service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
Coming up on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live.
Then former Trump White House press secretary and digital show host Sean Spicer talks about campaign 2024 and other political news of the day.
And author and columnist Jonathan Alter discusses his book, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Also, we'll look at state ballot initiatives with Reed Wilson, founder and editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.
Washington Journal is next.
Good morning, everyone.
On this Thursday, October 31st, you can now count the number of days until Election Day on one hand.
We are five days out.
This morning, we continue our live coverage of Campaign 2024 in a conversation with all of you.
The candidates are back out on the trail today, continuing to make their closing arguments.
We will, of course, have live coverage throughout the day and into the evening on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2.
You can also follow along online on demand at c-span.org and our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW.
Join the conversation this morning with all of us.
We want your latest thoughts on campaign 2024.
Here's how you can join the conversation.
If you are supporting the former president and the senator from Ohio, JD Vance, dial in at 202-748-8001.
If you're supporting the Vice President and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, call us at 202-748-8000.
And if neither one of these are your candidate or you're undecided, you're lying this morning, 202-748-8002.
You can also text with your first name, city, and state at 202-748-8003.
Join us on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or post on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
The former president in Green Bay, Wisconsin, yesterday, he was talking about the garbage comments made by President Biden and also showing up in a garbage truck with the Trump logo for his reelection campaign there.
Later, than earlier in the day, he was in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, and the former president also talking about garbage about the garbage comments made by the former president.
He made those comments at all of his stops yesterday.
Let's listen to what he had to say in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
And I have to begin by saying, 250 million Americans are not garbage.
This week, Kamala has been comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history.
And now, speaking on a call for her campaign last night, Crooked Joe Biden finally said, What he and Kamala really think of our supporters, he called them garbage.
No way.
No way.
And they actually mean it, even though, without question, my supporters are far higher quality than Crooked Joe or Lion Kamala.
Higher quality.
Higher quality.
My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple.
You can't lead America if you don't love Americans.
It's true.
The former president of Green Bay, Wisconsin, he made similar remarks at all of his stops yesterday.
This storyline dominating the national newspapers this morning, and we're getting your thoughts on the latest of campaign 2024.
The vice president also addressed what President Biden had to say in that call.
Here's what she said to reporters yesterday.
Did you talk to President Biden since his comment last night about garbage?
Listen, I think that, first of all, he clarified his comments.
But let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.
You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career.
I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not.
And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.
That is my responsibility, and that's the kind of work that I've done my entire career, and I take it very seriously.
Have you spoken about his comments?
He did call me last night, but this didn't come up.
Are you concerned about what impact this may have on voters, on the divisiveness of the election, and whether or not it's going to dissuade some people from supporting you because of your affiliation with president of this administration?
I've been very clear with the American public.
I respect the challenges that people face.
I respect the fact that we all have so much more in common than what separates us, and that most people want a president that understands that, that gets that, and approaches their role of leadership.
That way, I've been very clear from my earliest years as a prosecutor.
I never asked anyone, are they a Democrat or Republican?
The only thing I ask folks is, are you okay?
And that's the kind of president I will be.
The former vice president, excuse me, the vice president talking yesterday to reporters on the, before she hit the campaign trail.
Steve, in New Jersey, you are supporting the former president.
Mr. Trump, good morning to you.
Your thoughts on campaign 2024.
Hi, Amandier.
Yes.
Hi.
All I have to say is that a vote for Harris is like putting the Titanic in reverse and hitting the iceberg again.
Okay, thank you.
All right.
Otis, Orange Park, Florida, voting for the vice president.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I'll say this.
Kamala Harris is a better choice than anything we had in a long time.
So the people that hate Kamala Harris, ask yourself this question: why is it?
What have she done?
You can't say her policy because Joe Biden is the president of the United States.
If you want this country to be a democracy, let everybody have say in it.
Hate her for her policy, but don't hate her because Donald Trump says she's no good.
He won't say it, that she couldn't formulate a sentence.
I guess during the debate, she proved that he was wrong.
In every instance, she has proved that she is a better candidate across the board, barnot.
All right, Otis.
All right.
We'll go to Essero, Florida.
Susan is there.
Neither of these candidates are your choice, Susan.
Why is that?
I didn't say that neither of them were my choice.
I said that I haven't voted yet.
Okay.
And what's confusing me is that I have been listening to a lot of the replays of these different campaigns by Trump and by Harris.
And what I find kind of confusing in my mind is that Donald Trump was calling everybody in the United States garbage at one of his rallies prior to him going to Madison Square Garden.
And then in Madison Square Garden, there was a comedian who referred to Puerto Rico as garbage.
Well, all Trump had to do was come out on that stage and say that that was not appropriate.
But he didn't even do that, which really concerns me.
I mean, he had a blatant opportunity to refute what that comedian said.
And he kept his mouth clam shut.
Susan, then why not vote for the vice president?
What's your concern there?
Well, I guess my concern is that, yes, she's only been in the forefront of us for maybe three months, going on four.
And the vice presidential role in the United States is to be a supporter of the president.
Look how Mike Pence supported Donald Trump for those four years.
He was an outstanding vice president.
And then at the bitter end, his president could have cared less about him.
So, yeah, I am questioning all this.
And I guess what else I'm questioning is the fact that I'm 78 years old.
I voted in a lot of elections.
My husband is 82.
Well, when COVID hit the United States, my husband has been working part-time for a company in New York.
And everything sort of dried up because it was a food company.
And why aren't the people talking about that?
Why did they see those four years as so golden?
They were horrible.
People were dying.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm like, I'm very troubled.
I'm troubled by the fact that my father served in World War II.
I had uncles and aunts who served in the military in World War II.
My father was shot down in World War II.
And you know what?
If he wasn't able to come back, I wouldn't even be here.
So I just think that people ought to think long and hard that haven't voted yet, like I am thinking long and hard, weighing the options of what's better for us.
So I think you will vote on Election Day then?
You will wait until that day?
Yes.
Yes, I will wait.
And you know what?
I guess what's president in my mind or foremost in my mind is our democracy and how much I value it and how much it's brought to my family members going back to the late 1800s.
And so listen, I'm Jewish, and my parents, my parents, some of their, their parents, my paternal grandparents fled Odessa, Russia.
My maternal grandparents were on the border of Russia and Poland.
They fled in the 20s, at the beginning of the 20s.
My mother was born in Europe.
And you bring that up.
And you bring that up because of what?
How does that tie to your life?
Because we are all immigrants in this country.
The only indigenous people in this country are the American Indians.
And people ought to wake up and realize that.
All right.
Thank you so listening.
I really appreciate it.
Who's undecided there in Florida?
She's going to wait until Election Day before she makes up her mind.
Another storyline from the campaign trail in recent days is Jeff Bezos' decision, the owner of the Washington Post, for the paper to not endorse.
This morning, this is the editorial of the Washington Post.
Ms. Harris's closing argument, optimism.
It is not an endorsement.
They write this, though.
Mrs. Harris's big picture message remains clear.
Optimism versus pessimism.
If they take a moment, Americans might be receptive to a positive pitch.
The economy is doing better than many people feel.
Inflation has cooled.
Commerce Department data released Wednesday shows that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter.
Stock markets are at record highs.
Voters have heard Mr. Biden and before him, Barack Obama, come campaign on breaking the fever in Washington, only to watch politics become more polarized and government more gridlocked.
Voter patience is running thin, which is one reason Mr. Trump is mounting such a strong bid this time.
But that does not mean his vision is the only way.
Mrs. Harris's closing argument Tuesday suggests she gets that, as she made the case to Americans for considering a different path.
That's the Washington Post editorial this morning, five days out from the election.
The Wall Street Journal this morning, in their editorial page, they write this: Here's the editor's note: The Wall Street Journal hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate since 1928.
Our tradition is to sum up the candidates of the major party in separate editorials.
We'll start with Kamala Harris, and that is what they are writing about today in their editorial.
At home, they write: she's no centrist.
Abroad, she seems unprepared for the dangers ahead.
That is what the editorial board says about the vice president, saying it would be a fourth Obama term.
Two editorials from the national papers.
This morning, let's hear from Rob in Upper Marlborough, Maryland.
You're supporting the vice president.
Good morning to you, Rob.
Good morning.
Well, in August 1814, the British attacked the Capitol.
206 years later, in four months, Donald Trump incited a mob and attacked the Capitol.
140 officers were injured.
Three people died within a few days.
Some committed suicide.
The police officers, the D.C. police officers, or Capitol, I should say.
No big deal, right?
Well, it's a big deal to me.
25 women have come forward to say Trump sexually assaulted them.
No big deal, right?
Well, it's a big deal to me.
I was in the Air Force for 27 years.
TSSCI is sacred material.
Of course, Trump had it in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.
No big deal, right?
Well, it's a big deal to me.
34 felony counts against Trump.
No big deal, right?
Big deal to me.
Also, Trump said that it was a bad look to be seen with soldiers with their legs blown off.
No big deal.
A big deal to me.
That's why I'm voting for Kamala Harris, a real patriot and not a traitor.
Rob, before you go, who will you be voting for in that Senate contest in Maryland?
I'm going to vote straight Democrats.
I'm really sick of the Republican.
The Republican Party is gone.
His Trump party is a cult.
And I wish that Mikowski in Alaska, she's a true Republican, a really good Republican.
So is Liz Cheney.
I love Liz Cheney.
I would vote for Liz Cheney.
Your former governor, Larry Hogan, has name-checked people like Lisa Murkowski and said he would model himself after her.
I like Larry Hogan, but I can't vote for him because the Republicans will get the Senate.
And if they get the Senate, then Project 2025 is in place if Trump gets elected.
I can't understand how Trump can be even running after January 6th.
Really can't.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
And I'm not anti-Republican.
I wish the Republican Party was strong.
Did you like Larry Hogan?
Did you like Larry Hogan when he was your governor?
I did.
I did.
It's because he worked across the aisle.
But if he tries to work across the aisle, there's too many radical MAGAs in the Senate right now.
Rob, I'm going to move forward here.
I want you to listen to this next article that was written today in USA Today because you said you're not going to vote for Larry Hogan because then Republicans will get the upper chamber, the Senate.
That could be the case anyway.
Montana could hold the cards for control of the Senate.
That's the headline in USA Today.
Montana isn't typically the state that decides elections, but this year it holds all the cards, at least for the U.S. Senate.
In less than a week, Montana voters will choose between a Republican, former Navy SEAL new to politics, or a third-generation farmer, an incumbent Democrat, hoping to prove the polls wrong.
Montanans pick likely will determine which political party controls the upper chamber for at least the next two years as Democrats battle for every single seat to hold their majority.
Democrats control the Senate by a narrow margin of 51 to 49.
So Republicans need only two to win two seats to flip the chamber.
One already is all but guaranteed.
Democrat turned Independent Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is retiring at the end of his term, leaving a safe spot for Republicans in the mountain state.
Democratic Montana Senator John Tester is Republicans' next best target.
We will be talking about the results in states like Montana and other crucial Senate races across the country, as well as those toss-up House races on election night.
Tune into our coverage at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
We will continue all night into the early morning hours, and then the Washington Journal will pick up our live coverage at 7 a.m. and take it till noon on Wednesday.
Peter in Staten Island, New York.
Peter, good morning to you.
Yeah, I'm a combat Marine.
The last guy for the Air Force, I own my appointment, he's I was over there fighting for this country.
And the bottom line was I seen guys with their legs blown up.
I seen guys I took the hot shop.
We was in a communist world.
I don't, you know, I'm involved now.
And the bottom line is I talk to other guys that are involved now.
There's a place called Ellis Island.
My great-great-grandfather came through there, and my great-great-grandmother, they came through the right way.
I met Target the other day, and there's a big line, and the woman shaked her head.
She said, I can't do it.
She says, they put, those are immigrants.
I said, what?
I says, yeah.
She says, they put them in a hotel out here, and we're afraid now.
We got to be afraid.
Now, you get a guy like me that gets, you know, and friends of mine for the Marine Corps.
We combat guys.
Let these guys in the airports and who knows where they are, the Red Cross.
For years, they didn't see it.
We've seen communism.
It is bad.
And people got to understand.
You don't have to like Trump.
When he was in, there was nothing going on.
I try to understand.
Why is there all this stuff going on with this crew going in?
And what these guys don't forget, he was in the Air Force for 27 years.
Aren't they going into IRA or whatever?
They're 40K and taking money out of these guys.
Look, I'm 100% disabled.
Across the board, I make over $140,000 a year.
And I inherited money.
I'm not bragging, but these fuck other guys.
We got still doing the homeless.
That's have no legs.
Okay.
These guys are being taken care of by the VA.
All right, Peter.
All right, Peter, you should have called in on the line of those that are supporting the former president and the Ohio Senator, his running mate, JD Vance.
That's how we're dividing lines this morning.
If you're supporting the former president and if you're supporting, you can dial in at 202-748-8001.
If you're supporting the vice president and her running mate, the Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, dial in at 202-748-8000.
If you do not know who you're going to vote for, you will not vote for either one of those candidates.
Call us at 202-748-8002.
Let's hear from Robert in Davenport, Iowa, supporting the vice president, the Harris Walls ticket.
Hi, Robert.
Hello, good morning.
How are you doing today?
Good morning.
It's my birthday.
I've been trying to get in for months and months.
I finally got in.
Happy birthday.
Thank you.
I'm supporting, and I've already voted to vote the first day of early voting here in Iowa.
And my main thing is I wonder about our Christians.
And the Bible, Proverbs 12, 22, says that God hates a liar.
There's a man running for office who lies all the time.
We need a president that you can believe in if he tells you something, because it's just important that you can trust that person.
You can't trust this man.
He's lied over 40,000 times, and he lies every day.
And I'm just saying, Christians, you need to make sure not vote for him because God tells you Heath hates him, then you should hate the liar yourselves.
And that's what I would say.
Robert, how will you be voting on that abortion ballot initiative in Iowa?
And what do you think, what's your prediction for how it does there?
I'm voting that the women, I already voted, but I'm voting for the women to have the right to control, have controls over their own bodies.
I can't imagine because I posted on Facebook just the other day that how can some people who are politicians overrule a doctor who went to medical school and knows what's going on and they're going to pass laws about, well, you can't have an abortion even though you're going to die.
No, that's not right.
So that's how I voted.
And what's your prediction for what happens in Iowa?
I believe that we're going to make sure that the women have the right to have abortions in Iowa.
