Transcript:
Daniella Gibbs Léger: Hey everyone. Welcome back to “The Tent,” your place for politics, policy, and progress. I’m Daniella Gibbs Léger.
Colin Seeberger: And I’m Colin Seeberger. Daniella, I can’t believe it’s here, but it’s our last episode before Election Day.
Gibbs Léger: I cannot believe this moment has finally arrived.
Seeberger: It feels like this year has been multiple presidential election cycles, but all crammed into one.
Gibbs Léger: Yes, because it literally has been.
Seeberger: It kind of has been. No doubt, no doubt. But I mean, god, you think about the events of the last five, six months—
Gibbs Léger: It’s bonkers!
Seeberger: Somehow we’re all still standing, and somehow I still have hair on my head, shocking everybody.
Gibbs Léger: I mean, these next five days or four days are going to be so stressful. I hope that you are figuring out ways to do some self-care, take care of yourself.
Seeberger: Trying to, trying to.
Gibbs Léger: Well, that’s all we could ask—
Seeberger: Yes.
Gibbs Léger: —is that you try.
Seeberger: Well, of course. You also did have a really great conversation this week.
Gibbs Léger: I did. I talked to Robby Mook, who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 [presidential] campaign, and we discussed what polling and early turnout numbers are looking like, candidates’ closing arguments up and down the ballot, and how to protect our democracy in the next week or two as we await election results.
Seeberger: Obviously, a really important and timely conversation as we head into election week. But first, we have to get to some news.
Gibbs Léger: We do, Colin. And as we’re coming up on the big day, we could usually expect to see major news outlets issuing their endorsements. But a few prominent ones are missing this time around, Colin.
Seeberger: Hmm, I wonder why.
Gibbs Léger: I know! USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and most notably, The Washington Post. Let’s talk about it. The Post in particular, because what has transpired at the paper over the past few days has been really concerning.
This is a paper with a long-standing tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, and its editorial board planned to endorse Vice President [Kamala] Harris this year. Like, they were literally circulating drafts of their piece until their owner, billionaire and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, pulled the plug. With the stakes so high in this year’s election, especially when it comes to our democracy, our basic freedoms, and human rights—you know, little things like that—it’s a weird time to suddenly take issue with endorsements like this.
It also seems odd that the same day that The Post announced they wouldn’t be endorsing this cycle, a representative of Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin, met with Donald Trump.
Seeberger: Hmm.
Gibbs Léger: Robert Kagan, a former editor-at-large and columnist at The Post who resigned on Friday, told reporters that Blue Origin would not have met with Trump if the paper had endorsed Harris, implying that there may have been some sort of conditional arrangement.
Kagan called it a preemptive bending of the knee if Trump were to win. But even if you take Bezos at his word that he had no knowledge of this meeting, his justification for ending endorsements at the paper makes no sense. He claims endorsements don’t impact the election or move the needle. Then, why endorse some local races? But I’ll put that aside.
They’re not about switching votes from one candidate to another. Endorsements are and always have been about supporting a set of values and laying out the case for why a venerated institution like The Post thinks someone is the most qualified candidate for the presidency. And given the decision by papers owned by billionaires to not endorse this cycle, like the LA Times, it seems like the media is handing over elements of journalistic independence and integrity to Donald Trump before he’s possibly even elected. We can see it in the unfair double standard they’ve created on the campaign trail.
Seeberger: Yeah, that’s exactly right, Daniella. I mean, we’ve seen some pretty bonkers decisions from the press over the course of the past several months of this cycle in how they’ve decided to cover the candidates.
At the Trump campaign’s request, I will remind you that CBS News actually agreed to not fact-check the candidates at the vice presidential debate with [Sen.] JD Vance [R-OH] and Gov. Tim Walz [D-MN]. Just because one campaign has no problem lying all the time to the American people does not mean that the press is supposed to abdicate its duty to actually set the record straight, right?
And don’t even get me started on age and incoherence. When President [Joe] Biden, of course, was in the race, the media couldn’t stop themselves from covering every minor verbal gaffe, to whether the guy coughed a little too loud, whatever. But when Trump makes these flagrant mix-ups, you rarely, if ever, hear anything from the press about them.
