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US midterms: An opportunity for voters to choose their economic future

This podcast was originally published by the BBC here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172ydq57tyy2z0

The midterms decide who controls Congress as well as state legislatures and governor’s offices. Rahul Tandon is joined by Dianne Brady, assistant managing editor of Forbes from New York and Tony Nash, the founder of Complete Intelligence in Texas.

Billions of US dollars are being spent on the election campaign adverts that voters will be seeing and hearing in the run-up to the elections – but is it worth the investment?

And has the economic situation in the US overshadowed the overturning of Roe v Wade?

Transcript

Rahul

Hello, and welcome to Business Matters here on the BBC World Service. I’m Rahul Tandonin-depth. On the program today, we’re taking an in depth look at the US midterms. As millions of Americans get ready to vote, we’re going to be looking at the economic factors that are going to have a huge impact on their decisions. I’ll be joined throughout the program, as always, by two guests on opposite sides of the world. We have Dianne Brady, assistant managing editor of Forbes, who’s in New York, was on the program just a couple of days ago, but she did so well, we decided to bring her back. Diane, is it exciting in New York? Are people gripped by election fever?

Dianne

Well, yes and no. Let’s just say New York is considered a flyover state by some, so I don’t think this would be considered a swing state. But yes, lots of excitement, of course, as we look around the country, and everything feels high stakes.

Rahul

It does indeed. The laugh you heard there was from Tony Nash, who is the founder of Complete Intelligence, who’s in Texas you need quite a lot of intelligence to understand the midterms. I think, Tony.

Tony

I’ve never heard of New York described as a fly overstate.

Dianne

All right, well, I’m a Canadian turned American citizen, so forgive me all listeners who think I’m being cavalier here, but I think it’s not inaccurate.

Rahul

But I don’t think there’s no need to ask for forgiveness so far in the program.

Dianne

The election is over.

Rahul

Yeah, maybe by the end of it you might need more than forgiveness, but who knows? Tony, for our listeners who will have heard of the midterms, can you try and explain what happens here? Because there’s lots of terms that we’re going to use. The Senate, the House, governors. I mean, what are people voting for?

Tony

Sure. So every four years we have a presidential election where you vote from the president on down to, say, local offices. Like in Texas, it’s people who run your waterboard and judges and your local commissioners. So it’s from the president on down. In between presidential elections, we have what are called the midterms.

Tony

So every two years so in the US. House of Representatives, those representatives have to campaign and be reelected every two years. Senators are reelected every six years. So not every senator is up for election in every election cycle. And then you have governors, and those governor’s terms change by state. They’re not always the same. In some cases, it’s four years. In some cases it’s five years. And I don’t know if there’s other places, but Americans are now voting on kind of everything except the president, and those, say, Senate seats and governorships that are not up for vote.

Rahul

Well, I tell you what. That was pretty impressive, actually. If you ever see a job as a sort of political correspondent, I think you might get one, Tony, I think we’re done here. Real quick.

Dianne

Tony, summer up beautifully.

Rahul

There we go. Should we all go? No. Oh, probably not, Dianne. And this is important, isn’t it? Because at the moment, the Democrats, which is the party of President Biden, they control the House and the Senate, there is a strong possibility that they may lose both, which will have huge implications for President Biden’s ability to pass legislation.

Rahul

I think Diane said there’s a lot to get through and we’re going to try and get through some of that. Let’s start by looking at the key economic issues.

Rahul

Cost of living, Tony, is something that people around the world want tackled. I’m sure that as people begin to cast their votes in a few hours time, when those polls do eventually open up on Tuesday for the midterms, that will be close to the top of the agenda. When we talk about the Democrats and the Republicans, the left and the right, what are the big economic differences between them and tackling this problem?

Tony

Well, I think there was a bill passed about a year ago, the Inflation Reduction Act. Diane, tell me if I’m wrong. I think it was $3 trillion in spending, and I think that was one that many Republicans didn’t want because there was a feeling that that was going to contribute to inflation. And so I think there was. The irony of it is just a year earlier, in the depths of COVID there was a massive stimulus package passed under the Republicans that everyone was happy about. So I think it’s easy to say, while the Democrats are the ones who spend and the Republicans are the ones who don’t, it’s not really the case. It really just depends on what they spend on. Republicans tend to spend on things like defense and security and law enforcement and these sorts of things. Democrats tend to spend on things like social programs. So I don’t know that one is necessarily more disciplined than the other. They just have different spending priorities.

