Trump Blasts Cheney
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It's Friday, November 1st, right now on CNN This Morning. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it. Violent rhetoric. Donald Trump going after political foe Liz Cheney with some of his darkest language yet. And... We trust women. We trust women to make their own decisions. Winning over women. How both campaigns trying to appeal to this key group, which makes up more than half the vote. Plus...

I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote. The normal gay guy vote? J.D. Vance follows his running mate onto the internet's biggest podcast, and this: I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump, but I'm voting for Jon Tester. Holding the Senate, the new tactic vulnerable Democratic senators are using to hang on to their seats in tough states.

All right, 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Detroit, Michigan. Both campaigns heading to the Wolverine State today. Of course, a critical battleground ahead of Tuesday's election. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. Four days out from Election Day, and former President Donald Trump is escalating his violent rhetoric, suggesting one of his most prominent critics, the former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, should be fired upon.

She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy. Let's see how she feels when the guns are trained on her face. Let's sit with that for a moment.

Of course, violent rhetoric, it's not new for Trump. But this stark imagery represents an escalation at a tense moment when the country is on edge heading into Tuesday, with 7 in 10 Americans saying they feel anxious or frustrated about the election, according to a new AP poll. And it comes after Trump has raised the specter of using the US military on Americans he calls the "enemy within."

I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they're being inundated. But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national guard or, if really necessary, by the military.

Throughout the last nearly 10 years with Trump on the national stage, the public rhetoric has gotten darker and more violent with time. The man that was, I don't know, you say roughed up, he was so obnoxious and so loud he was screaming. Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. That was during Trump's first campaign. During his administration, he asked his national security team if he could shoot protesters.

He was speaking to General Mark Milley when he asked that question of, you know, can't you just shoot him, just shoot him in the legs or something? And I was, you know, shocked by it, to hear this from the President of the United States saying that we shoot our fellow Americans in the streets of the nation's capital. That was Donald Trump's former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper. After Trump left office, he suggested the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, should possibly be executed.

Milley's phone call with the Chinese to reassure them in the wake of the January 6th riot was, quote, an act so egregious that in times gone by, the punishment would have been death, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Then came his 2024 campaign after actual violence erupted at the Capitol, trying to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 win.

Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages. You see the spirit from the hostages and that's what they are as hostages. They've been treated terribly. Unbelievable patriots and they were unbelievable patriots and are. He called people put in jail for what they did that day, quote, unbelievable patriots. And as the campaign has gone on, he has made these promises.

I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. And 2024 is the final battle. That's going to be the big one. This is the final battle, he says. He's talking about the election happening four days from now. In her closing argument of this campaign, his opponent, Kamala Harris, had this warning.

- Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him.

That's where we are four days from election day in 2024. Joining us now to discuss Elliott Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor, Jonah Goldberg, CNN political commentator, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Dispatch, Megan Hayes, former director of message planning for the Biden White House, and Brad Todd, Republican strategist and partner at the public strategy firm on message. Welcome to all of you. Jonah Goldberg, I'd like to start with you as we sort of take in the comments that he had about Liz Cheney last night.

suggesting that she be fired upon, see how she likes it. What does this mean at this point in the election cycle? Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like we're triggering Brad, who works for a company called OnMessage, that he is not exactly on message here. Look,

I don't think you even need to call it fire to bond. He's saying quite explicitly and unambiguously that Liz Pena should be shot, should be executed by firing squad. That is appalling. It is a small facet of the reasons why he's unfit for office and the Republican Party has made a disastrous mistake renominating him. All that said, since we're here for the punditry, I don't know what this gets him, right? If his problem is freaking out suburban women who...

