• Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump spent their Thursdays courting voters in the Southwest. Trump started his day in New Mexico, a state that Democrats are expected to easily win, before heading to events in Nevada and Arizona. Harris also spent her day in the two Western swing states, wrapping up the night at a rally with pop megastar Jennifer Lopez. With just four days left until Election Day, Alex Wagner of MSNBC’s ‘Alex Wagner Tonight’ joins us to talk about what she’s hearing on the ground and Democratic fears about a 2016 repeat.
• And in headlines: The head of Trump’s transition team outs himself as an anti-vaxxer on CNN, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee J.D. Vance joined Joe Rogan for a three-hour interview, and inflation continues to cool.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, November 1st. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day. The show that would gladly accept the money that a Russian court has ordered Google to pay after the company blocked multiple Russian media outlets from YouTube following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. That fine, $20 decillion. That’s 20 followed by 33 zeros. That is more money than the GDP of the entire world. But honestly, I think we’ve worked pretty hard recently, and we deserve it. [music break] On today’s show, J.D. Vance goes on Joe Rogan to talk about how much he loves Emily in Paris and Trump’s transition advisor is an anti-vaxxer. Great. But first, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump spent their Thursday courting voters in the Southwest. Trump started his day in New Mexico, which isn’t a swing state, choices. Speaking to a few thousand people in Albuquerque, Trump got the crowd warmed up with a heavy dose of election disinformation, something he’s been really amping up in the closing days of the election. 

[clip of Donald Trump] I’m only here for one reason. They all said don’t come. I said, why? You can’t win New Mexico. I said, Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico. We can win New Mexico. 

Jane Coaston: It’s not rigged. Trump lost New Mexico by eight points in 2016 and 11 points in 2020. That is what we call in the news business, losing. But the Trump campaign believes the close races in the neighboring swing states of Arizona and Nevada, where Trump also campaigned Thursday, could spill over into New Mexico. Trump’s campaign is also still in damage control mode, whether Trump will admit it or not after a comedian called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage at Trump’s New York City rally this past weekend. About half of New Mexico’s population is Latino, and Trump basically admitted he was there to pander.

[clip of Donald Trump] So I’m here for one simple reason I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community. You know, in the East Coast, they like being called Hispanics. You know this? On the West Coast, they like being called Latinos. 

Jane Coaston: What? Still no apology over that whole garbage thing. Who needs that? Trump continues to not do himself any favors in the closing days of the race. Speaking at a rally on Wednesday in Wisconsin, Trump delivered this absolute whopper of a line about how his campaign had asked him to stop saying he would be a protector of women. 

[clip of Donald Trump] They said, sir, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say, I pay these guys a lot of money, can you believe it? I said, well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them. 

Jane Coaston: Whether the women like it or not. Great choice of words from the man who a jury found liable of sexual abuse and who’s been credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women. No, thank you. The Harris campaign seized on the remarks. The Vice President had this to say to reporters in Wisconsin on Thursday morning. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies. And this is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women. 

Jane Coaston: And she brought Trump’s comments up again at a midday rally in Phoenix. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women. We trust women. 

Jane Coaston: Harris ended her day with a late night rally in Las Vegas with pop megastar Jennifer Lopez and the Mexican pop rock band Maná. Nevada is a state that some Democrats worry might be slipping away from them. And so far, registered Republicans of Nevada have edged out registered Democrats in early voting. But it’s useful to remember two things. One, Nevada has automatic voter registration and most people are registered as independent. Also, it’s useful to remember that early voting doesn’t really tell us very much. Back in 2016, early voting numbers had Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton up big in states like West Virginia. She did not win West Virginia, but the election is just four days away and it remains close. Very close. Not that we needed a whole bunch of new polls to tell us that, but on Thursday, a whole bunch of new polls did, in fact, tell us that. So for more on the state of the race, I spoke with Alex Wagner, the host of MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight about what she’s hearing on the ground and Democratic fears of a 2016 repeat. Alex Wagner, welcome to What a Day. 

Alex Wagner: Jane, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. And what a day it is. 

Jane Coaston: So you’ve been on the ground for so many crucial moments of this election cycle from the DNC to the first presidential debate to the vice presidential debate. What has it been like covering all of this and how does it compare to covering the race in 2016, which I did in a different way, but I would love to hear your thoughts on how this feels. 

