4 days to midterms: GOP will use ‘FULL FORCE’ of DOJ to challenge race results — MS NOW Highlights

[0:00] Well, it sounds like the West Wing staff right now is mostly doing child care. [0:04] I mean, they're having to coddle the toddler president who is staring at imminent rebuke of historic magnitude. [0:16] Hi again, everyone. It is five o'clock now in New York. [0:18] I'm Alicia Menendez in today for Nicole Wallace. [0:21] If in the off chance you got yourself a ticket to rally put on by a Republican candidate for office, do yourself a favor and call to confirm that that event is still on. [0:30] Truly, if you were planning on attending a meet and greet with Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins at a barbecue restaurant in rural Georgia, don't bother. [0:39] Collins canceled the event just this morning due to what his campaign called a scheduling conflict, a media engagement, apparently. [0:46] Meanwhile, his opponent, Senator John Ossoff, whose conversation with our colleague Jen Psaki started off this hour, routinely sells out concert venues. [0:55] He's campaigning alongside New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill today. [0:58] And for those of you who had your heart set on the Ken Paxson rally for Senate in El Paso this weekend, got to find other plans. [1:06] That is canceled. Oh, and Paxson's bus tour event and Tyler, same deal. [1:10] From part of James Tallarico's statement on the matter, quote, no one's going to Ken Paxson's rallies, so he's canceling them and hoping Elon Musk will buy his seat for him. [1:19] Now, here's where things get tricky, because when it comes to the Sunday rallies Donald Trump previously canceled in Iowa and in Kansas, rallies in those states are now back on, at least as of this morning. [1:32] The reason for the reversal and the reversal of the reversal isn't entirely clear, although the fact that Donald Trump canceled events the weekend before election didn't go unnoticed or uncriticized, nor is it entirely clear whether or not Republican candidates in those states actually want him there anyway. [1:48] Because in the midst of all that chaos, Politico is reporting House Republicans are privately discussing not just if they'll lose their majority, but by how many seats. [1:59] Imperiled GOP incumbents in one safe districts have been begging party leaders for more money in the final few days to stem the bleeding. [2:07] That is according to six people involved in internal conversations, granted anonymity to discuss them. [2:12] Senate Republicans have found new cause to worry about contests in Ohio, Kansas and other red states. [2:18] A tale of two parties, four days to Election Day is where we begin this hour. [2:22] With me at the table, host of Politics Nation and founder of the National Action Network, Reverend Al Sharpton, and host of the Fast Politics podcast, contributing writer for The New York Times, Molly Jung Fast. [2:34] Media Matters for America president, Angela Corazon. [2:36] And also with us with some late breaking news on what Trump and his allies are planning in the event of defeats on Tuesday, MSNL's White House reporter, Laura Beto Lopez. [2:46] Laura, I was handed your reporting as I came on set. [2:49] Help me talk through it. [2:51] Yeah, Alicia. [2:52] So what we're reporting, Vaughn Hilliard and I, is that we talk to people across the board. [2:58] We talk to sources close to the White House, as well as legal counsel that are working on preparations, Democratic legal counsel, senior aides in Congress. [3:06] And essentially what we were told is that everyone expects the fight after Election Day to be in the states. [3:14] We've already seen a taste of this with the Justice Department lawsuits in California and Alaska, potentially another one coming in Washington around the noncitizen voter fraud claims that the administration is making. [3:26] But essentially, Republicans close to the White House that I talked to said that they expect the administration, the Justice Department and other Republican allies to try to block certification in key counties and states. [3:41] And certification happens at that level, at the county and state level. [3:46] It is not what happens when Congress seats members. [3:49] And so to try to contest the results at the certification level before any of the formal election certificates are actually sent to Congress. [4:00] And one of them, one of the sources that I spoke to close to the White House telling me that Georgia will also likely be in the crosshairs, Michigan potentially as well, especially if Abdul El-Sayed wins. [4:12] And it's close saying that they look at the Republicans typically look at counties like Wayne County in Michigan. [4:19] And the person said, quote, whether there's fraud or not, they expect this to be done. [4:25] So there's a lot to break down here. [4:27] But the top line is that they expect to mount these challenges in key states using the full force of the Justice Department and the apparatus of the government in a way that we didn't see the first time during the president's first administration. [4:45] Because, again, key point here is that he has a lot of loyalists across the board willing to do his bidding. [4:51] Here is what is remarkable to me about this reporting from Laura Barron-Lopez and Vaughn Hilliard, which is you have, as she just said, someone close to the White House saying Georgia, Michigan, especially if El-Sayed wins by less than one percent. [5:04] But then that same source said this. [5:07] Expect those challenges to fail. [5:09] We can be fired up. [5:10] We can have great lawyers. [5:11] But judges hate these cases and they almost go nowhere. [5:15] We're not going to win in a courtroom. [5:17] What then is it for? [5:18] It's for the drama of saying that you challenged it. [5:23] You're going to end up having a state version in various states of January 6th because they're not just going to contest us. [5:33] These are not lawyers like Perry Mason going orderly into the courtroom. [5:37] They're going to have the MAGA crowd out there, these state houses screaming, you better not certify, because if they can block the certification, they don't have to worry about blocking the inauguration or the