Harris Faulkner Says 2024 Voters "Don’t Want Gimmicks Or Promises"
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I'm Charles Payne. I'm Kat Timp. I'm Stuart Varney. And this is the Fox News Rundown.

Wednesday, October 16th, 2024. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Both presidential candidates will be on Fox News today. Former President Trump for a town hall and Vice President Harris in a sit-down interview with anchor Brad Bear as the latest Fox News power rankings show the vice president losing a bit of steam. 70% of the country thinks that we're going in the wrong direction, no matter how they vote. I'm Dave Anthony.

We all know this is a close race for the White House. So close, it could actually be an electoral college tie. And imagine this drama. Congress would decide the winner. You know, they say what is past is prologue. And as somebody who covers this stuff closely, I've never seen so many possible doomsday scenarios. And I'm Carol Roth. I've got the final word on the Fox News Rundown. ♪

The campaign trail attacks have become sharper, meaner. The former president has called the vice president dumb and stupid. In Oaks, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he mocked President Biden as well. And let me tell you, she is worse than him. And he's actually I didn't think I'd ever say this about anybody. She's actually you take a look at she's more dangerous than him, but he's actually smarter than her. I never thought I'd say that.

In Greenville, North Carolina, Vice President Harris told the crowd the former president wouldn't do a recent 60 Minutes interview and won't meet her for a second debate. She asked why the former president's staff is hiding him away. One must question, are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead America?

The latest power rankings show the vice president losing a bit of momentum. It notes the former president is up a point over the vice president in the latest NBC survey. She'd previously led by six. And she's two points ahead of the former president in a new ABC survey. She'd previously led by five.

The rankings also note tightening polls in swing states. A Wall Street Journal poll says Harris is ahead in Wisconsin, but only by a point, in Michigan, but only by two, whereas Quinnipiac has found former President Trump up in Wisconsin by two and in Michigan by three. The rankings move Michigan from lead Harris back to toss-up territory. Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto this week asked Harris campaign senior advisor Ian Sams Monday if she'd be doing an interview with Brett Baer if the polls hadn't tightened.

Sam's said they enjoy going on Fox. It's actually kind of a stark reminder that we're not really seeing Donald Trump do very many interviews. It's been about a month now since he did a mainstream media interview. The former president is doing a town hall tonight in Cummings, Georgia with Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. The focus is on women.

And the questions are coming from women. Well, first of all, I'm not going to be asking a bulk of the questions. It's going to be women. Harris Faulkner is the host of the Faulkner Focus show on Fox News and a co-anchor of Outnumbered. We've got a great audience here in Georgia. They have 6% of the electorate in the state of Georgia

is undecided. Now, that's a lot of people considering the last time around, this state was decided by about 12,000 votes. So that's way outside that number. So you could have some of the deciders in the audience. They wouldn't know it. But if they're undecided, you bet they're part of a really, really important percentage here in Georgia. So for battleground states, it's a good place to be just to kind of take everybody's temperature and

Every battleground state we have seen historically, they start to merge toward the end of the election cycle. So they may not vote exactly the same, but the percentages really start to shrink. And that's exactly what we're seeing. This is a super, super tight race. So women are the largest active registered voters, the largest number of them in our nation.

So we have big numbers and we have a lot of power as voters. And so both these candidates are going to try to target, you know, the issues that are important to, you know, to women. But, you know, Jessica, all issues are important to women. So they can't just like angle something and go, OK, that's a lady issue. They got to get the economy right. I mean, these candidates have to be able to show that they can make a difference. More than 70 percent of the country vote.

thinks that we're going in the wrong direction, no matter how they vote. So the job for former President Trump, which he has done before because he's been president before, is to get his arms around the economy and to tell this audience of women, many of whom run their households, as I do as a married mom, love my hubby. But in most things, I'm in charge when it comes to the pocketbook.

And so, you know, I want to know, how are we going to get those food prices down? And, you know, I don't want like a we've heard some gimmicks here recently, particularly from the left side of the political aisle on their presidential tickets. I don't need like gimmicks and promises and stuff. I need for you to tell me, how are you going to attack the bottom line in

inflation has come down. Prices are still super, super high. Like, does anybody have a recipe here? And so that'll be one of the first issues that we hit. We're going to hit abortion. We're going to hit child care. We're also going to hit Social Security because that's a large voting bloc as well. Yeah. And 70.7 percent of a lot of numbers, a lot of info, more than 70 percent of people 65 and older in the last couple of elections are

have showed up to vote. That means almost everybody who's over the age of 65 is voting. That's a big number. That is a big number. So what do they need?

