Early voting is underway in record numbers, even for the GOP. And Vice President Kamala Harris' media tour continues, this time with an NBC interview last night and a CNN town hall tomorrow. Later today, we re going to be joined by Dave McCormick, who s running for U.S. Senate in the crucial state of Pennsylvania.
00:03:21.400Okay, so Mark, let's kick it off with you yesterday making news on two fronts.
00:03:25.880One, you said if things keep going this way in terms of the mail-in vote, the early mail-in vote, I guess mail-in and early voting, then we will likely know before Election Day who has won, suggesting it would be Donald Trump.
00:03:47.640Well, make sure you put the if in all caps because this was not like total theoretical hypothetical.
00:03:54.320But the point is, Republicans are off to a surprisingly good start in the view of Democrats, Independent Analysts, and Republicans in how they're competing in the early, early vote.
00:04:06.020Mail-in and in-person, Dropbox, all that kind of voting.
00:04:08.580The likelihood is, Democrats argue, that things will even out, that their lead will not be as big in the early vote as it was in 2020, but it would be big enough to withstand what everyone expects will be a superior performance on Election Day by the Republicans.
00:04:25.960This is not the way it's been since time immemorial, but for the last few cycles, Republicans have swarmed to the polls on Election Day, and the question is, do they have big enough advantage on Election Day to offset the early vote?
00:04:37.240This year, because Republicans so far, so far, are doing better on early vote, some people believe that if the trajectory continues, this would lead to an Election Day where the Democrats couldn't catch up.
00:04:51.000I'm saying, on this trajectory, it's not a prediction, it's not rooting for Trump, and I don't think it's particularly controversial.
00:05:00.000The big question, as we discuss in the morning meeting all the time, is who's voting early?
00:05:05.320Is it Republicans who otherwise wouldn't vote, or is it Republicans who are moving their vote from Election Day to the early vote?
00:05:12.080Either way, Democrats are hoping to do better and need to do better.
00:05:16.180But, Mark, even if it is Republicans moving their vote from Election Day to the early vote, that's a good thing for Republicans, is it not?
00:05:22.660Because it's a vote in the bank, it's not dependent on weather, or the kids getting sick, etc., and it allows the people canvassing to focus their efforts on people who have not yet cast a vote.
00:05:36.500So that's one advantage for Republicans.
00:05:38.180Another thing to look at is the percentage of the vote in Georgia, for instance, is lower in terms of Black participation in the election than it normally is.
00:05:56.560But all I said yesterday was if things stay the way they are, then Democrats are in big trouble in most of the battleground states where we have early voting data.
00:06:07.460You know, Megan, I spent two elections-
00:06:09.640It was a reaction to the extraordinarily high numbers for Republicans on the early vote that we haven't seen.
00:06:15.640I was going to say, I spent two presidential cycles at the RNC having to make excuses why we weren't doing as well in early vote, right?
00:06:22.780That we were going to vote on Election Day, that the other side, the Democrats were cannibalizing their Election Day voters and just getting to vote early.
00:06:30.000I now know what it's like to be on the other side watching Democrats use the excuses that I used for two cycles.
00:06:35.600The fact of the matter is Republicans have never done well in modern history with these kind of numbers.
00:06:42.320You look at Nevada, for example, both Clark County, where Vegas is, and Washoe County, where Reno is, we're crushing it.
00:06:49.860Never mind the rural counties where we traditionally do better.
00:07:05.600And to your point, Megan, there are some estimates that to contact a voter early on is about 12 bucks.
00:07:12.160If you have to keep pursuing them, it costs, on average, about 100 bucks.
00:07:16.420So the earlier that a voter votes on the Republican side, we save about $88.
00:07:21.240That's money that can be used to go after what we call low-propensity voters, people who only vote in one of four or two of four elections.
00:07:29.120Plus, you've got to get these people who just registered out, which we're seeing really good numbers on in voter registration in paces like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona.
00:07:39.240So for Republicans, this is like the kid that was getting an F suddenly getting a B plus or an A minus.
00:08:28.340Young voters, people of color, you know, young Black men, Latinos in Nevada, as Sean was just saying.
00:08:34.980And so it's not that they won't turn out, but it's, you know, we would rather be in, you know, have the shoe on the other foot.
00:08:43.560The good news, if there is some for Democrats, is women are turning out at a much higher rate right now than men, the gender gap being what it is.
00:08:51.660I think Democrats feel like they're going to do well with women.
00:08:55.020And also, the people running the Harris campaign, David Plough, Jen O'Malley, Dillon, they ran Obama's 2012 campaign.
00:09:02.920They are the best at getting out the vote.
00:09:05.060And so I think the hope for Democrats, and it really is hope right now, is that while we may be struggling today, ultimately, by the evening of November 5th, you know, our voters will come home and turn out.
00:09:16.300All right, stand by, because I want to talk about that more, but I got to go back to Mark on his second piece of news last night.
00:09:23.300So there I am, getting ready to go to bed, and I see everybody's adding me, saying, Mark Halperin says that he's been shopped a story within the last week that is about Donald Trump that, if true, would end Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
00:09:39.900And everybody's like, what is it? What is it? What is it? Some people are mad at you for saying such a thing, you know, without backing it up.
