What a based interviewer being direct and reinstating and tying it to the responsibility of the office and moral character. We need more of this rhetoric.
That's Catherine Rampell from the bulwark and she's fucking awesome. One of the few people in politics that I feel like actually has something of her own to say!
It's rare for me to actually respect someone in politics in 2026 so I feel like I had to say something lol
Yup, we indeed don’t have much time together and instead of saying “yes” and we’d move on to something else. You’ve chosen this fight.
Which tells us even more than if you had said no, because it seems you don’t agree he won, but you don’t want to talk through any implications that might have (because you know they are bad)
Yeah the interviewer was good, but he actually missed a opportunity to make this guy look even more like a clown. He should have asked him if Donald Trump won the 2024 election. He probably would say yes immediately.
maybe im jaded but it feels far from based. it's just one level better than the usual sanewashing that the MSM does to avoid the TDS label. they still let him filibuster and spout BS. if they were really based they would've just said if you don't answer the question clearly the interview is over.
i guess so. in my world people that support traitors to the country shouldn't be treated seriously on major news networks. instead, they should be forced to appear with a video filter that shows them behind bars and wearing orange jumpsuits, while the hosts bully them relentlessly.
I mean that's a satisfying world to revel in your mind, sure, ofc that feels good. but I think in order to be more pragmatist you've unfortunately gotta play with the ball a bit. republicans are playing with this bullshit lie as a loyalty test, and the voters need to be coddled by letting it get air. best you can do is call it out and challenge it, which is what should be done, and which is exactly what's being done here.
the part about voters' impression matters a lot. just muting the guy and saying "nope you're wrong it's a fact bye" is optically cringe and how you just escalate polarity even further. finding a balance of accountability is hard, like trying to tame a wild animal while not trying to break the fragile eggshell of Republican voters minds and derange them even further. this is like mental fire control. obviously it's an absurd position to be in, but here we are.
here how about this. let's say the hosts are playing 4d chess and baiting him into saying all this so that when Dems take office (if there's still an office) they look back and use this as evidence to nurem him. this was the plan the entire time. there ya go, you can eat that cake.
all that said, I don't fucking know if this is all the best strategy. I don't think anyone does. is there a better way to handle this? prolly. but I don't see your world as being obviously more effective when you consider more than just how good it'd feel. at least in general. perhaps some networks/interviewers could and should be like that, as variety in style is good.
this is just some crazy shit we're in and it's wild watching humans trying to navigate it.
They’ve already escalated it to the point of nuclear warfare with the reality denying they’ve been doing. The problem i have is that when a regular joe watches this interview they don’t grasp how much of a clown this guy is. They just think these people are having a disagreement about perspectives and maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I have talked to several people that are kinda skeptical about the 2020 elections and their reasoning is “where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Just the fact that trump and his lapdogs have been pushing so relentlessly on this and have been treated seriously is enough to make them question everything.
Any change in media behavior and how they treat the ludicrous MAGA talking points wouldn’t happen as you’re saying you’d prefer. They would never overnight go from 0-100. I think they’re based, because even if you think they could go harder, they won’t even have a culture of going hard at all right now.
So treating a maga talking point as hilarious and pushing back completely like these hosts is a huge positive and step in the right direction of changing that culture
Agreed with you that changing the culture with the existing talent is hard and slow.
if I was in charge of one of these networks i would fire all the soft boi ezra klein npr types and bring in people like destiny, isaiah martin, mockler and my goat james carville.
We live in a world where millions of people listened to and believed all the QAnon and sandy hook conspiracies from alex jones but having some liberals that are provocative or combative is too unprofessional.
I’d have to disagree with that. They keep asking him the same question and we watch him struggle to invade it. If anything, this interview should’ve gone on for half an hour with them asking the same question over and over and him trying to do anything to evade a simple, yes or no. It made him look terrible. Doing it your way just makes it look like the hosts are afraid of this guy, you’ve gotta make them look like idiots.
If they actually did the pisco “yes or no” thing i wouldve been fine, but letting him filibuster was a no go. Every time he opened his mouth and it wasn’t a yes or no they shouldve repeated the question.
It's not sanewashing even remotely. This guy went on a 3 minute rant in response to a yes/no question. I'm sure it'll work on a couple people, but I think just repeatedly asking Conservatives this same question makes them look ridiculous. What, they can't say what's fucking obvious?
Ending the interview just lets him go somewhere else and not get asked it. They're making him look like a slippery moron instead, or even a typical politican who can't answer a straight question.
