The Daily - The Plan to Discredit the Florida Recount

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

Republicans, seeking to secure the party’s majority and agenda in the Senate, are determined to delegitimize the statewide recount underway in Florida. We look at what Democrats have learned since the last time Republicans used that strategy. Guests: Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Jeremy W. Peters, who covers politics for The Times and is reporting on the recount from Tallahassee. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, national Republicans are determined to discredit the statewide recount underway in Florida as illegitimate and fraudulent. What Democrats have learned from the last time Republicans used that strategy. It's Wednesday, November 14th. Uh, do we have Tallahassee? Sorry, yeah. Can you guys hear me now?

Oh, it's Jeremy. Hey, Jeremy. Oh my God. Hey, handsome Jeremy. How are you? I know. What a face for radio I have. I spoke with my colleagues, Maggie Haverman in Washington and Jeremy Peters in Tallahassee, Florida. Jeremy, this is probably going to be you with Florida. When the polls close on Tuesday night in Florida, what do we see?

So there are two big races going on in Florida, the governor's race and the race for United States Senate. And by the end of the evening, it looks like Republicans are in place to win both of those. A big day and a big night for Republicans here in Florida. Thank you, Florida, for your support. Good morning, Maria. It was a big night for Republicans here in Florida. But let's take a look first at that Senate race because we're calling... In the Senate race, you have the state's current governor, Rick Scott, running to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson.

...in the Senate for 18 years. So that was a big switchover... And that's a pretty pivotal race because it's going to determine how comfortable the Republicans' majority is in the Senate. In speaking of Florida, we're going to look at this governor's race. An update here, Ron DeSantis. In the governor's race, you have Ron DeSantis. I'd like to thank our president for standing by me when... by me when... This kind of Trump-styled Republican who became famous for running an ad that featured his young son building a wall out of toy bricks. Mr. President, I look forward to working with you.

And it looks like he has defeated Andrew Gillum. We recognize that, you know, we didn't win it tonight. Who would become the state's first African-American governor. But that does not appear to be happening on election night. Earlier this evening, I called Mr. Ron DeSantis and congratulated him on what we expect will be him as the next governor of the great state of Florida. as the next governor of the great state of Florida. So this starts to look like a Republican wipeout in a state that is considered a bellwether for the country, Florida. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And because it's Florida, it's really close, but decisive enough that the Republicans feel very confident as they go to sleep that night. Then overnight, the vote totals continue to trickle in. Of the state's 67 counties, Palm Beach and Broward counties were still counting votes Saturday. And for Senate candidate Republican Governor Rick Scott, the vote totals are narrowing. And for Senate candidate Republican Governor Rick Scott, the vote totals are narrowing. Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum has now narrowed the lead to.47 of a percentage point.

And then just yesterday, the Republican leads shrunk even more. Both Republicans see their leads cut considerably. The tallies between Republican Governor Rick Scott and incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson are so narrow, it could be within the margin requiring an additional manual recount. They don't just feed the ballots into machines now. Now they're going to take them out and hand inspect them. It looks like that's where it's heading here. Razor-thin margins in the battle for Florida's governor. Democrat Andrew Gillum has now retracted his election night concession. Replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote. We count every vote.

And I say this recognizing that my fate in this may or may not change. You know, let's be clear here. The Republican candidates in both races still have at this point a pretty significant advantage. But it's close enough that the automatic recount called for in the law is triggered. And the state appears headed toward a statewide recount in all 67 counties. count in all 67 counties. So with these two races in Florida, governor and senator hanging in the balance, how did Democrats start to respond to this situation? It's become obvious that Mr. Scott cannot oversee the process in a fair and impartial way, and he should remove himself from the recount process. People must have confidence in the integrity of the election.

So Democrats have looked at this recount, which was legally mandated in Florida, as a way to underscore something that they say is going on with Republicans, not just in Florida, but nationally, which is trying to undermine faith in democracy itself, trying to undermine faith that elections are sound and being held appropriately. And what do we see Republicans doing that would support that characterization by Democrats? The main issue is, among other things, trying to protest a legally mandated recount. We've seen that before, but they are doing it with claims of fraud.

I think they just cut open an alligator in the Everglades and found two more boxes of ballots down in Broward County. Every Floridian should be concerned there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward County. Election fraud charges are flying. Florida, quote, it's clear the Democrats' goal here is not to count every vote fairly, but to steal an election. I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great people of Florida. And it's mostly in their language, but they are infecting the process with a tinge of something improper taking place. National Republicans and Republicans locally in Florida have said Democrats are trying to find a way to reverse the result here. They have pointed to the fact that Republicans are up and that there aren't enough ballots.