Alex Wagner: It’s been a lot, right? I mean, it was always going to be a lot because any election featuring Donald Trump is by definition a lot. But there has not been an election cycle I can remember, with as many emotional highs and lows. Right. Like the Democratic convention. I always say there was emotional confetti coming down from the rafters because the sense of joy and catharsis and hope and the sense that we as a country might be on the verge of repudiating the Trump years, right, that was so palpable. And then here we are now, I think with a lot of progressives, a lot of Democrats, deeply concerned about what’s going to happen. And the sort of joy and optimism has taken a backseat to like an ocean of anxiety, not just for–

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Alex Wagner: –what happens at the top of the Democratic ticket, but also like where the country is after November 5th. 

Jane Coaston: As you figure out how you’re going to cover election night, what issues do you see as having the most impact on the vote? We know that the economy is top of mind for a lot of people. Reproductive rights have also been huge and a consistently energizing issue for voters. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is promising to protect women, quote, “whether they like it or not.” So what are you watching? 

Alex Wagner: I think the abortion issue is the X factor in this. We know that the economy is super important, but for women who are registered voters, likely voters, abortion is tied with the economy. And that’s kind of like an underreported angle on this. And I do think women can and will decide this election. 53% of the early vote is women voting. I have a hard time imagining that those women are so excited about Donald Trump that they’re rushing to the polls early to cast their vote for him. Anecdotally, women are saying to me that that’s because they are incensed by the regressive nature of the Republican platform when it comes to bodily autonomy. You and I have both been doing this for a while, and we’re in such a different era of politics than we were in 2016, I think in 2016 and 2017, it was like we were shocked and outraged every single day. I reached a level of just perpetual outrage, but now it doesn’t feel routine in a good way. It feels routine in just like, how can we have gotten used to this? 

Alex Wagner: I know. 

Jane Coaston: Can we afford to be so desensitized? Especially when we have one campaign in which Donald Trump can apparently say literally anything about large groups of people? 

Alex Wagner: I completely agree with you that there’s been an anesthetizing quality to all of this outrage and these comments that, by the way, are worse now than they were in 2016. The idea that Donald Trump is up there platforming people who are explicitly racist, talking about Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president, as a shit vice president. 

Jane Coaston: And a prostitute like, I think that that’s been undercovered. The degree to which you see the merch at Trump rallies, you see how people talk about her. It is like she is a whore. That is the campaign message is that Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president of the United States, is a slut. 

Alex Wagner: Yes. At the biggest moments of the Trump campaign, people are saying Kamala Harris has pimp handlers. That is that is the narrative. I think it is incumbent upon journalists to not sane wash. And it’s hard to sort of stoke the necessary outrage around daily coverage of Trump. But that’s like our job, right? Like we can’t normalize it. I don’t, I think it’s asking a lot of the American public to maintain it constantly. It’s not good for their cortisol levels. Right. But I do think there are kind of critical moments in this that we can’t look away from. And we as a citizenry must look at. And the Trump campaign has been full of them. It’s just an enormously challenging time for anybody interested in the American project. 

Jane Coaston: I hate to ask this because it continues the cortisol rise that is occurring for both of us all the time. But what are your biggest concerns going into this election, whether it’s lawsuits over mail in ballots? How long it will take to call the race? And Trump, we already know he’s going to declare victory at whatever time eastern on election day. Things seem primed to get messy. What are you what are you worried about? 

Alex Wagner: I’m very, very worried about the post-election period. I have been told that these margins are going to be just vanishingly small in maybe all of the battleground states. That means that every single vote is going to need to be counted. And if you’re talking about margins of a thousand votes, any kind of Election Day chicanery, there’s been so much mistrust sown. Because we know that there are election deniers who are now in state sort of infrastructure relating to the vote count. I think that the left is equally worried. Can we actually trust these votes in parts of states that are deeply red where Trump, and his election denialism that sort of cancer has metastasized? And I’m super worried about post-election lawsuits. I’m deathly afraid of this ending up at the Supreme Court. The court is siding with Virginia officials who want to purge voter rolls. There are a number of pre-election lawsuits that are working their way through the courts. The state courts have, by and large, done the right thing. But like once any of this gets to the Roberts court, it’s anyone’s guess what he’s going to do. And that’s being generous. I would not be at all surprised if the conservative actors on the high court have a disproportionate role to play in calling this election, and that scares the bejesus out of me. 