Let me ask you, the gender gap, if we believe the polls, is real. The former president's obviously doing a sit down with you. On the other side of the aisle, it looks like former President Obama is telling black men to question whether they're just not for her because she's a woman. We see Tim Walz with a shotgun hunting pheasants. I guess we'll find out if they're effective. But what do you make of the different optics here in addressing the gender gap? I'll tell you, Jessica, what I don't like about that whole thing.

So for some reason, the left loses. Are they going to blame black people? Because I tell you what, you cannot call our name and tell us you need us, James Clyburn in South Carolina, that the congressman who comes and can carry the black vote every year in that state and get everybody started in primaries. You can't do that for the left and then blame people of color when it doesn't work out for you. So it is an odd spot to put black men in particular. And by the way, the money is green.

That's their issue. Their issue is green. It's not black. It's not brown. And when you talk to black men, they will tell you we like Trump's economy best. It delivered the lowest unemployment in 50 years for black people, particularly for black men.

It's in the numbers. And so what I think about it is it's lazy politics. It's lazy identity politics. And maybe it can work for them. I mean, I don't know a lot of men who fall for the gimmicks of of what they're putting down out there on this new platform, which looks just like Biden's old platform for reaching out to black men.

But we'll see. We'll see what people really go for. But the voters that I'm talking with are telling me, yeah, we know the difference between a good economy and a bad economy. We had three years of Trump before the pandemic. We've had three and a half years of Harris, of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. We can do the math.

Listen, the Fox News power rankings came out this week. The big takeaway is this, and I'm reading directly here. Harris has a six vote edge that includes Nebraska's second district. That is important since a victory there combined with the Rust Belt battlegrounds would give her an outright win. But with so many coin flip states, this race looks like an electoral college dogfight. The presidential election moves from Harris lead to toss up.

How do you you pay attention to every nook and cranny of of the race? How do you think that happened that she lost this this momentum? Well, part of it is she wasn't ready. The the the suit was sold, but it didn't have anybody in it yet.

And so what you've seen is somebody who probably needed about a year of catch up to learn how to do all of that. Remember, she didn't get one electoral vote. She didn't get one delegate, excuse me, when she was running in the primary. She's run for president before. It didn't go well. So, I mean, this is not her first rodeo, but she's been a vice president who wasn't successful. And so she would have needed to take some time out of that job to get on the trail to really get ready for this. She didn't have a whole lot of time.

So they spent time puffing her up and rather studying up buttercup. I mean, I always tell my kids study up buttercup in case somebody asked you an important question. She wasn't doing that. She was doing the feels and the joy and all of that. And I like to feel good and be joyful, too. But whether you feel that way or not, most people have to get up and go to work and pay their bills.

And so if you can help them with that part, you might make them happy. I think that's a lot of it. I think people have looked and they've said, yeah, we've gone to the website. We still don't see the policy. Now they're trying to make up the difference. She went on a media blitz, but she did Howard Stern and the like. She's going to do Brett Baer. That'll be really the first test to see.

You know, can she stand on her feet? But you've got 20 days left. You'd have to do 20 days of hard interviews, top to bottom, eight to eight, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to make up for the time lost. That's why it's squeaky tight. Now, what does the other candidate have to do? Donald Trump's going to have to show some discipline and he better start today because those women are not going to be easy on him.

And showing discipline means you listen to the question and you answer the question that's asked and you don't go in any other direction. You talk plain to us. Look at us in the eye. Harris, for those who watch your show, and I do almost every day, we are very familiar with your voter panels.

And so you, you among all of our talent at Fox News has maybe a unique insight into undecided voters because you actually talk to them. When it comes to former President Trump and Vice President Harris, what is your sense, briefly I know, of what these folks want to hear, this ever dwindling number of undecided voters? What do they need to hear, want to hear from both of these people as we enter into this, gosh, 20 days left?

Are you going to deport criminals who are here that you haven't vetted some 425,000 of them, 13,000 convicted murderers in their own countries? When will that start? Are you going to attack the prices in a different way than just lowering interest rates? Because that didn't immediately get anybody to buy a house because they don't have money for that. The food is still so high. What are you going to immediately do? Not some, well, down the road, you'll start to feel we've had three and a half years of that.