All right.
Iowa is one of 10 states that has a abortion initiative, ballot initiative on the ballot in November for the Election Day, or in this case, in Robert's case, he voted before Election Day.
We're going to talk about ballot initiatives coming up here on the Washington Journal in our last hour.
We'll take a look at what different policy proposals will be on the ballots and what people will be voting on in different states across the country.
Wall Street Journal front page this morning with a headline on the economy, the U.S. economy extends its growth streak.
GDP rose at a 2.8% rate in the third quarter on consumer and government outlays.
I want to show you a little bit about from more from former President Trump's rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Here he's talking about a list of policy initiatives that he will do if he is elected in November.
After years of building up foreign nations, defending foreign borders and protecting foreign lands, we are finally going to build up our country.
We're going to defend our borders and we are going to protect our citizens.
We are going to protect our land.
We are going to protect our country.
And we will stop illegal immigration once and for all.
We will not be invaded.
We will not be occupied.
We will not be overrun.
We will not be conquered.
We will be a free and proud nation once again.
We are being invaded.
It's incredible.
Think of it.
We're being invaded by massive numbers.
Very little difference between this invasion and the military.
They don't wear a uniform.
That's about the primary difference.
Everyone will prosper.
Every family will thrive.
And every day will be filled with opportunity and hope and loaded up with the good old American dream.
We're going to have the American dream back.
But for that to happen, we must defeat Kamala Harris and stop her radical left agenda.
And we have to have a landslide that is too big to rig.
Gonna make it a landslide.
The former president in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one of the seven battleground states that could determine the presidential election.
In Madison, Wisconsin, the vice president was there campaigning yesterday.
And here's what she had to say about her to-do list if she were to win in five days.
And at the top of my list is bringing down your cost of living.
That will be my focus every single day as president.
I will give a middle-class tax cut to over 100 million Americans.
We will enact the first ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries.
We will fight to make sure hardworking Americans can actually afford a place to live.
And if any of you out there are caring for an elderly parent, well, my plan will cover the cost of home care under Medicare so that seniors can get the help and care they need to stay in their own homes.
It's about dignity.
It's about dignity.
And my plan will lower the cost of child care, cut taxes for small businesses.
Do we have any small business owners here?
I love our small businesses.
My plan will lower health care costs because, by the way, I believe access to health care should be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it.
The vice president in Madison, Wisconsin, she and her running mate will be out on the campaign trail again today.
So will the former president and JD Vance, his running mate.
And we will have coverage on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2 today.
We'll start with the Ohio Senator JD Vance.
He'll be in High Point, North Carolina, another battleground state.
And we'll have coverage of that at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN, our free video and mobile app, C-SPANNow or online at c-SPAN.org.
At 11 a.m., Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, another battleground state, we will have coverage of his remarks at 11 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2, C-SPANNOW, and C-SPAN.org.
At 8 p.m. tonight, the vice president in Reno, Nevada, Democratic presidential nominee, hosts a get-out-the-vote rally in Reno, Nevada, and we will have coverage of that at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, and our free video mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
The former president has three campaign events planned for today, and we will have coverage of his 2 p.m. rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
And that gets underway at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
Watch on C-SPAN 2, C-SPANNOW or C-SPAN.org.
He'll be in Henderson, Nevada, a Battleground State, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
You can watch his remarks on C-SPAN, C-SPANNOW, C-SPAN.org.
And at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, he'll be in Phoenix, Arizona, a neighboring Battleground state.
That is later tonight.
He'll be with political commentator Tucker Carlson in Phoenix.
And you can watch that on C-SPAN2.
And like we said, all of our coverage on C-SPANNow and c-SPAN.org.
Craig, in Brunswick, Ohio, you are supporting the former president.
What are your thoughts on the latest from the campaign trail?
Well, this piece of garbage would like to say that Lyon Biden and Dodging Committee and Heidi Harris all belong in prison.
And in a few days, Americans will have their last laugh.
Have a good day.
Make America great again.
We'll go to Dorothy in Drake's Branch, Virginia, supporting the vice president and Governor Tim Walz.
Hi, Dorothy.
Hi, how are you?
Thank you for taking my call.
Morning.
Go ahead.
We're listening to you.
Yes, I've already mailed in my vote.
I'm disabled, 78 years old, and my three reasons for voting for the former vice president are: number one, I'd like to be able to survive another two years in my life.
If the vice president doesn't get elected and this country elects a person who is going to take away my social security that I worked for since I was 15 years old, and it's the only reason I'm able to live on my own still.
So I have to vote for somebody who is going to make sure I have my social security.
I am voting the second reason for our democracy.
I do not want to spend the last two years of my life in a country run by a convicted felon who does nothing but lie.
The third reason that I'm voting for Vice President Harris is because it's time we have a woman run this country.
Men have not done the best job of it.
So I'd like to give a woman a chance.
I'm voting for her because she stands up for women's rights.
I'm tired of seeing women die for no reason except for that supposedly Supreme Court who is bought and paid for.
All right, those are Dorothy's comments in Virginia.
We'll move on to California.
Tula Vista, Janice, is there supporting the former president and his running mate JD Vance.
Hi, Janice.
Good morning, Glada.
One of the first times that I ever called in.
I actually spoke to you, and it seems I always get you most of the time whenever I call.
And I try to call my comments because the topics are really great.
But one of the first times I ever called, it was about The people sending over their children unprotected into the country to get away from gang members.
And I wonder now how many people still support that because over 300,000 of those children are gone.
They're missing.
My other point is Biden sabotaging Kamala.
It's so obvious that he is super highly peed off and is undermining her campaign.
The third thing that I wanted to mention was the hypocrisy from these so-called super sister Christian brothers and sisters that claim they can't vote for a liar, but on the other side of their mouth, they vote for abortion.
Are you kidding me?
And God says, thou shalt not kill.
And for those who kill innocent children, you may as well throw a milestone around your neck and throw yourself into the ocean.
God uses the foolish things of this world to conform the why.
Who are you to tell anybody who God can use?
He used David, he used Moses, he used all kinds of people throughout the Bible.
And the final thing I want to speak on is my mother will be 85 years old and she voted for Trump in 2016.
And then she was kind of shunned and she was made to feel like she stepped out of order because she didn't vote Democrat by certain members of my family.
And so this time she voted for Kimona Hill.
And I asked my mother, I said, okay, mama, let me ask you this: do you stand for abortion up until the ninth month?
She said, no.
I said, do you stand for open borders and anybody can come into our country?
She said, no.
I said, okay, so you love the fact that your taxpayer dollars are going to pay for illegal aliens that are living better than you, getting free medical, and you have to scrap by trying to pay your ability to do that.
So, Janice, how did the conversation end up then with your mom?
Well, when I finished asking her all the questions, she said, I said, so why did you vote for her, mama?
And she said, because I'm a Democrat.
Okay.
And I said, Lord, have mercy.
All right, Janice, there in California supporting the former president.
As we talked about earlier today, the comments made by President Biden, the garbage comments that he made during a call to supporters is dominating the headlines this morning.
And the former president picking up on them yesterday at all of his campaign stops, bringing them up.
Here's what he had to say yesterday, comparing those comments to what Hillary Clinton said in 2016 when she called Trump supporters deplorable.
Let's say 225 million people.
She's essentially, and he's calling them garbage.
They're a team, by the way.
Oh, she hated that last night when she heard that.
Although, honestly, I don't think she's smart enough to know what it really means.
What that meant, that makes deplorable look like baby stuff, right?
Deplorable with her.
Remember, Hillary?
She said deplorable and irredeemable.
And I said, oh, what a terrible term to use the word irredeemable.
I didn't know.
Somehow irredeemable.
I think it's worse, right?
But you know what's worse than anything?
Garbage.
We're garbage.
We're garbage.
And I call you the heart and soul of America.
You're the people that built America.
At the White House yesterday, the press secretary answered questions repeatedly about what the president had to say, those garbage comments.
Here's a little bit.
Does he have any regret for not being more?
His language was not specific.
It came out if you were listening to that video.
I was in the room.
I was in the room.
I'm curious about if you were listening on that.
But if you were any sort of normal person listening to that video or looking at the clips online, you could come to the conclusion that he was calling, at minimum, this one man garbage.
Or not, if not, all Trump supporters' garbage.
Does he regret not being more precise with his language?
And does he also?
I'm waiting for the question to end.
And I apologize.
The second part of that is: does he have any regret for how this has shadowed Vice President Harris's campaign?
So a couple of things there, because there's a lot that you laid out.
So, look, the president wanted to clarify because he understood that what he may have said was being, he understood that what he was saying was being taken out of context.
So he wanted to be very, very clear about what he was trying to say.
And I just read that out once over.
You all have the tweet or the statement that's on X. If you want to read it right now, feel free to do so.
And he was talking about hateful rhetoric.
And we've called out hateful rhetoric from here.
We have.
Obviously, this hateful rhetoric was about a particular community, a community that the Puerto Rican community, there are Americans.
This is somebody, this is a community that he respects.
And he wanted to make sure he called that out.
And hateful rhetoric should be called out.
It should be.
But at the same time, the president is a president for all.
He will continue to do so.
He will continue to serve for everyone.
I want to step back for a second because I think this is really important.
Yesterday, we went to Baltimore, Maryland.
He announced a $3 billion project in Baltimore.
That $3 billion project is going to help 27 states.
11 of those states have Republican governors.
This is what this president cares about: making sure that people who are in need get the need, get the assistance that they need.
From the White House briefing yesterday, the press secretary there fielding several questions about the president's remarks.
On Tuesday night, when he was talking to Latino voters about voting, let's listen to those comments.
Donald Trump has no character.
He doesn't give a damn about the Latino community.
He's a 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 was seen as unconscionable and it's un-American.
It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been.
That was President Biden on Tuesday night.
The front, inside the Washington Post this morning, an apostrophe could settle the score of Biden's garbage comment.
And they note this.
And then the key line, I'll offer three different versions which significantly change Biden's meeting with the key part, bolded.
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
No apostrophe.
His, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it's un-American.
And then you have the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
S apostrophe.
Or do you believe it's this version?
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
Apostrophe S.
And the rest of his comments there.
Republicans favor the first one because it would mean labeling at least some of Trump's supporters garbage.
Mark in Washington, D.C., you are supporting the vice president and Governor Tim Walz.
We are talking about the latest from the campaign trail with five days to go before election day.
Hi, Mark.
Hi, Greta.
So nice to hear your voice.
The first time I called in, I spoke to you as well.
I heard a previous caller say that.
So I work in the executive branch and I support the office of the presidency across administrations.
And I was on campus during January 6th.
And the following days, I had to walk through National Guard members, and it was a very stress-inducing time.
But for me, politics is about agendas, not individuals.
So with that said, agendas are often carried out by people, right?
And those people often work at the White House.
And so the University of Virginia Miller Center has a really good conference on the presidency where the former president's chief of staff, Chris Lydell, said that the former president leads through conflict, right?
So he takes two people with opposing opinions and puts those people in the room and has them kind of duke it out.
And he believes that's the best way to get an answer to an issue.
Now, unfortunately, the result of that often is low morale, hostility, and burnout.
And I think we saw that with his last administration.
So I have personal values of honesty, respect, and dedication.
And that doesn't really sound like a respectful way to lead.
And transparently and honestly, from my perspective, I don't think it's good for our country.
So I'll be voting for Kamala Harris.
Okay.
Jerry's next in Louisiana, supporting the former president.
Hi, Jerry.
Yes, I just want to say we're five days away before Donald Trump becomes our 47th president.
I'm predicting he's going to carry five of the seven swing states.
The problem with the Democrats is they're the reason why our country's in a shape it's in with the illegal aliens coming over the border and the prices, everything's so high and all that.
My prediction, like I said, in five days, Donald Trump will become our 47th president.
And Jerry, which five swing states are you predicting will go, will be red on Election Day?
Well, it's just going to be five out of the seven, but it's going to be swing states.
It's going to matter.
I think Kamala Harris concedes before midnight, concedes to her loss before midnight.
She's not qualified to be president of the United States, period.
No matter how what they say, she's not qualified.
All right, Jerry's prediction there.
Fred in Greenbelt, Maryland, supporting the vice president.
Hi, Fred.
Hi.
Thanks for having me.
I would like to point out several things.
To start off with, Donald Trump is hate-based.
Think about this.
Have we seen him be proactive or positive about anything?
And is hate-based, what is he using it for?
To stir and induce fear into all of the Americans that support him.
And the feeling that they get of that fear continues on to where they basically are blind fascists.
They are supporting a fascist who is duping them about the presence of him in society and life.
When has he ever done anything for anyone?
And MAGA, make America great again.
I am just so stunned that people would still be believing in this man and supporting this man with perspectives of hate that he continues to employ for his empowerment.
Never, ever have I seen him say something positive about what America can be as what America actually is.
And that is in the respect of it.
How can America go from being great when he's the president for four years to not being great for the next four years?
And we look at business.
Business is thriving.
Why has America people been cut short?
Corporate greed.
That is so obvious.
All right, Fred, I'm going to move on to Tony, who is in Michigan.
Tony, who is your candidate?
I don't have one.
I don't vote.
I kind of listen to your.
First of all, good morning, Greta.
Good morning, America.
Thank you for taking my call.
I don't see how someone can vote and then remain unbiased.
Now, I believe that 99.9% of Americans should vote, and I hope their candidate wins.
But people don't seem to be able to see the faults in their own candidate or the good points in the other candidate.
They're just so hard over one way or the other.
Why are you voting, Tony?
You're in a battleground state.
Why not vote?
Well, I would rather not vote and try to remain objective to where I can see the positive and negative on both sides.
To me, Frank Zappa a long time ago had a quote that said, politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.
And that's what it seems to me.
You know, we're $34 trillion in debt.
We're financing a war in Ukraine.
As a matter of fact, that was interesting.
When Joe Biden got out of the hand as well, Tony, I'm not going to go too far down that road.
Virginia in Orlando, Florida.
Hi, Virginia.
You're supporting the Harris-Walls ticket.
Yes, good morning, Greta.
Good morning.
And everybody on the line, good morning.
First of all, I just want to give you a little brief statement about me, and then you can understand why I voted the way that I did.
I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and I demonstrated and went to jail with Dr. King several times.
I also moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where I worked at Redstone Arsenal for the government for 40 years, and I retired in 2008, and I'm 82 years old.