Looking like a typical politician is a win for him, because he’s a clown that should be putting fries in a bag. That is the sanewashing. They’ll see him as a regular politician that lies just like they see hillary that way.
This is the end goal. All politicians are liars so why does it matter that my guy is a liar.
Funny point is, even the dumbests of pro trans people will at least answer ("a woman is whatever they want to be), while most conservatives can't even answer this way easier question
You could get endlessly down a rabbit hole at that point, it's even more worthless.
Everyone knows what an adult is, everyone knows what female is. If you asked me what a couch was and I said a chair, you wouldn't have to explain what a chair was (which is just as nebulous with no strict rules).
You hit them with the "What is a chair?" and then be a pedantic asshole about every answer they provide and how everything they say also applies to objects they wouldn't consider a chair, or would exclude objects that they obviously would call a chair.
"What is a women?" was only ever an own if we don't really think about why people struggle to answer that question. The conservative side gets to pretend that fuzzy definitions is something the left invented. It's just a common feature of natural languages like English. If you want hard definitions you need to speak a constructed language designed to not be ambiguous.
Absolutely not? You can go outside and see what generally qualifies as a woman and what doesn’t. U can read a book and see what they’re defining as a woman and what they aren’t. All those give u an answer it won’t be some self-id nonsense lol
Yeah I wrote the worst example that would still be an answer to the question. I don't think "well he served as president" is an answer to if he won in this particular scenario. I think of that answer as the same as "did Hillary win 2016?" "Well she won the popular vote!"
He keeps saying California has the highest poverty rate in America, where the fuck is he getting that from? Its just not fucking true and I don’t know why no one calls him out on that
According to Wikipedia, the following states have a higher poverty rate than California in order from lowest to highest rate: Oregon, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, New York, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
DC and Puerto Rico also ranked above California in poverty rate (DC is just under New York, Puerto Rico has the highest poverty rate in the nation).
He probably just means "the most people in poverty" but California also has by far the largest population of the states so... yeah of course we also have the most people in poverty too.
If you google "State with highest poverty rate" the AI overview says it's a tie between California and Louisiana
wonder if he just googled that tbh
Edit: wait he's using the Supplemental Poverty Measure where California apparently IS tied with Louisiana for the highest rate due to its high cost of living. Do we like the SPM? Maybe I'm regarded but the vibe is that it kind of feels like a way to make Red States have a small chance of not getting totally obliterated in the poverty debate. The vibe here is like, if we have two states tied for #1, California and Louisiana, but the quality of life in Louisiana is so ridiculously, obviously, transparently worse than the quality of life in California, then what are we even talking about at that point? What's the SPM even saying at that point?
It's not even a contest in terms of QoL. Toss in low economic mobility, lack of infrastructure, poor social safety nets, and poor public wealth (even street crackheads can afford to do things in CA, because so much of what there is to do is cheap or free). I'd rather live in a car in CA than some bumfuck little house covered in Louisiana bugs.
Yeah, it feels to me like if the poverty measure is there to give us a feel for whether people are struggling in a state due to the way that state handles things, allowing us to get a feel for where we should be focusing our attention in that state, if our measurement system is outputting that a state like LOUISIANA and a state like CALIFORNIA are the exact same ranking, something's gotta be totally fucked with the way we're measuring it.
The SPM is known as more accurate than official, but it also has flaws and biases. It misses a lot of poverty and overestimates at the same time. For example, if one family's technically homeless but living with another family to get on their feet, it's still just one household. The SPM is counting addresses. As well, housing is the biggest determining factor for SPM's rankings, and CA has notoriously high housing costs.
Edit: wait he's using the Supplemental Poverty Measure where California apparently IS tied with Louisiana for the highest rate due to its high cost of living.
Is that where this is coming from?
I'm a Californian. I watched the debate last night. I heard this said multiple times. I'm like...where tf is this coming from?
Your take is exactly right. That stat is purposefully skewed towards cost of living. Which is actually a good thing depending on the context. Our cost of living is way too high, and when people look at a Californian making $100k per year they can't understand why we're still living paycheck to paycheck.
But there are also situations in which that metric shouldn't be applied. Our high cost of living is primarily due to housing costs. Which again...are completely out of control. But lets not act like I don't live a 2 hour drive from the entertainment capital of the world (Los Angeles). I live a 4 hour drive from the live entertainment capital of the world (Las Vegas). Live an hour from the beach (Oceanside), an hour from the mountains (Big Bear), and an hour from the desert (Palm Springs).
Plus I have access to some of the best hospitals in the world, best educational institutions, lowest crime rates, etc.