Don't like the chaos don't like the violent rhetoric and all that kind of stuff. That's just not a great closing argument Let's execute a political opponent who happens to be a woman because I don't like her and Like does that pull more low propensity voters in his coalition to the polls? I honestly don't think so, but maybe they have some data that says other I just

if Access Hollywood did not have an impact in rendering this individual unfit to be elected president of the United States, and then forget everything that happened. - I will just, yeah, yeah, go ahead. - Okay, then let's forget what happened for the next four years. So if January 6th and the rhetoric there did not render this individual unfit for office,

and people are still, have open questions about Donald Trump, then I don't know what else is going to move the needle. And to Jonah's point, this is, there is no defending that rhetoric. We can try to both sides anything that anybody says, but that was quite explicit, what he said there. I just-- - You would have a hard time selling a jury that that's what he said. - I would not have a hard time selling a jury that that's what he said. Although it was a statement made out of court, might be hearsay, so I don't know.

I'm going to say this in the backwards order so I can get it all out. I don't think that all, first of all, I agree with Liz Cheney on foreign policy more than I agree with Donald Trump on some of these questions, or at least historically I have.

He was talking about their difference on foreign policy. Liz Cheney's a hawk. If you listen to the rest of the Biden, he says she always wanted to go to war with people. I don't want to go to war with people. He was saying if she was the one that had to go into infantry combat, maybe she would see it differently. That's a critique Democrats have made about Dick Cheney and other hawks. But staring at nine barrels, you think that that's... Yes, he's talking about her going to war. Now let's go to Donald Trump's problem. This is why he's in a close race.

He's ahead in every target state this morning, enough to get 270 in the New York Times poll, which is not exactly a friendly poll to him. Saying things like this in this way,

He'd be ahead by six or seven if he didn't do that. If he was talking about the economy this week, if he was talking about crime and the border and things that this administration has failed on, I mean, yes, he does not choose his words very well. And no, Jonah, he is not on message. But he is about to win. He's about to win. Despite the way he talks, that tells you how unpopular this administration is.

I disagree. I don't think he's going to win, but I also think this is going to get people who are conservative Republicans to just stay home. They might not go vote for the vice president, but they are going to stay home. This is such reprehensible language over and over and over again. And I agree with you, Elliot, nothing is moving the needle. But I do think these people are just going to stay home. I just don't think they're going to vote for him. I don't think these people want a president that acts like this.

This is not someone you want representing the United States in foreign countries. So is the new Democratic strategy just to get people not to vote, stay home? No, I'm saying that this type of language makes people want to stay home and not go out and vote for him. I'm not saying it's a strategy by any stretch of the imagination. Let's be clear, everybody should vote. I don't think they're not going to vote for down-ballot races. I don't think they're going to continue to vote for him. Brad, I love you.

- No, I do. - That's always the opening line. - Oh boy, here we go. - However. - No disrespect. - However, my love. No, is that what you want? And this is the question that I would ask of anybody

who's not even defending the former president, but set aside the economy, the tax cuts, the Supreme Court justices and so on. Is this what you want running the country and representing the United States on a global stage? - I think where the American people are right now is they don't want more of what we're doing.

- Sure, and my question-- - That's what they don't want. And that's the choice they have to make on Tuesday. Do they want more of what we're doing or do they want something that's perhaps different than what we're doing? All elections with an incumbent party are referendums on them. - Sure, and if what we're doing is inflation that is several points higher than we want it, is the alternative that on the global stage? That kind of rhetoric, that kind of treatment of-- - So look, it's not just rhetoric, okay? - No, no, no. - That's the thing, and this is where I trip.

Jonah, because I had so many Republicans. I was covering Congress for the entirety of the Trump administration, right? And I have always found that there are people that I greatly respect who are public servants on both sides of the aisle. And many of the people that I respected the most on the Republican side would say, I mean, they'd say one thing in private. In public, they would say, you know what?

