Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham, the great American. Of course. Leland Bitterer frequent
Speaker 1: guests of the Bill Cunningham Shows, one of the main anchors, commentators, etc.
Speaker 1: Of News Nation Monday through Friday. They've talked for politics
Speaker 1: and so many other issues. And Leland Bidder, welcome again
Speaker 1: to The Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, are
Speaker 1: you somewhat amazed over the past ten days to two
Speaker 1: weeks the rise of Kamala Harris. In fact, she's given
Speaker 1: no news conferences. I'm not sure she could defend her
Speaker 1: liberal record to a Midwestern audience. But if somebody had
Speaker 1: told you two weeks ago that the Democratic nominee is
Speaker 1: going to be at or past Donald Trump, would you
Speaker 1: have believed that what's.
Speaker 2: Happened, Well, don't want to say we predicted it, but
Speaker 2: the meteor rise is because of the turning into the
Speaker 2: first living saint in here, right. So there has been
Speaker 2: a coronation. There was a coronation of her as the nominee,
Speaker 2: and then there was quickly identification of her as the
Speaker 2: savior politician. And you rightly point out she has given
Speaker 2: no news conferences. She is becoming effectively if you listen
Speaker 2: to her stump speeches. She's tried to walk back a
Speaker 2: lot of her positions, whether it be on healthcare or
Speaker 2: the border, or crime or whatever it is. She's becoming
Speaker 2: an empty vessel in the same way that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: was in twenty twenty. It's a it's a non COVID
Speaker 2: version of the basement strategy, which is to allow people
Speaker 2: to grasph on to her whatever feelings they have that
Speaker 2: are anything but Donald Trump. And to be fair, we
Speaker 2: said for a long time leading up to this that
Speaker 2: whichever party replaced the unpopular I met, unfavorability candidate that
Speaker 2: was at the top of their ticket, that'd be neither
Speaker 2: Biden or Trump. Whichever party did that was going to get.
Speaker 1: A huge And in Kamala Harris's case, I've heard some
Speaker 1: of the commentators on News Nation and elsewhere and elsewhere said, well,
Speaker 1: this is a honeymoon phase, and this is a sugar high,
Speaker 1: and what's going to happen come end of October, first
Speaker 1: week in November. It's going to be different. And I
Speaker 1: see o contreer Mone Freyer, which is an Olympic reference.
Speaker 1: I would say, not necessarily because I watched Joe Biden
Speaker 1: for a long time hide out in his basement, not
Speaker 1: conduct interviews, not campaign at all, Ridolf a few teleprompters.
Speaker 1: He got eighty one million votes and Trumpster got seventy
Speaker 1: four million, and it's about seventy thousand votes was the
Speaker 1: real difference in the five or six states and he won. So,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris will not be required by the so called
Speaker 1: mainstream me to sit down for an interview with you
Speaker 1: or any of the other cable news giants, because it's
Speaker 1: not in her injuries to do so. And if Trump
Speaker 1: or someone like that had not given any interviews for
Speaker 1: like fourteen days, by the time at the end the
Speaker 1: convention rolls around, is going to be almost thirty days,
Speaker 1: there'd be a countdown clock. CNN, MSNBC, maybe News Nation,
Speaker 1: Fox would have a countdown clock. This is how long
Speaker 1: the Republican has not sat down for a broadcast interview.
Speaker 2: But in her case, well, to be fair, we've talked
Speaker 2: about it on the show almost every night. What day
Speaker 2: it is that she has not given an interview or
Speaker 2: have or forget an interview, had a meaningful interaction with
Speaker 2: the press. And when you talk to her supporters they
Speaker 2: give you varying answers for that none of them answered
Speaker 2: the key question, which is what is she afraid of?
Speaker 2: We saw and I don't know if you've played this
Speaker 2: clip for your listeners yet, but last night when she
Speaker 2: was on the tarmac and Andrews, she had to give
Speaker 2: unscripted remarks. And when the hostages came home and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the woman, who I think any fair
Speaker 2: arbiter of political skill would have to say a political
Speaker 2: acumen has gotten a lot better on the teleprompter, which
Speaker 2: she has, was right back to the circular word salads
Speaker 2: of Kamala Harris's past. That was last That was on
Speaker 2: what would be Thursday night into Friday morning. So I
Speaker 2: think you hit the nail on the head, which is
Speaker 2: once she has been deified, then she becomes untouchable.