And so Democrats are looking for a way to try to undo that. Democrats obviously deny that. But if history shows that only the tiniest fraction of elections are ever reversed based on recounts, then isn't a recount really just a validation of the winning candidate? It just gives you a clearer picture of exactly how much they won by. And if that's the case, why are Republicans resisting this or trying to undermine it? Because a big part of the conservative political identity, especially over the last decade, is to question the legitimacy of American elections, to push the unproven and often unfounded claim that Democrats cheat and steal and stuff the ballot box. And that's why Republicans have lost in certain close races. What recounts are supposed to do is reaffirm the public's faith

that the election they've just seen happen, a very close, close election, is indeed legitimate and that they can trust the outcome. But there's this pattern now that Republicans have picked up on where they can kind of combine these arguments that they've long made about voter fraud and the infection of the electoral process by people who are out to cheat. And this is like the perfect storm of that happening in Florida. And they seize on it. There is tremendous political power for the Republicans in claiming that the Democrats are trying to steal what is to them a settled election. And that motivates the Republican conservative base in a big way. In the broadest terms, what you're seeing right now in Florida by Republicans in terms of strategy bridges all the way back to the 2000 presidential election, where you had Republicans decrying Democrats and suggesting that they were using dishonest means

to try to grab the state back in favor of Al Gore. It feels very similar and evocative. Good evening. I'm Tom Brokaw in New York. It's been a long campaign. It appears it will be a long and exciting evening before we know who is the next president of the United States. You have a strikingly similar situation on election night and the immediate aftermath as you do today. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column. This is a state both campaigns desperately wanted. Stand by, stand by. CNN right now is moving our earlier declaration of Florida. George Bush, governor of Texas, will become the 43rd president of the United States at 18 minutes past 2 o'clock Eastern time. Gore calls George W. Bush on election night thinking he's lost and he concedes to Bush.

And they look at the numbers a little bit more closely in the Gore campaign. the Gore campaign. And they grab Gore just as he is about to go on stage and deliver his concession speech in Nashville and convince him, no, this is not over. Governor Bush, because Al Gore has recanted that concession that he gave earlier on this evening. So stand by. I'll try to get a little bit more information. He calls George Bush back and retracts his concession. This race is simply too close to call. And until the results, the recount is concluded and the results of Florida become official, our campaign continues. Let us be the votes!

Let us be the votes! Let us be the votes! And what you have after that is this protracted recount fight. The protest will continue until there is a re-vote in Palm Beach County! In the courts, on the streets in protests, and in the news media in a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. Hey! Go, Bucs!

Tell us a little bit more about that. What did Republicans do back then in 2000 that would be looked back at now as a kind of inspiration? So the Republican Party and the Bush campaign never stopped treating the recount like it was anything other than a campaign. other than a campaign. Two weeks after the presidential election, a court has decided that Florida's deadline for counting votes and certifying votes was not a deadline at all. That was very different from how Al Gore and his team approached it.

I firmly believe that the will of the people should prevail, and I am gratified that the court's decision will allow us to honor that simple constitutional principle. There's this very telling scene recounted in Jeffrey Toobin's book on the Florida recount of 2000 where the Gore campaign staff in flying down its young volunteers to help with the recount tells them all to take off their campaign pins. They are not a part of the Gore campaign anymore. They are there for something very different. George W. Bush and the Republican Party, on the other hand, saw this as a fight they needed not only to win in court, but they needed to win in the court of public opinion.

Bush campaign representative James Baker was displeased. opinion. Bush campaign representative James Baker was displeased. It is not fair to change the rules and standards governing the counting or recounting of votes after it appears that one side has concluded that is the only way to get the votes it needs. Republican demonstrators cheered as the already counted ballots were returned to elections headquarters, and a well-known former presidential candidate, Bob Dole, said it was not fair to count those dimpled chads. That meant mobilizing demonstrators. Adding more fuel to the fire, GOP protesters see Geller with a ballot in hand, leading them to charge he had stolen a ballot.

This is the most brazen attempt by the Gore people and the Democrat machine and the thugs in that building to hijack the American presidency. And part of the street fight aspect of the Bush campaign's strategy is to deploy demonstrators who are actually Republican staffers, some of them from Capitol Hill. And they sparked this incident that became known somewhat derisively as the Brooks Brothers riot, where a number of these staffers gathered in the Miami-Dade building where the recount by hand was taking place, saying that there was cheating going on inside, that this process was illegitimate and that the Democrats were trying to steal the presidential election.

That protest that day shut down the recount in Miami-Dade and it never resumed after that. And that could have been the difference that allowed George W. Bush to keep his advantage in Florida. Let us in! Let us in! Let us in! We believe that Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board made the right decision for the right reasons. They, in essence, said that there is a limit, that there are rational reasons for us to reject this idea of a rush to judgment in an attempt to try and reconstruct an election. As I recall it, eventually recounts are done after the election that show George W. Bush would have won if the recount had proceeded. Other scenarios, counting a broader set of ballots,

suggest Gore might have prevailed. But I guess that's all sort of beside the point, because the strategy was to stop the recount and to sow doubt. That's exactly right. And if you look back then at the way that Republicans were casting doubt on the integrity of the electoral process and accusing Democrats of effectively stealing an election or trying to, that is what you hear an awful lot today from Republicans and from President Trump himself when they are implying that Democrats cheat their way to victory. Right. And I think that you are seeing Democrats more mobilized this time to suggest that the

