Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO

**Jason Friedberg** (0:00)
How good do I look? I'm so sun kissed.

**David Sacks** (0:02)
How many buttons down are you?

**Jason Friedberg** (0:04)
Oh my God, I have three buttons.

**David Sacks** (0:06)
Three buttons.

**Jason Friedberg** (0:07)
No, look, look, look, look.

**David Sacks** (0:10)
Is there a button below that we can't see?

**Jason Friedberg** (0:12)
No pants. No pants either? There's no pants.

**David Sacks** (0:17)
Are you free buttoning and free balling it? Is both happening or what?

**Jason Friedberg** (0:38)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the All Line Pod. This week, our hostess with the mostest, Jay Cal is out with COVID, getting treated, spending the day in bed. We wish him well. We wish him a speedy recovery. We are going to plow forward like all championship teams do. This week, I think we're going to kick it off with a conversation about the election update. Obviously, Harris came out, guns are blazing in the media, the accolades seem to be flying, and the polling data is starting to become worrisome, it seems, for the Republicans. Just this week, Nate Silver released his newest model update. The Silver Bulletin, I think, he's got it trademarked as nowadays. And in the model, he tries to estimate, what does the polling data show us with respect to the electoral college and the popular vote in the upcoming presidential election? Harris currently has a 42.5% probability of winning the electoral college, Trump 56.9%, Kennedy coming in at 0%.
On the popular vote, Harris has a 57.1% probability of winning the popular vote, 42.9% probability for Trump. I guess I'll start it off with David Sacks. Sacks, given the momentum coming out of the gate since the announcement of Harris as the Democratic nominee and the threesync polling data, what's your read on the landscape today? What's your read on where we stand and what's ahead here? And what do you take away from these polls?

**David Sacks** (2:16)
Well, look, I think what happened is that Biden dropped out of the race, he abdicated, Harris took over, and it created a sense of euphoria on the part of the left because they thought they had a surefire loser with Biden and they were divided. And then once Harris replaced him, they thought, okay, now we got a shot and we can fully unify and get behind this new candidate. So what you've seen is over the past couple of weeks, the mainstream media has gone all out on behalf of Kamala Harris. And yes, this has led to a rise in the polls. But I think that the highs that Trump were at were always a little bit artificial in the sense that if the Democrats could field a candidate who could campaign, it was always going to be a close election. Biden was artificially depressed in the polling because he just couldn't campaign. He could barely read from a prompter, he couldn't do interviews. So I think you're seeing the race normalizing. This is going to be a close one. It's going to be a nail biter. But I think the question about this honeymoon period that Harris has right now is whether it's sustainable. I mean, she has not done any press interviews. She has not done any press conferences. She's not answered one question. She's not been asked one tough question by the media.
She has only read from a teleprompter. She's only done scripted appearances. And yet at the same time, she's basically been changing all of her policy positions and running from every position she ever stood for. So for example, she said that she was in favor of single payer. Now she's against it. She said she was in favor of court packing. Now she's against it. She said she was against fracking. Now she's in favor of it. On the border, she said that we should consider abolishing ICE. Now all of a sudden, she's in favor of more funding for border patrol. On crime, she used to take kind of the BLM position that cops don't make us safer, to now she's saying that she's a cop and prosecutor herself. She used to be in favor of federal gun buybacks. Now she's against them. It just goes on and on. I mean, in the 2020 riots, she raised money for the legal defense of rioters. Now she's distancing herself from those positions. My point is this, is that after spending really her whole career staking out positions on the far left, she has now dropped all of these positions for political expediency. And the question is, what does she stand for at all? Does she just kind of blow with the wind and say whatever helps her win whatever the next election is? I mean, I think that's basically what's going on here. And normally what happens is the press would ask you that question, but she's been getting a free pass because the mainstream media has basically been operating as a division of the DNC, and they're not holding her to account in any way. They're not requiring her to answer any questions. And as a result, yes, you're seeing this bounce in the polls. But I think the question is, can she sustain this for 100 days? Can she really get through the entire election without having gone through a primary, without ever having to explain her positions on issues? And she just does these short scripted appearances. I just think that at some point over the next 100 days, that approach is just going to fall apart. She's going to have to do a debate. She's going to have to answer questions. At that point, I think the bloom will come off the rose a little bit here, and you'll see the polls normalize.