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Speaker 2: A truly wild weekend on the campaign trail, and that
Speaker 2: continues today. Donald Trump in Greenville, North Carolina. We're going
Speaker 2: to bring it to North Carolina in a moment. Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris with events throughout Pennsylvania, Malvern on A, Birmingham, Michigan, Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: We're serious about these swing states. Tim Walls on the
Speaker 2: View this morning to see him talking to Whoopy Goldberg
Speaker 2: that I'm guessing we'll make some news a little bit
Speaker 2: later on. He's going to be taking part in a
Speaker 2: reception this evening on his big visit to New York
Speaker 2: and doing the Daily Show later over the weekend. Though, boy,
Speaker 2: what am I not suppose to talk about today? I
Speaker 2: think is my deliberation not to talk about Donald Trump
Speaker 2: using expletives to describe the vice president or the former
Speaker 2: president's describing of Arnold Palmer in the shower. Maybe the
Speaker 2: fact that they closed the McDonald's that he appeared at
Speaker 2: for the photo op yesterday. They did have to rehearse
Speaker 2: that whole thing. Apparently the customers were screened by Secret Service.
Speaker 2: Or we can look forward on what will happen in
Speaker 2: the next fifteen days. That is what Josh Wingrove is
Speaker 2: talking about. Harris Trump scrapped for few undecided voters as
Speaker 2: race titans. My favorite line in the story refers to
Speaker 2: this as a jump ball election, and that's where we
Speaker 2: start our conversation with the great Josh Wingrove Bloomberg White
Speaker 2: House reporter, with us at the table. It's been far
Speaker 2: too long, Good to see you, happy to be here.
Speaker 2: This is a jump ball. Then the campaign that scores
Speaker 2: last wins. Yeah, how do you score a last? Is
Speaker 2: it who lands the last big interview, who says the
Speaker 2: most outrageous thing? This is tie, Josh.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're Harris you think you do it by
Speaker 3: peeling off just a little bit of a few groups
Speaker 3: like Republicans, for instance, which is why she's touring the
Speaker 3: three Blue Wall states with Liz Cheney today, and other groups,
Speaker 3: including whether young voters will turn out, whether they can
Speaker 3: sort of run up the score with women, whether they
Speaker 3: can stop some bleeding among black and Latino voters, black
Speaker 3: men in particular. All of that is across the board.
Speaker 3: One thing though in this story I was with her
Speaker 3: last week in the blue Wall today is I believe
Speaker 3: the eighth or ninth day in a row she's setting
Speaker 3: foot in one of those three states. I think you know,
Speaker 3: if you'd go by where her feet are. They're seeing
Speaker 3: their path run through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and the
Speaker 3: governors there are striking an upbeat tone. Governor Shapiro Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: told me Flatley Harris will win the state. If she does,
Speaker 3: I think there's a very good chance she wins the presidency. Others,
Speaker 3: of course, less sure. The polls are pretty mixed. To
Speaker 3: a lesser extent, Governor Evers Wisconsin, Governor Whitmer of Michigan
Speaker 3: singling kind of similar optimism. Whitmer is saying she'd rather
Speaker 3: have Democrats hand than the Republican's hands. So they're supposed
Speaker 3: to say that they are they are, but they haven't
Speaker 3: necessarily been. Shapiro has been less upbeat, So I guess
Speaker 3: that jumped out to me. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: know whether I was expecting dour faces and clouds over
Speaker 3: the skies. But it looks like Democrats are I suppose
Speaker 3: there's two ways of looking at it. You could say
Speaker 3: that they are trying to shore up an inside lane.
Speaker 3: These are usually blue states. Trump won them in sixteen,
Speaker 3: but Biden won them in twenty. They all have democratic governors.
Speaker 3: Or you could say, gee, it looks like she's playing
Speaker 3: defense here in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean, it is an odd scenario to
Speaker 2: have two kind of wide open weeks with no debate.
Speaker 2: Normally would be having a debate around the end of
Speaker 2: this week or next. So what's the culminating event or
Speaker 2: does this campaign kind of fizzle out knowing a lot
Speaker 2: of people have already started.
Speaker 3: That's right, and I think we're seeing that in modern elections.
Speaker 3: So much of this is just a turnout game in
Speaker 3: an online date to the jumping, That's right, it's a
Speaker 3: So Harris is going to do her town hall, which
Speaker 3: was nominally supposed to be a date a debate at
Speaker 3: one point on CNN this week, so we'll be watching that,
Speaker 3: of course, very closely. And Trump has announced, for instance,
Speaker 3: other events including Madison Square Garden and a big.
Speaker 2: New York. By the way, is there some logic to
Speaker 2: it's going to be big pictures look as like led
Speaker 2: Zeppelin up there on stage at Madison Square Garden. Or
Speaker 2: is it a true waste of time knowing that he's
Speaker 2: not likely to win New York.
Speaker 3: Well, anything that makes your candidate happy, isn't it not
Speaker 3: necessarily a time? No, he wants to show momentum. I
Speaker 3: don't think that they are genuinely pledging that they're going
Speaker 3: to be particularly competitive in New York. But the New
Speaker 3: York House races are competitive and could well determine, of course,
Speaker 3: control of that chamber. Governor Hokeel was herself in the
Speaker 3: Blue Wall States, which is a bit of a funny scenario
Speaker 3: last week, campaigning for Kamala Harrison, saying that they are
Speaker 3: working to try to deliver those swing seat states or
Speaker 3: swing seats excuse me, because they don't really have much
Speaker 3: say in the presidential race.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: I think New York is safe. I don't think it's
Speaker 3: really a play there, But there are a lot of
Speaker 3: house races that are you know, unclear right now, including
Speaker 3: in New Jersey as well, so we'll be watching for that.
Speaker 3: You know, this is this is trite, Joe. It's every
Speaker 3: time we get asked like, so, who's gonna win. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be you know, give me something, and I like,
Speaker 3: I wish I had more to give. But genuinely, almost
Speaker 3: everyone you ask on both sides, it's like it's just
Speaker 3: so close right now. It's from four years ago that
Speaker 3: Biden people felt pretty strongly they were up in every pole. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, they felt pretty strongly. This time around, it's just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not only within the margin, but literally
Speaker 2: it's high. This is some poles here. Josh, Great to
Speaker 2: see you, Josh wunn Grove the story on the terminal online.
Speaker 2: Nice to see Clark Kent in person every now and
Speaker 2: then here on the program. I'm Joe, Matthew and Washington.