swearing in. [5:52] Because you can't swear in a senator or congressperson that the election hasn't been certified. [5:58] So what they really are going to try to do is disrupt the certifications so that there is no certification. [6:05] Therefore, you can advance to going into Washington and being sworn in by the new speaker or whomever. [6:11] And that is what we need to be on real guard for on the other side of making sure that security is around these state houses so certification is not stampeded or disrupted. [6:24] I'm not worried about Perry Mason. [6:26] I'm worried about the MAGA crowd. [6:28] I love that when you were asked for a highbrow attorney, you didn't think Mark Elias or Ben Crump. [6:32] It was Perry Mason that came to mind. [6:34] Well, I didn't want to spoil Ben Crump's whole weekend. [6:37] Here's the thing, which is we came in on a different idea, which is this idea that they are canceling events, either because they're afraid the crowds won't show up or because they're realizing that sending Trump to some of these states is not helping. [6:51] And then I want to layer in this. [6:53] This is from Politico. [6:54] Some Republican incumbents made an eyebrow raising emergency decision. [6:58] They stopped doing their own polling weeks ago as they tried to save every dollar for swaying voters as they begged for the GOP cavalry to arrive from President Donald Trump's political operation to the National Republican Congressional Committee. [7:11] That is, according to three of the people, one Republican strategist working on a midterm race simply responded to a question about the environment with a video of a dumpster on fire that was being swept away by floodwaters. [7:24] All of that is not very different from what we are learning in Laura's reporting. [7:31] It's the party of Trump. [7:32] Trump has disassembled all of the Republican Party. [7:35] It is only about him. [7:36] And he is polling at historic lows, historic lows. [7:40] Right. [7:41] I mean, modern history, we don't have polling this low. [7:44] You have people. [7:45] I mean, every time, you know, remember when we had all these packages of MAGA voters going to gas stations, being like I voted for him three times. [7:52] It's now costing 70 percent more to fill my car up with gas. [7:56] I mean, it is just and that's diesel. [7:58] Gas is only 40 percent more. [8:00] But the idea here is that these are he's wildly as unpopular as he has ever been in this entire time. [8:07] So the idea that they're going to come in and somehow disrupt elections when they can't when he can't even fill the kind of stadiums he used to fill is kind of like it's kind of preposterous. [8:20] You also have some reporting in here, Laura, about Dem Council preparing if Johnson tries to fire the clerk. [8:28] You're right, though. [8:28] They don't think that will happen. [8:29] Tell me why. [8:31] Yeah, that's right. [8:31] So there's a lot of scenarios swirling around. [8:34] Some of them have been put out there by Republicans. [8:36] Some of them have been raised because Democrats are preparing for every single scenario that they can think of under the sun. [8:43] And one of those scenarios is that Speaker Mike Johnson does technically have the authority to fire the clerk if he wants to while he's speaker. [8:51] So he would have to do that before opening day, January 3rd of next year. [8:57] And if he were to fire the clerk, then the theory is that he would install a loyalist and that clerk that is loyal to him and other Republicans would then attempt to not or to slow down or to not seat newly elected members of Congress, primarily newly elected Democrats in Congress. [9:15] But everyone that I spoke to, including senior congressional aides in the House that are advising lawmakers on this, lawyers that are working with Democrats to prepare for any kind of scenario, they do not think this is going to happen. [9:32] Because they said, one, even if Johnson were to somehow fire the clerk, the House has the ability to reverse his decision, and they believe that there would be bipartisan support for that. [9:43] They also feel like it would create a slippery slope. [9:45] So ultimately, even if a clerk were to try to slow down the seating of newly elected members, they would immediately be met with litigation to stop that, because they would be found in violation of federal law, of state law. [10:00] Because, again, those states get to certify who the winners of their elections are. [10:05] And when they send that to Congress, the clerk is in a ministerial role. [10:08] They're supposed to simply read out the role of who has been elected and determine the winners by those states. [10:15] And it's very similar in the Senate. [10:17] Now, Vaughn and I asked the White House. [10:19] We said, have you had any discussions with Republican leaders about any of these possibilities, whether it's to try to object to seating members in the House or to try to object to seating newly elected senators? [10:31] And have you had any conversations with Vice President J.D. Vance about him potentially using his role as the presiding officer of the Senate to object to members? [10:43] The White House didn't directly answer that question at all. [10:46] They simply referred us to the president's past comments, saying that we will see if he ends up pressuring Republicans to try to object to the seating of some senators. [10:57] So there is this possibility that there may be a senator or two in the other chamber that tries to object to the seating of, say, an El Syed or a Mary Peltola. [11:06] But, again, given the way precedent is and the law and the rules that are in place, essentially everyone we talked to, Republicans and Democrats alike, said that those those attempts would ultimately fail. [11:18] We begin with a special beat montage we've been doing new each night as we look at the sprint into the weekend and the campaigns brawling. [11:26] We have already shattered every turnout record for young voters in a midterm election in Georgia's history. [11:38] You can never go anywhere on Spelman College without hearing someone say, did you vote? Make sure to vote. [11:43] Do me a favor. Please don't leave. [11:46] I don't want the media to turn