Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/4/24
Episode Date: November 4, 2024Closing arguments: Harris vows unity, Trump goes dark and divisive ...
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America is ready. America is ready for a fresh start. Ready for a new way forward where we
see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbor.
I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to the challenges you face.
I am not looking to score political points, I am looking to make progress.
For anyone who hasn't voted yet, look first of all, no judgment, but please do get
to it.
I don't really laugh like that, do I?
A little bit.
We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based
on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.
This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance,
and the man is out for unchecked power.
And in less than 90 days, is he going to be him or me in the Oval Office?
Now Kamala, take my Pamela.
The American people want to stop the chaos
and end the dramala with a cool new step mamala?
Kick back in our pajamas and watch a rom-comala.
We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics
driven by fear and division.
We are done with that and we are exhausted with it.
Your vote is your voice and your voice is your power.
And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.
For all Americans.
A look at some of the closing messages from Vice President Kamala Harris over the final
weekend of the 2024 presidential campaign.
It was a very uniting message.
Joyful, uniting, clear.
And I will say, that's what candidates do at the end.
At the end, they end together arms out Willie right
across the fruited play. Yes, right across the hills of the
Republic you say come to me. Yeah.
Pluribus. That's what you say yeah, right. This should not
have been a surprise but I loved to hit all of her marks,
yeah, talking about bringing America together being a president for all Americans Just sort of things that Americans have long said they wanted right since this
compromise
Unity and that's a message that every politician is the ramping up
Campaign, that's what they do here now is some of what we heard and saw from former President Donald Trump.
Did he do the same?
The image of our country is terrible.
It's terrible.
It's a failed country.
That's what it is.
They view us as a nation in decline, but even worse,
they view us as a failed country.
Kamala's closing message to America is that she hates you.
You know, there's got to be something there.
I think she does. I do believe you.
The day that I left, I shouldn't have left.
I mean, honestly, because we did so well.
That white, beautiful white skin that I have would be nice and tan.
I got the whiter skin because I never have time to go out in the sun but I have that
beautiful white and you know what?
It could have been beautiful tan, beautiful.
And I have this piece of glass here but all we have really over here is the fake news
right? really over here is the fake news, huh? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that
so much because I consider myself to be the father of fertilization.
It's a very demonic party.
I come in, and here's the problem.
I said, oh, man, it's too low.
I said, oh.
So, I had to go and see.
In Lancaster, they found 2,600 ballots,
all done and by the same hand.
In other words, the same exact penmanship, the same hand, the same everything.
Your team is very good? I would say the Greek is a seriously good player. Do you agree?
And tell me, who has more Greek in him, the Greek or me?
I think we have about the same.
A little birdie told me that we're leading in New Jersey.
What's that all about?
We love New Jersey.
And if you don't vote, you're stupid.
You're stupid.
You watch.
It's going to be so good. It's going to be so good.
It's going to be so much fun.
It'll be nasty a little bit at times and maybe at the beginning in particular, but it's going
to be something.
Speaking of nasty, did he really do that gesture?
I don't know.
Well, there's so many things.
I mean, let's bring in the game.
Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Wait to Early White House beer chief at Politico,
Jonathan Lemire, U.S. special correspondent for BBC News,
Cady Kay, NBC News national affairs analyst
and a partner and chief political columnist at PUC,
John Hellman, and president of the National Action Network
and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton.
All right, so Willie, there's so much to go over there.
First of all, again with Kamala Harris,
she delivers the message that I think Americans want,
which is let's come together.
I'm gonna be president for all Americans.
And she's done this for quite some time.
Donald Trump, I couldn't write down the notes quickly.
Now, first of all, he looked, he was asleep on his feet
in one of those events, but he talked about America
being horrible, he lied about, once again,
spreading a big lie, he must be concerned
about Pennsylvania, he keeps lying about Pennsylvania.
Says he's the father of fertilization,
I'm not exactly sure what that means.
And then he did a he did a he did
a graphic.
Seen like he was having oral side my car with the microphone
and some
some
social media platforms actually would not play it
because they said it was so obscene and you look at that
moment and again you hear these people going running on
it called radio station content and saying that oh they're you
know he's going to save Christians he's he's sent by
Jesus, he's a Christian protector of one is a protector
of women and all this but
all the lies. We're just stunning and he's, I don't know that I've ever seen as much
contrast in a closing message, not just on energy and on vitality and on vigor, but also
just the overall message of hope, optimism versus pessimism,
grimness.
And again, a calling two days after he
called to have Liz Cheney shot by a firing squad,
talking about how he wouldn't mind if the press got shot.
Yeah, he said, I wouldn't mind that.
You'd have to shoot through the fake news to get to me,
and he wouldn't have a problem with that.
I think start with the superficial,
which you touched on, which is this was when Joe
Biden was the candidate, a contrast that Donald Trump was young and vital.
Watch those two sets of rallies and tell me which candidate is young and vital, who looks
exhausted.