Gibbs Léger: Right.
Seeberger: We got a great example this week, actually. President Biden had a slip of the tongue, and the media ran with this angle that he doesn’t respect Republican voters and that, by extension, Vice President Harris, of course, doesn’t either—which is absurd. This is the same person who’s doing events with former Rep. Liz Cheney, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, others, right?
This is so clearly a narrative that’s been cooked up by the Trump campaign in order to make demonizing Americans a, quote unquote, “both-sides issue.” But the vice president, of course, she clarified President Biden’s comments and said that she believed that he misspoke. And yet, she also said that she does not support anyone criticizing Americans based on who they vote for.
So, I’m disappointed but not terribly surprised that the press would pick up and run with Trump’s campaign lies. After all, Trump is the one who routinely traffics around with 9/11 truthers, conspiracy theorists, hits the campaign trail with white nationalists, antisemites. He routinely has referred to Democrats and those who oppose him as “political enemies within.” And when asked about those comments, responds by reiterating them again, right?
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, just doubling down.
Seeberger: He routinely promotes and encourages and incites political violence, laughs it off when it happens. It’s not just a question of, should we expect our political leaders to not make mistakes. That’s going to happen. The question in how we are evaluating them should be, how do you respond when these things happen? Do you correct the record, do you apologize, or do you double down? And routinely, time and time and time again, we see Donald Trump double down on his most outrageous, most offensive comments. And yet the media wants to play into the Trump campaign’s spin to try to make this, again, a both-sides issue. It’s absurd.
He’s also said that people who vote for Vice President Harris should have their heads examined and that people who oppose decisions by the [U.S.] Supreme Court should be thrown in jail. It’s ridiculous, and journalists are supposed to hold power to account. And it also proves how much of a problem their coverage has become.
And again, this is happening at a time where we are seeing a candidate in this country who is openly running on authoritarianism. And so, where is the media? You were supposed to be a bulwark for accountability on behalf of the American people. And yet these are the kind of games that we’re seeing them play, all for clicks, all for subscribers, all for more followers on Twitter.com—sorry, X. And again, it’s happening at a time that we can’t have this, because it influences the election by creating a double standard.
Vice President Harris, she did a town hall on CNN last week. And following the event, one of the anchors was absolutely ridiculous in their criticism.
Gibbs Léger: So ridiculous.
Seeberger: I’m not even going to mention who they are, but was so ridiculously critical of the vice president. And I think Van Jones was also on that panel. And he said, in the media’s narrative, Vice President Harris has to be flawless while Donald Trump gets to be lawless. And I just couldn’t think of anything better.
Gibbs Léger: It so well encapsulates everything that is happening right now.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: Well, speaking of Trump being lawless, I want to talk about the split screen we’ve seen from candidates in their final closing arguments on the campaign trail this week. First, we’ve got to talk about this rally that Trump held Sunday night at Madison Square Garden.
Seeberger: You want to call it a rally?
Gibbs Léger: I mean, I don’t even know. It was disturbing, is what it was.
Seeberger: It sure was. It sure was.
Gibbs Léger: All types of bigotry were on display on Sunday. And we referenced some of this earlier, but in case you missed it, one of the opening acts, a right-wing, quote unquote, “comedian”—I think in order to be a comedian you have to be funny, so I put that in quotes—called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” and made vulgar comments about Latinos, comments that have rightfully drawn huge backlash from the Latino community.
Immediately, Puerto Rican celebrities like Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin have since come out and endorsed Vice President Harris and called his bigotry out on social media. And Puerto Rico’s biggest newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, endorsed Harris. Now, the Trump camp tried to claim that they didn’t know he’d make these remarks and that the jokes don’t reflect Trump’s official stances on those groups.
But they did review the material and made edits to the comedian’s set. And they were loaded into the teleprompter. So yes, they did know. And apparently, he wanted to call the vice president the “C” word on stage.
Seeberger: He what?
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, that’s right.
Seeberger: Oh.