00:09:49.840And then everybody added me saying it had already been, quote, debunked, though I hadn't seen you actually say what the story was.
00:09:57.100So why did you say that without revealing what the story is in a way that could potentially harm Trump by just the looming, I've got something terrible about him, but I'm not going to tell you what it is?
00:10:11.960I contain multitudes. I'm an old fashioned journalist and I'm newfangled, old fashioned.
00:10:17.220I'm not putting a story out there that I haven't checked out. Newfangled transparency.
00:10:21.340The point I was making was keying off of the Atlantic story by Jeffrey Goldberg, making all these accusations against Donald Trump that I find very difficult to adjudicate.
00:10:32.080But my point is this. Go back to 2000. George W. Bush had been the son of a president.
00:10:36.260He'd run for governor of Texas twice, and it had never come out that he had a DWI.
00:10:41.280And it came out in the waning days of the 2000 campaign, leaked to Fox News by the Gore campaign.
00:10:46.360And my point was stuff is being shopped out there. It's being shopped to the New York Times, being shopped to me, to the Daily Mail, to the New York Post, to the Daily Caller.
00:10:57.240People who have a desire to affect the race with an October surprise through some packaged opposition research are putting stuff out.
00:11:05.240The thing that came to me, I don't think it's true. Pretty sure it's not.
00:11:09.340But I'm certainly not going to put it out there unvetted.
00:11:11.320And my evaluation is it's not worth my time to vet it anymore. I'm pretty sure it's not true.
00:11:16.980And my point is. Have you seen it in the press yet?
00:11:19.640Like people are speculating that it did drop in one way, shape or form yesterday or in the past couple of days.
00:11:24.580Has it? I will have nothing to say about what it is.
00:11:28.960And I don't have the best poker face, so I might have to hold this towel in front of me if you start to guess.
00:11:34.700Well, you can't tell me whether you've seen it already in the press?
00:11:37.580No, I'm not. I'm not going to discuss the content of it.
00:11:40.440My point is, was trying to fill people, my viewers in on this reality.
00:11:45.380Now, you're thinking about an October surprise and people talk about Israel or Martian invasion, whatever it is.
00:11:50.500The most likely October surprise, if you look at history, is one of these things.
00:11:55.120And we saw Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic launch one yesterday, I think to minimum effect for a variety of reasons that probably everybody knows.
00:12:02.640What what is surprising about the Jeffrey Goldberg piece, Sean Spicer?
00:12:06.760So the audience knows Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who's got a terrible history as a reporter.
00:12:11.460I mean, just go just go watch Glenn Greenwald today.
00:12:14.860Go feed. Go watch Glenn's Twitter feed and he'll explain you to you all the background of Jeffrey Goldberg.
00:12:20.140He has dropped more stuff about John Kelly thinking Trump is Hitler, admires Hitler, wants to be like Hitler, wants the generals to be like Hitler in specific.
00:12:35.100We've heard all that. We we know all of that.
00:12:38.820John Kelly's been jumping up and down ever since Trump fired him trying to tell us that.
00:12:43.540So other than now there's audio, like what is the surprise of the Atlantic piece?
00:12:50.440Nothing. And I think that's, you know, if you're a Trump hater and you were never going to vote for Trump, you're like, oh, my gosh, he's exactly the person I thought he was.
00:12:57.960Because Jeffrey Goldberg has this story about this soldier that that this family that had to deal with a funeral, et cetera, et cetera, that somehow novel and is being denied.
00:13:10.680There's nothing new. I mean, that's the bottom line is that Goldberg is basically going to the well and saying, I don't like the trajectory of this race.
00:13:17.560What can I throw out at Trump right now to get people more fired up?
00:13:21.500But I don't as Mark said, it's you know, a lot of it is not credible.
00:13:24.740It's not verifiable. And there's plenty of people who are debunking it.
00:13:27.900And there's nothing in that story that I think anybody's going, God, that's new.
00:13:33.180So, I mean, I think it's all in the eye of the beholder at this point.
00:13:37.980If you hate Trump, it's one more piece of evidence why I don't like the guy.
00:13:41.820But if you've seen the movie, this is sort of like Scream 8.
00:13:45.560Like you have a feeling that, you know, Ghostface is going to go after them at the end.
00:13:49.660It's it's it's so predictable what's happening.
00:13:52.460The other piece of it is the John Kelly thing.
00:13:56.220John Kelly also was on CNN and he spoke to The New York Times.
00:13:59.080We've got the audio of his claims, which I mean, I've heard them.
00:14:04.820I I think only leftists think now adding his audio or his face to it, Dan, is going to change things for people.
00:14:13.580I this has all been baked in the cake.
00:14:16.060The second piece of the the story is that Trump allegedly offered to help with the funeral expenses for this military family.
00:14:26.520And then when he was allegedly billed sixty thousand dollars for the funeral expenses, said something like it doesn't cost sixty thousand dollars to bury an effing Mexican.
00:14:42.620The family is still standing by Trump and doesn't they're taking issue with this reporting.
00:14:49.240Look, I just you tell me, Dan, what is the Democrat thinking behind this is going to do it like for the people who can't pay their rent, their electricity bills, their grocery bill?