It's going to be okay. He just talks like this. Nothing is actually going to happen. And because these were people who had been respected public servants for a long time, I believed many of them, even as in private, they would say, I'm actually a little bit more concerned about this than I'm willing to let on publicly. But then we hit January 6th.

and there literally were people tearing, breaking the windows, you know, bear spraying the cops. Several of the cops died in the aftermath of the thing and it became very implausible in my mind and the president of the United States at that time, Donald Trump, who any president is supposed to be the president for all Americans,

Right? This mob is attacking the building, attacking the democracy, attacking the people inside there, and he does nothing. He sends no one for hours. For hours. So when I listen to something like this, it doesn't feel hypothetical to me. It doesn't feel like just language. Yeah, no, look, I agree with that. And this is one of the reasons why I think that the

the best case scenario that a lot of my pro-Trump friends on the right conjure, which is, "Oh, we know what his presidency's gonna be like. It's gonna be a replay of the first one," is so wrong. Because as we've learned from the stuff from John Kelly and Esper, some of which you played here, and a lot of other people, there was a whole Praetorian Guard of the kind of people you're talking about that you covered on the Hill, what I used to call closet normals, right? Where they actually weren't Trumpy.

They just had to say this stuff in the public, in front of cameras and microphones. But then behind the scenes, there's like, Paul Ryan would say this often. He was like, you wouldn't believe the things that we stopped him from doing. He called himself the ballast in the ship of state at the time. And so now we have a whole, Donald Trump has gotten older, crankier, weirdly more confident, and surrounded by a coterie of sycophants and enablers. And you're not going to get

the bars, never mind the Sessions or the Kellys going into the White House, you're going to get the same, the whole bunch of the remoras, you know, which are the creatures that stick to the side of sharks,

that live down in Mar-a-Lago. - Something they know every day. - The sucker fish that live in Mar-a-Lago who come around and saying, "Sir, you are the greatest genius who's ever lived." And it's gonna be a bunch of enablers. And I think that that is something that people just don't appreciate. - Using the example of Jeff Sessions, an unabashed conservative who did not make it on account of straying from the former president, I do ask the question, what will it take to be fired from the next administration?

Like given the kinds of, assuming it is Donald Trump, if those are the folks he's putting around him. - Well he's also said, if you read, there's a very interesting interview he did with David Rubenstein for Rubenstein's book about presidents.

Rubenstein repeatedly asks him, "What's the thing that you learned in the White House?" And he repeatedly says, "You have to hire people who are gonna basically do what you want to do." And there are echoes of Jeff Sessions, Brett. - We've spent 13 minutes talking about people's hesitations with Donald Trump. He's currently a little more popular than Kamala Harris. If you look at favor and favor ratios,

We've not talked to anything about what people's hesitations are about her. She hasn't said she will not do anything different from Joe Biden. She's not renounced the left on any major policy. She has aides sometimes say, hint, maybe I won't be that bad. But she herself won't say she was wrong when she took the leftmost position. Voters know both these people.

They have hesitations about both these people. I think you're identifying policy differences. No, no, I mean, I think you're identifying what in a normal election would have been Romney versus Obama. They disagree on these things. There's a stylistic or tonal difference. Here you're talking about fundamental existential questions. Policy is an existential question, though. We're not talking about her because she's not threatening to kill her, someone who doesn't agree with her. You don't hear her out there saying that she's going to

take a firing squad at someone who doesn't agree with her. That is why we are not talking to her, because the language is reprehensible and abhorrent and not what our country stands for. And we should not be electing someone that's just I just don't understand how we can be electing someone or that is so popular. This is what we want to elect America like for to represent America. I just it just doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, if she had moved far off the far left positions and rebuked the left, she would be winning. I just disagree with you. And I just think that they're very different. I agree with Brad about that.

I think she's a terrible candidate. I don't agree with her policies. But I'm sort of within the PJ O'Rourke position. She's unacceptable, but within normal parameters. And Donald Trump is unacceptable outside of normal parameters. And therein lies all the difference. It is a terrible choice for a conservative like me. I'm glad I live in Washington, D.C., so I don't have to vote for any of them, and it doesn't matter. But I think she's a terrible candidate.

I think that the asymmetry between saying she's really bad on policy and he's really bad about talking about using the military against Americans. You did come in here, Brad, saying I'm so thankful for the Constitution. It means that the voting is going to have to stop on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Yes, the Constitution does guarantee this ends. So at least there's that. All right. Coming up here on CNN This Morning, why J.D. Vance thinks the Republican ticket can win what he calls, quote, normalcy.

I'm Anderson Cooper.