And then the second and perhaps more important piece of it is you didn't hear one word in
any of those rallies from Donald Trump
about the people yeah about the people whose vote he wants you
know all about you know it's so funny you said that because
there was one rally where he said oh all the seats are here
right everybody and some of the cameraman and around and you
saw all these empty seats. But I saw something else as he was
talking about himself and his
grievance. I saw people up in the stands with their arms like
around empty seats and just kind of looking around he.
It's crazy he never talks about them he never talks about the
people he talks about himself and Kamala Harris is message
here down the stretch as you said she made her sort
of final critique of Donald Trump this weekend and now has turned to, hey, we want to turn
the page together as a country.
We want everybody on board.
She was talking to Republicans.
There's a place for you in my campaign.
There's a place for you in my administration.
There's a place for you in this country.
And the Wall Street Journal actually, Joe, the front page talking about Donald Trump's final
weekend, you can go right here.
It says dark pitch gets third airing asking if voters really
want to hear American carnage a third time.
Will it sell this time?
And that's exactly what Donald Trump is selling here at the
end.
Cady, the grimness again, the grimness over the past several
weeks have been just the opposite
actually of what Donald Trump tried to do in the last 10 days of the 2016 campaign.
We win.
One, when you ask people, why did Donald Trump win?
And they always say, well, after the Mueller letter, he bit his tongue.
He stayed quiet.
It was one of the only times he ever showed any discipline.
And he finished quietly and got out of the way of the voters.
Here, my gosh, if you go back over the past two weeks, you have Donald Trump talking about
using the military, using the National Guard to go after Democrats and to arrest them.
You have Donald Trump talking about getting a firing squad and shooting at the face of
Liz Cheney, one of the most conservatives in Congress during her stay there. This past weekend you had him
talking about
you having talking about shooting the press and saying
he wouldn't mind if the press were shot. And of course he
again and we have to say that I'm so sorry that there are a
lot of kids that wake up start waking up their parents at 4.30
and say poor my cereal Ma poor my
captain crunch with crunch berries I want to see Joe and
me can wear entire funny gang right and so they're saying
that so I apologize, I hope not that's a long wind up to say
kids he
simulated that was oral sex.
simulated that was oral sex.
At a rally twice twice and it was so
it was just so graphic that again a lot of a lot of social
media sites had to put up warnings for it.
And that's his closing campaign he seems more untethered and
more exhausted at the same time the contra you know the first campaign ever ran, the guy that I talked to early on in the campaign,
he said, Joe, this campaign's all about contrast.
You're young, your opponent's old.
It's all about contrast.
You get to the end of this campaign,
I've never seen a greater contrast in American politics.
Yeah, this is not the campaign that Chris LaCivita
and Suzy Wilds were trying to get Trump on, and is not the campaign that Chris LaSavita and Susie Wiles were trying to get
Trump on and certainly not the campaign that it was.
When they seemed to have some amount of control earlier this year and we were all talking
about how much more disciplined this campaign was, I think the October surprise was Donald
Trump deciding filters, what the hell, I'm just going to throw them away and saying whatever
he wanted.
At that campaign with the famous microphone incident, He also said to the crowd, do you want to see me go backstage and bash some heads in
over this?
I mean, the violence of the rhetoric.
And if Kamala Harris has the momentum now, and if we're going to speak to Ann Seltzer
in a minute, if it looks like women are turning out in big numbers, this campaign will partly
have been defined by Dobs
and all of the work and the stories
that Meek has been airing all of last week
and how women are hearing those,
but also by the nature of Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump talks about violence like this,
when he talks about beating up his stagehands
because his microphone isn't working
the way that he wants them to,
that doesn't inspire a lot of women to think,
oh yeah, this is the guy we can trust with the nuclear codes and the keys to the Oval Office.
You know, in the other campaign, Jonathan O'Meara, you would have had actually a candidate
that had Donald Trump's weaknesses get like Nikki Haley and then figure out how to work the center
and pull those women towards him.
The exact opposite has happened.
We're gonna be talking in a minute about some polls
that came out over the weekend.
One in particular that many people are saying
is a canary in the coal mine, we don't know.
But there are a lot of people that know politics
that are saying that.
And if you look at those numbers in Ann Seltzer's polls,
which Ann is right 99.9% of the time,
you see women, especially older women,
breaking hard away from Donald Trump.
And I just wonder if looking at that poll
and understanding just how right that poll was four years ago,
and we'll talk to John Hyland about that in a second,
if that's one of the reasons Donald Trump
seemed even more unhinged this weekend. Just real quickly as we
talk to you I was I'm following another story of an 18 year old in Texas a year
ago her mother took her to three emergency rooms the first one begging
for help they gave her some sort of antibiotic or something the second one
they sent her home the third one by then the miscarriage was so, she, her organs failed and she died because
of these strict abortion bans.
People are seeing and living and dying this reality of Trump.
Yeah, we said on the show a few weeks ago that when the dust settles, if Harris were
to win, we might all look at each other and say, it was Dobbs all along.
And we're seeing that in some of the movement right now, the polls are suggesting.
Yeah.
A couple other notes here.
I heard from someone in the Trump campaign about yesterday's it was the
angriest they've seen him all year long before that rally
his first rally yesterday in Pennsylvania where he had
obviously digesting that the Iowa poll in a pure fury,
that's the rally we play all that sound from about shooting
the press and as the day went on he seemed to get
progressively more exhausted. Let's talk some data points
John Holliman here.
