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Episode: Trump seems to be failing at election basics, but he still has wildcards

Author: Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
Duration: 00:43:47

Episode Shownotes

Plus, Russian interference has become a feature of American elections when Trump is involved

Summary

In this episode of 'The Rachel Maddow Show', Rachel Maddow examines Donald Trump's difficulties with fundamental election processes amidst significant polling challenges. She contrasts the achievements of the Biden-Harris administration with the negative perception of Trump, highlighting potential distractions such as efforts by the Republican Party to disrupt the electoral process. Maddow discusses the serious implications of Russian interference in U.S. elections, underscoring Trump's ongoing communications with Putin and the sophisticated disinformation tactics at play. The episode emphasizes the risks associated with Trump's governance style and the importance of upholding election integrity.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Trump seems to be failing at election basics, but he still has wildcards) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. So tomorrow night, Kamala Harris is gonna give her big primetime speech. Tomorrow night, one week out from election night.

00:00:08 Speaker_01
It's gonna be live from the Ellipse in front of the White House, which is, I think, a good choice as a setting, if for no other reason than we'd all like to be able to imagine political speeches from the Ellipse that don't end in the politician behind the podium directing his armed and enraged followers to go physically attack the US Capitol and Congress.

00:00:29 Speaker_01
Let's take back the image of what it means to address a crowd from the Ellipse, shall we? We here at MSNBC will be taking Kamala Harris' big primetime speech tomorrow night. We'll be taking it live in its entirety.

00:00:44 Speaker_01
I'll be joining Joy Reid for that starting in the 7 p.m. Eastern hour tomorrow night, again, live here on MSNBC. We really hope that you're going to watch that speech with us.

00:00:52 Speaker_01
and then stay afterwards to get reaction and analysis with me and Chris Hayes and everybody else. Again, that'll all start tomorrow night in the 7 p.m. Eastern hour. I'm really looking forward to that.

00:01:05 Speaker_01
I'm really interested to see what this sort of closing argument is gonna be from Vice President Harris. So mark it in your calendars. I will see you then tomorrow night.

00:01:15 Speaker_01
As Vice President Harris puts together her closing argument and the final crucial schedule for the last few crucial days of the campaign, her campaign has also put out a somewhat controversial ad.

00:01:30 Speaker_01
I don't think this is gonna be their closing ad, but this may be their last ad that is directly about her opponent. Watch.

00:01:51 Speaker_05
Do you think he's a fascist?

00:01:52 Speaker_03
He certainly falls into the general definition. authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology, a movement characterized by a dictatorial leader.

00:02:03 Speaker_03
The former president, certainly an authoritarian, using the military to go after American citizens is a very, very bad thing.

00:02:18 Speaker_05
If he was left to his own devices, would he be a dictator if he didn't have people around him? Oh, I think he'd love to be.

00:02:24 Speaker_04
When somebody's the president, the authority is total.

00:02:36 Speaker_01
I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. One of the closing argument ads from the Kamala Harris campaign, powerful ad.

00:02:45 Speaker_01
I mentioned that it's a somewhat controversial ad, not because of any of the factual assertions in the ad, it's all true stuff. It's controversial strategically because there are debates in democratic circles right now as to whether or not it's

00:03:02 Speaker_01
the most effective thing to do in terms of voters' reaction, whether or not it's effective with voters to talk about Trump's extremism and his unfitness and his dictatorial inclinations. And I have no idea whether it's effective with voters or not.

00:03:19 Speaker_01
It certainly does have the virtue of being a true thing to say about your opponent, which is always a nice thing in any campaign and not always something you can bank on.

00:03:29 Speaker_01
But as much as Kamala Harris and the Democrats may want to be running this campaign on the basis of the good jobs record of the Biden-Harris administration, or restoring reproductive rights, or bringing down housing costs, or any other thing, as much as they may want this contest to be about those things, it's also just plainly true that she is running against the

00:03:53 Speaker_01
i want to be a dictator terminate the constitution hitler did some good things guy that is who she's up against and you can't ignore it you can't let it frame the contest but you can't ignore it and he really did offer his own big prime time closing argument with this thing at madison square garden yesterday

00:04:15 Speaker_01
which I was very prepared to not compare to the German-American Bund rally in February 1939, until I heard what they actually said at this rally last night.

00:04:27 Speaker_01
Again, I had no inclination toward this, no intention of doing this whatsoever, but I'm just gonna play you two very quick clips. The first one is from Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden last night.

00:04:39 Speaker_01
And the second one is from the infamous pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939.

00:04:48 Speaker_03
Americans sleeping on their own feces on a bench in Central Park. But the f***ing illegals, they get whatever they want, don't they? Five-star hotels, cash, probably get Yankee Dodger tickets tomorrow night.

