32. Trump's Plan to Steal the Election
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Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Welcome. How are you, Katty? Actually, I'm having a good week because I'm interviewing Vera Wang and Otto Lenge for this BBC show I do. So it's kind of nice. It's a very nice break from politics. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

And of course, I was up here during the vice presidential debate. And many of you joined us after our VP debate live stream. So thank you for joining us. And we gave our kind of instant take on that. And I think we both said pretty much straight away that we felt that J.D. Vance had won.

won the debate in the sense that you can win a kind of Oxford Union style debate. But what's your thinking a few days afterwards? It's interesting. I'm a center right person, as you know, Katty. And I think obviously I'm for Harris because I think Trump has tendencies that I think could be very damaging to the world. So I mean, I'm just trying to be as open as possible. But it's not going to mean it's going to sway my objective judgment of

who won or lost the debate. You know, Waltz got beaten. He wasn't as well prepared. He did well on the January 6th issue about, you know, listen, Vance is basically telling people he would have done the opposite of what Pence did, which is why I guess he has that job. And Mike Pence is not endorsing Donald Trump. You know, and I thought Waltz did well on that question. And that could be the center question. That could be the reason why I can't support Trump as well.

But there were other big flubs in there. When someone's asking about Tiananmen Square, you know the question is coming up and you spend 90 seconds in the dark wandering around. It's a very, very bad look and people need to know that. So it's over. It's a two-day news cycle. The polls went up slightly. They've gone back. I always look at the polymarkets. Polymarkets are tied.

Those are the betting markets outside the United States, Katty. And I've got a couple of pollsters that I talked to. They all think it's relatively tied race. Everybody thinks it's coming down to places like North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We'll see what happens there. I don't think Walt's heard her, but he did not win that debate. No, I agree with you. Actually, I spoke to Tom, my husband, the next morning because he was watching it down in D.C. And he said it's something interesting. I mean, you that that whole China answer and where he was interesting.

Tom said that just as a kind of viewer watching it, that he found that really off-putting, not just in the sense of the China answer, because it made him then doubt the other things that Waltz was saying. And the China answer was all about whether Waltz was in Tiananmen Square in China on the day that it happened in 1989. And he had suggested that he was. And on the morning of the debate, this reporting came out saying that he actually wasn't. And he kind of really fluffed the answer and said, oh, well, I was kind of in Hong Kong and

on my way and he just didn't answer the question and he didn't have a clear answer. It was interesting listening to Tom say, well, that kind of disqualified him on other things too. And that when somebody lies to you so clearly about one thing, then do you trust them on other things? I thought that was interesting. The other thing I thought was interesting is that this reporting that's just come out, I don't know if you've seen this because you are on holiday in Hawaii, apologies to you and Deirdre for dragging you out of your holiday. My apologies to your wife.

You look like, actually, by the way, you look like you've just come from the beach. So I'm not, I have zero sympathy for you. I mean, that's what a good shower does, actually. I haven't come to the beach. It's 7 a.m. here. Oh, you poor thing in your very nice resort in Hawaii. I feel so bad for you. Anyway, the other thing, I don't know if you've seen this reporting that's come out that

the Walsh campaign was kind of taken by surprise by Vance's nice guy move. And that made me think whenever a campaign misses something like that, I mean, I don't know, I've never prepped anyone for a vice presidential or presidential debate, but I would have thought the most important thing you do is plan for all scenarios. They knew that Vance's approval ratings were in the tank, that people don't think he's a very nice guy. So at some level, you'd think they would think,

oh, maybe he's going to use this debate to try and rehabilitate his image to some extent. And he's going to come out and be nice. And this is what you do, Tim, if Vance comes out and is smiley and friendly and nice to you. It just seemed to me they'd missed that. And then you kind of think, wow, what else have they missed? But anyway, I thought that was interesting reporting and seemed like something they should have caught. The other thing I do think is that this is going to precipitate them to get out more. We've already seen Tim Walsh, right? He's on this big tour at the moment to what you've been saying for the last couple of weeks and

She really has to get out there more. I know she's been doing fundraisers, but this schedule of three events a week is just nothing like enough. They can't take their foot off the gas in the way that the Hillary Clinton campaign did back in 2016. So you know people in the campaign. I know people in the campaign. And so what's the narrative then? So

