Morning Wire - Campaigns Final Days & Harris’ Alleged Platform Manipulation | 11.1.24

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

The candidates hold dueling rallies in different states as the campaigning reaches the finals days, data suggests backlash against the trans agenda may lead female voters to Trump, and the Harris campaign is accused of manipulating social media platforms. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Balance of Nature: Get 35% off Your Order + FREE Fiber & Spice Supplements. Use promo code WIRE at checkout: https://www.balanceofnature.com/ Beam: Exclusive discount for my listeners! Use promo code WIRE at https://www.ShopBeam.com/Wire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The furious final days of the election have the dueling campaigns crisscrossing the states that will decide it all. That your vote is your voice and your voice is your power. So at the end of the day, you need to ask yourself, can you afford to put someone

this incompetent in charge of our country's future? Where are the two candidates spending their precious time and money? And what's their closing pitch to voters? I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, November 1st, and this is Morning Wire. While the Harris campaign is betting on women for the win, some data suggests backlash against the trans agenda may turn some of

the female vote to Trump. I see on social media people saying they're voting for Kamala Harris because she's a woman. Well, guess what? I am voting for Donald J. Trump because I am a woman. And the Harris campaign is accused of manipulating social media platforms to boost her popularity and promote false claims. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Hey guys, producer Brandon here.

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With just days until the election, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are crisscrossing the nation to make their final case to voters. Here with more on the candidates closing strategies as DailyWire Deputy Managing editor Tim Ricey. Tim. So what's the ground game looking like in these last days of the campaign? Well, John, unsurprisingly, both candidates are focusing on the handful of key swing states that are likely to decide the election. As police, Politico reported, between now and Tuesday, fewer than 10 states are going to get to lay their eyes on VP Harris or former President Trump. Both campaigns are especially focused on the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the last of which Biden carried by just 21,000 votes in 2020.

And not only are Trump and Harris traveling to the same states, they're actually hosting a number of competing events. On Tuesday night, both candidates held events in Wisconsin. Trump spoke in Green Bay with Packers legend Brett Farve, who offered a full-throated endorsement. of the former president. People are losing hope in the American dream. And our kids face the prospect of World War III. Really? We've already had President Trump once.

We've already seen Kamala in action. We can compare and we know which is better. Meanwhile, Harris appeared at a Get Out the Vote Youth Rally in Madison, where she was heckled by protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Harris responded with one of her characteristic lines. Hey, you know what? Listen, we all want the war in Gaza to end and get the hostages out. And everyone has a right to be heard, but right now I am speaking. Just yesterday, both Trump and Harris made stops in Nevada, which has recently emerged as a hotbed of election

lawsuits. And the dueling rallies are set to continue. Today, Trump and Harris are both set to appear in Milwaukee, a clear sign that Wisconsin is becoming a major concern for both campaigns in these final few days. The campaigns have spent a combined. $65 million in Wisconsin since July. Yeah, let's talk about money. What's the spending look like now? Yeah, based solely on the money, it seems like both campaigns' priority is Pennsylvania,

where Trump and Harris have spent a combined $538 million on TV ads alone. But things really get interesting what do you consider states where one candidate is radically outspending the other. For instance, the Harris campaign has spent $69 million on ads in Michigan since July more than twice as much as the Trump campaign. That cash dash is likely a reflection of Team Harris' panic that they're losing support among Arab and Muslim voters, usually Democratic stalwarts, over Harris's handling of the war in Gaza. Just this week, a new poll found that Trump has a slight lead over Harris among Arab American voters.

On the flip side, the Harris campaign has reportedly canceled somewhere between $1.7 and $2.7 million in reserved ad buys in North Carolina, leading many to speculate that Harris is giving up on the Tarheel state. It's a curious move considering the fact that Trump only leads Harris by a point in North Carolina. One other curious thing to note, Trump took a notable break from swing state barnstorming yesterday to visit New Mexico, a solidly blue state where he said he hopes to bolster his popularity among Latinos. Well, we certainly are looking at an eventful couple of days ahead of us. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. With everything going on in America these days, turning off your mind at night can feel impossible.

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Use code wire for up to 50% off. Republicans are tackling the transgender agenda head on this election, drawing on parents' concerns about men and women's sports, sex change procedures for children, and sexual content in schools. The high interest in this topic is prompting some to warn this could be the 2024 sleeper issue. Here to discuss is Daily Wire senior reporter Mary Margaret O'Lahan. So Mary Margaret, how did this become such a focal point for the GOP? Hey, Georgia, I spent the last month talking to people in Trump circles about that very question. What I learned is that some key events of the last four years convinced Trump

that this is a culture war he needs to be at the front of. Those watershed events include several major stories that the Daily Wire broke, the Loudoun County sexual assault of a young girl by a skirt-wearing boy, the grassroots uprising of parents against ideology in schools, and the emergence of fighters like Riley Gaines. Now, Trump himself has said that no one would have known what he was talking about if he discussed gender ideology at a campaign rally during his first presidential run. He's right.

People weren't really talking about these issues then, and I'm told that back around 2020, some of the GOP were afraid to touch this stuff fearing they'd be seen as anti-gay. But during the pandemic, parents got a good look into the classroom, and they understood the radical content being pushed on their kids. They were furious, and they took their stories to conservative organizations and conservative press like the Daily Wire. Education reporting exploded, and the next thing you knew, everyone was talking about this topic, including Republicans and Trump.

So what are Republicans saying about this topic, and is their messaging on transgender issues landing with voters? Absolutely. In the campaign's final stretch, Trump has zeroed in on the left's embrace of transgenderism, and he's pouring millions into television ads that highlight Harris's promotion of far-left policies, like taxpayer-funded trans surgeries for illegal immigrants. According to Democratic testing results reviewed by the New York Times, that ad is not only the Trump campaign's most played ad, it's also their most effective ad. Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners. Surgery. For prisoners. Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access. Kamala's for they, them.