Gibbs Léger: That was where they drew the line. They knew that that was too much. They knew exactly what they were doing. And let’s not forget, they didn’t stop with Puerto Ricans and Latinos. This comedian made offensive jokes about Jews, Palestinians, a Black man in the audience. Another opening act used vulgarities to refer to migrants, Hillary Clinton, and women. One speaker called Vice President Harris the Antichrist?
Look, the hate that we saw on full display Sunday night is hardly a one-night affair. This demonization of our fellow Americans is a core feature of not just the Trump campaign, but of MAGA Republicans up and down the ballot. [Sen.] Ted Cruz [R-TX], for instance—in the first half of October alone, roughly 1 in 3 TV ads from the Trump campaign targeted LGBTQ people. That’s tens of millions of dollars in advertising going against a particular group. These people are just showing us who they are time and time again, and we have to believe them.
Seeberger: You’re spot on, Daniella. And I also need to point out that that really stands in stark contrast to the message that we’re hearing from Vice President Harris, who gave her closing argument speech to the American people on Tuesday night. She spoke in D.C. at the Ellipse, which is the same place that former President Trump gave his dark speech right before the insurrection on January 6, 2021, when he attacked [then-Vice President] Mike Pence and told the mob to march down to the Capitol. That mob, of course, later tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, assaulted 140 police officers who were injured because of the events that day. And also, that mob threatened his own vice president’s—Mike Pence’s—life, right?
Gibbs Léger: Let’s not forget that.
Seeberger: In contrast, of course, Vice President Harris gave a really, I think, powerful, hopeful speech about her vision for the country, where she wants to take us into this next chapter in our story.
She reminded us that in a few months, it’ll either be her or Donald Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk. And she said that while Trump would be focused on his enemies list in the Oval Office, checking off names one by one, she’d be focused on the American people and her to-do list. And she committed to giving folks who don’t see eye to eye with her politically a seat at the table and focusing on putting country over party.
And she talked a bit about fighting to give Americans more freedom, not less, about bringing down costs and putting more money back in people’s pockets. She also talked about the moment the country finds itself in and how we should think about it in the context of American crossroads past, right?
She talked about the American Revolution and our country being founded in defiance of a tyrant. She talked about our struggle to secure voting rights for people from Seneca Falls to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and where the moment that we’re in right now really stands as a critical touchpoint in that longer story of a more inclusive, more accountable, more reflective democracy and where we can go from here.
I thought it was a strong, powerful, and deeply patriotic speech from the vice president. And I think that it was a closing argument that’s going to resonate with the American people. And I think it’s also going to only further sharpen the contrast with the message that we heard from Donald Trump and his allies on Sunday night. The Harris-Walz campaign seems to really be sprinting through the tape, finishing really strong, and we’ll see if it pays off on November 5.
Gibbs Léger: Only five more days to go.
Seeberger: Only five. Feels like a lifetime.
Gibbs Léger: It does.
Seeberger: Well, buckle up folks. That’s all the time we have for today. If there’s anything you’d like us to cover on the pod—gee, not like much is going to be happening over the course of the next few weeks—hit us up on Twitter, Instagram, or Threads @TheTentPod. That’s @TheTentPod.
Gibbs Léger: And stick around for my interview with Robby Mook in just a beat.
[Musical transition]
Gibbs Léger: Robby Mook is a political strategist who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He has run a number of other campaigns, including Jeanne Shaheen’s [D-NH] successful Senate run and [former Virginia Gov.] Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial win in 2013. He’s worked for the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and was a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Robby, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Robby Mook: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks.
Gibbs Léger: So this is our last episode before Election Day, and early voting is already underway. Now, I know very well that polling isn’t everything, but what are the polls looking like right now? And what are we seeing in terms of early vote turnout trends? And what do both of these indicators tell us, if anything, about the state of the race?
Mook: Well, let’s start with polling first. I think my answer to what does the polling tell us about the race right now is, we don’t really know. Which is an incredibly unsatisfactory answer.
I say that for two reasons. First is most of the polling we’re seeing, if not all, is within the margin of error. So, we’re seeing both in the battleground states and nationally, either Harris or Trump are ahead by one or two points. And if the margin of error in most of these polls is three, four, five points, either candidate could be winning. So, that’s one way that we just can’t be sure.
