The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Oprah, Harris, Trump, Undecided Voters

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Vice President Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a campaign event that was reminiscent of the televison icon's classic daytime talk show. And Donald Trump's week included a event with Jewish voters where he repeated criticisms of Jewish voters who vote for Democrats. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Laura calling from the woods of Vermont, and since March of 2024, I've been through hiking the 2,200 mile long Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. This podcast was recorded at 109 p.m. on Friday, September 20th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be walking and climbing with my home on my back to the end of the trail, the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine. Okay, here's the show. It sounded so serene. I love it because the hiking the Appalachian Trail is forever associated in my mind with the former governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford.

So I'd love to hear a different association to clear my mental memory of what that means. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shibaram. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign. And today on The Roundup, a look at this week of campaigning. And Asma, I'm going to kick it off with you talking about Kamala Harris. She held a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey yesterday, who has endorsed her. You were there in the audience. What was the vibe? Yeah. I mean, well, the press was actually quite literally in the audience. We were in the back

row. So it was an interesting vibe. I mean, I don't know if you ever watched the Oprah Winfrey show, but it was very vintage Oprah, just in terms of sort of the production. There were two armchairs set up in the middle of the circular round stage, a few hundred invited guests. And it was very curated in terms of the people that were there. There were a lot of grassroots organizers, leaders. There were groups like South Asian Women for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, all of these folks. So it's a virtual event, but also in the room scene. And, you know, one thing that that I was struck by and why I say it reminded me of very like vintage Oprah shows was that there was a sort of like emotional tug and her parents were there. And she told this really emotional story, the mom in particular, of what it was like, how this is not just a statistic. It's totally different when it's your kid. And in the crowd, there was the mother and sister of this young woman in Georgia named Amber Thurman. This week, ProPublica reported that Amber had

complications due to an abortion medication pill. And sort of the long story short is that she was supposed to have a fairly routine procedure called a DNC, but it was delayed and delayed and Amber ended up dying. And, you know, her mother delivered death, according to ProPublica, was deemed preventable, right, under Georgia's restrictive abortion laws. And that's something that you heard Harris emphasize again yesterday. She used that word twice, preventable, preventable. These abortion bans have been passed that criminalize health care providers. In a couple of states, prison for life, Oprah. Prison for life in a couple of states for a for life, Oprah, prison for life in a couple of states for a doctor or a nurse who provides healthcare. And so it seems very apparent. Even when the mother's life is in danger.

Here's the problem with that. Here's the problem with that. So is she on death's door before you actually decide to give her help? That's a problem. Is that what we're saying? That you've got to prove you're on death's door. Like literally a doctor or a nurse has to say, she might die any minute, better give her now care. Because otherwise I might go to prison for life in some cases. Think about what we're doing in terms of saying that certain people who are in these state houses and then starting

with the former president of the United States think they're in a better position than a doctor or a nurse to determine when their patient needs medical care. This literally, in Amber's story, highlights the fact that among everything that is wrong with these bans and what has happened in terms of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it's a health care crisis. It's a health care crisis that affects the patient and the profession. I mean, this is an issue in particular where she's really been able

to lean in. And you hear this, I would say, in how she speaks about reproductive rights. It sounds different than when she talks about the economy or immigration. You know, one big question I've had is how that translates electorally. We've seen that there was a lot of energy in the 2022 midterms from women on this issue in particular. There was a lot of energy in the 2022 midterms from women on this issue in particular. There was a lot of energy in the room yesterday, but of course, it was a friendly crowd. Right, of course. One thing I want to touch on as well, Asma, is the really kind of intimate sense of this conversation with someone like Oprah, a crowd of people who already support her. Is this the kind of format you see going forward for the next six weeks and, you know, a couple weeks left until voting ends here. Is that what the Harris campaign seems to be prioritizing?