Last Saturday, and I want to say to the lady that I heard earlier from here from Florida that is confused about voting and who to vote for, last Saturday, my daughter and my son-in-law and all of us, we went to the poll and we voted, and we voted a straight Democrat ticket for Kamala Harris and Walls.
And the reason why, Greta, it has more to do with morals than anything else.
My parents raised us to always to tell the truth.
And Donald Trump is the chief of lies.
And you can Google it.
This man has told over 35,000 lies.
And not only that, when he was in office, I had several friends that passed from COVID.
I had a friend of mine that her whole family died from COVID.
She was the only one that was left.
He knew about this disease.
They told him that the devastating things that would happen with the disease.
He hated President Obama until he threw out everything about disease and to help the people.
Then he told them to take bleach.
And then there were some people down here that did that died from taking bleach.
All right.
Virginia there in Florida and why she is supporting the Harris Walls ticket.
Rick in Wilmington, Delaware.
Rick?
Hey, Greta, how are you?
Good morning.
So I'm a Delaware guy, but I'm not a Biden guy.
Kind of disappointed with his term.
But I feel, you know, so I'm undecided still.
But I got to say, I feel bad for the Democrats.
They're kind of clueless because Kamala, it was not and is not their presidential choice.
Kamala is a person that they're stuck with now because they couldn't anticipate the mental demise of Biden.
So whatever it was, five, six months ago, when Biden's mind started failing, they're like, wow, what are we going to do now?
So they had no plan.
So, all right, Kamala, you're it.
So that's why I feel sorry for the Democrats.
Kamala is there because they sat on their hands and didn't prepare to groom a new candidate.
Now, so, Rick, you're undecided.
So how will you decide over the next five days?
What will you do to try to make up your mind?
Well, not happy because I'm getting a little older.
If Trump is really going to cut Social Security or mess with senior benefits, then seniors got to get together and find some way to impeach him.
But I'm leaning towards Trump because of the disaster that Kamala and Joe has done with our borders.
And unfortunately, it's a complete disaster.
So kind of leaning towards Trump right now.
Okay.
Rick there in Delaware, undecided, but leaning towards the former president.
The candidates will be back out on the campaign trail today, and we will be live on both networks, C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2.
You can also find their stops online on demand at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now.
And we will continue our live coverage through the weekend.
We'll have conversations with all of you here on the Washington Journal and in between our live campaign coverage this weekend on Saturday, Sunday, Monday night, leading all up to our Election Day, Election Night coverage that starts at 7 p.m. Eastern time here on C-SPAN on Tuesday, November 5th.
Over at the White House last night, the president and the first lady marking Halloween with a trick-or-treat celebration at the White House.
President Biden walking out there with to greet the folks that gathered for treats on the White House lawn.
Oh, is that then?
That's that's that is Jill Biden in the costume there.
So a tradition at the White House, many presidents handing out treats at the White House on Halloween, which is today.
So happy Halloween to all of you.
Sherry in Adams, Wisconsin, we're talking about campaign 2024.
Sherry, go ahead.
Yes, I'm here.
Look, I just want to say, I don't love everything that Trump says, but then again, that's probably true about every politician that we see on TV nowadays.
I mean, I do think that Trump is better suited to run this country.
He's stronger on policy and more decisive.
And I just want to say to everybody out there, he has promised to protect Social Security despite what the Democrats report.
I mean, Kamala seems to morph into her audience.
She appears to be in over her head and underqualified.
I mean, I look forward to seeing Trump as our 47th president, and I predict Vance to follow him into the White House.
Mary in Ohio.
Hi, Mary.
Hello.
I'd like to discuss the elephant in the room.
The Heritage Foundation has been cutting women's rights left and right.
And Sunday evening, I was watching all the young men in the Trump program.
What they don't realize is that Trump is the front man for the Heritage Foundation, and that all of those young men who have trusted the women with breath control will now suddenly find themselves without her having a choice.
They have to make the choice.
And I see a lot of those young men in the next 10 years being paying child support for one or more children or married with a wife and a child trying to begin their working life.
And I think it's going to be a real hard time for them to find a good job or to continue in college or to move here and there when they have a wife and child or they're feathered or tethered by a large child support payment.
Okay, that's Mary in Ohio and why she's supporting the Harris Walls ticket.
Scott's in Aline, New York.
Scott, how will you vote?
Oh, yes, good morning.
I'm actually 62 years old, and I'm deciding this will be the first election presidential one that I vote in if I decide to vote.
There's a really whole bunch, this whole country is torn apart.
I'd like to go to say one thing, too, though, is does anybody remember what happened when Puerto Rico got hit with that hurricane a few years back?
And my president went back down there with paper towels and it was a big joke and he's throwing paper towels to all four Puerto Ricans that were down in Puerto Rico down there when he went down there.
It was a big joke.
I mean, we're running a man who doesn't care about the humans and then a Democratic Party.
I mean, they haven't done much, but at least they're not taking me to the end of times yet.
So, I mean, Donald Trump is probably placed here by the evil power to take an end to our democracy.
Scott, you don't sound Scott, you don't sound undecided.
Well, I am kind of leaning Democrat.
I belong to the Human Party, so that, okay, that's true.
I didn't say, I said I probably might not vote.
And if I do vote, this will be my first time I'm 62 years old because nobody out there represented me.
Okay, and why doesn't the vice president represent you?
Well, I mean, I just hear so much trash and garbage.
And then I sit here and I watch this guy beat up on them and they really don't, I mean, like where the president said that stuff about garbage the other day.
And Trump is not running against her.
If President Trump were to come out and said, look, I'm from New York, lady, I know a lot about Trump, okay?
If you were to come out and tell the truth about what he's all about and things, I might vote for a man.
But I'm not going to probably because I believe he's alive.
To me, truth means a lot.
Truth, to me, means a lot.
So God bless America.
I hope we have a country left after it's all said and done.
Thank you.
Tricia's in Forney, Texas.
Hi, Tricia.
Tricia in Texas, good morning to you.
Morning, can you hear me?
Yes, we've got you now.
Go ahead.
Okay, good morning.
Yes, I voted for Camilla Harris.
I was listening to the gentleman earlier speak about Biden and his mental demise.
Trump has it as well.
And, you know, I haven't always been Democrat.
I'm really independent.
But the Republican Party has really, to me, turned to like a cult.
Everything they say is always demeaning and finger-pointing.
Camilla, if you like her or not, I think it's really just rude to always say she's dumb, she's not smart.
Anytime I talk with a Trump supporter, that's all you hear is negativity now.
It's putting down people.
And I have two black sons who also voted for Camilla.
They're 18 and 20, and this is their first time voting.
I told them you can be Republican, Democrat, or Independent.
But I just suggest to you to listen to both, and then you make your mind up.
Because my youngest son was going to go for Trump.
And I didn't put him down.
I just said, listen to both.
But the Republican Party won't do that.
All right, Tricia.
Direct your son to our website or our app, C-SPAN Now, because he can listen to the candidates in their own words in its entirety at their campaign rallies that they're holding across the country, largely in battleground states, the seven battleground states, and that continues today.
We told you about our coverage, which you can find it all online at c-span.org or our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow.
The vice president has another event tonight in Las Vegas, and Jennifer Lopez will be speaking at that rally.
This is from the Rolling Stones website with that headline.
Jennifer Lopez-J-Lo will be appearing with the vice president in support of her candidacy.
And also in endorsements from the Hill newspaper, Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed the vice president, saying Trump would only make us angrier and more divided.
Let's hear from Arnold in Ravenswood, West Virginia.
Arnold.
Good morning.
Yes, I'd like to say something about the election that's going on.
The Democrats used to be for the working people, but I don't think they are anymore.
But Ms. Harris, if you heard what she's going to say, she's all against drilling for gas.
So what's going to happen if they quit drilling for gas and we have to have gas cars?
You can't afford the gas.
So that's terrible.
Okay.
JD in Oklahoma City.
JD, are you undecided or not supporting either one of these candidates?
Well, I'm kind of undecided right now.
I haven't heard any candidates tell me why they're or how they're going to reduce the deficit.
I haven't heard any plans.
We're taking $2 trillion and spend $4 trillion a year.
So sooner or later, it's going to abide us.
Okay.
JD there in Oklahoma Undecided wants to hear more about the deficit.
We're going to continue our conversation here on the Washington Journal about campaign 2024.
Up next, we're going to talk with former press secretary for the former President Donald Trump Sean Spicer will be with us.
And then later, a conversation with author and columnist Jonathan Alter, author of the new book, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Stay with us.
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This Saturday, the election of 1980.
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Washington Journal continues.
Joining us this morning is Sean Spicer, host of the Sean Spicer Show and the former White House press secretary during the Trump administration.
Mr. Spicer, thanks for being here with us.
We're talking about campaign 2024.
Obviously, there's only five days to go.
So what's your assessment of how this all ends on Election Day if it ends on Election Day?
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm actually really bullish on this.
Obviously, I support President Trump and the Republican ticket.
But when you look at the averages of where the polls are in all the battleground states, it's not just the edge that President Trump has.
It's the trend that's going in his direction.
So you look not just at one poll, but in the last several polls in each of these battleground states, and the wind is at President Trump's back.
And frankly, if you look at the Battleground State Senate races as well, everything from Wisconsin and Michigan to Pennsylvania and Nevada and Arizona, each of those same thing.
There's not one race in those Battleground Senate races where Republicans aren't moving in the right direction.
Now, Greta, I'm not saying every one of them is going to get over the finish line.
I hope they do.
But I think that, you know, I'd rather be going to Election Day as a Republican with the wind at our back than trying to hold back an insurgent.
What do you think of the remarks made at the Madison Square Garden rally and the former president's reaction to them?
Did it hurt his campaign?
No.
First of all, they weren't remarks.
It was a comedian who told a bad joke.
And I think, by and large, every Republican that I know says it was a bad joke.
A comedian got up four hours before President Trump got up and said a joke that fell flat because it was stupid, right?
That's what it was.
A stupid joke that went over very poorly because it wasn't funny.
And I think sometimes that's the risk you take with comedians.
That being said, I don't know a single person outside of Jon Stewart who said, you know, hey, you know, it wasn't funny.
Conversely, you know, juxtapose that to President Biden, who is the current president of the United States, who literally said the supporters of President Trump are garbage.
That's it.
Full stop.
There's no question about it.
I know the White House is trying to parse some of the words, but as somebody who has a little bit of experience of garbling words and saying things and living at that level, he screwed up.
And instead of trying to make it a grammar issue, he should have just said he was sorry.
But here's the thing, Greta.
I actually think he believes it, right?
He campaigned in 2016 saying he got in the race because of Donald Trump.
He announced his reelection because he said the threat of Donald Trump.
This shouldn't be surprising to anybody.
But the bottom line is that four days later, us talking about a comedian at a rally and not the current president of the United States really explains where the media is in the current environment.
The candidates are making their closing arguments.
There are some who say that the former president's rhetoric is too dark.
We heard that from Nikki Haley.
And I want to play for our viewers and have you respond to Megan Kelly's remarks about the former president's rallies.
Trump was not well served by those around him last night.
It wasn't a Nazi rally.
All that's nonsense.
But I'm telling you, even for me, and I voted for Donald Trump last week, it was too bro-tastic.
Okay?
It was.
You're trying to win an election in which you're hemorrhaging female voters.
Maybe when you present in front of hundreds, thousands at least, at Madison Square Garden, you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don't alienate women in the middle of America who are already on the fence about Republicans.
Do they have no women advising their campaign?
Is there no actual woman sitting behind the scenes, coming up with a guest lineup and saying, let's just have a word with the guys who are going to be speaking about this isn't the bar.
This isn't their living room.
This is a campaign.
This is politics.
We're trying to get him elected.
We don't need to rally the base or guys anymore.
And it's not helpful, even if we do want to rally the base or guys, to go full off-color insults to different racial groups and so on.
I get it.
Trust me, nothing that was said offended me.
I'm almost unoffendable.
But I understand how this plays, especially with women.
And it was an effed up choice.
Sean Spicer.
Well, look, obviously, Megan's got a huge audience.
I respect her point of view on this.
And it can't hurt to have more women out there.
I thought it was great that Melania was speaking.
The campaign is surrounded by a bunch of people who have data that tells them who they need to reach and the messages that work with them.
I don't think every speaker was great, but I thought it was an unbelievably iconic event at Madison Square Garden with some speakers.
I mean, this was literally in terms of the conservative world, this was like our Woodstock.
You think about the people that were there, Robert F. Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Melania Trump, Dr. Phil.
It was pretty unbelievable in terms of a lineup.
But look, I think all in all, that was a great rally that got worldwide coverage.
It really, and at the end of the day, what are most people paying attention to?
It's Donald Trump.
He focused on his record, the concerns that we have as a nation, the contrast between him and Kamala Harris, especially when it comes to the economy and border security.
Number one and number two issues in polls.
So look, Donald Trump, I think, is going to be headed for a big victory on Tuesday night.
I think we've got to keep our foot on the gas and keep running through the tape.
But at the end of the day, you look, Greta, at a state like New Hampshire.
Right now, I don't know that we'll end up winning it, but you've got a brand new poll showing him up 0.4 of a percent there.
That wasn't considered a battleground state weeks ago.
My state here in Virginia, we have one poll now showing us down two.
This is a state that Joe Biden won by 10.
So over and over again, as I said, the wind is at Donald Trump's back.
In every single battleground state, poll after poll, the wind is at Donald Trump's back.
So they're clearly doing something right.
You talked about the crowd at Madison Square Garden, the worldwide event.
What about the thousands that gathered here in the nation's capital to hear the vice president talk at the ellipse?
Good for her.
I thought it was great.
I think it was somewhat awkward that the backdrop was the White House, and you had a current sitting president, her boss, feet away in the White House, and he wasn't invited.
He could literally have walked down and been there in five minutes.
It was completely secured by the Secret Service.
Why wasn't Joe Biden invited?
I mean, I think, frankly, it was a recitation of all of her talking points.
It was, I mean, great.
This is politics.
I'm, you know, I'm glad to see her out there engaging with the American people, but it was the same speech I've heard a million times.
More than anything, I think it was extremely awkward that Joe Biden, her own boss, who was feet away, wasn't invited onto the stage as the current sitting president.
You said when you were talking.
By the way, had he been invited, maybe he wouldn't have made the garbage comments on that Zoom call.
You made, when you were talking about the Madison Square Garden, you said that there's data out there that the campaigns have of who they still need to reach.