it in saying that people don't like Ken Paxton. [11:50] Ken Paxton is canceling rallies because no one's showing up. [11:52] A sneer campaign. [11:54] Paid for by Farmacello, Mike Rogers, D.C. Buddies. [11:57] This stuff didn't work on me. It's not going to work on us. [12:00] There is a lot at stake in this election, Georgia. [12:03] Make your voice heard and vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor. [12:07] So you not going to Kansas have nothing to do with you being sick and traveling? [12:11] Oh, you're sick, you're sick. [12:13] You are sick. [12:14] Natalie, baby's cranky again. [12:16] Listen, we need a diaper change on runway two. [12:21] What can President Trump do for you in the last two days before the election coming back to Iowa? [12:25] It elevates how important this seat is. [12:27] The president keeps saying that John Huston has a great ass. [12:33] What's going on with that? [12:35] Well, first of all, I'm jealous. [12:36] What's his name? J.B. Dance? [12:41] J.B.'s got zero charisma. [12:44] They taught him that at Ohio State. [12:48] These tofu-eating charlatans. [12:50] Describe the economy right now in one word. [12:54] Unlittable. [12:56] Perplexed. [12:57] It's a disaster. [13:00] That's what we're hearing. [13:01] And by the way, those last quotes from one of our colleagues' interviews with just real voters in a state that has tended to go Republican in the past, [13:10] those are words that could apply to the economy or to Trump's closing message and how Republicans are doing in many of those once-read states. [13:19] We're going to be tracking the numbers through the show tonight. [13:21] We have a lot of new ones, including some really interesting seismic polling. [13:25] But let's start with the vote count. [13:27] We are not an election day anymore in this country, much to perhaps the president's chagrin. [13:32] He has attacked the right of Americans to follow state laws and vote early or vote absentee. [13:37] And I can tell you as of tonight, in high participation signs, now 48 million people have already voted. [13:45] Democrats feeling good about that, Republicans are not. [13:47] Politico, a nonpartisan D.C. outlet, has a devastating report here about Republicans admitting that this could be brutal on Tuesday evening. [13:56] That House Republicans are now privately discussing, quote, not just if they'll lose their majority, but by how many seats. [14:02] Imperial GOP incumbents in one safe districts have been, quote, begging party leaders for more money in the final few days to stem the bleeding. [14:12] And remember what we've reported. [14:13] Many of these Republican races already had a money advantage, but they're bleeding and they need more panic money. [14:20] Also, new reporting tonight, quote, some Republican incumbents made an eyebrow-raising emergency decision. [14:26] They stopped doing their own polling weeks ago as they tried to save every dollar for swaying voters as they begged for the GOP cavalry to arrive from Trump's political operation. [14:37] Another Republican strategist responding to a political question about the environment with an actual video of a dumpster on fire being swept away by floodwaters. [14:50] Now, on the beat, we've been unable to confirm the exact video that might have been passed to that reporter's question, but we can report that the most widely shared and widely recognized floating dumpster fire image or GIF is this one you see here. [15:06] So we, as a matter of both logic and circumstantial reporting, have reason to believe that this or an image somewhat similar to it is how this Republican described in private what they're bracing for Tuesday night. [15:19] With that in mind, I want to get right to our political midterm panel. [15:24] Che Comanduri, Obama campaign veteran, Juanita Tolliver, host of the Archival Podcast, award-winning author, MSNOW analyst. [15:30] Che, we can probably run that back. [15:32] We may bring the dumpster fire image back because it is from a Republican operative, according to Politico. [15:38] I have donned my best patriotic tie, inspired by John Flannery. [15:42] It's not maybe my most fashionable tie. [15:45] I just want to admit that up front. [15:47] Thank you, Juanita. [15:49] But it goes to something that Che, we're seeing, which is there's still something great in America. [15:56] I know people are suffering in the economy, and I know there's been a lot of political turmoil, and I know this president has sown a lot of division and hate. [16:02] There's our dumpster fire. [16:03] But the red, white, and blue that I'm wearing, the 48 million-plus people who've now turned out, the participation, the people still have a say, not in spite of, Che, but especially when they think the government has failed them, Trump starting this war, without public input or congressional approval. [16:22] The billions in oil profits, which Trump brags about but has put a cost of over $1,000 on every household. [16:28] We have numbers on that we're going to get into later tonight, Che. [16:30] And people are turning out. [16:32] I wonder what you think of that as we start tonight. [16:36] Yeah, I think that the civic engagement that we are seeing has just been so, like, you know, heartening. [16:43] It's given me hope. [16:44] It's given me optimism. [16:46] And it's really the beginning of something that we started seeing in Minnesota at the beginning of the year, when we saw people take to the streets in the freezing cold after ICE had committed those terrible murders. [16:59] Of, you know, of those two protesters, the result of that was that it showed civic action, civic engagement, turning out to vote. [17:10] These things really matter. [17:12] They still matter. [17:13] They're really the only tool, the only weapon we have against people who have authoritarian designs. [17:20] We saw that in Brazil. [17:22] We partially saw that in Israel. [17:25] We see that in Israel. [17:26] We saw that in Serbia. [17:27] We've seen it around the world where people have increasingly come out, taken democracy in their own hands and made the government that they want to see elected. [17:39] I want to play Ted Cruz, who the closer you get to Election Day, the more you get a mix of