The second thing is we saw in the last two presidential cycles, 2020 and 2016—and this is particularly personal for me from 2016—is the data wasn’t right all the time. And there are a number of reasons for that. But the thing I had to learn the hard way is you don’t know if your data is right until after the election. There’s literally no way to confirm it.
And so I think every pollster will say to you right now they think they know ways that they would have done their polling differently in 2020. And they’re doing those things now to make it more accurate, but there’s just no way to understand demographic shifts or changes that make our current methods for doing these pollings not work anymore.
So where this all boils down to me is we don’t know who’s going to win this. Little things probably matter a lot.
Gibbs Léger: So this week, Trump and Harris both made their closing arguments. Usually this is done at a candidate debate, but since Trump refused to do a second one, they did this in the form of separate campaign speeches.
So what did we hear from these speeches, and what did each candidate select as their final pitch to the American people?
Mook: Sadly, or not surprisingly, Donald Trump was back to all of his same old tricks. That event he did at Madison Square Garden was predictably incendiary, racist, insulting, immature, not funny. I think some of the things were meant to be funny. They were not. So it was business as usual, I would say, for Donald Trump.
What’s tricky about Trump and what’s tricky about situations like Madison Square Garden is people will say things that are everything I just said—racist, immature, inappropriate, insulting, offensive—and understandably and rightfully, I think, media organizations feel compelled to report on that and to talk about that.
First of all, I don’t think that’s anything new. I think the American people know this is who Donald Trump is. Or at least, a lot of them. And any time we spend talking about how insulting, reckless, false, offensive Donald Trump is, that’s time that we’re not spending litigating what I think are really important issues on this race—like, who’s going to be a better deal for the middle class.
And so it’s this double challenge, I think, for our democracy where on the one hand we can’t let this kind of rhetoric go unchecked. People can’t say things like that or act that way with impunity, in my opinion. But at the same time, we have to make a proactive case to folks.
And I felt like that dilemma really boiled up over the last few days. I think Harris is walking a tightrope. On the one hand, she has to raise the stakes and drive home the danger of Donald Trump, the true danger of him, both economically and politically in terms of how much he will literally cost the middle class financially.
They’re going to pay more taxes, their goods and everyday services are going to cost more money, so on and so forth. Their health insurance will probably be more expensive and cover less, so on and so forth. I’m sure you’ve had experts on who’ve elaborated on all that.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah.
Mook: But, he is also a danger to our democracy, quite literally. And I’m particularly worried about the ways he will try to weaponize the Justice Department against people. So she has to put all of that in bright lights. People really need to understand what costs could come from supporting Trump.
But she also, I believe, today—what are we, just a handful of days out from the election—she still has to tell people who she is. But really I think for some people, introduce herself. But then also lay down, most important of all, what’s she going to do for people? What’s in it for them? Why should they support her? What positive rationale should they have going in? That’s a lot to do.
Gibbs Léger: It is.
Mook: That’s a lot to do. And all Donald Trump has to go out and say is, “Everything’s terrible, the country’s a mess, wasn’t it so much better under me?” And he’s done. That’s it. Harris has to do all these things.
And, by the way, I’d argue, we still in this country have never elected a woman president. I think for some people, some people will say it out loud, some people will think it behind the scenes, so on and so forth. She’s got to help people imagine her in a role that a woman’s never had in our country. That’s a lot of freight for her to carry.
Gibbs Léger: It really is.
Mook: So I think she did all those things in her speech last night. By the way, massive attendance, great speech, really well done. But it’s a lot to ask from one human being and from one speech.
Gibbs Léger: So you talked about our democracy and fears around that. And I just want to, for this election, I want to talk about the really unique stakes that we have around courts, around other governance systems that are in peril in a way that we haven’t seen in previous elections. Can you talk about some of these potential outcomes and why they’re so unprecedented?
Mook: It’s a great question, in particular because I think sometimes in the public debate around this, it goes to extremes. So, many Republican apologists will say, “Oh, Donald Trump. Well, I guess maybe he said that he’s sympathetic to Nazis, but what does that really mean?” And so on and so forth, which is obviously ridiculous and not serious.
