Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
Then the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly.
She discusses their role in protecting the 2024 election.
And former Trump administration official Jeron Smith discusses what he calls a new realignment of the Republican Party and how former President Trump is benefiting from it.
Also, the president of the Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee, George Conway, on the campaign and candidacy of the former president.
Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Wednesday, October 30th, 2024.
We're now just six days from Election Day.
Yesterday's campaign stops took the candidates from Mar-a-Lago to the ellipse and ended with Democrats cheering Kamala Harris's closing pitch and President Joe Biden setting off a firestorm among Republicans with his comments about Donald Trump supporters.
But we begin by hearing from you with six days to go.
How are you feeling about the race for the White House?
If you're a Donald Trump and JD Vance supporter, the number to call 202-748-8001.
If you're a Kamala Harris and Tim Wall supporter, the number 202-748-8000.
And if you're undecided or supporting someone else, 202-748-8002, you can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
It's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Wednesday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
Two sets of headlines to set the table this morning: one from the left, one from the right, from the left.
It's the Huffington Post, a focus on that speech at the ellipse in Washington, D.C. last night.
Harris kitchen table closing case, 75,000 people at the site of the January 6th insurrection.
That's the headline there.
To the right, it's Breitbart, a focus on President Joe Biden's comments about Donald Trump supporters.
U.S. President attacks half the country is the headline.
Hate campaign hits a new low.
Nightmare, Bigfoots Harris's big speech.
Want to show you both first, it's about 90 seconds of Kamala Harris's rally last night at the ellipse.
America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind.
More chaos, more division, and policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else.
I offer a different path, and I ask for your vote, is my pledge to you.
I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your life better.
I am not looking to score political points.
I am looking to make progress.
I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me.
Unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.
He wants to put them in jail.
I'll give them a seat at the table.
I pledge to you to approach my work with the joy and optimism that comes from making a difference in people's lives.
And I pledge to be a president for all Americans and to always put country above party and self.
Vice President Kamala Harris, last night, the south lawn of the White House in the background there.
That speech coming yesterday evening.
The other big story, the one Republicans are focusing on this morning, is President Biden setting off an election firestorm with his garbage comment.
That's the headline from Axius.
President Biden handing ammunition, they write to gleeful Republicans on Tuesday night when he referred to former President Trump supporters as garbage.
The comment came in a video call with the progressive group Voto Latino when Biden wanted to respond to a comedian calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
Here's Joe Biden in that video call.
Donald Trump has no character.
He doesn't give a damn about the Latino community.
He's failed businessman.
He only cares about the billionaire friends he has and accumulated wealth for those at the top.
He says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.
Give me a break.
He wants to do away with the birthright citizenship.
Who the hell has said that in the last hundred years?
And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating isle of garbage.
Well, let me tell you something.
I don't know the Puerto Rican that I know or Puerto Rico where I'm in my home state of Delaware.
They're good, decent, honorable people.
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
His demonization is unconscionable and it's un-American.
It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been.
I was President Joe Biden in that call yesterday with Voto Latino.
Joe Biden tweeting out an explanation, a further discussion about that comment via Twitter last night in the wake of the immediate firestorm.
This was about 9.30 last night, saying, earlier today, I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage, which is the only word I can think of to describe it.
His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.
That's all I meant to say.
The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation.
That was Joe Biden in his tweet, but it didn't stop the ensuing firestorm from Republicans.
JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential pick, his tweet yesterday about 8.22 saying this is disgusting.
Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden are attacking half the country.
There's no excuse for this.
And I hope Americans reject it.
Donald Trump also talking about this statement when he was informed about it at his rally on Tuesday by Marco Rubio.
Here's that event from last night.
All right.
Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but I have breaking news for you, Mr. President.
You may not have heard this.
Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage, are garbage.
He's talking about the Border Patrol.
He's talking about nurses.
He's talking about teachers.
He's talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President.
And I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said.
We are not garbage.
We are patriots who love America.
And thank you for running, Mr. President.
Wow.
That's terrible.
That's what it says.
That's what it says.
So you have?
Remember, Hillary, she said deplorable.
And then she said irredeemable, right?
But she said deplorable.
That didn't work out.
Garbage, I think, is worse, right?
But he doesn't know.
You have to please forgive him.
Please forgive him.
For he not knoweth what he said.
So that's how the evening ended for the two campaigns last night, one week from election day.
We are now six days from election day and getting your thoughts this morning on the Washington Journal.
Phone lines split, as you can see on the screen, taking your calls in this first hour this morning.
We'll start on that line for those who are undecided.
Dion's in Richmond, Virginia.
Good morning.
Hi, hi, good morning.
Can you hear me?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay, yes.
I am, well, I'm not undecided.
I'm voting actually for Dr. Cornell West and Dr. Melina Abdullah.
The reason why I'm definitely not voting for Donald Trump, but the reason why I'm not voting for Kamala Harris, well, specifically, I really haven't heard a black agenda, but every time I do like watch clips of her, I'm sorry, her in interviews and stuff, I feel like she doesn't never answer the questions about as far as like what she's going to do.
I feel like everything that I've seen, she's always either bringing up Donald Trump or giving like a backstory, you know, of like maybe something that has happened.
So I haven't really heard exactly like what her actual plan is to fix everything, just from what I've seen.
So that's why I'm just going to go ahead and vote for the third party.
Dion, thanks for calling in.
Is that a baby crying in the background?
Yes.
You know, you never have to apologize for a baby crying in the background on this show.
Deion, thanks for the call from Richmond.
Yes, thanks.
Bye.
This is Robert, Tucson, Arizona.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I listen to callers, and the Trump followers don't realize Trump is unfit for office.
Apparently, they don't know he said the people who stormed the Capitol are patriots, or that he is a demagogue who admires Vladimir Putin, or that Dr. Burks, a member of his pandemic team, that tens of thousands more died from COVID due to Trump's mishandling of the pandemic.
He tells his followers the election was stolen, that all his claims have been disproved, or there's no evidence to support his claims.
He is unfit for office, and any evangelical votes for him is morally bankrupt as he is.
If he wins, it is because of the willful ignorance of his followers.
That's Robert on the Harris Walls line.
This is Kendra on the Trump Vance line out of Ashland, Virginia.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning, John.
I'm calling regarding Kamala's speech last night.
This will be my first time actually voting for Trump.
But her speech went well.
She is an experienced attorney, so of course she knows how to give closing statements.
Her closing arguments included bashing Trump, more fear-mongering by mentioning Project 2025, which was denounced by Trump.
He denounced Project 2025 several times.
Plus, she mentioned January 6, but left out the part that Nancy Pelosi turned down the National Guard.
She talked about stopping the division, but her speech shows signs of being divisive throughout the years.
And during the campaign, she has flip-flopped a lot, so no one really knows what she stands for.
She keeps copying Trump's policies like no tax on tips, and now she's copying what Trump said he would do for the elderly when it comes to caregiven.
She is a smart lady when it comes to being a prosecutor, but I'm not convinced that she would be a good president.
When she does any interviews, it's obvious that she has no leadership skills and she's not business savvy.
Her body language is very fidgety.
She does not make eye contact and she's not poised.
So she will not have any respect from leaders of other countries.
Kendra, who'd you vote for in 2016 or 2020?
2016, I voted for Hillary.
And then in 2020, I wasn't going to vote at all at first, but then I gave in and voted for Biden because the media, I was listening to the media, not doing any research on my own.
And I was convinced that, you know, that Trump was dividing the company.
I mean, dividing America.
So, you know, I just finally gave in and voted for Biden because he was, you know, saying that he was going to bring the country together and everything.
But that never happened.
We're more divided now than ever.
That's Kendra in Virginia.
This is Marsha in Mount Rainier, Maryland, on that line for Undecided.
Go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
Well, I'm an independent, and I'm 77, and I'm a black woman.
But my problem with VP Harris is that she is encouraging women to kill their babies.
I have a problem with a woman who doesn't have any kids encouraging other women to do that.
That's all I have to say.
God bless us all.
So, Marcia, you're not undecided?
Yes, I'm undecided.
I don't know who I'm going to vote for.
It sounds like it's not going to be Harris.
No, it won't.
It will not be her.
It will not be her.
But if anyone, I would vote for Trump.
That's Marcia in Maryland on the Harris Walls line, Severn, Maryland.
Kat, good morning.
Hi, good morning.
First of all, it's kind of scary to listen to people repeat Paul's talking points.
Dancy Pelosi did not turn on the National Guard.
But in any case, I'm feeling pretty good about Kamala winning.
My instincts in my gut tells me that she will win.
What I am worried about is what will happen afterwards with Trump and his supporters.
I do not want another January 6th, and I think that they have something up their sleeve.
And I just wish people would realize that he is not fit for office.
Something is wrong with him, whether it's dementia or who knows, he was a drug abuser.
I don't know.
But if you look at his biggest donors right now, Elon Musk and members of the DeVos family, it just shows that he is being bought and sold, and people are using him.
They see that he is not mentally all there, and they are using him to get his, to get what they want out of him.
And as a mom, a teacher, a woman, I am, I'm scared about that.
That's Kat.
This is Nikki Fountain, Florida.
Trump Vance supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I've supported Trump from way, way back, way back when people were first starting to ask him to run.
Back when Oprah was asking him about running.
And I've never deviated at all.
There's a lot of things about Harris that just make me so crazy.
Because Between Harris and Schumer and Jeffries and Pelosi and Hillary, they were hiding Biden's condition.
There's no question that they were hiding his condition until they had no choice.
And one other thing, I've got to say this: it's really been bothering me.
I'm hearing impaired.
I listen to you with hearing age, and I use closed captioning.
And when I watch, just like a while ago, you had on a Trump speech in Palm Beach.
And every time that Trump was speaking, the closed captions were working.
And then he'd bring somebody else up to speak, and they'd stop working.
And then Trump would come back up and they'd work.
And it just seems like a lot of times that happens when it's Trump and when it's other people talking about Trump that are pro-Trump, the captions drop.
Tell you what, Nick, I'll pass that along to the folks who are in charge of closed captioning and let them know and see if there's an issue or something they can do.
But thanks for bringing it up.
Thank you so much, John.
You have a great one.
Ray in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a Harris Wall supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm not sure why all the Trumpers are getting so angry with what Joe Biden said.
Everybody obviously knows he was joking.
They should get over it.
I'm so over it myself.
I'm not sure why they aren't over this joke that Joe Biden told.
Another thing about Trumpers is it's a good thing that breathing is an automatic function of your body because if you had to think to breathe, most Trumpers would have suffocated to death by now.
All right.
This is Mabel in Eastman, Georgia.
Good morning.
And good morning, John.
Yes, I'm voting for Trump and not Harris because Harris let all the immigrants in.
They left the Title 42 when Trump had it in place.
And the immigrants are coming over here, committing crimes, such as the little girl here in Georgia, the UGA student that was killed at the hand of an illegal immigrant.
So therefore, I'm voting for Trump because he told us that he's going to deport them.
And I do believe he's going to get them out of this country.
And another reason I'm voting for Trump is because I want the war in Gaza to stop.
Netanyahu will not listen to Harris or Biden.
So I do feel that Trump is the pit bull to put Netanyahu Yahoo in its place to stop killing the Palestinians, the innocent Palestinians, the women and children.
It's okay to go after Hamas, but don't tell the people to go to the North because they're going to bomb the South.
Then they wind up bombing where the Palestinians were told to go for a safe haven.
Waterbury, Connecticut, Janet, Harris Walls supporter, go ahead.
Yeah.
Good morning.
You know, this election has been so crazy.
You see this man, Donald J. Trump.
He has 34 felon convictions.
He's a rapist.
You're just a liar.
And everything that you say on your speeches, when they truth fact it, it was a lie.
I don't know what is wrong with our country.
We are the greatest country in the world.
Why do we have to have someone like Donald J. Trump as our president?
I will never understand how these people just follow him just unconditionally.
It's sad.
That's Janet in Connecticut to Emily in Kentfield, California.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I just wanted to say that I was very hurt by what President, the president of our country, said about us, about we Americans.
You know, that was very painful to me because the whole world heard this, that the leader of our country says that half of the American people are garbage.
That's something that no leader should say about its people, and I've never heard it before said.
So I ask that please people understand that President Trump was never convicted of any crime.
So please don't assume that he's guilty.
And he's a good leader for everyone in every way.
Thank you.
Emily, just a question.
You say don't assume he's guilty, but he was found guilty in that New York case.
Oh, New York?
Well, you know, the leader there is not good.
And they went right after him, you know, one right after the other.
Since the minute he came in and ran, he was told that he was being listened to.
And this is terrible because they have been after him.
And everyone knows that, that the Democrats have been after them.
And they say terrible, the Democrats have been saying terrible things about us.
And I resent that very much.
And please, if you're listening, any Democrats, have some sense and don't put our country down when you have to put us down.
That's Emily in California this morning, taking your phone calls in this first hour of the Washington Journal today.
And outside of the more than half dozen campaign trail events yesterday, here's another event that got a lot of news attention.
It was the release of Steve Bannon from prison, serving a four-month contempt of Congress sentence, linked to the January 6th investigation.
He was released yesterday.
Steve Bannon, of course, the host of the podcast, War Room, former chief strategist for President Donald Trump.
And here's a little bit of what he had to say in that press conference.
And Nancy Pelosi thought a federal prison was going to break me.
Well, it empowered me.
It empowered me.
I am more empowered today, more focused today, sharper today, in better shape today than I've ever been in my entire life.
So Nancy Pelosi, suck on that.
The desperation of Kamala Harris in her campaign is obvious.
They went from the politics of joy, and we were the first ones to call it, to darkness and night falls on America, and they pivoted hard.
You know why?
Her incoherent explanation for what the politics of joy is befuddled everybody.
So she had to go back to the same playbook.
Trump's a fascist.
His followers are not deplorables, they're fascist.