truth, panic, and maybe just sort of motivating spiraling. [17:54] We mentioned the dumpster fire, but there could be political reasons why Republicans want to really make sure that their voters understand in Texas they could lose. [18:02] So that could be part turnout message. [18:04] Che and I have covered those kind of things. [18:06] On the other hand, most years, you don't have to talk like this at all because it ain't close in Texas. [18:10] Here's Cruz. [18:13] Texas is excruciatingly close. [18:15] Understand, we could lose Texas. [18:17] Let me repeat that. [18:18] We could lose Texas. [18:19] And by the way, not just the Senate race. [18:21] We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. [18:25] That's how close these numbers are. [18:30] Juanita. [18:30] Sorry, I took a look at the Texas early voting data earlier today. [18:35] And on today, they crossed 6.5 million early votes in this election. [18:41] And for context, on October 30th, 2022, it was 2.9 million votes cast. [18:49] Like, that just shows you how engaged this electorate is at a critical moment when they have competitive races up and down the ballot. [18:57] So Ted Cruz is right to be scared. [18:58] Be very afraid. [19:00] I think that, yeah, you're right. [19:01] He's probably saying that. [19:02] And that's going to inspire some Republicans to maybe turn out who are otherwise considering staying at home. [19:07] But I also think it's important to understand that while we don't know how these voters are voting just yet, [19:14] we do know that they're voting in an environment where Elon Musk has dumped in $500 million in a turnout effort, [19:22] where we know that Ken Paxton can't keep people in a room to wait for him to show up on his campaign bus, [19:29] where we know Ted Cruz was booed at college game day earlier this year. [19:35] It just highlights the level of engagement and enthusiasm that Che was referring to earlier. [19:42] I also think that it highlights just how bad things are for voters, [19:46] how dire their situations are that they're turning out at this level, [19:51] and how concerned they might be that their ballots would be cast, [19:54] considering the message coming from the Trump White House around claims in trying to interfere in elections [20:01] and collect voter information and compile a national voter registry. [20:05] All of that information and threats against early voting or vote by mail is motivating people to turn out, [20:12] to make sure their ballots are cast. [20:14] And I'm curious to see how much this tracks with some of those voter enthusiasm gaps that we've been hearing about [20:21] since this summer, where Democratic voters and independent voters are highly motivated to turn out, [20:27] whereas Republicans are not motivated. [20:29] Some are threatening to stay home. [20:31] Some are not even tapped in to this election cycle. [20:34] And so I'm curious to see how that all shakes out when we start getting those reports on a county basis, [20:39] across demographics, on Election Day. [20:41] Yeah. [20:43] And Che, you've been around so many campaigns, you don't pick the closing arguments all the time. [20:49] John Kerry had to contend with a bin Laden video, [20:53] which reminds you what a different era it was in the final week. [20:56] We had a little bit of the cheesecake earlier this week, [21:00] and people can debate who got the better of that argument. [21:03] Last night, Che, I was able to, of course, quote Drake's Child's Play song, [21:09] where he talks about not wanting to argue in front of the families of the Cheesecake Factory, [21:13] the families that drive Camrys, that go to Disney. [21:17] We don't want them to know all of our business. [21:19] And that's sort of not what we knew we'd be talking about a month ago, right? [21:22] But I jest about the cheesecake, but I am serious about the economy, this costly war. [21:31] And late today, a sell-off, at least in the tech stocks that had the Nasdaq slumping, [21:36] which speaks to, again, Trump is on the side of these tech guys and the oil guys, [21:40] and I say guys because that's how he acts about it, [21:43] and against the rest of the country that is not profiting off much of this tech boom or gyration or the gas. [21:53] I want to put up this headline for you, Che, that I mentioned. [21:56] We're going into the midterm homestretch weekend. [21:58] It's almost unfathomable. [21:59] These are new numbers from The New York Times. [22:02] As of this week, so current, Americans have now spent an extra $147 billion. [22:09] I want to repeat that again for people watching who are angry. [22:13] Yes, you're not imagining it. [22:15] You have a right to be angry. [22:16] They started this war and collectively spending $147 billion more on gas since the February strikes. [22:25] That amounts to, Che, over $1,000 per household. [22:31] Sir? [22:34] Yeah, and one thing I saw Trump doing was actually bragging about this. [22:38] I saw him at a rally saying how we're making millions and billions of dollars. [22:44] Our country's never made so much money. [22:46] And he talked openly about all the money that is flowing into the coffers of oil companies. [22:52] And it shows you just how out of touch Donald Trump is. [22:55] You know, there are certain things that politicians will say at fundraisers to their rich donors. [23:04] And there's other things a politician might say to rallies of middle-class, working-class Americans. [23:12] Donald Trump doesn't care about this distinction anymore. [23:16] Let's bring an MSNOW senior legal reporter, Lisa Rubin. [23:21] Lisa, what happened in California? [23:22] Well, the Ninth Circuit, Katie, which is the federal appeals court that oversees the federal trial courts there, [23:29] decided today that it was not going to order California to do what the Department of Justice wants it to do, [23:34] which is to segregate ballots cast by these 20,000 alleged non-citizens on California's voter rolls [23:41] and refrain from counting them until and unless or unless and until they can verify citizenship. [23:47] You've got two judges on this panel saying that there was no reason to disturb the order earlier this week [23:54] by Judge David Carter, who said