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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Harris And Obama Question Trump's Fitness, Competence; Harris, Trump Holding Dueling Rallies In Michigan Tonight; Trump Declares Manhood Is Under Attack; "NewsNight" Discusses What Goes Through The Minds Of Undecided Voters. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired October 18, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, same place, same time. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris share the swing state spotlight. Harris sharpens her attacks.
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Come on. If you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions.
PHILLIP: And Trump turns to testosterone.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Manhood.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
TRUMP: Under attack.
PHILLIP: Plus, the future meets the past. Barack Obama is on the campaign trail a week after lighting the match on a national conversation about black men and their votes.
Also, no laughing matter --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The undecided voter, are you kidding me?
PHILLIP: Comedians joke about a serious question. Who hasn't made up their mind with only 18 days until America votes?
And a bribe for votes? Elon Musk offers cold, hard cash to voters while peddling fiction on the campaign trail.
Live at the table, Leigh McGowan, Shermichael Singleton, Chuck Rocha, Jim Geraghty and Roy Wood Jr.
With 18 days to go, Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abbey Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about, stamina. Donald Trump used to brag about it, but now there are some open questions on the campaign trail about if Trump has enough battery to make it to the finish line of this election, or if he'll run out of juice before November 5th.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Now, he is ducking debates and canceling interviews. Come on.
His own campaign team recently said it is because of exhaustion. Well, if you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world. Come on. Come on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Trump, of course, says that rumors of his exhaustion are greatly exaggerated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: What event did I cancel? I haven't canceled. She doesn't go to any events. She's a loser. She doesn't go to any events. She didn't even show up for the Catholics last night at the hotel. It was insulting.
I've gone 48 days now without a rest, and I've got that loser who doesn't have the energy of a rabbit. Tell me when you've seen me take even a little bit of a rest. Not only am I not -- I'm not even tired. I'm really exhilarated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I think he meant the energy of a turtle, a tortoise. I think that's how --
JIM GERAGHTY, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL REVIEW: The other thing that's (INAUDIBLE) is known for being very energetic. That's goes it's going on for a long time. Yes.
PHILLIP: He has backed out of five, by our count, events, interviews, 60 Minutes, CNBC, NBC. He did Fox and Friends instead, it looks like. But he also ditched an NRA event. ,So it's not even just that he's kind of dodging maybe tough interviews and the NRA is a very friendly crowd.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, interviews. But what he's not dodging are actual campaign events. He's had --
PHILLIP: I mean, except for the NRA --
SINGLETON: He had 21 campaign events last month compared to Vice President Harris' 13. That's a significant number. I went on his website today to just see what events he has upcoming over the next five days. I counted eight, nine events where the former president will be. Governor walz had seven events last month compared to J.D. Vance's 14 events.
So, the Trump-Vance ticket, they're out there talking to their voters. Maybe they're skipping a couple of interviews. I think it's less important to sit down with journalists and more important to be out there rallying your base. This is going to be a turnout election. I think they have the right strategy.
CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Look, it's something if it gets a little tired. When a man gets to a certain age, you get a little tired. If you all want to swap him out, there's 18 days left. We've done this before and you could just put in President Vance.
But, look, at the end of the day, what she's doing is a master class as a strategist on. Exactly, she knows what she's doing and she's putting a little bait out there. She knows just how to push his button. And instead of him talking, as you say, about the price of gas and groceries, he's talking about his stamina. That means she's winning because she's making him talk about an issue he wants her to talk about it, she wants him to talk about it.
SINGLETON: Well, why does she have less campaign events last month, though?
ROCHA: You don't take as many as you get through it.
LEIGH MCGOWAN, SOCIAL MEDIA HOST AND CONTENT CREATOR, POLITICSGIRL: Because she did way more interviews, dude.
ROCHA: Hers is only 15 minutes long and his is an hour and a half.
GERAGHTY: You know, the problem was, he used up all of his energy in that convention speech, that I believe clocked in at like 3 hours, 42 minutes or something like that. You know who's laughing right now? Jeb Bush. He's supposedly Mr. Low Energy.
[22:05:01]
Look, he's a 78-year-old man. Running for president, as much as Kamala has offered (ph), he has a really difficult job. You are constantly on the road. You know, he says he has been doing it for 48 some straight days. Yes, it is a very busy schedule. When he was president, remember the amount of stretches he would have, executive time, which generally amounted to raging on Twitter and kibitzing on the phone or something like that. This probably is starting to wear on him. He's not the same guy he was back in 2016 when he was in his late 60s.
So, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he actually is tired. It's not the most unreasonable thing in the world, but it's not like the presidency gets any easier from here on out.
MCGOWAN: Yes. But I'm tired and I'm not running for president and I don't have to be the president after. I think we have to understand that like what Abby said is true, you know, he doesn't have enough battery to make it to Election Day. Does he have -- he doesn't currently have enough battery to make it through an entire speech.
He stood on stage this week for 40 minutes listening to his own playlist and we need to talk about how that's not normal. And I think we also need to talk about the fact that when are we going to pretend -- stop pretending that this is the real candidate? We're just trying to get him across the finish line, and then, to your point, we're going to put in President J.D. Vance, because there is no way that this man who can't make it through an entire speech, who keeps canceling things, is going to be the person that does four more years, right? There's no way. We have to get really serious about who the real leader is going to be, and it's going to be the person --
PHILLIP: We wouldn't be talking about this -- but we wouldn't be talking about this, Shermichael, if it weren't for some of the things that have happened in recent weeks, one of which, Leigh was just talking about that incident.