That's an interesting question, because I do think this week's events feel different to me than what the Harris campaign had been doing at the outset when she ascended to the top of the ticket, right? There were those mega rallies that I'm sure you went to, right, that felt like being at concerts. There were famous celebrities that would show up. There were certainly celebrities on the Zoom call as well yesterday. But in addition to the Oprah event, she sat down with Wired Magazine this week. She did a panel interview with a trio of Black journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists, and then also event with the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute. I think in all of those events, what

you are seeing from Harris is an attempt to contrast herself with Donald Trump. They are really trying to crystallize that contrast. And I think that she is trying to do that in different venues and spaces. So whether that is trying to reach more Latino voters, some Black voters, I think you're seeing a bit of this even with her event the other week in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a county that Donald Trump won rather convincingly. She's trying to reach some of the more independent Republican voters. There is a belief that this election is going to be won at the margins. And so I think you're seeing her sort of try to specifically court key parts of the constituencies that she's going to need. Interesting. Stephen, I'm going to take a hard pivot to you here. You and I were talking earlier about the way Donald Trump and his events

has been rhetorically meandering, to put it lightly here, particularly a speech that he gave in Michigan this week. Can you set up that moment for us? Yeah. So Trump spoke at a town hall event in Flint, Michigan, that was moderated by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was a former press secretary when Trump was in office. He was there for about an hour and answered about two to three-ish questions or statements from Sanders and three questions from the audience. Now, six-ish questions, 60 minutes, that's a lot of text and that's a lot of speaking trump mentioned at one point that oh yeah you know people say that i ramble and the press says that i ramble in my answers but it's not rambling it's actually genius comments because i connect all these different dots and different stories and then right after that he was asked a question by a Michigan autoworker, part of the reason he's in Michigan,

about what he thinks the biggest threats are to the auto industry. And I think we just need to listen to the beginning of this answer to really get at this rhetorical dynamic. And my question to you, sir, is what do you see as the major threats to the future of Michigan manufacturing, auto working jobs? And what will you do to eliminate those threats, sir? Okay, so I'll get into another little bit of a long answer. Because when you say major threat, to me, we have one really major threat. That's called nuclear weapons.

We have other countries that are hostile to us. They don't have to be hostile to us. I always say if you have a smart president, you'll never have a problem with China, Russia, or any of them, okay? I got along great with Putin. I got along great with President Xi. I got along great with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Everybody said, oh, you can't get along with him. He liked me. I got along great with him. And he has a lot of nuclear force. But you essentially have five countries and you're going to have more. Whether you like it or not, you're going to have more. It's the single biggest threat to the world, not only Michigan, to the world. And I should just note that this went on for closer to 10 minutes where Trump talked about President Biden's call to him after the assassination

attempt. He talked about global warming being, quote, a good thing because people have more oceanfront property. He talked about America being close to World War III. He mentioned casually that he was going to be meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And then eventually at the end, somewhere there, he said, oh yeah, tariffs. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do about that. So this is just it's a challenge of the campaign trail. And also, it's this concept of there being a disconnect between what Trump, the campaign, is telling voters through advertising and social media posts and things like that and what Trump, the candidate, does, which is, frankly, whatever he wants. Right. I mean, this has been a consistent problem for the Republican candidate.

Continuing on that, I want to ask about another thing that Trump said this week. He had an event with Jewish voters on Thursday here in D.C. And this is what he said. The current polling has me with Jewish citizens, Jewish people, people that's supposed to love Israel. After having done all of that, having been the best president, the greatest president by far, by far, a poll just came out. I'm at 40 percent. That means you got 60 percent voting for somebody that hates Israel. And I say it, it's going to happen. It's only because of the Democrat hold or curse on you. Listening to Trump saying this, and it's something that he said multiple times,

best case scenario, this is Trump, you know, holding a grudge against anybody that isn't loyal to him and doesn't support him. And in his mind that he's the greatest ever, and how could you not vote for me? But on the other side of it, what we have here is the former president questioning the loyalty of Jewish voters, which is an anti-Semitic trope. And with six weeks to go, there's this massive disconnect in these states that Trump needs to win, where what he's saying and how he's saying it is not helping his campaign. And here's another case in point. On Truth Social, his social media site earlier this week, he made a post where he said,

I, together with many attorneys and legal scholars, am watching the sanctity of the 2024 presidential election very closely because I know better than most the rampant cheating and skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. He goes on to say, the people that cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences. That includes lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials. So here you are in the closing days of the 2024 campaign, and Trump is promising

to jail people that don't support him. And that's where we're at rhetorically with his message. Stephen, thanks so much for bringing your reporting to the pod. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, what undecided voters are thinking. And we're back with Domenico Montanaro, who is our polling maestro. Hi, Domenico. Hey. Okay. So, Domenico, you called back some of the folks who have told our pollsters that they were undecided at some point in this election cycle, right? Yeah. I got in touch with 10 of them, five women, five men, through our work with Marist College on our national survey.