There what what's a big clue where a candidate spends his or her time? Trump in the last few days over and over and over. North Carolina I'm told
there's some worries there. Whereas they try to piece together 270. The fact that
he's going there back over and over again. And then lastly let's talk about
Pennsylvania which is the biggest state most important state on the map where
Vice President Harris is spending her entire day today.
Two data points.
On Saturday, the Harris campaign had over 800,000 door knocks.
800,000 in one day in one state.
An unheard of number.
And it was relayed earlier this morning that while canvassers were out there,
some of these canvassers reaching the same home more than once,
which is extraordinary, they never saw any sign, any sign of a Trump ground game, a ground game that he outsourced
to Elon Musk and the like.
Yeah, man, so many data points right now.
Trump, if you watched him all weekend long, I'll tell you exactly what the, it wasn't
just that he looked angry Which he did sometimes and and again the constant projections of these violent fantasies
You know the the Cheney thing the shooting the press thing the his his as he gets more and more exhausted
He just his it just comes out more and more in these kind of these ball. They're all
Revenge fantasies people getting shot people who doesn't like it. But there's a dejection there to
they the exhaustion at the end and the begging please vote for
me, I don't want after all of this, but here's the here's the
headline I thought of the weekend of listen to him.
After he got he know he knows it's losing. I mean that you
can see it. He's saying more and more things that that
project not the Brea we got asked by I think he knows it's close he
got asked by John Karl in one of these are one of the stops
from ABC News whether he thought he could lose and I've
never heard Trump say in a moment like this what he said
I'm not this is a this is a paraphrase but it was basically
yeah, you know, I mean you could lose, I mean I mean
sometimes you know I feel good for us out there I think we're
going to win but I know
you could lose any kind of said like you could lose its possible
you can lose like 8 times but which is not a thing that
Trump would ever say he thought what does that follow up I'm
going to say right now what I've been saying for months
this race is tied at this race is tied the only difference
rather is Donald Trump has had people around him
for 3 months. It's like a fight corner for a fight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, champ, yeah, champ.
Yeah, you're the greatest champ. Go out there, champ.
They've been telling him, oh, you've got this in the bag.
You've got this in the bag.
I've never seen such arrogance in all my life.
People reporting on this campaign have never seen a campaign so sure
they were going to wipe out their opponent as this campaign and so Donald Trump's heard that and he was
sure he was gonna win easily and then this weekend as polls started breaking
suddenly understands this is still a fight right I don't think that Donald
Trump thinks oh I'm going to lose. I think Donald Trump, for the first time, is saying, oh, my God, my people were lying
to me all along.
They lied to me all along and oversold it, and I'm in a dogfight.
This is going to be a rough rumble to the very end politically.
If it was a boxer, it's his corner telling him, you're ahead in the fight, and then he
finds out that he's not.
And I think that I've never seen a more disastrous closing argument, especially to the ones he's
trying to appeal to, to those that he's trying to say that he is balanced and can handle
the ship of state he comes out.
All simulating oral sex evangelicals could love that to
those black voters he's trying to appeal a young black man he
talks about his beautiful white skin white and he says it
repeatedly my white skin that really will play well with young
black men to
women he goes the other way I mean everything you and I are back this
by the way you do we haven't even talked about Madison Square Garden exactly a
pivotal moment in this campaign and you look at his Hispanic numbers they dropped
about 10 points in the last New York Times, Ciena poll. And he has done nothing to try to recover that,
to even belatedly attack this situation
that the comedian put him in.
On his platform, with his invitation,
he's never done anything to try to repair that.
The campaign put out a statement,
but he has not personally denounced any of it.
And then as I was getting ready to say, you and I are Baptist.
At the end of a sermon sermon you open the doors of
the church, a man you say come and and become part of the
army who are wearing glorious afterlife. Yeah, you know say
you low down dogs.
The morning. Beat up the congregation is trying to come
inside.
So he or sorry Joe he just he says he wants to be
the protector of women and yet everything he's done we need to
be protected from him from from his policies and even his
actions I think what he does I think one of the most most
telling moving things have been the specific stories you've been
talking about me over and over again yeah to show how heinous and brutal the the Trump and in Texas what Colin
Allred's calling the Ted Cruz ban I've seen some of the commercials and the
football games in Texas whoa that's if that race is really close that's why
we're gonna get we're just gonna go to add seltzer in one moment I just want to
explain something really quickly.
So I go into this sort of dark zone.
Not Aaron Rodgers dark zone.
But the last week before, or last week and before campaign, I just turned everything
off.
Do you polish your corvettes?
No, I don't.
I delete, I delete, that's an old law school story.
I knew a guy who should have been studying for the bar exam and I'm like, dude, what
are you doing? He goes, I'm getting ready for the bar exam. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
He goes, I'm getting ready for the bar exam.
This is how I get my mind right.
But in my campaigns, I always last weekend, I shut down.
So I'm not looking at anything but football games.
And I went out golfing twice for the first time in four years.