The narrative is what we think we've won. It's Hillary Clinton 2016. We're not going to have her show up at rallies that much. No interviews, a couple of friendly podcast interviews, and we're going to win the election. No problem. So one person I know who has spoken to the vice president and had suggested, look, you need to get out there more. That was their advice to the campaign.

suggested that that kind of advice was new. There wasn't a realization from the top of the campaign anyway, that Democrats are anxious that she hasn't been out there enough. And so, you know, people get in bubbles in campaigns and in the White House, the president gets into a kind of bubble and you're surrounded by people that tell you what a great job you're doing. Okay. So what is the Kamala Harris narrative? I can give you the

Trump narrative in less than a paragraph. And it's a defining narrative and his people know the narrative and people that are voting for him know the narrative so much they're going to line up and vote for him. But tell me the Kamala Harris narrative. You mean about why they should vote for her? Yeah. What's her narrative? You should vote for me for president of the United States because...

There will be more investment in middle class Americans and less tax cuts for wealthy Americans. There will be more stability and less chaos. I will restore freedoms for Americans, particularly a woman's right to choose.

and I will protect American democracy. All right. Okay. So again, not to be overly complimentary, but you gave the narrative better than the campaign has given the narrative. Have you heard that narrative exactly the way you just said it

repetitively every single day from the campaign and from its surrogates. And then the second question is, where are the surrogates? Because Trump's got them. Now, you may not like them, and they all show up on alt-right televisions, and they all look

somewhat disfigured. You know what I mean? They look like they could be at a crime scene. You're taking photographs of them from the front and from the side, but where are her surrogates giving that exact narrative? Now Doug's doing it. The second gentleman, Doug, who we had on last week and he's great at it, but he's only one person. So where are the other surrogates? Pete Buttigieg has done a pretty good job of doing that. And he actually shows up on Fox news and does it, which might be the most useful place that he could go to do that. Um,

turn up on some of the more MAGA-centric media outlets. But where is, I agree with you, why are we not seeing Josh Shapiro every single day on television? Why are we not seeing, Tim Waltz got the job by being on television and by making the case for Kamala Harris. He's barely been on television since then. So they have a whole load of people, Gavin Newsom, all of those people,

Where's more? I mean, we could name them all, right? Gretchen Whitmer. I haven't seen these people since the DNC, since Chicago. They were with me in the spin room on September 10th and they were all fired up and they were all, they were all doing, they were all doing a good job, but we're now into October. So, you know, for me, what I'm worried about for her, I'm worried about momentum and I'm worried about changing momentum. And so we did that podcast special on 2016 and,

Hillary Clinton had the momentum. Donald Trump changed the momentum with the second debate. And so, you know, it was after the Access Hollywood, he was on the bus saying these derogatory things about women. It looked like it was going to be a really bad outcome for him. He changed the narrative. He caught momentum. And then he hustled from the 7th of October to the 8th of November nonstop. So I'm wondering, can you win a presidency without the hustle? That's the question.

I think you're right. I think it's hustle time. Look, I think we're making a broadcast review because you've just done the perfect segue. And on that note, it is October, October the 3rd, as we are recording this. And we are not even into the first week of October. And there are a bunch of things happening here and around the world.

that have the potential to be October surprises, the kinds of things that could change the narrative or the momentum of a campaign that the campaigns have more or less control over. And I think it's worth kind of running through some of them. Some, I think, are more important than others, and some they have more control over than others. But the things that I would point to are the storm, Hurricane Helene, that has kind of ravaged

Georgia and North Carolina, both of them swing states and has kind of put a spotlight on recovery efforts. And Donald Trump has already been down there. And Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have kind of now also flown over there to have a look. The dock workers strike, which you had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which is now getting everybody's attention this week. The situation in the Middle East, we can go through each of them and talk about the impact they have. I'm not sure how much legs

storm Helene has as an impact on the election. Possibly it has a kind of physical impact. I can imagine in Asheville, North Carolina, where people have been really devastated and our thoughts are with the people of North Carolina. I mean, who'd have thought the mountains of North Carolina will get hit by a hurricane in the way that they did. I imagine that the polling venues have been wiped out. I mean, so you've got kind of the logistical impact in some areas potentially on