This was all post-debate. And I thought it was really interesting. There were a couple takeaways here. One, the debate was really, really important for Kamala Harris because people who were maybe needing some reassurance certainly seemed to get it with her in that debate. Four of the people who I talked to said that they are now leaning toward Harris. Two of them said that they're leaning toward Trump. Another three probably won't vote, most likely, because they just can't decide between these two and mostly don't like Harris. And one of them is still truly undecided, and it might be a game-time decision for him. And I just want to say, going into this, I asked voters for their

first and last name, as we usually do as reporters, but a lot of them were skittish about doing that out of security concerns. They didn't want to give a lot of identifiable information because of the kind of culture in the campaign right now. So most of them only wanted to give their first name. Did they share some of the same concerns about the same issues? What kind of came out of those conversations? Yeah, I think the thing that was really important was the four people who said that they were going to vote for Harris are all women. And that was, I thought, really notable because three of them were Republicans or Republican leaning, had voted for Trump in 2016, but not in 2020. One person was a very strong Nikki Haley supporter, Dr. Linda Riemensneider, but said that she just cannot vote for Trump. She said that abortion rights was particularly important to her. The woman has the right to choose. No male should make the decision. No president should make the decision.

No party should make the decision. It's an individual decision that only a woman should choose. You know, this is somebody who voted in 2016 for Trump, but said that she thought that he completely mishandled the presidency. She said as a medical professional, she was embarrassed by how he handled COVID. She thought that he was a good businessman. She owned three doctor's practices and thought that he would be good for business. But she said she was wrong. She's embarrassed to have voted for him. But she thinks the gender divide is real because she sees it in her own house. She said her husband and her son are very conservative.

And while they tell her that they're going to leave the presidential line blank, she said they cannot vote for a Democrat. Interesting. That is interesting. Domenico, can I chime in? I have a question for you. For the one person you said who seems like it really is still undecided, but even for those who might not vote, was there anything they said that might sway their decision one way or the other? Well, I'd say five of these folks, there's no way they're going to vote for Kamala Harris. I mean, you know, when I pried and asked them some kind of follow-up questions, most of them cited prices as an issue. The person who is truly undecided actually is not a conservative. He is somebody who describes himself as a pro-union

liberal Democrat, but he's pretty disengaged, I will say. You know, he was somebody who voted for Obama twice, liked how Bill Clinton did the job as president. He had a personal problem with Hillary Clinton because he was part of an event that she didn't show up to, he said, in Florida and didn't vote for her in 2020. He really wasn't that engaged in the election. And he said that he basically let his son, who was five, cast his ballot for him. Okay. Which way did that go? He said he wanted to vote for Joe Biden. So he let him cast his ballot for Joe Biden.

But this time around, he says that prices are just out of control. He said, quote, it's freaking nuts. I heard that same thing from Brady in Wisconsin, 30 years old. He said that he and his wife have advanced in their careers, but they just don't feel like they can get ahead. And they blame Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for what they feel is inflation that's just been too high. Interesting. And for those staunch voters, Domenico, you were saying who are absolutely against Harris. Was their rationale mostly the economy? It was the economy, immigration as well. But you have to understand with undecided voters, we sometimes apply a lot of rationale to folks who are generally disengaged from the system, for the most part, don't have all the information. And we shouldn't necessarily apply a lot of

rationale to all of the things they say, because there's a lot of a lot of times things that were said were not always 100 percent, you know, based on the facts, but based on feels. Based on feels, based on vibes. So at this stage, based on the conversations that you did have, are all these folks voting minus that one that one voter? I don't know. I think that three of them probably won't vote at all, from what I gathered. You know, there was one voter, for example, in New Jersey, who's 21 years old, Thiago. He's born in Brazil, is a college student. For him, his top issue is Gaza, the war in Gaza. He considers himself a progressive. And he understands that Donald Trump is a non-starter for him,

but he doesn't like that Kamala Harris has reached out. He feels more to conservatives than to progressives, and he's probably going to leave the presidential line blank. But if you're the Harris campaign, and you consider that there were three women we talked to who had voted for Trump or lean in Trump's direction and now say that they're going to vote for her, and you have the one person saying that he's not going to vote for her because he feels that she's reaching out too much to conservatives, they'll probably take that sliding scale advantage. Yeah, that's kind of more in their favor. All right, we're going to vote for her because he feels that she's reaching out too much to conservatives. They'll probably take that sliding scale advantage. Yeah, that's kind of more in their favor.

