Katie Porter, a Democratic candidate for governor of California, was the most favored candidate to replace Gavin Newsom. But her recent meltdown during a basic interview may have cost her everything. Glenn and Stu give their commentary on this trainwreck...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Can we play the audio of Katie Porter?

Katie Porter, she's a Democrat representative from California, who ran for Senate and lost. And now she's running for governor. Yesterday, about this time, she was the frontrunner.

Today, she's not. I just want to play a clip of the interview she did yesterday.

VOICE: What do you say to the 40 percent of California voters who you'll need in order to win, to vote for Trump?

VOICE: How would I need them in order to win?

VOICE: Unless you're going to get 60 percent of the vote.

Everybody who did not vote for Trump, will vote for you.

VOICE: In the general election?

VOICE: Yes.

VOICE: If it's me versus a Republican, I think that I will win. The people who did not vote for Trump.

VOICE: What if it's you versus a Democrat?

VOICE: I don't intend that to be the case.

VOICE: So how have you intended that not to be the case? Are you going to ask them not to run?

VOICE: No, no, I said, I will build the support. I have the support already in terms of name recognition, and so I will do the very best I can, to make sure that we get through this primary in a very strong position. But let me be clear with you.

I represented Orange County. I represented a purple area. I even stood on my own two feet and won Republican votes before. That's not something every candidate in this race can say. If you're from a deep blue area. If you're from LA or you're from Oakland, you don't have --

VOICE: You just said you don't need those Trump voters.

VOICE: You asked me if I needed them to win. I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative. What is your question?

VOICE: The question is the same thing I ask everybody, that this is being called the empowering voters who stop Trump's power grab. Every other candidate has answered this question. This is not --

VOICE: I said, I support it.

VOICE: And the question is, what do you say to the 40 percent of voters who voted for Trump?

VOICE: Oh, I'm happy to say that. It's the do you need them to win part that I don't understand. I'm happy to answer the question as you have it written, and I'll answer it.

VOICE: And we've also asked the other candidates, do you think you need any of those 40 percent of California voters to win? And you're saying, no. I don't.

VOICE: No. I'm trying to say, I will try to win every vote I can. And what I'm saying to you is that -- I don't want to keep doing this. I'm going to call it. Thank you.

GLENN: She gets up and walks away.

VOICE: You're not going to do the interview with us?
VOICE: No. Not like this, I'm not. Not with seven follow-ups to every single question you ask.

STU: Oh, God forbid.
VOICE: Every other candidate has --

VOICE: I don't care. I don't care.

I want to have a pleasant, positive conversation, which you ask me about every issue on this list.

And if every question that you're going to make up a follow-up question, then we're never going to get there.

I've never had to do this before, ever.

VOICE: You've never had to have a conversation with a reporter --

VOICE: To any interview.

VOICE: Okay. But every other candidate has done this.

VOICE: What part of, I'm me -- I'm running for governor because I'm a leader. So I am going to make --

VOICE: You're not going to answer questions from reporters?

Okay. Why don't we go through -- I will continue to ask follow-up questions because that's my job as a journalist. But I will go through and ask these, and if you don't want to answer, you don't want to answer.

So nearly every legislative --

VOICE: I -- I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you, and I don't want this all on camera.

VOICE: I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you either. I would love to continue to ask these questions so that we can show our viewers what every candidate feels about every one of these issues that they care about.

And redistricting is a massive issue. We're going to do an entire story just on responses to that question, and I've asked everybody the same follow-up question.

GLENN: Didn't go well.

STU: Wow.

GLENN: Didn't go well.

STU: This is somebody who is -- she kind of even says it. She's never had to deal with follow-up questions before.

GLENN: No. No.

STU: What an amazing -- we sometimes don't appreciate what -- what a great life it must be on the left.

GLENN: Oh. I've thought about that a lot.

STU: You just go -- oh, my God. You never have to deal with anything. No one ever asks you a follow-up. No one ever pushes you on anything. You just say whatever you want, and everyone just walks away, as if it's the greatest thing of all time.

That must be so fun.

GLENN: You would be so intellectually weak. So intellectually.

