GOP Plans To Reclaim The Senate
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I'm Harris Faulkner. I'm Stuart Vonney. I'm Kat Timpf. And this is the Fox News Rundown. Thursday, October 17th, 2024. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. While Democrats hope to flip the House, Republicans are hoping they can flip the Senate this election year, even if only by a one seat margin. I think we have every reason to believe we can win in Montana and Ohio. We have great candidates. I'm Dave Anthony. History could repeat itself.

Former President Trump hopes it will in a battleground state we focus on today. And when assumed that black voters were going to be overwhelmingly behind Hillary Clinton, turned out that wasn't the case. She also experienced some softness in that base supporting her in 2016, and it foreshadowed her defeat in Michigan and into the election that year. And I'm Tomi Lahren. I've got the final word on the Fox News Rundown. ♪

A closely divided Senate with a one-seat majority in favor of the Democrats could be about to flip, but possibly just to a one-seat Republican majority. It appears in West Virginia's Senate race the seat will go to the state's Republican Governor Jim Justice. Then polling indicates the next flip could likely come from Montana, where former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy may beat incumbent Jon Tester.

But after that, polling shows an uphill battle for many Republican candidates. In Nevada, Democratic incumbent Jackie Rosen is far ahead of veteran Sam Brown.

The Fox News power rankings have the Democratic candidate ahead of the Republicans in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. That's where veteran and former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick is the Republican candidate. He debated incumbent Democrat Bob Casey this week. And under Biden, Harrison, Casey, I mean, this is another career politician election year epiphany from Punxsutawney Bob, who comes up every six months before every election.

I mean, under three and a half years of the Biden-Harris administration, there was nothing done on the border. It was an absolute disaster. Ten million illegal immigrants, people on the terrorist watch list. The fentanyl crisis has grown. Senator Casey said when Roe was overturned, McCormick said he was very happy. He does not support restoring Roe. He doesn't support the vehicle to do that, the only vehicle right now, which is

the Women's Health Protection Act, and it's a big difference in this race. But it's not just races with Democratic incumbents giving the GOP a bit of heartburn. In Nebraska, independent union leader and Navy veteran Dan Osborne is polling within striking distance of Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. In Texas, incumbent Ted Cruz is battling former NFL lineman Colin Allred. The two debated this week. You can't be for the mob on January 6th and for the officers. You can't. And it's not funny.

Because you're a threat to democracy. I was on the House floor when we went through the votes. I remember when you objected to the results in Arizona. Cruz said if you want to talk about a threat to democracy... Let's take a vote that just happened a few weeks ago on the floor of the House, the SAVE Act. The SAVE Act provided that in order to register to vote,

You got to prove you're an American citizen. Congressman Allred voted no. Senate Democrats announced late last month they were spending money on the Texas Senate race and the Senate race in Florida. I've had two government races and one Senate race, and every poll said I was going to lose. Rick Scott is the incumbent Republican senator in Florida currently defending his seat. So you have to, the way you win is you just, every day you just go out and

Work on, you know, getting voters to understand what you believe in and talking to them and shaking hands. And yesterday I did a senior center. I did a veterans event. I did a faith leaders event. And so he just, every day, he just keeps traveling the state.

As you know, in late September, the Senate Democrats campaign arm announced money for some ads in Texas and Florida to boost candidates there. And that included money for your opponent, Debbie McChrystal Powell. Why do you think Democrats see an opening for the congresswoman against you? I don't know. She's a complete socialist and she fits with the Harris crowd.

I mean, and Harris-Waldraud, I mean, they're open borders. I mean, she proposed giving illegal immigrants money and then raising our taxes. So, I mean, this is pure socialism. She wants bigger government, higher taxes. She doesn't support Israel. She supports Iran. She appeases Cuba. I mean, she...

You know, the only way they can win is running ads in line because Florians don't want socialism, and she's just a pure socialist. So my job is to, you know, raise money. You can go to rickscott.com and volunteer. You can help us get our vote out because, as you know, we had two horrible hurricanes on the West Coast. There's a lot of voters that are hopefully going to vote for me, but...

You know, when they you know, when they're struggling with no home and stuff like that, you know, it makes it way more difficult for them to get out to the polls. So so we're just we're just going to keep working hard and traveling state, talking to everybody. Now, Florida voters will have an abortion measure on the ballot. And in every state, voters have had an abortion measure on the ballot. They've they've opted to give abortion rights to women in their states. That includes the red states. How do you think that impacts your race, if at all?