of polling stations not operating or people finding it hard to get to polling stations. Perhaps voting is not the first thing on their minds in some of those areas. But I'm not sure that it has a massive impact. I think the Middle East and the strike, the dock workers strike, have the potential to have much more of an impact. What do you think about these October surprises? Let's take the hurricane first. I guess what I would say, and again, my heart goes out to these people, there's over a

million people without power. Yeah, that's miserable. This is an astonishing number, Katty, so I just want to read it and make sure I've got it right. There are 40 trillion gallons of water that was dumped in the southern United States since last Thursday. So this is incalculable. This is not a normal hurricane. It also speaks to the global warming issues. It also speaks to how

How are the politicians handling it? Of course, Donald Trump told a lie. He said that the White House is not getting in touch with the state and local governmental leaders, which of course wasn't true. He had to be rebuffed by Governor Kemp. He had to be rebuffed by Governor Cooper from North Carolina. Kemp from Atlanta say no. They've talked to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden regularly. Resources have been deployed. I'm going to call this one, and again,

It's a tragedy and so forth. I'm going to call this one neutral on October surprises because it's already priced into the marketplace and,

The responses have been good, I think, from both sides, frankly. Yeah, I think they've tried as hard as they can. Yeah, there's nothing else they can do. It's an unspeakable tragedy, of course, but hopefully we can get the power back on. Not going to overly affect the voting, in my opinion. The strike is a bigger issue. Yeah. The strike is a bigger issue. It's an interesting strike because these are workers who,

international longshoremen that make somewhere near 150,000 US dollars, I guess that's about 120 or so thousand British pounds. That's a bigger issue because there's some people that are okay, great, give them more. And other people are saying, you guys are making a tremendous amount of money for what you're doing. Automation is on the way.

You may price yourselves out of the market. Of course, we've all seen the videos on YouTube of how the docs work in China where they're like 80% automated now and that the docs are operated by machinery and software. So I think this is a problem.

in the sense that if they don't get this resolved, I'm not so sure they're going to blame Joe Biden on this one. So this to me is just an interesting thing. It could have an impact. I think it's too close to the election to have as big of an impact as some people on Wall Street were fearing because it's not going to have much economic harm in the next three or four weeks. But we'll

We'll see a lot of saber rattling on both sides. I predict it gets resolved, by the way, before the election. It is an interesting one. And the point you raise about the strikes and automation, friends of mine who work in the film industry in LA say that Hollywood has really not recovered since the writer's strike there. And it was similar kind of issues, right? Writers

asking for more money and for protections for people in the industry from the process of automation. After the writer's strike, it's actually just not really recovered. A lot of the film industry now is actually blossoming in the UK, in South Korea, in other parts of the United States, but LA has been really hit by it. These strikes can have long-term consequences that obviously the unions don't want and they don't know how to manage.

I think it does put President Biden, who has had a very long and good relationship with unions generally, in a little tricky position if it does go on for more than a week or so, because his instincts are clearly pro-union, but he's got to balance that against the interests of Kamala Harris. Because if it did start to have an impact on the things like the price of

bananas, or as somebody was saying on Morning Joe with us this morning, if you suddenly start finding there's less toilet paper in your supermarket, then that can have a kind of impact on people's confidence in the economy and people's confidence in the US economy is just starting to recover.

So if it goes on, he's going to have to weigh those two things. And it's going to kind of present him with a slightly difficult set of choices. I think one thing that it does show, and we can talk about the Middle East as well, because in all of these situations, Kamala Harris is in a slightly difficult position because as she's the vice president, she doesn't get to really control a lot of this stuff. I mean, Biden could have delayed this strike.

There was legislation that he could have used to delay the strike by 80 days. He's pro-union, and so he hasn't delayed the strike. But if this can't get resolved, the last time Longshoremen went on strike was 50 years ago, and the strike lasted for 45 days. Well, 45 days takes us to about the 1st of November, which would be a very big deal if it doesn't get resolved in terms of the economy. And it's $3, $4 billion a day of economic impact. It would lead to rising prices. Yeah.