STU: Oh. I mean, you see it there. She asked one minor follow-up question that isn't adversarial at all, and she pulls the plug on the interview. I'm not going to do this. I don't want all of this on camera.

GLENN: Well, there's a lot that I haven't wanted on camera. It didn't stop anybody else.

STU: Right. That's when they get most excited with you.

GLENN: Yeah, I know. I know. I know.

STU: That's so bizarre. The reporter wasn't even going at her hard. It was like, hey. What do you mean, you don't need -- it's such a -- what a layup of a question, Glenn. No offense. But it's like, do you need the 40 percent of people to -- Trump voters to win.

You say, well, I want to get as many of them as I can. And, of course, I want to get as many as I can.

But I want to stand on my principle.

Any politician. That's not even a follow-up question.

It's like, "Do you want more voters?"

That's the hard question she walked out of an interview for?

GLENN: But remember who she is. Remember who she is.

Okay.

STU: Must we?

GLENN: Well, I mean, I think we have just proven, everything they said wasn't true. According to people who had worked in her office, she has made several -- multiple staffers cry. People are so anxious to even -- to even staff her, because if anything goes wrong, she flips out on whatever staffer is present. She just talks to staffers however she wants. One criticism of Porter is that she allegedly is a terrible person, according to some accounts, abusive and racist. Separate text messages surfaced in which Porter scolded a staffer for giving the congresswoman COVID.

One message said, she was rage-prone and had a tendency to disparage staffers. Others suggested her expectations were wildly unrealistic. One message accused her of making racist comments.

Those are from her staffer. And remember, those are from 2022. I mean, we've seen this. And they just buried all of that. And now you're starting to see it. You know, when you force people into uncomfortable situations, you generally see who they really are.

And that wasn't really an uncomfortable. That was a normal situation for anybody who is -- you can't handle that, sweetheart, you can't handle anything.

But imagine, you're in California. She was the front runner yesterday!

That's who everybody was like, "Yeah, I'll probably vote for her."

It was yesterday!

STU: Yeah. Looking at Kalshi, running the prediction markets, and she was at a 40 percent chance to win, which was double anybody else in the race.

And today, she's now a slight underdog in the race from that interview. It was that bad.

Now, we don't know how the electorate actually responds to it --

GLENN: We don't know how much people will actually see it.

It can run and go away.

STU: Oh, conservatives will see that today. Because conservatives will play it like crazy. Will people who might actually vote for her see it, is a totally different question.

GLENN: How do we -- you know, we watch ABC, CNN. We have MSNBC on in front of us all the time. We listen to NPR. We listen to -- you know, the New York Times. We read the New York Times.

STU: Maybe it's time to appreciate us a little bit more. Just saying. We do that for you, every day.

GLENN: Yeah. We do it, so you don't have to. However, we bring those things up all the time. On the air.

We know where the other side stands.

There are stories that just don't hit that side.

STU: Yeah. They have no idea.

GLENN: And they don't listen to anything else. And so there are stories like that -- that stupid story of -- the judge's house burning down. There will be people forever, that believe that was a hate crime.

STU: Okay.

GLENN: There is no evidence of anything.

STU: Even of arson.

GLENN: There's nothing.

STU: Let alone some conservative that did it.

GLENN: It was a house that burned down.

That's all we know now.

They had to immediately jump to, it's a house of a judge. That judge stopped Donald Trump. Harmeet Dhillon wrote a really, absolutely innocuous, you know, hey, this judge just made this ruling.

We will fight that every way, we possibly can. That can't stand!

They took that and said, Harmeet Dhillon was targeting this judge. So somebody went on the right, and burned that judge's house down.

None of that -- there's no evidence of any of that. They don't even know what caused the fire yet. And I'll bet you, you're going to find out, that it wasn't arson, it was just a normal fire.

It was 11 o'clock in the morning.

It was just a normal fire. The house burned down. A tragedy. Glad that nobody was hurt. Well, her husband was hurt in it.

He had some broken bones and stuff, as he tried to get out of the house. And we wish them the best. But you're going to find, I think. And I'll correct it if we find differently. It wasn't any of those things.

