Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

Two Days Until Election Trump and Harris are Neck and Neck. Interview With Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson; Interview With Wall Street Journal Chief China Correspondent Lingling Wei. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired November 03, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:42]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, with two days to go until one of the closest and most consequential elections in American history, I have a great political panel to talk about Harris, Trump, Tuesday's vote, and the legal challenges that have already started.

Then, I talk to the former British prime minister Boris Johnson about whether he sees himself as a British Trump? Whether he has any regrets over Brexit and why he says NATO needs to let Ukraine in now.

BORIS JOHNSON, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: If Putin wins, we will have terrible, terrible repercussions.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's my take. As the election draws nearer and people consider the pros and cons of the two major candidates, I have to confess, for me one event stands out in bright lights. One that I cannot forget. And it's January 6th, 2021.

I'm not thinking so much about the violence that broke out on that day. Terrible, as I've watched.

Those actions were quickly condemned by people from across the political spectrum. By Democrats, of course, but also by Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham.

To me, the most frightening aspect of what happened on January 6th was not the event outside the Capitol but inside it. After the violence had ended and order had been restored, the House finally reconvened that night to certify the election results that had been sent forward from the states.

Remember, this is after dozens of objections and many of the states had been considered and rejected. Dozens of court cases had been filed and dismissed. After all those legal procedures had been followed, after a violent assault on the Capitol, Donald Trump and his allies still urged his supporters to reject the results, reject electors and in effect nullify the election.

And a majority of House Republicans, 139 of them, readily assented and voted against certifying the election. Had they had enough votes? Well, we don't know what would have happened. It's possible Trump could have managed to stay on as president.

Let's also not forget that Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to misuse his role, as the person who presides over the counting of the electoral college votes. That job explicitly laid out in the Constitution is a purely ceremonial one. But Trump wanted Pence to claim, for the first time in American history, that he had the authority to reject electoral votes. Singling him out to such an extent that the mob outside the Capitol chanted --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang Mike Pence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: "Hang Mike Pence." He repeatedly attacked the vice president on social media. Had Pence done what Trump had asked, America would have faced a constitutional crisis, and it's unclear if Joe Biden would have taken office two weeks later. As George W. Bush said of the day, this is how election results are disputed in a banana republic.

This history is worth repeating because sometimes in life a single choice at a crucial moment reveals character. Leaders of nations often face such tests of greater or smaller magnitude. Mikhail Gorbachev decided not to use force to hold together the Soviet empire. Lyndon Johnson supported civil rights bills even though he knew that it would shatter the Democratic base in the south. Al Gore gracefully accepted the controversial Supreme Court decision awarding the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

Trump faced such a test and failed. It's worth noting Mike Pence succeeded with flying colors. Not only that, Trump has never shown a moment's doubt or remorse about asking Congress and his vice president to overturn the election.

[10:05:07]

In fact, he's continued to wish that they had found some way to let him stay in power. As Trump's base quickly returned to him and his support grew, those who had denounced the violence reversed course and jumped back on to the bandwagon. Businesses that said that they would never support candidates who were election deniers somehow forgot those pledges.

Billionaires who had spoken out as a matter of conscience went silent for a while and then found their way back to Mar-a-Lago, hoping to curry favor with the man who was increasingly the Republican frontrunner. Some still condemned the violence, even wished Trump had done more to stop it but say nothing at all about the action at the center of that day that took place after the violence. An attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

The father of the American Constitution, James Madison, famously constructed a system in which there were many checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power or the rise of a dictator. If men were angels, he noted, no government would be necessary. But Madison understood that it wasn't enough to simply device institutions. He explained that he hoped that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. If not, he noted, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure.

We may be about to embark upon an experiment to see whether our institutions, checks and balances can hold, even when leaders try their best to bend them.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

Just two days to go before Tuesday's election, and a new "Des Moines Register" poll of Iowa that came out yesterday had Kamala Harris up three points against Donald Trump in a state that was generally considered safe for Trump. The Trump campaign called the poll a clear outlier. And a new "New York Times"-Siena College poll shows that the two candidates are essentially even across seven key swing states.

Joining me now to discuss all this is Ron Brownstein, a senior editor of "The Atlantic" and a senior political analyst at CNN, and Emily Bazelon, staff writer for "The New York Times" magazine and a senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

Ron, let me start with you. Before we get to the polls, this recent flurry of polls, the big takeaway seems to be the realignment we are seeing is around the deepening divide of gender and on college education. How does that translate geographically? What does that mean for these seven key states?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Generally, Fareed, what we have seen in this election is our traditional divisions along the lines of race and age are narrowing and our divisions along the lines of gender and education are widening.