Who is that that they still need to reach?
My guess is that it's low-propensity voters, people who don't tune into cable television every day, people who are working hard to put food on the table for their family or themselves, trying to pay the rent, don't necessarily tune in to cable news shows every day or read the mainstream legacy media outlets.
And so they're trying to find surrogates or outlets, which is why I think President Trump's media strategy of really going on a lot of new media, independent media, podcasts, things like that has been brilliant.
These are where people are at.
If they're a driver, maybe a truck driver or an Uber driver or a part of the gig economy, and maybe they're listening to podcasts when they have a break because they can't have time to come home and watch appointment television.
This has been great.
So they're reaching them.
And you think about all of the outlets.
I was on Sunday night clicking around online.
I was actually out at a family event and I was just clicking around at different sites that were all carrying that rally live and the thousands of people on each one.
And I thought to myself, like, this is brilliant, right?
This isn't just about trying to make sure that cable news carries it.
They've got all sorts of different channels connecting with their audiences.
We'll go to Paul in Naples, Florida, supporting the former president.
Hi, Paul.
Welcome to the conversation.
Yeah, hi.
Actually, I'm glad to speak to two different hosts.
I've only called him one time, and it was good.
But what I want to say real quick and two different things is people forget to think that the most important thing that we have is our children.
The children are a pot of gold.
That's the most important thing between men and women.
They should always think with having kids, that's the most important thing.
That's what makes you happy.
Okay, on that note, women are being left out.
They're not being left out.
They're just not talking about how important they are.
But without women, we wouldn't have kids and we wouldn't have a family.
We wouldn't be happy.
The other thing I want to say, with all our resources that we have under our feet as we hear it, all this gold, natural gas, and other resources, why aren't we using that to pay off our deficit?
Why can't we take, I'll guarantee you, if you take Democrats, Independents, and Republicans and put them together, they would vote for that if that money could go towards paying off our deficit.
It's a no-brainer.
All right, Paul, let's see.
Let's get a response.
Sean Spicer.
Yeah, so first of all, I'm not entirely sure on the first comment what you mean about women.
Clearly, they're a massive demographic in this election that are being really targeted and tried to turn them out.
So I think both sides are working hard for that vote.
Secondly, on the energy piece of this, look, you heard President Trump day one, drill, baby, drill.
I think he gets it.
We were energy independent when he was president.
He continues to recognize the importance of fossil fuels in our current economy.
So, yeah, it's important.
And look, I will say this with respect to the debt and the deficit, and I'll take a hit on my own party on this.
I think that this is an issue that has not gotten the attention it deserves.
It is probably the greatest existential threat that our nation faces in terms of our long-term viability.
I wish both parties paid more attention to our debt and deficit.
And with all due respect, I do get the point that you're making on the energy.
But I wish, look, this isn't just about driving up revenue and saying, okay, let's get more energy, more revenue, and then we can spend more.
That's the problem in Washington.
You just tell them there's more money, they'll spend more.
We need to start looking at the other side of the ledger and saying, are we spending efficiently and effectively?
And I think universally the answer is no.
But the problem is politicians on both sides aren't rewarded for actually fiscal discipline measures.
More are rewarded because they increase spending of some sort.
Sean, you said earlier that you're bullish on the former president winning on this election.
If he doesn't, though, what do you think is the message that would have resonated with voters that they would choose the vice president?
You know, here's what I would say to you, Greta.
If you look at the polls, right, President Trump, as I said, I feel bullish.
I feel like that the wind is at our back in every one of these polls, but there's not one of the seven, even, and I'd add Virginia and New Hampshire in that mix, eight and nine, that we're outside the margin of error one way or another.
And when you get down to the final two, three weeks of a campaign, mechanics matter.
It's that ground game.
And I think we did this when I was at the RNC.
We looked at how we were operating as a party, some of the digital efforts, research efforts, get out the vote efforts, early vote, absentee vote.
We're going to be able to look back and see if there were deficiencies there.
But the reason I'm answering the question is I don't know that it's a messaging thing as much as it is a mechanics issue and a logistics issue.
At the end, when it's this close, the question is, did you do your job, you know, and overall?
And it may be that, you know, there were one or two states where we came up short, and that was a bigger problem.
So I don't want to get in front of Tuesday night until we know the results.
But like I said, more than anything, I think I actually hope that when we win, that we still stop and reflect on what we did well and what we can improve.
By the way, CNN out with a new poll yesterday, Harris has a narrow edge in Michigan and Wisconsin while she and Trump remain tied in Pennsylvania.
This is with likely voters showing a tied vote in Pennsylvania, 4848.
In Michigan, 48 of likely voters saying they would support the vice president to 43% for the former president and 51 to 45 in Wisconsin.
What do you make of those poll numbers?
Well, I mean, look, as I said, everything's within the margin of error.
If you look at Real Clear Politics, Pennsylvania, Trump up three, Trump up one, tie tie, Trump up one, Harris up two, Trump up three, Trump up one.
You mentioned, what's the other one?
Michigan.
Let me get to that real quick.
I've got Wisconsin here, Trump up tie, Trump up one, Trump up one, Trump up one, tie, tie, tie, Trump up two.
Michigan, and this is just literally reading off real clear politics.
I'm not cherry-picking anything.
Michigan, Trump up one, Trump up one, Trump up one, Harris up five, Harris up four, Trump two, Harris three, Trump one.
Look, average-wise, as I said, he's up, but it's all within the margin of error.
So you can go find a poll that shows her up a couple points.
You can find one, him, up a couple points.
But I think overall, what you need to look for in the final days is a trend.
Where's the race going?
So even if you look at a poll, and as I said, the mistake I think a lot of people make, especially in the media, is they'll look at one poll and say, okay, it's a snapshot.
It's a photograph.
Part of what you need to know is it's like snapshotting two cars going down the road.
You see two cars.
You don't know which one is overtaking the other.
Are they going the same speed?
So if you're going to cherry-pick a poll and say, okay, CNN says this, where was that poll a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago?
And that's what you need to start looking at: is this the trend moving in one direction or the other?
Pat in Walton, Kentucky.
Hi, Pat.
I have two things that I want to say.
When Kamala has her speeches, I don't hear her ever.
It's always she will say the blacks are going to get the child care.
Every time she has a speech, I have never heard her actually say the white and the blacks.
I'm doing it for them.
I know she says Americans, but it's always I'm helping the blacks.
So that concerns me.
The other thing, my question is, as Trump gets in there and he scares me to death, will he take our Social Security or will he line us up like the Jews and have the old people tuck out?
That's my question.
Yeah, so let me say a couple things.
Number one, with respect to the vice president's phraseology that you mentioned, the Democratic Party is built on a stitch work of coalitions, right?
So that's how they look at things.
They look at different coalitions, young people, LBGTQ, blacks, and stitch people together as opposed to looking at, I think, the totality of Americans and saying, we're going to do this, this, and this, right?
So some people critique the Republican message because they don't focus on particular groups.
I think that's what makes us stronger is we believe that rising tides lift all votes.
That's how she views everything is in a group in constituencies.
And so that's why I think you hear the phraseology that she uses, plus the fact that they have a problem with that constituency.
You're seeing more, especially younger black men in the polling, show up supporting President Trump.
So that's number one.
Number two, here's what I'll tell you.
President Trump has committed to protecting and preserving Social Security.
I heard several pitches during my tenure.
He is 100% committed to protecting Social Security, number one.
Number two, for all the rhetoric out there, what makes this race historically unique is that it's not a hypothetical proposition of one candidate proposing this and the other one proposing that.
Look at their records.
They both have been in office.
If you like what Kamala Harris and the Biden administration have done, vote for her.
If you like these policies, if you like where our country is, if you like the economy and the broken border and the immigration, vote for her.
If you look at President Trump's record as president and what he did and what he got done, then vote for him.
It's that simple.
And so if you're concerned about all of these scare tactics coming out from the left, just say to yourself one thing.
Did he do any of those things during his four years as president?
Number one.
And number two, what was that record like under his tenure as president?
If you don't like it, don't vote for him.
But I think that when most people contrast the four years of President Trump and the four years of the Harris Biden administration, they will choose President Trump.
Sherry's next.
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Hi, Sherry.
Hi, how are you this morning?
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Go ahead with your question or comment.
What I would like to say is I'm totally for Trump.
He seems to me to be more, I know he's got the way he talks and stuff, but he's done that all his life.
That's the way he's brought up.
But Kamala, to me, knows nothing about what's going on in the wars, letting all these people come over the borders.
I'm very tired of paying for them because I see them in the grocery line.
They have $1,000 food stamp.
I'm sitting behind them.
I'm lucky to have enough to pay for what I'm getting.
I'm 74 years old.
Bring home $1,400 a month from Social Security.
And as far as I'm concerned, she's the one that's telling a lot of the lies.
And he's having to try to back away from it.
I don't understand why she keeps saying over and over the same things about her family, bringing, brought up, whatever.
We all don't really care about that.
All right, Sherry.
Yeah, let's pick up on your immigration comments.
Sean Spacer, why does this resonate?
I'm sorry, which specific part of the email?
I'm sorry, Greta, what specific part?
Her comments about immigrants coming to this country, the borders and just, you know.
Well, look, I would just say I think generally, if you ask not just President Trump, but people in the Republican Party, we recognize how great our country is because of legal immigration.
At some level, if you're not Native American, you're an immigrant at some level, right?
And so the difference comes down to legal immigration.
I don't think that you can talk about coming to the greatest country on earth and your first act is to break our laws, right?
We are a nation of laws, first and foremost.
That's why so many people around the world do love us.
They're fleeing persecution, et cetera.
But if you want to come to our country and you do so illegally, that doesn't really start you off on the right foot.
So I think more than anything, the party, our party supports legal immigration.
We recognize the amazing contribution that immigrants make to our country, our culture, our society.
But I think there's no question we want it to be legal.
Steve in Philadelphia.
Yes, good morning.
Morning.
How are you doing?
Good morning.
Yes.
I got three questions or comments I want to make.
One is the price of groceries.
Yesterday I bought 10 items.
It ended up costing me about $90 for 10 items, bread, milk, pasta, stuff like that.
Okay.
And then my other question is that why is Kamala Harris campaigning while the North Koreans are in Russia and are about to fight the Ukrainians?
Now, I know several presidents from the past in the 20th century would have stopped their campaign because it's practically over.
Go back to Washington along with Joe Biden and try to figure out in the situation room what's going on.
That's my second question.
Why didn't she stop the campaign?
So this is the kind of president we're going to have.
That nobody's going to really care about what's going on.
They care about themselves.
Number three, the question, I couldn't believe this at the debate, that when she says Donald J. Trump inherited all his money, you know what he took, you know what he did with that money?
He created jobs.
He built Manhattan.
He built the Bronx.
He built the Boroughs.
He built and he created construction companies.
Do you know how many people are employed alone in hotels?
All right, Steve, I have to jump in at that point.
Sean Spicer.
I feel like I'm back at the podium there, Dretta.
All right, let me take these in order.
I wrote them down for you.
All right, groceries.
Look, I think one of the points that you bring up is really important, and it's something that a lot of people in both the campaign world and in the media world and the government world get wrong.
Your experience is exactly the one that matters.
People will come out all the time and say there was new statistics on the economy.
The GDP is doing this, consumer confidence.
The economy and personal safety are viscerally gut issues.
If you go to the grocery store and have the experience like you had in Philadelphia, where you know that you're paying more, the cost of certain items that you normally get are through the roof or more than you used to pay, it's personal to you.
No one can tell you a government statistic says it's better.
And that's what I think so many people get wrong about the economy as an issue in politics.
If you don't feel it, it doesn't matter.
On the North Korea issue, look, here's the problem that Kamala has.
She's vice president.
She really doesn't have the authority as vice president to stop anything, right?
She could have spoken out about it.
But at the end of the day, I don't know that that would have been a politically smart move.
The problem that she faces is that on the one hand, they want to tether themselves to Joe Biden and say, I was in the room on every major decision.
I'm a co-you know, I'm a partner in this administration.
From the jump, they named it the Biden-Harris administration.
President Biden said she's going to be an equal partner here.
So it's hard to say, well, I only partake in the good decisions and the good outcomes.
I don't have the bad ones.
So I think, to your point, it's a very difficult political situation for her.
And then the last thing is, look, I think these personal attacks on Trump fall flat.
We've seen this for 10 years.
If she wants to go out there and attack how he derived his wealth and what he did with it, good on her.
It's a waste of time.
No one's going to buy it.
The narrative is set in.
Part of the reason that Donald Trump ran for president in the first place is because he had a narrative that was as a very successful real estate mogul, television star, et cetera.
So the idea that somehow you're going to throw a line out of the debate that's going to be effective is kind of nonsensical.
Sean Spicer, host of the Sean Spicer Show.
Thank you very much for being part of the campaign 2024 coverage with five days to go.
We appreciate it.
You bet, Greta, happy Halloween.
Same to you.
All right, we're going to take a break.
When we come back, continue the conversation.
We'll be joined by author and columnist Jonathan Alter, author of the new book, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
And then later, policy issues like abortion rights, marijuana regulation, and immigration are on the ballot in many states this election day.
We will take a closer look at which ones to watch with Reed Wilson, founder and editor of Pluribus News.
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Washington Journal continues.
This morning with us is Jonathan Alter.
He's author of a new book, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Before we get to your book, Mr. Alter, let's begin with your column in the New York Times yesterday.
What if Democrats win the White House and Congress Tuesday?
Your title is posed as a question.
How do you answer it?
Well, just very briefly, this is a piece about what would happen if the Democrats swept.
And you would get a lot of what Kamala Harris has promised for the middle class actually enacted into law.
I go through the various legislative impediments, the filibuster and other things.
You would get the Roe versus Wade decision that used to be the law of the land.
It would become law.
And so abortion would basically be off the table as an issue because the Congress would have passed a law returning us to the situation that we had before the Dobbs decision.
And all of these concerns about women dying, not just concerns, women are dying because doctors are afraid in a number of states to provide them with medical care because of state laws that make it difficult for them to do so.
All of those concerns would go away on the subject of reproductive rights.
But there's a whole series of other issues that relate to what Harris has proposed.
Remember, her key line in these closing moments of the campaign is Donald Trump has an enemies list.
I have a to-do list.
And this to-do list, contrary to what an earlier caller said, is not just for black people.
That's a complete misrepresentation.