But they have reported that now as fact. How many people are going to believe that forever?

I can guarantee you, I have members of my own family, who will bring that up to me. Well, you say violence. What about burning the judge's house down?

And I have to say, that's not true. Yes, it is.

And they won't believe me, because they heard it on MSNBC. They heard it on CNN. They heard it on the Washington Post. And so they just believe it. There are no facts to back them. None! Now, there may be in the future. Maybe in a couple of days. Let the process work. But there's none. These journalists on the left are so unbelievably irresponsible. And then because they have zombified their entire base, their base will not listen to the other side.

There are stories, I guarantee you. Think about how many people are going to believe from here on out, that Charlie Kirk was either killed by a Jew or somebody in his own camp or it was a left-winger. It was a Donald Trump MAGA killer.

Because that's what they said. And they're not listening to you.

They're not watching Fox. They're not getting their news.

They don't -- all news from major traditionally trusted sources. They watch all of that. And they think they're getting a variety.

Well, I read the Times and the Post. Oh, New York Post or Washington Post?

Well, not the -- the New York Post.

The Washington Post. There's no variety there.

STU: It's the same thing.

And this is how something like you can change your gender with a series of magical words comes into effect.

GLENN: It's how global warming is real.

STU: A liberal hears something like the gender stuff, for example. And they hear it for the first time.

And they just like you, react the same way. They -- what? What do you mean, you can just become a girl? What are you talking about?

They, in their minds, react the same way when they hear that. And then they hear it 500,000 times unchallenged.

GLENN: And saying, science is settled.

STU: And they're like, wow. I must have been wrong about that.

GLENN: If they have nothing to back it up, like in this burning down the house. They just say it over and over. And people go, well, they wouldn't say that, if it wasn't true.

STU: Right. And I don't hear anybody else. Oh, except for the crazy conservatives. That's what they're saying.

So, I mean, this is why -- I have hope, again. There's a lot of work to be done. She has a difficult job. But I hope for the Bari Weiss situation. It would be great if there was just an organization out of all of the ones that exist, that just comes out and gives you fair -- you know, balanced stuff. Now, I know Fox does that. But they're seen more as a conservative network obviously. But their slogan for years was fair and balanced. And it was seen by people who watched it and watched other networks. As the most balanced.

GLENN: Yeah. I think it was 40 -- 30 or 40 percent of the audience was Democrat.

STU: Democrat. So there's plenty of people who -- who will actually go and read and listen to other things.

But it's not particularly common. And I don't know -- what might happen is if the coverage by Bari Weiss over at CBS is, quote, unquote, too fair. They will be --

GLENN: They will be --

STU: They will be seen as a right-wing network and dismissed again.

GLENN: Yeah. That's how they will make them. And, by the way, congratulations, I was so glad to see GLAAD and everybody else, you know, LGBT celebrate Bari Weiss getting that position.

STU: Smashing another glass ceiling.

GLENN: Another glass ceiling. Yeah, it is amazing, what can be done.

STU: Too much fanfare. I was really overwhelmed by it.

GLENN: It really was. Yes. It's a first. But do we have to make that big of a deal out of it?

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Or did you hear anything?

STU: I didn't hear one word about it. Not one word of celebration. No one -- no one -- again, this is a person who founded the free press. With her wife!

It was just bought by a major media organization for nine figures. And she's now the editor-in-chief. Or, yeah.

Is it editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Not a -- no flowery discussions about her sexual preference.

GLENN: No. No.

STU: Her sexual orientation.

GLENN: And she's not even conservative.

STU: No. She's not.

GLENN: She's just fair.

STU: She describes herself as center left. And this is how desperate we are in the race.

Wait. Someone who is center left, and actually kind of means something with her. She will actually say it, because sometimes conservatives are right on stuff.

We're like fine. We're not even asking for --

GLENN: Look at how desperate we are. But look at the other side. How authoritarian they are, on the other side.

You can't even say, occasionally they get it right!

No! Never.

STU: Never.

GLENN: And we're the authoritarians.