The assumption for most of the year has been that that left Harris in a better position in the rustbelt battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, than it did in the sunbelt battleground states, Georgia, North Carolina in the southeast, Arizona and Nevada in the southwest, but some of these late polling, you know, is sending us conflicting signals as is often the case when you get this many surveys this close to an election.

ZAKARIA: But when you look at that Iowa poll, and this is by the so- called oracle of Iowa. I mean, if Kamala Harris wins Iowa, you got to assume she's going to win Pennsylvania and Michigan. BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely. And even if she doesn't -- look, so we have

this big flurry of polls in the final, you know, stretch of the election here and you can't square them all with each other. There's no way to line up the results. They don't tell you a perfectly consistent story. But I do think they tell you a few things. First, we are looking at more states that are this close to the election at any point since 2000. I mean, you have to go back to Bush-Gore which you cited to find these many states that were this close.

Having said that, on balance, I think you would slightly rather be playing Vice President Harris' hand in the past -- in the final 48 hours. A couple reasons. One, just starting with those "New York Times" polls. The seven states that will decide the election, they only have Trump leading in one of them. They have Harris narrowly leading in four of them and they have two tied in a way that I'll come back to.

Second, if you look at those "New York Times" poll, Harris has narrowed Biden's deficit since 2020 among white voters in all three of the rustbelt battlegrounds plus Georgia and North Carolina. The difference is that they show her resurging back toward traditional Democratic levels of support among black voters in North Carolina and Georgia but not in Michigan and Pennsylvania where they have her plummeting into the 70s.

[10:10:11]

If you're Donald Trump, you're looking at polls that have you only tied in Michigan and Pennsylvania with Harris probably recording an unrealistically low level of black support in them. You can't feel great about that. Two other quick points. Late deciders in the "New York Times" poll leaning towards Harris.

And finally, you know, these are very close states. I mean, the polling error could be such that anyone can win them. And you got to look at the stuff that is actually happening, and what is happening on the ground is a massive Democratic get-out-the-vote effort. 800,000 doors knocked on in Pennsylvania yesterday. They say 700,000 to 900,000 phone calls in Michigan and Wisconsin.

We just don't know what the Republicans have in response since Trump chose to outsource the get-out-the-vote operation to Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk. So it's not clear if they can match that. Obviously the polling says either one of them can win. But those factors that I just cited I think would give you a slight thumb on the scale that you'd rather be Harris in these final moments.

ZAKARIA: The key to that, Emily, is women because, as Ron described it, it is plummeting support for the Democrats among young men of color. And the hope that Harris has is that it's all going to be made up, more than made up by women. What's your sense?

EMILY BAZELON, STAFF WRITER, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: You know, Harris has been running strong on defending abortion rights. Most women are pro-choice. They can see that Trump did not defend abortion rights when he was president based on his choices for the Supreme Court. And so that is a strong incentive for women who care about that issue to come out for Harris.

At the same time, you know, Ron was talking about the difference between college educated and noncollege educated voters. There's a big gap among those groups. And women respond to cross currents, right? Some women who are not college educated are going to vote in a kind of more class solidarity with the men in their lives even though they are also majority pro-choice. So we'll just have to see how all those dynamics play out in these battleground states.

ZAKARIA: All right. Stay with us. I'm going to ask Emily when we come back because she is a legal scholar. Donald Trump has already issued well over 100 legal challenges this time around. The election is two days away. What does all that mean? Will this election be decided in the courts? When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:09]

ZAKARIA: One key plank of the Republican Partys strategy is to cast doubt on the outcome of the election, and it is already well underway. The GOP has been involved in an unprecedented number of preelection court cases. As many as 130 according to the party itself. Many of them attempting to restrict voter access.

Back with me is Emily Bazelon, staff writer for the "New York Times" magazine and a senior research fellow at Yale Law School, and Ron Brownstein, senior editor at "The Atlantic" and a senior political analyst at CNN.

Emily, can you explain to us what exactly -- what is the Trump campaign's strategy in terms? What are they alleging? And are they able to get courts to decide these things?

BAZELON: You know, I think they're throwing spaghetti against the wall. And the idea, as you said, is to sow doubt to kind of even before the election suggest their reasons to think that the rules are not fair. That the system is rigged. But it's really important to remember that, you know, in order to overturn the results of an election in court you need to have evidence of fraud or irregularity to the point that it would actually overturn the results.