That they're a danger to the country.
Well, you know who doesn't buy this?
Working class people don't buy it.
And particularly, African-American and Hispanic men do not buy it.
Steve Bannon, yesterday, taking your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal to Ed in Pennsylvania on that undecided line.
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning, sir.
I'm undecided, and here's my reason why.
We have a sitting president, Mr. Biden.
We have a former president, Mr. Trump.
Well, as far as I know, what they did is probably the highest form of criminal activity by being found guilty and having the top secret documents that they both possessed in their possession.
I would say that's high treason.
Neither of them have been arrested for what they did.
And that's my problem.
I mean, you have two men that are at the top, the top of our political.
Kamala Harris is running against Donald Trump this time.
I'm not saying I understand that.
She has no position.
She's a puppet.
She's being produced, you know.
She's being told what to do.
And like you said, it's just crazy that this is happening.
That's Ed in Pennsylvania.
This is Timothy San Diego, a Harris Wall supporter.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm truly a Harris supporter by all means.
But with behavior and the attitude that Trump had professed and displayed, anyone else would be arrested.
Then he's head of chief.
General Kelly warned us.
He's given us a warning.
The psychiatrists have given us a warning.
Congress should do their job.
Donald Trump's not tipped for office, and several psychiatrists have mentioned it.
Clearly, that's all.
Carol in Minnesota, good morning.
You're next.
Trump Vance supporter.
Good morning, John.
I just take great offense to what Joe Biden called half of the population of the United States.
I'm an abiding citizen, and what Hillary calls us before was deplorable.
Now we're pieces of garbage.
This has got to stop.
And I know what reason Joe Biden said that.
He wants to trash Kamala.
He just doesn't want to admit it.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Carol, stay on the line for a second.
So the White House saying that Joe Biden was referring to his supporters in a possessive sense, the comedian that made that joke at the Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, that it was supporters possessive, not supporters plural, as in all of Donald Trump's supporters.
I guess what do you think of that explanation when they tried to walk back that statement?
I don't believe that.
And I saw the rally, but I never saw that comedian.
And if I would have seen it, I would have hoped that they would have just taken him off the stage immediately.
I can't believe that someone that works with Donald Trump didn't say it's time for him to go because none of us believe that.
Carol, do you think Donald Trump should have come out and condemned the joke by the comedian?
I don't think he even was listening.
I don't think he even knew it was happening.
In the wake of everything that's come of it, do you think he should come out and condemn it?
Well, he did last night.
He did say he didn't even know that that was on and didn't even know the comedian.
Just like he doesn't know what Project 2025 is.
I don't either.
I don't care about it because I know it's a pile of junk.
But I think Joe Biden said that because he and his wife, Jill Biden, are so hurt by Kamala pulling him out that I think he did it for a reason because he knew Hillary saying we were half of the country was deplorable.
This was his way of getting back at her.
I think he knew what he was saying, but it's still disgusting.
That's Carol in Minnesota.
This is James in Tennessee on that line for undecided or other.
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
I'm calling from Memphis, Tennessee, and I'm kind of confused about something.
Here in Memphis, a convicted felon cannot vote nor bear arms.
However, we're trying to elect a president who not only can't even vote for himself, can't bear arms, but he can't control the world's strongest military forces where he don't have to bear arms.
He got people doing it for him.
And can it be a slang to me?
But that's what I was curious about.
Thank you.
James, he can technically vote for himself in Florida.
Florida deferring to the fact that he's still waiting sentencing, even though he's been convicted to the New York laws on that.
So technically, he can still vote in Florida.
Okay.
Thank you.
That's James in Tennessee.
This is Don in California, a Trump fan supporter.
Go ahead.
Oh, yeah.
I heard our sitting president, Joseph Biden, call me and people like me, Make America Great again, supporters, floating pieces of garbage.
And please don't give me that possessive plural junk because if he meant something different, he would have said something different.
His whole life has been talking.
So unless he's so demented, he doesn't know the words that are coming out of his mouth anymore.
He meant exactly what he said.
He dehumanized people like me.
And I've heard Kamala Harris and her surrogates and the fake news compare the Madison Square Garden rally to an actual Nazi rally that happened 100 years ago, even dragging out footage of it to show.
Okay?
This is all a design to dehumanize us.
And it not only insults and angers me, but it worries me because you dehumanize your enemies first before you do bad stuff to them so that the other people don't think you're doing bad stuff.
Now, what does it make me want to do?
It makes me want to come this election day, use my vote.
And this piece of garbage is going to take the trash out.
The trash that is Kamala Harris and the whole Democrat Party and the fake news.
And that's pretty much it.
That's Don in California.
We can zoom in on the official transcript that the White House sent out.
Again, this was after these comments caused a firestorm.
And the supporters line here, the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
That was the line that was on the video when it's put in transcript form.
According to the White House, it was supporters apostrophe S. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.
And they're claiming that Joe Biden was referring to the comedian there.
A lot of discussion about where that apostrophe goes or where that S would go in the wake of those comments yesterday.
Taking your phone calls here on the Washington Journal, about another 10 minutes in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
In about 10 or 15 minutes here, we're going to be joined by Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency overseeing election security.
She's going to talk about that effort and take a few of her phone calls in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
But until then, we are taking your calls.
Abe in New York is a Harris Wall supporter.
Good morning.
Abe, you with us.
Stick by your phone, Abe.
This is Robert in Waldorf, Maryland, on that line for neither.
Go ahead.
You know, we sit here and we talk about democracy, how Trump is a threat to democracy.
Well, we're not a democracy in this country, number one.
But second, the democracy.
In this country, we're allowed to vote.
Kamala Harris received no votes in the primary, not one.
13 million votes were disenfranchised that Joe Biden got that the Democrat Party decided to take away from the Democrat voters and Joe Biden.
So if anybody's a threat to democracy, it would be Kamala Harris.
She has received one vote.
So Robert, we've talked before, and we've talked before about your support for Donald Trump when you've called in.
Why are you calling in on the neither line?
I'm getting to that right now.
So secondly, my reason for calling in on the neither line is the invasion that has taken place in this country is taking jobs from all forces, all the workforce in the United States, black, white, purple, green, yellow.
It does not matter.
Kamala Harris enabled this invasion.
She has flown people from Haiti.
They did not.
Robert, I get that you're not supporting Kamala Harris.
You are not supporting Donald Trump?
They did not walk to Mexico.
They were flown to Mexico.
They were flown here by this government.
All right, that's Robert.
This is Tyrone in Illinois.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
It's always nice to talk to you guys.
I'm an avid C-SPAN watcher.
I'm voting for Trump strictly on policies.
I like what he wants to do for tax reform to smaller government.
But I also like to bring up several things that I wish would still be being talked about would be term limits in the House and Senate.
I would still like to see like the Plosies, the insider stock trading.
We need to, you know, they talked about the Supreme Court, but I think we need to investigate all the houses and all the people.
Really would like to see a show where you pick a Democrat, Republican out of a hat and just follow financially how they earn their money.
That would be pretty interesting.
And my last one to you would be: I would never ask you people on the show who you would vote for, but I'd like to know like you and Mimi and them.
I'd like to know which line you guys would call in for to discuss your political views.
Tyrone in Illinois.
This is Alex out of Brooklyn on the Harris Walls line.
Good morning.
Yes, sir.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, just give me a moment, please.
I think at this point, after hearing Harris last night, after hearing Trump on Sunday and even yesterday, there's no doubt as to what these two campaigns are about.
For all of those people that say that Trump knows nothing about Project 2025, out of the 307 authors, half of them, half of them worked for his transition team or worked for his administration.
One of the founders of the Heritage Foundation wrote the forward to JD Vance's book.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
Trump is a person whose own administration, a third of his administration is not endorsing him, including his own vice president.
His generals have said that he's not fit for office.
Of all of his associates, I think, what, 10, 12 of them have gone to prison, including Bannon, who comes out as if it's a badge of honor.
His own attorney here, you know, has to pay $450 million to poll workers that they terrorized and they destroy their lives.
And Rudy Giuliani now has to even give up his Yankee rings because of it.
I mean, the state that we are in in this country is beyond repairable.
No matter who wins, we've lost.
If half of the nation believes that a man that has gone bankrupt six times, who is a failed business person, now comes in and is the savior of a country.
This has nothing to do with what we're choosing as presidents.
It has to do with what we are as a nation.
And we've already lost if people think that one person in a system that is made to be pluralistic so that there are checks and balances can find solutions.
And if people can hear what actually was said that Sunday, calling Harris a demon, the Antichrist, calling black people by saying that they're eating watermelons, saying that they're garbage, that Hispanics don't pull out, they just come in.
And you look at all the evidence against this man, his acolytes, all of the people that are in Congress.
We're in trouble.
And what that means, and I will finish by saying this: half of the country no longer believes in democracy.
They see it as a burden.
They want what they want.
They want only justice, democracy for who they believe in, and everybody else can just go to hell or just leave the country.
And it is sad.
So I would just tell everyone: this is no longer about a party and what you believe in.
Really consider it about what we are doing as a nation to ourselves and how we view the other.
That's all I will say.
Thank you.
That's Alex in Brooklyn, a New Yorker.
And I think you read the New York Times either yesterday afternoon or today's paper when you were referring to Rudy Giuliani and his Yankee rings.
The story on the last relics of Giuliani's heyday joined a court-ordered fire sale in an attempt to pay for the judgment, the $148 million judgment for the defamation lawsuit.
Rudy Giuliani found guilty of defaming those two poll workers.
Though the story notes, his three World Series Yankees rings won't be seized for now, but it goes through other things that are being sold to pay for that judgment.
A 10-room apartment in a luxury cooperative one block from Central Park, a vintage convertible once owned by Lauren Bacal and Joe DiMaggio's number five Yankees jersey signed and framed.
That's a story in the New York Times, if you want to read it.
This is Robert in Franklin, Indiana, on that line for neither or undecided.
Go ahead.
Yes, I would call myself a Reagan conservative and have been voted Republican all my life.
But I'm in a bad position because, first of all, if you listen to Trump's sworn testimony in the Eugene Carroll case, he said he was a star and he could assault my wife.
He could do whatever he wants to my daughter, to my granddaughters.
You know, my manhood cannot vote for him.
And secondly, and more importantly, just as he has assaulted women, he has assaulted the Republic.
Every morning, I put my hand over my heart.
I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands.
And in this republic, states decide who they want for president.
Donald Trump tried to overturn the states' rights to choose the president.
That's an assault on the republic.
And I cannot keep my pledge to the flag and vote for Donald Trump.
So I don't know what I'm going to do about the top of the ticket.
I will vote Republican as much as I can, but I cannot vote for someone like Donald Trump who assaulted the Republic.
And for the life of me, I don't understand how anyone can vote for him.
Do we really care about our republic?
Do we care about the Constitution?
It was men who fought in World War II to save our country and our republic.
Where are those men today?
That's Robert in Franklin, Indiana, our last caller in this segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, though.
Up next, we'll be joined by Jen Easterly, the director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
We'll talk about her agency's work this election cycle and later a conversation with former Trump administration official and black men for Trump advisory board member Jeron Smith.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is also known as America's Cyber Defense Agency.
Jen Easterly has served as the director of that agency since 2021.
Explain the role that CISA plays when it comes to election security and what you're doing right now.
Yeah, well, great to be on C-SPAN.
Love it.
So CISA, and folks may not have heard of it, we're the newest agency in the federal government.
We were stood up six years ago to play two key roles.
We serve as America's cyber defense agency and as the national coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience.
So what does that mean?
We protect and defend the cyber and physical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day for water, for power, for transportation, for communication, for health care, for finance, and the infrastructure that Americans use to cast their ballots and to ensure that those ballots are counted as cast.
And that came out of 2016, Russian attempts to interfere in the election.
After that, election infrastructure was designated as critical infrastructure, and CISA was designated as the federal government lead for election infrastructure security.
We all know states run elections.
What we do is we bring together support from the federal government to ensure that state and local election officials have the resources that they need to defend their election infrastructure.
So when it comes to election security, what takes more of your time or where are you mostly focused?
Are the bigger threats coming from the cyber side attacking U.S. elections or is it the infrastructure, the physical devices and places where we vote?
So I should say that based on the work that we have done over the past eight years, really what state and local election officials have done, American people should understand our election infrastructure has never been more secure.
But to your point, the threat environment has never been more complex.
There are serious cyber threats, ransomware, denial of service, so you can't get to websites.
There's very serious physical threats to election officials.
And there is a range of very serious threats from our foreign adversaries, from Russia, from Iran, from China.
They're using different tactics, but they are focused on two main goals, to undermine American trust in our democracy and our confidence in elections, and to sow partisan discord, basically pitting Americans against each other.
And so we are focused on the full range.
We've been working with election officials since the beginning of this cycle to provide physical assessments.
We've done nearly 1,200 for physical security, 700 for cybersecurity.
We've done nearly 200 exercises to work with election officials on the full range of scenarios where you could have incidents or disruptions.
And we've done hundreds of trainings to help election officials reduce risk to election systems and processes.
Drill down on the foreign threats for a second.
There's an article in the business section of today's New York Times, the headline, how Russia, China, and Iran are interfering in the U.S. elections.
Are they taking different paths to do it?
Is one of those more concerning to you than the other?
Well, they're more active and they're using more sophisticated techniques.
In some cases, they're powered by generative AI, so they're using some of these capabilities to be able to more rapidly generate fake media personas, fake websites, so they can spew this propaganda out into the U.S.
And they're using unwitting influencers to get their message out widely.
I do want Americans to understand that despite this threat environment, as I said, no matter who you vote for, you can have confidence that your vote will be counted as cast.
And why am I saying that?
Well, a few things.
So to prevent digital interference, voting machines are not connected to the internet.
Really important to understand that.
To prevent digital manipulation, over 97% paper ballots.