00:05:04 Speaker_06
Great floods of tears for a few hundred thousand job-taking so-called poor Jewish refugees, who incidentally, in general, have more of this world's goods than you or I will ever possess.

00:05:26 Speaker_01
floods of tears for a few hundred thousand job-taking so-called poor Jewish refugees, who incidentally, in general, have more of this world's goods than you or I will ever possess. That was from the 1939 rally.

00:05:40 Speaker_01
That speaker was Gerhard Kunz, who was a German-American Bund leader who would ultimately be indicted for both espionage and sedition.

00:05:49 Speaker_01
leading the crowd to denounce these so-called refugees, these so-called poor people who get so much better treatment than real Americans. The argument doesn't change at all.

00:06:03 Speaker_01
You know, if you don't want to be compared to those people in history, don't steal their lines. Don't say you admire them.

00:06:14 Speaker_01
If you don't want to be called a fascist, don't convert a normal governing political party into a one-man cult of personality and then say all elections are rigged and the country used to be great, but now it's been humiliated and brought low because of an enemy within, and we're going to have to use force and violence against that enemy and terminate parts of the Constitution to get them.

00:06:37 Speaker_01
If you don't want to be compared to the folks who held rallies like that in 1939, don't hold rallies like that. If you don't want to be called a fascist, stop constantly acting out the dictionary definition of fascist.

00:06:50 Speaker_01
And then we'll all agree we won't use that F-word anymore. What is this election ultimately going to be about in the end? I don't know. I mean, maybe it will be about the economy. U.S.

00:07:06 Speaker_01
economy leads the world, says IMF, International Monetary Fund, quote, the United States is increasingly pulling ahead of the world's advanced economies with a surge of investment paying off in higher productivity and wages.

00:07:20 Speaker_01
And what has become something of a trend, the IMF upgraded the outlook for both U.S. and global growth, though more so for the U.S. They made a forecast of U.S. economic growth in January, which they then upped in July, now they've had to up

00:07:34 Speaker_01
it again because we're not only doing well, we're doing so much better than anyone expected. U.S. economic growth is, quote, increasingly ahead of all the world's wealthy nations. U.S.

00:07:46 Speaker_01
economic growth beats everyone else in the group of seven, the G7, major advanced economies. And according to the IMF, why is it that the United States economy is doing so well, better than everybody else in the world?

00:07:58 Speaker_01
Well, it's because wages are up for regular people. Productivity is up. Quote, investor money has flooded the U.S. in recent years while big legislative packages funded green energy and infrastructure.

00:08:11 Speaker_01
Meanwhile, abundant domestic supplies largely insulated U.S. companies from energy shortages and price shocks. Economists say that has all led to a surge in investment in the U.S. which boosts productivity.

00:08:24 Speaker_01
And quote, productivity is the main ingredient for higher long-term growth and living standards. So is this election going to be about the economy? Right, people always say, oh, it's the economy, stupid. It's always the economy.

00:08:40 Speaker_01
You think politics are about something else. It's all about the economy. Well, is it gonna be about the economy? Because it turns out, ahead of this election next week, the United States is beating the pants off the whole rest of the world economically.

00:08:55 Speaker_01
And why is that? That's in part because, what did they say? Because of, quote, big legislative packages funding green energy and infrastructure.

00:09:06 Speaker_01
In other words, the US economy is doing great because of the signature legislative achievements of the Biden-Harris administration. And what have those signature legislative accomplishments achieved for the American people?

00:09:19 Speaker_01
They've resulted in what for the American people? Quote, rising real wages and rising productivity, which is what? It is quote, the main ingredient for higher long-term growth and higher living standards. That's the Wall Street Journal.

00:09:36 Speaker_01
What the Biden-Harris administration has done economically has produced the greatest economy in the world with better prospects for Americans on wages, on long-term growth, and on living standards than any other major economy on earth.

00:09:51 Speaker_01
That's the Wall Street Journal. That's the IMF. Here's The Economist on the US economy right now being, quote, the envy of the world. The envy of the world, the American economy.

00:10:01 Speaker_01
Here's the New York Times on how what we're experiencing right now in 2024 is the best jobs market, the most healthy job market we have ever had in the history of the United States of America.

00:10:14 Speaker_01
Here's the Washington Post on how this is likely the best economic year of any of our lives, this year, 2024, when we're having an election.

00:10:28 Speaker_01
in which we are choosing between the vice president of the administration that brought you the best economy in the world, or this guy. Quote, Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico island of garbage.

00:10:44 Speaker_01
Quote, his rhetoric ranks among the most flagrant demagoguery by a major figure of any Western nation since World War II. Quote, a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.

00:11:03 Speaker_01
Sometimes the vote in a national election is about the fundamentals. You know, like, is this candidate a good choice on the economy? Sometimes it's about a different kind of fundamental. Does this candidate say he likes Hitler?