SINGLETON: Maybe he loves Ave Maria, I don't know.
PHILLIP: He does a lot.
MCGOWAN: Two versions --
PHILLIP: Of that song, we know that. Okay, but just listen to some of what was going on today. He was on Fox News. This is extremely friendly. You know, this particular show is just like a couch full of Trump fans. And here are all the different things that he got into in this interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Lincoln was probably a great president. Although I've always said, why wasn't that settled? You know, I'm a guy that it doesn't make sense, we had a civil war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, half the country left before he got there.
TRUMP: I was so amazed that Harvey Weinstein got schlonged (ph). He got hit as hard as you can get hit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's say you have a liberal city, let's say it's Los Angeles, San Diego, and they just decide they, oh, we're going to get rid of that history, we got new history. This is America built off the backs of slaves on stolen land, and that curriculum comes in.
TRUIMP: Then we don't send them money.
Get your fat husband off the couch. Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I live on a farm in Massachusetts. What's your favorite farm animal?
TRUMP: I love cows. But if we go with Kamala, you won't have any cows anymore because you're not allowed -- I don't want to ruin this kid's day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCGOWAN: If I may --
SINGLETON: I'm going to have a sip of water on that one.
MCGOWAN: If you --
PHILLIP: Shermichael is going to.
MCGOWAN: He's going to drink, and I'm going to say, if you criticize me, I'm going to shut down your news station. If I don't like what you're teaching, I'm going to defund your schools. He just told a kid that Kamala's going to get rid of all cows. Like this is not realistic, what we're doing here. That is not a leader of the free world, that man that's calling people losers and liars and I'm going to shut down your school if I don't like what you're teaching.
This shouldn't be what we're all saying like, huh, this is some reasonable political dialogue.
SINGLETON: Well, yes, Leigh, I take the point on shutting down schools. I mean, clearly we shouldn't do that. We have an education issue in this country. But I do wonder if the response to the kid was a bit hyperbole, maybe the former president was trying to be funny. Some folks, I think the laughs or maybe not.
PHILLIP: But the other things, I mean --
SINGLETON: Well, some of the other things, I mean, like the Lincoln thing. I mean, he's brought this up before.
PHILLIP: I think the critique is that it's erratic.
SINGLETON: Well, I understand that. But Trump has always been erratic, Abby. There's nothing new under the sun, I suppose.
MCGOWAN: That's what I'm saying.
GERAGHTY: It's tough to get a baseline of what Trump's normal level of erraticism is, and whether he's getting worse as he ages. I assume he's just never caught that Ken Burns series on the Civil War, on why war had to be fought.
PHILLIP: I think part of it is also that he has long insisted that he was a better president than Lincoln. And so, this is --
SINGLETON: Maybe better than George Washington.
ROCHA: Let me talk about something that was missed and well, all the clips that you played to something that was missing. That was a great strategic opportunity, again, as a strategist that he really whiffed on. There's somebody watching Fox News and that's a bunch of Nikki Haley supporters. And they literally served him up a softball to say something nice about Nikki Haley, and he could not help himself. And he went down a rabbit hole of talking about how he whooped her in the primaries, and she's no good.
Let me say one thing. She got 76, 000 votes in that primary in Wisconsin, and Joe Biden won that state by less than 20,000. Every one of those votes are like gold, because as a strategist, they vote like it's their job. They vote in a Republican primary. I promise you they're coming back to vote in a general.
PHILLIP: It's an important point about the strategy or lack thereof in a lot of this. I mean, here's a little bit more from another interview that he did that was -- this comment was about the January 6th attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They keep saying it's an insurrection. Why doesn't she tell that story?
TRUMP: It's a rigged deal. The whole thing is rigged.
They really won in the Supreme Court, okay, the Fischer case and the various cases.
[22:10:02]
Why are they still being held? Nobody's ever been treated like this. Nobody's ever -- maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. But, you know, they were held, too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Japanese --
GERAGHTY: That's a bit of history he picked up. That's the thing that he remembers.
PHILLIP: There's a lot of bad history happening.
GERAGHTY: Look, there's something now reflexive in Trump, that if you say to him, wasn't January 6th bad? He will not only reject that, he will insist, no, actually it was the greatest thing that ever happened. It's the most wonderful thing. It's not just a rejection of the premise. It takes it completely upside down. And, of course, it's absurd. And, of course, you end up with, you know, and they're going to ban cows. And it ends up in this bizarre, you know, fantasy.
But you notice that like if he's getting more erratic, it has not hurt him in the polls yet. We have not seen any in these seven key swing states. He's still neck-and-neck. So, you'd think that there'd be this recoiling of the American public, and it has not happened so far.
ROCHA: But there's a reason why he's not at 58 or 57, and he should be if gasoline was double the price and bread was double the price four years ago. And the reason that he's not -- I do focus groups in all these states every day because there's a group of voters, I know we're going to get to swing voters later, who don't like Donald Trump. They want to vote for him because they like their tax cut. They liked the things that his policy, some of them like what he did with the Supreme Court, but they just don't like him and they don't think he's a serious candidate.