Yes. And, you know, Trump is very clever. And so he would blame the strike on Biden. And of course,

What we know is that we personalize onto our politicians' situations. And so it would impact the election. But I predict this one is not going to. I think it's out there. I think the Middle East is a bigger issue, if you don't mind me segueing to it, because I'm going to make an economic prediction that they're going to get this resolved. There's too many smart people working on this. Can I just quickly, before we go to the Middle East, can I ask you one thing about, because there's this story doing the rounds about the

the president of the Longshoremen's Union. He's a rich guy. You know, he drives around in a Bentley. You would like that. He doesn't drive a Lamborghini. He drives a Bentley. So I promise you I'm not going to lay into the fact that he drives a Bentley, although I know that he had a lawsuit against him about 20 years ago around the issue of fraud. No, this is more about the question of whether he is a Trump supporter. And some of the Democrats that I've spoken to just today have raised the question of, well, why now this strike? Right.

And is there something there that Harold Daggett, who asked people to pray for the former president in the wake of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, I think that seems legit. There's this photo going around of him from some 2023 meeting with Donald Trump that he had, where he said he had a wonderful and productive meeting with Trump.

the former president. So there's now some people saying, well, Daggett is a supporter of Donald Trump's and that's why he called this strike now. This wage issue has been around for the last few years and the increasing profits of the operating companies has also been around for a few years. So why call this strike right at the beginning of October?

weeks before a very tight election campaign. Do you think there's anything to that or is that too conspiratorial? I think there's something to it. And I think that the play is they'll give us a little bit more to end the strike.

particularly if Democrats are in charge or there's pressure coming from the American government to put pressure on the people that are paying us. But to me, again, this is just me talking to you, but also to our viewers and listeners. I've had a tendency in my career to hear these crazy potential bomb that's going to be dropped on the economy. And I've had a tendency to always say, okay, that's probably not going to happen again.

the way the media is saying or the fear mongers are saying, everybody needs to take a chill. So I think this is gonna work itself out. The reason why I'm more worried about the Middle East is that these are predictable outcomes in an economy. I often said, "Katy, the reason why it did so poorly in Washington

is that Washington is not about money. On Wall Street, we're on the green team. Everybody's on the green team. So we sit around and say, okay, you hate me. Yes, I hate you. And I hate you. You hate me. Yes, great. We're about to split a billion dollars. Can we pretend to like each other? Yes, we can. Okay. And so we get together and pretend to like each other, split a billion dollars. So there's a green team element to

Wall Street in Washington or the Middle East, there's no green team. Nobody's just thinking about the money. There's red and blue teams. Somebody will stab your eyeball out with an ice pick in the West Wing if they're sitting closer to the president and they think you may have a chance to sit closer than they even are to the president. You know how it works. So

So this to me is predictable. The Middle East to me is way less predictable because there's lots going on. Biden is supporting them. And this is the thing that upsets American Jews. Biden is supporting the state of Israel, who's one of our strongest allies. He's got aircraft carriers over there. He's got militia over there. But at the same time, his rhetoric is not connected to the support.

Because he's worried about Michigan. He's worried about all the Arabs in Michigan. He wants the Arab community in Michigan to know that he's with them. Please, in places like Macomb County, vote for Vice President Harris.

If they don't show up to vote, they could lose Michigan. Right. And so, you know, and by the way, you have Lebanese communities in Michigan as well as Palestinian communities. And now the Lebanese communities are not happy either. So but but he is so so so he's got everybody unhappy. The Jews are unhappy because he's saying things like I don't want them to retaliate for the Iranian attacks. The Arabs are unhappy because he's supplying them with material and arms to attack.

to do the job that they think that they need to do on their defense. So for me, I'm going to say Long Sherman, yes, he's probably a Trump supporter. Yes, he's probably doing this right now to maximize his leverage before the election. But there's a number, and when there's money involved and there's a number, we're going to intersect to the right vector to get this thing done.

Middle East, very, very, very tricky situation. Bentleys and dollars, that's the world you're happy operating in. Yeah, I understand that world. Yeah, I understand that world. I'm good in that world. I think here's my take on the Middle East is that the problem for Kamala Harris here is one, obviously, that if this really blows up and there is a disruption of oil supplies and

We've already seen oil prices go up like 3% in the last couple of days. That could be 10 to 15 cents on the gallon. I went to fill my car up in DC, my nice little tiny Fiat the other day. Gas is at $5 a gallon. That's a lot. That is not where you want to be going into it. The thing about gas prices is that every time somebody drives past a gas station, they're reminded of how high gas prices are, even if they're not filling their car up.