And the number one question for Kamala Harris is, how are you different from Joe Biden? Because 72 percent of people are not happy with where the country is going. What will you do? How are you different? And she's been saying she's the same. Now she says she's different, but she hasn't said how. I would ask Trump the same question. How will you immediately change what's going on? Because it's got some momentum behind it now. We are stuck, stuck.

That's what people want to know. It's got to make sense and it's got to be realistic. It can't be pie in the sky. Harris Faulkner, host, anchor of the Faulkner Focus on Fox News. Thank you for joining us and good luck. Thank you, Jessica. Take care. We all have plans in life, maybe to take a cross-country road trip or simply get through this workout without any back pain. Whether our plans are big, small, spontaneous or years in the making, good health helps us accomplish them.

At Banner Health, we're here to provide more than health care. Whatever you're planning, wherever you're going, we're here to help you get there. Banner Health. Exhale. 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.

This is Carol Roth with your Fox News commentary, coming up. Let's get back to the Fox News power rankings. They show an even closer race for the White House. Michigan and its electoral votes have now moved to the toss-up category, joining Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Michigan had been forecast to go to Vice President Harris.

So as Fox's Alexandria Hoff also details, Harris and former President Trump are almost neck and neck now in the projections. Harris will achieve 226 electoral votes, Trump 219. There are 93 up for grabs, lots of room for either candidate to reach that magic 270. But what if neither gets that magic number? There are real scenarios that Harris and Trump could tie. Here's the most plausible one.

Of the toss-up states, if Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania go Republican red, and Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin end up Democrat blue, Trump is at 269-268.

Harris is at 269, then what? Here's the background that the Constitution, if you look at the 12th Amendment, it is up to the House of Representatives to decide the president. Chad Pergram is Fox News senior congressional correspondent. We have only had the House pick the president in what's called a contingent election twice. 1801 for Thomas Jefferson, and then you had 1825,

for John Quincy Adams. There was a special election, a contingent election in the Senate for the vice president that was in the 1830s, Martin Van Buren's vice president. But again, the Senate process is a little bit different. And I'll warn you now, if you're going to have a contingent election in the House of the president, you're going to have a contingent election in the Senate for vice president. Yeah, we'll break that all down. When we deal with the House,

This is not the way people think. When the House generally votes on a bill, there's 435 members and you get a majority. It's different if you have a contingent election in this case like we could have in 2025. How does it work?

Here's what happens. If you go through that certification of the Electoral College, which we saw on January 6th and 7th, last time it was Mike Pence, this time it will be Vice President Harris, who presides as the president of the Senate. She will still be in that role regardless. So she will preside over either her victory or loss or, as you say, something undetermined here.

And there will be something in the language that would say that, you know, we counted and gone through all the electoral votes and it's not clear who the winner is and what that should do. And again, because we've not done this in 200 years to the year, frankly, what we think would happen is almost automatically is you would start to have a contingent election. So the House of Representatives votes, but they vote by state delegation.

So there's 50 votes, right? Yes. Yes, exactly. And they count. And so it's whichever party. They count the same. Yeah. California is weighted the same as North Dakota. North Dakota has one seat. California has more than 50. But guess what? North Dakota counts just as much. So this is where and I wrote a blog about this, you know, some weeks ago. It's on our Web site. I went through and did a numbers crunch as to the state delegations.

And so right now we are at, and this is in the current Congress, and I can kind of predict how it might go in the new Congress. Okay, because it'll be the new Congress sworn in before this happens. January 3rd, that's right. Right, this is not the current Congress, the new one. And I will even give you a scenario where Democrats might win control of the House and lose numbers of state delegations, yet Republicans would have an advantage in this rarefied situation.

you know, a contingent election that they would have in the House of Representatives. OK, let's back up for one second for people who are trying to catch up with us. In that scenario, you could have House Speaker Jeffries, a Democrat, right? And Democrats controlling the House. Yet, as you said, Republicans could have

More states where they control the delegations. Therefore, Donald Trump would have the advantage to win the election. Conceivably. So right now, Republicans control 26 state delegations. Democrats control 22. There are two that are tied. OK, North Carolina is one of the tied ones right now. It's 7-7.

Because of redistricting, we believe that it could go to 10-4 Republicans, if not 11-3. Now, let me take you down the deep, dark rabbit hole here. Let's say that Vice President Harris wins North Carolina, and there is no dispute about that, because you have a conceivably 10-4 or 11-3 Republican delegation in the House of Representatives representing the Tar Heel State.