That's why you see the vice president doing what she's doing on stuff because she's trying to say, trust me, at least I'm an adult and I'll give you an audience even though they may prefer his policy.
SINGLETON: Chuck, just to offer a different perspective, I take the point, but one could also ask why hasn't the vice president increased her margins by five, six, seven, eight points if she was making that critique that you just made about the former president.
ROCHA: (INAUDIBLE).
SINGLETON: But it dropped, right? And you're looking at a city like Pennsylvania, look at Wisconsin, very competitive, Michigan, I just saw on Kaitlan Collins' show, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell saying, you know, this is going to be a very, very tight race. There's no clue if the vice president's going to be able to pull off a victory there, despite the critique you just gave of the former president.
ROCHA: Shermichael, every time you're on this stage, every time you're on CNN, you are stale message. I watch you talk about the economy, you talk about gas prices, you talk about immigration.
SINGLETON: Stick to the issues.
ROCHA: Exactly right. This candidate don't do that. That's why they're where they're at in this election and I think that's why she wins because that's why he's going off the rails.
MCGOWAN: I also think that there's a new silent majority. I think there was a lot of people in 2016 that just didn't tell pollsters that they were voting for Trump. And I think there's a lot of people in this time that just aren't telling pollsters that they won't vote for Trump. Because they're talking with their friends, they quietly don't want to be alienated from their churches, they don't want to be alienated from their friend groups, but they cannot vote for the man, but they're also not going to tell anyone they're not voting for the man. I think there is a new silent majority out there.
PHILLIP: We'll touch on pretty much all the things that you guys just mentioned, more ahead on this show on all of those topics.
Coming up next, Donald Trump insists that manhood is under attack. A special guest, Roy Wood, Jr., is going to join us in our fifth seat. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, he's going to fight for your right to be a man? Well, Donald Trump is now making manhood. Machismo, the patriarchy, part and parcel of his closing argument to voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Well, actually, manhood is under attack. I see things that are so beautiful. And the next day I see they're knocking the hell out of somebody for doing something that a day before I said, what a wonderful thing.
You know, the other thing under attack is religion. Religion was like the glue that kept this country together and so many people are mocking it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us now in our fifth seat is the host of CNN's Have I Got News for You, Roy Wood Jr.
Roy, so here we are in the last three weeks of the campaign and finally we are at the closing message. This is about what it means to be a man.
ROY WOOD JR., CNN HOST: Yes, finally, men get a time to be mentioned, right at the time that black men seem to be the issue that Kamala is supposedly having. I think that Trump does a good job of creating something for people to be afraid of, so that if that's not enough to scare you to vote, what about this, what about this, oh, you're all under attack, men are being under attack. He did not go into any more details about what it was. I have know -- I don't remember the program, but earlier this week he mentioned that Harvey Weinstein got jammed up and he didn't really go into detail on that in the sense of Harvey Weinstein's got a raw deal in terms of the criminal trial. But always seems to be a new fear law to throw on the fire of why you should vote for me.
As a man, I want to know what's under attack. I'm feeling good.
PHILLIP: Men have been oppressed for a long time. I mean, look, maybe he's right, though, that this is really what his campaign is about.
SINGLETON: But look at the trends. I mean, since the end of President Obama's second term, you've seen men slowly leaving the Democratic Party. I think there is an argument to make that some Democratic intellectuals have talked a lot about men being more vulnerable when I think men naturally are more stoic, more competitive. I think a lot of men will look at --
PHILLIP: Are they?
SINGLETON: Well, I think so. I think a lot of conservative men will look at the Democratic Party --
PHILLIP: I don't want to get into like a manhood debate with you. I'm just saying --
SINGLETON: No, I know, but, Abby, I think the critique would be from Republicans that Democrats are arguing for a new manliness. And Republicans will say, no, we are protecting traditional masculinity, and I think there's an argument to be made there. MCGOWAN: I would say as someone who's married to a man and I'm raising a man and I'm not a man, first of all, I think it's hilarious we're talking about manhood when women are the one being attacked across the country. I find that hilarious. We're the ones whose rights are under attack. But, secondly, I think it goes back to how you define a man. You're talking about men are naturally more stoic.
I think that we have bred out of men a lot of their instincts that they have when they're young.
[22:20:02]
When you're young, you have these close friendships, you have all of these relationships with other people, and then as you get older, you're supposed to keep it all in and keep it all together. And that's probably why men end up shooting people, shooting themselves, why there's an epidemic of loneliness.
There is a different way for men to react in our world that is not so alone, that is not so stoic, that is not so buttoned up. And we could open up the world to that. And then we would maybe not be having to talk about the death of manhood when we would say, okay, well, how is Donald Trump defining manhood, as bullying people, as demeaning women, as raping women, because this is the kind of manhood that he represents.
SINGLETON: I take the point about the increases in suicide, but let's be honest, men take risks that women respectfully don't typically take. And I'm just being honest. You think about -- no, I'm being honest. You think about men in conflict. More men have died in wars than women.
ROCHA: But he's talking about taking risks.
MCGOWAN: Women have been in wars for a really long time.
SINGLETON: Some may disagree with me on this, but those are my views.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Chuck.