Rahul

When we think of Texas, we think of gas, gas prices. We’ve seen President Biden releasing those strategic reserves of oil to try and bring down the price of gas. Is it that crucial a factor, do you think, in these elections? Will Americans just look at the cost of putting it in their vehicles and say, it’s too high, I don’t want to vote for this government?

Tony

Well, I think I saw a poll earlier today and I think it said that 65% of Americans believe that Biden is responsible for high gasoline prices. And I thought that was really surprising. I think it was from Pew. I can’t remember who it was from, but it was credible polling group. So Americans do see that and they do see that on Biden’s first day, he killed the pipeline, a potential pipeline from Canada, which would have brought heavy sour crude from Canada to fill US refinery.

Rahul

But these are global factors really, aren’t? I mean, of course, there are individual factors that will impact that.

Tony

No, they’re not global factors because the fact is, the sources of the crude that we need for American refineries is heavy sour. And there’s places like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or other places where we could get it. But the most accessible is Canada. And so Americans do pay attention to that stuff, and they do pay attention to what is impacting gasoline prices because it’s such a huge portion of their budget. And so I think policy does lead to the cost of living, and I think it is a big factor. And I think people are looking at the way the different parties have reacted to this. And when that pipeline was canceled, republicans were very unhappy and voiced it. So I think that’s the case. And like I said, I think 60, 65% of Americans believe that Biden does have responsibility for the gasoline price in the US.

Rahul

Tony, one thing that often happens after midterm elections in the US is we begin to get an idea of who the presidential candidates are going to be. Do you think that we are likely to see in two years time a rerun of President Biden against Donald Trump, or do you think it will be other candidates for both parties?

Tony

To be honest, I think it’s too early to tell. I think even if Donald Trump starts campaigning Tuesday or Wednesday, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a done deal because people like Ronda Santos have taken a national profile.

Rahul

That’s the governor of Florida, isn’t it?

Tony

Governor of Florida. That’s right. And so I don’t think that Trump kind of as the Republican candidate is a done deal. I also don’t think that Biden as the Democrat candidate is a done deal. I think we’re very much things are very much in play, and really, anything could happen. I wouldn’t want to put money on, say, Trump or Biden right now because I think two years is a long time.

Rahul

Is it a bit harder for the Democrats? Because we know that with the Florida governor, there is, it seems, a candidate that the Republican Party can get behind if it isn’t President Biden, is there an obvious Democratic candidate at this moment in time? Tony.

Tony

I think there are a lot of people who believe they are, but I think maybe Gavin Newsom in California, but I think his politics are a little bit too far left for most of those independent votes that both Republicans and Democrats really try to get in order to get elected. So I think people like Gavin Newsom in terms of, like, political consultants do, because he looks good on television and all this other stuff, but I just don’t think he’s electable for a nationwide office.

Rahul

What we’re seeing here, Tony, and there’s a large Hispanic community, isn’t it, in Texas who play a significant role in elections there. Are we seeing these communities, whether it’s the Latino voter, whether it’s the black vote saying, don’t take my vote for granted, and that’s a message for all parties.

Tony

Sure, absolutely. If you look, say, on the border in the US. Part of my family lives in Del Rio, Texas, and they’ve never seen the quantity of people crossing the border that they’ve seen before, traditionally Democratic voters. And they’re really questioning their voting intentions because of the things that they’re seeing on the border. We’ve seen Texas border counties really start to swing right because of that. These communities that are small and safe and other things have really had an influx of people, and it’s really threatened, I guess, their way of life on the border. So some of these places that were very, very securely Democratic locations have started to move away from that.

Rahul

Tony, have you been flooded with lots of different political adverts as well across TV, across social media, across everything?

Tony

Yeah, I saw more during the World Series than I had seen in other places, but I just kind of ignore them, to be honest.

Tony

Yeah, I think it can I think a couple of dances on TikTok are probably worthwhile as well, but I think TV advertising is probably worth it.

Rahul

Are there any dancers of Tony Nash on TikTok, by any chance?

Tony

No, but I’ve seen some comments about different candidates kind of dancing on TikTok, and it was kind of silly. But it does get people talking about the candidate, and who knows if it works. I’m not 22 anymore, so it may work on me if I was 22.

Rahul

And when we’re looking at turnout here, we touched on it briefly before we heard John Sadworth saying to us that it was going to be a good turnout here. But the simple fact is, in the midterms, the majority of voters never vote, do they?