All right. We're going to take another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back for Can't Let It Go, the Friday segment where we end our show talking about the things we just can't let go of, politics or otherwise. Domenico, I'm going to kick it off with you. What can you not let go of, politics or otherwise. Domenico, I'm going to kick it off with you. What can you not let go of? My goodness, I cannot let go of the greatness of Shohei Otani, who is the baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers. And I don't even want to pigeonhole him into a position because he does everything. He has now founded

a club that nobody has ever done before in baseball, the 50-50 club, and that is hitting 50 home runs in a season and stealing 50 or more bases. He did this on Thursday, hitting three home runs in one game and stealing two bases. It's just another cherry on the top of the resume for one of the great all-time players in Major League Baseball. That sounds pretty amazing to me. I will say baseball is one of those sports I have never got into, but it sounds amazing. And I've heard so much about him, so that is really interesting.

Deepa, what can you not let go of? Well, I'll stay on the theme of Asian greatness in general because earlier this week I went to Connie Chung's book talk. How was that? It was really good. Her memoir just came out, so she's just kicked off her book tour. I did not realize that Connie Chung is from good. Her memoir just came out. So she's just kicked off her book tour. I did not realize that Connie Chung is from D.C. Like she is from the D.C. area.

She is the youngest of all of her siblings. All of her other siblings were born in China. And when her parents came here, she was the only kid to be born in the U.S. and she was born in D.C. And so this is her hometown book kickoff tour thing. And her husband, Maury Povich, was moderating the conversation. As he does. As he does. Maybe something he might be well known for. And it was really fascinating to hear her talk about what it was like to truly be like the only woman of color, the only Asian woman. And she said it was like in a sea of white men.

I mean, I remember watching Connie Chung and I feel like I saw nobody else really. I feel like a lot of the journalists that I looked up to when I decided I wanted to be a journalist were journalists who then looked up to Connie Chung. And it almost feels like, especially because there's not that many Asian American women in journalism, like in the big scheme of things, like there is a very direct line to a lot of women in this industry who I will say in my experience are very good at looking out for each other and mentoring and lifting each other up. So I don't know. It was really cool to be in that space and hear from her and just how much the industry has changed for women and for Asian women and women of color. And that was just a really nice part of my week. So, yeah.

Asma, what about you? Okay, so I'm going to take us in a totally different direction, guys. But I'm sure you all have seen the news that the show Love is Blind, the new season, is coming out. And it is set here in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. So I've watched a variety of reality TV shows over the years. But I will confess, I actually don't really watch Love is Blind. I have a good number of friends who are obsessed with these shows. But basic premise of the show is, for those folks who don't watch, this is a synopsis I've heard vicariously from them, is that you go in these pods.

Basically, you meet, you know, a guy and a girl meet each other and they presumably fall in love without ever seeing each other. They're totally separated. Which is wild, but they had a remarkable success rate of couples who get together on the show who still are together years later, some of them having babies. So you know what? Maybe it works. I got to tell you, having watched the show, these producers are dirty because they set them up. And later on, you know, when they finally meet, then they get them all together and they do pool parties and go out to bars and all this stuff.

And there's always inevitably the one or two who are like, I'm actually more attracted to him or I'm more attracted to her and they're always trying little schemes it sounds like reality tv is really for you okay but can i ask guys i have a question about like what it is like though to have this show here i mean you all know this like dc is this city where you meet people and the first question they ask you is what do you do what do you, right? And it's a nosy, gossipy city. The exposure of just putting it all out there. In this city. In this city.

I will say, I heard, I don't know if this is fact check true, but I did hear that it took them a long time in this city to find people. Would you ever do this? I'm just curious. Me? Dude, it's a no for me. Absolutely not. It's a no for me.

I just am like, I'm not into putting my life all out there. I don't think I could do it. Unless I like had a different, like I just did an alter ego situation. Completely committed. Alright, that's a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Mithoni Mathuri. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung Yoon Han,

Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Ben Swayze and Dana Farrington. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political... Oh my God. Lord have mercy. I mean, what am I doing?