Jane Coaston: So what would be your advice to those audiences who are trying to parse through the bullshit? And how do you talk to your audience about knowing when to panic, when to not panic, how to figure out what’s real and what’s not? 

Alex Wagner: Well, I think part of the reason that Trumpism has been allowed to fester, the virus has proliferated because people have chosen not to be engaged. Civic engagement has been lost. And the civic engagement isn’t just reading, isn’t just doomscrolling, it is getting involved. And I think that’s an active way of combating the poison that’s out there. I’m a journalist, right? Like that’s the way I channel it is by covering it and feeling like, okay, at least we’re shining a light on it. That’s an active way of like being involved and just sitting there passively I think is devastating for your psyche, but also like a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness. But getting involved and feeling like in some incremental way, you are not letting the villains in this narrative win each and every day is like an important way of living and dealing with the sort of nonstop crisis coverage. 

Jane Coaston: Alex, thank you so much for joining me. Jane, thank you so much for having me. 

Alex Wagner: Good luck to us all. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with MSNBC host Alex Wagner. If you want to get involved in this election, visit VoteSaveAmerica.org. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now more news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Neither of us are doctors. 

[clip of Howard Lutnick] We are not. 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Vaccines are safe. RFK, I mean he–

[clip of Howard Lutnick] Why do you think vaccines are safe? 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] RFK–

[clip of Howard Lutnick] There’s no product– 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Because they’re proven. 

[clip of Howard Lutnick] –liability anymore. They’re not proven. 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Kids get them and they’re fine. 

[clip of Howard Lutnick] Why do you think they’re fine? 

Jane Coaston: That was the head of Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, openly saying on CNN that he does not believe in vaccines. Earlier in the conversation with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Lutnick shared some truly batshit stories that RFK Jr had told him, like how he wants to pull vaccines off the market. And that apparently convinced him vaccines are dangerous. 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] RFK Junior is a vaccine skeptic. He pushes lies about vaccines. And I don’t even think if Republicans–

[clip of Howard Lutnick] Why do you think he pushes lies? Why are you certain? You were–

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] I don’t know [?].

[clip of Howard Lutnick] You said I’m not a scientist and you aren’t so– 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Yeah but, but–

[clip of Howard Lutnick] He just wants data. 

[clip of Kaitlan Collins] Scientists say he pushes lies. But here’s my question on this.

[clip of Howard Lutnick] Oh but scientists who were paid to say he pushes lies I mean. 

Jane Coaston: This is the man that is supposed to help Trump fill his administration if he’s elected. Just to make that point clear. But Trump says he already knows where he wants to put RFK in his theoretical administration. He said so at his rally in Nevada, Thursday. 

[clip of Donald Trump] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. we have, and he’s going to work on health and women’s health and all of the different reasons because we’re not really a wealthy or a healthy country. We’re not. 

Jane Coaston: Remember, women, whether you like it or not. Less than a week after Donald Trump did a three hour interview with the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, did the same, and it was odd. Highlights or lowlights include Vance saying he became anti-vaccine because after getting the Covid vaccine, it worked exactly how it was supposed to? 

[clip of J.D. Vance] The moment where I really started to get red pilled on the whole vax thing was the sickest that I’ve been in the last 15 years by far, was when I took the vaccine. 

Jane Coaston: Okay, so that’s Trump’s vice presidential pick. The head of his transition team and his proposed health minister, I guess we could call them, who are all anti-vaccine. Cool. And then there was this exchange about abortion bans. 

[clip of Joe Rogan] I don’t think the government should be monitoring where you travel or what you do when you travel as long as that thing is legal. And I’m concerned with this idea that you could be prosecuted for it in your state for doing something that’s legal somewhere else. 

[clip of J.D. Vance] I don’t like the idea. To be clear, I’ve not heard of this maybe as a as like a possibility, but not as something that actually exists in the law. 

Jane Coaston: He hasn’t heard of traveling to get an abortion being criminalized? Funny, because for one thing, there’s a proposition on the ballot in Amarillo, Texas, that does just that, which people will be voting on in less than a week. Not to mention the fact that Republicans keep overtly saying they’re going to do it. It’s a funny gambit to keep trying. If someone tells you something that your fellow Republicans would obviously support but would poll badly, you just say you haven’t heard about it. And he also shared his thoughts on what constitutes good television. 