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I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'm voting for Jon Tester. I'm voting for Jon Tester. Jon got over 20 bills signed into law by President Trump. He stood up to Biden on the Keystone Pipeline and protected our Second Amendment rights.

Senator Jon Tester attempting to fend off a competitive Republican challenger in the red state of Montana. Despite the fact that he is a Democrat, Tester is embracing, really, Donald Trump. And he is not alone. As Democrats fight to maintain control of the Senate with an electoral map that very much favors Republicans, incumbents in red or swing states aren't hugging their own party's presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. Just watch this ad from Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey.

I'm a Republican. And I'm a Democrat. Our marriage, pure bliss. But on politics, we just don't agree. Except for Bob Casey. He's independent. Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking. And he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating.

All right. Brad Todd, you do a lot of work on these Senate races, and this is really notable. These Senate candidates that are running in these states are running, it seems, away from Harris and in some cases toward Trump. I completely embrace them. I'm working on that race in Pennsylvania for Dave McCormick. And, you know, you can tell Bob Casey's in trouble, like Jon Tester, when they take someone who basically their party has called Hitler and Donald Trump, and they're saying, oh, but he's a healthy collaborator with us on legislation. It just doesn't go together. Right.

It also tells you where the race is in these swing states. I mean, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin's done it. Sherrod Brown in Ohio's done it. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania's done it. All these Democrat incumbent senators rushing to tell voters, honest to God, I can work with Donald Trump. What's that tell you about the presidential race? Yeah, let's watch that ad that Tammy Baldwin put up. She's, of course, in Wisconsin. This Senate race tighter than I think a lot of people expected at this point. Watch.

We can't let China steal Wisconsin jobs, so I wrote a law to require American infrastructure projects use American iron and steel. Tammy Baldwin got President Trump the signer made in America bill. I mean, Jonah, the writing is in the ads, I guess. Yeah, someone showed me the other day some lawn signs in Arizona that say Trump Gallego.

which is kind of interesting, Gallego being the Democratic Senate candidate. Entirely possible that's how it goes in Arizona, right? Oh, for sure. I mean, the Gallego, the Trump-Gallego voter is a real constituency in Arizona, partly because Carrie Lake is so terrible. But...

and probably because he's a Marine, so he's got some cross-cultural appeal. But look, I think Brad's point is entirely right, is that you have, there's been a sort of, there's been a shift from, the shift of the FDR coalition has accelerated really dramatically recently. And that means you're going to get a bunch of people who are sort of traditional Democrats who like Trump,

And a lot of these traditional Democrats who have not had difficult races in the past are stuck trying to figure out how to navigate those waters. Well, keep in mind, most of these senators did not vote with Donald Trump. They voted 98% with Joe Biden. They don't vote with Republicans. They don't talk like Republicans except when they're right next to the election. So that is a little bit of a different switch, too. All right.

Coming up next here, tension, anxiety. What a majority of Americans say they are feeling ahead of the election. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is gonna talk through how to work it out, some of that nervous energy. And just four days out, Trump takes the stage in Arizona while Kamala Harris rallied in Vegas. - We all know who Donald Trump is. This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is increasingly unstable,

All right, welcome back to CNN This Morning. If it's Friday, it's Michael Smirconish. Michael, good morning to you. I'm thrilled to have you, as always. And this is the last Friday before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which means it's the last time you and I are going to get to talk before Election Day. And I'm anxious to know what you think here in the final days, where this race stands, where we're headed. Candidly, I feel like we may be in the calm before the storms.

storm, but you tell me if you disagree. Thank you for having me. I've looked forward to these Friday morning get togethers. I really have. The big question on my mind is Donald Trump

underperforming again in the polls because you know what happened in 2016 you know what happened in 2020 in three runs for the presidency he's never been in this strong of a position even though you wouldn't say that he's leading but if the polls are off as they were in the last two cycles then he wins or is there some level of overcompensation by the polling outfits that

because of what went wrong in 2016 and 2020. Me, I look at all the data like you. I know the polls. The polls say margin of error stuff in the battleground states. She's probably ahead in the national polls by a Hillary margin, not by a Biden margin. The betting markets favor him.