ROCHA: This is a big issue across campaigns everywhere. There's something that's a fact, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, that there is a big gap between the way men and women are voting this year. It's almost like when she was in elementary school and it was boys against girls, or it was skins against shirts. Like that's what it's come down to now.
And as a non-college educated Mexican redneck from East Texas, I can promise you, there's a lot of anxiety out there in the electorate. And what Donald Trump has figured out again, we talk about how stupid he can be and stays off message, he does know how to poke his finger at something. Like Roy said, he don't give you any details. He just says nothing about to go, well, things are a little more expensive. I ain't getting no better. He ain't talking to men, right?
WOOD: Which goes to the point that as a man, you want to feel useful, you want to feel like you have an opportunity to provide. Well, then that's a job issue. That's an economic issue. That's not a gender attack issue. And so, if Trump can get you thinking strictly in gender economics, because even as a man, if you wanted to be expressive, if you wanted to go to therapy, what does it cost? You can't afford it. And even if you want it to go, that's a health care issue.
So, if you want to talk about this issue of loneliness and men feeling alone and not being able to provide and you can't get a job and you can't get a date because you're ugly, these are all tied to other issues --
ROCHA: (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: Okay. I mean, you know what, today, Barack Obama was in Arizona and you mentioned Latino men. You are one of them. He has to speak to that audience there. They're drifting toward Trump, no doubt. But he also was speaking directly to this issue about what manhood looks like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I've noticed this, especially with some men who think Trump's behavior, the bullying and the putting people down and acting all, you know, pretend tough guy, that somehow that's a sign of strength. I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is, never has been.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: You know, there's a version of masculinity that is -- it's fine. I mean, it's what Shermichael talked about, that there are plenty of men who view themselves that way, and then there's a toxic version.
SINGLETON: That's not fine.
PHILLIP: Right? Like there is definitely a toxic version, and it does seem like Trump doesn't mind speaking to that too.
GERAGHTY: Now, I was going to speak up earlier, but I was being stoic over here.
MCGOWAN: Good for you.
GERAGHTY: So, you could have a really, really good, productive conversation about men leaving the workforce, able bodied, perfectly healthy, and, you know, not working, either, you know, collecting benefits or playing video games, whatever they're doing, not getting married, the birth rate going down, the entire process of maturing and becoming a full grown, responsible man, and I think that marriage and fatherhood are practically irreplaceable portions of that. We could have a real good conversation about that.
Donald Trump, the thrice married, notorious philanderer, cover of the New York Post, best sex I ever had, that he was linking himself to John Barron, not the guy, four bankruptcies, this is not a role model of responsible living. If Donald Trump hadn't been born, you know, and inherited an enormous amount of wealth, the terrible decisions that he has made with his life would have caught up with him.
But when you are born on third base, you have this enormous advantage. So he can't be a good role model for manhood. He can't be a role model. He's kind of an anti-role model. He's kind of what you don't want your kids to grow up to be.
PHILLIP: There is a gender issue, Chuck talked about this earlier too, you know, women, young women are two to one in favor of Harris over Trump. So, even if Trump is going after younger men, David Plouffe, was on with Dana Bash earlier today, and he said basically, that's fine, he can go after younger men, but they don't tend to vote. Guess who does vote? Young women.
But today, as you pointed out, he was asked, okay, well, get Nikki Haley on the campaign trail. Let's just play what he said on Fox News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Look, I think I do very well with women, and I think it's all nonsense. I see the polls, and we do well.
Yes, I'll do what I have to do. But let me just tell you, Nikki Haley and I fought, and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points. I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody's ever been beaten by.
[22:25:03]
I like Nikki. Nikki, I don't think, should have done what she did, and that's fine that she did it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: He is not doing well with women, okay? But he cannot get himself to the point where he'll say, if you supported Nikki Haley, I want your vote. Why?
SINGLETON: I mean, I don't think that's even a part of the campaign strategy anymore, which is why I think they are doubling down on some of those low propensity --
PHILLIP: I mean, the campaign strategists are telling CNN in a new report, the gender gap is real. Haley attracts a different kind of voter. She gets a lot of positive media coverage and appeals to women who are unsure of Donald Trump. They're asking Nikki Haley to get out there for him.
WOOD: But then you can't turn around and insult her while also asking her. He's not doing himself any favor. So, you almost have to bet on men, and I think that's also an important thing when we look at what happened with Obama last week with black men. And we talk about bullying and we talk about the fragility of the male ego. Men that are also not doing well and not sure also don't want to be scolded. And they don't want anything that's even remotely close to scolded. I don't think Obama scolded him, but it was an easy way to go, ah, well who are you to tell me what to --
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE).
WOOD: Not to the point of overreacting to the point where now I'm not going to vote for Kamala. I didn't think it was that bad, especially if you raised by a black father, you know what a real scolding looks like.
So, I think that Trump has an opportunity to play to steal some of those male voters by simply just going, yes, man, I hear you.
SINGLETON: But there is a real problem with Democrats in this gender issue and they have to figure out a way to address it.
PHILLIP: Look, there's a real problem both ways here. I think that's the point of this segment. Everyone, hang on tight.
