Managing the Unprecedented: The Media's Role in the 2024 Race
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making it a challenge for the media to cover. You know, for a journalist trying to cover all this stuff, I mean, the news changes every two hours, and that's typical in the final days of a campaign, but this one is unlike any campaign that any of us have ever seen.

I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Changes to how pollsters poll, nuances inside swing districts, and shifting voter registration, all playing critical roles in just how tight and how close this election seems. Pretty much across the boards in all of the swing states, in all the battleground states that have

voter registration you've had since the 2020 election, the state has shifted by about three to four points towards Republicans. And I'm Tommy Lahren. I've got the final word on the Fox News rundown. Less than a week before Election Day.

Former President Trump has a slight lead in the Electoral College projections in the Fox News power rankings that shift Arizona from toss-up to lean Republican, with six other states still too close to call. Michigan and Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Vice President Harris delivered what her campaign calls a closing argument last night. Unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I'll give them a seat at the table.

Harris was on the ellipse in Washington, D.C., speaking where, back on January 6th, 2021, then-President Trump spoke before his supporters then stormed the Capitol, disrupting the 2020 election certification that made Trump's loss official. We know who Donald Trump is.

He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair... Former President Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania on Tuesday after an event at his resort in Florida. She's running on a campaign of demoralization.

and really a campaign of destruction. But really, perhaps more than anything else, it's a campaign of hate.

It's a campaign of absolute hate. The former president calling it dangerous. The Democrats keep calling him a fascist and Nazi. My message is about saving our economy, securing our border. And the back and forth of them calling each other dangerous is getting a lot of attention in the media. The coverage has been very, very favorable to Kamala Harris, notwithstanding the Washington Post's disastrous decision to kill a Kamala Harris endorsement. Howie Kurtz is the host of the Media Buzz show on the Fox News channel.

at 11 a.m. Eastern Sundays, and he has the Media Buzz Meter podcast. That actually helps Donald Trump. In fact, he told me, both in our recent interview and when I spoke to him a few months ago in Mar-a-Lago,

that he, look, he declares the media to be the enemy of the people, just like he declares his political opponents to be the enemy within, a phrase that's gotten a lot of attention and that I brought up with him at our Trump Tower sit down, all of which helps him dominate the media. Kamala Harris keeps going to different venues, but what matters most is the message.

And the closing message, as best I can put it together, is that she's not Donald Trump, especially in the wake of former Chief of Staff John Kelly saying that Trump was a fascist in his view, saying that he had said he wanted his generals to.

To be as loyal as Hitler's generals. Yeah. And, you know, in the former president, the last couple of days, he's been talking about that. He's he's turned it around. He's like, they're dangerous. They're horrible. And it's this kind of rhetoric that led to assassination attempts. So he's he's turning it right on them.

to say that, oh, the rhetoric on the other side was too heated. I think it's a mistake. You, by definition, have to be clinically insane to take this on, especially with all the Secret Service protection. But sure, the charges, the counter charges, Michelle Obama makes a passionate speech on behalf of men need to listen to women and talking a lot about reproductive rights and other issues. And then Trump hits back about how

Michelle was out of control. You know, for a journalist trying to cover all this stuff, I mean, the news changes every two hours. And that's typical in the final days of a campaign. But this one is unlike any campaign that any of us have ever seen. Yeah. And as you watch the coverage and follow the coverage, you

whenever there is a Trump event or rally, there are a lot of times you'll hear, he again falsely claimed or he spread misinformation. As someone who studies the media, is that the right thing to do or not the right thing to do? Well, it's a dilemma for the media because on the one hand...

when they cover what Donald Trump does. For example, the other day, he held a sort of a live press conference in which he rebutted a lot of the stuff and said he's the opposite of a Nazi and comments like that. Fox took it live. CNN took it live and eventually broke away and came back, actually, when there were other speakers. And of course, they come back and said, Trump said this, Trump said that, Trump said that, and it wasn't true. In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Donald Trump tells me he's sometimes...

uses incendiary language deliberately because he knows it will rile up the media and his base despises the media. You know, most people have lives. They don't have a lot of time to follow this the way journalists and political junkies do. But I think impressions get formed.