00:11:18 Speaker_01
Sometimes it's a more personal thing.

00:11:21 Speaker_01
When it comes to just liking each of these candidates or not liking each of these candidates, Americans broadly like Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, and they broadly do not like Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance.

00:11:34 Speaker_01
The latest AP poll on just this sheer question, do you like him or don't you? It puts Kamala Harris plus five favorable, Tim Walz plus five favorable. It puts J.D. Vance minus 16. unfavorable and Donald Trump minus 17 unfavorable.

00:11:53 Speaker_01
That's its own kind of election fundamental as well. You know, and maybe this election will come down to the fundamentals, right? Number one, economic basics.

00:12:04 Speaker_01
The Harris and Biden administration with a rip-roaring economic record to run on literally the envy of the world. Maybe they'll be on, number two, likability of the candidate.

00:12:15 Speaker_01
Voters like Harris roughly 22 points more than they like Donald Trump, who they really don't like at all. They just flat out like her and don't like him. She's positive, he's negative. She's positive by a little, he's negative by a lot.

00:12:32 Speaker_01
Another fundamental, number three, quality of the campaign. I mean, just take a little snapshot of the quality of the campaign right now at crunch time one week out.

00:12:44 Speaker_01
Here yesterday was the local press coverage of Kamala Harris' day in Swing State, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia Inquirer. Kamala Harris goes to church, visits small businesses, and yet another visit to Philadelphia.

00:12:57 Speaker_01
Simultaneously, here was the local press coverage of Donald Trump's day in, not a swing state, New York. New York Daily News. Racist rally. Speakers supporting Trump at his Madison Square Garden event insult Puerto Ricans, blacks, and Jews.

00:13:15 Speaker_01
And when it comes to the quality of the campaign, not for nothing, but Trump has also been focusing his campaign message in these final few days to include really important issues like him saying that he thinks there's life on Mars.

00:13:28 Speaker_01
His top surrogate and funder, Elon Musk, telling a Trump rally crowd that there are aliens walking among us right now. Trump has also really ramped up all of his talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. here at the end of the campaign. He says that RFK Jr.

00:13:43 Speaker_01
is going to get a big job in government. In Trump's terms, he's going to be in charge of making America healthy again. If Trump is reelected, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is gonna get a big job. He's saying this more and more now on the campaign trail.

00:13:56 Speaker_01
He thinks this is awesome. While RFK Jr. himself is spending his end of the campaign talking about how we can't have Wi-Fi anymore in America because Wi-Fi causes something that he calls leaky brain. If you have Wi-Fi, you get leaky brain.

00:14:15 Speaker_01
Also, HIV doesn't cause AIDS. the early 90s called and they'd like their conspiracy theory back. So you know, maybe it's the economy, maybe it's the candidates, maybe it's the campaigns.

00:14:31 Speaker_01
I don't know how this election is gonna be decided, neither do you. But there are two additional wildcards that we need to factor in to how this election is gonna resolve. And we shouldn't have to factor either of these in, but we do.

00:14:45 Speaker_01
The first is the absolutely, totally telegraphed, easily foretold effort by the Republican Party to disrupt, subvert, ultimately to try to steal the election if they lose it.

00:15:00 Speaker_01
To try to flip the result or to cause enough chaos and delay and confusion that they prevent any clear election result from emerging.

00:15:08 Speaker_01
And as you know, we have covered this in detail now for most of the past four years, since their last effort to overthrow an election result caused chaos and intimidation and violence and death, and ultimately led to hundreds of people being convicted of crimes and sent to prison.

00:15:24 Speaker_01
They have professionalized their approach to the matter since then. And there's only a certain percentage, right, in covering this stuff ad nauseum. We know to expect it. We are ready to watch for it. At this point, there's no doubt that it is coming.

00:15:44 Speaker_01
There's not much to do to prepare for it except to know that it's coming, sort of get your knees loose, get ready. We're watching for local Republican officials to refuse to certify election results, even when elections are run totally normally.

00:15:57 Speaker_01
We're looking for them to at least try to delay certification of local election results in order to make it seem like there's something wrong with the election in their area, so that can serve as a pretext for some sort of larger effort to gum up the works in that state.

00:16:10 Speaker_01
We're watching for Republican state legislatures, especially in swing states like Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Wisconsin, where Republicans have control of the legislature.

00:16:19 Speaker_01
We're watching for those state legislatures to try to submit electoral votes for Trump, even if Harris wins those states.

00:16:27 Speaker_01
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson started saying this weekend that they have a secret plan between them, between Trump and the Republican-controlled House, that's going to result in them doing, quote, really well in Trump's terms.

00:16:40 Speaker_01
Presumably, that's something to do with how the Republican-controlled Congress is planning to handle the counting of the electoral votes if Harris wins.