It's for the American middle class.
And it goes through better affordability at the grocery store and on housing with very specific proposals, a child care, a child tax credit, which would help basically all Americans and lift, cut the child poverty rate in half.
And I could go on with the agenda, but you get the idea that basically the Democrats would not be able to go too far and they wouldn't actually, their proposals, according to the Wharton School, where Donald Trump went, according to their calculations, Harris's proposals would have only one fifth of the impact on the deficit that Trump's proposals would have,
mostly because she would end these tax breaks for the very wealthy and use that money that was going to the very wealthy for some of these programs for the middle class.
So that's what she's offering the country, and we'll see how people respond.
As you know, Democrats have a thin majority in the Senate, 5149, and one-third of the Senate is up this election.
It's not a map that favors Democrats.
Correct.
Many are predicting that Republicans flip the Senate.
They are then in control.
So with that unlikely scenario, then why write about it?
Because I do think it's possible, and I just wanted to give people a sense of what could happen if, say, Ted Cruz lost in Texas, and he's within the margin of error there.
So we simply don't know what's going to happen.
I think all this horse race coverage is actually, at this point, it's kind of a waste of time.
Nobody knows who's going to win this presidential election.
Anybody who tells you that they're sure what's going to happen, to be honest, you really shouldn't listen to them.
There are too many variables.
This is the 12th presidential campaign I've covered, and I understand that, you know, it just doesn't make very much sense.
Polling is kind of broken in this country.
We heard earlier from Sean Spicer about the real clear politics averages.
Those include a lot of Republican-sponsored polls.
So those averages have been thrown off.
That doesn't mean Harris is ahead.
We just simply don't know.
So I'm much more focused, Greta, on the stakes of this election rather than the horse race.
And the stakes here are immense.
And I think to understand them, just look in this morning's Wall Street Journal.
You had Admiral McCraven, who was one of the most highly decorated, revered military officers this country has produced in a generation.
And, you know, he was responsible for killing Osama bin Laden.
And he said that Donald Trump has the maturity of a 15-year-old boy.
He can't be trusted to be returned to power.
What he is offering is what George Washington specifically rejected when he established the idea of the peaceful transfer of power.
George Washington was all about reaching out, not spreading hate.
His farewell address warned against con men.
And Donald Trump is a con man and a chaos agent.
And there's a long history behind this.
An earlier caller a few minutes ago was talking about his great record in New York.
So I've lived in the New York area for 40 years, and he didn't build New York.
His company was put out of business because it was fraudulent and was ripping people off.
He was employing illegal aliens in the construction of Trump Tower.
And a whole series of other things about his background that he has just not told the truth about, not to mention what's going on now.
And I just wanted to, just on this issue of stakes, if I could just add to General McCraven's voice.
So I think we all know that when General Kelly, who was Donald Trump's chief of staff, and General Milley, who was head of the Joint Chiefs, they both used the F word, fascist, in describing Donald Trump.
Now, whether one thinks that goes too far or not, you know, people can decide.
But that's a very, very significant thing.
And you have all All of these people who worked with Trump were coming out and saying he should not be returned to office.
Nikki Haley, just last night, she reiterated what she had said during the primaries.
She said, I don't take anything back that I said during the primaries.
And during the primaries, she said he was dangerous.
Now, for her own political reasons, she's coming on board.
But she stood behind what she said during the primaries, which is that Republicans privately know he's dangerous.
And I would just ask people if the shoe were on the other foot.
Let's say that back in the Obama days, that Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, and General Shali Kashvili, who was the chair of the Joint Chiefs in the Obama years, if they had both said Barack Obama is a fascist, would you have wanted to vote for him for reelection in 2012?
Of course not.
The people around him are saying this man is dangerous, and we need to listen to that and have a real gut check before going in and voting for somebody.
Harris, you might agree with her, disagree with her on policy.
Taxes go up, taxes go down.
Let's even say that, you know, sure, the Biden administration didn't do enough on immigration in 2021 and 22.
And, you know, only now is it starting to come under control, though.
Trump rejected a deal that would have been proposed by a conservative in the Senate that would have actually secured the border in the last year.
But let's just stipulate that you don't like Harris on immigration and you don't, you know, you think grocery prices are too high, even though she's promising to crack down on predatory pricing, which Trump, with all of his corporate connections, is not promising to do.
But let's assume you agree more with Trump on the issues, just for the sake of argument.
This is not a usual campaign.
This is not about those issues.
This is about who do we trust?
It's about character over country.
And this is why so many Republicans, not just Liz Cheney and Judge Luddig, very, very conservative, former federal judge, but many others have come together and they're shouting as loud as they can: this man is unstable.
He is not fit to be president.
And I just want to add one more thing.
I know you want to get to the calls.
But I like to focus some on the cruelty.
We don't want a cruel president.
And everybody's got their own example of what really upsets them.
And mine comes from just last week, the week before, when Trump was talking on more than one occasion about the enemy from within.
Remember that that's a Stalinist Hitlerian term, like vermin when he calls people vermin.
We're not supposed to do that in this country, but enemy from within.
He's asked who is the enemy from within that he says, and Vance has said, is more dangerous than China or Russia, the enemy from within.
And he says that he would use the military or the National Guard against.
And that the names he mentioned were Adam Schiff, who's running for the Senate in California, and quote, the Pelosis.
The Pelosi's really caught my attention, Greta.
He wasn't just talking about Nancy Pelosi, who he's very angry at because she helped talk Joe Biden into getting off the ticket, which I write about in my book.
She wasn't just mad at, he wasn't just mad at Nancy Pelosi.
He said the Pelosis.
Nancy Pelosi is married to a man named Paul Pelosi, who, when he was 82 years old, faced a break-in in their home in San Francisco, and a Trump loyalist broke in and fractured his skull with a hammer.
And when he was still in the hospital, Donald Trump was laughing about it repeatedly, telling jokes, hatching conspiracy theories that made it seem as if it was Paul Pelosi's fault.
And now, years later, this man who just happens to have been married to Nancy Pelosi is the enemy within, and he wants to use the National Guard, the military, against Paul Pelosi, who's now 84 years old.
I mean, this is sick stuff.
We can't have a person that sick, that cruel, as our president.
Quickly on your book, then, before we get to calls, American Reckoning Inside Trump's Trial, which trial are you talking about?
I was in the courtroom every day for the Trump felony trial, the Hush Money trial in New York City.
And, you know, one of the most dramatic events I've ever covered is watching that jury four person say guilty, guilty, guilty 34 times.
You know, and I, again, just addressing some of the Republicans and Independents in the audience, I agree with former Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, who is a former prosecutor and he respects our criminal justice system, as I do.
We cannot elect a convicted felon as president of the United States.
Now, you can disagree about whether the case should have been brought.
He was convicted.
And this is what our system is.
We don't want to undermine our criminal justice system by having a felon be our president.
And when will sentencing happen in that case?
November 26th.
And basically, if Trump wins, it's likely that he would be sentenced to probation, and even that could be thrown out.
If Trump loses, most observers who cover this court and cover New York, the New York criminal justice system, say that there's at least a 50% chance that Judge Juan Rashon will sentence him to a short term in a country club jail.
We'll go to Alabama.
Chuck, Independent.
Hi, Chuck.
Hey, how y'all doing today?
Morning.
Doing well.
Give me a little time here.
This is something that has always bothered me about, especially Biden.
When he started his campaign, he brought up Charlottesville.
I read that whole transcript.
The journalists were asking him about monuments.
He said there's good people on both sides about tearing down monuments.
So either Clint Biden lied to us or he doesn't know what he's talking about.
So when is the journalist and when is people like Ceasebed going to admit that there's people on both sides that he was talking about monuments?
He wasn't talking about the KKK or whatever.
He just pisses me off.
All right.
Heard your point, Chuck.
Yeah, I mean, I actually think you make a very good point.
If you look at the full context, it's not as bad as Joe Biden was making it out to be.
But Joe Biden's not on the ballot.
And there are a lot of other examples of Donald Trump spending time with Nazi, literally with Nazis.
You know, had dinner with two Nazis.
And, you know, and he doesn't say he regrets having dinner with them.
And in terms of race, I have been around long enough to remember the Central Park V. These were five black kids who were wrongly accused of raping a woman in Central Park, and they went to prison for it.
And later, another person confessed to the crime.
DNA evidence cleared them.
One of the Central Park V is now a very well-regarded member of the New York City Council.
And Donald Trump wanted them executed.
And when told years later, they didn't, you know, they didn't commit these crimes, he doubled down on it because he never backs off anything.
If he had his way, they would be dead now for a crime they didn't commit.
And we could go on about a number of other things that he's done that may not have sided with white supremacists in Charlottesville, but they were just flat out racist.
And we could spend a lot of time talking about that.
But the main thing is when you start to use hate, it's just not the American way for him to be rubbing these wounds raw over and over again.
And Harris, whatever you think of her on certain issues, there's certain issues I don't agree with her on at all.
But she wants to turn the page to a better era.
And I think something she said the other night was very, very important.
She said, Donald Trump wants to go after what he calls the enemies from within, his political rivals.
Kamala Harris wants to bring those rivals into the White House and work out compromises on the issues that face the American people.
She's very focused on a different kind of future.
Do we really want, people go, oh, well, inflation was lower when Trump was president.
Yeah, that's true, because we had these terrible supply interruptions during COVID when after Russia attacked Ukraine, which, by the way, Trump doesn't care about.
Like, he said that Putin can, quote, do what he wants in Eastern Europe, which would basically destroy NATO, which is terrible, terrible, terrible for our national security.
But when he said this, when Russia did this, it sent the price of wheat skyrocketing after they invaded because Russia and Ukraine had control of a good chunk of the wheat market.
So there were a bunch of external reasons for inflation that sent inflation higher in other countries than in our own.
But having said that, let's just say, all right, you blame Biden for inflation.
That's not really very significant versus when you look at this as a choice between a kind of standard issue Democrat who believes in our system, the peaceful transfer of power, basic respect for political rivals, versus an authoritarian who wants to model his presidency on that of strong men like those in Hungary and Russia.
We don't want an American strongman.
That is not the American way.
And if you don't believe he wants to be a strong man, just listen to what he says.
He talks over and over about retribution.
He's talked about suspending the Constitution.
He's even said, you know, he says he was joking, but it's a little hard to tell, he wanted to be dictator for a day.
That's not the American way, even if it's just one day, which it wouldn't be, of course.
That's not the way we should roll in the United States.
And I think everybody needs kind of a gut check before they go to the polls.
This is not, this election is fundamentally not about higher prices at the supermarket or whether, you know, Harris, who actually has a plan to do something about it, whether her plan is better than Trump's, which is a 20% across-the-board tariff.
There is not one economist, either liberal or conservative, not a single one who thinks that's a good idea because basically the costs of the tariff would be go basically would be a tax and you'd have what Mark Cuban called insane inflationary consequences from Trump's position.
So all I'm saying is that the bigger issue is autocracy versus democracy.
All right, Jonathan Alter, got several people waiting for you.
I'm so sorry to be long waiting.
I'm in Long Island, New York, Independent.
Hi, David.
Oh, yes.
Hi, Mr. Alto.
Hi, Greta.
Hi.
Greta.
I just want to make, let's correct one thing, Mr. Alto.
Do you all remember during the crisis when the auto industry was going bad and things were getting real bad, Greta?
Donald Trump said, let Christ.gm and the auto industry go bankrupt.
Yeah.
They can afford it.
And then in addition to that, he said, I do not like pain over time and I do not like unions.
How is it now these unions go around talking about, and then the second thing, let me, you know, go to another point.
As he called it, his thing talking about, they call it weaving.
There's no thing in the English dictionary talk about weaving.
All the things about weaving.
You put all these different statements, different things together.
The man is confused.
Did you see Jonathan on a truck getting on the garbage truck?
He couldn't.
The door helped him.
They're getting it.
This trunk is gone.
Sinality, disaster, sinality that's affected the man is gone.
Okay, David, you've got several things there.
Jonathan Altor.
I can try to answer them.
So he is too old.
Like Biden was clearly too old.
I mean, Jimmy Carter rightly said nobody over 80 should be serving as president.
So you can see his mental decline.
So that's one issue.
As far as what you said about Trump wanting the auto industry to go bankrupt back 15 years ago, that's just true.
I mean, that was his position at the time.
Let them all go bankrupt.
And more recently, he said, it doesn't take much skill to build a car.
He was really dissing auto workers.
He's pretending now that he's pro-labor, but his administration was very anti-labor.
And I think people need to not look at his publicity stunts like working at McDonald's and work in a garbage truck.
The garbage thing, people forget that it was Trump who first used that word.
He said that the people around Harris were, quote, garbage.
And then he talked about us being a trash can nation.
He was talking about immigration.
So he's been talking down the United States.
He's been very critical of labor.
Earlier, we heard a caller saying, asking whether he would cut Social Security and Medicare.
You all have heard of Project 2025.
Trump's been trying to run away from this.
This is something that slashes everything, including Social Security and Medicare.
There's a guy named Tom Homan.
Trump just said just the other day that Tom Homan would have a major position in his administration.
Tom Holman is the author of Project 2025.
JD Vance wrote the introduction to a book by the co-author of Project 2025.
So they are very much on this anti-worker agenda that just helps their billionaire friends like Elon Musk.
Must now wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget.
Basically, every spending program on health, transportation, he wants to eliminate.
And obviously, he'll have a lot to say in a Trump administration.
Do we really want, and actually a much greater share of Trump's campaign expenditures, I think three times as much come from Republican billionaires as Harris is getting from Democratic billionaires.
So we would get Trump running a government with his fellow billionaires, and that's not good for America.
That's oligarchy.
We'll go to Stockbridge, Georgia, or Joyce is a Republican.
Hi, Joyce.
Hi.
Sir, I am sorry, but the visceral hate that you have for Trump is ridiculous.
Most of the things you have said has already been debunked.
No, they haven't.
That's just factually inaccurate, ma'am.
There's not a single thing I said that has been debunked.
Joyce, what is it?
I'm a journalist.
And everything I said has been finished.
Let her finish.
My apologies.
Joyce, what is it that you are taking issue with?
Give us two examples.
Well, the first thing, the guy that had the hammer with Pelosi while he was in his shorts with his glass of liquor, he was from Canada, and he is not a Trump supporter.
That is why.
Not true.
Go ahead.
Sir.
It's not true.
I mean, facts are stubborn things.