And to guarantee near zero human manipulation, there are multiple, multiple layers of safeguards, physical security, cybersecurity, pre-election testing of equipment, post-election auditing, to ensure that election infrastructure is safe from compromise.
And the last thing that Americans should understand is every state runs elections differently.
different equipment, different processes.
The saying goes, if you've seen one state's election, you've seen one state's election.
And that diverse and decentralized nature of our election infrastructure is actually a great strength because it means it's not possible for a bad actor to tamper with or try and manipulate our voting systems in a way where you can have an impact on the outcome of the presidential election.
Certainly not without being detected.
You talk about what Americans should understand.
Do you meet with both campaigns?
Do you think they understand the level of security that you're talking about here and the safeguards that are in place?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, most of my work over the past three years has been on the ground with election officials of both parties.
And, you know, election officials will tell you this is not a political issue.
Elections are political.
Election security is not.
It's not Republican.
It's not Democrat.
It's a national security American issue.
And so we work with all aspects of the campaigns so that they can take advantage of our voluntary services.
We have cyber expertise, physical security expertise.
And that strong partnership with all of the states and the territories, I believe, has made a real difference in improving the security of our election infrastructure.
Have you ever had a meeting with Donald Trump or members of the Trump campaign to have this conversation?
Yeah, so I have folks on my team who meet with all folks from the campaigns and from the partisan organizations.
Most of our time is spent with the election officials who are running elections and ensuring the security of election infrastructure.
But we meet with anyone who wants to take advantage of our expertise and our advice.
Jen Easterly with us for about another 10 minutes here.
So get your calls in.
Phone lines, as usual, 202-748-8000.
For Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, what do you make of ballot drop boxes being burned or set on fire in Oregon and Washington?
Yeah, so I talked to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs in Washington yesterday.
They are working very closely with local law enforcement and the FBI to identify the criminals involved and to hold them accountable for these crimes.
I think it's important to understand elections and certainly the presidential election is a very complex event.
You're talking hundreds of thousands of election workers, tens of thousands of polling places, some 150 million plus Americans voting.
There are going to be disruptions.
There are going to be incidents.
The good news is that election officials have prepared for this.
They've trained for this.
They've exercised for it.
And so they are ready to be able to deal with the full range of disruptions.
And when it comes to criminal activities, whether it's setting a ballot box on fire with an incendiary device or whether it's fraudulently signing up voters as we saw happened in Pennsylvania, those things will be, they will be caught, they will be investigated, and those who did it will be held liable.
You mentioned Pennsylvania.
I did want to give you a chance to talk about this October 25th threat update that CISA put out about a video circulating, purporting to show ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania.
Yeah.
Well, it goes back to your point.
As we noted in a statement on Friday, that was Russian.
Look, we've been warning about this for months now.
One of the things we've tried to do, learning lessons from the past, is to get with the intelligence community and the FBI and be much more proactive.
We actually put up a webpage earlier this week that shows all of the updates from the intelligence community that have been declassified about foreign adversary activity.
We've seen Russia, we've seen Iran, we've seen China.
And by the way, we've also seen disruptions.
We've seen indictments against Russia.
We've seen indictments against Iran for the hack and leak operation against the Trump campaign.
And so there are massive efforts going on to ensure the safety of our elections.
I've got to think there's more fake videos out there.
What does it take to get a specific threat advisory from CISA on a video?
Is it the fact that this one was kind of going viral?
Yeah, well, we were very focused on the fact that this was, it went viral, but also it was clearly, as we looked at it, it was very similar to what we had seen from Russia before.
We had talked about in the advisory that there was another video against the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic campaign.
And again, we're seeing a lot of this.
We've written about them.
What we're trying to do is empower the American people with the information that they need to be able to make a smart decision about having confidence in the integrity of their vote.
I know it's a busy time for you.
Appreciate you stopping by.
Let me get you a few calls before you have to run.
This is Carol in Louisville, Line for Democrats.
Go ahead.
Hello, Jen and John.
That has a nice ring to it, by the way.
You had a show on about, I don't know, several weeks ago, and you had, during the call-in, it was just for poll workers.
I think you had probably close to 17 different calls.
It was about 30 minutes long.
It was just for poll workers.
And from what I understand, most of these poll workers were all, they've worked several elections.
And just watching that made me feel very, very good about the security of the election and at the polls themselves.
Because it's usually the same people.
I mean, I see the same people there when we go to vote.
They're always working the booth.
And if that's the first time anybody's going to touch a ballot, so if anything's going to happen, it could just start there.
So I guess my question is, so we're safe at the polls, and what we're worried about is the cybersecurity from other countries.
I was just curious, are you with, is this agency you're with, Jen?
Is that part of the federal government?
Yeah, thanks so much for the question, Carol.
And I'm glad to hear your comments about poll workers because I have spent a lot of this time, my time in this job, getting a chance to work with election officials and to meet with poll workers.
And, you know, frankly, it is humbling to see people who are willing to stand on the front lines of our democracy.
They're not getting, you know, it's not for pay, it's not for fame, it's not for glory.
They're doing this for democracy.
And so thank you for raising that because when anybody goes to the polls, you should thank your poll workers.
CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
We are a nonpartisan, non-political agency that is focused on protecting and preserving the infrastructure Americans rely on.
And that segment that we did, it was an hour-long segment.
I remember it was 22 callers, and one of the poll workers had been working at the polls.
The first time that she worked at the polls was 1968.
Yeah, it's amazing, right?
I mean, people have this in their blood because they love to make sure that they're playing their part in protecting our democracy.
And by the way, if there are skeptics out there who lack confidence in the security of our elections, like sign up to be a poll worker.
That is such a great thing to do.
Tony in Texas, Slime for Republicans.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hey, I really love C-SPAN.
We still can't get an HD down here, but I have a question for you, ma'am.
Have you guys ever considered putting the drop boxes in a postal vehicle and kind of organizing it better that way and securing it in a postal vehicle?
Because nobody's going to burn down a mail truck.
Yeah.
So thanks so much for the question, Tony.
As you know, by the Constitution, states run elections, and every state has the ability to run things differently.
I know that states that rely heavily on drop boxes, you know, as you probably know, Washington or you may know Washington is all mail in voting.
And so there are things being put in place to ensure the security of those drop boxes.
I think having seen this issue around incendiary devices, they may look at other steps that they can take to ensure the integrity and security of those drop boxes.
I will tell you that, you know, there are a lot of things that are put in place to do that.
There are anti-incendiary devices.
That's why in Oregon, the incident there really saved all but I think two or three ballots.
Only two or three were damaged.
And so there are ways to deal with this stuff.
But, you know, great to come up with some of these ideas.
And hopefully election officials will continue to put in place measures to ensure as much security as possible.
Independent Line, Trent Monroe, Louisiana.
Good morning.
Hey, man, this is not my issue.
Can we talk about paper ballots?
That would be fun.
And my next door neighbor was the CFO of CenturyLink, and he's steeped in this cybersecurity business.
And Jen, I think he would disagree with everything you're saying.
What do you want to talk about paper ballots for, Trent?
It's certainly an issue as part of election security.
It just seems like there's no problem after that.
France can do it in one day.
And everybody feels good about it.
Yeah, so a couple things.
Paper ballots, I agree with you.
It's really important, and there's been an increase in paper ballots.
The great news is over 97% paper ballots.
So most of the country, to include all of the battleground states, has paper ballots.
So if there are any places where it's close, there will be records that can be counted and recounted to ensure accuracy.
And look, just to your point about cybersecurity, as the director of the cybersecurity agency, as somebody who's been doing this for decades, I'm happy to talk to your friend.
I think my point would be is that because of the multiple layers that have been put in place, and it's not just cybersecurity, it's physical access controls, it's procedural controls, it's checks and balances, it's pre-election testing of equipment, and it's post-election audits.
That's how I can say with confidence that it would not be possible to hack into machines in a way that you could have a material impact on the outcome of the presidential election, certainly not without being detected.
You know, it's really important to understand the machines that Americans use to vote are not connected to the internet.
And so that should hopefully give you some confidence, maybe not the confidence that I have, but there is massive protections.
And that's why I say that our election infrastructure has never been more secure.
Final 90 seconds here.
I know you have to run, but I know CISA is also tracking post-election threats as well.
What are you watching for there?
Yeah, so everyone should know the elections aren't over when the polls close.
You know, those are unofficial results that you see, and it may take election officials a few days to get a final result.
If things are very close, there may be recounts, there may be audits similar to what was done in 2020.
And so we all need to be patient.
We want to get an accurate result.
And one of the things that we've been warning about in the reports is that our foreign adversaries may take the opportunity in the days following the election where there could be uncertainty about who the winner is to really create that wedge to undermine American confidence in the legitimacy of the vote, to sow partisan discord, to foment violence.
And so we all need to be vigilant.
We all have a role in protecting and preserving our democracy.
And the foundation of our democracy is our ability to vote, to have free and fair and safe and secure elections.
And so we all need to come together to preserve that sacred right.
The agency is CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Jen Easterly is the director, has been the director since 2021.
Really appreciate you stopping by.
Thanks so much, John.
Coming up, a conversation with former Trump administration official and Black Men for Trump Advisory Board member Jeron Smith and later attorney and noted Donald Trump critic George Conway joins this program.
We'll be right back.
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Sunday, on Q ⁇ A, Attorney and Innocence Project Executive Director Christina Swarns joins us to talk about the history of the organization and some of the clients they've successfully represented over the years, including the two men convicted of killing Malcolm X in 1965.
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Washington Journal continues.
Jeron Smith joins us now.
He spent four years as an advisor in Donald Trump's White House, Jeron Smith.
What were some of the roles you served in some of the projects you worked on when you were in the White House?
Sure.
I originally served his director of urban affairs and revitalization policy.
I became a special assistant for domestic policy, later special assistant for legislative affairs.
And ultimately, I was his deputy director of domestic policy and also served some time leading the Office of American Innovation.
And what have you been doing since?
Since I've continued to still do some social impact work.
I have some campaigns around mental health, around public safety, and I've also done some advocacy work around criminal justice reform.
And this piece from Newsweek recently dated October 21st, Donald Trump is benefiting from a huge political realignment along class lines.
You were one of the co-authors of that piece.
What do you mean?
What kind of realignment?
So what we did at our firm, CGCN, is establish a research report called Class Dismiss.
And we looked at the poorest medium and average income households.
And we found that some of the poorest households come from some of the most polarizing caucuses and members of Congress.
For example, the four poorest medium incomes were white, black, and Hispanic.
And the members that represent those districts are members of the Republican Study Committee and members of the Freedom Caucus.
And then on the left is members of the Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.
And so we also found that in some of the highest medium income average incomes come from some of the wealthiest districts, which are usually some of the bipartisan caucuses like the Problem Solvers Caucus and some of the groups that are pushing for bipartisanship.
And so what we found with that is that some of those poor districts, the reason why you're seeing such polarizing reactions is because people are really trying to push the current establishment to do more for their constituencies because things haven't changed.
And so what we're arguing is that we're seeing a real realignment.
Trump came in and I've been associated with Congress over 20 years, so I kind of seen this stuff build out.
I was a part of the Tea Party movement, but people don't know that Jim Jordan started an anti-poverty caucus or the original person who talked about the opportunity economy was Tim Scott and I worked on an opportunity agenda with him.
But it wasn't until we had a president like President Trump who started to kind of work on issues that help working class voters.
And so you see a different Republican Party than the party that I came into is now a party of the working class.
And you're seeing a different Democratic Party that's representing more of the elite individuals.
And we're seeing less trust in institutions like media, big corporations.
Even Jeff Bezos just came out with a news article talking about how people don't trust newspapers anymore, you know, like the Washington Post.
And so what we're seeing right in front of our eyes is a real political realignment where you're seeing more working class voters want to vote Republican.
Class bias setting media narratives is something you talk about in this piece.
What's a few examples of that?
So for example, I mean, look at the USMCA policy.
You know, very bipartisan in essence.
Basically, you had both parties vote for this legislation.
And what did that legislation do?
Legislation basically recreated a new trade deal, a new NAFTA deal between Mexico, Canada, and America.
And it was a focus on, you know, working class voters, unions, more jobs to the United States, you know, easier to kind of create more supply chains.
And people saw that as kind of real kind of movement by the party to help working class voters because what they saw under the Trump administration was high wages, low inflation, and more economic mobility.
I think in the 40 years that preceded me working in Congress in 2000, economic mobility has been at an all-time low.
And then what you saw under the Biden administration was high inflation costs, less opportunity.
And so people are voting their pocketbooks.
That's the most important issue.
And then if you look at other issues around public safety and immigration, you know, I think that the Democrats have started to kind of lose trust with some of the voters that they've talked about advocating for for decades.
What did you make about two weeks ago, maybe it was a week at this point, it's all blending together, about the debate over Donald Trump working at a McDonald's and whether that was authentic or not?
I think it was authentic.
I mean, I've had my experience with the president where, first of all, he likes going to McDonald's.
He even talked about us going once when I was riding with him in the Beast, but it takes a lot to kind of do that for a president.
But I think that what he sees as a cure with all of our issues that we're dealing with in America is everyone having success.
He thinks success for the least of these kind of can transcend races and some of our class differences.
And so part of the reason he told me that he ran for president is because he couldn't sit back on the sidelines and watch, you know, these wide disparities continue to happen.
And so when you hear the slogan, make America great again, it's about making America the land of opportunity again for all Americans.
Jeron Smith with us until about 845 Eastern, taking your phone calls, phone lines split, as we've been doing as we get within just a couple weeks of this election.
If you're a Trump Vance supporter, 202-748-8001 is the number.
If you're a Harris Walls supporter, 202-748-8000.
And then if you're undecided or neither, 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, did you listen to any of Kamala Harris's interview with Charlemagne the God yesterday?
I didn't hear all of it, no.
In part of that interview, she denied that she has a problem with support from black men in this country.
Would you agree with that?