Whoa, pretty good.
You're not playing in four years.
Anything to get away from people talking about stuff.
They don't know anything about. So make it calls me.
What was it Saturday night.
I've been on anything I bring it up and I got bring up and so
she just quietly goes have you seen about that.
But an hour Iowa, I will pull I what I will pull because I'm
looking at South Carolina, they're looking pretty good
poll. I know what Iowa poll because I'm looking at South Carolina they're looking pretty good. Seltzer against Texas A&M and she goes oh this and
Seltzer has Trump up by I mean has has hers up by three points in Iowa and I'm
like what? And then I'm on the phone the rest of the night but John Heilman we
were talking that night and you told me the most remarkable story about,
first of all, Ann gets it right every time.
Just about every time.
But you told me the most remarkable story
about where you were four years ago
to the night that this poll dropped.
And I want you to explain that
so people get an understanding about Ann,
and then Willie will take us to Ann.
Well, I'll just very quickly to your point.
North Carolina is there four times in the last three days.
They're worried about North Carolina and that's obvious.
The other thing is the way he knows he's in trouble, empty.
The rooms are really empty now.
Like he's playing the half-filled halls now and halls that he filled two weeks ago in
the same place.
Right. and what halls that he filled two weeks ago in the same place. To Ann Selzer, four years ago, people forget how competitive Iowa was four years ago.
When we were making the finale of that season finale of the circus,
I went to Iowa, to Des Moines on a Halloween night,
which was the Saturday night before the election.
Traditionally, Ann Selzer's poll, last poll,
the Iowa poll with the Des Moines Register of MediaCom comes out that night.
And people look at that poll.
She had gotten Trump right, winning the state by the Des Moines Register of MediaCom comes out that night. And people look at that poll.
She had gotten Trump right, winning the state by the right number in 2016.
She had gotten Obama in 12.
She had gotten Obama in 8.
She hadn't missed a race at all, except for the race in 04, where she missed Kerry by
like a point.
Had Kerry winning by a point, and Bush ended up winning that state, winning Iowa really
narrowly with the last minute push but she's very
accurate she's very accurate in the famously in the primaries
and caucuses for years and years and years. So in that race last
time her previous poll in 2020 in September had Trump and Biden
tied at 4747 tied in Iowa this is the same time other polls
were showing Biden up by 10 in Wisconsin, 9 in Michigan.
It was going to be a blowout.
And you were looking for a landslide.
And I went there thinking, you know, well, we're probably going to see, we'll see what's
happening here.
If Biden's gained his space, put some distance between him and Trump, that'll augur a landslide
across the across the blue wall states.
Right.
And instead, Anne's poll came out and had Trump up by seven.
And I was sitting in a room with with Matt Paul, probably the best
Democratic strategist in Iowa, and Dave Cotcho, probably the best
Republican strategist in Iowa. And all three of us had the same
feeling at that at that moment. I think we all said on camera, we're
like, that's first time we all thought Trump could win the race.
And there was no question at that moment that Michigan, Ohio, or Michigan, well, Ohio was
not going to buy it.
It was never going to win Ohio.
And Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were all going to be way closer than anyone
thought.
Because of this one poll.
And you could see that the poll, and then it turned out, of course, on election day,
just drive the point home, Trump ended up winning Iowa by eight instead of seven.
So you said at the time a Canary in the coal mine.
A lot of people Saturday night were saying the same thing. Canary in the
coal mine. Yeah so Ann Selzer's poll the history as John said predicted Trump
plus 7 at this point in 2020. He wins by 8 2016. Selzer's poll shows Trump plus
7. He wins by 9 2012. Selzer's poll shows Obama plus five, he wins by five.
So here is that new poll out of Iowa.
The Des Moines Register MediaCom Iowa poll
has Vice President Harris up by three points
among likely voters, 47% to Donald Trump's 44.
That is within the margin of error.
Back in September, Trump was ahead of Harris by four points,
and in June, Trump was up by 18 points over President
Biden.
Trump, of course, won Iowa in 2016 and 2020.
The data shows women, particularly those who are older or registered as independent, are
driving the late shift toward Kamala Harris.
Joining us now is the pollster who conducted the Des Moines Register MediaCom poll.
The aforementioned Jay Ann Selzer.
She's also president of the polling firm Selzer and Company.
And it's great to have you with us this morning.
If you would, we've sort of given you a big wind up and lead in here.
If you could walk us through the poll, what you found and what has caused this shift.
Well, as you can imagine, this was a shock poll and I've been shocked since Tuesday morning
last week. So I've had the time for this to sink in because no one, not including me, would have thought
that Iowa could go for Kamala Harris.
So what we saw there was striking sort of elaboration of what had happened with our
September poll where we had Kamala Harris closing by 14 points, the gap with Donald Trump.
Our analysis then was it wasn't that people are switching their allegiances. It was that more
people were qualifying as likely voters in September. That would have been they say they
will definitely vote. That somebody asked me, well is Trump losing ground? And that's an
interesting question and you get out your calculator and start to work that
out. He actually there were more respondents, weighted respondents for
Trump by three individuals than he had in June. But Hamla Harris got 85 and
that's because the influx, the bigger number of likely voters, extremely went to
Kamala Harris.