Well, we don't know. You know, I'm pro-life, so I don't support the ballot initiative. It's extreme. They say, I'll have abortion up until the moment of birth. As you know, the Democrats have all voted to say that, you know, you can let a healthy baby born alive cry itself to death in the corner. So I don't know how it's going to do, but I'm clear what I believe in. I believe in

fiscal sanity, because that's why we have the inflation we have, is this wasteful government spending. I think we've got to stand up and support Israel. We've got to fight anti-Semitism. We have to be, you know, we have to start allocating tax dollars in a manner, the way we campaign. We campaign for limited government. We need to, that's how we need to govern when we're in the majority. And so I'm campaigning on basically the way I am.

I worked as governor. I worked in the balance of budgets every year. We added 1.7 million jobs. We improved the education system. We became number one higher education. So I'm doing, you know, we support law enforcement. So that's what I'm doing. I have an add-up right now where sheriffs support my election. I've got 61 of the 66 sheriffs have endorsed me. I've got an add-up supporting IVF. My daughter is going through IVF right now.

And I've got an ad up in Spanish explaining exactly who my opponent is, a complete socialist. Interesting. Yeah. Democrats have been targeting Republicans lumping in the abortion issue and the IVF issue. You're differentiating yourself with an ad on it. Yeah. I mean, I support IVF. My daughter's going through IVF. I hope it's successful. There's a lot of families in our country that have built their families through IVF. So thank you.

Thank God that, you know, people have figured that out and we can have healthy babies and build families that way. Now, Senator, you were in charge of the Senate Republican campaign arm for a bit, if I recall. Where would where would you like to see more of a focus on?

Is it like on in terms of any particular race, like would it be like Eric Hovde running against Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin or Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania? Where do you see opportunities that to spend or in these last few weeks to focus on?

Well, I think the first responsibility is to defend the incumbents and just so make sure that the incumbents that have tough races take cruises with me, make sure we win. That would be number one. And number two is, you know, help people that you think they have the opportunity to win. I think that's

I think we have every reason to believe we can win in Montana and Ohio. We've got great candidates. We have opportunities in Michigan, Mike Rogers with Eric Hovey, West Johnson with Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania with Sam Brown, in Nevada with Kerry Lake in Arizona. So,

I mean, what I would be focused on is how to raise money enough to give them enough support that they can win their races because they would all be great U.S. senators, and it would be great to have a nice majority to be able to accomplish the things that we all want to get done. We want a balanced budget. We want fiscal sanity. We want a strong military. So, yeah.

So we've got to get, you know, Republicans elected so we can govern that way. Now, if you do win, you want the Senate leadership position, right? You've got some stiff competition. We've got John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas. I think it's safe to say Thune is more aligned with the outgoing Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. You and McConnell have had your differences. So what is your pitch to your fellow colleagues? I assume you've made it. But tell us, I guess, briefly what your argument is for you.

Well, I think what's real clear is we've got to empower every one of our centers. What's happened is

We have given our, you know, the leader the ability to decide what we vote on, and we don't even get amendment votes, and our bills don't go through committee hardly at all. And that's just not the way the Constitution was anticipated that it would operate, and it doesn't give you the opportunity to really have great bills that come out.

So what I would do is I would make sure our bills go through committee. I'd make sure we have amendment votes on the Senate floor. I would empower all of our senators to be active in what's going to go on. I think we need to build consensus. I'm a business guy.

My success in business is I built teams and we operated a team. We didn't have one person that dictated everything. And so that's the approach I would take if I'm fortunate enough to be elected the Republican leader, and especially when we get a majority, it would be the opportunity to build a consensus and actually be very focused on results. This

Business guys have to focus on results because that's how we're able to raise capital, how we build our business, how we pay our employees. And so you've got to build consensus. And that's not been the way the citizens operate since I've been up here. Let me ask you about the devastation, really, that Florida's gone through a little bit.

With Helene and Milton, Florida Democrats have issued this criticism of you, and I want to give you a chance to respond. They wrote, as Congress passed a government funding bill without critically needed supplemental disaster relief funding, Senator Scott was nowhere to be found. Instead of fighting for disaster funds he knew Florida would need, he skipped town and did not vote to replenish FEMA's disaster fund and keep the government open. What is your response to that?