00:15:01.840This language, even if true, John Kelly's opinion that he wants generals like Hitler, if true, is going to do it.
00:15:16.000You know, I don't think anyone who's reading either The Atlantic or The New York Times at this point doesn't know who they're voting for.
00:15:22.120To me, where I think the Harris campaign is starting to focus and I think it is worthy of discussion is it is unprecedented, whether in a presidential or gubernatorial or a Senate race, for so many senior people who served a leader to speak out against him or her.
00:15:40.560That, to me, is is much better terrain for the party and I think worthy of someone to consider in their vote.
00:15:47.660But all of this, look, Trump, you know, has a potty mouth and he says wild and crazy things.
00:15:53.200To your point, I believe this is well baked into the cake and it's not going to move somebody in suburban, you know, Philadelphia or Milwaukee at this point.
00:16:03.440Megan, can I make one quick point that Dan's it?
00:16:06.060What is unbelievable and I never I am always reluctant to give the Democrats any advice, especially this close to an election.
00:16:12.480But to Dan's point, the strategy, sometimes you want to jump through the screen and say, like, you guys have so missed the mark.
00:16:20.200Right. When she does these interviews, like the one she did yesterday was asked, what would you do differently or what's one policy that you would change?
00:16:27.600And her answer is, well, I don't want to criticize the president.
00:16:30.220I mean, that's the lamest thing I've ever heard.
00:16:32.320But it's there are layups in politics and she misses the layups.
00:16:37.940This strategy of somehow just like I think Dan just articulated this perfect.
00:16:42.080If you wanted to go after him, say, when in history have we ever seen this many people this close to a president not want to support him?
00:16:47.880They can't even do the basics on the messaging.
00:16:50.400And I I scratched my head over and over again saying, why do you guys not get this?
00:17:24.200There are two things that run parallel.
00:17:27.380Tens of millions of our fellow citizens believe that Donald Trump is morally unfit and disqualified from serving as commander in chief because of the mindset and the conduct that the Atlantic article purports to illustrate.
00:17:40.300Parallel to that, the vice president has decided that her closing argument is not, I will help middle class families achieve their economic and other dreams.
00:17:50.160But rather, Donald Trump is a bad guy whose character disqualifies him from serving for president.
00:19:13.360Well, what's interesting, too, is the Democrats research, both the campaigns and outside groups supportive of the campaign, have really shown that when surrogates make the attacks against Trump, they fall flat.
00:19:27.100The only thing that apparently moves the needle is when Republicans themselves speak out.
00:19:31.900So unless John Kelly and all of these people are going to show up at rallies and look into the camera and really detail this,
00:19:38.540there is no qualitative or quantitative data that dismoves votes.
00:19:44.180Hey, Megan, since you name-checked McDonald's, can I make one quick point on this?
00:19:48.320Because it's blowing my – the idea that a Saturday visit for like 20 minutes to McDonald's is still blowing minds on the left.
00:19:55.400McDonald's put out a statement, which is awesome, because you have people like Garrett Haake and Hallie Jackson at NBC News using the phrase,
00:20:02.740Trump, without evidence, falsely claimed she worked at McDonald's.
00:20:07.660Though we are not a political brand, we've been proud to hear former President Trump's love for McDonald's and Vice President Harris' fond memories of working under the arches.
00:20:17.140While we and our franchises don't have records for all positions dating – like, they can't even corroborate that she worked there.
00:20:24.460And that doesn't – I mean, this – they've now piled on.
00:20:28.460And I know that McDonald's is trying to get out of it.
00:20:30.100But like, this story, which should have just been left by the left, they've dug themselves into a deeper and deeper hole to the point where McDonald's has to put out a statement saying,
00:20:39.600we have no record of her working here.
00:21:02.860Trump's made very disparaging statements about John Kelly, who served his country honorably in the military, and his son died serving our country.
00:21:45.680I said, you know, if you, first of all, you should never say that.
00:21:49.740But if you knew what Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, philosophy, so that nothing he did, you could argue, was good.
00:22:10.800It was certainly not done for the right reason.
00:22:18.660What would he say when you would lay that out to him?
00:22:22.360He'd just, you know, that would be the end of the conversation, usually.
00:22:25.540He goes on to say, Sean, that Trump's it seems like Trump's raising, if he did, the issue of Hitler was because Trump had admiration for how Hitler's generals did as they were instructed, that he wanted compliant generals doing what he wanted them to do.
00:22:43.860And that Kelly was informing him that members of the administration took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to do just whatever the president tells them to do.
00:22:54.120Because then he gets into how he told Trump some of Hitler's generals tried to kill him, actually.
00:23:07.340But for the most part, they they did do what Hitler wanted them to do, which is it's become a famous meme about how they say the best general that the allied forces had was Hitler because he was so backwards in his strategy and his approach.
00:23:24.960And most of the generals did do what he wanted them to do, which is why they lost, because he wasn't a great military strategist.
00:23:32.440Anyway, this is just back of the envelope stuff on, you know, historical Hitler facts.
00:23:36.780Um, but I'm just trying to give the context.
00:23:38.800It seems like this came up, if at all, in Trump's frustration that his generals were not doing as he wanted them to do.