Speaker 1: And at this point she is and I can't conceive.
Speaker 1: I look for the next week, getting ready in the
Speaker 1: next few days we're going to have the the and
Speaker 1: I want to talk with you about this. The Democratic
Speaker 1: VP nominee on paper, I said, it's going to be
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly, Senator Arizona or Josh Shapiro. Those are the two.
Speaker 1: And I'm watching on many cable channels how the radical
Speaker 1: left does not want Josh Shapiro because he's a Jew.
Speaker 1: And I'm watching these emails and these texts and these
Speaker 1: TikTok videos about he's a Jew, support of Israel, and
Speaker 1: to me, being a Jew is a positive thing. I
Speaker 1: practiced law in a Jewey's law firm for twenty years,
Speaker 1: currently broaden my experiences. I went to Israel, as you
Speaker 1: know last year. I love going there. I have great
Speaker 1: respect for the Jewish people. My boss is a Jewish
Speaker 1: carpenter and I have great respect. But there's an element,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the AOC element, Maybe it's the extreme element
Speaker 1: of the Democrat party that want to hold his faith
Speaker 1: against him because he's going to hurt him in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Are you offended by the fact that we have a
Speaker 1: religious test by Democrat leftists They don't want Shapiro because
Speaker 1: he's a Jew.
Speaker 2: Well, I live in washing DC. It takes an awful
Speaker 2: lot to get me offended. What I will say is
Speaker 2: I think it is quite interesting and to be I
Speaker 2: think sayer and give credit where credit is due. Adam
Speaker 2: Schiff and Moskowitz, the congressman I believe Florida, called out
Speaker 2: their own party on this, and they said the progressive
Speaker 2: say they don't want a Jew, say it out loud.
Speaker 2: Number one and number two to your point, can you
Speaker 2: imagine if this was a different minority that the Democrats
Speaker 2: were discriminated against. Somehow, discriminating against Jews is the only
Speaker 2: one that is okay. I think this will tell us
Speaker 2: a lot about where Kamala Harris's head is. Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: is a political operator. We know that it does not
Speaker 2: appear as though she has any true norse. She seems
Speaker 2: to have some deeply progressive personal views, but appears willing
Speaker 2: to vacillate on the issues as she sees it and
Speaker 2: sees an opportunity. Why she ran to the left in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, which she had her own presidential campaign. Now
Speaker 2: she's trying to run to the center in a general
Speaker 2: election campaign. I think if she kicks Josh Shapiro will
Speaker 2: tell us an off a lot, and if she doesn't
Speaker 2: pick Josh Shapiro, it will tell us an awful lot
Speaker 2: both ways. So in a way, being president about leadership,
Speaker 2: this we will get a real sense of her leadership.
Speaker 1: She has props with the radical left in her party.
Speaker 1: She came out of San Francisco. You know, on paper,
Speaker 1: if somebody would say to Leyland Vetter, we have, without
Speaker 1: a name or a gena, we have a candidate who's
Speaker 1: been a city prosecutor, who's been a county prosecutor, who's
Speaker 1: spent an attorney general, who's been a United States Senator,
Speaker 1: and who's been a Vice president. You would say, without
Speaker 1: reference to party, gender, or race, that's a qualified person.
Speaker 1: So that's true. On the other hand, if I would
Speaker 1: say to Leland Vinter, there's a candidate without reference to
Speaker 1: gender or race, who most of her life opposed fracking,
Speaker 1: supported the Green New Deal, defunded the police, in private
Speaker 1: health insurance, transgenders in locker rooms in high school, having
Speaker 1: the government pay for gender reassignment surgery in California state prisons,
Speaker 1: to calls for an eighty percent tax rate, wants to
Speaker 1: eliminate automobiles that are not evs. Wants an open Southern border.