I think that Kamala Harris surrounds herself with some of the most elite African Americans in our country, and she's a bit disconnected from working class black men.
You know, I've traveled the country working on public safety and having wealth seminars on how people can buy a home with America Property Owners Alliance and use that to build wealth.
And more and more I find more working class individuals whisper to me and say, you know, the economy was a lot better under Trump.
You know, I don't trust Harris.
You know, she hasn't had a record of kind of doing things that are affirmative for black Americans.
I mean, when she ran for vice president along with Joe Biden, they promised the Voting Rights Act, and they also promised police reform, and they both failed to do both of those things.
And I think that's the thing that we need out of a leader.
We need to have a leader that's willing to kind of work with both sides and actually get things accomplished.
And President Trump has actually had that record.
He passed a historic criminal justice reform bill that freed 30,000 people from prison.
And we've also had low recidivism rate as a result of that reform.
And so he also did stuff around opportunity zones and helped with supply chain by, I mean, his last bill he signed into law was called the Emergency Capital Investment Program, which put money into CDFIs, something that the Democrats hadn't done in a long time, kind of focused on that capital structure to help, you know, working class and new entrepreneurs.
And so you see a variety of different ways that President Trump has built trust through policy.
And I think all you're hearing from the Harris campaign is empty promises, where she has had no history of actually accomplishing whatever she runs on.
I'll let you chat with a few callers.
Tia's up first out of Delaware.
It's Newcastle, Delaware.
That line for undecided or neither.
Go ahead, Tia.
Good morning.
Mr. Smith.
If I could believe what you're saying, and the evidence is in what you see, not the words that are coming out of your mouth.
You say that all of these programs were put in place to help the middle class.
But it's not.
I don't see them.
I don't see them.
All I saw were efforts to take away.
In addition to that, you're saying that he's doing these things.
I don't know why, because his actions look like he's trying to help the rich more than the middle class or average people.
At the same time, and I hate to get distracted, but you're saying he's saying how he feels about minorities and people who don't have.
And you're acting like he's not saying these things, and people should believe that he is for them when he's obviously not.
And it pains me to see a man as intelligent as yourself, well-spoken, talk in his behalf as if he's someone that we should trust.
He's telling us who he is.
He's showing us who he is.
He's showing us what he will do.
Tia, got your point.
Let me let Jerome Smith jump in.
Well, thank you for your question, Tia.
I think that the issue with the Democratic Party is that they've continued to issue rhetoric for over decades that the Republicans are for the rich and that the Republican Party is racist and that they're the party for the working class.
I think that that hit a ceiling when Barack Obama was elected and he promised hope and change.
And we lived through one of the greatest recessions known in our generation.
And we also didn't have the access to capital, the access to job or criminal justice reform.
And then you had President Trump come into play and he created a robust economy where they said there wouldn't be growth, the type of growth that we had right after the World War II.
We were able to kind of have a very robust economy.
He was able to deliver on criminal justice reform, do stuff around working with police and communities, and then do things around HBCUs, which, by the way, at that point in time, had several of them had dealt with financial issues and were at risk of closing.
And he was able to kind of step in and do some work that Obama didn't do, that Bush didn't do, and at the same time, keep the country safe.
And so I think what you've been listening to is a lot of rhetoric, which is why most people don't trust the news anymore, because what you're actually seeing and feeling is the wake of the Biden economy.
But when Trump was in office before the pandemic, we had robust numbers that created the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and working class white Americans.
And that came from some of his policy changes.
And I'm going to be honest with you, the media didn't cover that work.
The media didn't cover when the president wrote a plan called the Platinum Plan that he's recommitted to that gave half a trillion dollars of new capital to black Americans.
The media didn't cover all the families and stuff he brought in who loved ones came home from the First Step Act.
And so I would just push you to maybe look outside some of the media that you're consuming and get the real policy wins that are happening and try to listen less to the rhetoric that's going on.
Kamala Harris on Monday was focused on some of the things that the media did cover when it came to Donald Trump and minorities in this country.
She was on the Club Shay Shea podcast with Shannon Sharp.
Let me just play a little bit of it and get your reaction.
Sure.
We're looking at Donald Trump basically somebody who has never been understanding of the issues that affect the community about disparities.
And I'm going to talk, for example, about how when he was a landlord, he denied rent to black families.
You look at what he did in terms of taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times against the Central Park V, which were a bunch of, they're not young adults, they were teenagers, black and brown teenagers, took out a full-page ad on the New York Times calling for their execution for crimes they did not commit.
They were innocent.
Donald Trump, who said of the first black president of the United States, the birtherism, to have people question whether he was born in the United States to try and diminish.
And then most recently, you look in this very election, legal black immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, saying they're eating their pets.
So, you know, part of what we have to help people understand is don't think you're in Donald Trump's club.
You're not.
Right.
He's not going to be thinking about you.
You think he's having you over for dinner?
Jeron Smith, your reaction.
Sure.
I mean, I don't have to go all the way back 30 or 40 years and mention comments that he may have made in the 80s.
I can look just to his administration and see how President Trump led the country by doing historic work around access to capital, historic work around criminal justice, historic work around access to education, and creating a robust economy.
Look at Vice President Harris's record.
Her record doesn't show that she even cares about those same communities.
She continues to kind of go out with elite celebrities, but maybe she have a town hall with some working class individuals and ask them why she led an economy that raised prices on individuals.
And her only plan to fixing this issue is more spending, which is going to make it harder for people to kind of establish a business, make it harder for individuals to climb the economic ladder.
What we're talking about is a real record between two different administrations, a record that she had that showed that we didn't have a robust economy and working class individuals were hurt.
And then a record that President Trump had that helped all Americans, including black Americans.
And I think that she can use the rhetoric as much as she want, but I think people are looking at the records and if they're going to be better off.
And most people are looking and saying, I was better off under Trump, so I'm going to vote Trump.
Lancaster, Ohio, this is Jenny Trump Vance Supporter.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
Hey, I got a question for you.
When Donald Trump was president, he stopped giving other countries money for abortions.
Is he going to pull that again where he's not going to give other countries money for abortions?
Why do we have to give other countries money for abortions anyways?
Teron Smith.
I don't know.
Sure.
So you're talking about the Mexico City policy.
I think that any Republican president, especially Donald Trump, is going to continue to do similar policies like that.
Because if we're going to spend any money, we're going to focus on America first.
You know, Democrats had historically said they were for the working class individuals.
And it wasn't until President Trump actually developed an agenda called the American First Agenda that Democrats then had to kind of come behind him and try to support some of the same policies.
If you look at the trade policies and maybe even some of the tariffs on China, Joe Biden has kind of backed whatever Donald Trump already put in play.
And now they're talking about all this stuff around working class individuals and are hurrying or scuttling along to try to get in front of these working class individuals and try to tell them a record that they just don't have.
And so, again, I think people are looking at two different administrations that they had the experience of being a part of, and they've decided that they're better off with Trump.
Columbia, South Carolina, Chris Harris Walls Line, good morning.
Yeah, C-SPAN, yeah.
I mean, I love C-SPAN.
Y'all hear the new load.
I don't know who this guy is.
I don't know why he has a beef with Kamala Harris.
Everyone knows what Trump is.
And this guy just, he keeps seeing robust and throwing word salad.
I mean, Kamala Harris is an HBCU grad.
They just gave 16 billion HBCUs.
I'm an HBCU grad.
He doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.
Trump closed HBCU officers that Obama had at the White House.
So this guy just appeared just.
Jeron Smith, give you a chance to say.
So I'm also an HBCU grad, and despite what you're saying, I'm not tearing Vice President Harris down.
You know, I actually am proud of her with being a Howard grad like myself and being in a position of power.
But I disagree with her policy platform.
And I think as an American, I'm not giving you a word salad.
I'm giving you the reason why I disagree with her policy positions and why I support Donald Trump, who's more aligned with my own policy positions.
But you mentioned the $16 billion in HBCUs.
I want you to understand that that money was given out through the CARES Act.
And it didn't just go to HBCUs.
It went to every college throughout America to keep those colleges open.
The difference between what she did for HBCUs and what President Trump did is that his policies around HBCUs actually helped them when they were vulnerable.
And it created a massive campaign around the world to invest in these institutions.
President Obama didn't do that.
President Bush didn't do that.
But President Trump did that.
And I'm happy that the Democratic Party is actually putting their money where their mouth is.
But I want you to understand that it all started when President Trump actually made some major investments.
We can look at things like the Katrina loan.
The Katrina loan stayed out there unforgiven by the Bush administration, unforgiven by the Obama administration, but forgiven by the Trump administration.
What was that loan?
Basically, a lot of HBCUs were hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, and they were given a loan that they had a hard time paying back.
And they had come to multiple administrations to ask for relief.
And they didn't get it from the Obama administration.
They didn't get it from the Bush administration, but they got it from the Trump administration.
They got that.
They got year-round Pell.
They got the Futures Act, which is one of their biggest priorities at the time.
And all of that went specifically to HBCUs, not all universities.
So when you talk about the CARES Act and the $16 billion, understand that those numbers were put out there just to help keep those schools open through the pandemic.
And those numbers are also given to other schools.
And so it wasn't something specifically carved off of HBCUs.
It was schools in general.
What do you see as the future of HBCUs today?
Well, I love HBCUs.
I just experienced my 20th homecoming at Howard.
And there continue to be robust institutions that allow for dialogue.
In fact, I became a Republican at Howard University.
I grew up in a working class family in Cleveland, Ohio.
And it wasn't until I went to Howard and learned more for myself of how I felt about policies and what party better represented me.
But I would say, Howard University.
Was there a specific moment you remember?
Well, I got an internship on the Hill with Congressman J.C. Watts.
And then I also started a college Republican chapter.
And so my experience at Howard allowed for me to be prepared to kind of get some of the arrows that people throw at you for being a black Republican.
You know, people want to question my authenticity in the black community, but I've always been someone who not only just talks about change, but have, you know, been very active in the community.
You know, I'm a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, and I did all of our community service projects and spent a good amount of my time just trying to figure out access to capital.
Did you ever have a conversation with J.C. Watts about that, about being a black Republican?
Oh, yeah, several times.
J.C. Watts, Tim Scott, Alan West.
What did they tell you?
Well, they told me to kind of stay true to myself, you know, and be consistent.
And I've tried to really focus on creating a policy regime that can help all Americans and specifically the black Americans.
And I had a great opportunity to advise President Trump, and he took a lot of my advice.
And we were able to kind of do some things historic for the black community.
And I think that's the reason why he's building trust in those communities.
Like that's different than any other Republican that's before him.
Youngstown, Ohio, Dan on the Trump Dance Line.
Good morning.
Yes, and Jeron, you know, that we've already seen one Trump administration.
And when you have a high tide, all boats rise with the tide.
You know, the economy was fantastic under Donald Trump.
But I think what people should realize is how phony Kamala Harris is and the Democrats, because she had one policy on the border for four years, and now she says she's going to be tough on the border.
I mean, I think people could see the phoniness.
The Democrats hired thousands of IRS agents in order to make sure the people in the middle class, the working class people, pay all of their taxes.
They had these IRS agents hired.
And then when Donald Trump said, you pay somebody a tip for taking care of you at the restaurant, and then the government has to reach their hand in the till and say, some of that is mine.
You know, why did they start taxing tips anyway?
And then now the Democrats jump on that bandwagon.
Oh, we shouldn't be taxing tips.
They were all about enforcing the taxes until Donald Trump said he would not tax tips.
Jeron Smith.
That's exactly right.
You know, I believe Vice President Harris actually voted to create more agents to look at taxing of tips.
And this is what I was speaking to: that he's made Democrats have to be accountable to their record because he's taken a leadership role to actually do things outside the box to move the country forward.
And I think we need that unique leadership to deal not only with the issues we have going on foreign, but also domestic with the immigration crisis and getting our economy back on track so it helps all Americans.
And so thank you for your comments.
But that's what I think most working class people are seeing is that they're better off with Trump because at least he's going to stick by his guns when it comes to making these policy commitments.
Darren in Nashville on the undecided or neither line.
Good morning.
Yes.
So I have already cast my vote here.
I intended to cast for Dr. Cornell West because I find him the most moral and qualified candidate to actually take this country into the secret lead and voted for Claudia De La Cruz and said that she was not valid as a right.
I kind of feel sorry for Tomo Harris.
The DNC has shown themselves to be unable to keep the moral high ground and has opened up a well for Donald Trump to step in after decades of the Republican Party dismantling the ability of the federal government to do all those things that you praised Donald Trump for doing, blocked mostly by Republican candidates.
How do you feel going forward with the kind of energy that we see and the fact that in the room with voters for Donald Trump?
You do have Nazi in that room with you, even if you are not.
How do you see us going forward as we're in a period of regrowth and the expectation that a man who was the figurehead of a real estate mafia in New York is going to likely shift power to the wealthy again as we rebuild America?
Jeron Smith.
Again, I think that's just a historic talking point that Republicans are for the rich.
I think his record says something quite different.
We were able to kind of reform the Perkins program that creates new workforce development programs in a very bipartisan manner.
I mentioned the United States-Mexico trade agreement that helped create more jobs for working class Americans.
We were also able to kind of have the lowest numbers around opioids before the pandemic because we set up bipartisan infrastructure to kind of deal with the fentanyl crisis.
I mentioned the First Step Act, which had a great bipartisan reform.
I think almost every Democrat voted for it.
And so he has a record of not just doing bipartisan work, but real bipartisan work.
You know, it's so many times at Washington you see individuals pass a law and it might have five Democrats or five Republicans and they say it's bipartisan, but that's not real bipartisanship.
Bipartisanship is actually having a majority of majority of both parties committed to a certain law.
And we've seen Donald Trump do that several different times based off of the examples I gave you.
And so what I would ask you to do is kind of re-look at the actual policy wins he did and maybe go talk to some working class communities and ask them how they feel about the Trump economy versus the Biden economy.