And this poll is an extension of that, that the people more likely to show up are her
kinds of supporters.
So she's got more women, she's got more older people, she's got more college-educated people,
and it ended up, you look at the graph of it, it looks pretty linear that her going
from Biden's low point in June up to now she is leapfrogged over Trump into the
lead. So there's lots of things going on, lots of things to
speculate there, but obviously we looked hard at these numbers
to feel confident in publishing, and we do.
And obviously there have been other polls out of Iowa.
We heard Donald Trump, of course,
quickly criticize your poll and say,
well, I'm up by 10 points in other polls.
I'm up double digits.
How do you respond to that idea that yours,
despite the track record we just laid out,
could be an outlier in Iowa?
I give credit to my method for my track record. I call my method polling forward, so I want to be in a place where my data can show me what's likely to happen with the future electorate.
So I just try to get out of the way of my data saying this is what's going to happen. A lot of other polls, and I'll count Emerson among them, are including in the way that they
manipulate the data after it comes in things that have happened in the past. So
they're taking into account exit polls, they're taking into account what turnout
was in past elections. I don't make any assumptions like that. So it's in my way of thinking it's a cleaner way to forecast a future electorate, which
nobody knows what that's going to be.
But we do know that our electorates change in terms of how many people are showing up
and what the composition is.
And so I don't want to try to predict what that's going to be.
I want to be in a place for my data to show me.
So John, as we're explaining this weekend, Jonathan, as we're explaining this weekend
to some people that we're asking, so many pollsters get so many things wrong in the
past are furiously playing with the numbers, trying to weight it this way and that way.
The reason why Ann Seltzer doesn't have to do that
is because she got it right last time,
and she got it right the time before that.
So she doesn't have to sit there and go,
is this my New York Times needle that has Hillary at 99%?
Do I need to crank it to 50%
because Donald Trump made me look like a full banner
because we got all the polls that got everything wrong in 2020 and all the polls get everything wrong in 2022.
So they're looking at their numbers and they're saying, is my data lying to me?
Have I gotten the wrong people?
Ann doesn't have to do that because Ann was right four years ago.
So she just looks at the data and she puts it out there.
So if people are asking what's going on here and
why this outlier may be a canary Nicole minus for the
same reason that John Hyman said 4 years ago. It was a
massive swing toward Trump and then just trusted the data and
she didn't have to play any games with the numbers because
she had to just for pass failure. Yeah, the pulse track
record speaks for itself which is why it landed with such a thunderclap
Saturday evening.
So, Anne, there's, you know, as to Joe's point, there's been all this speculation about what's
that quiet, what's that hidden vote this time around?
We know there was in other polls some votes for Donald Trump that weren't picked up in
16 and 20 as just two examples.
In your data here, are you seeing any surprises in terms of people turning out who might be
for Trump or perhaps for Harris that weren't expected?
Nothing that we felt was anything other than what naturally happens in polls.
We have some people who say that they are self-identified as Republicans, a small number
in single digits, who are voting for Harris.
We have less than 1% of self-identified Democrats who say they're voting for Trump.
And I'll just tack on to my comment here that this method is the same method that we used
in 2016 to show Trump winning and 2020 to show Trump winning.
So he doesn't like it now.
It's not the poll.
It's what the poll is saying.
And the Iowa's six-week abortion ban came into effect in July, and you've polled since
July.
Wow.
And you didn't see, in the first polls you did after July, you didn't see this big shift
towards Kamala Harris.
So why, do you think it's just that people are, as election gets closer, then being more
motivated by the issue potentially of abortion if it is a lot of women that are coming out
to vote or how do you explain that?
Yes, the gender gap definitely is, you see it here and Kamala Harris wins with women
more than she loses with men.
So that ends up there.
The very best demographic for her is women age 65 and over.
And her margin is more than two to one with that group.
So we did see this dynamic in our September poll that people were coming off the bench and getting in the game and that
she decreased the margin by 14 points. That was really kind of the thunderclap we thought we were
going to see. So it's independent women, it's women 65 and over. The poll in June where we had Biden down 18, this is before the fetal heartbeat
bill went into effect. And the September poll, it's been in effect. We can't close the loop
on this. We don't have proper data to do more than that. But we know the majority of the
state thinks that abortion in most or all cases should be legal and that the majority
are opposed to the six-week ban.
So it's not exactly apples to apples, but the mood of the state is clearly more in favor
of a different kind of law on abortion.
I'll make one more point and that's in the at the
congressional district level. The first district, we have Republican incumbents
in all four districts. The first district is like a 20-point lead for the
Democratic challenger and abortion has been a big part of that race. Yeah.
Gosh. And it's Heilman here and of course there's been tons of spending in of that race. Geez. Yeah. Exactly. So, gosh.
And it's Heilman here, and of course, there's been tons of spending in those congressional
races, mostly abortion-focused, so that's another factor.
Let me ask you real quick, though.
I'm not a mathematician, but 47 plus 44 gets you to 91.
I think you have 2% undecided and 7% that I don't really understand.