He was a Trump supporter.
You can look it up on Google.
What you just said is not true.
That's not true.
There are a lot of conspiracy theories going around, but if you actually track it back to reliable sources, what you said isn't true.
I'm sorry.
Joyce, your second example.
Go ahead.
Oh, you have me so upset.
Did you know that Kamala is a Marxist?
She's not a Marxist.
Joyce, why do you think she's a Marxist?
Well, first of all, her father was a Marxist.
So what?
And he hasn't been for 40 years.
He hasn't been a Marxist in 40 years.
She doesn't have a good relationship with her father.
I know he has.
She doesn't even have a good relationship with her father.
You're going to slime her because it's something her father wrote 40, 50 years ago.
So let Joyce finish.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry, Joyce.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Go ahead.
She is a Marxist, and Tim Waltz is being investigated about his ties with the CCP.
Okay.
We'll leave it there, Joyce.
So I just, I'm sorry that I was jumping in on Joyce.
I apologize to Joyce for that.
I should have waited until she finished with her untrue conspiracy theories.
None of what she said, unfortunately, you know, as a journalist, I try to look for facts, not conspiracy theories, things that you read somewhere on the internet that are often not true, to try to look at facts.
And on everything she said, it doesn't conform to the facts.
Tim Walz is not a communist.
In fact, when he started going to China some years ago, he came back and he was very, very tough on the Chinese communist regime when he was a member of the House of Representatives.
So there's a lot out there that's going around.
And I understand people's complaints about the mainstream media.
Many of them are very merited.
And we could spend hours talking about what's wrong with the media.
But if you actually go back to facts, what Joyce said and a lot of the other conspiracy theories are just simply not true.
Jonathan Alter, how do you respond to folks who say, you say you're a journalist, yet you are supporting the vice president?
Yeah, so I've been for 40 years, I've been an opinion journalist.
So I'm paid to express my views, which I hope are backed up by factual reporting.
And I've been a columnist since the early 1990s.
So I'm not a reporter for the Associated Press who's giving some kind of a straight news account.
Journalists come in different shades, and I'm an opinion journalist.
What would you say, McPherson?
That sounds like a contradiction, an opinion journalist.
Oh, well, we've had that actually since the dawn of the Republic.
It used to be, if you go back to the 18th century, when everything got started, newspapers in those days were all very similar to what we have now with Fox and MSNBC.
And newspapers were party papers.
And much of early journalism, and then going throughout all of our history, had columnists, commentators on radio and TV.
And so this is a very old tradition in journalism.
But unlike, you know, and there are bad journalists, believe me, there's some really bad ones, but there are also some really good ones.
And, you know, the difference is whether they have a fidelity to facts.
And if they, you know, when I express my opinion, I try, I don't always succeed, but I try to back it up with verifiable facts.
And one of the things that is very unsettling about where we are is that, you know, I guess it would be summarized by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a very popular United States senator, very popular across the aisle.
And he said, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts.
And it's when people start trafficking in half-truths, lies, some of which are, you know, the product of foreign disinformation campaigns, then we get into an area where you have people who are saying things that are not quite right.
Now, sometimes that works out bad for the left.
So there was an earlier caller who made a good point that what Trump said about Charlottesville was in some ways taken out of context and was not as bad as what Joe Biden said.
But there's a huge amount of other things that Trump has said that are just simply disqualifying for him.
Not to mention that he sat in his office on January 6th for close to two hours when our Capitol was under assault.
It was beyond dereliction of duty.
And then he tried to blame Nancy Pelosi for not calling out the National Guard.
That wasn't her job.
It was his job as president to recognize that his people had gone too far.
They were breaking into our Capitol.
They were assaulting police officers.
And he just sat on his hands after having incited them to do so.
That by itself, January 6th by itself, as so many Republicans are saying, is disqualifying because the peaceful transfer of power is what separates our system.
And the rule of law, not attacking judges who you don't like, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, those are the foundations of our system.
Jonathan Alter, author and columnist, thank you very much for the conversation.
The book is American Reckoning Inside Trump's Trial and My Own.
Appreciate the conversation this morning.
Thanks so much, Gret.
Appreciate your time.
We'll take a break when we come back.
We're going to turn our attention to statewide ballot measures to keep an eye that on this election day.
We'll have that conversation with Reed Wilson, founder and editor of Pluribus News.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
We are back discussing now ballot initiatives.
And according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, there are 147 ballot measures on the ballots next Tuesday in 41 states.
Here to talk more about that is Reed Wilson, founder and editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.
Let's begin with abortion ballot measures.
How many states have them?
And what do most of them do?
Yeah, so there are 10 states that have abortion-related measures on the ballot.
In all 10 states, there is some version of a measure to protect abortion rights, to codify it either in state law or most of them in the state constitution.
There's one state, interestingly, that also has a ballot measure opposing, restricting abortion rights, and that's Nebraska.
So Nebraska has dueling initiatives there, one to codify abortion rights, one to restrict them further.
And the Secretary of State there has said that if they both pass, which is a distinct possibility, the one that gets the most affirmative votes will supersede the other one.
But these abortion measures are interesting because in the two years since Roe was struck down, every time abortion rights or restrictions have been on the ballot, the pro-abortion rights side of the question has won.
So I'm not just talking about blue states like California and Vermont.
We're also talking about formerly swing states like Ohio, which passed a measure to codify abortion rights.
And then even some very conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky that rejected initiatives last year that would have rolled back or restricted abortion rights.
This year, some of the key states, and could be our presidential battleground states, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.
Florida is sort of iffy on the battleground category.
But those states all have abortion rights measures on the ballot.
Also, some bluer states, Colorado, Maryland, and then some red states, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, as I said, New York and South Dakota, New York on the blue state side.
Could when you have these ballot initiatives related to abortion, as they've had since Roe, which party do they tend to help?
So there's not a lot of research about whether or not ballot measures actually pull people out to the polls.
There's really only one good example that we can look to historically, and that was in 2004 when I think it was 11 states had measures on the ballot to ban same-sex marriage across the country in George W. Bush's reelection term.
There's a political scientist at Western Washington University named Todd Donovan who studied that and found that those initiatives didn't pull out a ton of people who might have otherwise stayed home to vote, but they might have pulled out a few tens of thousands in some swing states like Ohio.
And remember that Ohio was the key to Bush's reelection, and he only won it by, I think it was 100,000 votes that year.
This year, though, we're going to have a lot of states that are closer than that 100,000 votes in Ohio.
And so if abortion rights measures pull out, say, 5,000 young women who might not have showed up to vote, or young men for that matter, who might not have showed up to vote, who are probably disposed to vote for a Democratic candidate, that 5,000 votes could very well make the difference in the presidency.
Well, here's an interesting article front page of the Washington Post related to this.
The women backing abortion referendums and Trump splitting their ticket.
Yeah, there's some interesting sort of game theory happening here that, and that I know a few Democrats who are worried about it, that if you show up to the polls and you support abortion rights, well, one of these amendments is a great way to make sure that your elected official can't restrict abortion rights.
So it sort of offers a permission structure, if you will, to vote in favor of abortion rights, but also in favor of, say, a Republican candidate who might not favor abortion rights.
You're saving it in the Constitution, and then you can vote for whomever you like.
What about the prospects of this impacting the Senate race in Montana?
And explain the importance of this Montana Senate race.
Right.
So the U.S. Senate right now is split 51-49 for Democrats.
Democrats are likely to lose a seat in West Virginia, so make that a 50-50 Senate.
If Senator John Tester loses his re-election race in Montana, that's pretty much the ballgame.
That means Republicans would control the next U.S. Senate.
If this abortion rights measure is able to bring out a whole bunch of voters who might not have showed up otherwise, then it might help John Tester.
Tester, though, has never crossed 50% of the vote in any of his elections, and he's usually been helped by a third-party candidate, a Libertarian or something, siphoning votes from the Republican side.
There is no such third-party candidate this time around.
So he faces a really tough road to reelection, even with something like this, like an abortion rights measure on the ballot.
Because he's in a red state.
He is the Democrat in the reddest state, with the exception of Joe Manchin, who I guess is no longer a Democrat.
So now I can say that Tester is.
After the abortion initiatives, what other initiatives are high-profile that you're watching that could have an impact?
Yeah, well, let's start with marijuana.
That's been a prominent issue on ballots in a lot of the country over the years.
There are three states where it'll be up this year, Florida, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
And this is interesting because in a lot of the states where marijuana has been on the ballot, or marijuana legalization has been on the ballot, it's passed by a pretty substantial margin.
These three states are going to be a big challenge for legalization supporters.
First of all, in Florida, because state law requires a 60% threshold.
So if it gets 50 plus one, sorry, that's no good.
you didn't reach a 60% threshold and it fails.
North Dakota and South Dakota have both defeated prior legalization measures with more than 50% of the vote.
So in all three of these cases, it's a little, it's questionable whether or not they can pass legalization.
Even if they do, though, the legalization supporters then have a further challenge in that they're pretty much running out of states where they can run a ballot initiative.
Not every state allows citizens to circulate a petition and get a measure on the ballot.
And so they would have to switch focus and pay attention to state legislatures.
Only a small handful of legislatures, New York, New Jersey, have passed legalization measures.
Politicians don't like voting in favor of marijuana.
In fact, the governors of Washington and Colorado, the first two states that legalized POT, were not in favor of it.
Both pretty liberal Democrats were not in favor of legalization.
So getting through the legislature can be tricky.
If the legalization folks have success in Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota, they're going to have to start looking to politicians to get the other states on board with legalization.
And Florida is interesting on the marijuana and the abortion ballot initiatives because the governor there, Ron DeSantis, is campaigning hard against those two ballot initiatives.
He's literally running the campaign against both of these measures.
The State Department of Health a few weeks ago warned television stations not to run advertisements for the pro-abortion rights measure, saying that they were inaccurate.
A federal judge told the State Department of Health to stop doing that.
But as I look at the campaign finance reports, the campaigns against the abortion rights measure and against the marijuana measure are predominantly being funded by Ron DeSantis' political campaign.
And they're being run by his chief of staff.
So he's weighing in.
Politico said he's, you know, that his political future is at stake here on these initiatives.
I don't know about that.
I mean, voters do things that their governors don't always like or enjoy.
I feel like if DeSantis signed an abortion restriction measure, if he wants to come back and run for president in 2028, he'll point to that rather than this ballot measure.
So I don't know that his political future is at stake.
Well, let's talk about non-citizen voting and the eight states that have that issue on the ballot.
Yeah, and those states are all led by Republican state legislatures.
And this is another way that measures can get to the ballot.
It's not just circulating a petition and asking voters to sign it.
Legislatures can refer a question to the ballot.
So in these states, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, Republican state legislatures have forwarded those measures to the ballot.
And what those measures would do would prevent non-citizen voting, and this is important, in state and local elections.
Non-citizen voting is already illegal at the federal level.
There are very few municipalities in places like California, Vermont, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. that allow non-citizens to vote on local issues, school boards, city councils, things like that.
No state allows non-citizens to vote in, say, gubernatorial elections or anything like that.
But these measures are effectively meant to prime voters, just like the abortion measures in some respect, to prime voters to be thinking about an issue that Republicans want them to think about.
They want these voters to be thinking about immigration as they go in and cast a ballot on the presidential race because that issue favors President Trump, former President Trump, by a wide margin.
Just again to reiterate, there is no non-citizen voting allowed in federal elections or statewide elections anywhere in the entire country.
So just want to be clear on that.
Well, let's turn our attention to our viewers and what they have to say about these ballot initiatives.
If you're in a state where you have voted or you plan to vote for one of the ballot initiatives we just talked about, or if there's another one that you want to bring up, we want to hear from you this morning.
Catherine in St. Joseph, Michigan, Republican.
Hi, Catherine.
Hi there.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, Mr. Wilson.
Hi there.
I have a question for you, and I hope you can answer it or tell me where I can get an answer.
It's been brought to my attention most recently that our ballots are being taken off out of the polls and counted in another building.
I've had relatives, my father worked the polls, my aunts had worked the polls, and I can remember them staying to 12, 1 o'clock in the morning counting the ballots.
And now, you know, they're taking them off the premises, and they're counting the votes in other places.
Catherine, I think, Catherine, I think you should call your Secretary of State office to find out more about that.
Reed Wilson here to talk about ballot initiatives that folks like you and others will be voting on when you vote for candidates this election cycle.
Ava in Chicago, Democratic caller.
Ava in Chicago, Democratic caller, you're up.
All right, one last call for Ava.
Are you there?
All right, moving on.
Dave in Las Vegas, independent.
I got a question for him.
When Trump tried to overthrow the government and he wants to get rid of the Constitution, which is the highest law in the land, does that make he is definitely authoritarian communist?
He is definitely, people call other people communists, but he's definitely a communist.
And how can he get away with 34 felonies, sexually assault, no more, and all this stuff, and people are going to vote for him?
All right.
Dave there in Las Vegas.
I have a text here from a viewer, California independent voter.
Is Mr. Wilson familiar with Proposition 36 on the ballot here in California?
It's going to win by over 70% and recriminalizes some petty theft crimes.
Yeah, this is a really interesting conversation that's been happening in California for a long time now.
I should also say, by the way, California is the home of the most expensive ballot measures in every election.
Some of these measures can get up to, there was a sports betting measure in California a couple of years ago that cost all combined about half a billion dollars, and it failed miserably.
The campaign for it, they spent that amount of money.
The campaigns, it was this complicated, there were several ballot initiatives all sponsored by different groups that backed sports betting that was run by themselves.
So the big guys, the DraftKings and FanDuel, the tribes, local governments all had their own initiatives.
They spent a total of half a billion dollars on it all combined, and everybody's initiative lost by a big margin.
So big money doesn't always win campaigns.
On the Prop 36, so Prop 36 would repeal a criminal justice reform measure passed close to a decade ago that lowered penalties for some crimes.
Now as the focus has returned to retail theft and these, you see these videos on local news about smash and grab invasions of luxury goods stores and things like that, California voters are being asked to repeal that and to reinstate some of the higher penalties.
Governor Gavin Newsom doesn't like this.
The legislature is working on its own plan to raise penalties for some of these crimes, but it's very popular in California and it's probably going to pass 70%.
I don't think he's terribly far off there.
And this underscores a point about ballot measures and how they're used.
The average voter does not conform neatly into the policy verticals of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
We pick and choose.