Speaker 2: Glad you're with us here as we pick our way
Speaker 2: through the swing states. We're going to be doing this
Speaker 2: a lot over the next two weeks. And as we
Speaker 2: talk about North Carolina today, Donald Trump is there, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned, and that new Washington Post poll that you
Speaker 2: might have seen this morning finds Donald Trump in the
Speaker 2: lead in North Carolina. As we get into a thinner
Speaker 2: slice here, just looking at the state, fifty to forty seven. Again,
Speaker 2: I mean this is within the margin pretty much anywhere
Speaker 2: you look, or awfully close when you want to call
Speaker 2: this a statistical tie. But of course we had the
Speaker 2: matter with the Lieutenant governor. I think that might be
Speaker 2: the last time we talked to Professor Bitzer, and he's
Speaker 2: back with us now. Michael Bitzer with the politics department
Speaker 2: chair and professor of Politics and History at Kataba College
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. Professor, it's great to see you. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to Bloomberg. Been looking forward to talking with you
Speaker 2: now that we've got a couple of weeks under our
Speaker 2: belt with regard to the Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson's scandal
Speaker 2: there that put a lot of noise around North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and I wonder how you see it now with two
Speaker 2: weeks to go and what appears to be, at least
Speaker 2: according to the newest pulling a slight lead for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Well, I think, as you indicated, it is a slight lead,
Speaker 4: but it is within the margin of error. The way
Speaker 4: that I described North Carolina statewide elections, the margin of
Speaker 4: victory is going to be within the margin of error,
Speaker 4: and so I think the dynamic of what we have
Speaker 4: seen over the past month. Certainly, we started with a
Speaker 4: September surprise of the Mark Robinson allegations. We then moved
Speaker 4: into a hurricane hitting the western portion of the state.
Speaker 4: Nobody was expecting that. So I'm hopeful but won't be
Speaker 4: surprised that we will see in October surprise, hopefully not
Speaker 4: of a magnitude of a hurricane. But we are into
Speaker 4: the final days and we're well into early voting in
Speaker 4: this state as well.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many surprises North Care can take, Professor,
Speaker 2: but let me ask you about the two things you
Speaker 2: just mentioned. I'll start with the hurricane. Over the weekend.
Speaker 2: The call from people living in Ashville was please do
Speaker 2: not forget us. Would it behoove the candidates to look
Speaker 2: back to North Carolina to find out what's going on?
Speaker 2: There was a rush to get there in a very
Speaker 2: confusing time of misinformation. What Ka Kamala Harrison, Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: if not the actual president Joe Biden do to help well?
Speaker 4: I think certainly the dynamic of recovery and rebuilding is
Speaker 4: priority number one for those twenty five counties in North Carolina.
Speaker 4: We're seeing a little bit of depressed turnout in comparison
Speaker 4: to what we would expect from four years ago. But
Speaker 4: that's primarily in Buncom County, which is home to Ashville.
Speaker 4: In fact, a number of the other counties that were
Speaker 4: hard hit are actually at or slightly ahead of the
Speaker 4: state averages in terms of turnout so far. I think
Speaker 4: that this is certainly a Republican region. It was a
Speaker 4: sixty one to thirty nine Republican presidential region. Republicans need
Speaker 4: their vote to come out of this area that provides
Speaker 4: about seventeen percent of all the state wide votes. And
Speaker 4: so certainly if campaigns are going to be focused on that,
Speaker 4: they need to help with the rebuilding effort, but they
Speaker 4: also need to focus on are you safe in your home?
Speaker 4: Do you have your business back open? Now, let's think
Speaker 4: about participating and voting in this year's election.
Speaker 2: Well, are people getting around? Is it possible for everyone
Speaker 2: to get to a polling site.
Speaker 4: It is still hard in some regions of the state,
Speaker 4: particularly north of Asheville and Yancey County. I mean the
Speaker 4: devastation in terms of the roads. A lot of mountain
Speaker 4: roads tend to run along river rivers and creeks, and
Speaker 4: when those rivers and creeks flooded over, they destroyed so
Speaker 4: much of the infrastructure in western North Carolina. It's going
Speaker 4: to be a very slow rebuilding process. But people are
Speaker 4: being able to get supplies into a lot of hard
Speaker 4: hit areas. But there may be some communities that are
Speaker 4: just simply cut off in the back collars and valleys
Speaker 4: of the mountain region.
Speaker 2: That's a real heartbreaker that we're not talking about enough
Speaker 2: right now. Professor. On some Mark Robinson, you mentioned the scandal.
Speaker 2: I think I brought it up first. Now that some
Speaker 2: weeks have gone by, I was looking at the Raleigh
Speaker 2: News this morning. Josh Stein has a double digit lead
Speaker 2: over Mark Robinson. The Lieutenant governor had his whole staff
Speaker 2: on the campaign quit as the state just moved on.
Speaker 4: It feels like it. I think that this would be
Speaker 4: the real surprise of North Carolina's elections. If Josh Stein
Speaker 4: is able to pull anything more than a five point
Speaker 4: victory margin out, this would be a real landslide in
Speaker 4: North Carolina. If he's talking about potentially double digits, the
Speaker 4: effect on the ballot is what I'm going to be
Speaker 4: very interested in. North Carolina has a slight history, has
Speaker 4: a long history of split ticket voters, but that part
Speaker 4: of the electorate has truly collapsed to where it's typically
Speaker 4: less than five percent of the electorate. If we're talking
Speaker 4: about a major blowout at the gubernatorial level, does that
Speaker 4: have an impact at the top of the ticket and
Speaker 4: down the ballot, particularly in some very competitive Council of
Speaker 4: State executive statewide offices.
Speaker 2: And this is unquantifiable, right, professor, this is what you
Speaker 2: do for a living. But there's so much noise, how
Speaker 2: could it possibly project? Yet everyone asked you, everyone you
Speaker 2: saw over the weekend asked you who you thought was
Speaker 2: going to win the race? Right?
Speaker 4: They did, And I would take your jump ball metaphor
Speaker 4: and make it even simpler. Coin toss flip a coin
Speaker 4: heads for Harris, tails for Trump. You're probably about as
Speaker 4: a grade of a predictive model as anything that we
Speaker 4: can together at this point.
Speaker 2: That is something you know. Of course, the polls, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned, show a slight lead in North Carolina, but
Speaker 2: statistically close. And when you add all the noise that
Speaker 2: you mentioned, it does make you wonder when you see
Speaker 2: Donald Trump coming back down today, as I mentioned, he's
Speaker 2: in Greenville, North Carolina. Does the in person presence is
Speaker 2: showing up matter at this point?
Speaker 4: Oh, I think it certainly does. I think it appeals
Speaker 4: to the base voters. For each political party, they need
Speaker 4: to fight on the ground, and candidate visits like this
Speaker 4: really helps to mobilize and energize voters. I believe Waltz
Speaker 4: will be here. I believe Harris will be returning as well.
Speaker 4: So this is really a state where the true battle
Speaker 4: for victory statewide is literally fought on the ground. We
Speaker 4: are completely inundated with campaign commercials, but that really doesn't
Speaker 4: move a whole lot of people. It's about energizing and
Speaker 4: mobilizing your base to show up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you must love watching TV right now, professor, So
Speaker 2: let's talk about showing up in our remaining moment. I
Speaker 2: want to look at the early voting that's happening in
Speaker 2: North Carolina because it's important. More people turned out in
Speaker 2: North Carolina to cast ballots on the first day of
Speaker 2: early voting this year than in twenty twenty. Preliminary data
Speaker 2: shows a record three hundred and fifty three thousand people.