Republicans are acting just in total bad faith. But there is something similar going on where Democrats are basically saying we need to have every vote counted and Republicans are essentially saying you are all focusing on the wrong story. The right story is the Democrats are trying to steal this and there's absolutely no evidence of fraud taking place. This is what judges have said. This has been shown over and over. So again, as you did in 2000, to Jeremy's point,

you have Republicans treating this like an extension of the run-up to Election Day. I do think it's important to point out that there are political motivations on both sides as they fight through this recount. Democrats say they want to count every vote, but Democrats are also trying to remove standards and safeguards that would allow vote counters to determine whether or not a ballot is fraudulent. They're basically saying that the standards that exist in the first place in evaluating the signatures on ballots are too rigid and they shouldn't be applied. And that leaves you in a situation where you don't really have a standard to judge whether or not a ballot is valid. And that, I think, is troublesome to people on both sides of this. So the Democrats are trying to loosen the rules

after the election in a way that could clearly help Democrats in a recount. Yes, they're arguing that point in court. So Democrats are more actively involved this time than they were in 2000 in trying to play this game that Republicans have been doing so effectively. What else is different this time than from 2000? It's a great question, and it's answered with one word, which is Trump. Almost immediately from Europe Saturday, President Trump lashed out at Democrats, tweeting, trying to steal two big elections in Florida. We are watching closely. The president has been involved in this recount and in trying to put his thumb on the scale in ways that we've really never seen

a U.S. president do. President Trump today tweeted the Florida election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis and that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible. Ballots massively infected must go with election night. He has offered an opinion on this. He has described the ballots and the process as quote-unquote infected. Tweeting in part, you mean they are just now finding votes in Florida and Georgia, but the election was on Tuesday, let's blame the Russians and demand an immediate apology from President Putin. Now, Republicans will privately say they

wish he were being more restrained, but they certainly are not saying that publicly. Why would Republicans want him to be more restrained? Because it could create a backlash because when he says things, it tends to create an equal and opposite, if not greater, reaction among voters who oppose him. And because there's always the risk that his involvement could end up tainting a court proceeding and that a judge could see it that way. So they would rather he not get involved. And why exactly is President Trump so invested in this situation in Florida? I think for a couple of reasons. One, he understands it's an important state electorally.

I think for a couple of reasons. One, he understands it's an important state electorally. Number two, it's a state where in the DeSantis campaign, he and his aides essentially took personally, and it turned out that Rick Scott did need him. So I think for all of those reasons, he sees two elections that he thinks have a lot to do with him. sides, first Republicans and now in response Democrats, are treating recounts as extensions of campaigns based on what they learned in 2000. And we're now seeing that unfolding in Florida. Where does this all go? Not just in Florida, but the next time there's another big recount. I think that you can assume that it gets more political. I think that you can assume that the tactics become nastier. I think you can assume the language becomes louder and more accusatory. I think that you are seeing the systemic degradation of norms and faith in institutions and everything is getting replaced with being about politics only. So yet another institution that Americans

have lost to politics. The one reasonable certainty that Americans had about elections, in addition to that they would be the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, is that they would be conducted with civic-mindedness, that there would be rules and integrity that are adhered to, and that it wouldn't be all about what party you're involved in. But those norms, like a lot else in our political system right now, have degraded. Jeremy, Maggie, thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Election workers across the state are racing against the clock right now to get every vote counted before Thursday's deadline. Thursday, 3 p.m., all 67 counties must have their recount numbers in, or according to law, those votes won't be counted. Broward is confident they will make that. However, up in Palm Beach County, where they have older machines, they do seriously worry that they can make that Thursday dead. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, fearing a crackdown by federal regulators, the company that dominates the e-cigarette market in the U.S. said it will stop selling most of its flavored products at retail stores

and will no longer promote them on social media. The proportion of high school teenagers using e-cigarettes has reached nothing short of an epidemic level, in my view. And it requires us to step in and take dramatic action to try to curtail this. The company, Juul, is the subject of intense scrutiny by the FDA, whose commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, had planned to ban the flavored products at many stores after discovering that underage use of vaping products has surged. A lot of this youth use is being driven by one manufacturer, in particular Juul. I think we need to acknowledge that.

Juul has denied that it markets to children under 18, but its flavored products, like mango and cream, have prompted accusations that the company is directly targeting underage customers. And in an unusual move, CNN sued the Trump administration on Tuesday in an effort to reinstate the press credentials of its chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in midterms.

Here we go. Well, if you don't mind, Mr. President, that this caravan was an invasion. The White House had stripped his credential after a news conference last week, during which Acosta asked an unwelcome question about immigration and did not relinquish a microphone to a White House intern after the president tried to move on to another reporter. Miles away. That's not an invasion.

Honestly, I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings will be much better. If I may ask one other question, Mr. President, if I may ask one other question, are you worried? That's enough. That's enough. Mr. President, I was going to ask one of the other folks. That's enough. Pardon me, ma'am.

In its lawsuit, CNN argued that the removal of Acosta's White House press pass was a violation of his First Amendment right to freely report on the government. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.