So that's one obvious problem, if this really explodes and there's a much bigger impact on gas prices. But the other one, I think, is a kind of mood impact that Donald Trump is capitalizing on. And that is that, look, you see, the world was less chaotic.

when I was in power and I was strong and the world respected us and you didn't have these wars blowing up and Joe Biden is weak. I mean, that's a very simplified and we can debate that and I'm not actually sure what Donald Trump would do any differently to get the Middle East sorted out. But he has this narrative and we saw J.D. Vance say that, you know, when he said Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure.

That plays to this idea that things are chaotic and that uncontrollable and that America is in a bad position. So you could have an impact on the economy and you can have an impact on

in terms of people thinking that just they need a return to a strong man who reimposes security. And I'm not saying that I think that Donald Trump necessarily would make a better deal with the limits of American power have been proven over and over again. Every time Joe Biden has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to do something, whether it was around Gaza or

or now around Iran, trying to limit Israel's response to something, the response from Israel has been, we're not going to listen to you. We're going to do what we want. And actually, America does not have the leverage that people thought it had. And when I speak to people in the Middle East, one of the things that they're amazed about is how little America has power in this situation. And that plays to Donald Trump's advantage.

So this is a new book by Jack Carr. It's called Targeted Beirut. I finished reading it on the plane ride over here. And this is about the 1983 Marine barracks bombing. And the most damning thing about the book is that nothing has changed, Katty. It's 1983 in 2024.

The teams are the same. The Iranians are controlling certain areas of Lebanon. Hamas is being funded by the Iranians. Hezbollah is being funded by the Iranians. If anything, the Iranians on the margin, because they have more militia in places like Iraq, et cetera, Syria, they've actually gotten more powerful. And so what's interesting is what Netanyahu is doing, and it is unpopular for a lot of people, but what he is doing, he's trying to even it again because things are at their most peaceful.

You know, Von Metternich said this in the early 1800s, you're most peaceful when there's a balance of power. You can have antagonists on both sides, but if the world feels balanced, they don't go off on each other. And in reading this book, the power has tilted slightly to the Iranians. Now, if Trump were smart about this, he would campaign on that.

he would explain to people that he was there locking them down with sanctions. He was there crippling them and freezing their assets. He was there ripping up the nuclear deal that he had in order to get the power back in balance. So if you study Kissinger, Von Metternich, or any of these people, they always say the same thing. The balance of power, you can keep the peace. Chamberlain was trying to do that in 1938.

But what he didn't understand about the situation, that Churchill actually understood about the situation, is that he was dealing with a madman. He was dealing with somebody that was completely and totally irrational. Now, people are going to be mad at me for saying this, but if you observe the Iranians, what their objectives are, they have acted as rational actors.

Yeah, they want to stay in power.

This is why the Sunni Arabs in the Gulf are very, very worried. They've always been worried. And this is why the Israelis are saying, okay, if you guys are not going to help us rebalance this, we're going to unilaterally do this ourselves. Yeah. And I think it's interesting what Jack Carr is saying. The concern in the White House is actually that the Iranians are in a position at the moment where they feel weakened, not strengthened.

compared to Israel. And that would then accelerate them towards their nuclear ambitions because what have they got to lose? And that actually that they feel, like you say, they have a kind of comprehensible aim, which is to protect the Islamic revolution, ideally export it, but at least protect it at home.

And the way to do that would be to rush towards a nuclear weapon. Very complicated stuff. But this would be another reason not to elect Donald Trump because he honestly doesn't understand any of this and he wouldn't accept a briefing on any of this. So if McMaster got to him and briefed him on this or you pick a person, he wouldn't like it because it's outside of his realm and he'd start then bullying the person to try to pretend he knows more than they do. This is very complicated stuff that a

You need a sophisticated person at the top of the presidency to work on this stuff. You can see how his message that I'm the strong person. We didn't have these complications. We didn't have these wars. They wouldn't have done it if I had been there. You can see how that resonates on a kind of simplistic level. Yeah, but they would have done it.