Speaker 2: Even more cast ballots at more than four hundred early
Speaker 2: voting sites statewide when this began Thursday. Professor, who does
Speaker 2: that favor?
Speaker 4: I think right now it is again a kind of
Speaker 4: We're not sure how to read these tea leaves because
Speaker 4: as of today, we've got over a million early votes cast,
Speaker 4: and the partisan registration breakdown is fairly even between registered
Speaker 4: Democrats and registered Republicans. Back four years ago, it was
Speaker 4: a slight Democratic advantage. So how this plays out, and
Speaker 4: particularly the increase of the unaffiliated voter in this state,
Speaker 4: Yet again, we're trying to decipher that he leaves, and
Speaker 4: I'm not sure we can read that much into it.
Speaker 4: With only four days out of seventeen days of early voting.
Speaker 2: The unaffiliated voter what an idea. It's like looking for
Speaker 2: sasquatch out in the wild. Professor, have you met any
Speaker 2: of these rare people in this campaign?
Speaker 4: I've met registered unaffiliateds, but true registered independent voters politically independent,
Speaker 4: they are very few in this very polarized state.
Speaker 2: An endangered species. Will keep our eyes out for sasquatch
Speaker 2: with help from the professor with the bow tie. It's
Speaker 2: great to see you, Michael Bitzer, come back and talk
Speaker 2: to us again before we actually close this thing down
Speaker 2: on election day one way or the other. Is it
Speaker 2: a jump ball or a flip coin? Take your pick.
Speaker 2: According to the Professor, we'll have a lot more ahead.
Speaker 2: On the fastest show in politics.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast Ken
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Speaker 2: As we unpack a wild weekend on the campaign trail, Kaylee,
Speaker 2: a lot of things said by Donald Trump that I
Speaker 2: can't repeat as we prepare to bring in Nick Mulvaney,
Speaker 2: which brings us back to campaigns past. The fact of
Speaker 2: the matter is the latest polling out from Washington Post
Speaker 2: and the Shar School find this is a truly tied race.
Speaker 2: A survey of the swing state shows forty seven to
Speaker 2: forty seven among likely voters forty nine Harris forty eight.
Speaker 2: Trump still a statistical tie no matter where you look,
Speaker 2: so arguably both campaigns are doing everything right. We heard
Speaker 2: from Kamala Harris over the weekend in an interview with
Speaker 2: al sh Sharp and her reaction to Donald Trump using
Speaker 2: an expletive to refer to her, describing her as he
Speaker 2: did questioning her running mate's manhood and her husband's extramarital
Speaker 2: affair in a prior marriage. She was asked to respond here, she.
Speaker 5: Is what you see in my opponent, a former president
Speaker 5: of the United States? Really is it demeans the office?
Speaker 5: And I have said, and I'm very clear about this,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump should never again stand behind the seale of
Speaker 5: the president of the United States. He has not earned
Speaker 5: the right. He has not earned the right, and that's
Speaker 5: why he's going to lose.
Speaker 6: Although as we know, it is not guaranteed that he's
Speaker 6: going to lose this election. As Joe mentioned, we're still
Speaker 6: in a statistical tie. This thing is a dead heat.
Speaker 6: So for more on these final fifteen days of the race,
Speaker 6: we turned to mc mulvaney, former acting chief of staff
Speaker 6: in the Trump Roight House, former director of the Omb,
Speaker 6: former co founder of the House Freedom Caucus, congressman from
Speaker 6: South Carolina. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Speaker 7: Nick.
Speaker 6: As we're in the home stretch here, it does seem
Speaker 6: that Kamala Harris has narrowed what her closing argument is
Speaker 6: going to be that Donald Trump is unfit to serve
Speaker 6: as president again. Are you getting a clear closing message
Speaker 6: from Donald Trump? Is it demeaning the Vice president talking
Speaker 6: about Arnold Palmer. What exactly is he trying to tell
Speaker 6: undecided voters.
Speaker 8: Here, Kayley, I'm not sure that's the right way to
Speaker 8: look at it. And let me say why. I say
Speaker 8: that this is not an ordinary election where that are
Speaker 8: out trying to find the candidates are out trying to
Speaker 8: find the last few undecided voters. What Kamala Harris just
Speaker 8: says Kamala Harris just said in that interview doesn't move
Speaker 8: an independent voter. Tell me an independent voter who's undecided
Speaker 8: right now. They know all that stuff about Donald Trump
Speaker 8: and they're still undecided for some reason. Donald Trump going
Speaker 8: into a McDonald's I don't think helps sort of get
Speaker 8: into or undecided voters. I think this is a turnout election.
Speaker 8: You're not going to hear for that reason, a traditional
Speaker 8: closing argument. I think they're out there trying to make
Speaker 8: sure their people show up. If Kamala Harris was asked that,
Speaker 8: you know, really trying to reach out to independent voters
Speaker 8: with her comments, she'd say something about herself and what
Speaker 8: she's going to do. You know, Donald Trump might be
Speaker 8: talking about what he wants to do, and neither of
Speaker 8: them are talking about that, So it's a fair questions.
Speaker 8: It's a typical question to ask. I'm just not sure.
Speaker 8: This is sort of a square peg round whole sort
Speaker 8: of election, so looking at it what we looked to
Speaker 8: past elections might not be the best way to look
Speaker 8: at it.
Speaker 2: I get you, Mike, al though, when you look at
Speaker 2: the past, Look, you knew Donald Trump in the campaign
Speaker 2: in sixteen, you knew him in the White House, and
Speaker 2: so we're seeing Donald Trump in action, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: what would be different this time? What you see is
Speaker 2: what you get, and if he's reelected, it's going to
Speaker 2: feel a lot like it did last time. Am I wrong?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 9: I think you're probably right.
Speaker 8: I mean, face it, you're not going to teach a
Speaker 8: nearly eighty year old man new tricks.
Speaker 9: Right, That's just not going to happen.
Speaker 8: Joe, You and I have talked about this before, the
Speaker 8: couple of times where I tried to give him campaign
Speaker 8: advice when we're together in the White House. He'd look
Speaker 8: at me and go, Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 9: How many campaigns have you won for president? Zero?
Speaker 8: We're going to do it my way, and I have
Speaker 8: to imagine that's the conversation that's happening inside of the
Speaker 8: Trump campaign right now. He's going to do what has
Speaker 8: served him so well for his entire life. He won
Speaker 8: in sixteen, he lost in twenty twenty. He looks at
Speaker 8: this as sort of the rubber match at the three set,
Speaker 8: and he's going to be him here in the last
Speaker 8: couple of days.
Speaker 6: Well, Donald Trump doing as Donald Trump does is one thing,
Speaker 6: but the campaign is beyond just him. There's also questions
Speaker 6: if this is ultimately about turnout, about voting, or driving
Speaker 6: his base to actually go out and vote for him. Mick,
Speaker 6: as you were suggesting, are you as confident that the
Speaker 6: ground game is there? If Donald Trump is just doing
Speaker 6: what he wants to do, what's everybody else supporting his
Speaker 6: cause doing?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's better than twenty twenty. And here's
Speaker 8: why I say that. I've talked to Mike Wattley a
Speaker 8: couple of times, Mike, former North Carolina Party chair now
Speaker 8: running the RNC about say that the ground game and
Speaker 8: the door to door and he's like, look, Mike.