And I think the Trump campaign is worried about some of the racist talk, not by him, but by these speakers who apparently weren't vetted. And it wasn't just this comedian at the Madison Square Garden rally. It was a radio talk show host. It was a friend of Trump's, all uttering things that either were supposed to be funny or just weren't funny. And even many conservatives are worried now about the backlash among Latinos over

over the guy who said that basically it's a floating island of garbage. Right, for Puerto Rico. That, of course, is getting a lot of attention in the media, and the Harris campaign is trying to capitalize on that and outreach into the Latino community. Have you seen—you've been covering campaigns—

You know, of course, any campaign that former President Trump's involved in is always, there's a lot going on. Is it even more so this year like that? What happened on Sunday night? Was that a surprise to you or no? Uh,

It was a surprise to me only in that most of these people hadn't even been vetted. How do you put that on and not know what all these other speakers are going to say? Because it completely and totally overshadowed, even obliterated, what Donald Trump had to say. You know, he had a few words like hell and damn, so what? These people were talking about making fun of Palestinians, of Puerto Ricans, calling Hillary Clinton a Jew lover, calling Kamala Harris the Antichrist.

And when you do all that, you tick people off. And so there's a significant backlash right now. I mean, maybe there'll be another controversy in the final days here that will crowd that out. But yeah, I was surprised that this wasn't more carefully stage managed, given the importance the Trump campaign had put on this rally. You referenced the Washington Post coming out and deciding against endorsing a candidate in the 2024 race.

They've been doing it every year since '76 except for 1988 when they abstained. The LA Times did the same thing. The owner blocked, and in that case also, an endorsement for Vice President Harris. Why is this happening?

This is a colossal blunder, to start with the Washington Post, by Jeff Bezos. And in his op-ed that he ran in his paper, by the way, he has the right to sit editorial policy, no one disputes that, he actually admitted certain things, although with very careful language, that the timing of this, and I've been saying this for days now,

It was awful. It was terrible. If he had done this six months ago, we're not going to endorse and nobody cares. If he does it after the election, nobody cares. But by rejecting the Harris endorsement, a guy who does a lot of business with the federal government through Amazon,

and through his Blue Origin rocket company, I think he was motivated by a fear of Donald Trump because they have a very testy relationship. And Bezos has got to be looking at it and saying, "Look, I don't want to exacerbate our relationship. He may well win the presidency, and then, you know, he could make life very difficult for me."

And in addition, if you look at it, one third of the editorial board resigned from those positions in protest of the non endorsement.

a similar situation in Los Angeles where the owner there biotech mogul Patrick shun-shan uh has also killed it now USA Today has jumped in that bag went look and nobody really cares about newspaper endorsements anymore they don't have the clout that they once did but if they're so meaningless as Jeff Bezos is saying and I do agree with him that you know

people don't trust the media anymore. It's one thing he and I agree with. All right. We referenced how you spoke recently. Again, I know you've talked to him many times. You wrote a book about the former President Trump when he was in the White House and all. When you talked to him, was he the same? I mean, there's been a lot of media coverage about how at his rallies, he rambles, he loses his train of thought. He says crazy things. And they're trying to lump him in with, you know, President Biden being old and, you know, Donald Trump being 78. Do you see him any differently?

Well, I didn't in the interview I just did with him at Trump Tower. He was focused. He did not look tired. He answered all the questions. He basically doubled down on everything from using the phrase the enemy within to refer to, for example, political enemies, Nancy Pelosi and

Congressman Adam Schiff. He stuck to his guns on describing January 6th as a day of love. He seemed annoyed by your Springfield, Ohio questioning. Yeah, he did. He kind of hit back at me on that. That's okay. I mean, we, um, I know how to ask him tough questions and tough followups without making it personal. When I said, you know, you famously said they're eating the dogs, they're reading the cats. Uh,

are you now willing to say, look, that turned out not to be true, according to local officials who have looked at it. And I said, I know you feel strongly about all these immigrants, legal, by the way, Haitian immigrants going to Springfield, Ohio, and putting a strain there. And so I wanted to sort of concede that. And he said, well, I don't know that it's not true. And I said, you don't know. This has been thoroughly knocked down. He says, well, I'm going to go there and

and look more into it. He just would not back off eating the pets. And do I personally think that's not what he should make this election about? Yes, but he had a chance. You know, whether you liked his answers or not, he was very focused.

