is crazy that you have.
Hi, I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
We pulled all that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it'd be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, you won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online. And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.
This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
This series is presented by EY.
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Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov go live on Election Day to discuss the latest news and their final predictions for the 2026 Midterms.
While millions of Americans are heading to the polls today, early voting has also outpaced the last midterm cycle in key battleground states. What can we learn from early voting data?
If Democrats take back the House, Hakeem Jeffries could make history as the first Black speaker. But his party in Congress is still very unpopular — despite specific candidates gaining the edge in individual races. What will Democratic leadership look like if the party takes back Congress? And how will the Democrats form and communicate their policy agenda to a skeptical public.
As Democrats begin to contemplate the possibility of regaining control in key Congressional committees, reports say that they may already have their sights set on one of Trump’s biggest frenemies: Elon Musk. How serious could these investigations get? And, is there anything that the Dems will be able to do to limit the corruption in the White House?
Beyond the midterms, another major question is what Trump does next in Iran. But Trump is downplaying the prospect of a return to war, saying he’s “in no rush” to resume strikes as negotiations continue through Qatari mediators. Is Trump really easing up on the war in Iran, or is he pandering to voters before the Midterms?
As results start coming in tonight, there are a few early bellwethers worth watching. Will these races give us an early indication of the broader national picture?
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