00:16:50 Speaker_01
That, of course, is dependent on Republicans keeping control of the House, so Mike Johnson will still be in charge, but apparently they have a plan in case he is.

00:16:59 Speaker_01
Republican state legislators recently refused to comment to politico.com when they were contacted last week and asked if they have been in touch with the Trump campaign about trying some kind of fake electors plot again.

00:17:13 Speaker_01
CNN reported late last week that the House Administration Committee in Congress has just hired two people who were involved in Trump's 2020 fake electors plot.

00:17:21 Speaker_01
They've hired them to come on board as staff at that congressional committee right now to advise them on election matters.

00:17:29 Speaker_01
House Administration Committee is the committee that actually reads the electoral votes and advises members of Congress as to what procedures they should be following while doing things like reading and counting the electoral votes.

00:17:43 Speaker_01
Again, they've hired two people from Trump's fake electors scheme in 2020 to advise them as congressional staff for that process this year. So yeah, that does not seem good.

00:17:55 Speaker_01
And we shouldn't have to worry about and watch for things like that in an election, but in the Republican Party's Trump era, we absolutely do. We should also expect that sometimes the goal will just be chaos, so nobody has trust in the result.

00:18:11 Speaker_01
You know, chaos and upset. that anger and dread you felt when you saw the headlines today and you saw these images today of burning ballots, the ballot drop boxes that were set on fire in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

00:18:27 Speaker_01
In Vancouver, Washington, hundreds of ballots were destroyed. In Portland, Oregon, interestingly, they think only three ballots were destroyed and that's because they'd installed a fire suppressant system inside that Portland ballot.

00:18:41 Speaker_01
ballot drop box, and thank God they had. Again, only three ballots considered to be damaged in the Portland firebombing of a ballot drop box. They've been able, they say, to contact the three voters whose ballots were damaged in Portland.

00:18:55 Speaker_01
In Vancouver, where they believe it was hundreds of ballots destroyed, they're advising that people who put their ballots in that particular box that burned, people who put their ballots in Sometime after 11 a.m.

00:19:08 Speaker_01
on Saturday, that was the last time it was empty before the fire, people who may have used that ballot box in Vancouver, Washington are being asked to contact the local elections department to get replacement ballots.

00:19:19 Speaker_01
Portland police say they think the two fires are connected. They say they caught a suspect vehicle on surveillance footage and they're pursuing that lead. The FBI is investigating both of these as well.

00:19:33 Speaker_01
We shouldn't have to deal with what everyone is expecting to be a plan to subvert the election, to try to flip the result if the Democratic candidate wins.

00:19:41 Speaker_01
We shouldn't have to deal with efforts to stop the election, to burn ballots, to make us believe that there's no real knowable result. We shouldn't have to, but in the Trump era, we do. And we also, and this is the last point,

00:19:59 Speaker_01
We also shouldn't have to deal with any other country trying to determine who we pick as our next president.

00:20:06 Speaker_01
We shouldn't have to deal with any presidential candidates having secret communications with a foreign dictator who is hostile to the United States, who is trying to determine who we choose as our next president. That just shouldn't happen.

00:20:24 Speaker_01
But in the Trump era of Republican Party politics, This is now familiar. In the 2016 election, we know that the Russian government interfered in the election to help Trump. They hacked and leaked documents from his opponent's campaign.

00:20:37 Speaker_01
They mounted a big propaganda campaign, impersonating Americans, trying to mess with us, trying to turn the election toward Trump.

00:20:44 Speaker_01
We also know in 2016 that Trump's campaign chairman was, during the campaign, sharing proprietary, non-public information from the Trump campaign with a Russian intelligence officer, while Russian intelligence was mounting that operation against us.

00:21:00 Speaker_01
Then four years later, it was the 2020 election, and we know that Russia once again interfered on behalf of Trump. That time, it was Trump's personal lawyer working with a sanctioned Kremlin agent to try to derail Joe Biden's campaign against Trump.

00:21:16 Speaker_01
Then now, four years later, happening again, now in the 2024 election, we've got Russia seemingly doing more than they've ever done. They are straight up paying pro-Trump podcasters and media personalities.

00:21:30 Speaker_01
We've got Russia making deepfake videos about Kamala Harris supposedly hurting someone in a hit-and-run accident and Tim Walz supposedly abusing one of his students.

00:21:40 Speaker_01
Both of those videos are completely fake, but both circulated very widely online, and both of them are now officially considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to have been created by Russia.

00:21:51 Speaker_01
We've got Russian military intelligence paying and directing an American expat to make fake American-seeming news websites and to produce conspiracy theory videos that have been promoted widely by pro-Trump personalities and media outlets.

00:22:06 Speaker_01
Now we've got the Director of National Intelligence coming out and saying the recent fake video of ballots cast for Trump supposedly being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that fake video too is an operation of the Russian government.