I think on the other hand, some people on our side say, “Democracy will literally end. We will not have elections anymore. The United States will become a dictatorship or an autocracy.” And it could. I mean, we have to accept that could happen. He did praise Hitler and say Hitler did many things, and that’s who Hitler was and that’s what Hitler did. So we have to take that seriously.
On the other hand, I guess for now I’m just speaking personally and none of us can know, none of us have a time machine—but if he were to win, I’m more concerned the way he will erode, particularly our justice system, in damaging ways that could lead to our democracy ultimately breaking apart.
And it could certainly ruin a lot of people’s lives just for saying what they believe or speaking the truth. And that’s the point where then I start to ask, well, what does the U.S. stand for anymore? If we can’t stand for a justice system that doesn’t ever consider politics, where prosecutions or IRS investigations or any official government function is removed from politics and petty personal grievances—that’s what I really worry about. Because I think there’s a lot of ways that he could harass his enemies. And this is the other thing—he said he’ll do it. He said he’ll do these things, that he’ll prosecute people, that he’ll use the powers of government to go after people.
He’s certainly said that he’ll fire government employees at will. And since the beginning of the 20th century, we’ve had a system in place where most public servants are removed from politics. They can’t be removed because a different party comes into office. And I think that’s made our government stronger and better and more professional.
So that’s the danger that I worry about the most, is that he will make it “normal,” quote unquote, to use the tools of government to achieve political and campaign objectives, which is so dangerous and destabilizing.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, that’s utterly terrifying. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the downballot candidates. We have a lot of them who are in tight races, are wrapping up their campaigns. So I’m anxious about a lot of them. Are there any in particular that you’re watching?
Mook: Speaking broadly, I think something we haven’t talked about enough this cycle—let’s start with the Senate—is how many Senate races we have in presidential battleground states. I think we tend to focus—particularly as a Democrat—focus on Montana and Ohio, which are very competitive races, despite the fact that Trump is very widely expected to win both of those states by comfortable margins, which is an achievement.
But Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—they’re all presidential battlegrounds. And the question in a presidential year for these downballot races is always how much split-ticket voting are we going to have? And what makes this cycle so unique, as we talked about earlier, is for the first time in my recollection, every battleground state is not just within the margin of error, but basically tied. We’re talking about a lead of one, maybe two points. The national ballot, according to the polls—which might be wrong—appears to be tied as well, which has a whole bunch of implications we can talk more about if you want.
So what that says to me is if Trump were to win, we’re going to need some ticket-splitting in these states. And we’ve got a lot that are ground zero for the presidential, where both presidential candidates are doing turnout or campaigning heavily. So I think that’s something we don’t often talk about enough.
And I think what that translates into: The Senate map could really flip either way. I think most of us talk about the Senate map in terms of small margins. Well, we might win, we could pick up one seat, or we’ll only lose one seat or two seats. It’s possible, given how many people we have in battleground states, we could lose a lot more. Which again is why my mantra is take nothing for granted.
Look, on the House, as I mentioned earlier, the national vote seems much more narrow than certainly in the 20 years that I’ve been involved in this. What does that mean for the House? Well, I think neither party is going to win the House by a large margin. I think given the way redistricting changed things in the last few years, I think the days of these big House majorities are over. We’re going to have tiny margins, which has huge implications for lawmaking, by the way. We’ve seen what a small majority meant for the Republicans the last few years. I think the Democratic caucus will be much more disciplined and ideologically aligned. So I don’t see the kind of dysfunction and brinksmanship that you saw on the Republican side.
But there is an implication for lawmaking when you have tiny majorities like this. So I’m optimistic we can win the House, but we’ve got to look at New York and California and what happens there. There’s two very good seats in New York. Four or five, maybe even six. I don’t have my list in front of me. In California, a lot of good opportunities there.
So that’s what I’d be watching on election night. The problem in California is, I think, it takes a long time for those races to get back. So that’s probably my final thing. In the House, make a few bags of popcorn, because it’s going to be a few days until that gets resolved.