Coming up next, with 18 days to go, is there really such a thing as this vaunted, undecided voter? We're going to discuss that next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the (INAUDIBLE) is left for you to learn about then? How they load a dishwasher?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:31:20]
PHILLIP: Undecideds, persuadables, these are the people who will decide the next election, and we talk a lot about them. But comedians may have a point when they wonder if, at least in this election, voters who have not made up their minds yet are more of a myth than a reality.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM GAFFIGAN, COMEDIAN: I'm talking about the undecided voter. Are you kidding me? I mean, are you kidding me?
LEWIS BLACK, COMEDIAN: The same people you see at the ice cream shop asking for 12 mini spoon samples. It's a three-dollar cone, asshole (ph).
GAFFIGAN: You don't see a difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
BLACK: What the (BEEP) is left for you to learn about them? How they load a dishwasher?
BLACK: Nobody has ever thought, wait, is that a Trump quote or a Harris quote?
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: The people who take the 12 samples at the ice cream shop? They're bad people.
UNKNOWN: They're the worst people.
PHILLIP: They are. It's true. But I mean, is that the same situation that we're in right now with undecided voters?
MCGOWAN: No, I think with undecideds, I think it is very easy, especially for comedians, no offense, but it's -- it's easy -- it's easy fair to say like, what are you doing at this point? Like it's quite obvious that there's two different sides.
But I think, the thing about Americans is not caring about politics doesn't mean politics doesn't affect you. It means you can't affect it. And there's a lot of people that were taught in this country to not talk about things like politics and religion. So, they don't understand and they don't know and they're afraid to make a mistake.
So, I think we have to take undecideds even this close to the election in good faith and say, okay, if you really don't know who you're going to vote for right now, let's pick a couple issues that really matter to you.
The Affordable Care Act. Do you want your pre-existing condition to be uninsurable under one president or do you want it protected under another? Do you want the right to the government to make decisions over people's bodies? Or do you think that is not the government's job and people should have their own decisions over their own body?
These are major issues and if you only pick one of them you would know which candidate to vote for or maybe go to some of the -- you do trust who really does pay attention to politics talk to them or ask yourself --
PHILLIP: Maybe they're not even sure if they're even going to leave their house.
MCGOWAN: Sure.
PHILLIP: I mean, I suspect that that's part of what's going on here like these voters are -- they're -- they're just ambivalent.
UNKNOWN: Right.
PHILLIP: Maybe. I'm guessing.
ROCHA: I'm holding what we see is and to the issue point I'm not taking anything with my sister on the issues but we're 18 days out and what we see in all these races that we're working in across the country, the problem for Kamala Harris is not persuading people to come from Trump to her. It's persuading them to turn out to your point.
That's the problem. And as you said earlier, mostly that's people under the age of 35. They just don't show up at regular rates because they are like every other, like I was when I was 28, voting wasn't my top priority. And so, it just happens like that. And so that's the real problem is the turnout, not the persuasion.
GERAGHTY: Every year, the Annenberg Center surveys the American public on very basic civics questions. And the answers and the percentages in the merits who know basic facts. Which party controls the Senate? Which party controls -- I know it's close, but most people can figure this out.
Everyone at this table, everyone in this room operates in a bubble, a bubble of following the news, following politics and knowing this stuff. There are Americans who cannot name a Supreme Court justice--
PHILLIP: Right.
GERAGHTY: Nevermind any of you know, nine of the Supreme Court justices. And this is after Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the kind of marketing we usually associate with a Marvel movie of every possible mug and chitch, you know, shopping bags, you know. So, what do you think? Oh, how can these people -- these people don't think about politics at all. These people don't follow the news. They don't read a newspaper.
They're not watching CNN, probably doing some good. They probably, you're out there. Keep the channel here. But really, they're dealing with a knowledge base that it just never seems that important to their lives.
[22:35:00]
Now, you can make the case that it does matter, but generally they tend to recognize that six months after, the election is not going to do anything.
MCGOWAN: Well, here's the thing, here's what I'll say, and this is going to sound like a shameless plug but I literally wrote a best- selling book this year that started with American civics because most people don't know that and I didn't want them to feel bad about that. So, it's 20 pages of like this is how it works and this is what the senate does and that kind of thing.
But I think at this point, this close to the election, I think these people need to ask themselves if they're willing to take the risk that Donald Trump's vice president is right about him, that Donald Trump's newest vice president J.D. Vance who called him "America's Hitler" at one point is right.
They're willing to take the risk that Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and all these people that are going against their own party are right. You know, they need to decide if they're willing to take the risk and not vote.
SINGLETON: At this point, we believe that these folks aren't even thinking about that at all.
WOOD JR.: How do we inspire them to? I think the issue that decided voters make, the mistake decided voters make is assuming that undecided voters are as invested or have the same level of -- I don't want to say intelligence, I don't want to call them all dumb, but two- thirds of this country does not have a college degree. So, you cannot assume everybody is going to look at the smaller minutiae, because they work in 50 hours a week.
I'm not saying what you're saying is not important, it's very important, but the average American wants to come home and watch a reality show and go to sleep. And that's why you see the candidates going on podcasts, because that's where those voters actually go and get information. So yeah, you might have to go on a podcast with a weird person that you wouldn't have gone in four years.
PHILLIP: And a lot of these voters, I mean when we do talk to some of these voters, I think they consider themselves to be open-minded. You know, 12 percent right now say that they are persuadable.