00:22:21 Speaker_01
All designed to help Trump and hurt Harris and make us not believe in our own democracy. In 2016, it was Trump's campaign chairman talking to Russian intelligence while they did their campaign to help Trump.

00:22:36 Speaker_01
2020, it was Trump's lawyer talking to the Russians while they did their campaign to help Trump. Who's the contact person this time for the Trump campaign while Russia's doing it again? Cheaper to cut out the middleman.

00:22:50 Speaker_01
Ah, this time it's Trump himself talking to Putin, while Putin is mounting this big new effort to try to get Trump elected, reported in Bob Woodward's most recent book, at least seven times, excuse me, have talked as many as seven times since Trump left office as president.

00:23:08 Speaker_01
When asked if it was true, Trump said, quote, I don't talk about that. Remarkable message discipline from him on this subject and only this subject. What else is he so, you know, tight-lipped about?

00:23:21 Speaker_01
In addition to Trump, it's also reportedly Elon Musk, Trump's top funder and cheerleader.

00:23:27 Speaker_01
who has reportedly not only been talking secretly to Putin while Putin has been mounting this effort to try to get Trump elected, Musk specifically has also been talking to Putin's first deputy chief of staff.

00:23:40 Speaker_01
And why would Elon Musk be talking to Putin's deputy chief of staff? Why would he be talking to that guy specifically in the Russian government?

00:23:50 Speaker_01
I don't know, but he is the specific guy in the Russian government who's apparently in charge of operations targeting the American public. Like, say, for this election.

00:24:00 Speaker_01
The guy who orchestrated the whole fake news websites that look like American news outlets, that guy who's running that part of the pro-Trump Russian campaign operation is in frequent communication with Elon Musk now? While that campaign is underway?

00:24:16 Speaker_01
While Elon Musk has taken a leading role in the Trump campaign. That's who Elon Musk has been talking to while Russia's been doing this stuff. I wonder what they talk about when they talk.

00:24:30 Speaker_01
When the Republican candidate and his top funder are reportedly in frequent and secret communication with our country's most determined enemy, while that enemy is messing with us in our election to help the Republican campaign win.

00:24:47 Speaker_01
How do you play that wild card into this hand that we've been dealt? That's ahead, stay with us. I did not see this coming in Ohio. I should have, I guess, but I did not.

00:25:04 Speaker_01
In the Ohio Senate race this year, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is running for reelection. He's running against a Trump-endorsed wealthy car dealer named Bernie Marino. This is a hard-fought race. Both candidates are working really hard.

00:25:17 Speaker_01
Mr. Marino last month told a town hall, quote, you know my rules, nothing's off limits. If you want to tape record, videotape anything I say, you're welcome to do that. Record everything I say, nothing to hide, tape me.

00:25:31 Speaker_01
Of course, that was before somebody at one of Bernie Marino's town halls actually did record him talking like this.

00:25:42 Speaker_05
You know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there's a lot of suburban women. A lot of suburban women that are like, listen, abortion's it.

00:25:51 Speaker_05
If I can't have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else. Okay, a little crazy, by the way. But, especially for women that are like past 50, I'm thinking to myself, there's an issue for you.

00:26:02 Speaker_05
Oh, thank God my wife didn't hear that one.

00:26:11 Speaker_01
Oh, thank God my wife didn't hear that one. Did I say record me? Record everything I say? Maybe that was bad advice.

00:26:19 Speaker_01
That piece of tape of Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Marino saying a woman over 50 has no reason to support abortion rights because, you know, she's not making babies anymore, so why should we care what she thinks?

00:26:32 Speaker_01
That tape got Mr. Moreno a lot of negative press coverage, as you might imagine. Now, one way for his campaign to avoid that happening again would be for their candidate to just not say stuff like that.

00:26:43 Speaker_01
Mr. Moreno's campaign has instead decided on what they think is a better option, a safer option for them. They can't guarantee he's not gonna say stuff like that, and so they've done one of the weirdest things I've ever seen in politics anywhere.

00:26:57 Speaker_01
Credit to the publication Business Insider for reporting this out. But watch this video that they've posted. This is bananas. This is a guy asking Republican Senate candidate Bernie Marino a question. You can see that the question's being asked.

00:27:12 Speaker_01
You can hear that the question's being asked. But then a staffer for Bernie Marino runs up to the guy asking the question and holds a big black box that kind of looks like a speaker in the face of that guy. Why? What is he doing with this black box?

00:27:26 Speaker_01
The black box puts out an ultrasonic jamming frequency so no one can record any sound anywhere near it. And it makes the audio get all squeaky and muffled so you can't hear what Bernie Marino says.

00:27:40 Speaker_01
It sounds like Dick Tracy's science fiction, but they're actually doing it. Just watch this.