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. So we’re seeing MAGA radicalists indicate that they want to interfere with the election, whether through on-the-ground intimidation and violence or bogus legal challenges like the one that is happening in Pennsylvania right now over our provisional ballots that Republicans are sending to the Supreme Court. I have to say, it is ironic how many of those same voices that are fearmongering over voter fraud support meddling in our free and fair elections.
So this is obviously very dangerous. How do we combat this? And what role do you think the Supreme Court might play here?
Mook: Well, sadly, I mean, they could be the decider of this election. And I say “sadly” just because I don’t think they’re impartial.
Gibbs Léger: Right.
Mook: We already saw earlier this year, they said anything the president does in his official capacity, he’s immune from prosecution.
And we heard during the case, one of the justices in the district court said, “Does that mean the president can send a SEAL team out to assassinate an opponent?” And I guess the answer is yes.
Gibbs Léger: Sure. Yeah.
Mook: Right? So, I don’t trust the Supreme Court. And we already saw in 2000, I mean, the votes were being counted. The margin was narrowing. In all mathematical likelihood, [Democratic presidential candidate] Al Gore was going to win. And the Supreme Court just said, “Stop counting. Why should we keep counting?” And I’ve still never heard a rationale for why we couldn’t keep counting.
Gibbs Léger: Right, because there was none.
Mook: Yeah. So, I worry a lot about that. On a positive note, I do think the new law they passed did streamline and clarify at least from the voting certification at the statewide level up to the Electoral College, and ratification of that by Congress.
So I think the ability of the fever dreamers and the conspiracy theorists to think that somehow in the Capitol they can magically rip the presidency from the voters—that’s been deflated, at least. What I am concerned about—and we’ll just have to see how it plays out—is I do think there are bad actors at the county level who are going to either vote not to certify the results or vote to certify bogus results. And I think they know exactly what they’re doing. I don’t think they’re under delusions. I think if Trump loses, they’re just going to try to mix it up.
And what that’s going to mean, I presume, is that a court is going to have to intervene and say, “Hey, there’s a right way to do this,” and either force them to do the right thing or the judge—I’m not a lawyer, but I presume the judge then has the ability to do the right thing. But again, that can work its way. We could have one county in Pennsylvania that has to get all the way up to the Supreme Court. So, that’s something to watch.
What do we do about it? Honestly, I think the first thing is, let’s watch things play out. Let’s not light our hair on fire before anything’s happened. But let’s also be prepared. And I think people are prepared. I don’t think anybody’s under any illusions about what could happen. So, let’s be prepared to use the peaceful means, the legal process, the facts, to make sure that the correct result comes out.
By the way, I would say the same thing as the person who was in the room with Hillary Clinton when we determined that we couldn’t win, that we’d lost. With her, when we set the time for her to go out and concede, I would say the same thing.
If Donald Trump has won in a free and fair manner, we as Democrats need to back that result up. The people are in charge. This is their call. Their votes matter. So I think we also need to recognize that this isn’t just about helping Harris win. This is about helping the person who got the most votes win.
Gibbs Léger: Well, you just answered my last question, and I think that’s a really great point to end this interview on—that at the end of the day, it’s about preserving our democratic norms and making sure that the will of the people is heard and counted, regardless of what the outcome is, as long as every vote is actually counted.
I want to thank you for joining us and giving our listeners some last-minute insight and tips as we all chew our fingernails down for the last five days. Robby, thank you so much for joining us on “The Tent.”
Mook: Oh, it’s absolutely my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, and for what you guys do.
[Musical transition]
Gibbs Léger: All right, folks, thanks for listening. Be sure to go back and check out previous episodes. Before we go, we’ve got a lot to catch up on, Colin.
Seeberger: We do. We do. Let’s just get the bad stuff out of the way. Well, we have enough hate and division in our country right now, and we need more love.
Gibbs Léger: We do. Oh, we’re just going to skip past talking about football?
Seeberger: Yeah, we’re just going straight to “Love is Blind.”
Gibbs Léger: OK, let’s go straight to “Love is Blind.” All right.
Seeberger: Give the people what they want, Daniella.
Gibbs Léger: This is what the people want. Nobody wants to talk about our terrible teams. So, as of this taping, the reunion will be airing tonight. So we don’t have deets on that, but we can talk about everything else.