President Trump is for you. And it's resonating with a lot of people. Here's a clip of popular radio show host Charlemagne the God, reacting to the messaging with his team. I don't know if it was the backdrop of football, but when you hear the narrator say Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners, that one line, I was like, hell, no, I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to that.

I definitely said that. She did that. That ad was effective. Now, how is this messaging playing out with women specifically? So that's a really interesting question. Of course, we already know that 69% of Americans want athletes competing on teams that conform with their gender. And the Wall Street Journal has leaned into this polling and dubbed the topic the 2024 sleeper issue. But I'm also being told that this issue is really resonating with women.

I talked to pollster Brent Buchanan, founder of Signal, and he told us, me that pushing back on trans ideology is a, quote, very effective message at moving female voters. Buchanan filled me in on some internal polling in a competitive congressional district, where he said that the number one issue by far that moved women over 55 was trans sports. He also said that when you look at women under 55 in that district, it's the second most effective issue with only tax messages ahead of it. So we're now just about four days out from the election. What's the status of the trans messaging right now? Well, Trump is campaigning on a pretty strong platform when it comes to trans issues.

Over and over again, he's saying men don't belong in women's sports. He says we shouldn't be pushing kids through irreversible trans surgeries or procedures, and he's suggesting he might use federal legislation to stop that. He also promises to cut funding for any schools pushing inappropriate content or radical ideology in the classroom. And I think most significantly, Trump really emphasizes that all of this is just crazy. That's his key line. Now, Kamala's team would argue that this is just. just fearmongering, but the Trump campaign is betting that Americans are going to choose a party

that stands with parents and against transgender ideology. Well, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out. Mary Margaret, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. While the New York Times and Washington Post pushed for the censorship of conservatives over supposed election misinformation, the Harris campaign is allegedly manipulating numerous internet platforms and possibly breaking the rules to artificially boost her popularity and evade fact checks on false content. Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta, Hey Amanda. So the Harris team is accused of manipulating numerous social media platforms, but most recently we've learned about the campaign's alleged coordinated efforts on Reddit

and X. What's going on here? Yeah, I'll start with Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world. An investigation by the Federalist has uncovered what appears to be a vast astroturfing operation run on Discord to artificially boost pro-Harris and anti-Trump content, both by paid staffers and volunteers. Harris staffers allegedly direct which posts to promote where and with what language. For example, they appear to boost abortion content to subredits with women or target swing voters with content relevant to their state. The apparent goal is to make Harris appear more popular than she is and promote content that helps Harris, even if it's not true. For example, they'll direct the boosting of Project 2025 content and tie that to Trump, even though Trump is not at all connected to the plan.

And this has all been extremely effective, though it does appear to routinely run a follow of Reddit rules. In the matter of 15 days, they were able to publish thousands of posts, again, all directed by Harris staffers. That content has received more than 5.7 million up votes and over 400,000 comments. It was also uncovered that 126 of the top 1,000 posts on the very popular politics subreddit in just the past month were allegedly published by Harris campaign volunteers. That's a huge deal considering how influential Reddit is on politics. In fact, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman in 2018 said that he was confident that Reddit could, quote, sway elections. All right, so that's what's going on on Reddit allegedly. What's the campaign being accused of on X?

Well, on X, another hugely influential platform for politics, Harris staffers are directing similar activity from volunteers. One goal there is to block community notes that are unfavorable to Harris. A community note is basically a fact check on X. They appear under misleading or outright false posts. Under Elon Musk's leadership, contributors can add a community note, which is then voted on my users to determine if it appears under content or not. So when Harris campaign staffers direct volunteers to dislike an unfavorable community note, it won't appear.

This seems to be why pro-Harris accounts have been able to spread falsehoods without fact-checks attached to them. This is a big problem, too. I mean, even CNN, an outlet extremely. hostile to Trump, has reported on the routine false info spewed from Kamala HQ, for example, that's the official Harris Camp X account. That goes for other pro-Harris accounts, too, that appear to be working for the Biden-Harris administration. Google is also playing a role here. Aside from the company's documented bias against Trump, it's also permitting the Harris campaign to engage in some pretty shady activity. Over the summer, a report from Axios, another left-leaning

organization, they exposed that the Harris camp was changing headlines and subheadlines of mainstream articles to appear more favorable to Harris. So let's say you're doing a Google search related to health care. You might get a link to an NPR story that's being sponsored by the Harris team. The campaign, though, has edited that headline and subheadline. So it might now read, and this is a real example, Harris will lower health care costs. So you think you're reading a preview of an NPR story, but you're actually reading content from the Harris camp. Exactly. And by the way, those news organizations, they had no idea their content was being manipulated by the Harris team. And to be clear, this is not something the Trump campaign is engaging in. At the least, this is really misleading stuff from a campaign and party that's consistently promoting the censorship of dissent under this guise of supposed deception or misinformation. Right. We're seeing that even more now with the New York Times and Washington Post recent reporting targeting conservative voices. What sort of responses have we seen from all of this?

from the Harris campaign or the social media sites? Well, we don't have a direct response from the Harris camp, but on Wednesday, the account that broke this story, Reddit lies, that was banned from the campaign-run Discord server that's organizing all of this. So it seems they're aware this has been exposed. We've also seen a reaction from Elon Musk. He announced earlier this week that he's opened an investigation

into the Harris campaign's antics. So we'll see what Musk does here. Amanda, thanks for recording. You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon. afternoon with more news you need to know.