00:23:45.520Um, it's true as a principle that they take an oath to the Constitution.
00:23:49.840But can you please explain for us why so many people in the Trump administration have turned on him?
00:24:13.580And they were undermined by somebody else.
00:24:16.900You know, the one thing and we talked about this in the morning meeting that I think is fascinating.
00:24:21.260Um, there were several instances during my tenure, where there'd be a story, whether it's Politico or the New York Times or what have you, where they'd say, you know, uh, in a meeting that occurred, this and this happened.
00:24:31.600And the four people in the meeting all agreed that that never happened, that never was discussed.
00:24:36.440I'm not trying to impugn General Kelly's, uh, integrity or his comment, but I'm just saying that I always find it fascinating.
00:24:42.620The stories that occurred during my tenure that never occurred, that had five sources, none of which were in the room, um, that got printed.
00:24:51.340Well, let me just add something on that.
00:24:52.880But then I want to redirect you to my question.
00:24:55.580One of General Kelly's objections, as I read the New York Times piece in particular, was, or one of his comments was, he's very disturbed.
00:25:02.740The reason he came out and spoke on camera and on audio is he's most disturbed that Trump is talking about unleashing the military on the American people.
00:25:15.560What Trump said was that we have a great enemy within people like Adam Schiff, who he thinks are undermining democracy and who's an enemy of Trump's.
00:25:24.720And he said, when asked by Maria Bartiromo about Joe Biden's prediction that there could be chaos on election day by Trump voters, Trump responded, no, there won't be, not by Trump voters.
00:25:37.080And she said, well, what would you do if there were, you know, rioting on election day?
00:25:43.460And he's saying, I'm not going to allow that.
00:25:46.680I would unleash the National Guard and, if necessary, the military.
00:25:50.360It's the Tom Cotton piece in response to the BLM riots.
00:25:55.160So this so but my point is not to rehabilitate Trump on that.
00:25:58.780It's to say John Kelly appears to have an understanding of Trump's statements that is akin to something you might find if you watched MSNBC all day, which makes me not trust him or his lens through which he receives information when it comes to Donald J.
00:26:23.440But she asked him specifically what you just said, which is, how would you respond if the following happened?
00:26:29.840Now, remember, just to keep this in context, Trump was criticized for not immediately calling the National Guard on January 6th, according to the Democrats.
00:26:37.880Right. So they want him to use it at certain points.
00:26:40.620They don't want him to use it at others.
00:26:42.500Trump was very clearly responding to Maria Bartiroma's question about what he would do.
00:26:48.160Get back to my my hard question, which is why are there so many administrative administration officials who hate him, have quit and are leaking to the press about how bad he was?
00:26:59.280Again, as I said, I think some of them just have a personal animus towards him because of how they personally were treated or the advice that they were given.
00:27:06.980I watched it constantly in the Oval Office.
00:27:09.520Two people would come in, give him two versions of a policy, and then he would choose one person.
00:27:14.460And the other person would walk out of there and say, fine, I'm going to find people to undermine your argument.
00:27:23.280And when he said, I mean, I watched him bring in a bunch.
00:27:25.900We were talking about Afghanistan policy one day, and he said, I want 10 enlisted soldiers to come in that have served in Afghanistan.
00:27:31.920And he sat around a table and said, tell me about your experience.
00:27:35.000And it pissed a lot of people off that he wasn't taking the advice of the more senior people and asking the actual enlisted folks, tell me what your experience has been.
00:27:52.000They hated the fact that they came in, gave their PowerPoint presentation, and they were being undermined by a guy who didn't just sign off on it with like a blank check.
00:28:00.320So I think Washington is full of a lot of guys with a lot of big egos that don't like the fact that when they come into a room, everyone doesn't just say, oh, great idea.
00:28:12.240Well, there's a lot of people I've watched it all the time and Trump would blow up and say, we're not just doing the same thing over and over again.
00:28:18.320And I think for people who are used to the system that said, oh, well, this is the way it's always been.
00:28:24.900I mean, to me, this plays into, Mark, something that many people in the GOP base and frankly beyond who are sick of the forever wars admire in Trump, which is he did not bend the knee to the generals who we now we would later learn couldn't stand Trump.
00:28:43.580That he they do tend to be like the surgeons, you know, the surgeon wants to cut the general wants to go to war.
00:28:53.560I mean, he's not fully, you know, a peacenik, but he's much more of a pacifist than the neocons of the Republican Party of old who absolutely like Dick Cheney would have said to the generals.
00:29:04.900How can we extend wars and continue them?
00:29:07.940That's really kind of unkind about Dick Cheney, but it's kind of right.
00:29:12.640And this I'm just looking at this story like this kind of makes sense to me that Trump would be frustrated with these generals.
00:29:19.160As Sean said, he would have brought in enlisted folks who actually fought and gotten their perspective to the great frustration of people, even like John Kelly.
00:29:26.560And we're what we're watching play out in the media right now is that dynamic and not Trump wanting to be like Adolf Hitler.
00:29:37.280So I've very ambivalent, nuanced view of this.
00:29:41.200I as a human being and as a journalist, I find it hard to side with either side.