And you will learn that a lot of individuals figured that they were better off with Trump.
What do you think of Donald Trump's rallies?
Do you think the former president is getting these policy prescriptions across to his supporters in these rallies or in how he's communicating with voters?
I think President Trump has had a unique way of kind of reaching out to average everyday Americans and kind of, you know, talking about the issues that our country is going up against.
But what we've seen when he actually is in a position of governing, he brings the best minds from all across the country.
We had a very diverse administration where you had conservatives, you had former Democrats, you had individuals like me who've kind of been around the Republican Party and done things with Everything from the establishment Republicans to being a conservative to working with libertarians.
And so we had a very diverse team to kind of deal with the multitude of issues.
And so what I think is he's going to do what he has to do to win this election, to make the case to the American people.
And then once he wins the election, he's going to put together a tiger team that can deal with some of these issues.
I mean, you see some of the bipartisan individuals, you know, where you have Tulsi Gabber, you have RFK Jr., you have Eli Musk.
You have a very kind of robust people from different perspectives, all committed to kind of helping create an America that works for everyone.
Why does he seem to have an unusual number of former officials who worked for him coming out against him or his former vice president deciding not to endorse him?
Why is that happening?
Well, I mean, honestly, not all of them kind of left the administration on good terms.
I think that his approach towards foreign affairs with a lot of the former generals is different than what we've had over the last 70 years.
And I think we have to have that new realignment because what we've done when we went back to it under Joe Biden is put us back into a situation where we're at war on many fronts.
You know, if we see the growing concern with China, the issues with Russia, or we're looking at what's happening in the Middle East.
And so I think his leadership is much needed and that we have to kind of navigate this differently and not kind of give in to the same regime that's got us here.
About 10 minutes left with Jeron Smith this morning, taking your phone calls.
Alonzo is in Leavenworth, Kansas on the Harris Walls line.
Go ahead.
Yes, I have a comment for this man.
Sir, with all due respect, you're just digging your own grave.
Donald Trump is an obviously ignorant man.
He's an obviously racist man.
And I don't know how long you've been on this earth, but as a black man, if you don't know a racist man when you see one, then that makes you a fool.
And I'm sorry to call you that, but you're a fool and a collaborator.
Thank you very much.
Jeron Smith, give you a chance to respond.
Well, I mean, honestly, I can't really respond with you throwing names at me.
You know, you don't know much about my background, but I've been committed to helping move our people forward.
And I know that in working for Donald Trump, he'll continue to kind of do some of the work that I worked on in this administration, which helped empower HBCUs, helped create a better, safer criminal justice system, and then also created new access to capital for all Americans, including the black community.
And that's what I'm committed to.
You know, I'm not trying to get you to kind of change parties.
I just ask you to just look at the facts.
You know, instead of calling me names, why don't you go look at what are the actual policies that she passed legislatively versus the policies that Donald Trump passed legislatively?
And then reevaluate how you think about me because all I'm doing is giving you some policy pieces to consider as it relates to the election.
If Donald Trump were to win next week, would you like to go back into government work?
And if so, where do you think you could best make a difference?
Well, I will say this.
I had children on the famous January 6th.
So I had twins on January 6th, 2021.
And my commitment has been to being a father first and foremost.
And the work of the administration peels into a lot of your time.
And so I'd have to pray on that and make a decision based off of how God can use me best.
Do you think you'd ever like to run for office?
Would I like to run for office?
Again, I look at that as kind of a North Star wherever God would have me serve.
I'm just committed to trying to help the country be a better place rather than kind of being in office or advising people who are in office.
Loretta is in Grove City, Ohio, Trump Vance supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have a question for you, Mr. Smith.
I am an immigrant in this country, and Trump talked down on immigrants.
And you guys keep putting your head under the sun and asking me, you guys don't hear what he's saying.
And Loretta, you're calling in on the Trump Vance line.
You're not a Trump Vance supporter, I take it.
I am a Trump Vance supporter, but I want to know what the people around him are telling him.
He is married to an immigrant.
All the Republican Party's top eight are married to immigrants.
Why is it that you guys keep talking down on immigrants?
I want to know why is it that you guys are picking fruit on top of poop and eating it?
All right, that's Loretta.
Sure.
So I think the issue that we're dealing with is under the Harris administration, you have 8 million people that have come into the country at a time where we're post-pandemic dealing with the wake of the pandemic and trying to give working class individuals opportunities.
Really hard to do that if you can't get a good handle on the border and deal with the influx of individuals who are coming in undocumented.
And so I think the commitment here is just kind of focusing on a better legal immigration system and a stronger border and then helping kind of tell the narrative of like, if we don't fix these issues, these are some of the problems that may arise.
We've had a number of illegal immigrants that have come through that are also terrorists.
We've also had a number of gangs that have made it across the border and taken over communities like the community in Colorado.
And so these are the issues I think that the president is worried about.
I worked on some of his immigration policies and he wants to create a very robust merit-based immigration system because again, we need it to kind of grow the workforce and dealing with the challenges of the 21st century and creating the most robust American economy that anyone's ever seen.
Remind viewers what an opportunity zone is.
So opportunity zone is a low-income designated census track designated by the CDFI fund.
CDFI.
Yeah, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund over at Treasury.
And they basically look at unemployment rates and the poverty rates, and they gave governors the opportunity to designate these census tracts.
And if business wanted to kind of start up, they got some tax ramifications from it, like they didn't have to pay capital gains.
And so it was a way to kind of capitalize on money, capital gains that's out there, and encourage investment in low-income census tracts.
Has it worked?
It has very much so worked.
Over $50 billion of new investment in low-income census tracts and 3,800 census tracts.
And I think it'd be a hallmark vehicle to do more work in some of those underserved communities.
Who came up with opportunity zones?
Tim Scott.
Tim Scott led on it with the help of Corey Booker.
So very bipartisan in essence.
And I think it will continue to be very bipartisan in essence.
Yuri in Charlotte, North Carolina, on that line for Undecided.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
My question is, why is Trump using the name manga?
Make America Gray again?
Because this name belongs to Hitler.
Should love to use manga.
Got your point, Yuri.
What are your thoughts on the fact that Hitler fascism has come up so often in this campaign?
I mean, it's just terrible rhetoric on the left that I think is very troublesome.
As you can see, there's been two assassination attempts on President Trump.
President Trump has already become president.
He wasn't a fastest president.
I gave you all the reasons why he wasn't because he created all those bipartisan reforms.
And I think that in a second Trump presidency, he'll continue to kind of work and lead some bipartisanship because at the end of the day, he's going to make Democrats an officer they can't refuse because their constituents, as I outlined in our article, are some of those low-income individuals that want to kind of create opportunity.
And we need a president that can bring both sides together to create opportunities for those Americans.
Chad Board, North Carolina, David, Trump Vance Supporter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. Smith.
It's a pleasure to see you on this morning.
To your defense, the caller, a previous caller who was calling you names earlier, I guess we really see where the ignorance really lies.
My question to you, sir, is: why do you think the black community is such a big sponsor and supporter of the Democratic Party?
Okay.
I think historically, at least in my lifetime and before my lifetime, that Republicans have just done a poor job of reaching out to the black community and actually showing up.
I think for President Trump, what he did uniquely was deliver policy reforms that help working class black communities and that created some trust building.
And I think right now in the post-Obama world, after running a campaign on hope and change and being the first black president and most working class communities not really feeling the difference, and then you're hearing the political rhetoric from the left that they continue to use is that it's because the Republicans did this or the Republicans did that, is why you can't get it done.
You know, we saw a Republican president didn't make any excuses.
He just did it.
And that kind of changed the landscape.
And that's why I see realignment.
And alignment is not based off of race.
It's raced off of working class communities.
So that's the poor Latino community, that's the poor white community, that's the poor black communities.
And I think that that realignment is, to me, a movement that's worthwhile, and I've been happy to be a part of it.
To James in Illinois, the Harris Walls line, go ahead.
My question is this.
If the economy was so good in his four years, why did he add $8 trillion to the debt?
Well, I think we also dealt with a historic crisis that the country and the world has never seen, not in 100 years, which was called the pandemic.
And so we had to kind of do things that we traditionally can't do.
I think that if you see something that contributed to the debt, his Tax Cuts and Job Act, we were able to kind of see the robust economy that grew as a result of that legislation.
But the economy took some hits with the pandemic, and we had to do more spending.
But if things would have played out without a pandemic, that tax cuts and jobs bill would have continued to kind of make the economy more bust because we saw historic growth numbers that we haven't seen in such a long time.
But again, we've never dealt with a pandemic.
I will say his leadership in the pandemic, you know, we had to do some things to kind of reset the country.
But ultimately, we started taking the country on a different path.
And once the Biden administration got into place, they went into another direction, which included increasing inflation.
Let me come back to the previous caller and talking about black Americans and Republicans versus Democrats.
Theodore Johnson in today's Washington Post has this column, the headline, Here Comes a Message from Black America.
Get ready for it.
He writes, whatever the choice, expect the coalitions in this country to change.
The number of black voters supporting Republicans has rebounded to the historic averages, though still just barely one in eight.
But it's more notable that the recovery happened under MAGA's reshaping of the party.
Congress has more black Republicans today, five, than at any time since the first Reconstruction.
Trump threatens to be the first Republican nominee since 1980 to win 14% of the black vote.
Support for Trump has also increased among voters younger than 30 and Hispanic voters, especially the men.
If nativism in the United States becomes multiracial, it will change the country forever, Theodore Johnson writes.
It goes on from there.
But your thoughts on some of those numbers?
I mean, that's what I was alluding to.
And I think those numbers have a lot of working class individuals.
These are individuals who also are low-propensity voters.
And so Trump is actually reaching out to communities that normally aren't politically engaged because they care about the direction of what he's taking the economy and the public safety that he created with low immigration as well as empowering police to work with communities.
And so the record is everything.
I think people actually want to pay attention to what the policy platforms are.
But more importantly, they want to elect a member that they can trust that's going to actually deliver and not just talk about it.
And I think he developed a lot of trust by actually doing things in this administration that empowers all communities.
Unlike Harris and Biden, they've continued to kind of give rhetoric and have done less for these communities.
And so that's going to be the case about this election.
This is an election about the working class voters.
About a minute left.
I did want to mention your book, co-author of Underserved, Harnessing the Principles of Lincoln's Vision for Reconstruction for Today's Forgotten Communities.
What's the one-minute elevator pitch on the book?
So the book goes into deeply policy regimes that we can create in a bipartisan manner to help underserved communities.
I think that for years we've had politicians kick the can on helping underserved communities and doing things to further divide us.
President Trump gave us a policy infrastructure to bring both parties together to kind of do the hard work of helping all underserved communities, whether it's economic development, entrepreneurship, education and jobs, or safe communities.
We need to take a holistic approach towards dealing with the issues of underserved communities.
Jeron Smith has been our guest for the past 45 minutes.
You can find him on X at JeronSmith04.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much, John.
Coming up next, we'll continue our conversation about the presidential campaign with George Conway.
Stick around for that conversation.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
George Conway back with us, lawyer pundit and president of the Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee.
I know you're not a pollster, but what's your explanation for Donald Trump erasing Kamala Harris's lead in national polls according to the average of polls that are out there, 538 in real-claim politics?
What's going on with this country as we get within six days of Election Day?
Well, I think it goes without saying that it's a very divided country.
I'm not a pollster.
I have to say that what I do know about polling, I was previously married to a pollster for 20 years, is that it cannot, pollsters cannot determine who will show up.
They cannot predict who will show up on Election Day.
And the other thing about polling is that if you call 10,000 people, you're only going to get a handful of responses.
And once you get a sample that is statistically useful, it's not going to be a sample of the population at large, let alone registered voters, let alone likely voters.
And likely voters, the pool of likely voters is really unknowable.
I mean, you can only guess because every year the mix of voters is a little different because some voters are more motivated in some years than others.
Like I think women are going to be highly motivated this year.
So I don't think polls are useful as predictive tools for what's going to happen here.
I think that Kamala Harris is well positioned to win because I think the enthusiasm factor is so much greater on the Democratic side.
It's partly enthusiasm for her, having a fresh face and an inspiring face who looks to the future and is positive and joyful.
And also there's terror, I fear, on behalf of the Democratic base and other people who understand the danger of Donald Trump.
And on the other side, you have a MAGA base that is devoted to him.
But I think there are a lot of Republicans who are completely exhausted by Trump.
Even if they think that in some ways they would benefit from a Trump presidency from lower marginal tax rates or other issues, I think they are exhausted by him.
They're exhausted trying to have to defend him to people.
And I think a lot of them, I think there are a lot of hidden Harris voters, but we'll see.
I mean, it's like what Derek Cheeter says about baseball.
It's like, it's why they play the game.
You can't know beforehand.
You can look at what's happening on paper, and that doesn't tell you how it's going to come out.
Are Democrats, is Kamala Harris, going to have to defend this garbage comment by Joe Biden, the headline in the Washington Times today, Biden labels Trump backers garbage in that Vodo Latino video that we played for viewers earlier.
Yeah, well, I think that's whole story is garbage.
I mean, it's so funny.
The Republicans have spent so much time talking about how inarticulate Joe Biden is.
And here he was clearly saying that what he thought was garbage was the racism of Trump and his supporters.
He wasn't saying that the supporters are garbage, but he was saying that the people who were giving those speeches, including that comedian who made a couple of really horrific remarks about Puerto Ricans and made another horrific remark about blacks, that's what he was clearly talking about there.
George Conway.
By the way, he's not running for president.
George Conway with us this morning for about the next 40 minutes here on the Washington Journal.
Go ahead and get your calls in.
Phone lines split the way we have split them as we're getting close to election day.
Trump Vance supporters 202-748-8001.
Harris Walls supporters 202-748-8000.
If it's neither for you or if you're still undecided, 202-748-8002.