Well, first off, I had a bill that would have funded FEMA. I know we have, and I've been very vocal that, you know, we've got to fund all, you know, whether it's FEMA or the SBA or Department of Ag or HUD, all of these. And I actually have been talking to the president about it. But what the Democrats do is they'll have...

a gazillion dollar bill, and they'll have a little piece in there that you would like and say, well, if you want that little piece that you would like, you got to go spend all this money on all this wasteful spending. And I'm not going to do it. And it's not fair to the citizens of my state. And I'm not going to do it. I don't believe in these big omnibus bills that they do where they spend a trillion dollars. And there's a little piece in there that you might like.

So what we should be doing is we should be playing games with this. Now, if this was happening to New York, we would have had a vote, independent vote, because remember when Sandy hit, Schumer said, oh, we've got to get the funding right away, and we've got to get all this money out. But when it impacts states other than New York, he plays games. And so...

You know, if you look at it, they didn't, you know, the Democrats and what they passed at the end of September, they didn't fund SBA. They didn't acknowledge today they don't have any money for the loan program. They didn't. All they did with FEMA is move some money up. They didn't fund FEMA. FEMA is going to run out of money.

So the bottom line is, you know, the wasteful government spending causes massive inflation, which is what the poorest families in my state are seeing right now with grocery prices up and gas prices up and rent up, everything up right now because of this wasteful government spending. Florida Senator Rick Scott, thank you so much for joining. All right. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

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I'm Emily Campagno, host of the Fox True Crime Podcast. This week, I'm joined by trial attorney Joshua Ritter to discuss the gruesome murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez and the controversial, shocking trial of their sons. Available now on foxnewspodcast.com.

Democracy 24 Election Reflections. Today, we look back at pivotal election moments that have shaped the country's history. From the first televised debates to a pandemic election, each moment has had a unique impact on the nation and those who helped tell the stories. I'm Dana Perino. Let me take you back. I was the White House press secretary. So I

Flashback, I am always reintroducing myself to people. And I had met the junior senator from Illinois in February of 2005, and I think his second week in Washington, D.C., at a dinner called the Gridiron. He and I were junior birdmen, really, for the whole operation. We were at the USA Today table. And he and I sat across from each other and had so much fun. Barack Obama.

So I got home that night and my husband said, how was the great event? And I said, well, I got to sit with Barack Obama. You remember him. He gave the DNC convention speech in 2004. He's a rising star. And Peter, he was so nice. And he introduced me to his wife. And I really think that he could be president in like 20 years. So three years later, he's the nominee.

It was pretty clear that Obama was going to win pretty early. And as we watched, there was a woman interviewed in Chicago and a black woman. She was crying with joy. And President Bush said to me, Dana, they never believed in their lifetime that this would happen. And this is an amazing moment for them and for America.

I bring this up because for as hard fought as our elections can be, for as tough as they can be, and sometimes I think Americans feel that they're more polarized than we actually are. We are the greatest country in the world. And we show people that over and over again. And it's because people rise to the occasion, like in 2008. This is Tomi Lahren with your Fox News commentary coming up.

The road to the White House runs through Fox. Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency. Brett Baier interviewed Vice President Harris last night in Pennsylvania on the Fox News channel. He has the judgment.

And the experiment and experienced to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people. There were no concerns. Joe Biden is not on the ballot. I understand. And Donald Trump, Donald Trump. But you talked about it. And Donald Trump is. After George Clooney said within a few minutes of talking to President Biden at a fundraiser that he thought this was not the same Joe Biden that we saw on the debate stage. Donald Trump is on the ballot. Hours earlier.

There was a Trump town hall hosted by Harris Faulkner on Fox. First of all, we are going to end all sanctuary cities. The former president talked about securing the border and tackling inflation. Your energy bill, which is a very big bill, will be down 50% starting on January, one year from January 20th. Now the audience was all women. Then the former president was asked. What kind of realistic changes that do you think you can provide single parents, married parents, any kind of parent

to just simply afford children in today's world with the way things are. I understand exactly what you're saying. We're going to readjust things so that it's fair to everybody because it's really not fair to everybody. That town hall was in Georgia, one of seven battleground states that could decide the election. Another is Michigan, which had been leaning Harris's way, but Fox News power rankings this week changed that state to a toss-up. The state of play in Michigan is similar to what we're seeing

in a state like Pennsylvania and some of these other competitive battleground states. Josh Kraushaar is Fox News Radio's political analyst. There are elements of the Democratic coalition that are just not 100% on board with Kamala Harris. You look at the polling and you look at the reporting on the ground, union members not automatically Democratic as they have been in many past elections.