Is that because the bro vote is laying a lot of crypto on Donald Trump? I don't know. The stock market seems to suggest it's an incumbents election. That would be Harris. The cultural touchstones, is it a Ted Lasso world or is it a Yellowstone world? That's more subjective. The pundits, you know, the two Nates, the 538. And in the end, Casey...

Nothing would shock me. If you said that Harris ekes out a victory, it wouldn't shock me. If she wins convincingly, it wouldn't shock me. If he ekes out a victory or wins convincingly, that wouldn't shock me either. Go vote. It's fun to talk about all this stuff. It's insightful. It's important. But in the end, we don't know.

Yeah, I mean, look, it's honestly the best part. And is that at the end of the day, it's up to the voters. And as much as we can try to figure out what they're collectively thinking, my gosh, the number of times that they've surprised us in recent election cycles. But look, Michael, I'm so glad you raised the question of how

how or whether the polls are capturing accurately what the electorate is going to be, because you rightly point out that mistakes were made in recent previous years. The pollsters have tried to compensate for understanding that there are more sort of hidden Trump voters. Right. There is this question, though, Liz Cheney and other female politicians have been out saying there is a secret message

female vote, right? That there are women out there who are not telling their husbands, they're not telling their families, they're not telling the pollsters that they don't like Donald Trump and that that may make one of those scenarios where Harris wins by a little or by a lot more likely. I want to show you a little bit of how Charlie Kirk and Jesse Waters, two figures on the right, have been talking about this possibility and get your take. Watch this.

It is the embodiment of the downfall of the American family. She's coming in with her sweet husband, who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go, you know, and have a nice life and provide for the family. And then she lies to him saying, oh yeah, I'm going to vote for Trump. And then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth.

I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris. That's the same thing as having an affair. That violates the sanctity of our marriage. Yes. What else is she keeping from me? Exactly. What else has she been lying about?

I'm interested in your reaction to how those two spoke about this particular topic, but also whether you think this secret vote exists in the first place. It might. I mean, I think that the Harris campaign believes that it does, hopes that it does, so much so that you know of the Julia Roberts commercial, which I thought was pretty effective.

It's a week of hysteria. Thank God it's Friday. When I think about, you know, all that has taken place this week, and I am not minimizing the comedian at Madison Square Garden. The joke was appalling. They should have flagged it. Trump should have immediately come out and condemned it. But to go from that to the garbage truck, the White House apparently manipulating the transcript with the apostrophe, reminds me of that book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Mark Cuban and the comments that he made about the truck.

I think in the end, this is all a wash. I really believe it's a wash. Alan Lichtman, he of the 13 Keys, said to me yesterday on radio, in the end, it's about governance and how well the incumbent party has been governing. I think there's some truth in that. But soon we're going to find out. I just hope in the end it's clear because I'm fearful of what next Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday look like. And it's kind of funny, Casey, because you've got Philly burb cred.

I've got Philly burb cred. It's amazing to be living where I'm living, watching what I'm watching, and to see that it might all come down to the very area where I have spent all of my 62 years.

Yeah, it is actually a remarkable reality. I feel that way, too. Obviously, I'm not I'm not living there at the moment like you are. Michael, how can I mean, we're going to talk to Sanjay Gupta later in the show about the sort of levels of anxiety that are going on around this election. Do you think that anxiety is warranted? Is it warranted? I think it exists.

Is it warranted? I don't know. I would like to think that our system has guardrails. Some would say it barely held four years ago, but I think we're in a position where we can control this outcome. I just think it's very important to continue to remind the public that Tuesday night might not tell us who the victor is. And that doesn't mean that there was any Tom Fullery involved. It just means that the way in which we run our elections, it's like we create a pop-up Starbucks every four years with a largely volunteer force. And guess what?

stuff's gonna happen. And when stuff happens on a minor level, it doesn't mean that there's a major pattern of fraud or some type of chicanery. So everybody just cool down, have a cocktail, settle in. It could be a long couple of days.