00:29:45.060I find I find it incredible that Trump would say the things I find incredible.
00:30:17.200I'm not saying they're all liars, leakers and bureaucratic infighters.
00:30:19.980But a lot of them are the 51 intelligence officers who signed the letter about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:30:24.980That characterizes them in that action.
00:30:28.140And so I think figuring out this for history, let alone in the next two weeks, it's going to be a big challenge because the motives and the interests of this group are adverse to Donald Trump.
00:30:40.920There's no doubt that the people who are telling stories about what they say he said, they don't want him to be president.
00:30:45.800So they have the motive to do what they can to stop him, to take their credibility and to say things to stop him.
00:31:06.180Last night, she sat down with Hallie Jackson of NBC.
00:31:09.400And while Hallie Jackson did her level best to try to help Kamala Harris with the line of questioning, she couldn't.
00:31:16.540There was no new position taken that would possibly change her trajectory in this race.
00:31:22.380I will give Kamala Harris one kudos, and that is even though Hallie Jackson tried three times to make her talk about being a woman and identity and how much it mattered, Kamala Harris did not do it.
00:31:43.600I mean, it was just pathetic, though, how obvious Hallie Jackson was like in trying to get her.
00:31:48.680So I'll give the audience a sense of how this went.
00:31:51.420OK, she comes out with the economy, the cost of living.
00:31:55.740That's what's really upsetting people in this race, that more voters think the Biden policies have hurt rather than help them are the last four years an obstacle.
00:32:24.620If you don't want to buy a new home for the first time, if you're already a homeowner, if you don't have a child that was born this year, and if you don't think that her price gouging plan is going to lower your groceries, you're not going to be helped by what she said.
00:32:39.380Then, OK, why is it not landing with voters?
00:32:53.660Hallie Jackson, the last time when you were running for president in 2019, you said the elephant in the room was whether the country was ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president.
00:33:58.800The point most people care about is, can you do the job?
00:34:01.120Then she goes back to, and I kid you not, what we're doing is addressing people's concerns, challenges, their dreams, their ambitions, their aspirations.
00:34:31.500Is this that important to Democrat voters that Kamala Harris played the identity card?
00:34:38.040Yeah, I was really taken aback that she kept going back at it because throughout this short campaign, to your point, Harris has been really good about not focusing on that, saying I have to earn it.
00:34:49.360You know, the country is not going to look at whether I'm a woman or a black.
00:34:53.800They're going to look at whether I'm qualified.
00:34:55.820And it was surprising that Hallie Jackson kind of kept trying to get her to open up about that.
00:35:02.440But, you know, as Kamala Harris likes to brag, she has good message discipline.
00:35:06.360And she did so in that instance when pressed.
00:36:42.960I mean, he just kind of blurts it out.
00:36:44.500And then, you know, he goes on to talk about it.
00:36:46.960And, you know, this has been an issue.
00:36:49.480I mean, we talked about it when we were on last when Barack Obama was like, the reason black men aren't voting for Kamala Harris is she's a woman, which was just incredibly patronizing.
00:36:58.020I don't know, you know, why she won't just admit it, why she won't kind of try to turn on it.
00:37:04.800But, you know, her message discipline has been very intense.
00:37:08.560She has stuck to her kind of narrow set of talking points to the point where I think she's offended some voters.
00:37:15.020I hope they haven't thrown their hands up and locked in for Trump.
00:37:21.740You see it in the data, both the campaigns and what's out there publicly, that there is frustration that she is so scripted and so tight in her answers.
00:37:33.640And I think some of her best moments on the campaign have been when she's leaned forward and had passion and energy and kind of gotten off the talking points, which really the one issue where we see that is when it's anti-Trump.
00:37:46.760Like you can tell she dislikes the guy so much.
00:37:49.420It really probably is the animating reason why she's running.
00:37:53.040I think if you ask the average voter, why does Kamala Harris want to be president?
00:37:57.940I don't know if that's going to be successful or not, but it's the only place that she kind of lets the guard down, lets the hair down and really shows who she is and how she feels.
00:38:50.440What she wants to restore the Roe versus Wade regime?
00:38:53.720But whether a president or the U.S. Congress has the ability, I mean, the constitutional authority to do that, to regulate abortion at the national level, is very much in doubt.
00:39:03.100Trust me, as a lawyer, that is very much in doubt.
00:39:05.460So I guess the presumption is that they do and that Kamala Harris is going to get a Roe versus Wade regime restored with the help of Congress.
00:39:11.840I'll give Holly Jackson the facts that are not actually presented by her.
00:39:16.920What would you be willing to do in terms of concessions to make that happen on abortion access?
00:39:36.040You need to use more words to make yourself.
00:39:38.980No one knows what the hell you are talking.
00:39:40.860I am in news, and I don't know what you're talking about.
00:39:44.800Religious exemptions to what, for whom, in what context?
00:39:49.960Kamala Harris, I don't think we should be making concessions when we're talking about a fundamental freedom.
00:39:54.180So I think what she's saying is Catholic doctors have to perform abortions in Catholic hospitals, period.
00:40:01.280But she's not saying it explicitly because she wasn't asked it explicitly, presumably because maybe she wanted to run cover for her and not get that detailed.