But they would have done, but that's the issue. They would have done it, you know, he would have given Putin way more leeway into the Ukraine. He would have told the Ukrainians, you're not getting any arms, give them half the country, that sort of thing. And by the way, the Finns know that, so do the Swedes, which is why they joined NATO after not being in NATO for 74 of the first 75 years. We're going to take a quick break, but before we do so, I've got a little pop quiz, a super, super easy one for you.

Okay. Because you're on holiday, taking it easy. Don't want to stretch your brain too much. When was the first time that the expression October surprise was ever used? Okay. I don't know the answer to this, but I'm going to venture that it was the 1980 election with the Iranian hostage crisis. Am I right? You are quite right. See, that was a 16-year-old. You were right. It was when Jimmy Carter was trying to negotiate to have the hostages released

And some politicos from Texas went and did a tour of the Middle East and

and said to a whole bunch of Arab countries and got kind of consensus and said to the Iranians, don't release those hostages yet because if you wait until Ronald Reagan is elected, you will get a much better deal. And the hostages were eventually released minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. But Reagan's campaign and particularly his campaign manager were worried that if those hostages had been released,

in October, then Jimmy Carter would have been elected president. Did the campaign, did the Reagan campaign break the law? Well, I think that's a very interesting question, right? Because the people that were operating these two Texas politicians who went and did the tour, they were not actually on the campaign. The question is whether his campaign manager broke the law, because if you're not the president, you're not meant to be involved in foreign policy. It's a dirty business, Skadi K. It's a dirty business. You see, look, you're well

The world is so much more simple. Yeah. We're ruthless. We're just not as dirty. We're like front-stabbing people. Yeah, right. Oh, come on. We focus on money. We're not focused on all this intrigue. We're going to take a quick break while Anthony kind of calms down a little bit about the world of finance. And we'll be right back to talk about what could happen after this election.

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Well, welcome back to the second half of the show. This is The Rest is Politics U.S. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. I'm Cathy Kay. Okay, Cathy, let's look at some of the possible election scenarios and potential chaos. Let's start with if Trump loses, does he contest the election? Oh, yeah, he absolutely contests the election. And I think what is interesting is they are already launching a whole load of lawsuits.

in preparation for contesting the election. Lawsuits around things like whether there have been election fraud, whether there was proof of citizenship requirements, whether people missed their mail-in ballots.

deadlines, a whole bunch of things they were already contesting. Interestingly, only in the swing states, the majority of these, I think there have now been 90 lawsuits already this year, which is way more than there were, which is, I think, three times the number of lawsuits that were filed before election day in 2020. And you can see the Trump campaign kind of

preparing the ground because when you put something into a lawsuit, suddenly it becomes more kind of serious and has weight rather than just saying, I think there's going to be election fraud, which he did at the rallies in 2016 and 2020, and that this election is going to be stolen. You kind of put it down as a legal document and you say, well, we've already filed a suit.

after the election, it's that much easier for them to turn around and say, you see, we knew this was going to happen. We knew that dead people would be voting and we knew that illegal immigrants would be voting and we prepared already. We already launched those lawsuits. So I think there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to contest the election if he loses. What do you think? I mean, the first thing I want to say is that he's a useful idiot for our adversaries. So this is exactly what the KGB would want. This is exactly what totalitarian regimes around the world that are

antagonists to the United States and to liberal democracies in the West. They want the voters to think that the elections are unfair. They want cynicism to pervade, and they want people to question the system that they're living in. And so this is an unfortunate consequence of Donald Trump. I'm not saying that

There haven't been things on the margin that weren't right in every single election. Of course, like everything in life, there's probably things on the margin. But we know definitively that there was nothing in the 2020 election, nothing fraudulent that could have overturned that election and flipped it to Donald Trump. And the Attorney General, Donald Trump's Attorney General said as much. Yeah. And also he...