Speaker 9: It's not going to come out.
Speaker 8: It's not going to come across as the same as
Speaker 8: it was in the past because and this is the
Speaker 8: specific example he gave me on door knocking, which everybody
Speaker 8: knows you sort of do you know, at the last
Speaker 8: couple of weeks to try and drive enthusiasm and get
Speaker 8: you know, maybe an occasional swing voter. He's like, look,
Speaker 8: we're skipping everybody accept hard Republican voters. We're if you're
Speaker 8: an undecided voter, we're probably not knocking on your door.
Speaker 8: We are going to find our people. That's by design.
Speaker 8: And sure enough, there's stories out there how that door
Speaker 8: knocking get campaign might not be as strong as other
Speaker 8: people think it should be. I think both campaigns are
Speaker 8: looking at this through a very different prism. This year,
Speaker 8: the campaign looks different, it feels different, and again the
Speaker 8: proof will obviously be in the putting that that's probably
Speaker 8: DOESN'TDD much value to say that, But in talking to
Speaker 8: the folks of the Trump campaign, I think they are
Speaker 8: going about this as methodical as a Trump campaign is
Speaker 8: going to go through something and say, we are going
Speaker 8: to find our people and make sure they show up.
Speaker 8: And my guess is, even though I don't have first
Speaker 8: hand information, the same thing is going on in the
Speaker 8: Harris camp.
Speaker 2: Kayley asked you about Donald Trump's closing argument, how about
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris's The New York Times ran a headline over
Speaker 2: the weekend you might have seen Mick Trump becomes the
Speaker 2: star of Harris's closing pitch, which brings us back to
Speaker 2: the whole do you vote for someone or do you
Speaker 2: vote against someone? Is that enough for her to be
Speaker 2: the next president?
Speaker 8: Up until twenty sixteen, actually up u twenty sixteen, certainly
Speaker 8: twenty twenty, I would have said that positive energy is
Speaker 8: always more important.
Speaker 9: Than negative energy.
Speaker 8: People will show up to vote for something much more
Speaker 8: than I'll vote show up against something. And Donald Trump
Speaker 8: changed that. I've said this before, I'll say it again.
Speaker 8: People yell at me, but this is not a conspiracy theory. Listen,
Speaker 8: hear me out. No one voted for Joe Biden. People
Speaker 8: either voted for Donald Trump or against Donald Trump. There's
Speaker 8: not that many people voting for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 9: I don't even know who she is.
Speaker 8: They're voting for Donald Trump or against Donal Trump. He's
Speaker 8: a turnout machine for Republicans and a turnout machine for Democrats.
Speaker 9: What's her closing argument?
Speaker 8: She got to asked some really interesting questions over the
Speaker 8: course of the last ten days, which is, you know
Speaker 8: how would you be different than Joe Biden? And she's
Speaker 8: given really poor answers to that, in my opinion, by
Speaker 8: essentially saying I'm not Joe Biden and I'm not Donald Trump.
Speaker 8: That's great, but that's counting on that negative energy. You know,
Speaker 8: when you really want to deliver the message, you tell
Speaker 8: people who you are. And hearkens back Joe and Kayley
Speaker 8: to the interview. I think that Ted Kennedy give back
Speaker 8: in the nineteen seventies and I asked him why are
Speaker 8: you running for president?
Speaker 9: And he couldn't give a good answer. That was Roger.
Speaker 9: But that's exactly right if she loses.
Speaker 8: If she loses, I think history will look back at
Speaker 8: those questions she got asked in these final weeks when
Speaker 8: she wasn't able to tell people who she was and
Speaker 8: instead chose to tell people who she wasn't.
Speaker 6: Well, that's if she loses. There's also the question of
Speaker 6: if she wins or vice versa. If Donald Trump loses
Speaker 6: or wins, either candidate is going to accept those results.
Speaker 6: So if we're just going to litigate this thing for
Speaker 6: three months between election day or almost three months and
Speaker 6: inauguration day, Mick, what are you bracing for in the
Speaker 6: aftermath of November fifth, knowing what we as a country
Speaker 6: experienced in twenty twenty, are you seeing the seed sown
Speaker 6: for that kind of activity to happen again?
Speaker 9: Kayla?
Speaker 8: The easy answer is no, I'm not. But that being said,
Speaker 8: I didn't see January sixth coming either. I never thought
Speaker 8: my party would be the folks, you know, leading an
Speaker 8: armed rebellion. That's I didn't see it coming, and I
Speaker 8: certainly don't see it coming now. I think answer your
Speaker 8: question depends not only how close the election is going
Speaker 8: to be, and there's a chance it's going to be
Speaker 8: exactly as close as the polls say that it is.
Speaker 8: There's also a chance the polls are wrong. Been lying
Speaker 8: to pollsters now for you know, several years, especially when
Speaker 8: it comes to Donald Trump, how close it is and
Speaker 8: where it's close. You know, if it's close in a
Speaker 8: Republican state like Georgia, if it's close in a Democrat
Speaker 8: state like Pennsylvania, I think does give two different answers
Speaker 8: in terms of the reaction that the different parties give.
Speaker 8: I will caution I encourage people to consider this. You know,
Speaker 8: Donald Trump got asked a question during his MC Donald's
Speaker 8: been pumped presser, would he accept the outcome of election?
Speaker 9: He said, you know, yes, if it's fair.
Speaker 8: I think most Democrats that have been asked the same
Speaker 8: question have been giving the same answer. They've asked a
Speaker 8: whole bunch of House members over the weekend, would you
Speaker 8: vote to certify Donald Trump? And their answers, well, if
Speaker 8: it's a fair election. You know, it depends on if
Speaker 8: it's a fair election. I think that's the right answer
Speaker 8: to give. I wouldn't read automatically, would draw a straight
Speaker 8: line from those answers into say civil unrest. But look,
Speaker 8: I hope it goes smoothly. I hope it was a
Speaker 8: clear cut winner. I hope it's quick. I hope we
Speaker 8: don't have to wait five days for Pennsylvania to count.
Speaker 8: That's a self inflicted wound on the nation and inflicted
Speaker 8: on us by Pennsylvania. And I just hope there is
Speaker 8: whoever wins wins grace flu never loses, accepts the outcome.
Speaker 2: You know, A shade away from what we're talking about here, Mike.
Speaker 2: You might have seen this from Bruce Melman that was
Speaker 2: making the rounds and in some of the tip sheets
Speaker 2: this morning. It's titled the nine weeks slog and it
Speaker 2: looks at what happens between the election and January sixth
Speaker 2: Are you of the mind that this election has decided
Speaker 2: before January fifth or after?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: I think I hope it's decided before that. I mean,
Speaker 8: but we forget. We don't ballot box.