Oh my goodness. First of all, again, it’s “Love is Blind” Arlington edition. Like, these people don’t live in D.C.
Seeberger: Definitely not D.C. Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: It’s fine. Let’s just be clear about what this is.
Seeberger: Definitely giving south of the Potomac [River].
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, most definitely. All right, where do we want to begin? Do we want to start with Leo? Do we want to start with Hannah and Nick? I mean—
Seeberger: How much time do we have?
Gibbs Léger: Not enough to go through everything.
Seeberger: Leo, oh gosh.
Gibbs Léger: Ick!
Seeberger: I mean, the most sadistic—
Gibbs Léger: Ugh.
Seeberger: —narcissistic—
Gibbs Léger: Such a narcissist.
Seeberger: —controlling—
Gibbs Léger: Oh my god.
Seeberger: —everything I’ve ever seen before.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah.
Seeberger: I am just so grossed out by the guy.
Gibbs Léger: And he thought he was God’s gift to this earth.
Seeberger: Oh, yes. I’m sure he has told many a woman that over the years. Yeah, I don’t even know where to begin. So my question is like, how do we feel about Hannah?
Gibbs Léger: OK.
Seeberger: Because that was—
Gibbs Léger: Hannah had—
Seeberger: That was a rollercoaster.
Gibbs Léger: We went on a journey with Hannah this season, OK? So very much I was team Hannah. I thought the way that he treated her—when she was like, “I’ve made up my mind,” then he was like, “Well, what if I said …?”—so manipulative and so disgusting. And I felt for her in that moment.
Then, I watched her interactions with Nick. Now, you can think that the person you’re with has some flaws and that maybe they need to work on some things.
Seeberger: And most of us do.
Gibbs Léger: All of us do, exactly. None of us are perfect. But baby girl, your 26 was screaming really loud with the way she talked to him and demeaned him.
Seeberger: It was gross.
Gibbs Léger: It was so gross. Like, “I made you into the man that you are today.” What?
Seeberger: You did what?
Gibbs Léger: You did who and what now? And I’m not a big Nicky D fan.
Seeberger: No.
Gibbs Léger: But, I’m sorry, she jumped into villain territory for me.
Seeberger: Yeah. Treat the guy with just an ounce of respect. It was so wild. Speaking of wild, we’ve got to talk about Stephen.
Gibbs Léger: Do we?
Seeberger: Because Stephen and Monica were, I think, my like top favorite couple outside of, of course, Garrett and Taylor. Because—
Gibbs Léger: We love them.
Seeberger: We love them. They can do no wrong, and are ridiculously attractive, right? But Stephen and Monica.
Gibbs Léger: I did not see that coming. So this is where the interwebs tell me that there’s a lot of stuff that’s on the cutting room floor that we didn’t see, because that conversation seemed to come out of nowhere.
Seeberger: Nowhere.
Gibbs Léger: And like—
Seeberger: My jaw was on the ground.
Gibbs Léger: I was so floored. And I’m like, how did we go from this guy who seemed to be perfect and worship the ground that she walked on to like—
Seeberger: As he should.
Gibbs Léger: As he should, because she’s a goddess—to cheating and just being like, what?
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah, so that was disappointing, to say the least.
Seeberger: It was. It was. Also, I mean, it’s hard to tell whether folks just don’t have the heart and moral courage to call something off if it’s not working, right?
Gibbs Léger: Right.
Seeberger: Versus, like, how much we have to go to these extreme scenarios of the guy cheating on her and there being texts and everything, right? Like, come on, dude, step up.
Gibbs Léger: Just step up. Just say, “This isn’t working for me.”
Seeberger: “It’s not working.”
Gibbs Léger: Yeah.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: So we need to talk about Ramses and Marissa.
Seeberger: Daniella, I cannot. Ramses is—
Gibbs Léger: First of all, the two things. What are those? Those two, like, random dreads?
Seeberger: The little rat tails? Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: Red flags No. 1 and 2.
Seeberger: Yes. It gives me the ick.
Gibbs Léger: Oh, it also gives me the ick that he was very much centered on—how do I say this in a way that’s appropriate for children?—focused on his needs, regardless of how she was feeling.