Dianne

That’s usually the case. I don’t think that will be the case this time. Tony, what do you think?

Tony

So I went to early vote last week, and I had to stand in line for quite a while to vote. So I think people are really, really engaged this time around, and I think it’s mostly because people’s pocketbooks are hurting and they’re just tired of it. So I think you’re hugely engaged because of the economy.

Rahul

That is interesting. Let us see what those numbers are. We will get them very, very shortly. Tony, if you believe the polls, and often that may not be a sensible thing to do nowadays when we talk about elections, they do seem to indicate that this is not going to be as important an issue. Clearly it’s a very difficult issue for many Americans, but it’s not going to sway voters as much as maybe people thought it was going to sway voters a few months ago.

Tony

It definitely won’t, I think. Look, all the Supreme Court said is that they’re leaving it up to the states, and so there’s no issue for mobility in the US. So people can go to another state to have an abortion if they want. So I think we had the initial emotion after the Supreme Court judgment, but I think when people really realized it’s a state issue and many of the things in the US. Constitution are really devolved to the states, and so this just takes that same issue and puts it up to the states unless the states decide. And so I think most adults, when they read it and they consider that if they really want to have an abortion, they can drive or get on a flight and go to another state, it’s really actually pretty simple.

Rahul

It’s a communicated economy, the US. Isn’t it? Because you look at it and we hear this talk of recession, we hear this talk about the incredible rises in inflation, cost of living, and at the same time, you sort of hear still about a very strong jobs market. Still.

Tony

Yes. But what we are starting to see there was an announcement yesterday, I think, that Meta, Facebook will soon be announcing major job cuts. And so job cuts are starting to hit the tech sector. Companies like Stripe laid off, I think, 18% of their workforce. Twitter had some big layoffs last week, and so tech is really starting to be hit hard with layoffs. So a lot of the discussion about job vacancies and unemployment, say, out of the Fed and the White House, that will start to even out. And the job market by the end of the year will likely be much less strong than it is right now.

Rahul

Yeah, I knew Twitter was going to make its way into the program at some particular point. Okay. Prediction diane. What is what’s going to happen?

Dianne

I think the House will go to the Republican. Senate, will hold Democrat, and Biden will have a tougher time the next two years.

Tony

Tony, Republicans get the House, they get 52 in the Senate, and they pick up a couple of governorships.

Rahul

Okay, well, thank you to both of you for your insights and thoughts on the American midterm elections. Americans will vote on Tuesday for the Senate, for the House, for governors as well. We’ll bring you all the results here on the BBC World Service. You.

Categories
Podcasts

Microsoft Executive Backs Australian Government In Tech War

Tech war in Australia, Trump’s impeachment hearing, companies moving to cheaper areas, volatility in the market, and online dating — these are some of the topics in the recent guesting of Tony Nash at BBC’s Business Matters. From Texas, he joins Rahul Tandon in UK and Michelle Jamrisko in Singapore.

 

What will happen to Australian businesses if Google left? Will Biden be involved in China deals? How will Trump’s impeachment hearings will bring about? How will this move to rural places evolve overtime, for example Californian companies moving to Texas? How will the stocks market play out with too much volatility with increasing number of retail investors? And will online scrabble be the new way of dating?

 

This podcast was published on February 12, 2021 and the original source can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x197h9pkh53

 

BBC Business Matters Description:

 

The President of Microsoft, Brad Smith, says Australia’s proposals that tech giants pay for news appearing on their services, strengthen democracy by supporting a free press. We hear more from Rebecca Klar, a tech journalist from The Hill. As the second cricket test match in this series between India and England starts this weekend, the BBC’s Rahul Tandon reports that more Indian players are now coming from smaller towns than bigger cities, and how that reflects a broader economic change taking place in the country. It’s an interesting time for dating services with the pandemic throwing the world of romance into disarray; our reporter Deborah Weitzmann has been to meet some people looking for love in the time of Covid. And we’re joined throughout the programme by Michelle Jamrisko, Blomberg’s senior Asia economy reporter who is based in Singapore and economist, Tony Nash from Complete Intelligence; he’s based in Houston.

 

 

Show Notes

 

RT: Will there be some sort of compromise? Because Australia, and many of the businesses in Australia, particularly small and medium sized ones, would struggle if Google suddenly left?

 

TN: They would. How much of a compromise there would be? I’m not sure, and I think about like GDP in Europe, that wasn’t a real huge compromise. We start to see these nation states starting to act like nation states again. We’ve seen India push back on Twitter over the past. Right? And we’re starting to see countries push back on tech giants because they’re sovereign nations.