We were talking before the program about the newspapers we have on the desk here and reading more newspapers.
I wonder, do you think newspapers doing away with presidential endorsements as the Washington Post, the LA Times, and USA Today is doing this cycle, does that matter?
Well, I understand the general argument in the abstract that newspapers, a lot of people say newspapers should not do political endorsements because it calls their news pages into question and people confuse what's opinion and what's news.
And I do think there is merit to that.
I think one of the problems in the way we get information these days about current events is, first of all, people don't read enough newspapers, and local news is dying.
But I think there's a little bit too much intermix between opinions and fact reporting and entertainment.
All these things have kind of melded together to the point where I think a lot of can't distinguish opinion from fact and in violation of that old adage of Senator Moynihan that you're entitled to your own opinions but you're not entitled to your own facts.
That being said, I think it is extremely unfortunate and disturbing and disturbing is really an understatement that they have chosen these newspapers and newspaper chains,
I guess USA Today and Olive Gadette, I guess, and the LA Times and the Washington Post of all places, to decide shortly before the most consequential presidential election since probably 1864 that the choice between someone who is clearly an authoritarian,
who a sociopath, who clearly has already attempted to destroy American democracy for his own ends, and a candidate who is committed to the rule of law.
I mean, I'll leave all other policy issues aside.
The notion that, I mean, if newspapers never made endorsements, which some people believe they shouldn't, this is the time for them to make an exception.
And these three news organizations are going the other way.
And I have to say, you know, it is very reminiscent of what has happened in countries where there have been authoritarian takeovers in the past.
People don't want to incur the wrath of a vindictive government.
Jeff Bezos argued yesterday in his op-ed that this is a way, a step towards increasing trust in newspapers, saying now, according to the latest Gallup newspapers are below Congress in trust.
I don't want to use the word I want to use on this is C-SPAN, right?
That's garbage, okay, to use milder word.
Because he's owned this paper for a long time.
He could have taken this position two years ago, four years ago, six years ago.
And he did not.
And it just so happens that this man has business with the federal government that he doesn't want disturbed.
And he has his own employees at his Blue Origin or whatever the name of his meeting with Donald Trump the day this gets into the newspaper.
Okay, he has zero credibility.
He has zero credibility on this.
And you see it, essentially what you are seeing.
I mean, it is like Lenin's adage that the capitalists will sell us the rope with which they will hang him.
The same is true of fascists.
And Donald Trump is definitionally a fascist.
And I hate to say that, and it's something I never thought I would come to that conclusion.
But you look at the pages of history, and there's no question.
And what people are doing, what these corporations are doing, is that they're putting financial interests, momentary financial interests, above the interests of the public.
Well, you buy a newspaper, you're providing a public service that may be for profit, but you have an obligation to provide truthful information and to give truthful guidance to people.
And if you cannot take that heat, you should not own the newspaper.
You should sell that newspaper.
It is absolutely in our range.
But this isn't the only thing that's happening.
I mean, we see something.
There was an incident that didn't get a lot of press because we're in the middle of an intense election season and we see what happened at the Post and at the LA Times.
And now at USA Today, that there was a A professor of history that I know, Ruth Ben-Giat, a very prominent scholar of authoritarianism at NYU, was scheduled to give a lecture at the Naval Academy.
And some MAGA Republican House members and the Heritage Foundation objected.
The speech was going to be about how authoritarians co-opt the military, which is something I think potential officers of the United States Navy should really understand, because I think it's important that military officers understand history and particularly international history.
And the speech was postponed in light of those objections.
I mean, what we are seeing is chilling.
And the fact that we are seeing it now in anticipation of a possible, but I don't think it's going to happen, victory by Donald Trump, should scare the living daylights out of anybody who believes in free speech and democracy.
Coming up on 9 a.m. Eastern, no surprise, plenty of calls for you.
Lines are full.
Hope you keep calling in, and we'll start with Cheryl in California on the Harris-Walls line.
Go ahead.
Hi, Mr. Conway.
How are you this morning?
Very well, ma'am.
Oh, well, that's good.
And thank you for C-SPAN for taking my call.
But what I wanted to point out, you know, because, you know, all through this election cycle, we have heard, you know, Kamala, you know, didn't do this or she was a part of this, blah, blah, blah.
You know, but what I want, you know, you to point out to the American people is how the government works.
Because, you know, Trump inherited an economy from President Obama, okay, that he took credit for.
Half of the stuff that he said he did, he did not do.
Obama did it.
And the other thing, when they talk about what Biden and Harris is not doing, think about the House and the power of the purse, where it belongs.
And see, this is where the American people get caught up in the rhetoric instead of the facts.
So I hope through this segment, you can point out the facts to them.
That's Cheryl in California.
Well, thank you, Cheryl.
And I'm absolutely right.
I mean, I think she makes a number of good points.
I mean, for example, Vice President Harris is simply the vice president.
Vice President doesn't really have any job to do in the Constitution other than to preside on January 6th and to be president of the Senate.
And so it's a difficult job in that sense because if you do too much, people are going to say, well, if you try to do too much, people are going to say, well, you know, she's overstepping because she's just the vice president.
And if you just sit there like a wallflower, then people say you're not doing enough and you're not going to make anybody happy.
But she's absolutely right.
What Donald Trump, where's the money for the wall?
From Mexico, for example.
One of the advantages that Donald Trump has had in this election is people forgot why they fired him in the first place in 2020.
And there is, I think the caller at the very initial point in her remarks talked about how Kamala Harris is essentially being nitpicked, whereas Donald Trump gets a pin.
Donald Trump can say, I want to, just off the cuff, say, I want to eliminate all federal taxes, which is insane.
And yet, people are worried about what people are saying.
Well, Gumla Harris was very, very unclear about what her policy on kumquat farming in California was.
It really is just a double standard, which is created by the fact that we've been watching an absolute, frankly, lunatic who absolutely knows virtually nothing about politics, economics, foreign policy, even after all these years.
And he's held to a lower standard because he has brought standards down for himself.
But somehow or another, the standards for everyone else remain the same.
Whitsett, North Carolina, Mark on the Trump Vance line.
You're on with George Conway.
Yeah, I'm a little bit disturbed about the double standards you're applying on what you're saying.
For example, you dismissed Joe Biden's comments about calling all of Trump's supporters garbage, and that's what he said.
He did not say that, Caller.
He did not.
He did not.
He said that the racism, the comment, the disgusting comments about Hispanics were objectionable.
I read the quote too, sir.
You're just wrong.
And I know you want to believe that's what he said.
But by the way, he's not running for president.
The other guy is.
Mark, did you want to respond?
To call Trump, to call Trump a fascist, calling his supporters fascist.
I'm not a fascist.
I'm a freedom-loving Republican.
And for you to say that Trump supporters are fascist is just wrong.
I didn't say Trump supporters are fascist.
I think they may be supporting a fascist.
Sir, I was a Republican from 1980 to 2018.
Okay?
I don't want to see a Republican Party led by a fascist, but he is a fascist.
He cannot help but be a fascist.
His personality disorders make him a fascist.
He does not care about anyone else.
He does not care about the rule of law.
He does not care about justice.
He does not care about right and wrong.
He's a criminal.
He's a convicted criminal, 34 counts.
He stands charged with many other counts on which I really don't think he has much of a defense.
He's an adjudicated sexual abuser found by a New York City jury, that included, frankly, people north of the city who were probably Republicans, unanimously found him liable for inserting his hand in a physical assault, inserting his fingers in a woman's vagina, which the judge called rape.
He is, by any colloquial standard, a rapist.
He is a bad man.
And why all of you out there seem to want to excuse him and pretend that reality is something other than what it is and what you want it to be is the problem.
And I don't say that you're garbage because of that.
I think you need to look in the mirror someday and start thinking about, is this man the man you want your children or your grandchildren to emulate?
On the garbage comment, the transcript sent by the White House has it as possessive and not plural.
The statement, the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters' apostrophe S. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it's un-American.
It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything that we've been.
some debate over there since yesterday about whether it was plural or possessive just to the caller's point of what he said.
Yeah, and I, you know, as a conservative lawyer, I am a textualist and you have to, part of the ruling way you examine a text is you look at the entire sentence.
Okay.
And the entire sentence makes it makes sense that there is a possessive there.
When we speak, we do not say apostrophe.
Although Donald Trump has shown that he doesn't know what an apostrophe is, by the way.
If Donald Trump wins, what does that mean for you?
And if Donald Trump loses on Tuesday, what does that mean for you?
Well, I don't, it doesn't really matter what it means to me.
I think what it means to the country is scary if he wins.
Personally, I'm probably going to do the same thing either way.
It was never my intention to be on television, not even here, although I enjoy it very much sitting here and being a political advocate.
And I think I'm going to write a book.
I intend to write a book.
I want to write a book to talk about the interplay between Trump's psychological, deep-seated psychological disorders and the public, how it is that somebody so manifestly unfit can gain the confidence of large segments of the public.
This is something we've seen in other countries that have lost their democracy.
And, you know, I think, you know, it's really a description about how Donald Trump represents the worst in us and brings out the worst in us.
And it's going to be a bit of an academic book because I've done a lot of reading and I really want to do more reading about what political psychologists and historians have written about authoritarianism and what psychiatrists and psychologists have written about malignant narcissism.
And I want to try to connect it all and then I want to draw lessons for the future for both America and the world.
Because one of the things we believed and I believed and fooled myself into believing is it couldn't happen here.
And it almost happened here.
It could yet happen here.
We're going to find out in a few days.
I'm hopeful that it will not happen here, the destruction of our democracy.
But somehow we have, as the Republican nominee for president, a man who led an insurrection against the United States and who tried to overturn the results of an election he lost,
which is something, you know, if you had ever, I never, ever thought that that would be something I could, that was even within the realm of possibility in the United States of America, yet by 2020, even before the election of 2020, you know, it began to dawn on my dense head that, wow, this is the guy who could and would do that.
And he still would do that.
Jimbo, Bakersfield, California, on that line for undecided or neither.
Go ahead.
Good morning, George.
Anyone willing to face me?
Anyone willing to face this angry mob here on Washington Journal earns my respect.
And sir, you have earned it, man.
This is an angry mob you're dealing with.
Anyway, whenever you speak, I always listen because you always help educate me.
And I hope your daughter follows in your footsteps, not your wife's.
Okay, but anyway, here's a really important question I wanted to ask you, and it's been bothering me.
I keep thinking that Trump will declare victory early on election night, irrespective of the tally.
And I think he's just going to go headstrong into it.
And I think we're dealing with a collection of people who there is no preponderance of evidence that would ever change their mind on any of this.
That's what impresses me so much about you is that I have long ago given up the fight and trying to explain facts to people.
And I have just abandoned it.
I just keep to myself now because I realize how dangerous so many of these people are.
And you go out there and put up the good fight every day.
And irrespective of anyone's political belief, I really respect people who are out there speaking facts and the truth to people.
So keep up the good fight, my friend.
What says you about election night?
And again, Brian Lamb, you're my hero.
Thanks so much.
George Conway.
Well, thank you for that.
And I absolutely think he will declare victory no matter what.
His position is going to be, his position is going to be, I could not have lost but for fraud.
He's already laid the groundwork for that.
We know his modus operandi.
He is absolutely going to do that.
And it is my hope that the margins will be sufficiently great at the end of the day that he won't really have any practical mechanism to cause any disruption in the transition from Biden to the Harris administration.
But we'll have to see.
I mean, partly, I mean, he really, there is this lurking threat of violence because he does use rhetoric that is conducive to violence.
And his point is that if an election were stolen, if he says it's an election stolen, well, that's the kind of thing that people revolt over.
And, you know, so his lies are very dangerous.
And we have no reason to believe and every reason to believe that he's going to do as much as he can now, that he's going to lie this time around.
Because this time, he's not just running for president.
In 2020, he was running for reelection.
This year, he is running from prison.
He is running to escape responsibility and accountability for the crimes he's committed.
And that makes him all the more desperate.
It makes him all the more unstable.
It makes him all the more likely to stoke up violence.
French Lick, Indiana, this is David on the Trump Advance Line.
David, good morning.
You're on with George Conway.
Good morning, John.
Thank you for taking my call.
The question I have for Mr. Conway, who was speaking of Vice President Harris, said, her only responsibilities as Vice President and kind of laughingly was to break ties in the Senate and certify the election.
Well, if that's the case, what is her qualification for president?
And secondly, if he decides to write a book, I hope it isn't censored by the Biden-Harris, Harris-Waltz campaign because of all the censoring that was done by Biden-Harris in agreement with the social media companies.
So good luck on your book getting published if Trump comes in because we'll censor you.
Well, David, let me let George Conway respond.
Yeah, I mean, again, I mean, This caller, David, is an example of someone who obviously does not get his information from reputable sources.
I mean, there was no social media censorship.
I mean, there was an effort by the Biden administration to encourage social media companies to identify false information that was discussed about vaccines because it really was a public health information, a public health issue.
But nobody was being censored.
I mean, and the notion, I'm not sure why the Biden-Harris administration would censor me.
I do know why Donald Trump would want to censor me if he could.
He also, you know, while he was president, he actually tried to punish Amazon because its owner owned the Washington Post.
I mean, he is a man who does not believe in free speech.
My point is I believe in accurate speech.
I believe in truthful speech.
And we cannot under the First Amendment ban false speech, not even the lies that Donald Trump tells on a regular basis.
I mean, the only mechanism there would be defamation, which he's been held liable for because he continually lies about individuals.
But again, I'm not, it's really disturbing to hear callers like David with that perspective, I mean, of being so out of touch with facts and reality.
And I think it's just dangerous.
Headline from the New York Times, Bannon released from prison proclaims that he is empowered.
Did you watch the press conference yesterday?
No, I did not.
I know some people who attended it.
I mean, I was running around and I missed Steve's discussion, whatever.
You can fill me in if you want.