African-American men, a big soft spot for Kamala Harris, surprisingly so. And she's been spending a lot of the final weeks on the campaign trail trying to do outreach to black voters, especially black men going on Charlamagne, the God's radio show in Michigan and also speaking to other other other prominent black hosts and communicators.

that is a sign she is not where she needs to be with that poor Democratic constituency. And then in Michigan, you also have the

You know, the Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza playing a big role in alienating both, frankly, Arab-American voters who are very anti-Israel and Jewish voters who don't think the Biden administration and Harris by extension has been supportive enough of Israel's fight for its own security and self-defense. All right, let's get into that. Yeah, let's get into some of these things. Let's let's talk about her outreach to black voters today.

She's on defense. Is that what you think she's on, trying to keep those voters which have been traditionally Democratic? She's playing defense and offense at the same time, but you don't want to be playing defense three weeks out before Election Day. I remember covering Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and was very surprised to see her do a campaign stop in the city of Detroit, which Michigan was assumed to be leaning Democratic. The

and when assumed that Black voters were going to be overwhelmingly behind Hillary Clinton, it turned out that wasn't the case. She also experienced some softness in that base supporting her in 2016, and it foreshadowed her defeat in Michigan and in the election that year. You're seeing some similar parallels right now with

Kamala Harris. You heard Barack Obama, former President Obama in Pennsylvania, admonishing Black men for being misogynistic and not supporting Kamala Harris more enthusiastically and noting the fact that the support isn't quite where it needs to be. So Michigan has got a sizable African-American voting base in the city of Detroit. And if

You know, even if they vote, you know, 70, 75 percent for Kamala Harris, that is well short of where the numbers usually are in most other presidential elections. All right. You mentioned Detroit last week. The former president stirred things up. He went to the Detroit Economic Club. There was a forum there.

And he warned about what it would mean if he loses the election. You want to know the truth? It'll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she's your president. The Harris campaign turned that into a political ad. It aired in Michigan featuring that Trump soundbite showing images of areas of Detroit that are revitalized after the city had gone into bankruptcy like a decade ago. Is that a big deal? What he said, does it resonate? Does it help her at all, do you think?

Well, look, I think it's playing defense and I think it's a little too clever by half. There are a lot of Michigan voters in the suburbs that have perhaps a less or maybe perhaps more politically correct view of Detroit. Detroit has been on the upswing, but, you know, there are a lot of.

All you have to do is go on YouTube or look at commentary about the city of Detroit not that long ago, and you would see some more perhaps high-minded criticism of the state of governance in that city. So I think what Trump said was sort of a politically incorrect way of expressing the views of Detroit by a lot of people who left the city, who live in the suburbs, or who don't live in Detroit.

You know, the Detroit area anymore. You talked about unions, organized labor, huge, huge, of course, with the big auto industry in Michigan. Former President Trump's been reaching out, trying to get those people on his side. But, you know, the United Auto Workers Union strongly in favor of Vice President Harris. Is that just the leadership or do you think she has a good base among those workers? Yeah.

Yeah, look, I think the question that's coming up most recently in Michigan about the auto workers is about electric cars. And Trump has certainly been eager to bring that up on the campaign trail in the state about some of the mandates and regulations that the Biden administration has imposed on the car industry.

And that's been a big issue, by the way, in the Michigan Senate race, a big, big battleground state race as well. So there's an economic angle to that, which is that Ford and GM have had to do layoffs because some of their missed targets when it comes to electric vehicles. There wasn't enough demand as much as they thought, as much as the government, federal government thought. Right. And he's trying to say that it's going to get worse because she's going to have all these regulations mandating these cars.

Right. And that's a very, very relevant issue. There's an economic element to the workers. And there's also, I think, if you look at the data, less than, what, 9% of Americans are driving electric cars, much lower than that in Michigan. So there's just not a lot of demand. And that's what the government seems to want to persuade Americans to buy. People aren't buying the dog food, so to speak. So, you know, that is an issue that's become a big political one in Michigan. Okay. Okay.

Immigration has been an issue. I know that it's been an issue for Mike Rogers. You referenced the Senate race there. He's talking like a lot of Republicans in every state's a border state dealing with, you know, the record illegal immigration that happened in the least the first couple of years of the Biden administration. Is that in Michigan a big issue like it is in a lot of other states?

Yeah, I mean, it's one of many, but, you know, I do think and this relates to the car issue, the economy is the top issue in Michigan. And even more so, you think, than other states?

