Decoding the “Compelling” Attack Ads of the 2024 Campaign

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the fiery advertising war between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. They are joined by Jennifer Lawless, the chair of the politics department at the University of Virginia and the author of “Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era.” Plus, how memes and social media have boosted the Harris campaign. “The Harris campaign will have a couple of uplifting, very positive ads, especially when they announce who the V.P. will be,” Professor Jennifer Lawless says. “But my bet is that this will be a race to the bottom in terms of negativity.”

This week’s reading:

“Trump’s Racist Attack on Kamala Harris Was No Accident,” by Susan B. Glasser
“The Politics of ‘Weird’,” by Jay Caspian Kang
“Does Kamala Harris Need a Latino Campaign?,” by Geraldo Cadava

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I mean I do think the most amazing story out today the most amazing story you'll read is a piece in the
0:07.0	Wall Street Journal explaining the full saga, this really epic story of how Evan Gerskovic was freed and it is a wild story.
0:18.4	Have you guys seen it?
0:19.4	Yeah, you know, I dare you to look at the video of Evan being reunited on the tarmac, you know, first
0:26.6	hugging President Biden and Vice President Harris and then running over to his mom and lifting her in the air.
0:33.6	It is a real tear jerker.
0:35.6	I also want to say it's amazing that the US
0:38.7	expended this diplomatic effort to release not only
0:41.8	three US citizens, but basically a number of
0:44.8	incredible Russian dissidents. What interested me also was the creativity of
0:49.5	the problem solving here which was the traditional thing is sort of a one for one swap, and that the
0:55.6	Biden administration had the creative breakthrough to enlarge this to a really large swap of many people which made it much
1:06.6	more complicated but also much more historic and possible. I'll mangle the
1:11.6	line but Eisenhower had this line something about when you have a problem, sometimes the solution is to make it bigger.
1:17.5	And that really was the diplomatic breakthrough in some sense was complicating it.
1:22.6	It's such a great line and then of course instead of commenting like that in a wise way, understanding history and celebrating this moment,
1:31.4	what did Donald Trump do? He is, of course, attacking it, saying
1:36.0	he could have done better somehow. And I really enjoyed that Biden had such a good response
1:42.1	quickly on his feet when he was asked to respond to Trump claiming
1:46.0	he could have done better and he said, oh really? Well, why didn't he do it when he was president?
1:51.5	Kind of one of those mic drop moments.
1:55.8	Welcome to the political scene,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.