Speaker 2: Or courthouse, I guess, is my question, Mick battle box.
Speaker 8: Although I mean, look, in two thousand, it went forty
Speaker 8: six days before we knew who was the president, and
Speaker 8: the country managed to get through that. A draw some
Speaker 8: conclusions that maybe that's where the country sort of started
Speaker 8: to move apart.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 8: It's a fascinating academic conversation. But look, I'm one of
Speaker 8: the folks rooting, as I know a lot of folks
Speaker 8: are for some clean cut decisions. Yes, no, Harris Trump whatever.
Speaker 8: I'm obviously rooting for Donald Trump because I'm a Republican.
Speaker 8: But I'd like to see some very clean elections, some
Speaker 8: quick decision, and then whoever loses, say you know what,
Speaker 8: I fought my best.
Speaker 9: Uh, let's move on together.
Speaker 6: And that's just the presidential race, of course, there's also
Speaker 6: the balance of the House and Senate to consider as well.
Speaker 6: Would you be feeling better right now, if you were
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson or Hawckeing Jeffries.
Speaker 9: Ah, that's a great question, Kaylee. I don't listen, you'd
Speaker 9: never know. And here's why.
Speaker 8: So many of those races, especially the close races, are local.
Speaker 8: And I know that sounds sort of axiomatic and doesn't
Speaker 8: you know, not very insightful, but.
Speaker 9: It really is.
Speaker 8: I remember talking to Kevin McCarthy, you know, before my
Speaker 8: race in twenty ten. I didn't know Kevin very well.
Speaker 8: He's like, well, it looks like it's gonna be a
Speaker 8: nail miter, you know, because that's what everybody was telling him.
Speaker 9: But we knew it was different down here.
Speaker 8: Sometimes the folks who are down in the trenches in
Speaker 8: those house races are gonna know more about their race
Speaker 8: than anybody else. There's folks out there right now Republicans
Speaker 8: who we think are going to win, who are.
Speaker 9: Really really afraid.
Speaker 8: Conversely, there's some Republicans out there who think there's Democrats
Speaker 8: who think they're gonna win who probably won't.
Speaker 9: That you just can't.
Speaker 8: It doesn't filter up like the governor's races do, the
Speaker 8: Senate races, and certainly the presidential race. So there was
Speaker 8: going to be half a dozen or so surprises on
Speaker 8: election night in the House, and.
Speaker 9: I flip a coin.
Speaker 8: The country is divided, just no question about it.
Speaker 9: It's really really narrowly divided.
Speaker 8: And that will be reflected obviously in the presidential race, but.
Speaker 9: In those House races as well.
Speaker 8: My guess is there's twenty two or three dozen races
Speaker 8: decided by less than one point.
Speaker 2: Pretty amazing to see what's happening on the Senate side too.
Speaker 2: Before you join us, Mick, we were talking about these
Speaker 2: changes reratings by Cook. Pennsylvania Senate goes from leans D
Speaker 2: to toss up, Nebraska Senate goes from likely R to
Speaker 2: leans ARE. And you wonder how much the ground will
Speaker 2: be shifting under our feet between now and November fifth,
Speaker 2: with only two weeks to go. Mick Malvaney, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining us as always here on Balance
Speaker 2: of Power. Former Congressman, founder of the Freedom Caucus, former
Speaker 2: acting White House Chief of Staff.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
Speaker 1: us live weekdays at noon Eastern on Appocarplay and then
Speaker 1: Proud Oto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand
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Speaker 2: I don't know. This whole conversation just brings us back
Speaker 2: to the fact that no matter what each campaign in
Speaker 2: which each candidate try, this is still as high rates.
Speaker 6: It absolutely is, as they try to vie not just
Speaker 6: with media attention and celebrity, but with policy for voters votes.
Speaker 6: And of course we've gotten a litany of policy proposals
Speaker 6: from each of them. It's Donald Trump's though, we want
Speaker 6: to take a close look at now, as there's a
Speaker 6: new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Speaker 6: that looks at the impact of some of these ideas
Speaker 6: he's put forward, including no tax on Social Security benefits,
Speaker 6: mass deportation of people not legally in the country, and
Speaker 6: some other ideas that the Committee for a Responsible Federal
Speaker 6: Budget finds today could increase Social Security's ten year cast
Speaker 6: shortfall by two point three trillion dollars through twenty thirty five.
Speaker 6: They are bringing up Joe by three years. They're insolvency
Speaker 6: estimate from the fiscal year twenty thirty four to twenty
Speaker 6: thirty one, just six years after the next president takes
Speaker 6: office if these policies come to fruition.
Speaker 2: So maybe we should be talking about this. Now the
Speaker 2: candidates have not been the campaigns have pledged to keep
Speaker 2: their hands off of this, going back to the old
Speaker 2: Al Gore line about a lock box. And you wonder
Speaker 2: if a report like this brings this conversation to the
Speaker 2: four last time Miamiguinness's group came out with numbers, this
Speaker 2: was on the tax proposals. Both campaigns were asked about
Speaker 2: it repeatedly in high profile interview settings. And I dare say,
Speaker 2: she's driving the conversation again.
Speaker 6: Yep, and she's joining us now. Maya McGuinness is with us.
Speaker 6: She's president, of course, with the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget. Maya.
Speaker 6: It's a fascinating report. Can you just walk us through
Speaker 6: specifically the policy ideas you are looking at here and
Speaker 6: how they translate to a financially weaker America? Can social
Speaker 6: security system? What is it exactly that would weaken it
Speaker 6: so much knowing it was already on a path to insolvency.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: So that's right.
Speaker 10: The discussion about social security has been completely backwards, with
Speaker 10: candidates promising not to fix a program that desperately needs
Speaker 10: to be fixed. And as we've been analyzing all of
Speaker 10: the policies of both candidates. We've been well aware of
Speaker 10: the void of discussion on this important topic. But what
Speaker 10: caught us by surprise is when we were going through
Speaker 10: the policies, we did find that former Presidents Trump's policies,
Speaker 10: many of them, would actually contribute, as you said, to
Speaker 10: a significant deterioration in the program's finances. As you asked specifically,
Speaker 10: there have been a lot of promises about cutting taxes
Speaker 10: for certain groups. Cutting those Social Security benefit taxes means
Speaker 10: that undermines a revenue stream that currently goes into the program.
Speaker 10: You would lose about nine hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 10: by not taxing those benefits for seniors for Social Security. Likewise,
Speaker 10: if you don't tax tips and you don't tax overtime,
Speaker 10: that's another revenue stream that's going to finance the underfunded
Speaker 10: program that would no longer exist. Cuts about nine hundred
Speaker 10: billion dollars out of the program over the next decade.
Speaker 10: And then, finally, the effects of getting rid of undocumented workers,
Speaker 10: mass deportation and tariffs would actually have both potentially inflationary
Speaker 10: effects on the economy, which means higher colas for seniors.