We're sort of naturally, we want maybe we favor this thing that Democrats like and this thing that Republicans like as individuals.
And so in a very red state or in a very blue state, ballot measures are a way that the minority party can get one of their issues on the ballot and pass it despite a reluctant legislature that's never going to bring it up.
This is the ballot initiative is the way Western states got out from under the control of the robber barons and the Timber Barons back in the Progressive Era.
So this is why I love talking about this stuff.
It shows the nuance of American politics in a way that we don't otherwise see.
And Reed Wilson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.
Here's another viewer in Diane in New Jersey.
The Florida marijuana bill was written by a private company and has restrictions for other growers.
I don't know that it has restrictions for other growers.
I'm not saying she's wrong in that assertion, but I will say that that initiative is being funded almost entirely by a company called True Leave, which is one of the largest pot producers in America.
They're based in Florida.
They've got a big part of the Florida medical marijuana market.
They would presumably have a big part of the recreational marijuana market.
And this underscores another point about ballot initiatives is that, yes, you, the citizen, can go put a ballot measure on the ballot that favors your position.
So can a big company, and so can an interest group pushing a ballot measure.
I'm reminded of a legalization, a marijuana legalization measure that came up in Ohio a number of years ago, eight or nine years ago now, that was largely backed by venture capitalist firms in New York who wanted basically a monopoly on the Ohio marijuana market, which would have been extremely lucrative for them.
And they ran it almost like a VC fund.
Like it was not a well-run campaign.
And at the very end, they debuted a mascot named Bud, who was actually a rolled-up joint, a guy in a rolled-up joint suit.
It was very bizarre.
They lost.
And Ohio subsequently passed a different marijuana legalization measure a couple of years later.
But this underscores the point that, and I talk about the California betting measure, and now we've got this True Leave company in Florida.
Big corporations can use the ballot initiative just like everybody else, and they can do it in a way that benefits themselves financially.
Jones says, please address Florida's Amendment 12 regarding hunting and fishing.
So if I'm not mistaken, this is a hunting and fishing, the right to hunt and fish, a measure that's been on the ballot in a number of mostly red states, and they've passed by huge margins, 80 or 90 percent, in most states, especially with traditions of outdoors, outdoors-ism, if you will.
My question is, how is it that a convicted felon is able to legally run in a presidential election?
Well, I'll tell you, he was convicted of a felony at the state level.
And beyond that, I am not a legal expert.
So I'm going to stick to these ballot measures.
Georgia, by the way, was one of the, I think I'm right in saying the first state to hold a ballot measure back in something like 1789.
Ballot measures have been around for a long time.
Here is BC Venice.
Do any states have ballot measures relaxing regulations on child labor, right to work for less states have already lost children from this?
I'm not aware of relaxing standards on child labor.
That has been a thing that's made it through some state legislatures in recent years, especially in Ohio, Florida.
Oh, I'm in a blank on the rest of the states.
But that is relaxing some standards on child labor have made it through state legislatures.
I haven't seen any on the ballot this year.
Which states don't allow ballot initiatives and why?
It's about half the states, mostly on the East Coast, mostly in I think it's fair to say that the Midwest and the South, and I think a lot of it is history.
It's, you know, the progressive era ushered in basically the modern idea of ballot measures as ways to influence public policy.
You know, people like California Governor Hiram Johnson was a big supporter of direct democracy.
And so a lot of states adopted those rules early on.
Eastern states typically sort of solidified their political identities 100 years before that when voting on a ballot measure would have been, well, when voting on anything was a really big deal.
And we have elections on Tuesdays because that was market day and things like that.
So ballot measures are sort of a more modern but not terribly modern way of conducting public policy.
Anthony in Boston, thoughts on Massachusetts question number five regarding minimum wage for tipped workers.
Thoughts on how this has succeeded in other states?
So minimum wage is on the ballot in something to do with the minimum wage.
It's on the ballot in five states this year.
Alaska and Missouri would raise the minimum wage to $15, California to $18.
And in Massachusetts and Arizona, the measures have to do with how much you pay a tipped worker, that is, say, a restaurant server, who under the state law in most states can make less than minimum wage on the presumption that the tips will make up that difference on an hourly basis.
I haven't seen a measures specifically dealing with tipped workers in the past, but betting against a raise on the minimum wage is a very bad bet because since 2000, there are like 26 or 27 ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage in states across the country, in the reddest states and the bluest states.
Every single one has passed.
There is not a single minimum wage hike that has not passed since the turn of the century.
So that tells you that betting against minimum wage hikes, not a good place to put your wagers.
People want to dig into ballot initiatives.
Will they find that on Pluribus News?
What else will they find there?
Right.
We have a preview of all the ballot initiatives that are up this year on our site this morning, pluribusnews.com.
We also are the only nonpartisan independent outlet in America that covers state legislatures.
And at a time when Congress is so broken and so dysfunctional, the states are really stepping up and taking on public policy.
I mean, we talk about child labor laws.
That should be the purview of the feds, right?
Well, their feds aren't doing anything, so the states are stepping in.
Same thing on issues like artificial intelligence and data privacy and nuclear energy.
The federal government isn't doing things on this.
The states are stepping up.
That's why we think it's important to cover state legislatures.
You're tracking legislation at the state level.
How are you able to do that?
Well, we read a lot of newspapers every day, and we focus on a lot of bill filings that come through.
But our theory is that state legislatures are not silos.
What happens in what we've had, we've had calls from Nevada today, so what happens in Carson City or from Georgia, what happens in Atlanta, they don't stay there.
These legislatures are looking across the country to their friends and colleagues in other states to get their next big ideas.
So if you see an issue that pops up in Sacramento or Albany or Austin today, it's going to show up in 25 states next year and federally the year after that.
Consider these bills over the last couple of years to restrict transgender rights in a lot of states.
You might recall that that bill came up in North Carolina about a decade ago, and the fur was incredible.
Everybody yelled and screamed about it, made a big deal, and eventually North Carolina repealed what they called their bathroom bill.
Well, when it comes up in 25 states, you can't focus that attention and that pressure on all of those states.
So what I think Democrats and Republicans have learned is that if they share ideas widely and pass them quickly, that a whole bunch of states can sort of set the direction for federal policy before Congress gets its act in gear to elect a speaker.
Here is viewer Scott in Massachusetts with the question.
There is a ballot initiative to not have a standardized test for graduate high schoolers.
How many states have a test requirement to graduate high school?
That is a very good question.
I know there has been a push lately to require passage of the American Civics Test, the test that any aspiring citizen would have to take to become a citizen.
There's a push in a lot of states to require that as a requirement for graduation.
I don't know about the Massachusetts one is called MCAS.
I think it's just a pretty standardized test.
The campaign to repeal it, excuse me, to take it out of the requirements is being funded largely by teachers unions.
The campaign to keep it in place, that is to reject this ballot measure, is being funded in part by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who just dropped, I think it was $2.5 million into the opposition campaign.
The campaign in Massachusetts that I'm more interested in is the ballot measure that would legalize psychedelics and mushrooms.
It's been tried in a few states already, Colorado, Oregon, here in Washington, D.C. We'll see how it does in Massachusetts.
Another one that you're watching is property taxes in Colorado.
Talk about that.
There are a lot of property tax bills in Colorado, sorry, in states across the country.
And the specifics of the Colorado one are going to elude me, but the point is this is a way that a lot of those interest groups, those sort of anti-tax interest groups, can get measures on the ballot and create real havoc with state budgets.
There's one measure in North Dakota this year, I hope I'm not misspeaking, I hope it's not South Dakota, that would effectively repeal all property taxes.
And the hit, you can imagine the hit to the state budget that that would do, even in a Republican state where they like to keep taxes low, eliminating something altogether, that's going to blow a hole in the budget.
And we'll see what legislators would do about that.
I mean, presumably they would have to raise other types of taxes.
But tax fights are common at the ballot box.
I'm from Washington state, and about 30 years ago, there was, aging myself terribly, there was a ballot measure to set limits on car tabs at $30 when car tabs were getting up to $500, $600, $700 at $30 a year.
And it caused all kinds of havoc with the state budget.
And that's what these ballot measures can do.
It's interesting to note that the people who write these are the lawyers and supporters of whatever issue they're paying attention to.
It's not the legislators who might take, the Office of Legislative Services might take a lot more time to see how a measure interacts with other parts of existing state law.
Sometimes a measure passes and people realize they wrote it very badly.
And so now everybody's got to go back and fix it.
On Election Day, you'll also be watching legislatures and which party controls legislatures at the state level.
Where should our viewers be watching along with you?
You won't be surprised that there's a lot of overlap between the presidential battleground states and the state legislatures that are up for grabs.
Arizona is an example of a very narrow Republican majority.
They're trying to play defense there as Democrats make gains around Phoenix, around Tucson, and into Yuma areas like that.
In Michigan and Minnesota, two states that flipped blue in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are trying to win back control in both of those states.
Minnesota only has one state Senate race up this year, and they control the state Senate by one seat.
That's probably going to stay in their control.
But the House in both chambers, excuse me, both states are up for grabs in Minnesota and Michigan.
Minnesota, not really a swing state, but still a narrowly divided legislature.
New Hampshire is another place where Republicans are playing defense.
They hold a narrow majority in the state Senate, 14 to 10, and then they hold a majority in the state House.
But there are 400 seats in the New Hampshire State House.
Basically, you land at the Manchester Airport and you get a seat in the state legislature.
I'm only kind of joking about that.
But the state legislature in New Hampshire is so many people that we're not going to know who controls it for quite a long time.
The last state I'll point to is the one state in America where the legislative chambers are divided, and that's Pennsylvania.
Republicans control the state Senate.
Democrats control the state House by a single vote.
Both of those chambers are up for grabs.
I think the House is more vulnerable than the Senate.
But talking to Republicans and Democrats over the last couple of days, they sort of think that both sides are just going to hold serve and we'll continue to have that Republican Senate and Democratic House in Pennsylvania.
Kristen, Superior, Wisconsin, Democratic caller.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I just had a general comment.
At least here in Wisconsin, the ballot initiatives are worded in such an intentionally misleading way.
I just would really like there to be some, if it could be standardized somehow to eliminate the confusing wording of those initiatives.
Yeah, and this is something that we've seen in a lot of states across the country this year where the ballot initiative process is a process.
It's a long one.
It starts with drafting a bill, and then that in some states, the Secretary of State has to approve that language or the Attorney General has to run the traps and make sure it's not unconstitutional.
And then you collect all the signatures and it goes to a ballot board where there are all these different steps.
And what we've seen is that a lot of opponents of some of these measures have drafted or have sort of taken a section of that process and used it to put a thumb on the scale.
And the best example, I'm not up on any Wisconsin examples this year, but the best example this year is in Ohio, where issue one is on the ballot.
It would reform the way the state draws its political boundaries in the decennial redistricting process.
Right now, those lines are drawn by a panel of politicians, and because of who controls what office, Republicans control that process now.
The initiative would change that process to allow a citizen panel of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five Independents to draw new district lines and vote on them.
The state ballot board, which is headed by Secretary of State Frank Larose, a Republican, changed the wording of how that would, that what I just explained, would be presented to voters to say that the measure would require the new citizen panel to gerrymander.
Well, gerrymander is a really loaded word, right?
And it's something that I think supporters of this measure would say we're trying to eliminate gerrymandering.
But the ballot board wrote their ballot description.
It was challenged in court, sort of a mixed ruling from the state Supreme Court there.
But yes, this has been a complaint in a lot of states that somebody along the line is putting a thumb on the scale, whether it's an attorney general, whether it's a ballot board, whether it's a Secretary of State, putting their thumb on the scale to try to influence the way people see these initiatives.
Lynn in Oregon wants to know about Oregon's ballot measure for ranked choice voting.
First of all, what is explain ranked choice voting and where else is this an issue?
So ranked choice voting is the idea that when you go into a ballot box, you can pick multiple candidates.
I can pick Greta as my number one candidate and John McCartell as my number two.
And I should have actually reversed this because now I'm going to eliminate you from the process.
If my first choice finishes at the back of the pack, then my vote is reallocated to my second choice.
If my second choice is eliminated, my vote is reallocated to my third choice, on and on and on, until one candidate has 50% of the vote plus one.
The theory behind ranked choice voting is that it disincentivizes extremist candidates and it incentivizes candidates to build the broadest possible coalition.
To go out, if you're a Democrat, to go out and appeal to independents and to Republicans, moderate Republicans, because you need them to rank you high on their list.
And same thing if you're a Republican, appeal to Democrats.
The theory is that it creates a broader coalition and a more positive campaign, because if you're the negative guy, nobody's going to rank you high up, right?
So on ranked choice voting, there are a few states that implement it already, Alaska and Maine.
And now it's on the ballot this year in a record number of states, in Oregon, in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada.
And I get to vote on it here in Washington, D.C. as well.
Interestingly enough, Alaska opponents are trying to repeal the ranked choice voting system that came up.
It's an intriguing sort of way that voters are trying to change the way their own elections take place.
And we can point to the Ohio issue one.
We can point to some other states, Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana, where they're trying to eliminate partisan primaries so that independent voters could walk in and vote for, say, a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and a Republican for House and a Libertarian for Secretary of State or whatever, however it may happen to be.
But this is an interesting way of voters taking control of their own voting system.
We'll see if it passes.
There have been some pretty strong campaigns.
Interestingly enough, the people who run the strongest campaigns against ranked choice voting are the parties themselves.
So if you walk around Washington, D.C., you'll start to see some no on Initiative 83 is the D.C. ranked choice voting.
Those signs are paid for by the D.C. Democratic Party.
The parties don't want to give up that control of partisan primaries.
And in Alaska, that effort to repeal it, who's behind that?
So that's the Republicans who are behind it largely because in the first time that the ranked choice voting took place, the Democratic candidate for a U.S. House seat, Mary Peltola, ended up outlasting the two Republicans in the race, former Governor Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, who's running again this year.
And Republicans blame ranked choice voting for her winning.
It's not quite the way ranked choice voting works, but they lost a U.S. House seat and now they want to repeal the ranked choice voting system.
Tony in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Independent.
Good morning.
I just wanted to give a little history and give my opinion on something.
Florida went to 60% ballot initiative margins because we almost bankrupted the state with a high-speed rail.
It sounds popular and people voted for it and it was going to bankrupt our state.
And ballot initiatives are anti-American.
Our founders went through a long process to craft a constitution and a small Republican form of government.
