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The U.S. economy added 12,000 jobs in October as hiring slowed.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton likely reduced employment last month.
The job numbers were expected to be constrained by the Southeast hurricanes and several worker strikes.
The report comes just days before next week's historic election and a key Federal Reserve meeting.
The unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, according to the Labor Department.
This morning with us is Jonathan Alter.
He's the 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, 51, 49, 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 is 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, you know, 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 conmen.
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 of these people who worked with Trump, who are 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, you know, 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 Emmanuel, 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, that was 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 Pelosi's.
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 he was in the, 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 Rashan 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.
Okay, 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 Nazis, 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, you know, in terms of race, I, you know, 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 that, 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 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.
David, sorry to be long-winged.
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 pay over time and I do not like unions.
How is it now these unions go around talking about, and then the seven things, let me, you know, go to another point.
As he call it his thing, talking about, they call it weaving.
There's no thing in the English dictionary talk about weaving.
Other things about weaving.
You pull all these different statements, different things together.
The man is going to fuse.
Did you see Jonathan on a truck getting on the garbage truck?
He couldn't.
They do it.
They ought to help him.
The gun, his trunk is gone.
Sinality, besides sinality, that's affected the man is gone.
Okay, David, you've got several things there.
Jonathan Alternative.
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 know, 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 working 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 as 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 Homan 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.
And Musk now wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget.