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A truly wild weekend on the campaign trail, and that continues today. Donald Trump in Greenville, North Carolina. We're going to bring it to North Carolina in a moment. Kamala Harris with events throughout Pennsylvania, Malvern on A, Birmingham, Michigan, Brookfield, Wisconsin. We're serious about these swing states. Tim Walls on the View this morning to see him talking to Whoopy Goldberg that I'm guessing we'll make some news a little bit
later on. He's going to be taking part in a reception this evening on his big visit to New York and doing the Daily Show later over the weekend. Though, boy, what am I not suppose to talk about today? I think is my deliberation not to talk about Donald Trump using expletives to describe the vice president or the former president's describing of Arnold Palmer in the shower. Maybe the fact that they closed the McDonald's that he appeared at for the photo op yesterday. They did have to rehearse
that whole thing. Apparently the customers were screened by Secret Service. Or we can look forward on what will happen in the next fifteen days. That is what Josh Wingrove is talking about. Harris Trump scrapped for few undecided voters as race titans. My favorite line in the story refers to this as a jump ball election, and that's where we start our conversation with the great Josh Wingrove Bloomberg White
House reporter, with us at the table. It's been far too long, Good to see you, happy to be here. This is a jump ball. Then the campaign that scores last wins. Yeah, how do you score a last? Is it who lands the last big interview, who says the most outrageous thing? This is tie, Josh.
Well, if you're Harris you think you do it by peeling off just a little bit of a few groups like Republicans, for instance, which is why she's touring the three Blue Wall states with Liz Cheney today, and other groups, including whether young voters will turn out, whether they can sort of run up the score with women, whether they can stop some bleeding among black and Latino voters, black men in particular. All of that is across the board.
One thing though in this story I was with her last week in the blue Wall today is I believe the eighth or ninth day in a row she's setting foot in one of those three states. I think you know, if you'd go by where her feet are. They're seeing their path run through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and the governors there are striking an upbeat tone. Governor Shapiro Pennsylvania told me Flatley Harris will win the state. If she does,
I think there's a very good chance she wins the presidency. Others, of course, less sure. The polls are pretty mixed. To a lesser extent, Governor Evers Wisconsin, Governor Whitmer of Michigan singling kind of similar optimism. Whitmer is saying she'd rather have Democrats hand than the Republican's hands. So they're supposed to say that they are they are, but they haven't necessarily been. Shapiro has been less upbeat, So I guess
that jumped out to me. I don't know, I don't know whether I was expecting dour faces and clouds over the skies. But it looks like Democrats are I suppose there's two ways of looking at it. You could say that they are trying to shore up an inside lane. These are usually blue states. Trump won them in sixteen, but Biden won them in twenty. They all have democratic governors. Or you could say, gee, it looks like she's playing defense here in the last couple of weeks.
Sure, yeah, I mean, it is an odd scenario to have two kind of wide open weeks with no debate. Normally would be having a debate around the end of this week or next. So what's the culminating event or does this campaign kind of fizzle out knowing a lot of people have already started.
That's right, and I think we're seeing that in modern elections. So much of this is just a turnout game in an online date to the jumping, That's right, it's a So Harris is going to do her town hall, which was nominally supposed to be a date a debate at one point on CNN this week, so we'll be watching that, of course, very closely. And Trump has announced, for instance, other events including Madison Square Garden and a big.
New York. By the way, is there some logic to it's going to be big pictures look as like led Zeppelin up there on stage at Madison Square Garden. Or is it a true waste of time knowing that he's not likely to win New York.
Well, anything that makes your candidate happy, isn't it not necessarily a time? No, he wants to show momentum. I don't think that they are genuinely pledging that they're going to be particularly competitive in New York. But the New York House races are competitive and could well determine, of course,
control of that chamber. Governor Hokeel was herself in the Blue Wall States, which is a bit of a funny scenario last week, campaigning for Kamala Harrison, saying that they are working to try to deliver those swing seat states or swing seats excuse me, because they don't really have much say in the presidential race.
It is.
I think New York is safe. I don't think it's really a play there, But there are a lot of house races that are you know, unclear right now, including in New Jersey as well, so we'll be watching for that. You know, this is this is trite, Joe. It's every time we get asked like, so, who's gonna win. Yes, it's gonna be you know, give me something, and I like, I wish I had more to give. But genuinely, almost everyone you ask on both sides, it's like it's just
so close right now. It's from four years ago that Biden people felt pretty strongly they were up in every pole. Yeah, you know, they felt pretty strongly. This time around, it's just.