Speaker 10: Because when there's inflation hurts many people. But seniors have
Speaker 10: an automatic bump up in their soci security benefits and
Speaker 10: it could reduce wages, both of which would cause further deterioration.
Speaker 10: We find of about four hundred billion dollars and so,
Speaker 10: like you said, this program headed towards insolvency within less
Speaker 10: than a decade. Current seniors are supposed to are on
Speaker 10: track to be getting twenty three percent across the board
Speaker 10: benefit cuts, which is unconscionable, terrible policy. They need to
Speaker 10: do something to fix it. And under these policies, we
Speaker 10: find that those benefit reductions would actually move up to
Speaker 10: thirty three percent across the board benefit cuts. We need
Speaker 10: all candidates talking about how to fix the program. We
Speaker 10: don't need policy to make it worse.
Speaker 2: Well, so how do we figure, Maya, and you've been
Speaker 2: in Washington for a minute. How come no one wants
Speaker 2: to talk about it? This is a hands off for
Speaker 2: both campaigns. That goes for Joe Biden back when he
Speaker 2: was running and I guess still as president of the
Speaker 2: United States. This has been in a lock box since
Speaker 2: Al Gore talked about it a whole bunch of years ago.
Speaker 2: Why won't anyone raise their hand? Knowing how many people
Speaker 2: this impacts. This would be a good political issue, wouldn't it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's become a pretzel of a narrative where everybody's
Speaker 10: talking about a backwards as though protecting the program means
Speaker 10: doing nothing, when clearly protecting the program means doing something.
Speaker 10: We can't be saying to today's seniors. The current plan
Speaker 10: right now is you are heading for a benefit cut
Speaker 10: of about sixteen thousand dollars per year when policymakers promise
Speaker 10: not to do any to fix the program. But I
Speaker 10: happened here for a long time, and we do know that, unfortunately,
Speaker 10: reasonable fiscal policy can be very bad politics. Right now,
Speaker 10: we have candidates on both sides promising not to fix
Speaker 10: Social Security, not to touch these programs, and not to
Speaker 10: raise taxes, both of which are going to have to
Speaker 10: be part of an overall plan to address the fiscal situation.
Speaker 10: So good fiscal policy not always good politics. That's a
Speaker 10: real problem for the issue. And as long as pantering
Speaker 10: on this issue and promising not to touch benefits when
Speaker 10: they actually benefits or revenues when they need to be
Speaker 10: changed to fix the program is it's doing a huge
Speaker 10: disservice to seniors. Frankly, I sort of. I'm surprised the
Speaker 10: ARP isn't out there saying to everybody, where's your plan?
Speaker 10: You need to have a plan to fix this program.
Speaker 6: Well, so on the idea of neither candidate having a
Speaker 6: plan on this specific issue, we do have an understanding,
Speaker 6: as we were mentioning with Donald Trump, but for Kamala
Speaker 6: Harris as well, of what some of their other plans are.
Speaker 6: Do we have a sense of how the vice president's
Speaker 6: policy proposals would impact Social Security?
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 6: Are we looking at the same kind of time frame
Speaker 6: for insol or insolvency, or is she not not as
Speaker 6: debilitating potentially to the program?
Speaker 10: So these other ideas, Yeah, exactly, she fails completely to
Speaker 10: put out a plan to address the program, but the
Speaker 10: policies that she does have that would affect the payroll
Speaker 10: tax or Social Security kind of net out to zero.
Speaker 10: So it's neutral. It's where the plan the program already is.
Speaker 10: Let me say over and over again, though that is unacceptable.
Speaker 10: You cannot be saying to current retirees and people who
Speaker 10: are about to retire that they are a part of
Speaker 10: a program that is headed towards insolvency, and the bosses
Speaker 10: of those programs the lawmakers of this country are promising
Speaker 10: not to do anything to fix it. They are trying
Speaker 10: to wait until the last minute. I don't know why
Speaker 10: anyone thinks that's a good plan. It's going to hurt
Speaker 10: seniors and taxpayers more. It's going to leave fewer revenues
Speaker 10: for other important priorities in the budget. It's going to
Speaker 10: create chaos and uncertainty in a program for retirement where
Speaker 10: you need certainty. And it's just frankly like we aren't
Speaker 10: governing well at this point where they are taking the
Speaker 10: easy way out instead of saying the trustees tell us
Speaker 10: every single year in their annual report, with basic certainty,
Speaker 10: we are going to have to make changes to avoid
Speaker 10: these across the board benefit cuts. Let's get to it.
Speaker 10: We've known about it for years and decades, and you know,
Speaker 10: it's a presidential campaign. That's what leadership is. It's leveling
Speaker 10: with the country, including about difficult choices that we have
Speaker 10: to make, and talking about their plan to address it.
Speaker 10: And we're just not hearing that from any of the
Speaker 10: presidential candidates.
Speaker 2: Well, god knows, we like to wait till the last
Speaker 2: minute on everything around here in Washington.
Speaker 9: Maya.
Speaker 2: I wonder how often in the history of the Committee
Speaker 2: for a Responsible Federal Budget. Have you found that the
Speaker 2: Republican candidate adds more to debt and deficit than the
Speaker 2: spending happy Democrat. Is this a first.
Speaker 10: Well, when President Trump ran previously, it in our scores,
Speaker 10: we found that he would add much more.
Speaker 2: To the overall Okay, so not named Trump.
Speaker 9: It used to be.
Speaker 10: Prior to those races. Actually, the candidates were almost exactly equal,
Speaker 10: like just to tens of billions of difference and how
Speaker 10: much they would affect the national debt through very different
Speaker 10: kinds of policies. You'll remember in the past, Republicans tended
Speaker 10: to cut taxes, Democrats tended to raise spending. You're now
Speaker 10: seeing e merging of both, where Republicans also raise spending
Speaker 10: and Democrats also cut taxes. So both candidate's proposals are
Speaker 10: much much worse than we've seen in the past, and
Speaker 10: in this situation, we've certainly seen the President Trump's with
Speaker 10: its effect on social Security and the overall debt is
Speaker 10: larger than we're seeing from from Vice President Harris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, prepared to hear both candidates forced to respond to
Speaker 2: this research, Maya, I'm so sorry we're out of time,
Speaker 2: come back and see us soon. Send us what you
Speaker 2: wanted to say. Well, let the audience know Miam Againness
Speaker 2: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Of course she's the
Speaker 2: president there. And Kayley, this is the first time we're
Speaker 2: hearing about this, not the last time.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Remember there's town halls happening for the candidates this week.
Speaker 6: They could face some tough questions about this, and course
Speaker 6: will continue to have full coverage here on Bloomberg TV
Speaker 6: and radio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Can
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Speaker 1: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being with us year. On the Monday edition
Speaker 2: of Balance of Power, Ed McMahon has been dead for
Speaker 2: fifteen years. I just had to check. Can you believe
Speaker 2: that was two thousand and nine. If you don't know
Speaker 2: Ed McMahon, ask your parents because I figure if he
Speaker 2: was still with us, he could be playing an important
Speaker 2: role for the Trump campaign right now. Did you see
Speaker 2: Elon Musk with the big check the big cardboard check
Speaker 2: on stage over the weekend, he's given away a million
Speaker 2: dollars a day. Imagine Ed McMahon with the big check
Speaker 2: in the balloons, knocking on your door, the publisher's clearing house.