Now we're trying to do government by plebiscite with no debate, no checks and balances.
And I think it's dangerous and I urge everybody to vote no on every initiative.
Okay, interesting call.
Last one.
I don't think there's no debate.
I mean, in Florida, there are several ballot measures that are attracting more than $100 million in spending this year.
Anybody can debate on that and vote on that and read the newspaper for and against and all of that.
I think ballot initiatives, I think this is my perspective as a Westerner.
I think ballot initiatives have played a hugely important role in modern America.
And sometimes, sometimes states get them wrong.
And, you know, that's fine.
That's a part of a part of democracy.
To track these ballot initiatives and legislation that's happening at the state level, go to pluribusnews.com.
You can follow on X with the handle at Pluribus News.
Reed Wilson, the founder and editor-in-chief.
Thanks for the conversation.
Thanks, Greta.
We're going to take a break.
When we come back, we will return to the campaign trail.
Five days to go until Election Day.
We want your thoughts on the latest from these candidates.
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Washington Journal continues.
C-SPAN's campaign 2024 coverage continues today, and we begin here, continue here on the Washington Journal with a conversation with all of you about the latest from the campaign trail.
The candidates will be back out talking to voters today and we will have live coverage of their remarks on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2.
Let's begin with JD Vance, the former president's running mate.
He'll be in High Point, North Carolina.
And you'll be able to watch that at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN, as well as our free video mobile app, C-SPANNow and online at c-span.org.
And the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, he will be speaking at 11 a.m. Eastern Time in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Our coverage on television is on C-SPAN 2, live there, and of course on the app, C-SPANNOW and online at c-span.org.
The vice president will be in Reno, Nevada today, and we'll have live coverage on C-SPAN 2 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
She'll also have a rally in Las Vegas tonight as well with J-Lo appearing there.
The former president has three stops today, and we have coverage of that at 2 p.m. Eastern Time in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
That'll be on C-SPAN 2.
And then at 6:30 p.m. in Henderson, Nevada, the former president there, our coverage on television on C-SPAN.
And he'll be in Phoenix, Arizona, 10 p.m. Eastern Time, and we'll have coverage of that on C-SPAN 2.
All of our campaign coverage of the rallies and the get-out the vote remarks can be found online at c-span.org.
You can watch our live coverage there.
You can also watch our coverage on our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now.
We'll continue to be live with five days to go until Election Day here on C-SPAN today, tomorrow, through the weekend, and on Monday.
So watch our coverage on C-SPAN 1 and C-SPAN 2 and on our digital platforms as well.
Dottis in New Haven, Connecticut.
You are supporting the Harris-Walls ticket.
Good morning.
Share your thoughts with us.
Yes, I am, and I watch your program a lot, you know, for over a period of years.
And I support Kamala, and I would have even supported Biden, but she's qualified for it, and she's very, she's just overqualified for that position.
And I watch what the Trump people are saying.
And some people will call and say, really nice things and know what's going on.
But something is mentally wrong with Trump.
He's saying, I watch his rallies to see what he's going to say.
And him wearing, what is it, people that pick up the trash, you know, wearing a jacket.
It is crazy.
He's saying and doing some sick stuff.
And all of the things that he's done, he lost that child, you know, that woman that he assaulted, physically assaulted.
I found out yesterday, and I won't say it on this program, exactly what he did to that lady in that store.
And I'm asking women, how would you feel if that happened to you or happened to your daughter or whatever?
He is sick.
Dottis heard your thoughts.
We're going to go on to Tony, who's supporting the former president and his running mate, JD Vance, in Sugarland, Texas.
Hi, Tony.
Yes, ma'am.
Good morning.
I'd like to first say to all the veterans, active service members, and first responders, thank you for your service.
Greta, on March 3rd, 2016, you did a show with two congressmen, one a Republican and one a Democrat.
The Democrat was Tim Walz.
You introduced him as the Command Sergeant Major that he retired.
He acknowledges, he shakes his head yes.
Second thing, you said that he served in Afghanistan.
He acknowledges yes to you.
Those two acknowledgements were lies.
Number two, there was a report that came out last month.
The Representative Laudermilk Laudermilk, I believe that's his name, came out with a report last month about General Milley overheard Trump saying to one of the members of the Pentagon to make sure that he had either National Guard or the Army there for January 6th.
I never heard anything.
Somebody called in and spoke to John about it, but nothing has come about it.
Y'all never would bring up that report.
Number three, which is my last thing, Ms. Harris, she keeps on talking about her prosecution in the past.
But let me give some people some insight.
There was a great journalist, Michael Rezendez for the Associated Press, two-time Pulitzer Award journalist, an investigative journalist.
He did a report that she never prosecuted the Catholic priests for sexual abuse.
Peter Schweitzer has a book.
He came out, Corruption in Politics.
Okay.
Y'all did four books now on Trump.
I've called in two times already asking to do a book on Biden.
Biden's not running this time.
One book was by the stenographer Michael McCormick.
The other book was by Ben Schreckinger.
Could y'all do the book on Peter Schweitzer finally?
Thank you, ma'am, and have a great day.
Okay, Tony there.
Josh in Illinois, supporting the vice president.
Hi, Josh.
Good morning, Greta.
Good morning.
If you could give me a few minutes, it's a really important subject for everyone, and nobody's really talked about it.
I want to talk about Social Security.
Okay.
On top of Freya, first off, anybody that makes over $165,000 after that $165,000, like Trump or Vivek or Yambaswami, anybody that's made over that amount doesn't pay into Social Security anymore of their income.
So they can make millions of dollars and only pay $165,000 worth of income into the Social Security.
Second of all, Trump wants to cut taxes on Social Security.
That's only a tax benefit for the rich.
Anybody right now that is collecting Social Security does not pay taxes on their Social Security.
All right, Josh, let's go to Lynette in Richmond, Virginia, supporting the former president.
Hello, Lynette.
Your turn.
Hi.
I was trying to get on when Jonathan Alter was there, but he's gone now.
But I'll still make my comment.
So he made a comment about Trump trying to get the Central Park V murdered or the death penalty, and I don't agree with that.
First of all, I'm African American.
I did vote for Trump this time.
This is my first time.
But anyway, I would hope, Greta, that anytime someone mentions Central Park V on your show, and even your other host, if they mention Central Park V, please ask them, did you read the article?
The article was saying that people that murder should get that, they should bring back, they should bring back the death penalty.
First of all, nobody was murdered.
So how did Donald Trump, by placing this ad, how is that saying that they should get the death penalty?
Nobody was murdered.
A lady was attacked in the park.
Nobody was murdered, but these five, for some reason, admitted to attacking her.
It comes out later, years later after they went to jail that they did not do this.
But the point is, Donald Trump was not trying to get them the death penalty.
He was.
Got it, Lynette, there with her remarks.
D D in Winder, Georgia, undecided, D D. Why are you still undecided?
Oh, I made a decision, but it won't be for either one of these guys.
Okay.
People have failed to use their insight and look into the history of what's going on and the track record of both of them.
And it's just abominable what's going on.
Let me go back to the joke that this so-called comedian made about Puerto Rico being a garbage island.
Well, let's go to the real garbage-floating islands or islands floating garbage.
Do you remember when all those barges that were pushed out of the Hudson River back into the ocean, carrying tons and tons of filthy garbage that is still floating around out there,
being ignored by these politicians that have the power to make those decisions to poison our atmosphere, our water, and now our minds.
All right, Dee Dee there in Georgia, undecided.
The candidates are making their closing arguments, hoping to convince people who are undecided to vote for them.
Let's listen to a little bit of what the vice president had to say at one of her rallies in North Carolina, part of her closing argument.
And here is my pledge to you.
As your president, I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to the challenges you face.
I am not looking to score political points.
I am looking to make progress.
And I pledge to you, I will listen to experts.
I will listen to those impacted by the decisions I make and to people who disagree with me.
everybody, okay.
You know, see, this is the thing, because we know we're actually fighting for a democracy.
And unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.
That was the vice president in North Carolina, part of her closing arguments, talking about unity with protesters there at her rally.
An update to our programming, our campaign 2024 coverage on C-SPAN.
Here is a list of what you can find on C-SPAN.
JD Vance in High Point, North Carolina at 10:30.
Kamal Harris, the vice president in Phoenix, Arizona at 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time.
Then at 6:30 p.m., we will have Donald Trump's remarks in Henderson, Nevada.
And then at 11:45 p.m. Eastern Time, we will bring you the vice president in Las Vegas for her rally there.
That's our coverage on C-SPAN.
You can go to our website, c-span.org, for our coverage on C-SPAN 2.
You can also go to our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, and you can see it all there.
For C-SPAN 2, 11 a.m. Eastern Time, we'll cover the Minnesota Governor in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
2 p.m. Eastern Time, we will have the former president's remarks in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Then we'll bring you the vice president's remarks in Reno, Nevada at 8:25 p.m. Eastern Time, and then the former president's rally in Phoenix, Arizona at 10:45 p.m. Eastern Time.
So you can be flipping back and forth between C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 throughout the day for our live 2024 campaign coverage, or find it on the go with our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW or online at c-span.org.
Rick in New York.
Rick, are you voting on Election Day?
I definitely am.
I was only considering not voting for at the time Biden and now Harris and Waltz only because they keep shipping 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and they kill 50,000 to 100,000 Palestinians that are innocent.
But I am going to vote for Harris because the other option is worse.
More people would die in a variety of different ways.
I have two quick things to add that would help our election a great deal.
I was looking at putting it on when the gentleman was talking about state ballots, but I don't know how to get this on a national ballot.
But if we can get rid of gerrymandering and the Electoral College, our country would be in great shape.
And that was my comments.
Thank you very much for having me.
All right, Rick.
Linda in Monroe, North Carolina.
Linda?
Hi, good morning.
What are your thoughts on campaign 2024?
Good morning.
Well, first off, that man, that reporter you had on this morning, I cannot even watch your stations when somebody like that comes on.
He is Fetriol.
He is spewing out lies.
And during the Trump campaign, I will tell you, I could at least buy groceries.
I'm 73, I'm not able to work.
And under the Biden-Harris campaign, I don't buy groceries anymore.
I feel like since they have been presidents, there has been a doom and a gloom that has just fell over most everybody, especially the senior citizens.
And the illegals that's coming across that border, killing our women and missing our children, and people are still going to vote for them.
I cannot believe it.
There are nothing.
Let me finish.
What Kamala Harris has to run on is a complete 180.
She's wishy-washy.
She is running on nothing but pop, porn, and abortion.
And if you want to say abortion, you might as well say murder.
All right, Linda.
I'm going to go to Glenn, who's in Madison, Illinois, supporting the Harris-Walls ticket.
Glenn, your comments, real quick.
Good morning.
It's got to be Harris all the way and get rid of Trump and that bunch.
Jimmy Vance is going to end up president when Trump kicks the market.
That's all.
Okay.
All right, Dennis in Martinsville, Virginia.
Let's go to you, Dennis.
Good morning.
I want to get right to the subject.
We need leadership back in the White House.
We don't have any leadership up there for the last four years.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, Biden was asked, Do you know what the plans are that Israel has for Iran?
He says, Yes, I do.
The next week, the newspaper says White House leaks plans that the IDF has for Iran.
And then his representative comes on and says, Well, look, we're sorry.
Oops, we'll investigate.
We have had prices that have been escalating for the last four years, and now they are trying to discourage those prices by raiding the strategic oil reserve.
We all know that groceries arrive at the grocery store by gasoline vehicles, and therefore the prices in the grocery store are higher.
Gasoline is ridiculous compared to $1.98 that I used to pay about four years ago.
All right.
I'm going to go to Lewis, who's in Kansas City, Missouri, supporting the vice president.
Hi, Lewis.
Hi, thank you.
I appreciate you having me on.
I'm here in the Midwest, and I'm very pro-Harris.
I'm excited because I think we should have had a woman president for a very long time now.
And I first want to start off by saying anyone that says they can't buy groceries now need to look at who was president before our current one.
A president helps support policies.
I can't think of one policy that Trump has named that is supportive.
I don't think he honestly knows how to read, but when you actually listen to what Harris is talking about, she goes down to the nitty-gritty and actually does the work and isn't focused on outside influences.
I feel like her stances are based on what she's listening to.
Okay.
Lewis there.
Let me get to Richard, who's in Massachusetts.
Hi, Richard.
Hello.
How do you plan to vote?
For Harris.
Okay, and why?
First of all, a couple of colleagues there.
They're talking about Social Security.
My Social Security, I've gotten about 19% raise in the last four years that keeps up with inflation.
I check for prices out there.
You know, I get things that are on sale.
I'm better off.
I have a CD.
Now I can get 5% on my CD.
Under Trump, I got 0% on my CD.
So I'm getting $5,000 more a year on that.
They don't mention that.
And things about climate, too.
Climate change seems to be out of the conversation.
Like North Carolina got wiped out by climate change.
Under Trump, you say, oh, it's a big hoax.
It's a big hoax.
It's a big fake.
Climate change is probably the biggest thing that's going to happen in our country in the next 10, 20 years.
And then we're talking about his tariffs.
You're going to put so many people out of work.
Truckers are going to be out of business because people can't afford things.
So half the product's going to be shipped across the, you know, you're not going to have half as many moves going across the country.
All right, Richard.
We just have a little bit of time left.
I want to get in Gilbert, who's in Toledo, Ohio, supporting the former president.
Hi, Gilbert.
Yes, yes.
Mike, I'm going to vote for him only because I'm using pure common sense.
I didn't pay that much groceries for the last four years.
I can choose from either one of them.
They both have spent four years controlling this country, and I enjoyed being able to save money while Trump was in office for four years.
And my father became citizen 58, and these immigrations is ridiculous without following the ABCs.
All right, Gilbert there with five days to go before Election Day.
We hope you continue to watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the candidates on the trail.
You can find it here on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 and online at c-SPAN.org, as well as our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now.
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We'll continue our coverage tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time, with another conversation with all of you here on The Washington Journal.
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Our live campaign coverage continues here on C-SPAN, beginning with Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, holding a town hall with voters at High Point University in North Carolina, scheduled to get underway in about 30 minutes at 10.30 a.m. Eastern.
Then Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns in Phoenix at 4.20, and we'll take you to Henderson, Nevada this evening at 6.30 for a rally with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Also tonight at about 1145, Vice President Harris will be joined by actress and singer Jennifer Lopez for an event near Las Vegas.