Now, when he does these rallies, yeah, I think they're longer. They're filled with more profanity. And he does ramble. He calls it the weave, which is, you know, starts out and then he comes back. Trump can be very funny. He also can be he can wander pretty far afield.

when he did the three-hour sit-down with Joe Rogan, which had something like 34 million views. This is awesome. Three hours is such a long interview. I was surprised he did three hours a long time, Howie. Yeah, well, that's the length of the show. I know, but, you know, Trump likes to talk, and he had somebody who was interested in him. Huge benefit for him because the audience is mostly men and mostly young men. Rogan revealing the other day that he...

The reason it hasn't worked out, although he says he's still open to the idea of having Kamala Harris on, is that she puts certain conditions like he should go to her rather than her coming to his Texas studio. And she would only give him an hour. And apparently they're still talking about it. I think she should do everything she can because she needs that audience. She has a huge gender gap, which scores very well with women, not so much with men, especially black men in this campaign.

She didn't do a lot of interviews at the start. She's been doing a lot more lately. Does that indicate to you that she might think she's behind? Yes. And I think it was a colossal mistake not to do some of those interviews earlier. She let that build up and build up and build up. They're hiding her. What are they afraid of? She can't do anything but teleprompter. But I'm glad she's out there sitting down with Brett Baer at Fox.

I think that's all smart. If she makes mistakes, so be it. She's got to be out there. She's got to let people see that she has some sort of positive message that goes beyond just I am not Donald Trump.

We'll see. We only have six days. Watch all the election night coverage on all this. Howie Kurtz, host of the Media Buzz show, Fox News Channel, 11 a.m. Sunday morning, Eastern Time. Also, the Media Buzz meter podcast you can download and check out. Great to talk to you. Thanks, Howie. Thank you very much. Bud Light knows that there's no better day than game day.

With good food, great company, and plenty of cold ones for the tailgate, Bud Light makes football easier to enjoy, especially when your team scores. Bud Light, easy to drink, easy to enjoy. Enjoy responsibly. 21 Plus, copyright 2024. Anheuser-Busch Bud Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

Tuesday, it's Election Day in America, and Fox News Radio has wall-to-wall coverage. Starting with a one-hour preview show with Brett Baer, Martha McCallum, and Dana Perino. Then, Jared Halpern and Jessica Rosenthal lead Democracy 24's state-by-state coverage of the all-important presidential election and balance of power in Congress. Along with Fox News reporters throughout the country. It's coverage you can't hear anywhere else. Listen starting at 6 p.m. Eastern at foxnewsradio.com and on the Fox News app.

This is Tomi Lahren with your Fox News commentary coming up. The latest Fox News power rankings say it's still anyone's race, but they bring down the number of toss-up states from seven to six. Fox's America's Newsroom anchor Bill Hammer shared the rankings findings on the issues. Trump leads on the economy, as you see behind me, by seven points. He leads on immigration by 15 points.

When it comes to abortion, however, Kamala Harris has a solid lead at 13 points. Republican National Committee political director James Blair told Fox News a shift in voter registration in many states, but especially Arizona, toward Republicans may also matter. A lot of these pollsters, even when you average it all out, they set...

their sample to look like the 2020 electorate. But the fact is these battleground states, in particular Arizona, they've all moved three to five points to the right. Harris-Walls campaign surrogate former Congressman Cedric Richmond told Fox News they're confident in what he says is the vice president's broad coalition. You see many Republicans, you see many independents. And if you look at her numbers with undecided voters, she's up 10%.

over Trump with those who are still making up their mind of who they're going to support. And that's very significant. Either way, the rankings show absolute toss-ups in six swing states. I think it's very close. You know, Team Trump can certainly point to some good data points over the last few days. Patrick Graffini is the co-founder of Echelon Insights.

In a lot of the early voting data in old in the final voter registration data coming out of Pennsylvania, a lot of the hard data coming out of the states, particularly the Sunbelt states.

Point to potential turnout problems for Kamala Harris. You have electorates and Sunbelt states that are more Republican as, yes, Republicans are shifting to voting earlier this time. That's part of it. But you're also seeing lower turnout from black voters, which is historically a poor omen for Democrats.

