EMMA: Hi. This is Emma (ph) in Franklin County, North Carolina, where I just voted in my first ever presidential election on the first day of early voting in North Carolina. This podcast was recorded at…
TAMARA KEITH, HOST:
12:07 p.m. on Friday, October 18.
EMMA: Things may have changed since then, but I will still be proudly wearing my I voted sticker. Enjoy the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: It’s happening.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Go, Emma. Go, Emma.
KEITH: Hey there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
SHIVARAM: I’m Deepa Shivaram. I also cover the White House.
ORDOÑEZ: And I’m Franco Ordoñez. I cover the campaign.
KEITH: And today on the show, our campaign roundup in a week where both presidential campaigns got a lot more frenetic. You can feel the mid-October energy out there. So Franco, let’s start with Donald Trump. He participated in two big town hall events this week, targeting voters he wants to do better with – one with Latino voters on Univision and one with women voters on Fox News. So tell us about that Univision town hall first and what stood out.
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, I mean, I think the Univision one was really some of the toughest questions that he has gotten in recent weeks. It was a town hall of Latino assembled undecided voters just outside of Miami. You know, he was asked about his plans for immigration. You know, he was asked about so many of his top officials from his first term in office not supporting him now, and why should the voters then support him? I mean, he ducked a lot of these questions really and kind of stuck largely to his campaign themes. He did say he fired a lot of people and that if they’re not good, he’s going to fire them, and of course they’re going to say bad things. But it is so many people, including, you know, his former vice president, obviously.
KEITH: There was this interesting exchange between a voter – Ramiro Gonzalez – and Trump about January 6 and the COVID response during this town hall. And I want to play it in full, and we’ll talk about it after.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RAMIRO GONZALEZ: I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote. Your – how do you say – action and maybe inaction during your presidency and the last few years was a little disturbing to me. You know, what happened during January 6 and the fact that, you know, you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol. Coronavirus – I thought we were – the public was misled during coronavirus, and that many more lives could have been saved if we would have – had been informed better.
And also, people in your administration who don’t support you – I’m curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you. So why would I want to support you? You know, your own vice president doesn’t want to support you now.
ENRIQUE ACEVEDO: Thank you, Ramiro.
DONALD TRUMP: So the people that don’t support are a very small portion. We have a tremendous – about 97% of the people in the administration support me. But because it’s me somebody doesn’t support, they get a little publicity. The vice president – I disagree with him on what he did. I totally disagreed with him on what he did. Very importantly, you had hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me. They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came.
Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said peacefully and patriotically, nothing done wrong at all, nothing done wrong. And action was taken, strong action. Ashli Babbitt was killed. Nobody was killed. There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down. This was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows. But that was a day of love.
KEITH: Now, Trump downplaying January 6 is not new. But I’m curious what the response was like to this from people in the room.
ORDOÑEZ: You know, I found it very interesting because especially when Trump said that this was a day of love – talking about January 6 – you could see kind of the expressions on people’s in the audience faces just change – eyebrows raised. Gonzalez, his head kind of like shifted to the side. It was very clear that, you know, this was not being received, I think, the way that Trump wanted to receive.
I mean, Trump said that nothing was done wrong, and we all know that a lot was done wrong. Hundreds of people have been convicted of crimes. Trump, you know, he called his supporters to Washington. In Washington, he told his supporters to fight like hell. His version of the events since then is just so out of touch with reality of what actually happened that day.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, and this is a clip, I will say, that the Harris campaign has been blasting out on social media, specifically that question from Ramiro Gonzalez, that facial expression change, Franco, that you talk about. Like, they have clipped it. It is on Instagram. It is on Twitter. They are really pushing it out because, keep in mind, these are some of the exact same voters that Harris is trying to go after, right? And say, like, hey, you might have voted Republican in the past. You might have even voted for Donald Trump, like, four years ago, but we still think that there’s a space for you in this party this time around, especially if you have that, like, you know, kind of dissatisfied feeling with Trump and he’s not giving you the answers that you’re maybe looking for.
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, and I’ll just add that Gonzalez was interviewed later on Spanish language television, and he said that he was not convinced and that Trump was not winning his vote back with that answer.