So, maybe they're just so open-minded that they're taking all of the things into consideration for as long as possible. But given that Donald Trump, I don't think there's a human being on this planet who is more known than Donald Trump. It is--
GERAGHTY: That's true. In the 2016 cycle, he started with 99 percent name recognition, which is something no candidate ever has.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, if he was 99 in 2016, can he be over 100 at this point?
WOOD JR.: He said January 6th was a peaceful gathering. Ashley Babbitt died. Nobody died.
PHILLIP: Yes.
WOOD JR.: That's literally a sentence out of his mouth. And you still, oh, don't know. Well, then that's the type. That's why you have to pander. That's why you have to get a rapper and kid rock and make the stallion to come out on a stage because that's literally how some people are going to connect the dots.
SINGLETON: I also wonder if among that 12 percent, how many of them, maybe they participated once, maybe they tuned into politics and they thought, you know, my life hasn't gotten better. I'm not making more money. I'm living in a community that's impoverished. Doesn't matter if Democrats are in control or Republicans are in control. I don't really see anything tangible that I can immediately grab that's changed.
I think that is a mindset among some within that 12 percent. So, maybe there is some ambivalence or maybe some are saying it doesn't matter who I vote for, my life's not going to improve regardless of who's running the country.
WOOD JR.: But do you think that's -- I feel like those are two different voting blocks though. You have people who just don't believe in the system at all and then you have people going, I don't know which ice cream I'm going to decide. It's like you've been in the store two hours.
MCGOWAN: That's why I think we need to be responsible for our people, right? Like if you are a voter, if you are someone that's going to go vote in this election, go out and talk to someone -- your friend, your hairdresser, the person at the grocery store, and ask them if they're going to vote.
Because at this point, we need to have those conversations at our dining room tables, at our salons, at our friendships, you know, and say, are you going to vote and who are you going to vote for and what's your plan to vote? That would be a good idea.
ROCHA: All three of you are right. All three of you are right. When you run a campaign today and I'm hired to win elections. I'm not hired to make friends or to be smart on TV. I'm hired to win elections. And we take these voters like this and we segment them out. And we segment them out and we start having conversations with them to decide whether that 12 percent is leaning one way or the other.
Are they a man or woman? Have they ever voted before? Things that both parties do wrong, I think, is that if you don't have some kind of a voting history, we start eliminating talking to you over a long period of time. So, both parties start, there's a generation of people who've never really heard from either party. So, they really start less and less and you see this.
The difference with what you said about Donald Trump having all that name ideas, he was a known quantity. Whether they liked him or not, they thought he was a little crazy, they thought he was orange, whatever it was, they were like, oh, maybe he'll break something, to your point, about, that's why you saw all those folks show up to vote for him.
Kamala Harris is trying to get a whole new group of people who've registered to vote and come of age under Donald Trump, who really don't like him. This is what's going on every day in the campaign.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone, hang on, we have a little bit more ahead for you. Coming up, Elon Musk is spending time and quite a lot of money supporting Donald Trump. He's also spreading an election lie that cost other people millions and millions of dollars. We'll discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Big money and a big lie, conspiracy after conspiracy, Elon Musk is spending a lot of money to elect Donald Trump on this campaign trail. He is also repeating the same fictions that the Republican nominee is telling about the 2020 election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, BILLIONAIRE AND CEO, X, TESLA AND SPACEX: When you have mail-in ballots and no sort of proof of citizenship, it becomes almost impossible to prove cheating is the issue. There are some very strange things that happen that's-- that are statistically, incredibly unlikely.
So, you know, there's always this sort of question of like say the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that the, you know, I think they're used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not in a lot of other places. Doesn't that seem like a kick of a coincidence?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, doesn't that seem a little scary that the guy who's running one of the biggest social media companies and sending rockets into space also is gullible enough to believe things that have been completely debunked and that people have paid millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in punishment for?
SINGLETON: I mean, the good news is -- the good news is Georgia and I think several other swing states have really made significant changes to try to make sure that we know the results early, to try to debunk a lot of this so that there is trust and faith in the process. People --
PHILLIP: But the guy who's running one of the biggest social media platforms, he fervently believes, it sounds like.
SINGLETON: A lot of people believe it.
PHILLIP: That there is widespread fraud which there is not and he controls the thing. I mean, that -- that's got to give people --
WOOD JR.: Let him keep running his mouth about dominion to see if they don't get hit, too.
MCGOWAN: But I think the thing is --
PHILLIP: -- very litigious.
MCGOWAN: --is that we can't just have truth be based on civil lawsuits, right? We can't just say, okay, you're lying and the only way we can stop you from lying is to hit you with a civil lawsuit. There has to be some way that we don't do this.
Right now, we're watching the richest man in the world buy a country, right? He's got the America PAC. He's single-handedly filming. He is single-handedly funding a PAC that is keeping Donald Trump afloat. He owns Twitter, which is the echo chamber for all of the right-wing information. He has town halls, he's doing public appearances, he's paying for all the ads, he's paying for Turning Point USA's entire door-knocking situation.
UNKNOWN: Leigh, Leigh.
MCGOWAN: That is one man. And we have to say, how come one man can spend all this money on election? And it's because we had a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United.
SINGLETON: But we also have a lot of them.