It's not a few people voted who weren't supposed to. You know, there's always human error in elections. And our laws are constructed to allow for a little bit of that so that we can have the outcome that most people want. And it's important to remember that in 2020, the courts were a really important bullwork against the kind of, you know, more frivolous charges that the Trump campaign brought that time around.

So I think we can and should expect the courts to follow the law and make sure that, you know, people are -- have their votes counted and that the results that the majority wants are the ones that the country gets.

ZAKARIA: But you read reports of many counties, you know, each of these counties often have to certify these elections. And there are counties where people are -- it seems like they're setting themselves up to say we're not going to certify unless Trump wins.

If that happens and there's a certain date by which it all has to happen, what happens? Does the court force the county to decide? Can the court decide for the county?

BAZELON: Yes, they can. It's important to remember, these county officials, their job is not to be the referee. It's to be the scorekeeper. It's a ministerial role. And so if lone county officials refuse to certify the vote, then the state officials, often the secretary of state, can step in and sue and go to court and say, you have to certify the vote by a certain date. So the county officials really have limited authority here however determined they may be to, you know, throw sand in the gears. The courts, the law exists to make sure that, again, they can subvert and overturn the will of the majority.

[10:20:03]

ZAKARIA: As far as I can tell, Pennsylvania is ground zero where a lot of this is happening. And part of that is because we have this crazy system, in my opinion, in America where not just every state but every county within the state can have different requirements and rules for ballots and how they're counted and when they're counted. Right?

BAZELON: Right. Well, this is a vulnerability in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, first of all, allows votes not to be counted for kind of small ticky-tack technical reasons like you didn't put the date on the envelope or you didn't use the inner privacy sleeve when you submitted your absentee ballot. And also Pennsylvania allows counties to have some different rules about when absentee voters can fix mistakes. When counties tell them they've made a mistake and then whether they can do what's called curing the ballot to fix the mistake.

So that unevenness is a kind of issue that Pennsylvania will be going into this election with. It's only going to matter if the election is very, very close. And we did, I think, have a common sense helpful ruling from the United States Supreme Court this week saying that people whose votes will not be counted because they made the minor error of not submitting the inner privacy sleeve envelope, that those people can cast provisional ballots.

And that makes sense just for ensuring that someone who's told your vote that you cast by mail can't count can still try to cast a provisional ballot to make sure that they can vote in the election.

ZAKARIA: Ron, first, tell me what is your sense of whether or not the Supreme Court, are they banking on the Supreme Court, the Trump campaign, to bail them out? So far it's not clear exactly how it would go.

BROWNSTEIN: Short answer I think is yes. I mean, you know, it reminds me in some ways of the situation in Florida in 2000 where you had a state Supreme Court that was majority Democratic appointees and Republicans felt they had the Trump card because of the U.S. Supreme Court with majority Republican appointees. This time, in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the states that

I still think are most likely to decide the election, you have progressive or Democratic majorities on all three state Supreme Courts. So I think by and large, they're going to rule expansively toward including as many votes as possible. And the question will be, how far will this Supreme Court go in overturning their decisions and ruling in a way that Trump wants?

Certainly, you know, John Roberts historically his desire to have the Supreme Court be seen as above politics has extended only so far as cases that directly implicate the immediate electoral interest of the Republican Party, Shelby County, Citizens United, Brnovich. There's a whole long line of them in 2020. As you point out, they did not go that far to, you know, overturn results for Trump.

But what we saw in that immunity decision this year was a willingness to go pretty far toward putting a thumb on the scale of an election. So the Supreme Court is a real wild card as this litigation proceeds.

ZAKARIA: And briefly, Ron, can you just explain to us, Pennsylvania likely to be the decider? Not just Pennsylvania. Probably a handful of suburbs outside Philadelphia. Right?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Why?

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Look, I mean, Joe Biden won Philadelphia, the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia, in Allegheny, which is Pittsburgh and its immediate suburbs, by 910,000 votes. It's entirely possible Harris will have to win them by more in order to overcome what will be probably further movement toward Trump in small town and rural parts of Pennsylvania.

The precedent is there. Democrats in 2022 ran better among college educated voters. Not only in Pennsylvania but also Michigan and Wisconsin in the governors' races than they did in 2020. Don't forget, Fareed, in 2020, January 6th hadn't happened yet. The Dobbs decision had not happened yet. Harris can but she probably must run even better in the white-collar suburbs of all three states in order to hold them. And of course, if she wins all three of them and Omaha, she will reach 270 electoral college votes exactly.