Yeah, it's just not only within the margin, but literally it's high. This is some poles here. Josh, Great to see you, Josh wunn Grove the story on the terminal online. Nice to see Clark Kent in person every now and then here on the program. I'm Joe, Matthew and Washington. Glad you're with us here as we pick our way through the swing states. We're going to be doing this
a lot over the next two weeks. And as we talk about North Carolina today, Donald Trump is there, as I mentioned, and that new Washington Post poll that you might have seen this morning finds Donald Trump in the lead in North Carolina. As we get into a thinner slice here, just looking at the state, fifty to forty seven. Again, I mean this is within the margin pretty much anywhere you look, or awfully close when you want to call this a statistical tie. But of course we had the
matter with the Lieutenant governor. I think that might be the last time we talked to Professor Bitzer, and he's back with us now. Michael Bitzer with the politics department chair and professor of Politics and History at Kataba College in North Carolina. Professor, it's great to see you. Welcome
back to Bloomberg. Been looking forward to talking with you now that we've got a couple of weeks under our belt with regard to the Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson's scandal there that put a lot of noise around North Carolina, and I wonder how you see it now with two weeks to go and what appears to be, at least according to the newest pulling a slight lead for Donald Trump.
Well, I think, as you indicated, it is a slight lead, but it is within the margin of error. The way that I described North Carolina statewide elections, the margin of victory is going to be within the margin of error, and so I think the dynamic of what we have seen over the past month. Certainly, we started with a September surprise of the Mark Robinson allegations. We then moved into a hurricane hitting the western portion of the state.
Nobody was expecting that. So I'm hopeful but won't be surprised that we will see in October surprise, hopefully not of a magnitude of a hurricane. But we are into the final days and we're well into early voting in this state as well.
I don't know how many surprises North Care can take, Professor, but let me ask you about the two things you just mentioned. I'll start with the hurricane. Over the weekend. The call from people living in Ashville was please do not forget us. Would it behoove the candidates to look back to North Carolina to find out what's going on? There was a rush to get there in a very
confusing time of misinformation. What Ka Kamala Harrison, Donald Trump, if not the actual president Joe Biden do to help well?
I think certainly the dynamic of recovery and rebuilding is priority number one for those twenty five counties in North Carolina. We're seeing a little bit of depressed turnout in comparison to what we would expect from four years ago. But that's primarily in Buncom County, which is home to Ashville. In fact, a number of the other counties that were hard hit are actually at or slightly ahead of the state averages in terms of turnout so far. I think
that this is certainly a Republican region. It was a sixty one to thirty nine Republican presidential region. Republicans need their vote to come out of this area that provides about seventeen percent of all the state wide votes. And so certainly if campaigns are going to be focused on that, they need to help with the rebuilding effort, but they also need to focus on are you safe in your home?
Do you have your business back open? Now, let's think about participating and voting in this year's election.
Well, are people getting around? Is it possible for everyone to get to a polling site.
It is still hard in some regions of the state, particularly north of Asheville and Yancey County. I mean the devastation in terms of the roads. A lot of mountain roads tend to run along river rivers and creeks, and when those rivers and creeks flooded over, they destroyed so much of the infrastructure in western North Carolina. It's going to be a very slow rebuilding process. But people are being able to get supplies into a lot of hard
hit areas. But there may be some communities that are just simply cut off in the back collars and valleys of the mountain region.
That's a real heartbreaker that we're not talking about enough right now. Professor. On some Mark Robinson, you mentioned the scandal. I think I brought it up first. Now that some weeks have gone by, I was looking at the Raleigh News this morning. Josh Stein has a double digit lead over Mark Robinson. The Lieutenant governor had his whole staff on the campaign quit as the state just moved on.
It feels like it. I think that this would be the real surprise of North Carolina's elections. If Josh Stein is able to pull anything more than a five point victory margin out, this would be a real landslide in North Carolina. If he's talking about potentially double digits, the effect on the ballot is what I'm going to be very interested in. North Carolina has a slight history, has a long history of split ticket voters, but that part of the electorate has truly collapsed to where it's typically
less than five percent of the electorate. If we're talking about a major blowout at the gubernatorial level, does that have an impact at the top of the ticket and down the ballot, particularly in some very competitive Council of State executive statewide offices.
And this is unquantifiable, right, professor, this is what you do for a living. But there's so much noise, how could it possibly project? Yet everyone asked you, everyone you saw over the weekend asked you who you thought was going to win the race? Right?
They did, And I would take your jump ball metaphor and make it even simpler. Coin toss flip a coin heads for Harris, tails for Trump. You're probably about as a grade of a predictive model as anything that we can together at this point.
That is something you know. Of course, the polls, as I mentioned, show a slight lead in North Carolina, but statistically close. And when you add all the noise that you mentioned, it does make you wonder when you see Donald Trump coming back down today, as I mentioned, he's in Greenville, North Carolina. Does the in person presence is showing up matter at this point?
Oh, I think it certainly does. I think it appeals to the base voters. For each political party, they need to fight on the ground, and candidate visits like this really helps to mobilize and energize voters. I believe Waltz will be here. I believe Harris will be returning as well. So this is really a state where the true battle for victory statewide is literally fought on the ground. We are completely inundated with campaign commercials, but that really doesn't
move a whole lot of people. It's about energizing and mobilizing your base to show up.