Seeberger: Yes, yes.
Gibbs Léger: And I’m like, you, my dude, are not prepared to be in a real relationship.
Seeberger: No.
Gibbs Léger: At all, if this is where you’re coming at with this.
Seeberger: I mean, I would expect better from like somebody in a high school relationship.
Gibbs Léger: Yeah.
Seeberger: Much less, one that is being broadcast on national television, right?
Gibbs Léger: Exactly. And when he’s been married already.
Seeberger: Yes!
Gibbs Léger: Now, maybe we know why he got divorced.
Seeberger: Yes!
Gibbs Léger: So, I felt for Marissa because she had said all along that she was worried about—she has a lot of personality and she knows it, and being too much for somebody. And so then to have Ramses go and throw that in her face.
Seeberger: Right. Go right at the thing that she was most vulnerable about.
Gibbs Léger: And not be like, “We can work on this.” Because she was like, “We don’t have to get married. We can keep dating.” Like, just ending it. The interwebs were split. People were like, I wish that she didn’t get so raw and crumpled on the ground and crying and begging him. And I’m like, you know what? That’s real.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: Sometimes you go through a breakup and it feels like your heart is literally being crushed into a thousand pieces. And that’s your reaction. And personally, I was crying because I felt it so deeply and viscerally. This made me love her even more and hate Ramses even more.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: And also maybe respect her mom, who maybe didn’t say things in the most polite way, but mama knew.
Seeberger: Ma’am.
Gibbs Léger: She knew. Ma’am. Ma’am was correct. OK, quickly—Tyler and Ashley. Do we think they’re going to make it, given the baby mama’s drama?
Seeberger: I don’t know. I mean, this is the one that I feel like has thrown me for a loop. I feel like more than any couple on this entire season, it’s hard for me to really get a read on where they are, what conflicts are, like, we can’t move forward, right? Versus when there are playful disagreements and seeing things from different perspectives. Loving couples who are committed to each other have these kinds of disagreements all the time, right? And for me, it’s very hard to tease out when it’s in one of those buckets versus the next, even though we’re talking about wild revelations.
Gibbs Léger: Wild.
Seeberger: Yeah.
Gibbs Léger: So I just I wonder, it’s one thing to have it sprung after you propose that you have donated sperm to your friends so they can have kids. It is quite the other thing to find out that two of those kids were in fact not donation, but they were made the old-fashioned way. That’s a lie. That is a big, big lie. And to say you don’t have any relations with the kids, and then the baby’s mama puts pictures on Instagram of you with the kids at the holidays. So if I’m Ashley, I’m like, wow.
Seeberger: Girl, come check your man.
Gibbs Léger: So I’m going to be sitting there at 9 o’clock tonight just to see what has happened with the two of them.
And as far as Garrett and Taylor are concerned, if they’re not together, I’m just going to burn it all down. That’s it.
Seeberger: Completely agree.
Gibbs Léger: Yep. That’s it. Because they’re end game. They’re goals. They’re wonderful. They are Olivia Munn and Captain America. Like, I love them. I love them so much. Garrett’s glow up is—
Seeberger: So good.
Gibbs Léger: So good.
Seeberger: So good.
Gibbs Léger: She did not need a glow up because she was already stunning.
Seeberger: Stunning.
Gibbs Léger: Yep. All right, we’ve got some good TV to watch tonight.
Seeberger: We certainly do. And we all could use a little release from time to time over the course of the next five days.
Gibbs Léger: We certainly can, folks. So y’all find your joy, whatever it is, and come back to it frequently over the next couple of days. Because you’re going to need it. And we will talk to you next week.
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Gibbs Léger: “The Tent” is a podcast from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s hosted by me, Daniella Gibbs Léger, and co-hosted by Colin Seeberger. Erin Phillips is our lead producer. Kelly McCoy is our supervising producer. Mishka Espey is our booking producer. Muggs Leone is our digital producer.
Hai Phan, Matthew Gossage, Olivia Mowry, and Toni Pandolfo are our video team. Views expressed by guests of “The Tent” are their own and interviews are not endorsements of a guest’s perspectives. You can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.