KEITH: Let’s talk about immigration because that is a key issue that Trump and Republicans have been leaning into this election year. Trump has frequently used racist language towards minority groups in his campaign speeches – talking about poisoning the blood, for instance. Was that a factor in this town hall?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, I mean, it was a big factor. I mean, it was a – this was one of the things that he pressed on repeatedly. Now, some of the questions also asked about immigration, asking him for specifics about his plan. Who was going to pick crops if all these undocumented immigrants were deported? There was a farmer who, you know, talked about how he spent decades of his life picking fruits and vegetables and – from his own labor. Who would do that if it wasn’t going to be undocumented immigrants?
You know, Trump basically, you know, deflected. He didn’t answer that question directly. He just talked about the threat from criminals. He made more false claims that the Biden administration is allowing in hundreds and thousands of criminals, terrorists, murderers, into the United States. You know, Trump was also asked about the Haitian immigrants in Ohio and whether, you know, he really, really believes that they are eating cats and dogs. And, you know, Trump, you know, just said that those are the reports, and that he’s just spreading – you know, just echoing the reports. But of course, the press has reported these claims are not true.
KEITH: Franco, I want to turn now to the Fox News town hall that had just women in the audience. And this comes as reproductive rights is still a top-tier issue in this election. There could be a record gender gap between how men and women vote. And Trump was asked about his position on IVF and what he would say to women who are afraid they might lose access to it because of abortion restrictions.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I got a call from Katie Britt, a young – just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama. She’s a senator. And she called me up, like, emergency, emergency, because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down. A judge ruled. And she said, friends of mine came up to me, and they were – oh, they were so angry. I didn’t even know they were going – you know, she – they were – it’s fertilization. I didn’t know they were even involved in – nobody talks about it. They don’t talk about it. But now that they can’t do it, she said, I was attacked. In a certain way, I was attacked. And I said, explain IVS very – IVF, very quickly. And within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, no, no, we’re totally in favor of IVF. I came out with a statement within an hour – a really powerful statement – with some experts, really powerful. And we went totally in favor – the Republican Party, the whole party.
ORDOÑEZ: It was interesting because Trump really wanted to talk about IVF. He actually called himself the, quote, “father of IVF.” I mean, he’s really trying to rebrand himself as a champion of women’s rights.
KEITH: And Franco, obviously Donald Trump did not invent IVF. He had to have it explained to him.
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, that audience was a very friendly audience to him. It was in a part of Georgia that is very red. You could hear in the audience that, you know, they’re very supportive of him. So it was kind of a warm audience. But he has some big challenges with women voters, and he has really been pushing to try to kind of change that script, talking about – also about, you know, being the protector of women. Recent weeks in Pennsylvania, he said that he was going to save women from fear and loneliness, and that soon they would no longer have to think about abortion.
KEITH: And in terms of IVF, he came out with a policy pronouncement, saying that either private insurance companies or the government would pay for everyone who wanted IVF to get IVF, which actually created some divisions among Republicans and in particular religious Republicans, right, Franco?
ORDOÑEZ: So, yeah, he actually also spoke to a Catholic TV network where he, you know, supported the idea or at least was talking about the idea of religious exemptions for IVF. This is not a fully fleshed-out policy statement on IVF. This is purely a political statement. I just want to be clear.
KEITH: And Deepa, much like his comments on January 6, Harris immediately came out and responded to this father of IVF thing.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, I mean, I will say there’s kind of like this rapid response thing going on with anything Trump says, especially when it’s encroaching on, like, a bloc of voters that Harris, you know, has a lot of support from – right? – which is women, which is suburban women. And so when he said that comment about, you know, claiming to be the father of IVF, the very next morning, when we were on the tarmac, we were ready, you know, to take off on Air Force Two, she came up to speak with the press and said that she wanted to talk about Trump’s comments from before. She called the comments bizarre, and she kind of used similar rhetoric that we’ve heard from her before, calling abortion restrictions all over the country Trump abortion bans.