It could indeed. We will be here 24 hours a day on CNN until we figure out what the answer to that question is. Michael Smirconish, so grateful to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you as always. Thank you. Yes. And come back next Friday because we're going to have a lot to talk about. For our viewers, remember to turn into Smirconish tomorrow morning, 9 a.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. All right. Coming up here on CNN this morning, the normal gay guy vote. Senator J.D. Vance explains how he believes Trump will win a very specific voting bloc.

I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote. Because again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone.

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All right, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance facing some pushback this morning after making some eyebrow-raising comments during his three-hour interview on the Joe Rogan podcast that aired Thursday. Vance suggested that white upper and middle class students are incentivized to identify as transgender to get admission into elite U.S. colleges. He also said this.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote because, again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone. And now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it that they're like, we didn't we we didn't want to give pharmaceutical products to nine year olds who are transitioning their genders. We just wanted to be left the hell alone. All right. So let's watch also what he said about admission to colleges and the incentives around people who identify as transgender. Watch.

If you are a, you know, middle class or upper middle class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle class kids. But the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be white.

Trans if you become trans that is the way to reject your white privilege

Okay, panelist back. Jonah Goldberg, what do you make of what he said here? Stipulating that clearly this cultural issue of transgender people has been a message that the Trump campaign has put a lot of money behind and that they think does resonate with some voters. Yeah. Look, I'm a persistent critic of J.D. Vance. I don't like the way he necessarily phrased these things or talked these things. I think a lot of people actually understand what he's getting at.

The higher education establishment, there is this widespread understanding as someone who sent their kid to college and went through that process and all my friends are that age with their kids that

There are certain shibboleths, or what the sociologist Rob Henderson would call luxury beliefs, that if you put in your college essay, that if you identify in some way that pings on the radar of identity politics, it is an added value in the application process. Now, whether it's identifying as trans, I don't, whatever. I think non-binary is one of these fashionable terms that

the kids these days like to use a lot. - Jonah Goldberg, comma, not a kid these days. - Yes, exactly. I wasn't even a kid when I was a kid. My only point is I think he's getting at something that a lot of people, it's sort of like everyone talks about don't take Trump, literally take him seriously.

That kind of applies to what he's dog whistling and talking about there. There's a real thing there that I think a lot of people understand, even if you can easily nitpick the language that he's using. And I say this as a non-J.D. Vance fan. Now, the thing is, you can say the words DEI, the letters DEI in the context of college applications all you want, but just look

at the data. And right now, I believe it's 60% of college students, I think, and don't quote me on the number, are first generation college students. Colleges go out of their way to draw people from diverse places in the country. - Sure.

Being trans isn't gonna get you into college. Being a white kid from Kentucky whose parents didn't go to college will get you into college. And so it's a little rich. - I think it's a point system across the spectrum. - Yeah, no, no, but I agree with you on that point. But it's not just this sort of lefty program. - But I wanna overvalue the trans point. But the simple fact is it is a little rich hearing that from JD Vance. Now, it's a point that works. It's a point that works. And people hear the letters DEI, people hear about the idea. The vestiges of affirmative action over years are sort of in people's heads and it whips them up.

Is there a normal gay guy vote? Well, I think there's a taxpayer vote, and I think that's probably what he's talking about. But you know, this transgender agenda question, this is a place where Republicans have about 80% of the country agreeing with their position. Democrats like Kamala Harris are in like the 20% position. The more that that topic is up this week, the better it is for Republicans up and down the ballot. I mean, I think it's a fear tactic that Republicans are using, and I think that then Democrats

Donald Trump steps on himself and says he wants to shoot Liz Cheney. So, I mean, I don't think it gets very far. All right. Coming up next here on CNN This Morning, keeping their advantage with women, how the Harris campaign seizing on Donald Trump's comments about protecting women, quote, whether they like it or not, end quote. Plus, is the election stressing you out? You are not alone. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here to help us all cope with it. I'm ready for it to be over. Yeah, go ahead. And it's getting more and more difficult to listen to all the...

vitriol and that sort of thing. All right, welcome back. Just four days out from Election Day 2024. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris wrapped up late night events in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada. It was really just hours ago. There was one large and important group of voters on their mind, women. Kamala Harris looking to drive up her sizable advantage with female voters, seizing on the former president's recent comment that he would protect women, quote, whether the women like it or not.