00:27:48 Speaker_07
Hey, Mr. Marino, will you apologize for insulting Ohio women? You've been a little bit of a slacker the last few days. Mr. Marino, do you have any other opinions on women over 50 you'd like to share?

00:27:59 Speaker_07
Mr. Marino, do you have any other opinions on women over 50 you'd like to share? Where have you been, though? We've got to put in the effort. Send me the address, I'll be there. Yeah, I'm typing. Have a good night.

00:28:15 Speaker_06
Do you have any other comments you'd like to share before you leave?

00:28:22 Speaker_01
See, you can hear things a little bit until the box gets really close to the microphone. These are videos from the Ohio Democratic Party.

00:28:30 Speaker_01
The campaign apparently bought an ultrasonic jamming gadget that they're now waving in front of microphones to stop people from being able to record anything that Bernie Marino says.

00:28:44 Speaker_06
Hey, Mr. Marino, how many of your former employees do you think are going to vote for you?

00:28:51 Speaker_02
I can't hear you. Not over the sound of my ultrasonic jamming gadget that we bought at the spy store.

00:28:58 Speaker_01
I don't think putting an electronic noise box in the face of anybody shouting questions at you is going to stop people shouting questions at Bernie Marino in Ohio. but this is apparently their strategy. I've never seen anything like it.

00:29:13 Speaker_01
Joining us now is Ohio's Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. Senator Brown, I appreciate you being here. I know you're in the middle of a very busy campaign.

00:29:19 Speaker_04
Pleasure to be back. Thanks, Rachel.

00:29:22 Speaker_01
I have never seen anything like this. I have to ask you your reaction to it.

00:29:27 Speaker_04
Well, I haven't either. I don't think anybody is using a spy gadget. He's been hiding from Ohioans the whole election. He's rarely talks to the media. He doesn't seem to want to answer questions from much of anybody. When he does, he gets in trouble.

00:29:41 Speaker_04
So, so he invents him.

00:29:43 Speaker_04
finds this spy gadget apparently made for the military, so he doesn't really want to answer questions about voting, Ohioans voting 57% for abortion rights, about how he stiffed his employees out of their overtime, $400,000 worth, how he shredded documents, and I guess this is the more high-tech way to avoid talking to the public.

00:30:05 Speaker_01
You know, your opponent did really sort of step in it when he said that women over 50 essentially don't have a right to have an opinion about things like abortion since they're not making babies anymore at that age.

00:30:18 Speaker_01
I felt like that comment from him, he did have the instinct like, oh, I hope my wife didn't feel that, didn't hear that, but he didn't have enough instinct to stop himself from saying it. Do you feel like the broader issue here is that he's,

00:30:33 Speaker_01
inexperienced candidate, that his campaign doesn't trust him to not be able to either say things that are more politic or that he ought not to, that he ought to be stopping himself from saying.

00:30:47 Speaker_04
Well, he always thinks he knows better. He's one of those kind of candidates. But like you said that his own staff clearly doesn't trust him to go out and talk to people and answer questions.

00:30:59 Speaker_04
And so it shows something about this race that, you know, I fight for the dignity of war. he sniffs his employees and then refuses to talk about it, or his staff steps between him and the questioner.

00:31:11 Speaker_04
So I don't really know what to make of this, except that he really does want to hide his views from the public, and his staff really wants to hide his views from the public.

00:31:21 Speaker_04
When you're that out of step with the public, the only way to win is to spend a whole lot of money. This is, as you know, Rachel, the most expensive. There's been more money against me in this race, we believe, than any Senate race in history.

00:31:33 Speaker_04
And so it's going to be a very close race because Ohio has gotten more conservative in spite of our 57% abortion rights vote last November. But he's going to continue to hide behind his $200 million ad campaign.

00:31:49 Speaker_04
And that's why I ask if people could help at sherrybrown.com, send $20 or $25 to beat this machine of $200 million.

00:31:59 Speaker_01
You're right that this is thought to be the most expensive Senate race in history. It's all because of the amount of money that has been spent against you. Ohio is broadly expected to select Trump in the presidential this year.

00:32:15 Speaker_01
What's your closing argument to Ohioans who are weighing whether or not they wanna split their ticket? Obviously, Ohioans who are gonna be supporting Kamala Harris for the presidency are probably pretty likely to support you as well.

00:32:27 Speaker_01
Ohio voters who might be thinking about voting for Trump and might also be thinking about voting for you, what's your message to them?

00:32:33 Speaker_04
Well, what I said to you in the past, Rachel, and I so appreciate you having me on again, is politics to me is not so much left to right as who side you on.

00:32:40 Speaker_04
And the reason they're spending $200 million is I take on the drug companies and I hold Wall Street accountable and I stand up for workers and unions, take on the railroads when they did the disaster, committed the disaster in East Palestine.