And she said something that kind of stood out to me, which is to say, you know, don’t get distracted by his words. Like, look at his actions. And that’s been something that I think she’s really hammered home. But in a moment like this, when we’re just weeks out from voting ending, and Trump is clearly trying to get back some of those margins that he’s lost with women voters particularly, I mean, this issue is the issue for his campaign to win over some of those women – particularly white women – who have often voted for Trump in the majority. So she really was quick to respond to that in a way that wasn’t just, like, a statement coming out from the campaign or putting out something on social media, but for her to come up and gaggle with reporters, I think, to specifically talk about that was really interesting.
KEITH: All right, we are going to take a quick break and more in a bit.
And we’re back. And let’s turn now to Vice President Harris. Deepa, she sat for a testy interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier. And we’ll get to some highlights of that in a bit. But just first off, the Harris campaign is making a concerted effort to show up in places that they normally aren’t, like Fox News. So what’s the play there?
SHIVARAM: I mean, yeah, this is an election – as we have said so many times on this podcast – that is going to come down to the margins, right? – which means that Kamala Harris can’t just focus on turning out her own base voters, trying to drum up support from her base. She has to expand that bubble, and that means going to conservatives. That means going to independent voters who wanted someone like a Nikki Haley or literally anyone but Trump to be the nominee this time around.
And that’s come in, I would say, many forms for the Harris campaign. I mean, I think it comes rhetorically in ways that she has talked about, for example, owning a gun and really leaned into that kind of rhetoric, or talking about her faith and God and things like that. And also, it comes across in the time that she spends on the trail. So she held a rally earlier this week with Republicans. And then she’s doing interviews like this on Fox News, an outlet where she will reach a lot of voters that wouldn’t probably be watching her. So it really is, I think, proof that the Harris campaign is trying to push, push, push for as many voters as they can bring into the fold as possible, even voters who maybe, you know, will definitely never vote for her but will hear her probably maybe for the first time or one of the first few times in her own words rather than in the words that, you know, Trump would describe her as.
KEITH: And I think, arguably, the exchange that is going to be remembered most from this contentious interview – the most contentious part of it – was where Vice President Harris referenced something that Trump had said on “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” That is a Fox News show. And let’s first hear what Trump did say.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES WITH MARIA BARTIROMO”)
TRUMP: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country – by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages – they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they are the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big – and it should be very easily handled by – if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military because they can’t let that happen.
KEITH: So Baier then said, Fox had asked Trump about this line in the Women’s Town Hall, let’s hear a clip. And so here is that exchange between Baier and Kamala Harris.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRET BAIER: We asked that question to the former president today. Harris Faulkner had a town hall, and this is how he responded.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I heard about that. They were saying I was, like, threatening. I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. He was the greatest gangster.
HARRIS FAULKNER: All right.
TRUMP: No, it’s true.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: No, but think of it. It’s called weaponization of government. It’s a terrible thing.
BAIER: So…
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated. When he’s speaking about the American people – that’s not what you just showed.
BAIER: Well, he was asked about that specific…
HARRIS: No, no, no. That’s not what you just showed, in all fairness…
BAIER: No, no, no.
HARRIS: …And respect to you.
BAIER: I’ve been telling you, that was the question that we asked him.
HARRIS: You didn’t show that, and here’s the bottom line. He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.
This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America.
BAIER: He’s quoted in the Bob Woodward book that way, yes.
KEITH: And Baier has since said that they played the wrong clip because, in fact, earlier in Trump’s answer in that Faulkner town hall, he also doubled down on the idea of Democrats being the enemy within and named Congressman Adam Schiff and also Nancy Pelosi.
SHIVARAM: But also, you know, something new that Harris has been doing this past week is repeating these lines about, like, you know, what Trump has been saying. She’s taking that to the campaign trail, especially in these events where she’s doing with Republicans.
And she’s also doing this thing where she has these big TV screens at her rallies. She’s only done it, like, twice now. But I think it might keep coming up where she says, you know, Trump is a threat. I keep telling people to watch his rallies, to listen to what he’s saying, to take him seriously. But in case you haven’t, here’s what he has been saying. And she says, roll the tape. And this huge screen of Donald Trump’s, like, latest quips have been rolling at her own rallies. And so she’s really taking these final weeks, I think, to literally shift people’s attention and say, you know, this is what he’s saying, and this is who it’s going to impact.