Yeah, you must love watching TV right now, professor, So let's talk about showing up in our remaining moment. I want to look at the early voting that's happening in North Carolina because it's important. More people turned out in North Carolina to cast ballots on the first day of early voting this year than in twenty twenty. Preliminary data shows a record three hundred and fifty three thousand people. Even more cast ballots at more than four hundred early
voting sites statewide when this began Thursday. Professor, who does that favor?
I think right now it is again a kind of We're not sure how to read these tea leaves because as of today, we've got over a million early votes cast, and the partisan registration breakdown is fairly even between registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Back four years ago, it was
a slight Democratic advantage. So how this plays out, and particularly the increase of the unaffiliated voter in this state, Yet again, we're trying to decipher that he leaves, and I'm not sure we can read that much into it. With only four days out of seventeen days of early voting.
The unaffiliated voter what an idea. It's like looking for sasquatch out in the wild. Professor, have you met any of these rare people in this campaign?
I've met registered unaffiliateds, but true registered independent voters politically independent, they are very few in this very polarized state.
An endangered species. Will keep our eyes out for sasquatch with help from the professor with the bow tie. It's great to see you, Michael Bitzer, come back and talk to us again before we actually close this thing down on election day one way or the other. Is it a jump ball or a flip coin? Take your pick. According to the Professor, we'll have a lot more ahead. On the fastest show in politics.
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As we unpack a wild weekend on the campaign trail, Kaylee, a lot of things said by Donald Trump that I can't repeat as we prepare to bring in Nick Mulvaney, which brings us back to campaigns past. The fact of the matter is the latest polling out from Washington Post and the Shar School find this is a truly tied race. A survey of the swing state shows forty seven to forty seven among likely voters forty nine Harris forty eight. Trump still a statistical tie no matter where you look,
so arguably both campaigns are doing everything right. We heard from Kamala Harris over the weekend in an interview with al sh Sharp and her reaction to Donald Trump using an expletive to refer to her, describing her as he did questioning her running mate's manhood and her husband's extramarital affair in a prior marriage. She was asked to respond here, she.
Is what you see in my opponent, a former president of the United States? Really is it demeans the office? And I have said, and I'm very clear about this, Donald Trump should never again stand behind the seale of the president of the United States. He has not earned the right. He has not earned the right, and that's why he's going to lose.
Although as we know, it is not guaranteed that he's going to lose this election. As Joe mentioned, we're still in a statistical tie. This thing is a dead heat. So for more on these final fifteen days of the race, we turned to mc mulvaney, former acting chief of staff in the Trump Roight House, former director of the Omb, former co founder of the House Freedom Caucus, congressman from South Carolina. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio.
Nick.
As we're in the home stretch here, it does seem that Kamala Harris has narrowed what her closing argument is going to be that Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president again. Are you getting a clear closing message from Donald Trump? Is it demeaning the Vice president talking about Arnold Palmer. What exactly is he trying to tell undecided voters.
Here, Kayley, I'm not sure that's the right way to look at it. And let me say why. I say that this is not an ordinary election where that are out trying to find the candidates are out trying to find the last few undecided voters. What Kamala Harris just says Kamala Harris just said in that interview doesn't move an independent voter. Tell me an independent voter who's undecided right now. They know all that stuff about Donald Trump
and they're still undecided for some reason. Donald Trump going into a McDonald's I don't think helps sort of get into or undecided voters. I think this is a turnout election. You're not going to hear for that reason, a traditional closing argument. I think they're out there trying to make sure their people show up. If Kamala Harris was asked that, you know, really trying to reach out to independent voters with her comments, she'd say something about herself and what
she's going to do. You know, Donald Trump might be talking about what he wants to do, and neither of them are talking about that, So it's a fair questions. It's a typical question to ask. I'm just not sure. This is sort of a square peg round whole sort of election, so looking at it what we looked to past elections might not be the best way to look at it.
I get you, Mike, al though, when you look at the past, Look, you knew Donald Trump in the campaign in sixteen, you knew him in the White House, and so we're seeing Donald Trump in action, right, I mean, what would be different this time? What you see is what you get, and if he's reelected, it's going to feel a lot like it did last time. Am I wrong?
No?
I think you're probably right.
I mean, face it, you're not going to teach a nearly eighty year old man new tricks.
Right, That's just not going to happen.
Joe, You and I have talked about this before, the couple of times where I tried to give him campaign advice when we're together in the White House. He'd look at me and go, Okay, that's interesting.
How many campaigns have you won for president? Zero?
We're going to do it my way, and I have to imagine that's the conversation that's happening inside of the Trump campaign right now. He's going to do what has served him so well for his entire life. He won in sixteen, he lost in twenty twenty. He looks at this as sort of the rubber match at the three set, and he's going to be him here in the last couple of days.
Well, Donald Trump doing as Donald Trump does is one thing, but the campaign is beyond just him. There's also questions if this is ultimately about turnout, about voting, or driving his base to actually go out and vote for him. Mick, as you were suggesting, are you as confident that the ground game is there? If Donald Trump is just doing what he wants to do, what's everybody else supporting his cause doing?
Yeah, I think it's better than twenty twenty. And here's why I say that. I've talked to Mike Wattley a couple of times, Mike, former North Carolina Party chair now running the RNC about say that the ground game and the door to door and he's like, look, Mike.
It's not going to come out.
It's not going to come across as the same as it was in the past because and this is the specific example he gave me on door knocking, which everybody knows you sort of do you know, at the last couple of weeks to try and drive enthusiasm and get you know, maybe an occasional swing voter. He's like, look, we're skipping everybody accept hard Republican voters. We're if you're an undecided voter, we're probably not knocking on your door. We are going to find our people. That's by design.
And sure enough, there's stories out there how that door knocking get campaign might not be as strong as other people think it should be. I think both campaigns are
looking at this through a very different prism. This year, the campaign looks different, it feels different, and again the proof will obviously be in the putting that that's probably DOESN'TDD much value to say that, But in talking to the folks of the Trump campaign, I think they are going about this as methodical as a Trump campaign is going to go through something and say, we are going to find our people and make sure they show up.
And my guess is, even though I don't have first hand information, the same thing is going on in the Harris camp.
Kayley asked you about Donald Trump's closing argument, how about Kamala Harris's The New York Times ran a headline over the weekend you might have seen Mick Trump becomes the star of Harris's closing pitch, which brings us back to the whole do you vote for someone or do you vote against someone? Is that enough for her to be the next president?
Up until twenty sixteen, actually up u twenty sixteen, certainly twenty twenty, I would have said that positive energy is always more important.
Than negative energy.
People will show up to vote for something much more than I'll vote show up against something. And Donald Trump changed that. I've said this before, I'll say it again. People yell at me, but this is not a conspiracy theory. Listen, hear me out. No one voted for Joe Biden. People either voted for Donald Trump or against Donald Trump. There's not that many people voting for Kamala Harris.
I don't even know who she is.
They're voting for Donald Trump or against Donal Trump. He's a turnout machine for Republicans and a turnout machine for Democrats.
What's her closing argument?
She got to asked some really interesting questions over the course of the last ten days, which is, you know how would you be different than Joe Biden? And she's given really poor answers to that, in my opinion, by essentially saying I'm not Joe Biden and I'm not Donald Trump. That's great, but that's counting on that negative energy. You know, when you really want to deliver the message, you tell people who you are. And hearkens back Joe and Kayley
to the interview. I think that Ted Kennedy give back in the nineteen seventies and I asked him why are you running for president?
And he couldn't give a good answer. That was Roger. But that's exactly right if she loses.
If she loses, I think history will look back at those questions she got asked in these final weeks when she wasn't able to tell people who she was and instead chose to tell people who she wasn't.
Well, that's if she loses. There's also the question of if she wins or vice versa. If Donald Trump loses or wins, either candidate is going to accept those results. So if we're just going to litigate this thing for three months between election day or almost three months and inauguration day, Mick, what are you bracing for in the aftermath of November fifth, knowing what we as a country experienced in twenty twenty, are you seeing the seed sown for that kind of activity to happen again?
Kayla?
The easy answer is no, I'm not. But that being said, I didn't see January sixth coming either. I never thought my party would be the folks, you know, leading an armed rebellion. That's I didn't see it coming, and I certainly don't see it coming now. I think answer your question depends not only how close the election is going to be, and there's a chance it's going to be exactly as close as the polls say that it is.
There's also a chance the polls are wrong. Been lying to pollsters now for you know, several years, especially when it comes to Donald Trump, how close it is and where it's close. You know, if it's close in a Republican state like Georgia, if it's close in a Democrat state like Pennsylvania, I think does give two different answers in terms of the reaction that the different parties give.
I will caution I encourage people to consider this. You know, Donald Trump got asked a question during his MC Donald's been pumped presser, would he accept the outcome of election?
He said, you know, yes, if it's fair.
I think most Democrats that have been asked the same question have been giving the same answer. They've asked a whole bunch of House members over the weekend, would you vote to certify Donald Trump? And their answers, well, if it's a fair election. You know, it depends on if it's a fair election. I think that's the right answer to give. I wouldn't read automatically, would draw a straight line from those answers into say civil unrest. But look, I hope it goes smoothly. I hope it was a
clear cut winner. I hope it's quick. I hope we don't have to wait five days for Pennsylvania to count. That's a self inflicted wound on the nation and inflicted on us by Pennsylvania. And I just hope there is whoever wins wins grace flu never loses, accepts the outcome.
You know, A shade away from what we're talking about here, Mike. You might have seen this from Bruce Melman that was making the rounds and in some of the tip sheets this morning. It's titled the nine weeks slog and it looks at what happens between the election and January sixth Are you of the mind that this election has decided before January fifth or after?
Oh?
I think I hope it's decided before that. I mean, but we forget. We don't ballot box.
Or courthouse, I guess, is my question, Mick battle box.
Although I mean, look, in two thousand, it went forty six days before we knew who was the president, and the country managed to get through that. A draw some conclusions that maybe that's where the country sort of started to move apart.
I don't know.
It's a fascinating academic conversation. But look, I'm one of the folks rooting, as I know a lot of folks are for some clean cut decisions. Yes, no, Harris Trump whatever. I'm obviously rooting for Donald Trump because I'm a Republican. But I'd like to see some very clean elections, some quick decision, and then whoever loses, say you know what, I fought my best.
Uh, let's move on together.
And that's just the presidential race, of course, there's also the balance of the House and Senate to consider as well. Would you be feeling better right now, if you were Mike Johnson or Hawckeing Jeffries.
Ah, that's a great question, Kaylee. I don't listen, you'd never know. And here's why.
So many of those races, especially the close races, are local. And I know that sounds sort of axiomatic and doesn't you know, not very insightful, but.
It really is.
I remember talking to Kevin McCarthy, you know, before my race in twenty ten. I didn't know Kevin very well. He's like, well, it looks like it's gonna be a nail miter, you know, because that's what everybody was telling him.
But we knew it was different down here.
Sometimes the folks who are down in the trenches in those house races are gonna know more about their race than anybody else. There's folks out there right now Republicans who we think are going to win, who are.
Really really afraid.
Conversely, there's some Republicans out there who think there's Democrats who think they're gonna win who probably won't.
That you just can't.
It doesn't filter up like the governor's races do, the Senate races, and certainly the presidential race. So there was going to be half a dozen or so surprises on election night in the House, and.
I flip a coin.
The country is divided, just no question about it.
It's really really narrowly divided.
And that will be reflected obviously in the presidential race, but.
In those House races as well.
My guess is there's twenty two or three dozen races decided by less than one point.
Pretty amazing to see what's happening on the Senate side too. Before you join us, Mick, we were talking about these changes reratings by Cook. Pennsylvania Senate goes from leans D to toss up, Nebraska Senate goes from likely R to leans ARE. And you wonder how much the ground will be shifting under our feet between now and November fifth, with only two weeks to go. Mick Malvaney, thank you so much for joining us as always here on Balance
of Power. Former Congressman, founder of the Freedom Caucus, former acting White House Chief of Staff.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch us live weekdays at noon Eastern on Appocarplay and then Proud Oto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts. Or watch us live on YouTube.
I don't know. This whole conversation just brings us back to the fact that no matter what each campaign in which each candidate try, this is still as high rates.
It absolutely is, as they try to vie not just with media attention and celebrity, but with policy for voters votes. And of course we've gotten a litany of policy proposals
from each of them. It's Donald Trump's though, we want to take a close look at now, as there's a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that looks at the impact of some of these ideas he's put forward, including no tax on Social Security benefits, mass deportation of people not legally in the country, and some other ideas that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget finds today could increase Social Security's ten year cast
shortfall by two point three trillion dollars through twenty thirty five. They are bringing up Joe by three years. They're insolvency estimate from the fiscal year twenty thirty four to twenty thirty one, just six years after the next president takes office if these policies come to fruition.
So maybe we should be talking about this. Now the candidates have not been the campaigns have pledged to keep their hands off of this, going back to the old Al Gore line about a lock box. And you wonder if a report like this brings this conversation to the four last time Miamiguinness's group came out with numbers, this was on the tax proposals. Both campaigns were asked about it repeatedly in high profile interview settings. And I dare say, she's driving the conversation again.
Yep, and she's joining us now. Maya McGuinness is with us. She's president, of course, with the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget. Maya. It's a fascinating report. Can you just walk us through specifically the policy ideas you are looking at here and how they translate to a financially weaker America? Can social security system? What is it exactly that would weaken it so much knowing it was already on a path to insolvency.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's right.
The discussion about social security has been completely backwards, with candidates promising not to fix a program that desperately needs to be fixed. And as we've been analyzing all of the policies of both candidates. We've been well aware of the void of discussion on this important topic. But what caught us by surprise is when we were going through the policies, we did find that former Presidents Trump's policies, many of them, would actually contribute, as you said, to
a significant deterioration in the program's finances. As you asked specifically, there have been a lot of promises about cutting taxes for certain groups. Cutting those Social Security benefit taxes means that undermines a revenue stream that currently goes into the program. You would lose about nine hundred and fifty billion dollars
by not taxing those benefits for seniors for Social Security. Likewise, if you don't tax tips and you don't tax overtime, that's another revenue stream that's going to finance the underfunded program that would no longer exist. Cuts about nine hundred billion dollars out of the program over the next decade.
And then, finally, the effects of getting rid of undocumented workers, mass deportation and tariffs would actually have both potentially inflationary effects on the economy, which means higher colas for seniors. Because when there's inflation hurts many people. But seniors have an automatic bump up in their soci security benefits and it could reduce wages, both of which would cause further deterioration.
We find of about four hundred billion dollars and so, like you said, this program headed towards insolvency within less than a decade. Current seniors are supposed to are on track to be getting twenty three percent across the board benefit cuts, which is unconscionable, terrible policy. They need to do something to fix it. And under these policies, we find that those benefit reductions would actually move up to thirty three percent across the board benefit cuts. We need
all candidates talking about how to fix the program. We don't need policy to make it worse.
Well, so how do we figure, Maya, and you've been in Washington for a minute. How come no one wants to talk about it? This is a hands off for both campaigns. That goes for Joe Biden back when he was running and I guess still as president of the United States. This has been in a lock box since Al Gore talked about it a whole bunch of years ago. Why won't anyone raise their hand? Knowing how many people this impacts. This would be a good political issue, wouldn't it.
Yeah, it's become a pretzel of a narrative where everybody's talking about a backwards as though protecting the program means doing nothing, when clearly protecting the program means doing something. We can't be saying to today's seniors. The current plan right now is you are heading for a benefit cut of about sixteen thousand dollars per year when policymakers promise not to do any to fix the program. But I happened here for a long time, and we do know that, unfortunately,
reasonable fiscal policy can be very bad politics. Right now, we have candidates on both sides promising not to fix Social Security, not to touch these programs, and not to raise taxes, both of which are going to have to be part of an overall plan to address the fiscal situation. So good fiscal policy not always good politics. That's a
real problem for the issue. And as long as pantering on this issue and promising not to touch benefits when they actually benefits or revenues when they need to be changed to fix the program is it's doing a huge disservice to seniors. Frankly, I sort of. I'm surprised the ARP isn't out there saying to everybody, where's your plan? You need to have a plan to fix this program.
Well, so on the idea of neither candidate having a plan on this specific issue, we do have an understanding, as we were mentioning with Donald Trump, but for Kamala Harris as well, of what some of their other plans are. Do we have a sense of how the vice president's policy proposals would impact Social Security?
Is it?
Are we looking at the same kind of time frame for insol or insolvency, or is she not not as debilitating potentially to the program?
So these other ideas, Yeah, exactly, she fails completely to put out a plan to address the program, but the policies that she does have that would affect the payroll tax or Social Security kind of net out to zero. So it's neutral. It's where the plan the program already is. Let me say over and over again, though that is unacceptable.
You cannot be saying to current retirees and people who are about to retire that they are a part of a program that is headed towards insolvency, and the bosses of those programs the lawmakers of this country are promising not to do anything to fix it. They are trying to wait until the last minute. I don't know why anyone thinks that's a good plan. It's going to hurt seniors and taxpayers more. It's going to leave fewer revenues
for other important priorities in the budget. It's going to create chaos and uncertainty in a program for retirement where you need certainty. And it's just frankly like we aren't governing well at this point where they are taking the easy way out instead of saying the trustees tell us every single year in their annual report, with basic certainty, we are going to have to make changes to avoid these across the board benefit cuts. Let's get to it.
We've known about it for years and decades, and you know, it's a presidential campaign. That's what leadership is. It's leveling with the country, including about difficult choices that we have to make, and talking about their plan to address it. And we're just not hearing that from any of the presidential candidates.
Well, god knows, we like to wait till the last minute on everything around here in Washington.
Maya.
I wonder how often in the history of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Have you found that the Republican candidate adds more to debt and deficit than the spending happy Democrat. Is this a first.
Well, when President Trump ran previously, it in our scores, we found that he would add much more.
To the overall Okay, so not named Trump.
It used to be.
Prior to those races. Actually, the candidates were almost exactly equal, like just to tens of billions of difference and how much they would affect the national debt through very different kinds of policies. You'll remember in the past, Republicans tended to cut taxes, Democrats tended to raise spending. You're now seeing e merging of both, where Republicans also raise spending
and Democrats also cut taxes. So both candidate's proposals are much much worse than we've seen in the past, and in this situation, we've certainly seen the President Trump's with its effect on social Security and the overall debt is larger than we're seeing from from Vice President Harris.
Yeah, prepared to hear both candidates forced to respond to this research, Maya, I'm so sorry we're out of time, come back and see us soon. Send us what you wanted to say. Well, let the audience know Miam Againness Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Of course she's the president there. And Kayley, this is the first time we're hearing about this, not the last time.
Absolutely.