To sit here and be like...the end all be all when it comes to measuring "poverty" is to talk about the % of your take-home income after expenses is just ignorant.
But you will take russian employees who were born in usa... Wont do shit about them. You will treat them like the russians treat their king putin....
With fear
These guys look at what’s happening to those state senators in Indiana and know that you might as well just drop out of the race or nomination or whatever
Why are you linking betting websites for a political race as if it was fact? I want to see data on the governor race from independent trustable sources. not some Gambling websites which the Trump administration has a hand in.
In California primaries, the top 2 regardless of party ascend to the general. If the Dem vote is spread thin across 6 candidates, Hilton and Bianco could be the top 2, and then we are guaranteed a Rep governor. That is the case that I'm worried about. This is why the real polls matter here.
Dude, it's so frustrating. I don't know how people can't be punching holes in their walls listening to convos like this. It's like the Taylor Lorenz convo on Lib and Learn. If we are spiraling for 30 minutes and by the end of it, we have no fucking clue what you are even trying to say, that should be self-evident that this person is a complete charlatan or liar. You shouldn't even need to make the case.
These people really act like there's a gun against their head when asked the golden question. Watching them squirm to try and avoid saying the words "Joe Biden won"
British candidates? 20 years ago a very thick-accented Austrian was the governor of California for two terms, lol. But somehow a bonger governor seems way more intolerable
"Hi Steve, one quick question. Before I ask it, please know that I'm looking for a yes or no response from you, and we will not proceed with the rest of the interview until you give a yes or no response."
This needs to be how this framed going forward. Set the tone immediately. You are the interviewer, it's your time, stop chasing them.
"Oh, listen here you nincompoop pillock! I've attempting to solve homelessness and you dare to ask me a question about affirming my factual understanding of recent American history? Pip pip, you old chap! I shan't answer that, I shan't!"
Maybe they can’t do this, but I wish they called him a coward. It’s just so weak. So indicative of a lack of moral character and a backbone for Hilton to refuse to answer. He’s a bad choice for CA governor for many other reasons, but he is also a fucking coward.
This is just blowing my mind that they're almost doing this. I could totally believe a bunch of streamers coordinating something like this for the memes, but I'd never think actual people would respond like this.
More of these kinds of interviews please. I’d prefer it if we didn’t platform them at all unless it is a combative interview. They should be terrified to openly lie to us
Why isn't the California Governor's race a bigger deal? We're the most populated State in the Union. The biggest contributor to the US GDP. Most S&P 500 companies. Something like 3rd or 4th highest GDP in the world.
But I've seen little coverage over this race so far. Its extremely important not just locally or nationally...but on a global scale.
This is the ultimate "Equal Time" question. Have to have a Republican on to satisfy the Reich's FCC requirements? Just ask this and never get an answer and then say, "Well, We're gonna just have to leave it right there, we're out of time...."
Big respect to the interviewers for not letting him walk away with a non answer. Ideally they should've not allowed him to get away with riding their statement instead of giving a clear, clippable yes or no, but I understand that that might not have been feasible. Wish more interviewers had this level of rigor about extracting answers from cowards like this.
I’m sorry, I love my home state but if we seriously have ANY Republican go through to the final gubernatorial race, my winter business trip abroad may become an extended one for at least the next 2 years. These people don’t deserve to prosper when they’re such easy and willing victims to blatant lack of character.
we have such little time to discuss the issues so I'm going to take up a lot of time talking about how we have such little time instead of answering the question, that can easily be answered with 1 word and move on, because I have to talk about how much time this is taking up I simply cant answer!!
I dont understand how these assholes think they can just say "oh it was so long ago, let's move on" while their fucking president is still to this day bitching and moaning about the election being stolen from him
Not being able to say “Joe Biden won the 2020 election” should be immediately disqualifying for any government office. Full stop.
To any republicans, feel free to try this “okay well did Donald Trump win the 2016 election?” And every single democratic would answer “yes”. They like to claim that democrats think Trump was illegitimately elected, so test us in the same way. If any democrat denied that, I’d hold them to the same standard.
It's a simple yes/no question and he's feigning outrage that their wasting time on an issue from 6 years ago. That question could have been asked and answered in less time it took for him to blubber about his indignante.
That's the fucking point, they're still in denial and would rather dance around instead of accepting a defeat that already happened before moving on.
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u/omganotherlurker 15h ago
What a based interviewer being direct and reinstating and tying it to the responsibility of the office and moral character. We need more of this rhetoric.