MCGOWAN: That is a ridiculous undertaking that we have allowed to happen.
PHILLIP: What she's talking about is $106 million spent in pro-Trump hack.
SINGLETON: And there are a lot of wealthy Democrats that have written $50 million checks, $80 million checks.
PHILLIP: I'm not saying that's not true. I think it is clearly not true.
MCGOWAN: He's because he's single-handedly keeping Trump afloat. Trump has lost all of his money.
UNKNOWN: He's not the only mega-donor donating to a PAC service.
GERAGHTY: He is raising three times as much money as the volunteers.
MCGOWAN: He is -- okay, then the other one is Peter Thiel who --
UNKNOWN: Harris' a billion dollars.
GERAGHTY: Three times as many volunteers.
WOOD JR.: But how many people that are raising money for Harris, how many of the big buck donors for Harris are on stage peddling lies in that same instance?
GERAGHTY: If you follow Elon Musk on Twitter, or I'm sorry, X, as we actually call it these days.
WOOD JR.: He's got a choice with the phone because it would come up in the four now.
MCGOWAN: He keeps coming back.
GERAGHTY: If something comes across that sounds really shocking or cool and it may or may not be true, Elon will retweet it or co-tweet it like that. Now, I know the man can parallel park a rocket and I'm sure he's a genius in certain ways. But his discernment of what -- you know, it's not about all of us in the journalism profession are kind of like, well, okay, that sounds too good to be true. That old saying, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. I guess you can check it out very soon.
PHILLIP: I'll ask my mother.
GERAGHTY: Okay. But for Elon, that temptation to retweet, that temptation to spread it out to the bigger, broader audience is just reflexive.
PHILLIP: Yes.
GERAGHTY: And what we see here, what he's now doing on stage is just the same version of what he's been doing on Twitter for many years now. ROCHA: But you got to ask yourself is what's in it for Elon? Why would a guy that can parallel park a rocket upside down on a forklift by next to an ocean, like I'm impressed as a Mexican redneck that somebody could do that, but also like what's in it for Elon? Because $106 million is still a lot of money and sure we got our rich people too, but you can fit all of our rich people in my granddaddy's barn. You all got a lot of rich people.
MCGOWAN: But if I may, Elon --
GERAGHTY: SpaceX contracts make the $106 million look like a chopper change.
MCGOWAN: Well, that's the point. This is the thing, though.
PHILLIP: Yes, it is pocket change essentially to him at this point.
MCGOWAN: Elon just did an interview with Tucker, right? With Tucker Carlson. And they had this back and forth ha-ha thing where he said, if Kamala Harris wins, I'm F'd, is what he said.
GERAGHTY: Yes.
MCGOWAN: And then they had this little laughing thing because he has so many government contracts and he made jokes in that same episode about why hasn't anyone tried to kill Kamala Harris yet. He made jokes about how he might be the next leader of the free world.
He talked to Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Netanyahu said, are you allowed to be president of America? He said, not officially. And then Benjamin Netanyahu said, well then unofficially you'll be president? There's a lot in it for Elon. And it's not just government contracts.
SINGLETON: But why does he have so many government contracts? Because he's a brilliant guy as it pertains to rockets. He's doing things that no one else in the United States is currently doing.
MCGOWAN: But two years ago, Elon Musk is a completely different Elon Musk than today.
SINGLETON: There's a need for the development of the technology that he's overseeing. That's why he has those contracts.
WOOD JR.: SpaceX is not the only company. They are --
UNKNOWN: SpaceX is ahead of the curve for a lot of --
UNKNOWN: Nowhere near SpaceX.
WOOD JR.: But what we also consider is, Elon is also rich and bored to some degree, as well. And so spending the money helps to protect the company, one. Two, a little bit is about attention. I'm not going to say it's all about attention, but a little bit is about attention. A man that rich doesn't need to be on stage with Dave Chappelle cracking jokes earlier this year.
GERAGHTY: That's true.
PHILLIP: The other thing, I mean, /Jim was talking about Kamala Harris, they have a lot of their own money, a lot of field offices, a big ground game. But Elon Musk has enough money to kind of just mess around with it. They put out ads targeting Muslim voters, touting how close Harris is to Israel. They're tinkering with the electorate in real ways.
MCGOWAN: They put out two ads at the same time.
PHILLIP: Yes.
MCGOWAN: One saying she was on Israel's side and one saying she was on Gaza's side.
[22:50:00]
PHILLIP: Yes.
MCGOWAN: To the same market just to see what they get.
PHILLIP: Just to see what happens. And I know it does, but they have the money to just do whatever.
ROCHA: And I ran into this first-hand in Michigan this week. I was up there doing some work and I saw the door hangers. I've actually emailed it earlier to one of your team members to be like, this is actually happening. And I was really shocked to say, we should talk about this field operations my entire career. I've been doing this for 35 years. It's the first time I've ever seen a campaign literally outsource the field operations.
PHILLIP: Yes.
ROCHA: They're knocking on the phone call.
PHILLIP: And it's the stuff that Ron DeSantis did. It didn't work for him, but we'll see if it works for Donald Trump. Everyone, stick with us. Coming up next, new eye-popping details about Donald Trump's watches. And there's a link to Viagra, honey? Okay, yes, there is. Roy Woods got some thoughts on that coming up.