Do you think that they are going to just respond to the wishes of the good people of North Carolina and say, well, she won the state and we're going to vote for, are they going to vote for Trump? Those House members on the House floor. They're not bound to that at all. Georgia, there's really only one House seat in play there. You know, that's 9-5 right now in favor of the Republicans. What if the same thing happens there? Now, let me take you deeper and darker down this rabbit hole. So right now, Virginia is 7-6 Democrats.

There are two to three House seats that are competitive there. So you see where maybe Virginia could suddenly go into the Republican camp. Michigan right now is also 7-6 in favor of the Democrats. The seat right now held by Democratic Representative Alyssa Slotkin is in play. She is running for the Senate. OK, so your scenario, Republicans could have 20, what, nine maybe? What I'm telling you in the short in the shorthand here is

is even if it's a good Democratic night for Democrats in the House, you might still have an increase in Republican delegations and therefore they presumably would vote for Donald Trump for president and elect him because there's a lot more Republican state delegations in the House. It is one vote per state in a contingent election. And again, not tied to how that state went in the Electoral College. Exactly. Now there's another issue here.

The vice president. Now, we consider them running mates. Tim Walz, of course, for Vice President Harris. J.D. Vance for former President Trump. That would be decided by the Senate. But it's not by state. Every senator votes. That's right. And right now, you know, I did a bit of a numbers crunch just for fun, you know, looking at the delegation there. But it's done differently, as you say.

And, you know, let me take you back to the election of 1800. There's a song in the Broadway musical Hamilton called The Election of 1800, by the way. If there's one election I wish I could have covered, Dave, it probably would have been that one. 1876 was pretty amazing, too. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's in there, too. But I think the election of 1800 might edge it out because this was the first time we ever did the election.

contingent election business. Quick history lesson. That 1800 election went to the House after Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr ended up tied. Now in those days, an electoral vote for president and vice president counted the same, something a constitutional amendment later changed.

So Aaron Burr and Jefferson both tried to win. Ultimately, lawmakers chose Jefferson as president thanks to a lot of influence from Alexander Hamilton, a bitter rival of Aaron Burr, who infamously shot and killed Hamilton in a duel three years later. Now, the House also decided the 1824 election. Andrew Jackson got the most electoral votes out of the four candidates, but not the majority needed to win.

and lawmakers controversially elected John Quincy Adams. Now imagine 200 years later the controversy if it happened again like that in this modern era of communications and social media. In some respects I'm more worried about president versus vice president because you know you kind of have to have that and that's where if they can't settle this after a period of time and

and you get to inauguration day on the 20th, suddenly you don't have a president because Biden's term has ended. You don't have a vice president because Harris's term has ended. Well, who is next in line of succession? Well, the Speaker of the House. Okay, I've taken you down the deep, dark rabbit hole. I've taken you down the deep, darker, darker rabbit hole. Now I'm going to take you down the deepest, darkest, darkest Halloween hellscape that you can imagine.

Let's say that Republicans win the House of Representatives. Dave, how many days did it take them to elect a speaker last time starting in January? Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a while. OK. Yep. How many days did it take them to elect a speaker in October after they bounced Kevin McCarthy? Twenty two. And they had several different candidates that didn't make it. They have spent 27 days this Congress trying to elect a speaker of the House.

So let's look at the calendar. I say it's about the math. This one's about the calendar. Let's say you can't elect a speaker expeditiously starting at noon on January 3rd when the Congress is supposed to begin.

You absolutely unequivocally cannot do anything in the House of Representatives until you get a speaker, because then the speaker swears in the membership. OK, so if there's no speaker, you can't have a contingent election. Conceivably. And that's where I say this might be the worst possible political hellscape that we have ever seen. It is unbelievable. And there's also we didn't get into this, but let's say Donald Trump is elected by a

a majority of states in that scenario. What if the Senate is 51-49 Democrats? Could they elect Tim Walz as vice president? Very possible. Absolutely. So you could have Trump-Walz? Why not? Absolutely. You see, this is where I'm talking about with Jefferson and Aaron Burr. You know, I mean, no wonder he shot somebody. You know, I mean, I'm serious. I mean, this is insane stuff.