Speaker 1: She wants illegals voting, she wants criminals to vote from prisons.
Speaker 1: You would say, basically, that person is unelectable. So on
Speaker 1: one hand, you have the Democrats see this extremely on
Speaker 1: paper qualified candidate. But on the other side, her policies
Speaker 1: over the last really thirty years of her life have
Speaker 1: been on the far left joining the Democratic Party. So
Speaker 1: our average voter is going to focus on all these
Speaker 1: qualifications job wise or are they going to focus on
Speaker 1: her policies, which is to the left of Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: And I've said Leland Villart, she's like Bernie Sanders with
Speaker 1: lipstick and high heels. And the American people would say,
Speaker 1: we don't want that, and so is it which is it?
Speaker 2: Well, Sarah Palin got an awful lot of lass with
Speaker 2: the line just like that in two thousand and eight, Yes,
Speaker 2: and it did not work out so well for her
Speaker 2: or Republicans. And I would warn Republicans that they have
Speaker 2: a candidate who is now historically unpopular. It was that
Speaker 2: Joe Biden was historically unpopular. Now they have the historically
Speaker 2: unpopular and older candidate who is prone to say things,
Speaker 2: uh that, shall we say, get coverage for for the
Speaker 2: wrong reasons or no, or get or get a lot
Speaker 2: of coverage that is all negative. Joe Biden and you know,
Speaker 2: in the past couple of months said a lot of things.
Speaker 2: They got him a lot of negative coverage, and Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is now saying things they get him a lot
Speaker 2: of negative coverage. The American people are looky, you know,
Speaker 2: and told us over and over again, are looking for
Speaker 2: something different. And what Kamala Harris is providing with the
Speaker 2: help of the media, no question about it, is something different.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of people who are quite excited
Speaker 2: about that. And I think any fair look at this
Speaker 2: has to include that did Republicans picked Donald Trump knowing
Speaker 2: that he was historically unpopular with with moderates and independence
Speaker 2: and then Donald Trump two weeks ago? I don't think
Speaker 2: we talked when I was at the conventions. Pick jd
Speaker 2: Vance could have could have pick Nicki Haley, could have
Speaker 2: picked Marco Rubio, could have picked Doug Bergham, and didn't
Speaker 2: tick jd Vance doubled down, and there was an awful
Speaker 2: lot of people at the conventions scratching their heads, going,
Speaker 2: what in the world does he add? And now there's
Speaker 2: an awful lot of people scratching their heads going, oh,
Speaker 2: what in the world did he do? And these are
Speaker 2: Republicans that I'm talking.
Speaker 1: To Leland Venter and I for disclosure, I've been friends
Speaker 1: with jd Vance for a long time, have dinner with him,
Speaker 1: met him eight years ago. A little bit of the
Speaker 1: story in Butler County Ohio, which is the county directly
Speaker 1: north of Hamilton County and the Butler County. GOP wanted
Speaker 1: to have him to be their Lincoln Day Reagan Day
Speaker 1: speaker about eight years ago. It was twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and he said to the organizers of that, can you
Speaker 1: get Cunningham to come? He and I can bat around
Speaker 1: my book. He'll billy allergy. I said, I'm not good
Speaker 1: at public speaking, and I don't want to like speak,
Speaker 1: I said, And I thought, I said, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know the guy. I said, I I'll go meet with him.
Speaker 1: And we sat up there with one of three hundred people.
Speaker 1: I had the book. I read it one over a
Speaker 1: chapter and it was a good presentation, and he thanked me.
Speaker 1: And since then we struck up a friendship and I
Speaker 1: liked the guy a lot. He was largely unknown on
Speaker 1: the national scene. Believe it or not. Kamala Harris was also,
Speaker 1: until the last two weeks unknown on the national scene.
Speaker 1: News nations sent out reporters to people to say, hey,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, what has she done right? Give me one thing?
Speaker 1: In the end, it's a blank stare. So when JD
Speaker 1: was announced, they sent planeloads and bus loads of reporters
Speaker 1: all over parts of his life to find a text
Speaker 1: made or and email he had with somebody when they
Speaker 1: were at Yale Law School twenty years ago that is negative,
Speaker 1: and they reported the negative stuff. The life story of JD.