Remember there's town halls happening for the candidates this week. They could face some tough questions about this, and course will continue to have full coverage here on Bloomberg TV and radio.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Can just live weekdays at noon Eastern on Apple CarPlay and enroud Oro with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Thanks for being with us year. On the Monday edition of Balance of Power, Ed McMahon has been dead for fifteen years. I just had to check. Can you believe that was two thousand and nine. If you don't know Ed McMahon, ask your parents because I figure if he was still with us, he could be playing an important role for the Trump campaign right now. Did you see Elon Musk with the big check the big cardboard check on stage over the weekend, he's given away a million
dollars a day. Imagine Ed McMahon with the big check in the balloons, knocking on your door, the publisher's clearing house. That was the American dream. Wasn't it a little bit different this time? Did you used to put in for the publisher's clearinghouse. You get all the magazines thinking he might win some money. Now you're registered to vote, I guess, or sign a petition. Elon Musk making big news a million bucks a day he's going to give away between
now and the election if you sign the petition. People said, wait, that's not legal until they read the fine print here it's basically a sweepstakes. So what keeps, by the way, all the Harris supporters from trying to get a million dollars a day? Maybe they don't want to give up their cell phone number. I digress. The fact of the matter is it's coming down to a jump ball election. As Josh Wingrove put it here earlier, who scores last, and that of course means who turns out the voters most.
The news today, the polling from the Washington Post is remarkable it's tied, not even a statistical tie, it's a tie tie. He gets forty seven, she gets forty seven. And that's a poll of the Swing States. Speaking over the weekend on Sunday Morning television, one of Kamala Harris's chief surrogates in the Swing States, the governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, talking on ABC this Week about the ground game. Let's listen.
There are people that Frank Ray, don't follow this on a daily basis. There's people that don't follow the polls. There's people that just don't you know, they go to work, they got kids at home, they do through their job with their kids, and yet up the next day these poles look at a small number. I know, I know it's a science, but at the end of the day, I run and the people all the time that just having been no thought, and so we're going to help them.
They like the three amigos now Evers, Whitmer, Shapiro. They sat for a three way interview. They also sat down with Bloomberg, spoke with the afore mentioned Josh Wingrove, who hit the trail with all three. It's where we start our conversation with our panel. Let's get them together. Our signature panel is back on this Monday. Rick Davis and Jennie Schanzino Bloomberg Politics contributors. She, of course, is political science professor at Iona University. Ricks partner at stone Court Capital.
It's great to see both of you, Rick in the final stages here, welcome back. What are you doing as a campaign manager with two weeks left? Early voting is underway and you need to get people off the couch who maybe have never voted before. It's that close. How do you spend your time?
Yeah, there are really two things that are still moving. One is the schedule, so getting the final tour set and all the activity that goes around that, which is not insignificant. And then secondly, which is actually more important, is pumping every extra dollar you having to get out the vote and monitoring those and checking them against historical
averages or current registration lists. So it's really just pouring over slates of numbers constantly throughout the day and redirecting your efforts to fill vacancies to make sure that the precincts that matter the most are getting the attention. And so the TV's all bought, the ads are all made. Things that people see as a campaign are pretty much done. Highly unlikely there's going to be a killer ad that's produced and put up in the last two weeks of
the election. So it's all about the ground game and making sure that you're not missing something like Hillary missed the entire state of Michigan in sixteen. That may be the biggest historic miss in history. But mostly it's making sure that precincts you're dependent upon are hitting a certain turnout level that you have estimated will give you a victory.
It's pretty fascinating stuff, Genie, what Tony Evers said there, These are people that don't follow the polls, right, They don't follow this on a daily basis the way we do. We're weird. They were not normal. He didn't say that. I did. They've got kids at home, they do time with their kids. Geenie, how do you find them? How do you talk to them in their homes in the next two weeks?
Yeah, they have lives, Joe, unlike you, and I just pictured you all week and Joe and you haven't mentioned it yet. But watching that McDonald's clip that was you know, five minutes. Yeah, it's precious. I mean, it's fifty five minutes of trolling, and I have to say it was pretty good. You know, how you reach them is just the way that Rick was talking about. And I think that's why getting those governors out on the ground in those blue states, the blue wall as we call it,
is so important. You know, one sort of underdiscussed aspect of these seven swing states is five of the seven have democratic governors. And you know, there was a long time when for Crats, rightly, they bemoaned the fact that many leaders at the state and local level for a long time in the US have been on the Republican side.
We're seeing that change, and I think it can't you know, underestimate how important our local and state officials are in things like the ground game, getting people out to vote, energizing folks, so all of that critically important, which is why you know Donald Trump is lately trying to you know, make up with Kemp, and I guess they have. But that's why you never want to sort of, you know, have a you know, some kind of riff with those folks on the ground because they matter an awful lot.
Well, they absolutely do. Rick, does it help to be putting on the McDonald's apron and doing that stunt that Donald Trump did yesterday. By the way, the answer may well be yes. A lot of people ran images of him behind the friolator and handing out bags of food to people in their cars, but of course we know they closed the restaurant that day and he was actually doing the job for less than five minutes.
