Kamala VS Trump Is Fueled By "Vibe-Based Politics"

***Originally Aired August 29, 2024*** 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.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

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.

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.

Have you found them? Announce 'em right now if you've found 'em because I haven't.

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.

How do you do it?

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.

Yeah. What's the result of that?

That's gonna kill the economy.

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.

I've done that.

Oh, you have?

I've been to both campaign websites.

What did you find?

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?

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.

Well, and even with Biden, when he was running, the infrastructure bill.