And the people she’s been kind of naming recently – you know, and she’s also reminding her crowds, remember who else he’s gone after. He’s gone after journalists. He’s gone after judges. He’s gone after election officials who, you know, haven’t given him the fake votes that he’s been looking for in the past. And so that’s kind of what she’s been really, really trying to hone in on as Trump is saying these things and all these various interviews and events that Franco has been talking about. She, at the same time, is saying, hey, did you catch what Trump said? And that’s been a real focus for her the last week.
KEITH: This was part of an effort to reach out to Republicans. Harris earlier this week was in the Philly suburbs doing an event with Republicans, in particular, 100-plus Republicans who have endorsed her. Who was there? What was that like?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, it was a very different event than her typical kind of rallies where she’s got, you know, thousands of people showing up and she does her regular stump. This was in a historic place actually, at Washington Crossing, which is where George Washington, like, crossed the Delaware River. And so the event venue was this barn. It was very quaint, Pennsylvania. It was outdoors. It was fall. And you could see the river in the background, and so it was, like, this white barn-like structure that she stood in front of with this big red sign that said Country Over Party. And it was kind of similar to the event that she had done with Liz Cheney where, you know, Liz Cheney came out and introduced the vice president.
This time around, though, instead of just one Republican who’s a notable endorsement, she had about, like, two dozen former electeds or current electeds, who were standing on stage with her – so that included people like former Congressman Denver Riggleman from Virginia, former Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, also from Virginia – all these other kind of elected officials who have been staunch Republicans in the past, some who have even supported Trump in the past, saying, you know, we’re done. We’re done here, and we’re standing literally with the Vice President onstage.
I thought it was interesting because the two people who introduced Harris at that event – they’re farmers, they’re in Pennsylvania. And it was a husband and wife, and the way the husband kind of introduced her was saying that, you know, his wife came to her senses earlier than he did, and he voted for Donald Trump twice, in 2016 and 2020, and she only voted for him in 2016.
And so one thing that was really interesting from that event was just the range, I think, of folks onstage who are now standing with Harris. And then Harris, in her remarks, also very, very pointedly saying, if you have voted for Trump in the past, if you have voted for Trump or supported Trump up until yesterday, you know, you still have a space in this party and in this election, and we are, you know, kind of here with open arms, which is really interesting as she tries to do the whole super big tent thing, you could say and really, really try to expand because this is such a tight race.
KEITH: Yeah, and I have no idea whether this will work.
SHIVARAM: We don’t. We simply do not know, but the bottom line for someone like Kamala Harris is that she has to do everything, right? And that means doing events that are outreach to Black men voters that she was doing at the beginning of this week, all the way up to this end of the week, where she’s doing outreach specifically to Republicans and independents and women and just that wide, wide, wide range that she has to reach, again, with just, you know, 18 days to go.
KEITH: All right. So let’s talk about what we can expect in the next week or so as we are in the home stretch. Franco, what are you watching for? Where’s Trump going to go?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, it’s crunch time. And he’s going to be barnstorming across swing states. Today, he’s going to be in Detroit, Michigan. Saturday, tomorrow, he’s going to be in Pennsylvania. Sunday, he’s going to be in Pennsylvania. Then he’s going to do a couple rallies in North Carolina. He’s going to go to Georgia. He’s going to go to Las Vegas. And then in a week, he’s actually going to be doing a big, big rally, something he’s long wanted to do. He’s holding a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.
KEITH: Bucket list, man. Bucket list.
ORDOÑEZ: Bucket list.
KEITH: And Deepa, what about Harris?
SHIVARAM: So Harris is going to be doing a number of events rallying with the Obamas next week. And she’s also doing a town hall with CNN that was kind of effectively the date of what could have potentially been a second debate between her and Donald Trump. That did not come to fruition, so she’s doing a town hall instead. And then, you know, probably hitting up – I don’t know – one of the seven swing states or maybe all seven of them. Again, crunch time, as Franco was saying.
And you’re really seeing on Harris’ end – I mean, she had said a while back, you know, it’s all about the grind from here on out. And at that point, she was maybe doing, like, two, three events – three, four events a week.
KEITH: Yeah.
SHIVARAM: And now I feel like we have definitely hit a point where, like, seven days a week, she is pretty much on the road and, at this point, hitting multiple states in a day.