00:40:09.880Then she says Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Hallie Jackson, would back something like this on a Democratic agenda if Republicans took control of Congress.
00:40:20.880She says, would you offer them an olive branch or is it off the table?
00:40:45.260And Hallie Jackson, not surprisingly, comes into it on the trans side.
00:40:48.720We've got multiple questions on it where she did press her.
00:40:51.480And because Hallie wanted her to say something nice about trans people and trans rights versus women rights that would diminish women, she comes at it multiple times.
00:41:00.080The way she starts is, do you believe transgender Americans should have access to gender affirming care in this country?
00:42:58.700One more point, then I'm going to give it back to you guys.
00:43:00.640The correct follow up to that nonsense first answer is not,
00:43:04.120what do you want the LGBTQ plus community to know as they're looking for a full throated backing from you for trans Americans?
00:43:09.520The correct follow up is you say that you will follow the law.
00:43:14.400That's what you want people to know, that you will follow the law.
00:43:17.540Now, you actively worked to change the law when you were the attorney general of California to make sure that the policy was changed to cover these procedures for trans individuals.
00:43:39.140You thought the law was unjust and you worked to change it.
00:43:41.540The question is whether you're going to do the same thing at the federal level.
00:43:44.900And beyond that, if the law mandates these procedures, which are very controversial on the taxpayer dime,
00:43:51.000do you promise that you will work to change the law back to where taxpayers do not have to pay for this?
00:43:58.880In case you didn't see it, here is Kamala Harris bragging about changing the policy as California AG back in 2019 to a trans interviewer.
00:44:08.880When I was attorney general, I learned that the California Department of Corrections, which was a client of mine, I didn't get to choose my client, that they were standing in the way of surgery.
00:44:27.440And when I learned about the case, I worked behind the scenes to not only make sure that that transgender woman got the services she was deserving.
00:44:42.140So that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need.
00:44:52.620And I believe it was not only, I know it was historic in California, but I believe actually it may have been one of the first, if not the first in the country, where I pushed for that policy.
00:45:38.140Well, then you're not going to do anything.
00:45:39.820That's the biggest cop-out I've ever heard in politics.
00:45:43.000She clearly doesn't want to just, you know, adhere to the law.
00:45:46.940As you point out, on myriad of other issues, she has no problem talking about how she's flouted the law, how she's enforced the law, how she sent people to prison.
00:45:55.780So this is the cop-out of all cop-outs.
00:45:59.240If Kamala Harris loses, one of the reasons is going to be she's very liberal.
00:46:04.020And I think, you know, whereas some candidates would triangulate, I think she believes it.
00:46:08.780I mean, I think even on this issue, most Americans respect an individual's privacy, whether they're gay, lesbian, or transgender.
00:46:15.500Where there's not consensus and where it's controversial is stuff like men who are now women playing women's sports, you know, the government providing surgeries and things of that nature.
00:46:27.600And I think the reason Harris won't speak against it, she's giving very lawyerly kind of mealy-mouthed answers, is she believes in, you know, providing transgender care and other things.
00:46:39.120And there's a reason that she keeps kind of complaining about the tens of millions of dollars of ads being run against her.
00:46:46.660Trump is hitting a spot where the majority of the country currently stands.
00:46:50.400One of the great tests of a political leader is if they have an unpopular position, whether it's unpopular within their own party or unpopular in the broader electorate, and they're willing to defend it, and they're willing to spend time in capital and their own ability to talk, saying, hey, let me try to convince you.
00:47:07.460If you don't agree with me, let me at least show you where I am on this.
00:47:10.740She's chosen not to do that on almost any of these very liberal positions that she's had, whether she repudiates them kind of in a surface way or not.
00:47:17.700And I think, again, if she does lose, and she's right in the race, so it's not a foregone conclusion by any means, but if she does lose, Sean's right.
00:47:27.240This is about as weasely an answer as you'll get, but it's of a piece with she simply does not want to take on the hard task of saying, hey, I'm for this because it's a human right, and let me explain why.
00:47:38.380She just wants to speak in platitudes.
00:47:40.320She and her advisors seem to think that's the path to victory.
00:47:43.420When I talk to undecided voters, it seems just the opposite.
00:47:46.100They find her posture towards this unforthcoming or a secret key to what Dan said, which is she believes the very liberal stuff still, and she's trying to obfuscate on that until she gets elected.
00:47:57.860Mark, we saw yesterday a meltdown on MSNBC in response to how her campaign is handling this issue, which I think they accurately deduce as well, is hurting her.
00:48:07.720We saw Jonathan Martin piece in Politico saying the clock is ticking on her message, like it's not resonating, and she's got precious little time left.
00:48:29.600So I always look for asymmetries, right?
00:48:32.420So one asymmetry is Republicans are confident and Democrats are not, okay?
00:48:37.100Republicans culturally tend to be more confident, but they're more confident based on the data that they see.
00:48:43.160I could cite 10 things that say, can't straw in the wind of why it looks like it's going in Trump's direction, including Senate candidates in the battleground states embracing Trump.
00:48:52.160Very few things you can cite about why it's going her way.
00:48:55.060What's happening is another asymmetry.