[clip of J.D. Vance] I actually think Emily in Paris is a masterpiece, but set that to the side. Bracket that one for now. [laughter] Um.

Jane Coaston: I wonder what he thinks about Emily moving to Rome or why Emily is so bad at her job? Actually, now I have more questions on the subject. Remember Elon Musk’s one million dollar giveaway that was absolutely legally questionable? Well Musk’s attorneys were sent to Pennsylvania State Court on Thursday, they had to respond to a lawsuit from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner over Musk’s giveaways. Musk himself was supposed to attend, but his lawyers told the judge he’s a very busy person and couldn’t, quote, “materialize on such short notice.” Probably doing some very important enthusiastic leaping. Now, this behavior could have resulted in the Tesla mogul being held in contempt of court. But lucky for Musk, his lawyers requested the case to be heard in federal court, which was granted. So for now, the case waits for a federal judge to review and likely won’t get settled until after November 5th, which means Musk can keep handing out giant checks. Inflation has continued to cool this September, according to a report from the Commerce Department out Thursday. Prices rose by just 2.1% compared to September 2023, which is just above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. That’s good news for Harris’s presidential campaign, as the soaring cost of living is a major issue in the race. However, if you exclude the volatile prices of food and energy, the inflation rate is at 2.7%, making the new numbers good, but not that good. But applications for unemployment for the week ending October 26th were also down. So that’s good, too. Economists are mostly happy with all these numbers, but say we’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to bouncing back from the pandemic induced economic downturn. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. It’s been a long 2024. Actually, it’s been a long eight years. Since Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, it’s felt like every single day had the potential to be a complete clown show of cruelty and anger and failure with the worst people you know, getting to become rich and famous and worst of all, politically powerful based purely on being the worst people you know. And I can’t believe we’re facing the real chance that we have to do anything like that again. But we don’t have to. We don’t. Trump isn’t inevitable. We’ve proved that over and over and over again. Remember the 2018 midterms, the 2022 midterms, the 2020 election where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump? I do and clearly so does Donald Trump, since he’s like, still really mad about it. Our friends at Vote Save America have been putting in the work this election. Volunteers with VSA have knocked on more than 150,000 doors, called three million people. And altogether, Vote Save America has contacted more than nine million voters. That’s more than the population of the great state of Wisconsin. And you can join them because we want to elect Kamala Harris to be the next president of the United States, because we think that protecting reproductive rights, ensuring the rule of law and supporting everyday families matters. And also because we don’t have to do this again, we don’t. We don’t have to have Tucker Carlson hanging out in the Oval Office with Elon Musk and Steve Bannon and RFK Jr and the Mypillow guy. We don’t have to have racist, misogynistic assholes in charge of our schools and our libraries and our health care and our military because fuck that and fuck the anxious doom spirals we’re all putting ourselves in for the last few weeks, reading polls and watching the news. We don’t have time for doom. Now is the time, as Michelle Obama would say, to do something. 

[clip of Nicole] This is Nicole, the nomadic activist I’m canvasing here in York, Pennsylvania. 

[clip of Jake] My name is Jake. I’m 43, and I’m a volunteer in Georgia. 

[clip of Michelle] My name is Michelle. I’m 32 and I’ve been volunteering in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

[clip of Jake] I was pretty nervous at first, but you get used to it pretty quick and it’s really fun. 

[clip of Michelle] Something I don’t think a lot of people realize is that a lot of the doors we’re knocking on right now are either Democrats or undecideds who’ve indicated that they’re going to support the candidate and just haven’t voted yet. So if you’ve never volunteered before, it’s a great time to sign up and start learning how it works, because most of the doors you’re going to be knocking on are supporters. 

[clip of Jake] People don’t realize how close the election is until you tell them they’re not listening to political news and podcasts. So when you tell them they’re actually really surprised and I’m surprised that they’re surprised, but they’re not plugged in like like we are. 

[clip of Nicole] Find a canvasing ship near you. If you can’t canvass, if you can’t travel to a swing state or where they have important races, just join a phone bank. I know it sounds scary, but you can do this. We’re going to elect Kamala Harris and it is going to be important. 

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a review. Explain to me why Emily is still so bad at French despite having a job in France and living in Paris for four seasons and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how RFK Junior has many connections to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and talk to your friends about voting. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. [music break]

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