WOOD JR.: Yes, I do.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:30]
PHILLIP: Tomorrow at 9 P.M. Eastern Time, tune in for a brand-new episode of "Have I Got News For You?" with our own Roy Wood Jr. who is here at the table tonight. Here's a preview of what you can expect.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOOD JR.: Trump is running all of these scams on top of selling a $100,000 Trump Victory Watch that he launched this fall. Ah, yes. And despite being advertised as having, "Swiss-made power and precision." Can anyone tell me where a CNN investigation revealed that those watches are actually coming from? Where is the Swiss-made 100K victory watch really coming from?
UNKNOWN: Can I ask one question?
WOOD JR.: Okay.
UNKNOWN: Where is the cheapest place in the world to produce such a watch?
WOOD JR.: Oh, how do you know? It's not even there. It's America. Where in America is this cheap ass watch?
MICHAEL IAN BLACK, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU" CO HOST: Wait a minute.
WOOD JR.: Really?
BLACK: For the first time in his life, he had the opportunity to honestly say something is made in America -- of his, and he declined to take that opportunity?
WOOD JR.: I couldn't do that because then you won't believe that it's got Swiss-made precision.
BLACK: So, what states allow sweatshops?
UNKNOWN: It's going to be --
AMBER RUFFIN, "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU" CO HOST: I want it to be Detroit.
UNKNOWN: Oh, my God.
WOOD JR.: Oh, Detroit's bouncing back. Don't put this on Detroit.
RUFFIN: I want him to have talked shit about them and then done this.
UNKNOWN: It's going to be--it's going=g to be Alabama or--
WOOD JR.: No, that's my crib.
UNKNOWN: I know, I know. I know.
UNKNOWN: Do you ever want to get invited back on this show, Alex?
UNKNOWN: No, I've, he gave me--
BLACK: Don't say shit about Alabama or Waffle House.
UNKNOWN: It's not-- it's not their fault they got a manufacturing gig. And then like, here is it?
WOOD JR.: It's a shopping center in Northern Wyoming where Trump's watch brand, the best watches on earth, LLC is registered. Also, registered to that same address in Wyoming is a company called, quote, the best honey on earth, whose website sells something called Male enhancement honey, which the Food and Drug Administration has warned people not to consume after they found it contained the same drugs used in Viagra.
UNKNOWN: Well, I'm going to have to clean out my pantry now.
WOOD JR.: Male enhancement honey.
BLACK: Those are some horny bees.
WOOD JR.: Male enhancement honey. That's why Winnie the Pooh don't wear drawers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I really struggle through the tease for that. But this is actually real life. This is not comedy. This is real life.
WOOD, JR.: How can you all, of everything of Trump there is to not like, how can you not respect the hustle, the griff, the scam of a watch made in Wyoming for $100,000 for a victory he has not yet been confirmed to have yet?
SINGLETON: And the honey.
WOOD, JR.: Yes, and the honey, of course.
MCGOWAN: Exactly how he found it.
PHILLIP: It's actually pretty amazing that they were able to put that together so quickly and get it ready for the news.
WOOD, JR.: Yes, I mean, well, this is a news organization here that believes in, that's an investigation.
PHILLIP: I'm talking about Trump. The company and everything.
ROCHA: The company's going to be owned by one of his buddies. It's in Wyoming. It's where every rich white person in America moves to. Like, I guarantee you, it's one of his boys who own it, and they're like, we'll get a storefront, we'll call it this thing, you can do it with your little honey business. I know you got to do my plot.
GERAGHTY: This sounds great, Trump made the greatest, what's the name, the best watches, the greatest watches, that Trump came up with that name himself.
ROCHA: Absolutely. It is somebody's brother-in-law.
WOOD, JR.: I will say this much, male enhancement honey will fix the attack on manhood that Trump says is happening.
SINGLETON: I mean, look, Roy, you can pour the honey in your tea and you can wear the watch and keep track of time while you're doing what you do.
WOOD JR.: You're going under wrong --
SINGLETON: There you go. I'm just saying, there you go, combination.
PHILLIP: So, Roy, this week, actually yesterday, Trump was at the Al Smith dinner. Brian Stelter sitting last night. He said Trump was pretty funny. Do you think it was smart for Kamala Harris to skip it?
WOOD JR.: I think it was very smart for the vice president to skip the event because then it just becomes a battle of name calling between her and Trump. If Trump was going to play the game straight up and do jokes and do structured jokes, it actually have some degree of angle to them versus him just going -- but talking about a man in the last couple of weeks has called her stupid, has called her, like, just so many different insults with no punchline, with no structure to it.
[23:00:03]
If I'm the Madam Vice President, I'm trying to go and get everybody else's votes. I know the purpose of that event is to raise money for Catholic charities. She contributed a video. That's just got to be what it is. We're talking about a dude who didn't show up to the Correspondents' Dinner for a couple of times.
PHILLIP: That's right, yes. The Correspondents' Dinner is not a place he likes to be at all. Roy, actually Roy was also very good at the Correspondents' Dinner.
WOOD JR.: He showed up for that one.
PHILLIP: Looking forward to the show tomorrow, "Have I Got News For You?" Everyone else, thank you very much for joining us. "Laura Coates Live" starts next.