So what's that 9% that's sitting out there that's still left to be accounted for in the
Iowa electorate?
Right.
Thank you, John, for pointing this out.
Neither candidate is getting to 50% in our poll.
So there's plenty of smush still there.
And some of that 3% is going for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appears on our ballot.
And then the rest are a mix of people who say they're going to vote for someone else,
you know, 1%.
Some people who say they're not sure still at this point.
And some people who have already voted, but they don't want to tell us who they voted
for.
So maybe those are all Trump voters.
So, you know, there's still plenty of things that could happen.
I'm prepared for this election to go either way.
I'll be OK.
Yeah.
Yeah.
President of the polling firm, Selzer & Company, J.N. Selzer, thank you very much for coming
on the show this morning.
Still ahead on Morning Joe, inside the ruthless, restless final days of Trump's campaign.
The Atlantic's Tim Alberta joins us with that.
Plus, Democrats are hoping to retake the House
and defend the Senate tomorrow on Election Day.
We'll talk to two top lawmakers in charge of delivering those results.
You're watching Morning Joe. we're back in 90 seconds. You know.
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On our screen right now, I'm showing you Donald Trump.
This isn't even a Democratic Republican battle.
This is Donald Trump talking about executing one of the most conservative Republicans in
Congress over the past decade.
Well, I can't wait to watch the cameras chase Lindsey Graham around the mall, see how fast
she's going to run and get away from them.
So Liz Cheney, don't listen to her.
She's selling out conservatism to stay relevant.
She's not relevant in terms of conservatism.
She no longer has a voice. Trump's gonna win.
We're gonna win the Senate.
We're gonna push through all this.
And I'm not gonna listen to anything she has to say.
Well, you know, by the way,
if you heard Catholic mass music playing in the background,
that was, it's Lindsey Graham's confession.
He's talking about Republicans who will do anything
to stay relevant.
Oh my God, it's Lindsey, I love you.
You know I love you.
It's the story of your life.
It is literally the story of your life.
Anything to stay relevant.
Now let's talk about, really quickly,
just have to talk about it.
Let's talk about Liz Cheney. She had a safe seat. She could have stayed in it
forever. She could have been a senator. She could have been a vice president. She
could have been a president. But Liz Cheney chose at a certain point, as did
all true conservatives, and yeah I count myself as one of those, that Donald Trump
actually was undermining the conservative movement.
He was undermining the Republican Party, and he was undermining, in my case, I thought
he was undermining the evangelical church.
And so it seems to me there's not really a whole lot of sacrifice and staying as close to a person
in power as you possibly can. Watching a January 6th riot, saying you're done with him,
then being chased by three people and a hound dog at National Airport.
It was a chihuahua.
And then immediately flipping. I mean, you know,
Willie John McCain, the last time I spoke to him, you know, he was very concerned. It
was Valentine's Day, I think 2017. I was in his office and he had a lot on his mind, mainly Putin. He was very concerned about Vladimir Putin and the killing of a political opponent in
the shadow of the Kremlin.
But he just shook his head.
He was talking about Lindsey.
He's like, you came in with Lindsey, right?
I go, yeah, we came in 94.
We're friends.
I know Lindsey.
He goes, that guy, what he's willing to sacrifice
to play a golf game with the president.
He just wasn't mad at him.
He was really disappointed.
And just like Shukas had and just just sighed, he couldn't could not imagine it.
Go back to January 6 2021 on the floor down in the well of the Senate.
Remember him pounding that lectern saying I'm out it's not I'm done I'm
done almost saw a glimmer of conviction there and then 2
days later he's going through Reagan National gets hounded by
Trump supporters and completely flips yeah Steve Schmidt the
friend and adviser to John McCain famously described
Lindsey Graham as a pilot fish a smaller fish who always
swims with a larger predator and stays close to the strong fish
yeah, so that he can live off of that I think that's probably
what we're so well listen guilty is charged. I mean I
pilot fish to make it out pretty well, it's bringing the
Rogers chair of American University Vanderbilt
University who beat Auburn this past weekend and now is ball
eligible that that's a that's a real football TV got that on the road to on the road they look good beat Alabama and Auburn this past weekend and now is ball eligible that that's a that's a real football TV got that on the road to on
the road they look good beat Alabama and Auburn the same
season for the first time since 1955, 19 things are a change in
that 1955. So hey John Mitchell my wind.
It's a new way forward Willie yeah, so if you bring up the
French Indian War or shades rebellion.
Team we're out we're out. So so John.
I'm sure you saw the top of the show. The contrast between
Kamala Harris is closing statements which I've got to
say for you and me the way we talk in our nerdish way about
what government should be about,
bringing people together, compromising, prudently governing, and looking at your political opponent
not as the enemy, but as a partner in negotiations.
That was Kamala Harris's message.
Donald Trump's message obviously
was talking about the shooting of the press and he wouldn't be mind, he wouldn't
mind if the press were shot and saying many awful things, making obscene
gestures, seeming completely exhausted and beaten down by this process.
I'm just curious first of all your thoughts your reflections, but also have you ever seen a contrast this dramatic in the
closing days of a campaign?