KEITH: Rocket boosters are on. OK. We’re going to take one more break, and when we get back, Can’t Let It Go.
And we are back. And it’s time for Can’t Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise, I will go first. And what I can’t let go of is that early voting started this week in Georgia. And Jimmy Carter, the former president, voted by mail, got his ballot in. He recently turned 100 years old. And his family said, and now he wants to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris. He succeeded.
SHIVARAM: That’s really exciting for him, honestly.
KEITH: Yeah. I mean, like, people are voting, including centenarian former presidents.
ORDOÑEZ: Yes. Yes.
KEITH: Deepa, what can’t you let go of?
SHIVARAM: OK. So mine is in a totally different direction, but I think, Tam, you’ll appreciate it because I know that you too are a fan of one Olivia Rodrigo.
KEITH: Oh, yes.
SHIVARAM: I don’t know if you guys saw the clip of this, but she’s on tour right now. And she was in Melbourne, Australia.
ORDOÑEZ: Oh, yeah. I saw that.
SHIVARAM: And at the beginning of her show, she, like, you know, was, like, how are you doing, Melbourne? Like, she comes out on stage. And you know the, like, stage – there must be, like, an actual term for this. I just don’t know what it is. But, like, basically, the trapdoor situations on the stage – and, like, someone got in trouble for this, I would imagine, but, like, they didn’t close it. And so there’s just this…
KEITH: Oh, my God.
SHIVARAM: …Big hole on the stage. And Olivia Rodrigo was, like, running around doing her thing, and she fell through the hole.
KEITH: Oh.
SHIVARAM: Yes, it’s crazy.
ORDOÑEZ: Tam, she’s OK. Tam, she’s OK.
KEITH: Oh, OK.
SHIVARAM: Yes. And she, like, falls through it, and I was so shook. Like, you know when you’re watching a video, just, like, scrolling on Instagram or something, and, like, you kind of just, like, cringe ’cause it just feels, like, very – not like you’re there, but, like, it was such a moment that I was like, oh, my God. Like, I think I just said it out loud. I was like, is she good? And she falls through the stage.
KEITH: Wow.
SHIVARAM: And she’s so graceful about it. Like, I don’t even know how you’d be graceful about falling through a hole.
ORDOÑEZ: I was just very impressed with how…
SHIVARAM: Yes.
ORDOÑEZ: …She handled that. She was like…
SHIVARAM: She just immediately was like, I’m OK. It’s fine. Like, sometimes, there’s just a hole in the stage, guys. And then that was…
KEITH: Oh, my gosh.
ORDOÑEZ: Sometimes, there’s just a hole in the stage.
SHIVARAM: There was – that was the beginning of the…
ORDOÑEZ: That’s Australia for you.
SHIVARAM: That was the beginning of the concert. She still performed a whole concert after that.
KEITH: Wow.
SHIVARAM: Yes. Wild.
KEITH: Wow.
SHIVARAM: Shoutout to Olivia Rodrigo.
KEITH: I was…
SHIVARAM: If I fell through a hole on the stage, I simply could not do that.
KEITH: Franco, why can’t you let go of?
ORDOÑEZ: So mine is one for the Trekkies out there.
KEITH: Ooh.
ORDOÑEZ: Scientists…
KEITH: Live long and prosper.
ORDOÑEZ: I know. Everything is a metaphor with “Star Trek,” isn’t it? I mean, scientists have now found seven new species of frogs in Madagascar, and they are all being named after “Star Trek” captains – Captain Picard, Captain Kirk, Captain Archer – and the reason is because instead of croaking, they do this high-pitch sound, kind of a whistling sound that the scientists say sounds like some of the communicators on “Star Trek.”
KEITH: No way.
SHIVARAM: The scientists would say that (laughter).
ORDOÑEZ: Of course the scientists are Trekkies.
SHIVARAM: That’s kind of awesome.
KEITH: Love it – OK, well, this has brought me so much joy, and that is a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelli Wessinger. Special thanks this week to Kelsey Snell. I’m Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
SHIVARAM: I’m Deepa Shivaram. I also cover the White House.
ORDOÑEZ: And I’m Franco Ordoñez. I’m covering the campaign.
KEITH: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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