And I don't want to sound alarmist, but you could have a very close election in the House of Representatives. In other words, it might take us days to sort that out. And you might also have days where you are trying to or multiple races that it takes days to figure out, you know, who won which seat.

And so if you don't know which party is in control, this is where I'm saying January 3rd, because you don't know, you know, let's say, you know, the margins about five either way and you have about five or six seats that are outstanding. Well, the Constitution says the House and the Senate, for that matter, but the House is up to the seating determined who it decides to seat in its body. They have the final say. What do they do? I talked about hellscape one. This is hellscape two.

I'm serious. I mean, there's some real problems here, potentially. I know we're going down all kinds of rabbit holes, but the main premise here...

of a tie or a faithless elector or two making it so that one of the candidates doesn't get the 270. That is not a wild and crazy scenario. We could, if that all happens, this could make 2024 the craziest election we've ever had. Yeah, it's very possible. I mean, it is so close. You know, they say what is past is prologue.

and as somebody who covers this stuff closely, I've never seen so many possible doomsday scenarios. My wife calls me Dr. Doom to start with. And so we have a lot of these from time to time, but not as many as this.

And we put this on the heels of what happened in 2020. In addition to challenging the electoral results, stop the steal, culminating in the riot, you know, efforts by some still there's some who are still saying, oh, you know, it wasn't right. You know, they shouldn't have certified and so on and so forth. J.D. Vance, you know, on some of the Sunday programs this weekend, refusing still to say that.

that the President Biden had won and Donald Trump had lost. We haven't really moved on from that.

In fact, in some respects, it may have gotten worse. And that's where I really seriously look at some of these scenarios. This puts that and the 2000 election of the Supreme Court on steroids. If this ends up in the House in January of 2025. Yeah, absolutely. It could be, you know, quite a time, which is why I am going to get out of Dodge.

go on vacation, which most people would not do. But I am because I think that my services will be better served from November through the middle of January than in late October. Chad Pergam, Fox News, senior congressional correspondent. Who knows what we have coming up in the coming months. Election day, less than three weeks away. Great to talk to you. Thanks for being here. Likewise. Thank you.

Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant those blackout motorized shades. Blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Hall of Fame's son? They're the number one online retailer of

custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the GOAT. Shop Blinds.com right now and get up to 45% off select styles. Rules and restrictions may apply. I'm Dana Perino, and this week on Perino on Politics, I'm joined by Republican strategist Matt Gorman and Democratic strategist Antoine C. Wright as we examine what the candidates' best case scenarios look like for election night. Available now on FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Subscribe to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. It's time for your Fox News commentary. Carol Roth. What's on your mind? Kamala Harris claims she supports small business. She doesn't, and I have the receipts.

In an attempt to distance herself from the economic ruin she had a hand in creating, VP Kamala Harris is positioning herself as the small business candidate. It's a good strategy given that there are more than 33 million small businesses in the United States and tens of millions more if you include entrepreneurial gig workers. But one cannot just wave a magic wand and become something. Between

Between the Biden-Harris policies over the last three and three quarters years, as well as her campaign proposals, it's clear that Harris is, in actuality, the anti-small business candidate.

While it's always challenging to be an entrepreneur, small business owners have had a particularly rough go over the last five years. They bore the brunt of the COVID-19 shutdown mandates while they saw big businesses get more support and thrive. Coming out of COVID, the Biden-Harris policies helped stoke historic inflation, which created an immense set of challenges for small business owners as well as Main Street Americans.

It's estimated that the Biden-Harris administration increased the regulatory burden on small businesses to the tune of $1.7 trillion. Harris's flagship proposal purportedly demonstrating her support for small business rests on increasing a startup expense credit. Now,

Not only is this proposal opaque, but it's also focused exclusively on new business entities and completely ignores America's more than 33 million existing small businesses. Her other proposals are directly damaging to small business owners.

She's communicated that she will let the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire, which gave many small businesses a tax break and included a qualified business income deduction for certain small businesses that will also expire. She's also said she plans to raise income tax and capital gains taxes, among other proposals, that will see existing small businesses paying more of their hard-earned money to the government.

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and they deserve to be treated with respect, not used as a political pawn. Kamala Harris's actions are very clear. No matter what she says, she is no friend to small business.

I'm Carol Roth, author of the bestselling book, You Will Own Nothing. You can connect with me at carolroth.com slash news. You've been listening to the Fox News Rundown. And now stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on Amazon Music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.

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