00:48:56.860If Trump loses, it's going to be because of his personality, and the country doesn't want four more years of him.
00:49:02.000There's a hundred reasons why Democrats will cite while she lost, including gender, which is why I think Hallie Jackson was asking about it.
00:49:08.540But another one is the wrong message expressed orally, and that, I think, is why you're seeing Democrats panic, because they think it's off track, but they think if they pressure her publicly, there's still time to fix it.
00:49:19.300Hmm. Not much. I am going to ask you about those Senate candidates when we come back in just a minute, and we'll get to what happened with Obama on the campaign trail yesterday and the meltdown over the Doug Emhoff allegations.
00:49:34.480Stand by. More with the guys right after this.
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00:50:55.100A couple things that I want to get to.
00:52:33.520It's like it's almost a little dangerous to have the surrogates be that good.
00:52:38.160Yes, I mean, look, it's one of the things that I've thought here this whole time, which is the more interviews that Harris does, the more rallies she gets, the more comfortable you get, the more you're likely to get a moment like that, where you're just kind of feeling it.
00:52:51.320You're in the groove, and you're kind of willing to be an entertainer a little bit.
00:52:55.420And yes, to your point, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, it's unbelievable.
00:52:59.940It's so natural, and they look like they're having fun doing it.
00:53:02.780Okay, he also spoke with Tim Walls at a rally in Wisconsin, former President Obama did, and said one of the most clue—I mean, I think every Republican or right-of-center person on Earth did one of these, like, oh, my God, with the forehead into the palm.
00:53:21.920Honestly, like, to me, guys, that is so clueless, having lived it.
00:53:48.640You know, you guys lived it, but it's like, why don't we take Obamacare, something you've shoved down the throats of the American people without majority support, the first major overhaul to an entitlement ever, in decades at least, without majority support.
00:54:03.900And you just said elections have consequences, John, when John McCain tried to say, eh, this is very divisive, you're going to take away people's doctors and health care.
00:54:10.520And you lied to us for a year about being able to keep our doctors.
00:54:29.420Because I remember, I remember being shocked as a lawyer to see a U.S. president comment like that on race, on a case like that, where you didn't know the full facts and wound up getting them wrong, actually.
00:54:38.580We could keep going, Sean, but Barack Obama is amazingly given a pass for being this unifying president as he, notwithstanding his apology tour on behalf of the American people, the open door policy with Iran, whom he was refunding.
00:54:55.980And then you get Joe Biden and Dark Brandon, and yes, Trump was in there, too, who was very divisive, but Trump was a response to Obama.
00:55:05.920Trump was a response to divisions that were sowed during that guy's presidency.
00:55:10.200Yeah, look, I think the policies that you brought up, you know, created a lot of this, but also the personality.
00:55:18.060I mean, Obama gets up there and just rails about Trump and Trump supporters.
00:55:32.220If it was wrong for Trump, then you guys can't claim the mantle now and say, but it's okay if our guy does it, right?
00:55:38.680So the double standard is unbelievable, but Barack Obama loves to just chastise everyone on the right, Trump supporters, whatever, and then say, but let's get together.
00:55:48.720And it's like, dude, because you helped create this problem.
00:55:51.800You just, this is, Megan, this is literally the biggest problem with the left.
00:55:56.140I have this conversation with folks all the time that says, you know, we could get together.
00:56:00.040We need to tone down the rhetoric, but here's where you're wrong.
00:56:03.620The left inherently, big tech, Hollywood, big corporate America, all of government, academia, they love to, their idea is, if you only agreed with us more, we'd have less vitriol.
00:56:27.620The censorship that we saw during this administration throughout the COVID lockdowns, as people's businesses were being destroyed, we weren't allowed to talk about what was really happening or doubts about vaccinating our children who were getting myocarditis, a devastating health condition with the heart, a heart infection that leads to permanent scarring, and in some cases has led to death.
00:56:50.640All this stuff, you can't just say, how did we get so divided?
00:56:54.040I mean, it's, I know that the left wants to say Trump, Hitler, Trump, Hitler, Trump, Mussolini, Trump, but that's just, anybody who's not a committed leftist understands this has been a process, and he does not have clean hands in the process.
00:57:08.600Mark, you heard Sean reference a comment by President Biden.
00:57:22.340He went, checks notes, to New Hampshire and a campaign office by himself, and still managed to screw up the news cycle by saying the following.
00:57:36.640This is a guy who also wants to replace every civil servant, every single one.
00:57:41.840He thinks he has a right under the Supreme Court ruling on immunity to be able, if need be, if it was the case, to actually eliminate, physically eliminate, shoot, kill someone who he believes would be the threat to.
00:57:58.620I mean, so I know this sounds bizarre.
00:58:02.060It sounds like if I said this five years ago, you'd lock me up.
00:59:09.360I'm not predicting Trump will win a landslide.
00:59:11.520I'm not rooting for Trump winning a landslide.
00:59:13.080But there's a school of thought that says Trump's going to go to Albuquerque to try to win New Mexico.
00:59:17.520He's going to go to St. Paul to try to win Minnesota.
00:59:19.860He's going to go to, I don't know, Richmond to try to win Virginia.
00:59:23.340And then he's going to go to New Hampshire.