Yeah, I do, just because Michigan has a slightly higher blue-collar electorate. And that is the topic. In almost every election, you're going to see the economy dominating as the subject. But the inflation in the first years of the Biden administration and the fact that you do have a lot of middle-class Michiganders still struggling to deal with grocery bills and

dealing with a pinch of inflation. That is still a lag, even though the economy has been getting better in the last year. Okay. Now, Democrats have made abortion a big issue everywhere in this race, certainly. But in Michigan, it's not on the ballot this year. They already had, in 2022, put abortion rights and codified it into the state constitution. So

It's not as big an issue for Harris to drive women out in Michigan necessarily. Am I right or wrong? It's certainly an issue that plays to women. I mean, women, gender gap in Michigan and states across the country is significant. Women are overwhelmingly backing Harris. Men are pretty solidly backing Donald Trump. And it's the same in the state of Michigan. Yeah.

So something like two Western states, Arizona and Nevada, have abortion referenda on the ballot. So there's not a specific force driving voters to the polls. But this is a presidential election. They're the people who care about abortion are going to be showing up anyways. All right. Going back to the Democratic primary in Michigan earlier this year, President Biden, he was the candidate at the time.

He got a protest vote. There were 13 percent of voters who went uncommitted in that primary, upset over the Biden policy supporting Israel and the war in Gaza, upset that there's the humanitarian crisis for Palestinians, all the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Is that at all going to happen?

continue to be an issue for Democrats? Will that have some voters staying home if they tie Vice President Harris to those policies? What do you think? Well, look, the Arab-American vote in Michigan is fairly, I mean, it's big and dearborn. It's sizable enough in the Detroit area. But overall, as a

you know, percentage of the state electorate. It's still fairly small. Same with the Jewish vote. About 2% of the state is Jewish. But I think the real metric is the larger kind of mainstream majority. And in a swing state, there are a lot of people who are more sympathetic towards Israel, and they don't like it when Kamala Harris is pandering to some pretty radical voices.

on the anti-Israel left. Rashida Tlaib is not popular in the state of Michigan, even though she represents a largely Arab-American congressional district in Detroit and Dearborn. You know, former President Trump has made inroads. We've talked about black voters and maybe some, you know, working class voters. Do you think that there'll be more Jewish votes that go Republican this time around?

Maybe on the margins, though, you're not seeing any evidence that there's going to be a dramatic swing. But yeah, like in a close election, especially in a state like Michigan, do margins matter? Of course. And if Kamala Harris only gets 65 percent of the Jewish vote rather than 75 percent, that would make a difference in a close race. Now, both Trump and Harris are there on Friday campaigning.

Which one of these candidates, I mean, there's these seven toss-up states. As we look at Michigan and its 15 electoral votes, which one of the candidates do you think could afford to lose it more? Oh, I mean, Trump...

Definitely. I mean, I think Trump needs to win. Pennsylvania is sort of the key blue wall state that is going to decide this election. Could Trump lose Wisconsin and Michigan, win Pennsylvania, and then win the Sunbelt states and get to 270? Sure. That's probably the most logical playbook for the Trump campaign. If

Harris loses Michigan, she's going to need to pick off one of those more conservative Sunbelt states like North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, to compensate the loss of Michigan. And that would be, I think, a much more damaging loss for Harris. And by the way, Michigan did vote for Trump in 2016, but it's been a pretty reliably Democratic state going back to the Clinton years. Josh Kraushaar, Fox News Radio political analyst. Great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Thanks, Dave.

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We're bringing the thunder to football. Fox weather is storming the field with the risk of weather impact on the hottest NFL games this season. Listen to Storming the Field every Friday on foxnewspodcasts.com. Subscribe to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. It's time for your Fox News commentary. Tommy Lahren.

What's on your mind? Someone over at Team Kamala saw the polling on black male voters and came up with a solution, a totally unconstitutional race-based loan forgiveness and weed.

Kamala's favorability with black male voters is slipping and now just weeks before the election, she's devised a plan to win them over. She unveiled her opportunity agenda for black men and it's a doozy. Pillar one of her plan is to provide 1 million loans that are fully forgivable up to $20,000 for black entrepreneurs. I'm pretty sure offering loan forgiveness on the basis of race is unconstitutional and violates the Civil Rights Act. It's also pretty racist and exclusionary, but that's not even the most insulting part of her plan.

Her final pillar is a promise to legalize recreational weed. That's downright demeaning, and it goes to show that Kamala sees black men as caricatures, as if race-based loans and weed is what they care most about. But that is the Kamala Harris campaign in a nutshell. Empty, vapid, and based entirely on gimmicks and identity politics. I'm Tomi Lahren.

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