What are your thoughts on Steve Bannon's role now that he's released from prison from that four-month contempt of Congress sentence related to the January 6th investigation?
Yeah, I mean, he served his time, and I hope he leads a better life from now.
I don't hold out hope for that.
But he got what he deserved.
He violated, he refused to comply with a lawful subpoena.
And he didn't really have to do this.
I mean, he could have, I mean, in light of what he had done, and in light of the fact that there's a criminal investigation, he could have taken the Fifth Amendment and not avoided prison here.
But we'll see.
I mean, he's facing other criminal charges, and we'll see how he does with those.
Alvin, Jacksonville, Florida, Harris Walsline, good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, Alvin.
You're on with George Conway.
Yes.
Hi, George.
And I want to thank you for coming on.
You're basically making my case.
So I watched the previous segment with the gentleman that was stating his case.
And my question is, I can't understand how, and this is for you and the moderator.
I can't understand how you can have a whole segment without touching on character, morality, alignment with autocrats and dictators, disrespecting our allies wanting to leave NATO, January 6th, disrespect for democracy and the Constitution, and evangelical Christians are a whole nother story.
Could you speak on that, George?
Well, I mean, you're certainly not going to have a segment with me that's not going to talk about some of those things because that's what I talk about a lot.
I mean, I don't think this is the kind of, I mean, this particular show isn't the kind of setting Where people are cross-examined on the things that they're not into, so to speak.
But I absolutely agree with you that those are the important topics, and I'm happy to be here to discuss them here and anywhere.
What is the Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee, and who's a part of it?
Well, the Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee was a political, is a political action committee that I formed in order to really point out the psychological disorders, the personality disorders that Donald Trump has.
And I think one of the reasons why his bizarre conduct, his abnormal conduct, his dangerous conduct has been somewhat normalized is because we don't treat him as pathological.
He is a pathological liar.
There is nothing, you cannot normalize him.
And once you understand the two main personality disorders that he has, narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, you basically understand Trump.
And that, you know, I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
I was a lawyer by training, but I had intended to go into this administration.
I was offered the position of head of assistant attorney general for the civil division of the Department of Justice, which is basically, I think, the world's largest law firm.
And I realized I could not go into this administration because there was something very, very severely wrong with it, and in particular with the president.
This is back in 2017.
And I began to read up: like, what did I, what, you know, I thought, okay, he's a little bit of a screwball.
He's untested in politics.
He needs, he's green.
But I didn't explain a lot of the bizarre behavior, like lying about the crowd size at his inauguration and insisting that people like Sean Spicer and my ex-wife go out and repeat or bolster those lies.
I didn't understand why, you know, why would someone who just became president of the United States be obsessed about whether on a rainy day he didn't get as many people to attend his inauguration as the first black president did on a sunny day, right?
It's like there was just something off there and his behavior throughout the first few months of his administration just left me wondering what's wrong with this guy.
And I began to do reading.
And I learned about personality disorders, clustered B personality disorders as defined in the DSM.
And I, you know, I mean, I have them here.
First, I read an article about narcissistic personality disorder.
And you can look at the characteristics of this man and he checks every box.
And then antisocial personality disorder.
He checks every box for that.
And that's why I formed the anti-psychopath political action committee to really point out these things and to point out how these things explain everything about him.
And last week we culminated our campaign with a signed petition or letter from 230 plus psychiatrists and psychologists talking about those personality disorders and why he has them and why they're dangerous for the country.
How many people are a part of it, and what are you doing with your political action committee?
We've been, again, we've been taking out ads.
I mean, we had four goals with that.
One is to educate people about these personality disorders, educate them about how Trump has them and how they're dangerous to the country.
Third is to get the media to talk about them more.
And we've had some, you know, we've had some success with all of that.
And then the fourth is to trigger him into displaying those characteristics.
And we've had some success with that.
What's an example?
Oh, example.
You know, we talked about him, for example, in our opening video.
We talked about him, how his personality disorders explain his belief in his favoritism toward authoritarianism, his own authoritarian tendencies.
And he clearly watched that because in a speech in Asheville, North Carolina, a few days before the Democratic Convention, he started talking about how he's friendly with Victor Orban and other strong leaders.
And he said, some people say that's a personality defect.
When you talk, when you criticize Trump, because he is a narcissist, and if you criticize Trump on something that he is, narcissists are very, very sensitive and deeply sensitive people who fear that their flaws are going to be revealed.
And so if you say he's weird, he goes out and gives speeches and says, I'm not weird.
I'm not weird.
You say he's a fascist.
He goes out, I'm not a fascist.
I'm not a fascist.
You say his crowd size isn't so big.
He gets very sensitive and he starts talking about crowd size.
And he starts saying the other person's crowd size crowds are artificially generated through computer technology.
Okay?
That was the kind of thing we wanted to do and to provoke him into displaying and throw him off his game.
And I think we did that to some extent.
And I think that I like to think that the campaign took after us by the Harris-Wals campaign kind of learned a little from that because they've been pretty good at getting under his skin.
Gasville, Arkansas, Tim Trump Vance Supporter.
You're on with George Conway.
Good morning to Ceasefan.
George, George, George, where do I begin?
With so many.
I think you're projecting.
I think you've done a lot of hurt feelings that you didn't get in.
But I wasn't born yesterday.
I remember stuff that your Lincoln project was into.
And all we've heard this morning is how you don't like Donald Trump.
Not a single position of the Harris Walsh campaign.
The Democrats in power, they're the ones that are putting people in jail over speech, over attendance at J6.
And we know now, we knew, some of us knew then, but we know now.
Nancy was responsible for not having enough security there.
We know now that there was FBI agents at J6.
We just can never get them to tell us how many, but the IG has confirmed that there was.
Now, why don't you get into some policies and tell us how, you know, Harris was the last man in the room when they evacuated Afghanistan and gave the airbase to China over there.
And I wonder, does it concern you at all about all the money that Joe took from China?
George Conway.
Well, again, I mean, this is an example.
I mean, so much of what that caller said is just suffused with misinformation and disinformation.
I mean, the January 6th people who have been convicted, hundreds of them convicted, whether they pled guilty or they were tried by a jury, they weren't, they were not, and I'm a lawyer and I've litigated free speech cases, they were not punished for free speech, for violating, I mean, for exercising free speech.
They engaged in trespassing on the Capitol grounds when police officers told them to get away.
They assaulted police officers.
They damaged property in the Capitol, causing millions of dollars.
They smeared feces on the wall.
It's all on videotape, and that's what these people were convicted for.
If the people who stood on the ellipse and applauded Donald Trump and who did not go up to Capitol Hill, did not assault police officers, did not destroy property, did not break windows and to break into the Capitol, those people were not charged.
And, you know, I mean, this notion that somehow, I mean, the Afghanistan thing, I don't know what she's talking about, Harris in Afghanistan.
Harris wasn't in Afghanistan.
Look, I have policy differences with the Biden administration and the Harris Waltz administration.
I mean, I will have policy difference with the Harris-Waltz administration.
That being said, those policy differences are like this compared to the difference between having a president like Donald Trump who gives not a whit about the Constitution, who has called for literally the suspension of the Constitution, who has tried to overthrow the Constitution by violent means and by mendacious means,
and someone who is going to adhere to the rule of law, who may interpret the law sometimes differently than I might, but that's, you know, at least she's in the realm of normality and within playing within the playing field that where we govern, we govern ourselves by rules, by constitutional rules, by statutory rules, and by norms of decency and honor.
And I want somebody, I want a conservative candidate someday who plays within that realm because that's what America is about.
America isn't about this bizarre circus that we've seen on the conservative side.
It's not really even that conservative.
They want to turn Europe over to the Russians and they're sabotaging our allies and they want to punish people for criticizing Donald Trump and throw their enemies in jail just for criticizing, not for engaging in violence.
Now, I want somebody who's going to play within the system and conserve that system because I'm a conservative.
Who's a conservative that you could see as somebody who plays within that realm and be a future leader of the party?
Well, I don't think a conservative who plays within that realm will be a future leader of the Republican Party.
I think the Republican Party is dead as a normal political party.
But as a conservative who I would love to see as president as a presidential candidate and in some potentially new, actually conservative party, like a Liz Cheney, for example, or an Adam Kinziger.
There are people out there, a Brad Raffensperger.
I mean, these are people, these are conservatives who believe in the rule of law.
They accept the results of elections.
I don't believe that people should be lied to on a regular basis so that you have people like the last caller who is just suffused with misinformation and misperceptions.
Time for maybe one more call.
Crystal's been waiting in Philadelphia.
Harris Walls Lying, good morning.
Go birds, Philadelphia.
I truly appreciate you.
Philadelphia, go birds.
Yes, from your wife's position and her talking about alternative facts.
It's honestly, it's blame the Jews if I lose.
Trump says he was best for black, best for Puerto Rico while throwing paper towels.
I mean, my grandmother could not vote in this country.
We worked so hard, marched and worked hard for the rights, hard-earned rights that they have tried and with women's rights taken away.
The segment before with the black Republican who came off as a he came off as a sellout to his people who came before him, and Trump is trying to stay out of jail.
That's what's going on.
And Trump supporters, I can't wait for your Kool-Aid drinking selves because this country is not going back.
And please, I love you.
It's the Republicans and just clear-eyed people that make America keep us from getting dragged back.
We're not going back.
Please, America, don't vote for dopes.
That's Crystal in Pennsylvania.
Final minute or two here.
No, Crystal, I mean, I thank you, Crystal.
And I think that that's what this country is about.
What Crystal describes of, you know, we may have our differences on issues.
I don't know what Crystal believes on various things, but I bear her no ill will.
I want, you know, I love her aspirations.
And we share all those as Americans.
We share this heritage of freedom and democracy and trying to work things out through rational discussion.
And that's what we need to get back to.
We need to get back to a healthy two-party system where people will, you know, they'll fight it out on the floors of the House and make their arguments within the rules and with the bounds of truth and propriety.
And when the decision is made, we move on to the next thing.
And we respect each other because we respect that everyone is acting in good faith.
And what we have here is one party has gone completely off the rails, led by a demagogue who is a pathological liar.
And the North Star of the Republican Party is no longer the rule of law and truth.
It's just whatever it takes to convince people to vote for them and whatever it takes to win, even if it's lies, alternative realities, and entire world of facts that aren't facts.
And, you know, I never thought we'd get to this point.
But I'm hopeful that we've all learned something from it because I actually think in talking to Democrats and people who I've had serious political disagreements, disagreements about how to interpret particular provisions of the Constitution, tax policy, or foreign policy, They want to discuss these things.
They're happy to discuss these things.
They want to understand other viewpoints that are based on reason.
And what we're having here is just too many people are basically have been misled and led off the rails by a demagogue into believing things that aren't true and into hating people who are different than they are.
And that's not America.
And I hope the caller is right, that we won't go back.
George Conway is the president of the Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee.
It is psychopath.org.
If you want to check them out online, always appreciate your time.
Thanks.
Coming up in our final 25 minutes of the Washington Journal this morning, we turn the phone lines over to you.
It's open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about, if you want to talk, Campaign 2024, let's do it.
Phone lines are on your screen.
Go ahead and start calling in now, and we will get to those calls right after the break.
As the 2024 presidential campaign continues, American History TV presents its series, Historic Presidential Elections.
Learn about the pivotal issues of different eras, uncover what made these elections historic, and explore their lasting impact on the nation.
This Saturday, the election of 1980.
I've been president now for almost four years.
I've had to make thousands of decisions, and each one of those decisions has been a learning process.
I've seen the strength of my nation, and I've seen the crises that it approached in a tentative way, and I've had to deal with those crises as best I could.
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?
Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?
Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?
Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?
In a landslide victory, former California Governor Republican Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
Watch Historic Presidential Elections, Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend at 6 p.m. Eastern, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia awards documentary filmmaker Ken Burns its 2024 Liberty Medal for his body of work as America's storyteller.
Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, watch American History TV's series Historic Presidential Elections, exploring what made these elections historic, the pivotal issues of different eras and their lasting impact on the nation.
This week, the election of 1980, in a landslide victory, Republican former California Governor Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter, winning 489 electoral votes in 44 states.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, University of Dallas history professor William Otto discusses the decade leading to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the key compromises that led to the ratification of the United States Constitution.
Exploring the American story.
Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Washington Journal continues.
It's open forum to end our program today.
Phone lines as usual.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
As you're calling in, let me run you through our campaign coverage today on the C-SPAN networks.
If you want to see Donald Trump, you can catch him in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina at 1 p.m. Eastern today, speaking with voters there.
That's going to air on C-SPAN2, also C-SPAN.org and the C-SPAN Now app.
Also, Donald Trump in Green Bay, Wisconsin this evening, 7 p.m. Eastern to speak with voters.
Brett Favre expected to join him at that rally in Green Bay.
That'll air live on C-SPAN this evening.
If you want to catch Kamala Harris today on the C-SPAN networks, it's noon at a rally in North Carolina in Raleigh, North Carolina.
And also at 4 p.m. Eastern Time in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, I get out the vote rally there.
That also on C-SPAN.
And then this evening, 9.30 p.m. Eastern, Kamala Harris will be in Madison, Wisconsin.
Various musical artists expect to join her at that rally.
That's going to air on C-SPAN2, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
With that, your phone calls to end our program today.
Open forum.
Any political issue, any campaign issue you want to talk about.
This is Richard in Cumberland, Maryland.
Line for Democrats.
Go ahead.
Yes, hello.
George Conway's segment about Trump's morality, shall we say?
I wouldn't let him babysit my children.
And also, I know you are, but what am I?
He treats people bad.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't understand how anyone can support him.
Facts, and sadly, my social circle and my family, I've lost friends because they don't listen to the other side.
I'm bipartisan.
My TV remote needs new batteries.
My channel surf.
I watch all the outlets.
And I see fact and fact.
I don't see a Sharpie going across Florida.
You know, I see facts.
That's Richard in Maryland.