Speaker 2: That was the American dream. Wasn't it a little bit
Speaker 2: different this time? Did you used to put in for
Speaker 2: the publisher's clearinghouse. You get all the magazines thinking he
Speaker 2: might win some money. Now you're registered to vote, I guess,
Speaker 2: or sign a petition. Elon Musk making big news a
Speaker 2: million bucks a day he's going to give away between
Speaker 2: now and the election if you sign the petition. People said, wait,
Speaker 2: that's not legal until they read the fine print here
Speaker 2: it's basically a sweepstakes. So what keeps, by the way,
Speaker 2: all the Harris supporters from trying to get a million
Speaker 2: dollars a day? Maybe they don't want to give up
Speaker 2: their cell phone number. I digress. The fact of the
Speaker 2: matter is it's coming down to a jump ball election.
Speaker 2: As Josh Wingrove put it here earlier, who scores last,
Speaker 2: and that of course means who turns out the voters most.
Speaker 2: The news today, the polling from the Washington Post is
Speaker 2: remarkable it's tied, not even a statistical tie, it's a
Speaker 2: tie tie. He gets forty seven, she gets forty seven.
Speaker 2: And that's a poll of the Swing States. Speaking over
Speaker 2: the weekend on Sunday Morning television, one of Kamala Harris's
Speaker 2: chief surrogates in the Swing States, the governor of Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: Tony Evers, talking on ABC this Week about the ground game.
Speaker 2: Let's listen.
Speaker 11: There are people that Frank Ray, don't follow this on
Speaker 11: a daily basis. There's people that don't follow the polls.
Speaker 11: There's people that just don't you know, they go to work,
Speaker 11: they got kids at home, they do through their job
Speaker 11: with their kids, and yet up the next day these
Speaker 11: poles look at a small number. I know, I know
Speaker 11: it's a science, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 11: I run and the people all the time that just
Speaker 11: having been no thought, and so we're going to help them.
Speaker 2: They like the three amigos now Evers, Whitmer, Shapiro. They
Speaker 2: sat for a three way interview. They also sat down
Speaker 2: with Bloomberg, spoke with the afore mentioned Josh Wingrove, who
Speaker 2: hit the trail with all three. It's where we start
Speaker 2: our conversation with our panel. Let's get them together. Our
Speaker 2: signature panel is back on this Monday. Rick Davis and
Speaker 2: Jennie Schanzino Bloomberg Politics contributors. She, of course, is political
Speaker 2: science professor at Iona University. Ricks partner at stone Court Capital.
Speaker 2: It's great to see both of you, Rick in the
Speaker 2: final stages here, welcome back. What are you doing as
Speaker 2: a campaign manager with two weeks left? Early voting is
Speaker 2: underway and you need to get people off the couch
Speaker 2: who maybe have never voted before. It's that close. How
Speaker 2: do you spend your time?
Speaker 12: Yeah, there are really two things that are still moving.
Speaker 12: One is the schedule, so getting the final tour set
Speaker 12: and all the activity that goes around that, which is
Speaker 12: not insignificant. And then secondly, which is actually more important,
Speaker 12: is pumping every extra dollar you having to get out
Speaker 12: the vote and monitoring those and checking them against historical
Speaker 12: averages or current registration lists. So it's really just pouring
Speaker 12: over slates of numbers constantly throughout the day and redirecting
Speaker 12: your efforts to fill vacancies to make sure that the
Speaker 12: precincts that matter the most are getting the attention. And
Speaker 12: so the TV's all bought, the ads are all made.
Speaker 12: Things that people see as a campaign are pretty much done.
Speaker 12: Highly unlikely there's going to be a killer ad that's
Speaker 12: produced and put up in the last two weeks of
Speaker 12: the election. So it's all about the ground game and
Speaker 12: making sure that you're not missing something like Hillary missed
Speaker 12: the entire state of Michigan in sixteen. That may be
Speaker 12: the biggest historic miss in history. But mostly it's making
Speaker 12: sure that precincts you're dependent upon are hitting a certain
Speaker 12: turnout level that you have estimated will give you a victory.
Speaker 2: It's pretty fascinating stuff, Genie, what Tony Evers said there,
Speaker 2: These are people that don't follow the polls, right, They
Speaker 2: don't follow this on a daily basis the way we do.
Speaker 2: We're weird. They were not normal. He didn't say that.
Speaker 2: I did. They've got kids at home, they do time
Speaker 2: with their kids. Geenie, how do you find them? How
Speaker 2: do you talk to them in their homes in the
Speaker 2: next two weeks?
Speaker 7: Yeah, they have lives, Joe, unlike you, and I just
Speaker 7: pictured you all week and Joe and you haven't mentioned
Speaker 7: it yet. But watching that McDonald's clip that was you know,
Speaker 7: five minutes. Yeah, it's precious. I mean, it's fifty five
Speaker 7: minutes of trolling, and I have to say it was
Speaker 7: pretty good. You know, how you reach them is just
Speaker 7: the way that Rick was talking about. And I think
Speaker 7: that's why getting those governors out on the ground in
Speaker 7: those blue states, the blue wall as we call it,
Speaker 7: is so important. You know, one sort of underdiscussed aspect
Speaker 7: of these seven swing states is five of the seven
Speaker 7: have democratic governors. And you know, there was a long
Speaker 7: time when for Crats, rightly, they bemoaned the fact that
Speaker 7: many leaders at the state and local level for a
Speaker 7: long time in the US have been on the Republican side.
Speaker 7: We're seeing that change, and I think it can't you know,
Speaker 7: underestimate how important our local and state officials are in
Speaker 7: things like the ground game, getting people out to vote,
Speaker 7: energizing folks, so all of that critically important, which is
Speaker 7: why you know Donald Trump is lately trying to you know,
Speaker 7: make up with Kemp, and I guess they have. But
Speaker 7: that's why you never want to sort of, you know,
Speaker 7: have a you know, some kind of riff with those
Speaker 7: folks on the ground because they matter an awful lot.