He raised money to do these lawsuits. He did a few lawsuits, but down deep in his heart, he knows that he lost that election fair and square and there was really nothing to do. But this is something that Vladimir Putin would want. If you were sitting with him and he had a KGB or GRU strategy session, he'd be like, it would be wonderful if we could get one of the two candidates to question and hold into doubt

the election in the United States, the largest Republican-oriented representative democracy. Let's see if we can demolish the idea that it actually is a democracy. People have a tendency towards conspiracy theory. People have a tendency to not believe things, and we can put this fear and instill doubt. So I find this the most despicable part

of Donald Trump. And I find this a despicable thing for somebody like a Mike Howell, the executive director of the oversight project, the Heritage Foundation, which of course is the author of Project 2025. And I'm going to read this. He says,

that there's a 0% chance of a fair US election. Okay, so I don't know, is he getting paid by Putin to say something like that? I mean, it's just literally nonsensical rubbish. So she would have to beat him by an incredibly wide margin, want to see what happens. The second question though, is he going to foment a revolution? Is he going to try to instigate a violent revolution?

attack on the Capitol or some other type of attack? You know, the attack on the Capitol has already happened. So is he going to create violence in various states? What's on tap for this guy who is literally the most anti-American presidential candidate in the modern era? So what's on tap for him, you think?

So you have to kind of look at what they're pushing this time around. And there are two things that they seem to be particularly focused on in these lawsuits. One is getting states to count ballots by hand, which is time consuming and delays the process of certification. And into that time vacuum, you can start seeding conspiracy theories about the fact that illegal shenanigans are taking place.

I think there's that issue. And then the other issue, which I think gets to what might happen afterwards, is that the other real focus of these lawsuits that are being launched by Trump's allies is around non-citizens voting. In Arizona and Nevada, there are two lawsuits underway that are charging the state with allowing non-citizens to vote. Now, according to the Heritage Foundation, which is that conservative-leaning think tank,

that's done a database of voting irregularities, there have only been since 2002 in the United States, 85 cases involving non-citizens voting. I mean, this is

I mean, not even minuscule. I don't know what smaller than minuscule is. Non-citizens do not vote in the United States. It's an illegal practice already, but the Trump campaign is already pushing that. And I think one of the things where I see potential for unrest and violence is you marry this narrative that non-citizens are going to vote in big numbers with

and swing the election for the Democrats with what we keep hearing around Springfield, Ohio, and the denigration of these Haitian immigrants. And you kind of marry those two, and you can see where there would be a potential for violence. I mean, I can see that if the Trump campaign were to come out

after the election and pushed the line that they had lost because non-citizens had voted and stolen the election from them.

With already a sort of fermenting of hatred towards some of these immigrants, I think that's an area where you could get violence. I really hope not, but I've done reporting from Arizona. I spent quite a lot of time down there around the 2022 midterms, and I interviewed people who told me they had guns and they were prepared to go to war if Republicans lost.

There wasn't a civil war, but I interviewed people who very seriously said, we will take up arms against people in our community. It'll be town against town, community against community, ethnic group against ethnic group. And that's how a civil war would start in this country. So I think there is a real risk for violence in the country. Okay. So let me, and I agree with you, but let me throw another wrinkle into this. On the 26th of November in the state of New York, Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts.

on previous crimes. And he's going to be sentenced on the November 26th. So if he loses the election, he has hanging over him three weeks later, the prospect of going to jail. And so if there's violence and he's out there on a bullhorn saying, let's wreck each other's towns, brother against brother, sister against sister, this was an unfair outcome, blah, blah, let's violently try to overturn the United States. You don't think they're going to put him in jail?

Or let me rephrase it. What do you think would happen at that November 26th sentencing? The speculation at the moment is probably that because it's a first time offense, right? He doesn't get sent to jail. If he's out there fomenting violence, would that have an impact on the sentencing in a

case that was related to something else? I don't know. You're the guy that studied law. Would there be a reason to do that? I mean, a legal reason that they could do that? I don't know because I haven't studied that recently. I don't know if there's a legal thing that would allow that or not. But I do think that in Trump's mind, okay, that reptilian mind of his, he's got to be looking at that saying, whoa, what?