No, I haven't and this isn't quite the French and Indian
War but it's close when I did think about honest to God it
that easy easy is 1800 when Thomas Jefferson was in
this huge battle, what they thought of is an early, an existential struggle.
And Jefferson said, we have to restore the spirit of 76.
They already thought it was gone in 1800.
But Jefferson was the architect of a politics that TR, Lincoln, FDR, Ronald Reagan, and
Vice President Harris this weekend practiced, which was a politics of optimism. It was about America being the world's first,
Jefferson said the world's best hope,
Lincoln made it the last best hope,
and Reagan made it the last best hope of man on earth.
And it was a gradual building up of the possibilities
of politics, the possibilities of the country.
And if you don't believe that politics is about possibility, then the alternative is
that it's only about power.
And I believe, as firmly as I believe anything, that that's what's on the ballot tomorrow,
is that, and I don't say this as a partisan,
but I think it's very, to me, it is beyond clear
that people who revered Ronald Reagan,
people who voted for the Bushes,
who voted for McCain, who voted for Romney,
this is not your guy.
This is not your party.
Don't just stay out of lassitude or some kind of old loyalty, because it's not the same
institution.
Liz Cheney's argued it.
So many people have argued it.
Just believe the evidence of your eyes.
You know, Joe, he mentions 1800.
You and I go to 1985 when Dairy Queen introduced the Blizzard
as a really historical marker.
And you can get the crushed up Oreos on top and mix it in.
And what that really was, and I think we're seeing it here
too, that was sort of a compromise
between the old and the new.
I want my Dairy Queen. Right?
They bring the ice cream cone,
and I just want it.
But what do they do?
Two great tastes.
The taste great together.
Kind of like Reese's peanut butter cup, too.
So, you've got the Crimean War
and the French Indian War.
You've got James Rebellion.
You've got the election of 1800. We got the war you got a belly and you've got parallel like 1800 we got the blizzard
85, yeah, it's a big year by the way listen to outfield
John is. It's just what's better than that but that was
my fault apologize. All right well get us. So John when you
think about Donald Trump in this idea of American carnage
which is gone deeper and deeper into, especially over the weekend, it got very dark, very low energy
conspiracy theories about the election.
He's already seeding the ground again in case he loses.
He can point to these conspiracies that are being debunked by the day by election officials,
both Republican and Democratic, by the way, and all of these swing states.
That message worked in 2016.
It lost narrowly in 2020.
It lost in 2022 and on and on and on.
Are there parallels or do you see anything appealing to a broad electorate, not just
a base, about a vision of an America that is a third world country or a hellhole, as
Donald Trump likes to call it?
No, what it is is an appeal to people who, there are two groups here, right?
There are people who do not believe the country's on the right track.
They discount for reasons that surpass understanding, but they do discount the
temperamental questions. That's the most euphemistic way I can put Trump's
behavior. And they just want to change, right? There are a lot of people, or a
significant number of people, who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald
Trump in 2016. Now think about it, to go in 48 months from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016.
Now think about it, to go in 48 months
from voting for Barack Obama to Donald Trump
is a pretty wide, it's almost as big a journey
as going from nominating Mitt Romney
to nominating Donald Trump.
So there are people who look out at the world,
they don't like what they see, so they wanna change.
That's a totally, obviously, legitimate impulse.
And their vote counts as much as our vote does.
Here's the thing.
What I would urge folks to do is look out
and consider what the change would be.
And what's the price of that change?
A Harris presidency will be a recognizable phenomenon.
You can disagree with it.
You can love it.
You can dislike it.
But it's something that fits within the way America works.
And a Trump, another Trump presidency is something that is so risky, so self-evidently risky.
Don't just look at what he says now, look at what he did four years ago in this season.
It wasn't just January 6th, right?
Listen to the tape when he called Georgia and asked for the votes.
Go online, take a look at the January 6 committee stuff. And I just, you
know, Joe and I both have Republican friends who have somehow, Lindsay-like, sort of talked
themselves into January 6th being this liberal fixation, right? It's not. It's not.
It was a genuine attack
on
the thing that has,
dare I say it, since 1800,
characterized American democracy, which is a peaceful transfer of power.
And there were a lot of people,
let's be very clear, there were a lot of people,
Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, Al Gore in 2000,
Hillary Clinton in 2016.
These are folks who might have had some reason to challenge results, and they didn't because
they believed fundamentally that the Constitution was more important than they were.
Right.
And that's what I think we have to decide.
I mean, it's a very, you're so right, it's a very really simple choice here.
You have someone who respects constitutional boundaries and Madisonian democracy,
and another candidate who even those who support him will say is repelled by any
check against his power.
That is where we are.
Our historian John Meacham, thank you so much.
We'll see you again tomorrow morning for our Election Day coverage.
And to make it even more basic, this election is a matter of life or death for women right
now because of what he did four years ago. Coming up, some of the cast members of the award winning show,
The West Wing, are endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
We'll show you their new ad campaign.
Morning Joe will be right back.
Fifty-three past the hour.