00:59:25.300And I was told yesterday, someone showed me an email saying that the Trump campaign is doing last minute hiring, paying a pretty robust sum for folks to do door knocking at the last minute.
00:59:42.600Now, in terms of what he said, I don't think the four of us need to review the reality of Joe Biden's cognitive decline for the last 10 years.
00:59:52.140But it's amazing that he's out there doing these events.
00:59:56.820Did it ruin her chance of being president?
00:59:59.500But it's not great for the news cycle.
01:00:01.240And of course, it undermines one of the strongest high horses that Democrats have and feel they have and the media feels they have, which is that they're not using loose rhetoric the way Republicans are.
01:00:12.440He tried to take it back, but it's not a great thing to say, both in terms of the photo op and the moment, but also as a sitting president, he just shouldn't be saying stuff like that.
01:00:22.400And I'd say that about a president of either party.
01:00:24.440And he is at this moment trying to lock up Trump.
01:00:27.960I mean, he is actually trying to lock up Trump at this moment.
01:01:08.880Can you say that you were honest with the American people about what you saw in those moments with President Biden as you were with him again and again, repeatedly in that time?
01:02:08.220And it sounds like what you're saying is you feel like you never saw anything like that from President Biden.
01:02:11.620I have worked with Joe Biden, whether it could hours and hours and hours over these four years, whether it be in the Situation Room or the Oval Office.
01:02:20.860Joe Biden is the one who was able to bring NATO together during a crisis where for the first time in 70 years, Europe saw and has seen war.
01:02:32.400I speak with not only sincerity, but with a real firsthand account of watching him do this work.
01:04:56.800There should have been a proper, competitive Democratic nomination fight.
01:05:00.180And and the belief amongst most people in the White House, including, I believe, the president was Kamala Harris would not have emerged victorious from that nomination fight.
01:05:08.480And so I think, again, the question is, you know, you were left trying to run a 90 day campaign for the White House.
01:05:15.000Didn't you think the country and the Democratic Party should have moved earlier?
01:05:34.940So while some Democrats are critical of her, particularly on this issue of not breaking with him, I do understand why she doesn't want to break.
01:05:41.680In part, it's because breaking opens up other questions.
01:06:00.700I want to pick up on a point that Mark made a moment ago about some of these, you know, New Hampshire, et cetera.
01:06:05.180So I go through every Wednesday on my podcast, the road to 270, what's changed from the week before, et cetera.
01:06:11.340The last couple of weeks, I sort of said Nevada is the seventh state that I don't think that Trump's going to have the hardest time winning the battleground states.
01:06:18.580That I think we talked about earlier in terms of early vote.
01:06:21.860I believe that's solidly in Trump's camp now.
01:06:24.640I think that the interesting thing that's going unreported right now is the shift in the dynamic, right?
01:06:29.640Coming out of the convention when she kicked Biden out and she went in, there was this vibes and joy.
01:06:35.000And she was riding a sugar high and people were talking about how competitive it was and could Trump stay competitive, et cetera, et cetera.
01:06:40.920We've shifted from that to not only the battleground states, but I talk about this tonight in the podcast.
01:06:46.880Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, and I think to some extent potentially Nebraska, too, are all now back in play in a way that we wouldn't have talked about four weeks ago.
01:07:20.120But I think that they've gone from assuming that the blue wall, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were going to be the toughest to now saying, what else could we pick up?
01:07:28.900But I believe at the very least we pick up one of those four other states that I mentioned.
01:07:41.700That, I mean, unlike the best case projections on the map when you make it most favorable to Trump, Minnesota remains blue.
01:07:48.740So, I mean, that would be truly a power move.
01:07:51.140Dan, what do you make of Sean's analysis?
01:07:53.420Well, I don't know if Trump is actually going to end up winning those states.
01:07:58.040I think what's hard as a Democrat is you would hope that there would be some states that you would be talking about for you where maybe Trump is on having to play a little bit of defense, a little bit of rear guard.
01:09:26.660Your guest coming on soon is probably feeling pretty good right now about where the trend lines are heading.
01:09:32.460And I think what's most concerning is this is about the time where a candidate, if they think they're going to lose, does whatever they think is necessary to try to turn that around.
01:09:42.700And usually that means when there's a presidential election, you try to hug the candidate that is in the lead in your state.
01:09:49.320And my hope would be that they would all the Senate Democrats would be hugging Kamala Harris.
01:09:53.820But what we're seeing, Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin and others are starting to run ads that, you know, hug Donald Trump.
01:10:02.200And those ads, that is not a kind of like off the cuff statement at a press conference where you maybe misspoke.
01:12:53.000And I think that as long as they can keep it close, and so far, with the possible exception of Arizona, I don't believe he's blown any of these states out.
01:13:01.160And so she's in the ballgame, and a combination of ground game, October surprise, and a hidden female abortion vote, she could still win.
01:13:12.960The New York Times reporting today on the gender gap and just how strongly anti-Trump young women are in particular, and pro-Trump young men are, but saying, at least according to the numbers they ran, the young female vote is turning out in amazing numbers.
01:13:30.860And that's something for Kamala Harris to feel good about.
01:13:33.740Like, those women are, so far, getting to the polls.