This is the same man who said women should be punished for their choices. He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what's in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women. We trust women.

But one of her most vocal supporters on the campaign trail, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, was not making Harris' job any easier yesterday, catching heat for his own comments about the women around Donald Trump. Turns out Donald Trump is not even asking Nikki Haley for her help to try to reach her voters. What do you make of that? And do you think having people like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and other Republicans with Kamala Harris is going to put her over the edge with these Nikki Haley supporters?

Yeah, I mean, yes, it'll put her over the edge with Nikki Haley supporters. Donald Trump, you never see him around strong, intelligent women ever. It's just that simple. They're intimidating to him. He doesn't like to be challenged by them.

So here was how the New York Post answered that with the faces of women supporters and people who are around Donald Trump. Who wants to take this? Megan, why don't I start with you? A strong, intelligent woman. There you go. Who are we all happy to have at the table. I mean, look, the language that Trump uses here, whether they like it or not, I mean, it definitely hits a certain way when anyone is talking about you like that. That

That said, Cuban was not terribly complimentary of the women that are in Trump's orbit, and there are women in his orbit.

Totally. And I just think that some of these people on the periphery should probably stay out of it and let the former president and the vice president make their final arguments here and let them go at each other because they're both saying enough for us all to talk about. But I do think but I do think I think that what he was probably trying to say is at the rally at Madison Square Garden, there was like five or six speakers to these, you know, 20 some men that spoke. And I think that was the point he was trying to make. I don't know that for sure, but it's just.

It seems like that's the point. It also seems like Trump can never get ahead of himself with women and he continues to insult strong women. So it would just, I think, draw in conclusion with like, what are all these women around you saying to you? Why aren't you saying a message? I think Mark Cuban's never met Susie Wiles.

who is Donald Trump's campaign manager, who's one of the strongest women in politics that I've ever worked with. And Cuban can be an idiot, frankly. And he doesn't know what, he's in a field he doesn't know what he's talking about. I also think, though, that the gender gap, we're treating it a little bit too much with crayon in this race. The fact is that Donald Trump may well carry married women. He will definitely carry women with kids in the home.

What we have is a marriage gap and a parent gap more than we have a gender gap. And you see it on the men's side, too. Men with kids in the home are going to vote for Donald Trump much more than single men are. It's a lot more complicated than we make it a lot of times. So we do. One woman who, of course, has been the focus of Donald Trump is Liz Cheney. We talked about her at the top.

of the show. We now have her response was just posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter. There it is. She says this quote, "This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant." And she hashtags it, "Women will not be silenced." Jonah.

It's a good statement. I've been sitting here and mulling Brad's defense of the statement, and I think he's got a better point than I granted at the beginning. I still think what he said was outrageous and grotesque. But...

That's part of the problem, right? Donald Trump speaks in ways, sort of like Mark Cuban, that does not allow for nuanced shades of gray exceptions to the rule. I have lots of criticisms of these women. Not all of them, though, right? But so when Mark Cuban says all of the women, period, there are no smart, intelligent women around, strong women around Trump, that's just not true. Donald Trump does have a lot of

not great people, men and women around him. And Cuba doesn't know how to talk about this kind of stuff. Trump likes to sound so macho and so tough that it freaks people out. And so like the clip about him saying, "I'm gonna protect women no matter what." If you actually listen to the broader part of it, he's got a perfectly fine point, which is that the commander-in-chief is supposed to protect Americans regardless of who they are, regardless of their gender.

But often when these things about sort of men are from Mars, women are from Venus kind of things, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And the way Trump talks,

Whether you like it or not. Yeah. I do not blame women in the slightest, or men, for getting a hard case of ick from it. Yeah, all right. Look, we are running out of time here on a Friday, so we thought this would be a good point to address what everyone at home seems to be talking about. It's certainly what I hear from people when I am asked about the election, which is frequently. It's on everyone's minds. Watch.