Eight members from the cast of the award-winning television show The West Wing are endorsing
Vice President Kamala Harris in a new ad made in partnership
with the Lincoln Project.
Take a look.
The right kind of president reminds us that honor and dignity aren't relics of the past,
but the foundation of our future.
They know that while their time here is fleeting, their service can build a stronger America for generations to come.
The woman who will soon sit behind this desk
will be the first in many ways.
She will lead America to a new era, a crowd era.
A future where we will build as one nation.
A time of opportunity and prosperity for every
American every family. Her name is Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris. And she will be
our next president.
Wow. Let's bring in a longtime political strategist and consultant Rick Wilson.
He is a co-founder and board member of the Lincoln Project.
And John Heilman, I'll give you the first question for Rick.
And also I believe the author of that ad, or the author of the script of that ad, according
to Donald Trump, a little bird told me, there are two obvious questions, one of which is
this thing I understand from my little bird, this thing came together real quick.
Yes. And I think the biggest question watching it is beautiful ad.
We don't get to see any of their faces.
I think maybe those two things are connected.
You know, the West Wing was such a cultural icon for a generation of political people
and a generation of Americans.
And it did remind people all the time, even though it was fiction,
it was a fiction of a White House people wanted they wanted the honor and dignity
They wanted the sense of service
They wanted the idea that people in that in that sacred space were there for the American people and not for their own
financial gain or their personal grand Isaman or or whatever lunatic fantasies that were you know,
Have empowered certain recent residents of that office.
And we didn't show Trump in the ad, we showed the White House, we showed the city, we showed
America in an aspirational way.
Well, I also meant none of the actors' faces.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Just all aspirational.
Rev?
I think one of the things that West Wing brought to all Americans is that we actually felt
like we were on the West Wing.
By the cast coming out and endorsing, or at least some members of the cast, Kamala Harris,
doesn't that also in a subliminal way say that these are the people that we learned
with the West Wing was about who feels this should be in the West Wing?
Was that part of the message?
The idea was to show people, you know,
to remind people that the stories they saw on the West Wing,
that the stories they saw about that White House
also exist in real life.
Republican and Democratic presidents before
have put the country first.
They've done the things that leadership demands
when they're in the White House.
And so we're really proud to work with the West Wing cast on this. It was
an amazing group of people to work with. And it did happen at a speed that is like speed
of light.
Really?
Rick, this sounds like a little bit of a prosaic question after the kind of lofty rhetoric
of the West Wing and the aspirations of the cast there. But when you make an ad like this,
who do you think, whose minds do you think
you might be able to change?
Are you making it thinking, right,
there are certain people we want to target,
older voters perhaps, who reminisce about that period,
or are you just hoping it reaches somebody somewhere?
Well, look, there are an awful lot of Gen X voters
who are still in the undecided camp.
There are some soft Gen X Republicans
that a little bit of research has shown us are still in play. Those folks have moved over to Harris
in meaningful numbers, bigger than Trump has ever lost before, and they're 16 or 20.
And so talking to those folks, but it is also a more broad appeal to talk to America and to remind
them that they don't have to accept something lesser
in the White House this time.
So Rick, there was an ad that you guys made a rebuttal to that really broke through with
people that was played on a lot of football games and things like that about Kamala Harris
in her own words saying a few years ago that she supported transgender surgery from prison
inmates.
It turns out that that was actually a Trump era policy.
Let's just watch the rebuttal ad,
because I'm not sure everyone saw this
as opposed to the original ad.
Have you seen this ad?
Donald Trump is spending millions attacking Kamala Harris
on a desperate lie.
Taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners
and illegal aliens is a Trump administration policy. He's attacking Kamala
Harris for his own record and he thinks you're too dumb to
get it.
He's gaslighting America because Trump is for he him
Kamala is for us.
Wow so I mean that's so that's the truth about that policy but
the original ad broke through in a way that even Democrats are saying.
Did she really say that?
You know, they invested about $30 million in that ad.
They bashed it into the heads of particularly younger male
voters around the country.
They did a lot of testing on it.
They knew it was working.
This ad came together in a way that was pushing back on it,
because as Joe has been pointing out for weeks. This is a
fact it was Trump's policy it was always trumps era policy he
didn't do a Donald Trump would issue executive order at the
drop of the hat right there were to touch that never did a
thing about that.
But what's so amazing is they can say we didn't know it was
there because they actually a man yes, it is a tax payers will
find transition surgeries if they are quote medically
necessary. So it was so that the Trump Justice Department,
the Trump Bureau of prisons went in and they looked at this
and said well let's allow for gender transition surgeries if they are quote
medically necessary.
I think the biggest lesson here, Joe and Mika, is that Donald Trump has contempt for his
own audience.
He knew his people wouldn't care about the lie.
We cared about the truth.
And so that was when we were really proud of the pushback we've done.
And the crazy thing is $30 million in ads for something she said at a forum.
When she said it at a forum, Donald Trump was actually enacting the law in the Justice
Department and his Bureau of Prisons.
Crazy.
It's crazy.
Co-founder and board member of the Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, thank you so much for
coming on.
Thank you so much for having me.
Appreciate you guys.
Great.
Still ahead.