We'll stay in Maryland, Clarksville.
This is Jennifer, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I actually tried to call on the Independent line, just letting you know I was never able to get through.
So I apologize that I'm not a Republican.
I am an independent, but...
I'll tell you what, Jennifer, call back on that independent line and try to get through on that line just because it takes a call away from a Republican when you do that.
So Patty, Plano, Texas, Republican, go ahead.
Hi, good.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you.
I just want to say the damn duo just scares me to death.
And why is that, Patty?
Well, Kamala had to take two times to go through the bar to pass it.
And I understand she was not the greatest law enforcement district attorney or whatever she says she was.
And secondly, her dad and mom are avowed Marxists.
And he's still alive.
Her mama's dead.
But he's still a professor and teaching his Marxism.
And she was born into that idea, that thought, that mindset.
Where do you go, Scott?
Where do you go to learn about Kamala Harris, learn about her background?
Where are your news sources?
My news sources are from Fox News.
And I do listen to MSNBC and CNN, but they're so deep into backing up Kakamala and calling Pennywise the clown that I just kind of dismiss anything they have to say.
That's Patty in Texas.
Mike in California, Independent.
Good morning.
Hello.
Trump doesn't believe in anything and knows very little, but his handlers, Stephen Miller, and people, they are sharp.
They know how to put together enough people.
So the main Trump supporters have the Kool-Aid, and they will put up with anything he says.
But he has to say more and more crazy, raunchy things to try to get the proud boys and right-wing extremists who wouldn't vote.
But if he can get them excited enough with this stuff, like, boy, oh, boy, he's with us.
They will come out.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I was looking.
I thought you cut me off.
I'm sorry.
Anyway, we're going to get a new bride.
Would you like to put your daughter next to Donald Trump on an airplane?
The idea that those people lied and his defense is that they weren't hot enough.
Otherwise, God, what a logic.
All right, that's Mike.
This is Troy, Independent, in Florida.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I find it very interesting that before Donald Trump ran for president, he was loved, revered, and admired.
Oprah Winfrey, back in the 1980s, said he would make a wonderful president on her show.
He was on the view.
You still with us, Troy?
Then we will go to Richard in Missouri, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I guess this country is really divided down the middle.
So we'll have to live with it, I guess.
One of the others going to be president.
Now, this deal about Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., there's a bunch of a state as Alaska and Hawaii.
Now, what's the matter with this deal?
Calling them a bunch of garbage out there in the ocean.
What kind of maniac could do something like that on election day?
I'll let you go.
Thank you.
That's Richard.
This is Steve in Linfield, Massachusetts.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
First, I'd like to say George is great, but I would like to say that it doesn't seem like Trump supporters really accept the fact that he's a psychopath.
So I'd like to hear Democrats talk a little more about the facts, like how horrible Trump's economy really was and how much money he added to our deficit or any other thing for that matter.
Any topic whatsoever, the border or the Afghan war, the Doha Agreement.
None of the facts get talked about.
And then the Republicans just ignore any obvious signs that Trump is a psychopath.
I just urge Republicans to just actually look at some of the issues that are your top issues.
And you'd realize that Trump is horrible at all of them.
And I guess that's all I have to say.
Oklahoma City, Angela, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I am for Trump because I had a sister out in Utah.
An immigrant broke into her basement, almost killed her.
This by herself.
Now she's living in her living room.
And the cops got the Democrat out, but they couldn't arrest him.
Tell me what's wrong with the picture.
That's Angela.
And this is Jay in Newberry, Florida, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm an independent, and I'm 75, and this is the worst presidential election we've ever had.
We're a country of over 200 and something million, 300 million, whatever.
And this is the best that they can do.
I looked around, and the Libertarian Party has a candidate.
His name is Chase Oliver.
And he was on your show, and he was exceptional.
His speech and talk and what he believed in was the best I've ever heard.
And I realize that he won't win the election, but I'm voting for him because I can't, in good conscience, vote for Harris or for Trump.
Jay, what do you think happens next Tuesday?
Oh, I have no idea.
It's all about the money and where they're spending the money and what they're saying.
And the Trump supporters, well, there are some good people in there, but Harris doesn't have the credentials.
And I look at the Democrat Party.
They didn't have a primary.
They did it somehow under the cover of something else.
And so you didn't have other Democrat people running for the president's position.
So, and I don't know, this whole country is 50-50, and they can't seem to compromise.
If we had an independent president, then each party would have to deal with them.
And they would have to compromise in order for him to sign whatever bill they want to pass.
And that's where we should go.
But the way things are set up, you have two money power parties, and they don't even allow the independent to debate on TV.
And I watched the show you had with Chase Oliver, and he was incredible.
That's Jay in Florida.
And when you talk about the way things are set up, Ben Ginsburg in his column today in the New York Times talks about the fact that we probably won't know the results on Tuesday night of the presidential election.
It's this top story here above, in which Ben Ginsburg is a former election lawyer, former advisor to the presidential campaign of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.
He writes in that piece about specific state laws on vote counting that is going to probably make this go a day or several days after election night.
Results in Nevada, where the presidential race is expected to be tight, are likely to be delayed again by a state law allowing mail votes postmarked by election day to be counted if received up to four days later.
More than a dozen states allow mail ballots to be received after the election, including two, California and New York, that are expected to play an outside role in determining which party controls the House of Representatives.
California and New York allow mail ballots to be received up to seven days after the election, which can lead to delayed results in very close races.
The outcome of the 2020 election in North Carolina remained fluid for over a week as a result of a state law allowing mail ballots to arrive after Election Day.
Republicans changed that law last year over the governor's veto to require mail ballots to be received by 7.30 p.m. on Election Day.
That change should speed up tabulation errors, although the changes enacted last year push back the time when counties can count ballots cast during early voting.
It's now after polls close instead of during all of Election Day.
One more, Arizona, likely to take longer to count votes in 2024 than it did in either 2020 or 2022 when it took six days to call a contested governor's race.
There are several culprits.
The state, especially Maricopa County, where about 60% of the state's registered voters live, tends to have a very large number of absence ballots walked in on Election Day, which is permitted by state law.
Those ballots must then go through the state's thorough verification process.
Arizona's Republican majority legislature has also added a requirement that local election officials count the number of ballots that are dropped off on Election Day before tabulating them to make sure the numbers match some of the issues in some of the states that may keep this from being called on election night.
This is Laura in Newton, Mississippi, Republican.
Good morning.
And how are you this morning?
I just wanted to make a comment that the guests that you had on, the George fella from Lincoln, that is, he has the worst case of Trump derangement syndrome I have ever seen.
That was just crazy.
And the heritage fella that you had on there yesterday was a little bit better, but he, Lincoln, the Lincoln Project, that was just awful.
And he was just awful.
And so it's very biased.
And C-Span is very biased.
Laura, it sounds like you like some guests and you don't like other guests.
Well, that was just kind of like over the top, this George fella.
So I know this is the last week of election, so it's just really ramping up.
But I do want to say that agreeing with the woman in Texas about Harris being a Marxist, Trevor Louden has a new book out.
It's called Stealth.
And it goes all into that.
And yes, she is a Marxist, and her father is a Marxist professor.
And this whole four years has been a catastrophe.
And I'm a nurse.
I'm a registered nurse.
And I'm also a small farmer.
And I can tell you that economically it has been horrible, horrible.
And farmers are struggling.
The health industry is struggling.
Everything is struggling.
And yes, I am voting for Trump.
I do not, I'm not voting on his personality.
I'm not voting to take him to church.
And I am a Christian.
And I don't believe that you can be a Democrat and be a Christian because all Harris is her whole policy is abortion.
She's just running on abortion.
And she doesn't want Christians at her rallies.
She is horrifying.
And I'm in the Bible Belt.
And I can just tell you that that is horrifying.
And for someone, why don't you think she wants Christians at her rallies?
Because she said that.
She said, you're at the wrong rally when the two students said Jesus is Lord.
And they actually took the boys out.
So, I mean, that's horrifying.
And her guests at the rally, I mean, they're people with just blatant, this transsexual, trans, whatever, and all of that.
That's an abomination to the Bible, you know, to God.
Anyway, so Christians see that, and so they're not going to vote for her.
I mean, we don't want that, not at all.
And you just can't have that.
So this is really a war between good and evil.
And you're going to vote between good and evil.
And I certainly hope, and I know the American people have had enough.
And we don't want evil.
And the things that she has no policy whatsoever.
So that's Laura in Mississippi.
This is Ron in Vermont, Independent.
Good morning.
Hello.
I appreciate you taking my call.
I want to remind everybody that with all Trump's lies that he's told is not what hurt people the worst.
What hurt people the worst was the day that he got out of the hospital, took his mask off, and showed like everything was all right.
Four months later, I lost my brother from COVID.
They were living down in Tennessee.
A week later, I lost my mom from COVID.
And two months later after that, I lost my sister from COVID.
He destroyed my whole family.
I'm the only one left in it.
So that's what Trump does for this country.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Ron.
In Vermont, this is Elliot Huntington Beach in Florida.
Democrat, good morning.
Yeah, that's Huntington Beach in California.
California.
Sorry, Elliot.
Go ahead.
That's okay.
I feel we live in an Alice in Wonderland country right now.
It's crazy.
The January 6th brutal attack on the Capitol, and as president, he sat idly by for three hours, not doing a thing.
And he's considered a patriot for that.
I just don't get that.
And then his bread and butter issue of illegals crossing the border, he single-handedly stopped any kind of solution to make it better.
We wouldn't even be talking about it as much right now had he not done that.
You know, and it was solely for him to be re-elected as president.
I just don't see how anyone can reward that and see that as showing character.
He says the other side doesn't like it when he calls them the enemies from within and an enemy list.
I think all Americans should see that as being abhorrent of that anyone says anything about an enemies list, you know, from Democrats or Republicans to independents.
I just hope that for anyone who hasn't voted yet, you know, and for anyone who still who wants to vote for Trump to reconsider and do like my goodness, who's his ex-vice president did, and just, you know, he can't endorse even the man he worked for.
You know, if you can't bring yourself to vote for Kamala, just don't vote.
I really think you should strongly reconsider.
Thank you.
Albertville, Alabama, Republican.
This is Danny.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning.
I was an asshole in North Carolina.
I was going to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I got into a mess.
The bridge collapsed.
The road collapsed.
I mean, the mountain had a last Danny.
Is this three days?
Yes, after the hurricane.
This was after the hurricane.
It was two days after, or a day after the hurricane.
Me and my mother, I had an 80-year-old, 89-year-old.
My mother, she's 89 years old.
She was with me.
Well, we found out Highway 40 was clear to go.
So I told my mother, I said, okay, we left from Alabama going to Jacksonville, North Carolina.
We get, I get to Aspel, North Carolina.
They stopped me.
Says it was going to be an hour before they get the road fixed.
So we had to turn around.
I had to come back around.
I tried to get another way out.
Well, about that time, everything started happening.
My mother said, before we started going down there, after we came out of the tunnels of the North Carolina, mother said, Danny, look at these cattles going down the river.
I said, I ain't got time to look at no cows going down the river.
She says, there's a lot of cows going down the river.
I can't look over there.
I thought she would have pulled my leg.
Well, I get on down about 40 miles, and I says, wait a minute, why did all these trucks pull off the shoulder of the interstate?
I get on down there.
The troopers stopped us and made me turn around and go back.
They said they had the road fixes in an hour.
Get back on the interstate.
They told us it was going to be six hours.
Then the heavy equipment got washed off the mountain.
All the people working on the mountain, they got washed off the mountain.
The mountain collapsed.
Danny, my show's going to end in a little bit here, but where's this going, Danny?
And how did you get out?
No, nothing for four days.
We didn't eat nothing for four days.
And all these people, the water pipes were busting, shooting up in the air.
All these people were dying.
No help.
Nobody came and got us out of there.
Where was the National Guards?
How did you get out of there?
It took me four days.
It took me, and I found somebody told me where to go.
And I got to a gas station.
It took me three hours to get to the gas station.
And if you didn't have money, you couldn't buy gas.
If you didn't have cash, you couldn't buy gas.
We lucky we had cash on us.
Because credit card, we didn't have no phones for four days.
The police didn't have no phones for it.
Nobody had nothing.
You could ride the bank.
Dan, people would have thought you could go into a bank.
No alarm systems, nothing.
Everything was shut down.
Danny, is your mother okay too?
Now?
That's right.
We made it out of there.
No water, no food for four days.
Danny, thanks for that.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Can you wrap it up, Danny?
Because I have less than a minute.
I vote for Trump.
Do you want to say why?
What?
Do you want to say that?
Because them people didn't have them people ain't got no BEMA, no money.
If you would have seen them people, these pregnant women and everything, and couldn't get them out of there.
Why didn't they bring in the National Guards?
That's why I can't figure that out.
Why didn't she come up there and look at that?
Lee Trump went up there and checked out them people.
That's Danny in Alabama.
Danny, our last caller in today's program, but will, of course, be back here tomorrow morning.
It's 7 a.m. Eastern.
It's 4 a.m. Pacific.
In the meantime, have a great Wednesday.
Today here on C-SPAN, our campaign coverage continues, beginning with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at a Get Out the Vote event in Raleigh, North Carolina.
After that, Vice President Harris will make a stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state's capital.
Later this evening, we'll bring you Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigning with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
You can also watch live coverage of these events on the C-SPAN Now app or online at C-SPAN.org.
Discover the heartbeat of democracy with C-SPAN Voices 2024 as we engage voters ahead of Election Day asking, why is it important to vote?
I feel it's very important to vote so that we can pick the proper candidate to lead our country.
And whether you are not sure, you should definitely get out and vote.
I vote because my ancestors bled and died for me to vote.
I'm voting this year because it is a civic responsibility.
It's the most direct way that a citizen has to influence what goes on in the country.
I think this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime.
I know a lot of people say that about every election, but this election is vitally important.