ZAKARIA: All right. So the election of 340 million is going to be decided in a handful of suburbs in maybe three states, possibly one state.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: Ron Brownstein, Emily, thank you so much both. This was just terrific.

Next up, Boris Johnson on Donald Trump, Tuesday's election and much more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [10:29:07]

ZAKARIA: Few figures have loomed as large over British politics in recent decades as Boris Johnson. The conservative politician has played many roles from member of parliament to London mayor to foreign secretary, and then prime minister. Along the way, he's made history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: I will be advocating but lead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: In 2016 he championed the controversial Brexit vote to leave the European Union. Three years later, he moved into 10 Downing Street and his Conservative Party won a landslide election with the largest majority since Margaret Thatcher. After three years in office, he lost the top job over several scandals. Now he's telling it all in his new book, "Unleashed."

Boris Johnson, pleasure seeing you.

JOHNSON: Fareed, it's great to see you. Thank you for having me on the show.

ZAKARIA: You came of age politically as a Thatcherite Tory. I remember you when you were a journalist and we would talk. You were very much a Thatcherite. I look at what suddenly the Republican Party has become under Trump. It's essentially protectionist, nationalist.

It's largely against a limited government. Trump wants to spend more, you know, on all kinds of entitlements. He wants to give people tax free overtime and tips. And yet you support him. I don't understand that.

You know, the Republican Party under Trump sort of essentially believes in the opposite of everything Margaret Thatcher did. How could you as a Thatcherite support Trump?

BORIS JOHNSON, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Well, I mean -- hang on. Wait, Fareed, you're brilliant. I do not wish to get, you know, trapped into -- trapped into --

ZAKARIA: You do. You've said that you support Trump. I'm just asking why.

JOHNSON: Trapped into this very important election that's taking, you know, place just a couple of days.

ZAKARIA: Boris, you've said you were supporting him. I'm asking you why.

JOHNSON: What I would say about the question is, how can someone like me who is a free marketer and a free trader and a Thatcherite in my instincts have done some of the things that we did in -- that I -- and yes, I do oppose tariffs. And I do think that -- I look at the U.K. right now, I'll say nothing about the U.S., but look at the U.K. I think the state is too big. Yes, I do.

And I think that we need to be cutting taxes. I think it's insane. The labor government that just put up taxes by 40 billion pounds. What they think they're doing? There's no need to do this. Government is astronomically big now in the U.K., and we do need to going in the other direction. Now, you talk about the U.S. --

ZAKARIA: Nothing like that. You were a big spender when you were prime minister.

JOHNSON: Hang on.

ZAKARIA: We did have COVID but even outside of COVID --

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: We did have -- come on, mate. Come on, mate. We had -- we had -- spent about 410 billion pounds on COVID. And it was very difficult to --

ZAKARIA: Even outside of that, you were a big spender.

JOHNSON: Well, I believe in --

ZAKARIA: You're leveling up agenda costs money.

JOHNSON: You do need to spend on infrastructure. But the advantage of doing that is that you trigger private sector investment. What I wanted to do, and which we did very successfully in London, was to (INAUDIBLE) and you get London, it's the opposite of most of the rest of the U.K. The private sector -- the public sector is about 25 percent of the economy. The rest is private investment and that's what you need.

Now here in the U.S., I gather that Elon Musk is going to come in and cut 2 trillion off of government spending. I mean -- so, if that's the agenda, then I think that needs to be looked at seriously. Because I do -- I do think there is a case that western democracies, like the U.K., you know, perhaps like the U.S. as well, the state has gotten too big.

ZAKARIA: Let me go to Brexit because Goldman Sachs says U.K. economy grew 5 percent less over eight years than other countries. And it says it has significantly underperformed because of reduced trade from the European Union, weaker business investment, and lower immigration from the European Union.

JOHNSON: Lower immigrant --

ZAKARIA: More importantly -- more importantly 63 percent of your countrymen now believe Brexit has been more of a failure than success.

JOHNSON: No.

ZAKARIA: Surely that is -- I mean, 63 percent don't agree on anything nowadays. So, surely that's a resounding argument against Brexit. JOHNSON: No. I don't agree at all. You got to imagine the British public is seriously going to want to go back into the European Union. To do that, they would have to vote to spend an extra 20 billion pounds a year, send it to -- to be spent at the discretion of the European Union, give up control of their legal system.