Speaker 2: Well, they absolutely do. Rick, does it help to be
Speaker 2: putting on the McDonald's apron and doing that stunt that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump did yesterday. By the way, the answer may
Speaker 2: well be yes. A lot of people ran images of
Speaker 2: him behind the friolator and handing out bags of food
Speaker 2: to people in their cars, but of course we know
Speaker 2: they closed the restaurant that day and he was actually
Speaker 2: doing the job for less than five minutes.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I look, I thought the imagery was terrific. I mean,
Speaker 12: there were a lot of ups and downs with his
Speaker 12: campaign over the weekend, but uh, it wasn't because he
Speaker 12: went to the McDonald's one. It's authentic, right. The guy
Speaker 12: eats more McDonald's and probably any other elective official in history. Uh, so,
Speaker 12: so there's a there's He actually knows the routine pretty
Speaker 12: well and it wouldn't surprise me. It's not his first
Speaker 12: time behind the counter in a McDonald's.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 12: The reality is, uh, these these the pictures are worth
Speaker 12: much more than the event itself. And so kudos to
Speaker 12: the campaign for putting him in a place you know,
Speaker 12: really well well done, had the whole apron going, had
Speaker 12: the fry in his hand, uh and uh and you
Speaker 12: know they got him out of there without a whole
Speaker 12: lot of grease and his fingers and and and and
Speaker 12: too many big max getting eaten. So uh yeah, these
Speaker 12: that was a good weekend shot for them. And this
Speaker 12: is one thing they've always done pretty well is put him,
Speaker 12: uh Donald Trump in a humanized saying location. It's separate
Speaker 12: from the big rallies that were all used to. They're
Speaker 12: pretty good at these these kind of OTAs, off the
Speaker 12: record type events.
Speaker 2: People watching on YouTube, you're actually seeing Donald Trump in
Speaker 2: action behind the Frio lator. He did that for five minutes,
Speaker 2: and he spent about fifteen minutes at the drive through.
Speaker 2: All right, Genie, you know you pulled me into this
Speaker 2: because you know, I don't like to talk about it.
Speaker 2: No one ordered, they didn't get to order. That's just
Speaker 2: very funny to me. They said they were pre selected people.
Speaker 2: They pull up and these are Trump supporters, I guess,
Speaker 2: pre selected by the Secret Service. Pull up to the
Speaker 2: window and he gives you a bag of something. You're
Speaker 2: not really sure what's in it. But so Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: has been invited to do the same, I'm told or
Speaker 2: I read by this franchise owner, Genie. And part of
Speaker 2: the point here is Donald Trump doesn't believe Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: worked at a McDonald's. He said this again to the
Speaker 2: reporters who were there, that he worked fifteen minutes more
Speaker 2: than Kamala Harris did. Does she need to produce a
Speaker 2: photograph or something here? She says she worked at a
Speaker 2: McDonald's in Alameda, California, in nineteen eighty three during the
Speaker 2: summer freshman year Howard University. I spent the summer working
Speaker 2: in the fredol A shipping department. Genie, my hair still
Speaker 2: smells like grease. I don't have a photograph. I actually
Speaker 2: went back to look. I thought, is it possible, this
Speaker 2: is before cell phones. Is it entirely possible that no
Speaker 2: such a photo exists?
Speaker 9: Number one?
Speaker 2: And should she take the invite and go to McDonald's.
Speaker 7: Well, Joe, I have to agree with you. The kids
Speaker 7: today can't believe it. But like when I worked at
Speaker 7: Friendly's back in the day, and you're New England, yes,
Speaker 7: you know I worked at several Friendlies in fact, and
Speaker 7: you know I don't have any photographs of me in
Speaker 7: that uniform. And so she may not have photographs. She
Speaker 7: does have friends who attest to the fact she worked there.
Speaker 7: I think she can very well go to the McDonald's.
Speaker 7: But I think what the campaign on the Kamala Harris
Speaker 7: side is trying to do is to try to point
Speaker 7: to Donald Trump and what they describe as unhinged behavior.
Speaker 7: And over the weekend and over the last week, he
Speaker 7: has given them a lot to work with. And you know,
Speaker 7: one of the things we've talked about a long time
Speaker 7: now for this election is whoever this election about is about,
Speaker 7: and whoever this election is a referendum on may very
Speaker 7: well will well lose. And Donald Trump, since he can't
Speaker 7: keep his focus on, say, Kamala Harris's you know, twenty
Speaker 7: nineteen policy prescriptions or policies themselves, keep saying things and
Speaker 7: we heard a bevy of them over the weekend that
Speaker 7: do make him look unfit to be president. And so
Speaker 7: that's what they are focusing on as we move to
Speaker 7: this closing And of course they're also bringing out Republicans
Speaker 7: who say, I don't agree with Kamala Harris on any issue,
Speaker 7: but I agree with her on this. The man who's
Speaker 7: talking about Arnold Palmer in this way cannot be president
Speaker 7: of the United States. And that is an important closing
Speaker 7: point because some of the data shows for INDECE that
Speaker 7: does move the needle a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that one.
Speaker 2: I And we're going to spend a little more time
Speaker 2: on some of the language that was used over the
Speaker 2: weekend with our panel in the next hour. By the way,
Speaker 2: friendlies is still around, Genie. That looks like they've got
Speaker 2: a lot of them left, and so is to my
Speaker 2: just learning now the publisher's clearing house. It's pch dot com.
Speaker 2: Who knows these things never go away? Rick, you talked
Speaker 2: about authenticity Donald Trump, not necessarily in the cosplay at McDonald's,
Speaker 2: but wearingly apron with credibility. Would Kamala Harris draw the
Speaker 2: same image and response from you if she took them
Speaker 2: up on their invite? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 12: I mean, you know, you hate to do the copycat thing.
Speaker 12: I honestly think it would be much more effective, you know,
Speaker 12: showing up in Philadelphia grabbing a steak and cheese. I mean,
Speaker 12: I think these are the things that would suit her
Speaker 12: much better and be in a place that's you know,
Speaker 12: more likely to make her seem like every person, right,
Speaker 12: which is what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish. I mean,
Speaker 12: the reality is it's authenticity does matter, and so if
Speaker 12: She's been on defense. Every time he you know, lies
Speaker 12: about her record, she tries to correct the record, and
Speaker 12: I applaud her for doing that. But as a result,
Speaker 12: she literally has spent almost every day on defense. And
Speaker 12: at some point in time, you got to go on
Speaker 12: offense and start creating your own record, and that would include,
Speaker 12: you know, going after Donald Trump is a you know,
Speaker 12: I don't know, pretender to the Burger King, right, I mean,
Speaker 12: you know, he's he's not somebody who anybody visualizes eats,
Speaker 12: you know, McDonald's every day, even though he probably does.
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, it brings us to the New York Times
Speaker 2: headline from over the weekend. You might have noticed Playbook
Speaker 2: grabbed a screen grab of it for a reason. We're
Speaker 2: going to get into this with our panel in the
Speaker 2: next hour. Trump becomes the star of Harris's closing pitch.
Speaker 2: That's what Rick's talking about, and you wonder if that
Speaker 2: might turn around again between now and November fifth. Indeed,
Speaker 2: fond memories of the light blue cotton candy soda for
Speaker 2: producer James at friendlies. I'll tell you what the memories.
Speaker 2: We'll pull him back here, CEC says Kamala Harris go
Speaker 2: to Angelo's. Maybe we talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: restaurants here coming up off the air, guys.
Speaker 1: We could.
Speaker 2: There's a lot two weeks to film. Thanks for listening
Speaker 2: to the Balance of Power podcast. Make sure to subscribe
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Speaker 2: weekday from Washington, DC at noontime Eastern at Bloomberg dot com.