I could end up in jail on the 26th of November if I start a lot of nonsense. Right. So you think that might hold him back? Might hold him back. It's just something to think about. Arranging different outcomes. It's almost like an investor committee meeting, you and me. We're having an investor committee meeting. What the hell is going to happen? Yeah. And listen, I'm sure you know that there are lots of businesses, and by the way, world leaders around the world who are sitting there having exactly this conversation. What are the permutations that we would put our money on? I mean, there is...

a new poll out that shows that seven out of 10 likely voters are worried about violence after the election. So this is not you. I mean, I'm always worried about being hyperbolic and saying, my God, America is going to have a civil war because people were saying that at the 2022 midterms and it didn't happen. And the guardrails did hold after 2020. I mean, there was violence clearly on January the 6th, but the guardrails eventually hold and there was a peaceful transfer of power. If you take out January the 6th, there was a transfer of power anyway. So,

But just the fact that it's not just us that are having this conversation. A lot of Americans are now worried that there could be some kind of violence. And all of this litigation is there with the aim of trying to make Donald Trump win the election. I mean, interestingly, I spoke to a kind of conservative constitutional lawyer a while ago who said to me, whatever happens, the best thing for America would be if this was decisive. So if Kamala Harris clearly wins this,

the electoral college vote by a large number and clearly wins the popular college vote, then it would be much easier. I don't know. I think Donald Trump might even contest that. I don't know. Or if Donald Trump clearly won, then Democrats would have to accept that. I mean, get such a big margin of victory that you force the other side to accept defeat, I guess, would be the ideal outcome. But I don't think that's going to happen, by the way.

In the event that Trump wins the election, does the Biden team help the Trump team with their transition? I think they do. I think Joe Biden's an institutionalist. Does he show up at the inauguration? Yes, I think he shows up at the inauguration. So does Kamala Harris. Don't you? I do. But also, it speaks to why Trump should not be the president of the United States. So he broke all those traditions. Mm-hmm.

He broke every bound. His first inaugural address was about, quote unquote, American carnage. And so he never accepted the defeat. He stood out on Joint Base Andrews, flying back to Florida on the morning of the inauguration. You know, when Waltz calls him a weird guy, it's beyond weird. You know, it's sociopathic. And so-

The real question is for the super smart people that are supporting him, what is that all about? Ultimately, how is Elon Musk going to be doing if he loses? What is Elon Musk doing?

Is he going to be upset? Is he going to – what do you think happens on X if Trump loses? So to me, it's just so many norm breaks. There's a reason why there are 40 plus of us that work for Donald Trump that tell the American people, whatever your policies are, be a patriot first.

This is a very dangerous guy to have return to the presidency. And this is a guy that our adversaries want to be president. Vladimir Putin wants this guy to be president. And he would like the breakup and the dismantling and the weakening

of the economic power and the social structures of the United States. And you have to ask yourself, if you have a guy that wants a breakup and a weakening of the United States, and he wants your guy to be president, and you're a patriot, why are you voting for that guy? I mean, that's why you've got the former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, and big Trump critic out actually campaigning with Kamala Harris this week in Wisconsin. And

And I interviewed Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the star witness in the January the 6th Commission investigation, who had worked in the Trump White House, who was there on January the 6th, who was

an aide to the chief of staff who was trying to kind of get the president to call the rioters off from the Capitol and kind of was, you know, speaking truth to power on that day. And I interviewed her this week and she said, listen, I'm still a conservative. I disagree with nearly all of Kamala Harris's policies, but this election is about something bigger than that. It's about

protecting the American democracy. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. On that very cheerful note, we're going to wrap it up.

And save the republic. I mean, listen, it feels like it's going to be a very close election. I would just tell the people in the Harris campaign, you got to do more. There's, you know, there's an expression in parenting that there's quality time and quantity time. I don't believe that, Katty Kay. I think there's only quantity time. I think it's the same thing with presidential campaigns. Quantity and get out there, get the message out there, get your surrogates out there and get the narrative out there. They got to do it better than they're doing it right now.

Life is about showing up. And my impression is that people on the Harris side and democratic strategists are more concerned about the election this week than they were even two or three weeks ago, that there is a kind of anxiety setting in that this is closer than they thought. The heady days of August and early September are behind us.

And this is looking closer and closer. Okay, on that note, our final episode of how Trump won the White House, our special series is out on Monday. You can catch our thoughts on the kind of big picture of what the reasons are, the election day and why Donald Trump actually won it, what it says about America and what it says about the American electorate and what it says about Donald Trump. And before that...

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