 

RT: What will we see countries getting together in a unified way to push back on the tech giants because there are two very powerful sides there?

 

TN: I hope they do, because they rule their own countries. And it’s up to a company to learn how to operate within a geography rather than the other way around.

 

RT: Do you think President Biden will want to get involved in this particular issue?

 

TN: I don’t think so. It’s interesting when you look at, like China has their way with tech companies all day long. They cultivate their own giants and they do whatever they want with Western companies. I don’t really think Biden will get involved or want to get involved, to be honest. I think it has a lot to do with whoever is closer to the campaign and whoever is closest to the Oval Office. But I think he would want to stay out of it.

 

RT: Do you think minds will be changed amongst those Republicans, 17 of them are going to have to vote to impeach President Trump? That looks unlikely, doesn’t it?

 

TN: Well, like Joe Biden, I really don’t know of anybody who’s watched it.

 

RT: I read something that said this had more viewers than the first impeachment trial. But from what you’re saying, it’s not exactly something that’s bringing in the ratings figures.

 

TN: I’m a political nerd. I talk to people all the time. I honestly don’t know of anybody who’s watching it. So what you say is possible, but it’s just not what I see. Do I think they change minds? Look, Trump is out of office like somebody pining over like losing a football game or something. This guy is out of office. They need to just let him go. That’s the way most of the people who I speak to feel. Every politician is competitive. Every politician uses rhetoric to win. And what Trump said was no different from what many, many Republicans and Democrats have said over the last four, eight, 12, 16 years. So I think this is just a clown show and it’s not going to result in anything.

 

RT: Michelle raised an interesting question, that is this about preventing what happened, making sure it doesn’t happen again or is a little bit about this preventing from Donald Trump running again?

 

TN: It’s more the latter than the former. If we look at the Supreme Court justice discussions over the last two years, especially during the cabinet hearings, there were protests in government buildings in the capital all over the place, people being violent.

 

RT: But this was different and they’re very different.

 

TN: But I don’t understand how it was different because though this was different because there was so much ruckus made about it and people wanted to make an issue of it. But if you look at the protests and the violence around the Kavanaugh hearings and you set them side by side with what happened on January 6th, there is very, very little difference aside from the Capitol Police letting people into the Capitol building, which they did.

 

And it’s on footage. People also let protesters into various government buildings during the Capitol hearings. So, again, this is completely about Donald Trump. Democrats are obsessed with Donald Trump and they just need to let it go. The guy’s not even in office anymore, so they just need to let it go.

 

RT: It’s not going to be let go for a while. And it’s going to be a conversation that we will be continuing here on business matters over the next few days as that impeachment trial continues. And Tony, China says to the U.S. confrontation will be disastrous. President Biden says he will work with China when it benefits the American people and he will have to work with China on some issues when he particularly his ideas on climate change.

 

TN: We will live in an integrated world. I actually think Xi Jinping would talk a a tougher game on climate change than Biden would. He certainly has at the World Economic Forum for several years. The question is what they actually do about it.

 

I actually worked for the Chinese government for a couple of years and the Central Economic Planning Agency. So I understand in a very detailed matter how the Chinese government actually works. And this discussion is just preliminary. It doesn’t mean anything. OK, we’ll know in six or nine or 18 months what the real policies are.

 

My concerns are with, we really have to look at the people on the National Security Council in the US and their relationships with China.How many paid speeches have they had in China that those are the biggest issues that we need to look at with regard to China policy today from the U.S. perspective.

 

RT: That trend in India where we’re seeing the growth of what’s called Taiwan tier two, often, these much smaller towns. Is that something that you’re seeing in Texas at all or is it still very much focused around Houston, Dallas, Austin, economic growth?

 

TN: First on India. The tier two and three cities is something I would forecast when I was with The Economist back in those days. We did work on this 10, 15 years ago. And it’s amazing to see it happen. You go outside of cities like Chandigarh and you see what used to be fields. That is all some suburban cities. It’s really incredible to see that is in Texas.

 

What we’ve seen since COVID is more people are moving to semi-rural areas or buying bigger plots of land further out. And it’s some people from Texas, but it’s a lot of people from outside of Texas. Some of us, including myself, get a little bit defensive about Texas, if you can imagine.

 

RT: One interesting thing I think that we are seeing as well is maybe COVID will accelerate this. But this was always going to happen, that we will see businesses moving to cheaper areas. We see that in the States, don’t we? With some movement from California towards Texas?