Speaker 1: Vance is the American dream, the American success story. Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, led to a middle class lifestyle.
Speaker 1: She at one point claimed to be an Indian American
Speaker 1: and then of course Caribbean American.
Speaker 2: Still you seem to be under the mistaken impression that facts.
Speaker 1: Matter, Well, well they should. I want each candidate to
Speaker 1: be scrutinized by the media by the standards of Sarah
Speaker 1: Palin and JD. Vance. But that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: What can can you just can you just imagine well,
Speaker 2: look all we didn't get to the National Association of
Speaker 2: Black Journalists, but can you just imagine for a second, Okay,
Speaker 2: if a white journalist had gone after and frankly, I
Speaker 2: thought it was it was rude, and I thought it
Speaker 2: was inappropriate the way the reporter Rachel Scott ABC, Rachel
Speaker 2: Scott went after went after Donald Trump, just just in
Speaker 2: terms of decorum, because the presidential nominee. This is a
Speaker 2: former president. There's you can ask tough questions, but you
Speaker 2: can do so respectfully. You can follow up, you can
Speaker 2: do so respectfully. You know she was. She was there
Speaker 2: to make a point. You and I both done interviews
Speaker 2: to make points. We know what it's like. So that's
Speaker 2: what was happening. Can you imagine if a white reporter,
Speaker 2: a white male reporter, did that.
Speaker 1: Tamala Harris, well, the section, the gender the reporter would
Speaker 1: be the main story, not the question. The question was
Speaker 1: asking such a way that couldn't be answered. And if
Speaker 1: and if he was, said, Rachel, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I'm here to talk about the policies I've had that
Speaker 1: positive impact the black community when I was in office,
Speaker 1: talk about HBCUs, talk about enterprise zones, talk about appointments.
Speaker 1: He didn't do that. They set out the bait and
Speaker 1: he lashed onto it like a tuna and ran with it.
Speaker 1: And I could not conceive of Kamala Harris ever going
Speaker 1: to an NRA meeting or Right to Life society and
Speaker 1: sitting there. She wouldn't put herself there because maybe she's
Speaker 1: better politically, but that Donald likes going into nasty environments.
Speaker 1: And interchanging in fisticuffs, which results in the occasional low
Speaker 1: information voter to think about feelings more than facts. So
Speaker 1: when you say to me, well, Billy, you're constrained by
Speaker 1: the facts, yes, and the feelings about this. Many women especially,
Speaker 1: you know, most women are like some men, who care
Speaker 1: about the feelings and the presentation and the gender and
Speaker 1: the race, not the facts. If I line up the
Speaker 1: facts of what she said in the past, she's unelectable.
Speaker 1: But we're not going to get to the facts because
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump went to the napj and that reaction
Speaker 1: is all that matters, not facts. Care about facts. I
Speaker 1: think you care about facts. Many care about feelings. And
Speaker 1: that's why Donald Trump might lose, is that he doesn't
Speaker 1: play to the crowd that demands a little bit of
Speaker 1: feelings and touch and feel and respect. Remember Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: could feel your pain. He understood you completely. You'll never
Speaker 1: get that from Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Well, look, Donald Trump sells himself as the master of
Speaker 2: the art of the deal and the master and the
Speaker 2: understanding of the media. And we'll see. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: old enough to remember twenty sixteen when there was a
Speaker 2: moment after the access Hollywood take the grabber by the
Speaker 2: fee take and guess what everybody said, Oh, this is
Speaker 2: it can't recover, and on and on, and he did
Speaker 2: and he won. So we've got a long time between
Speaker 2: now and November. Things change, Okay, I would return. I
Speaker 2: make no casinist versions on JD. Vans As as a person,
Speaker 2: and you said he's the epitomed the American dreams. Great, Okay, Now,
Speaker 2: whether that makes you qualified to be president of the
Speaker 2: United States? Okay? Which is the job of vice presidents
Speaker 2: to be ready to be president? And whether he could
Speaker 2: connect with American people and convince them of that, And
Speaker 2: whether he, as a both in terms of policy and
Speaker 2: in terms of that ability, is able to connect with
Speaker 2: the people that Donald Trump can't to win two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy electoral votes. Those are two very different conversations.