00:32:56 Speaker_04
And the contrast is clear on abortion rights, on workers, on the dignity of work. And voters, no matter how liberal or conservative, in the end, they want to know who's on their side.

00:33:07 Speaker_04
And I think when they go to vote a week from tomorrow, that they make that in their own minds. They understand that I'm on their side on all these issues.

00:33:18 Speaker_01
Senator Sherrod Brown from the great state of Ohio. It's always good to see you, sir. Thank you so much for your time tonight.

00:33:23 Speaker_01
I know this next week is gonna be hanging by the fingernails, a real nail-biter for everybody watching the race, and I know for you and your family. So good luck to you, sir, and stay in touch with us over this next week. Will do. Thank you always. Okay.

00:33:36 Speaker_01
Much more ahead here tonight. Stay with us.

00:33:43 Speaker_01
If you're living through an election that Russia is targeting with paid propaganda and deep fake videos about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and supposedly destroyed ballots in Pennsylvania, if you, in other words, are an American voter in 2024, where that is what Russia is doing in this election, while the Republican candidate and his top funder, Elon Musk, are both reportedly,

00:34:07 Speaker_01
in frequent personal communication with Vladimir Putin, and in Musk's case, with the senior Russian government official who appears to be orchestrating this attack on our election for Trump's benefit.

00:34:20 Speaker_01
Well, then it might help to check in with somebody who knows how Russia works, who has personal experience with it. Victoria Nuland retired this year after more than three decades of government service.

00:34:30 Speaker_01
She retired as the number three ranking official at the U.S. State Department. In her time in government service, she also became a top target of Putin and Russian intelligence agencies. Putin's regime bugged her cell phone.

00:34:44 Speaker_01
They leaked recordings of her calls with other diplomats in an attempt to undermine her relationship and America's relationship with our allies. Russian state media has consistently portrayed her as a kind of uber-powerful American boogeyman.

00:35:00 Speaker_01
They've blamed her, for example, for single-handedly causing the revolution that ousted Ukraine's pro-Putin president in 2013. That was 2013. They're still blaming her for that now.

00:35:12 Speaker_01
Victoria Nuland is an American government expert on Russian aggression. She also personally knows what it's like to experience it firsthand.

00:35:21 Speaker_01
Joining us now is Victoria Nuland, career diplomat, recently retired as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. Madam Ambassador, thank you very much for being here. I know that TV interviews aren't your favorite thing in the world.

00:35:34 Speaker_00
Thank you, Rachel. It's great to be back with you and to talk about this issue, as you and I did in 2016, as we did as well in 2020.

00:35:42 Speaker_01
This is the third election in a row in which Russia has tried to interfere to try to get Trump into the White House.

00:35:49 Speaker_01
How do you assess the magnitude and the type of interference they're attempting this year compared to what they've done in his previous two elections?

00:36:01 Speaker_00
Well, as you said earlier, Rachel, he's at it again. This time, he's not even trying to hide his hand, and he has far more sophisticated tools. You know, his A.I. is better, so he can make these fake videos.

00:36:15 Speaker_00
He has done things like spend $10 million trying to buy American influencers and get them parroting his lines and not even know it's happening. But he's also got a brand-new, very, very powerful tool, which is Elon Musk and X.

00:36:31 Speaker_00
You know, in 2020, the social media companies worked hard with the U.S. government to try to do content moderation to try to catch this stuff as it was happening.

00:36:41 Speaker_00
But this time, we have Elon Musk talking directly to the Kremlin and ensuring that every time the Russians put out something like this, it gets 5 million views on X before anybody can catch it.

00:36:53 Speaker_00
So, it's quite dangerous, although I do think the American electorate has gotten more sophisticated and more savvy about this stuff.

00:37:02 Speaker_01
If an American citizen is talking to senior officials in the Russian government about anything, aren't they supposed to be reporting those contacts to the US government?

00:37:12 Speaker_01
And if so, is that just a nice thing to do, like a patriotic thing to do, or are they required to do that?

00:37:20 Speaker_00
It's not a legal requirement, but it obviously causes some suspicion and question about what Musk's motives are here, especially because Putin doesn't like it when he thinks we're interfering in his election, which we

00:37:36 Speaker_00
don't do, despite his views about that. But, clearly, he's interfering in our election, and Musk is helping him. And Musk is also helping Trump. So now you have this triumvirate all on the same team.

00:37:51 Speaker_00
And Putin doesn't think it's important to try to look even with any semblance of evenhandedness in this election. He knows what he wants. He wants Donald Trump elected.

00:38:06 Speaker_01
I wanted to ask you about something else that was reported today in The New York Times, which is that, according to The Times' reporting, one of the ideas that's circulating in Trump's campaign is that if he's elected, they should get rid of FBI background checks for security clearances.