What do you mean, why am I anxious? Of course I'm anxious. There's an election in six days. It's one week to the election and I'm so stressed out. I'm too anxious. Maybe ask me after election day. You just kind of wish you could just hide under a rock because you just wish the election would hurry up and come. And I wasn't able to pinpoint exactly what the source of that anxiety was. Wasn't sure exactly why. It's the election. It's the election.

If you are anxious about the election, rest assured, you are not the only one. In fact, according to a recent poll, seven in 10 Americans report feeling anxious or frustrated about the 2024 presidential campaign.

With less than one week to go before the big day, it is hard not to feel tense living in such a divided country with so much at stake. In a new Chasing Life podcast episode out today, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta helping us learn how to navigate our polarized world by having difficult but oftentimes necessary

Conversations and Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now. Sanjay, it's so wonderful to see you. Thanks for having me. This is such a dominant thing right now. What should people be doing between now and Tuesday to try to sit with all this? Yeah, first of all, those clips make you kind of anxious just watching those, right? I mean, I think everyone is certainly feeling this.

Let me start with the good news, which is that our bodies and our brains are incredibly biodynamic. So as stressed or as anxious as you may feel, you can quickly revert as well. And the key is developing some strategies.

One thing, you know, it's interesting, Casey. I think that there's some evidence, if you talk to evolutionary biologists and stuff, that in some ways humans are sort of hardwired to be suspicious of one another. It's kind of how we survived in our earliest days. That's what the argument often is. And there's this guy, Peter Coleman, he's a psychologist, and he runs this thing at Columbia University known as the Difficult Conversations Lab, which I just found so fascinating that a lab like that even exists today.

But I had a chance as you mentioned to talk to Peter for the chasing life podcast Just I want you to listen to this and I want to explain it afterward You know, there's some neuroscience research that just looks at you know when you see a tweet from somebody the other side that says something you think is a name and you experience a sense of outrage and a kind of taste for retaliation that it triggers parts in the brain that you know are triggered by narcotics, so these are you know addictive substances and

So the argument that he's essentially making is that there's a lot of outrage out there, there's a lot of polarization, and that in some ways,

Were sort of addicted to it and he's talking about a part of the brain when he was just talking about this Known as the amygdala it sits there. It's sort of the seat of emotions when it gets fired up Sometimes people want that to happen over and over again, so they they seek out outrage So there's a clue immediately in terms of how to sort of deal with it but let me just again make a little bit more of an optimistic point that most of our human existence at least early days

we needed to cooperate to survive. That's what's really part of our DNA. It wasn't until we started to claim land and claim things and things like that, that we actually started to develop more polarization. So overall, the odds are on our side, Casey, in terms of our evolutionary biology. - Well, I am happy to hear that. Sanjay, briefly,

You list ways to reduce stress, exercise, control your environment, practice positives, get good sleep. We had Molly Ball from the Wall Street Journal on earlier. She wrote a piece about this and she said that people are turning to things like cocktails and edibles at this stage. Would you recommend that?

You know, I mean, I think you need to find a break from the stress. I think that is really the key. Everyone says, "I want to obviate stress from my life. I want to obviate anxiety." You can't really obviate stress from your life. You need a certain amount of stress in your life to get out of bed, to study for an exam, to whatever, go vote.

The key is to find the breaks from it. I think that's sort of a shift in how you think. People are like, I'm just done with it. No, you can't be done with it. But finding the breaks. So if you had that list again up there, exercise and movement is probably the best thing that you can do overall just to get endorphins going in your body. Just taking that first step really makes a big difference. Controlling the environment, Casey, I'll leave you with this.

Getting off social media for a while. That really does. Get off the socials. I will take that advice. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, very much appreciate your calm approach to this. Thank you for being here on this Friday. I don't know who's anxious about the election. All right. Reminder, you can listen to that latest podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our panel. Try not to be so anxious this weekend. Those of you watching at home. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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