Speaker 1: And the other issue is I look at nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight when Bush forty one picked a person, Dan Quail
Speaker 1: of Indiana, that the media pummeled, and Bush forty one
Speaker 1: still won easily over Michael Dukakis, who who was behind
Speaker 1: fifteen points in the polls, came back and beat him.
Speaker 1: VP's honestly don't matter. The only time it might have mattered.
Speaker 1: Was nineteen sixty when LBJ brought Texas to Kennedy that
Speaker 1: might have mattered. But other than that, but Jdi Vance
Speaker 1: is the real deal.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, I'm going to disagree with it. I'm going
Speaker 2: to disagree with you on when whether VP matters. I'll
Speaker 2: give you two other points that it matters. One it
Speaker 2: mattered in two thousand and eight, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of people who were uncomfortable with the idea of Sarah
Speaker 2: Palin being one heart beat away from the presidency. What
Speaker 2: it was very old heart in John McCain and I
Speaker 2: would argue that now, especially given Trump stage, Biden dropping out,
Speaker 2: and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the public's focus
Speaker 2: on the concept of the VP. Am I comfortable with
Speaker 2: this person? It has changed. And look, you know, we
Speaker 2: can talk about how many you know, millions of votes,
Speaker 2: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of votes will be cast.
Speaker 2: That's all true. As you pointed out, we're talking about
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand votes that's going
Speaker 2: to decide this, right right, Okay, So what you really
Speaker 2: have to think about, what are you going to make
Speaker 2: those people on the margins, those hundred thousand people who
Speaker 2: are truly on the margins make their decisions, and I
Speaker 2: think it is it's it's perfectly acceptable, but it is
Speaker 2: somewhat naive to assume that they make the decisions, their
Speaker 2: decisions on the same point and give the same weight
Speaker 2: to things that people who are diehard supporters of either
Speaker 2: candidate do.
Speaker 1: Anything could affect it, and maybe the event to determine
Speaker 1: this election has not happened yet, something could happen the
Speaker 1: rest of this month or September October that everything we
Speaker 1: talked about means nothing, and something's going to occur of
Speaker 1: such a quality, whether it's a terroristy doctor God forbids,
Speaker 1: some other nasty bomb goes off somewhere and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, everything we've discussed means nothing. In America may
Speaker 1: want a tough guy instead of Kamala Harris. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, we don't know.
Speaker 2: What about a couple what about another couple of nasty
Speaker 2: jobs reports?
Speaker 1: That's the markets then meltdown. That's a bad thing too.
Speaker 1: That's not And Kamala Harris owns everything in the Bide administration,
Speaker 1: plus her her background, her policy backgrounds is far left wing,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's another issue. So all right, Leland, we
Speaker 1: got to run.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give you one more thing. I'm going to
Speaker 2: give you one more thing for your listeners to listen to.
Speaker 2: Listen to Kamala Harris's stump spyed, listen to the whole thing.
Speaker 2: We're fair our news nation. We broadcast rallies from both sides.
Speaker 2: Notice the one thing she doesn't say in her stump speech.
Speaker 2: You know what that is?
Speaker 1: Immigration Joe Biden. Yeah, she's separating, not last night, but
Speaker 1: she's separating from Joe Biden because he's so unpopular. And
Speaker 1: last night was that was bad. I mean to look
Speaker 1: at Joe Biden like eleven thirty or midnight, that's bad.
Speaker 1: And she that's a pre phone calls, that was And
Speaker 1: if he steps down, she becomes the president acting president.
Speaker 1: Now we've got a whole new set of things and
Speaker 1: we'll see what well. Leland Vender, thanks for keeping the
Speaker 1: lines of communication open. Good luck to you, and have
Speaker 1: a great weekend. Thank you, Thank you, my friend, God
Speaker 1: bless you. Let's continue with more your reaction five one, three, seven, four, nine,
Speaker 1: seven thousand. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred WLW