Nationally, the polls have tightened. So about two, three weeks ago, the typical national poll had Kamala Harris up by three points. Now it's closer to one point. Obviously, we don't have a popular vote. So that's not the be all end all. But certainly, Team Trump can claim some momentum. I think the concerning piece of this for them, the big question mark for them is,

is exactly where the rust belt stands um and that they don't necessarily have um a state in which they've opened up even a small lead i mean yes trump is ahead by the tiniest of margins in the real clear politics average in in pennsylvania but all the polls there continue to be very tight and if they all go one direction right and they all you know if trump falls short

in all three of those states, that's probably the election. Have pollsters changed their ways? Like I'm reading that they've shifted, for example, how they weight educational background, that that ended up mattering.

Is that sufficient to make up for whatever's missing? Have other things changed in the polling landscape and how pollsters conduct polls given where we ended up in 2016 and 2020? - Sure, so in 2020, there was a lot, a big deal made about waiting on education because you had a lot of polls, particularly state polls.

that did not wait on education and had too many college graduates in their sample. And that, you know, those college graduates voted more democratic and pushed the polling samples more democratic.

This year, most of the, let's say, controversy around polling has been whether you should wait to the results of the last presidential election. So Biden won the national vote by four points. So we're going to say our poll, right, is, you know, has when we ask people who they voted for in 2020, you know, a lot of those polls will have a margin of Biden by four points because they've been weighted to that.

Now, there's some controversy about that because it's certainly people don't always remember exactly who they voted for. And the election results can look different. Right. The electorate this year could look different, either more Democratic or Republican than it did in 2020.

I was also reading that it's harder than ever to reach people for polling and that there's this maybe still this belief that Trump supporters are less likely to pick up the phone, answer a poll. We used to hear about the shy Trump voter. Is it true across the board that it's been harder to reach people to get them to answer a poll? And is there a belief that Trump supporters or Republicans are harder to reach?

Yeah, I mean, so it certainly is true that it is harder to reach people. There are obviously new ways of reaching people. You can reach them online. You can reach them through texting. So there are a lot of ways pollsters are combating this trend, right, of people no longer have landline phones and they don't pick up their cell phone. If it's a number they don't recognize.

So it is getting certainly more complicated, more expensive, and we have to, as pollsters, really try a lot more ways to reach out to people.

You know, I do think, you know, there is an issue in some states where, you know, it has been the case that Republicans are less likely sometimes to actually take the survey. Now, that doesn't matter so much in states where we have really good data on the voter file. So we know what their party registration is. We know. Yeah.

How they, you know, how they say they voted in the past. And we can wait for that. We can adjust for that. But I'm thinking about a state like Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a state. We have very little data on voters. Right. We basically don't know very much about their partisan background. There's no really records kept on that. And so the kinds of polls that we do. Right. That rely on voter lists.

aren't as good in a state like Wisconsin as they would be in a state like Pennsylvania, which has a lot of great data on voters.

Tell me about registration data. I was looking in for the seven swing states where we do have registration data. And it seems like there's this drift away from Democrats somewhat toward Republicans, but even more so to just being unaffiliated or an independent voter. What are you seeing? I think you've you've shared with some of your followers some some data out of Pennsylvania. But is this true?

Yeah, you've definitely seen Republicans have gained more than Democrats pretty much across the boards in all of the swing states, in all the battleground states that have voter registration. You've had since the 2020 election, the state has shifted by about three to four points towards Republicans. Now, part of that is a lot of people were voting Republican, a lot of registered Democrats. These are old school working class Democrats who may have been voting Republican.

may have voted for Obama, may have voted for Democrats traditionally, but moved over in in the age of Trump that, you know, what you're seeing is there are in many cases, those voters are realigning.

their party registration, their party affiliation to become Republicans. They started voting for Trump as a Democrat for Trump, and now they're a Republican. But you also have in Pennsylvania specifically among new registrants, people who have not been on the voter file before, Republicans have been –

you know, outnumbering Democrats by around one. And we expect the electorate in Pennsylvania to be close to tied when it comes to party registration. So even though

The registration as a whole in Pennsylvania is about Democrats are ahead by about three points. You know, we just expect that, you know, given these patterns, that the electorate that actually shows up will be close to tied on party registration. And that is a first. We haven't seen that in quite a long time.

Wow. So you did this great piece on slivers to look for indications in the swing states. And I just want to hit you on some of the some of your points, get your your more of a fleshed out take from you, because in Pennsylvania, you say to when it comes to former President Trump, look in places like Scranton, Lackawanna County and Wilkes-Barre and Lucerne County, even outside Erie City. And for Harris, you're saying you're telling us to look outside Harrisburg and Cumberland County,

What are you what do we know, I guess, about the recent past that indicates that that's where we should look? Yeah, I mean, I think the most interesting place to look in a lot of these swing states is you have these kind of smaller cities.