 

TN: Yes, but you also see this in places like I was hearing about a technology company that in Taiwan, so the companies are based in Taipei, for example, and the workers wanted to move outside of the city since they couldn’t come into town, into the office. So they moved to small towns around Taiwan where their family was. The company actually indexed their pay based upon the cost of living to those country towns. Right. So and I think what you’ll start seeing as you see the diffusion of employment, companies will start looking at their costs and say, “look, these people aren’t paying for an apartment in Manhattan, they’re living in Iowa.” So we need to really understand where people are living. That company in Taiwan was using mobile phone records to understand where those individuals were so they can index their pay. I think you’ll see more and more of that. It’s not that people won’t be able to live. It’s just that they won’t make the salary from Manhattan while living in, say, rural Texas.

 

RT: I think we’re seeing that in many parts of the world with that sort of story you described. The taking place in and companies looking at and what’s happening with employees if they move to what you could describe as cheaper areas.

 

We had Carrie Lee here, there being a little bit cautious about what’s happening with many of these companies are going public. There is a lot of cash around from stimulus in the U.S. Interest rates are very low. Do you see this continuing?

 

TN: We’re very late in the investment cycle and we’ve moved from a company being valued on its earnings or future potential to a speculator’s market. And a lot of what we’re seeing in markets today are stocks that pop for one day by 50 percent and then they lose that 50 percent the next day. We just saw that with a big pot stock, a big marijuana stock over the past 24 hours here in the U.S. And people are trying to to squeeze out as much gain as they can in markets. So this this market is very long in the tooth. I just don’t see this lasting much longer because we are in such a speculative market right now.

 

RT: Do you not think that when stimulus begins to to slow down in many parts of the world, some of that frothiness in the markets may disappear?

 

TN: There’s a concept of stock, meaning how much money is in the market. And then there’s a concept of flow, meaning how much money is moving into the market. And because a lot of the investment climate right now is focused on flow. So how much money is coming in stimulus? How much money is coming in support from other mechanisms? Not necessarily a reallocation of the money that’s already in the market.

 

One of the big triggers potentially could be a possible disappointment with the the package coming out of the U.S. Congress. If it’s not what people have been promised, then there’s a possibility that those marginal investors who’ve been pumping stocks up by 50 percent per day could be squeezed out of the market. And then we see that flow start or grind to a trickle. And then the action really slows down and then we start to see a correction. No one wants to call a top. I don’t necessarily think this is it. I have no idea. But it is that stock and flow discussion that really worries me.

 

RT: The thought of dating is always absolutely petrified me. I was always happy my mom would have arranged my marriage and to Indian way somehow there were not many takers. Unfortunately, if you had to go back in the dating scene, would playing Scrabble online be your idea of romance?

 

TN: No. No, not at all, sorry, it just doesn’t cut it.

 

RT: No?

 

TN: We would find way. Look, I have two 19 year old kids. They get out, they’ve been social. Their friends are dating. I know it’s impacted some parts of the world in a very difficult way, but it hasn’t necessarily impacted my kids and their friends. I certainly wouldn’t settle for online scrabble. Who is the researcher at the university in London who snuck out for a hookup? I think we would sneak out outside a curfew to get things done if needed.

 

RT: OK. All right. Thank you, Tony. We’re getting a very different image of you now. Tony, stop sneaking out, please. No breaking curfew for you. That’s it for business matters.

Categories
Podcasts

Biden “clear we will win” but key results still outstanding

Tony Nash joins Rahul Tandon at the BBC for Business Matters podcast where they examine how diversity of Hispanic groups in Florida, voted and how this influenced Trump’s winning of the state in this election.

 

This podcast was published on November 5, 2020 and the original source can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172x192dk8khr8

 

BBC Business Matters Description:

 

Democratic challenger Joe Biden says it is clear he is winning enough states to take the US presidency, despite key results still outstanding. We get the latest from the BBC’s Michelle Fleury in Pennsylvania, one of the decisive states still counting votes. We examine how diversity of Hispanic groups in Florida, voted and how this influenced Trump’s winning of the state in this election. Will President Trump soften his stance towards China if he is re-elected? And how might relations with Sino-US relations change with Biden in the White House? We ask Stephen Vaughn, General Counsel for the Office of the United States Trade Representative under Donald Trump until 2019.