00:38:23 Speaker_01
that instead the White House alone or the White House maybe with a private company that they appoint for this purpose should decide who gets security clearances without allowing the FBI to review, for example, people's personal information.

00:38:38 Speaker_01
past convictions, people's connections with foreign governments, people's susceptibility to blackmail, or other reasons they might be denied a security clearance. That feels like a very risky move in any circumstance.

00:38:51 Speaker_01
Given the circumstance that we're just discussing right here, it seems almost insanely reckless. But I wanted to get your take on it.

00:39:03 Speaker_00
Insanely reckless is the right way to put it, Rachel. That would mean that there would be no independent check on who anybody around Trump was talking to, might be influenced by, might be paid by, and it would put

00:39:19 Speaker_00
It would put Xi Jinping, it would put Kim Jong-un directly into the Situation Room and into Donald Trump's brain. And that's very, very dangerous.

00:39:30 Speaker_00
But equally dangerous, if I may, is what Trump is saying about what he would do inside the United States. that he would turn the U.S. police, that he would turn maybe the U.S.

00:39:44 Speaker_00
military against his enemies, that he would obviously use the courts to go after folks that oppose him. He is already suing members of the media. and that he would deny licenses to media organs that oppose him. Who does this sound like?

00:40:02 Speaker_00
It sounds like his friend Vladimir Putin and the way Putin operates in Russia and what Putin did to the tiny, fledgling democracy that was starting to sprout in Russia. So, Trump is also taking Putin lessons, as autocrats around the world are.

00:40:21 Speaker_01
the idea of an American led by an admirer of Putin who puts the United States not as the leader of the free world, but rather into effectively a sort of axis with the dictator of Russia and the dictator in China and North Korea.

00:40:37 Speaker_01
And I mean, to join, for the United States to be allied with those countries instead of our traditional alliances, I'm not sure people have absorbed. the magnitude of what you're just describing there. But maybe we will.

00:40:49 Speaker_01
Victoria Newland, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, career public servant. It is always a real honor to have a chance to talk with you, Ambassador. Thank you so much for being here.

00:40:59 Speaker_00
Thank you, Rachel.

00:41:00 Speaker_01
All right, we'll be right back. So we know that a big part of the Republican Party's plan to make sure Donald Trump gets another term in the White House, it runs through the court system.

00:41:15 Speaker_01
With just a week to go before Election Day, we've already seen state Supreme Courts in three different really important swing states all come to definitive sort of resounding rulings against Republicans on voting challenges.

00:41:27 Speaker_01
In all cases, they've been pro-democracy rulings so far.

00:41:31 Speaker_01
Tuesday last week, it was a unanimous, really fast ruling from the Georgia State Supreme Court, smacking down that state election board's attempts to impose a bunch of last-minute new rules that experts say would have opened the door to real chaos in Georgia on Election Day.

00:41:45 Speaker_01
Then the next day last week, Wednesday, it was Pennsylvania, that state's Supreme Court ruled that voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected, they should be allowed to cast a provisional ballot and have that vote counted.

00:41:58 Speaker_01
And now today, it was the Nevada State Supreme Court. They ruled against another Republican challenge. They're gonna allow election officials to count mail-in ballots that arrive without a postmark as many as three days after election day.

00:42:10 Speaker_01
So yeah, there's gonna be a big legal fight right there alongside the political fight in this election. But so far, the legal side of the fight is proceeding in a sort of orderly and normal way, at least in the state courts. And that,

00:42:23 Speaker_01
Shouldn't be something that counts as news, but in an environment like this it counts as news. I'll be right back One last thing before we go.

00:42:35 Speaker_01
So I made this new documentary about Russian interference in the 2020 election and Trump's first impeachment. It's called From Russia with Lev. You can now watch it streaming. It's available on Documentary Plus.

00:42:48 Speaker_01
If you wanna, you just scan the QR code right there on your screen and it'll take you right to it at Doc Plus, which is very cool. Also, MSNBC Films has another new documentary out that you may have heard about. It's called Separated.

00:43:01 Speaker_01
Un-American Tragedy. It details the story of the Trump administration's horrific child separation policy. Screenings of Separated are happening this week in eight different towns and cities. You can see them here on the screen.

00:43:16 Speaker_01
You can scan there to get tickets. You can head to mattoblog.com for information on both of those films.

00:43:22 Speaker_01
As for us here together on TV tomorrow night, I'll be joining Joy Reid during the 7 o'clock Eastern hour for coverage of the big speech by Vice President Harris from the Ellipse. The campaign's calling it her closing argument.

00:43:33 Speaker_01
I'll be here with Joy at 7, with Chris at 8. Really looking forward to that. Then on Sunday, we're going to start our election special coverage, me and the whole gang, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern on Sunday night. Really hope you'll be here for that.

00:43:46 Speaker_01
But that does it for now.