ZAKARIA: But they seem to be willing to do it.

JOHNSON: No. Let's -- I bet they would never do it. It's never going to happen. And I think it was the right thing to do. To come out of the -- people in America -- you know, America guards its sovereignty, American independence, American freedom more zealously than any other country in --

ZAKARIA: We are a vast continent -- a nation. You're -- you know, without being part of Europe, you're a -- you're a small country, a middle-sized power --

JOHNSON: As for Goldman Sachs' statistics, I just remind you that since the vote to leave the E.U. in 2016, we've grown faster than Germany, we've grown faster than --

ZAKARIA: But slower than --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: Slower than Switzerland --

JOHNSON: The last time I looked -- the last time I looked --

ZAKARIA: Again, you're in the middle of the pack.

JOHNSON: The last time I looked -- I know but the last time I looked France, Germany -- these were all members of the European Union, right? So, what we need to do and what my government would have done had I been spared by my team, by the Tory guys, what we need to do is take proper advantage of Brexit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll ask Boris Johnson about his passionate support for Ukraine and whether a potential second Trump presidency would help or hurt that country's war effort.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:39:49]

ZAKARIA: Former British prime minister Boris Johnson has been one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine's war effort. Reflecting on one of his visits after the invasion, Johnson quipped that, I thought I was definitely more popular in Kyiv than in some of parts of Kensington.

[10:40:05]

It's all detailed in his new memoir, "Unleashed."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: So, I know that you have been incredibly strong in terms of your support for Ukraine, as prime minister, after being prime minister. You must worry that a Trump victory would mean that the United States would be less zealous in its support for Ukraine.

JOHNSON: I do worry -- I do worry a great deal about what will happen in Ukraine. And I think it's the single most important issue that we face in our -- in our generation, in the early part of the 21st century.

This is the deciding conflict, in my view. It will set the pattern for what happens for decades to come. If the tyranny, if Putin wins, it will have terrible, terrible repercussions for the world. And not just in the Euro-Atlantic area but in the -- area but in South China Sea. So, it has got to go right.

Now, how is the U.S. election going to affect that? I know that you and I have discussed all of this many times. Before we go into President Trump, just continuing with the current policy that Joe Biden and our government is not enough, right?

ZAKARIA: But you want more.

JOHNSON: Even if Kamala wins that's not -- with the current trajectory, that is not enough. I'm afraid the Russians have been gaining territory in the last couple of days. We don't know what's going on. The Ukrainians have done astonishing things. They've taken this huge segment in Kherson and so on.

But unless they get the permissions to use the ATACMS systems, the Storm Shadows, unless they get the proper financial support, and unless they get a long-term solution to their security needs then we're not going to -- we're not going to fix it for them.

ZAKARIA: But that enhanced support is more unlikely under a President Trump --

JOHNSON: Well -- so, that's where we -- that's the -- OK. So, that's -- clearly that's -- a lot of people worry about that and a lot of people say that. But I got to speak as I find. And when I was foreign secretary, when I had to deal with Donald Trump, I've got to tell you, Fareed, that on a lot of the key issues, he was very, very solid.

So, when it came to Iran, when it came to Syria and, indeed, when it came to Russia, to Putin and Ukraine. He gave the Ukrainians those shoulder launched antitank weapons when frankly the previous Democratic administration, when you look at how they responded to Putin's invasion in 2014, they did virtually nothing.

So, I hear what people say. And to say I'm not anxious, you know, would be clearly wrong. I am very, very concerned. But I believe on the basis of what Trump has -- Donald Trump has done in the past, that he will be robust. I really do. Just on this -- for this instinctive reason that I cannot believe that a guy who is so passionate about his country, about making America great again, which he wants to do, and so convincing about that would want to kick off his next presidential term by basically allowing the soviet empire to be great again. I can't believe that he will allow that to happen.

ZAKARIA: Would you advise Trump to extend NATO membership to Ukraine?

JOHNSON: I think it's the only solution. And it has to be done. Because, you know, why is Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, all the Baltic states, and Finland now -- why are they all members of NATO? Because Russia has invaded them in the last hundred years. And that has not happened to Ukraine.

Now, Putin has not succeeded. He will never subjugate Ukraine, right? Those people are going to fight and fight and fight for their freedom. The only long-term solution is to give everybody the clarify that comes with NATO membership. And that clarity means peace and stability.

ZAKARIA: I got to ask you, finally. You write in the book that maybe being prime minister should be the last job you hold in British politics. But you said politics is addictive. Does that mean that you are still addicted to politics and that we could expect to see Boris Johnson back in the arena?