Yeah, I look, I thought the imagery was terrific. I mean, there were a lot of ups and downs with his campaign over the weekend, but uh, it wasn't because he went to the McDonald's one. It's authentic, right. The guy eats more McDonald's and probably any other elective official in history. Uh, so, so there's a there's He actually knows the routine pretty well and it wouldn't surprise me. It's not his first time behind the counter in a McDonald's.
Uh.
The reality is, uh, these these the pictures are worth much more than the event itself. And so kudos to the campaign for putting him in a place you know, really well well done, had the whole apron going, had the fry in his hand, uh and uh and you know they got him out of there without a whole lot of grease and his fingers and and and and too many big max getting eaten. So uh yeah, these that was a good weekend shot for them. And this is one thing they've always done pretty well is put him,
uh Donald Trump in a humanized saying location. It's separate from the big rallies that were all used to. They're pretty good at these these kind of OTAs, off the record type events.
People watching on YouTube, you're actually seeing Donald Trump in action behind the Frio lator. He did that for five minutes, and he spent about fifteen minutes at the drive through. All right, Genie, you know you pulled me into this because you know, I don't like to talk about it. No one ordered, they didn't get to order. That's just very funny to me. They said they were pre selected people. They pull up and these are Trump supporters, I guess,
pre selected by the Secret Service. Pull up to the window and he gives you a bag of something. You're not really sure what's in it. But so Kamala Harris has been invited to do the same, I'm told or I read by this franchise owner, Genie. And part of the point here is Donald Trump doesn't believe Kamala Harris worked at a McDonald's. He said this again to the reporters who were there, that he worked fifteen minutes more than Kamala Harris did. Does she need to produce a
photograph or something here? She says she worked at a McDonald's in Alameda, California, in nineteen eighty three during the summer freshman year Howard University. I spent the summer working in the fredol A shipping department. Genie, my hair still smells like grease. I don't have a photograph. I actually went back to look. I thought, is it possible, this is before cell phones. Is it entirely possible that no such a photo exists?
Number one?
And should she take the invite and go to McDonald's.
Well, Joe, I have to agree with you. The kids today can't believe it. But like when I worked at Friendly's back in the day, and you're New England, yes, you know I worked at several Friendlies in fact, and you know I don't have any photographs of me in that uniform. And so she may not have photographs. She does have friends who attest to the fact she worked there. I think she can very well go to the McDonald's.
But I think what the campaign on the Kamala Harris side is trying to do is to try to point to Donald Trump and what they describe as unhinged behavior. And over the weekend and over the last week, he has given them a lot to work with. And you know, one of the things we've talked about a long time now for this election is whoever this election about is about, and whoever this election is a referendum on may very
well will well lose. And Donald Trump, since he can't keep his focus on, say, Kamala Harris's you know, twenty nineteen policy prescriptions or policies themselves, keep saying things and we heard a bevy of them over the weekend that do make him look unfit to be president. And so that's what they are focusing on as we move to this closing And of course they're also bringing out Republicans who say, I don't agree with Kamala Harris on any issue,
but I agree with her on this. The man who's talking about Arnold Palmer in this way cannot be president of the United States. And that is an important closing point because some of the data shows for INDECE that does move the needle a bit.
Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that one. I And we're going to spend a little more time on some of the language that was used over the weekend with our panel in the next hour. By the way, friendlies is still around, Genie. That looks like they've got a lot of them left, and so is to my just learning now the publisher's clearing house. It's pch dot com. Who knows these things never go away? Rick, you talked about authenticity Donald Trump, not necessarily in the cosplay at McDonald's,
but wearingly apron with credibility. Would Kamala Harris draw the same image and response from you if she took them up on their invite? You know, I don't know.
I mean, you know, you hate to do the copycat thing. I honestly think it would be much more effective, you know, showing up in Philadelphia grabbing a steak and cheese. I mean, I think these are the things that would suit her much better and be in a place that's you know, more likely to make her seem like every person, right, which is what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish. I mean, the reality is it's authenticity does matter, and so if
She's been on defense. Every time he you know, lies about her record, she tries to correct the record, and I applaud her for doing that. But as a result,
she literally has spent almost every day on defense. And at some point in time, you got to go on offense and start creating your own record, and that would include, you know, going after Donald Trump is a you know, I don't know, pretender to the Burger King, right, I mean, you know, he's he's not somebody who anybody visualizes eats, you know, McDonald's every day, even though he probably does.
Wow. Well, it brings us to the New York Times headline from over the weekend. You might have noticed Playbook grabbed a screen grab of it for a reason. We're going to get into this with our panel in the next hour. Trump becomes the star of Harris's closing pitch. That's what Rick's talking about, and you wonder if that might turn around again between now and November fifth. Indeed, fond memories of the light blue cotton candy soda for
producer James at friendlies. I'll tell you what the memories. We'll pull him back here, CEC says Kamala Harris go to Angelo's. Maybe we talk a little bit about the restaurants here coming up off the air, guys.
We could.
There's a lot two weeks to film. Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find us live every weekday from Washington, DC at noontime Eastern at Bloomberg dot com.