this would cause chaos in the election, [23:58] that he would not involve himself in such a process, [24:00] and also that the Department of Justice needed to knock off their threats toward election workers [24:05] through those letters that essentially said, unless you verify their citizenship, [24:09] you might be guilty of aiding and abetting violations of criminal law. [24:14] He said, knock it off. I don't see it. And I'm not going to give you an order compelling California [24:19] to verify these people's citizenship. Now you've got two judges of the federal appeals court saying [24:25] that they agree with that judge. There's no reason to disturb his finding. But there's a dissent here [24:30] and you can see in the dissent some of the seeds that the Department of Justice may hang on [24:35] in making an application as early as this afternoon to the Supreme Court for an order directing California [24:40] to do what a lower court judge in a federal appeals court would not, segregate those ballots and ensure [24:45] that they're not counted. So I wonder, after all of this, we've seen a number of lawsuits failures. [24:50] Are people that you speak with as worried today about what might happen on Tuesday as they were [24:55] maybe a month ago, or are they feeling better? I think they're feeling better because of the 50 [25:00] million votes that have been, you know, cast. I think, again, I think they're worried about, [25:06] and I'm worried about what President Trump is going to say. I'm less worried about his ability [25:11] to sort of shut down voting in places. We could have incidents. And Lisa knows best, but federal [25:17] judges are ready for an election day. If you do have federal agents or even soldiers showing up at [25:23] polling places that they will immediately issue court orders. Obviously, the agents could, you know, [25:28] ignore that. But part of the strategy here is to report it to us, have it live on national [25:34] television, that ICE agents are approaching this, you know, voting polling place in a blue area of [25:40] Iowa. And then you have a court order saying, get out. Don't seize those voting machines. [25:46] I spoke to an attorney's general office earlier today, a state attorney general office, [25:51] and I asked them what kinds of preparations they're having, given what's going on right now. [25:56] One of the things they said to me was that they're having conversations with [25:59] court administrators all over their state to make sure that if there is an emergency, [26:04] they know where to take an emergency application and how to take it there, [26:08] because they can't quite see exactly what emergency is going to arise. And they're prepared, [26:13] they say, for any exigency that you could ever imagine, everything from ICE showing up at the [26:18] polls to ballot seizures. But most importantly, they want to make sure that the court is ready for [26:23] them when and if that emergency arises. [26:25] David Becker, finally to you. Are you worried? [26:27] I'm less worried than I was. I agree with David. Everything I'm seeing, [26:31] I'm seeing desperation right now from the administration without much strategy. [26:35] Election officials, think about how many problems we're hearing about actual voting. [26:39] We're hearing about no problems with that as 50 million people cast their ballot. [26:43] And it should be noted in that Ninth Circuit opinion, one of the two judges was a Trump appointee [26:47] who wrote that opinion. And I had agreed with in an earlier decision as well. I think Lisa's exactly [26:52] right. I think there's absolutely going to be an appeal to the Supreme Court. I don't think there's [26:55] much chance that they find five justices who are willing to own the chaos that would result [27:01] from agreeing with the administration after they sat on their hands for 21 months. They could have [27:05] brought claims to California in 2025 or early 2026. They alleged 190,000 non-citizens back in July. [27:13] They refused to share that information with California, waiting instead for the moment to [27:18] bring the most chaos. And the courts are seeing through it. [27:20] Embattled Republican Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxson just scrapped plans for a rally this Sunday, [27:27] just two days out from the election. Paxson was slated to appear in El Paso at a venue that can seat [27:32] 130 people, according to the El Paso Times. His campaign is now weighing whether to reschedule it. [27:39] But the news comes after a speaker at one of Paxson's events went viral for pleading with the crowd [27:44] to stick around for him because he was running late. Do me a favor. Please don't leave. And the [27:52] reason why that is because I don't want the media to turn it in saying that people don't like Ken [27:57] Paxton. Well, it's not our fault that we have jobs we've got to do in the morning. I'm sorry. [28:02] Eugene Daniels is back with us, along with Sawyer Hackett, Democratic strategist and former [28:06] communications director for Julian Castro's 2020 presidential campaign. What a plea, [28:12] Sawyer. Please stay. It reminds me of Jeb Bush's Please Clap. The El Paso event may be off. Do you [28:18] know where Paxton is slated to go, though? He is slated to go to the Alamo on the eve of the election [28:25] as part of his come and take it bus tour. You know Texas well. Does that seem like where you want to [28:31] stage your last stand? Yeah, quite the last stand, I think, from Ken Paxton. But, you know, this is what [28:37] happens when you built your entire campaign, when your campaign is propped up by a corrupt trillionaire. [28:41] I mean, nobody is showing up at these Paxton events. There's been pictures just this week [28:46] that show, you know, 10, 15 people in a crowd that they're expecting hundreds. He doesn't have [28:51] any grassroots donors. He doesn't have any volunteers. And so he's using AI robocalls to [28:56] call in volunteers for his events. There's no energy behind the Paxton campaign because it's all [29:01] being propped up by Elon Musk, by hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spending from Elon Musk [29:07] and Republicans. And this is what happens when Donald Trump handpicks, anoints a candidate, [29:12] a nominee in Texas that's extremely unpopular, that's known for being corrupt, and that doesn't [29:17] have any kind of, you know, energy within Texas, not building any kind of grassroots energy in Texas, [29:21] where on the other side, on Democratic side, you're seeing thousands of people show up in [29:25] extremely red parts of the state for James Tallarico and for other Democrats. That's built on [29:30] organizing. That's built on a message that reaches across the spectrum. And that's built on [29:35] a campaign that's been working hard from the beginning. You don't see Ken Paxton working [29:39] hard. And it's just like you don't see Donald Trump working hard. It's why he's pulling down [29:42] events as well, because there's just no energy and excitement for the Republicans right now. [29:46] And we're only just a few days away from the election. [29:49] You've been reporting on just that, right, Eugene, the hard work, a message that is supposed to reach [29:54] across the spectrum, something that James Tallarico's team has been very focused on. You have new [29:59] reporting that's going to debut on your show tomorrow about a key demographic that Tallarico [30:03] needs to get over the finish line, Black voters. And you spoke to Tallarico. Tell me, [30:08] what is he doing to court those voters? [30:10] The thing that is so interesting in this last episode of the deciding vote that we've been [30:15] working on is that we spent time with him from June to September talking about this, right, [30:21] whether we were in the state or on the phone with him and his team, trying to figure out what [30:24] does it actually look like for them to gain the vote of Black voters? And the reason, [30:29] the main reason is because of the primary, right? You saw that a kind of nasty primary, [30:35] especially online, where some of the Tallarico supporters were being racist and sexist toward [30:40] Jasmine Crockett. And it actually bled into the ground game. And so you started to see Black voters [30:46] in Texas blaming Tallarico. So what did it look like for a campaign to actually do that? And so [30:51] he spent $25 million just on Black voters. He invested in actual Black-owned firms in Texas. [30:59] He hired three strategists from Texas, Black strategists, to help lead that effort. [31:04] And it seems like it's worked, right? We've seen his polling with Black voters move. [31:08] We've seen him be out on the road. And one of the things, Alicia, that I found so interesting [31:12] is that he, and maybe it's because he's a millennial, he calls himself a cringe millennial, [31:16] but like he accepted that he had a problem instead of trying to fight it, instead of trying to pretend [31:22] like it didn't exist. And then through money and time and resources to fix the problem, [31:28] which is something that with candidates, especially folks that run for Senate, they don't always do. [31:33] Cringe millennial. I love it. Is there any sound you have from it? I want to hear from some of these [31:40] voters. Can we play some of it? Let's play some of it, then we'll talk about it. [31:42] I'm curious what you have learned in the last few months about Black voters in Texas recently [31:50] that you didn't know before. [31:52] The idea that Black voters are just going to show up and vote for a Democrat is incorrect. [31:56] I'm treating Black voters as swing voters. [31:59] Sir, I want to get your reaction to that as someone who has thought about how to reach those voters. [32:06] Yeah, James Tallarico is clearly not taking any voter for granted in this election. And I think [32:10] he's had to do that in part because the Democratic coalition kind of fell apart in Texas in 2024. [32:16] I mean, we had huge attrition among Black voters, among Latino voters, among young voters, [32:22] even among women. And so he's had to do the hard work of rebuilding that coalition. And that includes [32:27] investments like Eugene obviously just alluded to, but it also includes going into those communities, [32:32] talking to those voters, speaking to the issues that they care about. And if you've seen just in [32:36] the last week, if you look at those polls, he's up above, you know, 60 percent with Latino voters now, [32:42] which is, I think, you know, about where Democrats were before 2024. He's up above 90 percent with [32:46] Black voters in some of these polls, which I think is a good mark of where you want to be in Texas. [32:52] And so he's done the really hard work of reassembling that coalition. At the same time, [32:55] he's also winning over independents and former Republican voters or even Republican voters [33:00] who would have supported Paxton. So this is exactly the kind of work you need to do to build a [33:04] winning coalition in Texas. And now it's really just all about turnout. [33:07] Big news out of the White House, the president, new plans. Why does schedule change? [33:14] Well, look, they haven't really explained it. They essentially yesterday, the president was asked [33:19] about how he was handling all of this flurry of campaign travel that he had. You know, [33:24] if he had decided to cancel his weekend rallies because of the fact that he was maybe not feeling [33:30] well, he lashed out at the Reuters reporter who asked him that, essentially calling the reporter [33:36] sick and saying that he was the one who wasn't fit and the president saying that he didn't feel the [33:41] need to go to Kansas anymore because he felt that the Republican candidate there was doing well and [33:47] that Republicans were going to be OK in these states. So canceling both the Iowa and the Kansas [33:52] stops that were expected to happen Saturday and Sunday and, you know, saying he was just going to [33:59] continue to do taller rallies ahead of his stop in Florida. But then today, a White House official [34:04] telling my colleagues Vaughn Hilliard, Jackie Alemany and Jake Traylor that the president is [34:10] now going expected to make those stops in Iowa and Kansas. And the reason given is that they're [34:16] rearranging that this is the reason they're giving is to rearrange to accommodate the 20 [34:22] tele-rallies that were added to his