 

All this and more discussed with our guests throughout the show. Nicole Childers, executive producer of Marketplace Morning Report in Los Angles, Tony Nash, founder of Complete Intelligence, in Austin Texas and Samson Ellis, Bloomberg’s Taipei bureau chief.

 

Show Notes

 

RT: And you confused, Tony, from above, from the messages coming from from the Trump family, from some within the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell Lasalle’s Mitch McConnell says, look, this is part of American life. You get lawyered up and that’s how it works.

 

TN: I’m confused about things like your reporter who said that Republicans are claiming they’re irregularities without evidence, but she herself said in her report that they’re showing her photos of irregularities.

 

RT: So I suppose she wouldn’t be able to check. She wouldn’t be able to check what those photos are. But on the general point here of where we are at the moment, because this seems to be an election that may well be decided not by the public, but by the courts.

 

TN: Oh, it definitely will be. We’re not even close to finishing this up. This thing won’t be done on Friday. It won’t be done next week. We’ll be in the courts for weeks, if not months, because if you look at things like Wisconsin’s voter turnout, it was 89 percent of the voting population.

 

Turned out that’s a five and a half standard deviation event, which is like one in 100 million. OK, there is no likelihood that 89 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin turned out because unlike places like Australia, it’s not mandatory to vote in the U.S. And so you normally have 60 to 70 percent of a voter base turnout in a place like Wisconsin with 89 percent of people turned out of five and a half standard deviation event.

 

It’s just not normal. And so there’s…

 

RT: But not normal doesn’t mean that it’s not possible, does it, Nicole? Or is Tony right here? We do need to look at some of these figures and understand why there’s a different.

 

TN: Well, I’m sorry, but it’s statistically impossible for that to happen. A five and a half standard deviation event is statistically impossible to happen on an election day.

 

RT: Nicole, I really should have concentrated more in school, but on statistics. But here we go.

 

TN: These are the reasons that they’re looking at legal action and these are the reasons they’re looking at recounts.

 

RT: If you could come back on this point, because then we’re going to move on to Florida.

 

TN: We can be sure that Pennsylvania is going to the Supreme Court. There was a court action that went to the Supreme Court before the election, before Amy Meconium was on the Supreme Court. So now there is a clear Republican majority on the Supreme Court. So at the time, the Supreme Court said we’re going to leave this alone until after the election, unless there are grounds for the court to review it. And so this is why there’s plenty of photographic evidence you can look at all over Twitter. You can look all over. I’ve spoken to a number of very senior Republican Party officials today. Pennsylvania is definitely going to the Supreme Court and there may be other states as well. So we’re not even close to deciding this thing. And if these cases are at the Supreme Court, these state level safe harbor laws mean nothing.

 

RT: Let’s see what happens…

 

TN: If there are federal violations when these just don’t mean anything.

 

RT: Let’s see if there’s a long way to go. Clearly, as you both said in this story, we’re going to be continuing to cover it here on the BBC World Service.

 

An interesting discussion there on the Hispanic vote in Florida, There in Texas, where, of course, there is also a large Hispanic community. But it’s too easy to generalize in this election, isn’t it, because the Hispanic community is so diverse, it’s not one vote at all.

 

TN: I live in Texas, we have about 40 percent Latino or Hispanic population and about 40 percent Caucasian or white population. So it’s pretty even and the rest of the population is very diverse. So now this is a pretty deep red state.

 

And there was a huge move about, I think, three or 400 million dollars that came into Texas from Democrats out of state to try to turn Texas blue, which means turn out to be Democrat. And it utterly failed. There was not a single seat that turned to Democrat in the state of Texas that wasn’t already a Democrat.

 

RT: But that gap of victories is narrowing, isn’t it, in Texas?

 

TN: I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s happening, I think that’s more wishful thinking than anything. And I think when you see the amount of the Latino population that is voting Republican, it’s growing, actually.

 

And if you look in Florida, in Miami, you actually see a very large amount disproportionately Hispanic community that actually voted Republican. So the Republican Party is appealing to African-Americans and Latinos and Asians. In a way, if you look at the Indian population, meaning the Indian population in America, they’re generally very heavy supporters of Republicans under Trump, not before.

 

RT: That’s a global trend. I want to move to Nicole very quickly, but that is a global trend because we see it here in this country as well with a move towards a conservative candidate that’s often to do with economic success. And Tony, I’m sad to see you go, but thank you very much for your contributions. It’s a difficult subject that you’ve managed to make some sense of, I think, for us. So thanks very much for Tony for giving us some of your time on what’s been a very busy day for.