JOHNSON: The answer -- the answer -- the answer, Fareed, is of course contained in the pages of "Unleashed." But -- no. I think that -- I was useful in 2019 because we couldn't get Brexit done. You know, I can't see at the moment how I can really do anything similar. But I want to be -- I want to be -- of course, I want to be supportive of my party.

[10:45:03]

And, of course, I'm going to do -- I'm going to do that. But, you know, I want to stress that, you know, the purpose of writing "Unleashed" was to -- was to explain what Brexit Britain was all about, to explain leveling up. And, you know, if other people are going to drive that agenda forward then, of course, no one would be more delighted. I'm living a life of blameless.

When I'm not appearing on your show, I'm living a life of blameless, rustic obscurity. You know, writing and painting and doing (INAUDIBLE).

ZAKARIA: Boris Johnson --

JOHNSON: So, I'm very happy.

ZAKARIA: -- pleasure to see you.

JOHNSON: Thank you. Lovely to see you. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, how does China view the U.S. election? Would Xi Jinping rather deal with Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:32]

ZAKARIA: Who would China prefer as the next U.S. president? The winner, whether it's Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will help shape a very rocky relationship between the world's two largest economic powers. Officially, Beijing's government says it has no preference. Calling the upcoming election a, quote, "internal affair of the United States," unquote.

But my next guest says China has, in fact, been making some careful preparations. Joining me is Lingling Wei. She is the chief China correspondent at the "Wall Street Journal." Welcome, Lingling. As always, a pleasure to talk to you. So, tell me, how is China looking at these two choices in this election?

LINGLING WEI, CHIEF CHINA CORRESPONDENT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Thank you, Fareed. It's really great to be back here.

So, for the Chinese leadership, they are definitely doing scenario planning. You know, privately, they definitely have indicated what they want from the next U.S. president. They want predictability. They want some sort of stability. They want a desire from the next U.S. president to soften this tough on China approach.

ZAKARIA: Do they think that Trump is a known quantity and Harris is unknown? Does that --you know, they've dealt with Trump. They've never dealt with Harris. What do you think -- how do you think that makes them feel?

WEI: So, yes. They definitely have dealt with Trump, you know, during the trade war under the first Trump administration. And time and again China's officials were caught off guard by the very high-pressured techniques from the Trump administration. And to some extent, a lot of them were utterly exhausted by the technique employed by Trump trying to use tariffs and other measures to try to extract concession from Beijing.

ZAKARIA: And what about with Harris? Do they worry or are they fine with the idea that she -- you know, she doesn't have much experience in foreign affairs. She, I don't think has ever been to China.

WEI: In their view, yes, Harris is unknown. But based on my conversations with some Chinese officials and scholars, there is a belief in Beijing that Harris largely would inherit the Biden approach to China, which is tough but more targeted and limited in, you know, scope in terms of, you know, tariffs and other measures.

ZAKARIA: Trump, of course, is proposing or threatening a 60 percent tariff in China. Do they think that's for real? And do you have a sense -- if Trump were to do that they must have thought through what their response would be. Presumably they would raise tariffs on American goods very substantially.

WEI: That really is the most immediate concern for the Chinese leadership because China's economy right now is struggling. You know, we have seen various level for local governments running out of money because of unprecedented property crisis in China. A lot of young people are struggling to find jobs.

So, there has been a tremendous amount of economic stress in China. A tariff war or trade war 2.0 under a possible Trump administration would be another huge blow to China's economy. You know, if the first trade war gives us any indication, China definitely would hit back at any additional tariffs. This could potentially lead to a cycle of retaliation and counterretaliation.

ZAKARIA: You wrote about how one of the reasons Xi Jinping seems to be worried about a Trump victory is Trump's relationship with Putin. Explain what you mean.

WEI: Yes. During the first Trump administration, President Trump did try to bring Russia closer to the United States. So, the worry in Beijing these days is that if Trump is to win the second term Trump would cozy up to Putin again and potentially hurting the relationship between Beijing and Moscow.

[10:55:10]

I mean, in Xi Jinping's view, Putin is a crucial ally in China's standoff with the West. So, you know, the worst-case scenario in Beijing's view is the so-called reverse Nixon. You know, much like former President Nixon, you know, sought out China to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War era. The fear is Trump could cozy up to Putin and align with Russia to counter Beijing.

ZAKARIA: Fascinating. Pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much.

WEI: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)