calendar. So that's what they're saying the reasoning for the [34:28] shakeup is. But again, we should take that with a grain of salt, given the fact that this White [34:33] House isn't always forthcoming or transparent about the actual reasons for the president's [34:39] schedule. And of course, the Republican National Committee, this comes after they just said yesterday [34:43] that they felt that Republicans were in a, quote, strong position in those two states in Kansas and [34:50] Iowa. And so essentially those rallies didn't need to take place. So there's a lot of moving parts right [34:56] now with the president and his campaign schedule, all as the White House is well aware and the [35:00] Republicans that I talked to that are close to the White House are well aware that the polls are not [35:05] looking good for them. And Republicans regularly admit that they are struggling to talk to voters when [35:11] it comes to gas prices and the economy stuff. Laura, thank you. So glad we tackled that for the White House, [35:17] who's worried there's fake news out there. Not here. We've got the president's new schedule. Now let's enter [35:23] the group chat. Dan Nathan is here, co-founder of Risk Reversal and a CNBC Fast Money contributor, [35:28] Pablo Torre, not in a Halloween costume, so he better deliver content because his look isn't [35:33] working. ESPN analyst and host of the Metal Ark Media, Pablo Torre finds out podcast, Shawna Thomas, [35:39] MSNOW political director. And also with us, Claire Strumpel, Alaska Beacon editor and chief. Claire, [35:45] we're obviously going to you first. Talk us through this. You have been covering this double Dan [35:50] Sullivan drama over the last few days. How are Alaskans reacting to this? It's been a bit of a [35:59] noose bombshell in Alaska, but it's unclear if it's shaken support among Peltola's key followers. [36:06] So she was at a campaign rally last night here in Juneau, and her supporters, along with legal experts, [36:14] don't seem to think the move, often referred to as ballot stacking, was illegal. Support for Peltola [36:20] among her supporters has been strong. Interviewers that the Alaska Beacon reviewed last night said [36:26] they're sticking with Peltola and that they think the idea of voters being confused by the two Sullivan [36:32] candidates is insulting. At the rally, Peltola said she wanted to clear the air. She repeated denials [36:39] of any involvement in the Sullivan campaign and said she's not interested in tricking voters. [36:45] Then she turned the conversation to affordability, which is a subject that's tougher for her Republican [36:51] opponents. Shawna, Shawna, Shawna, Shawna, Shawna. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie. [36:59] It does not appear to be illegal, right? It was three months ago a judge said, yes, [37:03] Dan and Dan can both be on the ballot. Yes, it says incumbent on the ballot. Yes, [37:08] they have rank choice voting there. However, this cannot be what Mary Peltola wants to talk about [37:14] with four days to go. No. And as we send David Noriega to Alaska later today, we hope that Peltola [37:22] is supposed to have an event tomorrow. People will be at that event. A lot of news organizations are [37:27] spending the money to go to Alaska. Were we already? We were already going. Okay. We had already made the [37:32] decision that we were going to cover Alaska. He'll be the last correspondent standing as we wait for [37:36] Alaska to count their votes and do the rank choice system. But whatever that event is about, [37:42] all of those journalists are going to try to make it about this. We know the campaign has denied this. [37:48] We know the DSCC denied it. But when the DSCC denied it, and I was emailing back and forth with [37:52] them, they were like, we're not part of this. But here's a long list of times when Republicans have [37:58] done the exact same thing. So this has happened before. Democrats have done it before. Maybe not as [38:05] creative as getting someone with the same name, but it has happened. Is it slimy? Yes, it's slimy. And I think in [38:12] some ways, it affects the Democrats a little bit more, because they hold themselves up as the party of [38:19] democracy, as the party of being good in some ways. And there's a hit there that is just inherent in it, that if we had [38:29] seen that Dan Sullivan had done this for some unknown reason, I think it would have brushed off [38:34] everyone's backs, because in some ways, the Republican Party has set themselves up as the [38:38] party who kind of tries to do this. But both parties do this. This is politics. I'm not excusing it. But I am [38:45] saying this, this just isn't that crazy. It's sometimes how the game works. So that's the thing. So you know, [38:52] but if it turns people off, that's how totally like Republicans jam is like, it's, you know, [38:58] it may be frowned upon, but it's not illegal. And now here, Democrats find themselves in this [39:02] position. The whole idea of like shame is a market inefficiency. Well, look, I'm just much like the [39:09] president. I am pivoting to tele rallies and then showing up in person. After all, I want you to be [39:15] like, I want you to be in velvet. Harvey Fierstein for Halloween, Steph. You know what I find is that [39:20] you sound sexy to me. You know what? Can we get that clipped and aggregated? Sure. New York Post [39:26] headline. Shauna finds it sexy. Sure. The vocal cord weakness that I have. Yes. What I want to use [39:33] my remaining strength to express is that shame is historically seen as this market inefficiency, [39:40] certainly for the Republican Party. And now what you lose is anything resembling that we go high [39:44] when they go low aspect of this, which is a political concern. Right. And so, look, [39:49] I read the New York Times reporting. It is rigorous. It is hard to believe that they did [39:54] not have anything to do with this, the campaign. But it may be, but it's legal. And it may be like, [39:59] so it's hate the game, not the play. And on top of it, the reporting, if you, if you actually read it, [40:03] and it's a long piece. Yes. Their main interview tried to retract it. They said in the report that [40:10] she tried to retract it and they still went with the story because they had the good. Yes. And so, [40:15] in this case, it is not a letter of the law issue from a legal perspective, but it is a why are you [40:21] covering this up and what does that allow you to be criticized for and characterized as, which is to [40:28] say, just like everyone else, which is not the message. I just like to think, like, if you're, you know, [40:35] at the federal level here, if you're a national democratic strategist, you're like looking at [40:41] Alaska, just like face palming, like guys, did we need this? Yes. Come on. It's been litigated, [40:48] right? To your point. We've been through this thing. I think the voters up in Alaska probably [40:52] have a good sense of how Dan Sullivan, I don't know if it's the Jay Sullivan, whatever the ones [40:55] who not the incumbent got on the ballot here. So I'm not sure that is kind of the focal point or [41:00] should be the focal point, but you know, not, not to both sides, this what's more undemocratic, [41:05] what just went on here, what's being reported. Obviously we have to assume that, [41:09] you know, we don't know if people associated or very closely associated with the campaign did [41:14] what the New York times was reporting, but on the flip side of it, the presumption of guilt [41:19] of the woman who is running for Senate by the president of the United States, what's more [41:25] undemocratic. And when you think about it, and I think that's something that I think needs to be [41:29] fleshed out. And I think that voters who are concerned about the cost of living and affordability, [41:34] that sort of thing, I don't think it really matters if another Sullivan is going to siphon off [41:38] a percent of the vote. But here's the thing, right under a huge anti-Trump sentiment in the [41:44] country right now is an anti-establishment, anti-incumbent sentiment that people across [41:49] this country don't trust their lawmakers. They don't trust Washington. So when you get a story [41:55] like this, yes, again, everything here may be legal, but it plays exactly into that. [42:00] And if you want people to participate in the process, and I don't know, I don't know how much [42:06] this story is going to permeate in Alaska. I don't know how much the story is going to permeate outside [42:10] of Alaska. But if you want people to be part of the process and you encourage them to, and then [42:15] this is another story on top of the moves that the DOJ has made to preemptively, they were already [42:20] making moves in Alaska to preemptively challenge the vote. I can see it turns off the populace to [42:27] actually voting. And that is kind of the sad part. [42:30] Claire, take us to Alaska because it is not your typical state, right? You've got Republican [42:34] Lisa Murkowski endorsing the Democrat there for governor. Alaska is a special place. Alaskans [42:42] know what they want. [42:44] It's true. And I would want to note as we're talking about this and about voter turnout that [42:51] voting has been going on in Alaska since October 19th. Early voting is popular here. We have lots of [42:58] rural and far-flung communities. And as of one state, 62,000 people had already voted. For [43:07] us, that's about 10% of our voter turnout. So people are casting votes. And to your point [43:15] earlier, in the U.S. Senate race, the candidates are differentiated. Incumbent Republican Senator [43:22] Dan S. Sullivan has his party and his incumbent status, as well as his middle initial listed [43:28] on the ballot. And Dan J. Sullivan, the Petersburg candidate, called the spoiler candidate by some, [43:35] is listed on the ballot as Dan J. Sullivan Jr. He does not have a party affiliation on the ballot. [43:40] And that's due to the way that the Alaska Division of Elections handled questions of confusion when [43:48] this went through state courts. [43:50] Liberace, last point to you. [43:52] In fantasy football, when you make a trade, sometimes one of your friends will try to trade [43:56] you, like, the other Adrian Peterson. There'll be a guy with the same name. And it's like, look, [44:00] you're an idiot. You clicked accept. You got the wrong guy. Same name. Wrong guy. [44:04] Okay, but there's a difference between you and your homeboys in a fantasy football league [44:08] and voting. [44:09] Also, I don't think your fantasy football league has ranked choices. I actually think people are [44:13] smart enough to vote for the Dan Sullivan they want to vote for. But if they rank them one and two, [44:19] this is most likely not going to get to above 50%. It is going to probably go to ranked choice voting. [44:23] If lower down Sullivan doesn't have enough votes and gets knocked out, if you rank the other Dan [44:28] Sullivan as your number two, he gets your vote. That's right. No, no, look. [44:32] Now, if your fantasy football does have ranked choice voting. [44:34] You know what? The MSNOW Fantasy Football League should have ranked choice. [44:37] We're learning that. But at the same time, yeah, look, it's an insult to the intelligence of voters. [44:41] It is cynical. Their thought was, maybe it'll work, though. And so now they have to answer to this [44:46] at a time when now you're just drawing attention to the fact that, oh, by the way, there's this little [44:50] hidden trap door that you might fall into. And now everyone's going to know to not fall into it. [44:54] The unfortunate thing goes back to Dan's point that we are seeing massive corruption, potentially [44:59] huge voter intimidation tactics. Look what they're trying to do in California. We're not talking about [45:04] any of those things. We are starting this hour. What are we talking about? Shame on me, alas. [45:08] Hey, it's Rachel. I am so glad to see you at the end of that clip, because this is where I get to [45:12] tell you about a new way to watch all our clips and all of our shows and everything on MSNOW on your [45:19] phone or your tablet or your laptop. You can watch things live or recorded. Plus, you can ask me and [45:25] all the other hosts and reporters questions in our weekly live chats. You can go to ms.now [45:31] slash membership or just click below. Thanks.