So we're used to going into places like Philly or Detroit or really thinking about the Republican base being in urban or in rural areas. But in a lot of these states, the election really is decided in smaller cities, places like Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Trump is going tonight, places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, places like Kalamazoo, Michigan. Right. Those tend to be the bellwethers. Right.

you know, in terms of in the way that they move sort of is a pretty good indication. If we have those results early on on election night from those counties, that's a pretty good indication of how those states are going to move. For Kamala Harris, you know, she in many places, she's playing defense. She needs to maintain defense.

third party's historic levels of support among African-Americans. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about African-Americans and black men in particular voting more for Donald Trump. So she needs to protect that that margin in big cities. But, you know, I think she also has has staked, particularly in Pennsylvania, a lot on outreach to suburban voters and

And not just in Philly, but, you know, as you said, outside Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, too, with appearances with Liz Cheney, which she thinks she can, you know, reach out to these disaffected Republicans who are not quite as favorable to Donald Trump.

Yeah. And, you know, for all your talk of Wisconsin about how we don't have that much data, you do tell us that we should be looking because that most of the state is sort of a foregone conclusion, it sounds like. But if it if if you're stuck, you're telling us to look.

Green Bay area, Appleton, Oshkosh that Trump did well there in 2016, but just but just barely. And then Biden got it back in 2020. So your eyes are right up there, right? That's right. That's right. I think, again, the small the smaller cities where, you know, that are pretty close to even right now in terms of me.

Maybe the counties are a little bit Republican, but even the urban areas, right, are pretty are pretty close to tide. But they did shift in Biden's direction in 2020. So I think I'll be looking to see, particularly in Wisconsin, if he can get those places back. OK, finally, Dana Prino told us this week Republicans are more motivated to vote when they think they're winning and Democrats are more motivated to vote when they're losing. Who do you think?

you know, a few days out, who's more motivated right now? - I don't know. I think there are signs and even in our polling of just increased Trump enthusiasm from, you know, where we were a month ago. A month ago, I always said, you know, I'd rather maybe slightly be Kamala Harris.

So the question is, does that cancel out what I think was Harris's advantage maybe a month ago? I'm not I'm not 100 percent sure. I think that certainly the balance of enthusiasm has shifted back to back to Republicans. But like I said, there is such a thing as peaking too soon. Right. And and, you know, to some extent.

You know, you kind of want to peak on Election Day, right, rather than peak 10 days out or a week out or two weeks out. That's that sort of thing. So I think, you know, I'll be looking I'll be looking to see if Trump can keep the momentum going. With that said,

There's still going to be a lot of the vote that's already been cast. So about probably around the third of all the votes have been already people are already spoken for. So that limits, I think, the potential that we'll see this kind of late movement in this race. Wow. Patrick Graffini, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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Must be present in certain states. Visit prospects.com for restrictions and details. I'm Dana Perino. Join me for my podcast, Perino on Politics. As we analyze the 2024 election cycle, make sure you subscribe to this series on foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts and leave me a rating and review. Subscribe to this podcast at foxnewspodcast.com.

It's time for your Fox News commentary. Tommy Lahren. What's on your mind? Candy prices like everything else in Joe and Kamala's inflation nation are soaring ahead of the Halloween holiday. Americans are projected to drop $3.5 billion on candy this Halloween season, and we will be paying more for less.

In 2023, candy prices rose about 7.5% from the previous year, and 2024 average prices are on pace to be even higher. A report from Wells Fargo shows the increase in price for candy and chocolate products is due in part to cocoa beans, which is expected to cut production by 14%. Take that and add in Bidenflation and your trick-or-treat might look a little more tricky and not so much treat. DealGuru suggests buying in bulk and opting for items that don't include chocolate as a main ingredient.

While American politicians can't control the cocoa bean crops in West Africa, where 70% of the product is grown, there's no doubt American consumers are being punished in every lane of that grocery store, not just the chocolate section. And you can't blame that one on cocoa beans. I'm Tomi Lahren, and you can watch my show, Tomi Lahren is Fearless, at Outkick.com. Outkick.com.

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