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It's Friday, November 1st.Yeah, that's right.We're in November.We start here. The presidential candidates both head out West as they begin a final cross-country push.As I was saying, I love the Hispanics.I love them.
With just one weekend worth of rallies to go, how do they plan to capitalize?Meanwhile, if this is an election about economics... That's a number that any president would want to tout.Each candidate has a distinct vision.
So what would day one be like in a Harris or Trump White House?And they've been deployed around the country to spot voter fraud.
Have you seen any evidence of fraud so far?
No.You've been out watching?No.But are they there to investigate or instigate?From ABC News, this is Start Here.I'm Brad Milkey. You guys, it is November 2024.
Officially, this is the month that we've been pointing to as a potential turning point for this country.And it's arrived.We know, of course, that this presidential race is extremely close in several key battleground states.
Just yesterday, CNN and SSRS put out some state level polling showing Donald Trump up a point in Georgia, Kamala Harris up a point in North Carolina. which we know are well within the margins of error.
In the so-called blue wall states of Michigan and Wisconsin, CNN has Harris with a narrow lead and a dead heat in Pennsylvania.But again, this is so close that any state or any voters that pollsters did not pick up on could swing this significantly.
So in their final weekend of convincing, which is now T minus four days, where are these candidates campaigning and perhaps more importantly, How are they campaigning?What are they focusing on?
And what does that tell us about how this could all turn out?It's check-in time.Let's go to ABC's chief White House correspondent, Mary Bruce, who is on the road with the Harris campaign.
Mary, where are these candidates putting their focus starting now?
Yeah, good morning from Las Vegas and happy official election month.We made it, Brad.Look, they are out blitzing the battlegrounds, no surprise here.Both candidates are hitting all of the major critical key states in these final days.
And, you know, it is interesting that the road to the White House has led both candidates to these crucial Western battlegrounds, right?
Last night, both of them out in Las Vegas as they try to court these key constituencies that are going to be critical in determining who wins this race.And of course, the Hispanic vote is so key.
So Donald Trump yesterday saying he's here for one simple reason.As I was saying, I love the Hispanics.I love them.
Of course, it comes in the wake of the uproar over that speaker at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, making those crude racist jokes about Latinos, calling Puerto Rico a, quote, floating island of garbage.
So he's still doing some cleanup from that, obviously, and trying to reach out to those critical constituencies.
With your vote in this election, I will end inflation.I will stop the massive invasion of criminals.
into your state.And he's continuing to hammer his economic message, well aware that that remains the top issue for voters, Brad.Are you ready to make your voices heard?
Do we believe in freedom?
Harris overnight also trying to reach out to those same voters.She was out with J-Lo and Minaj.She's really been leaning into the celebrity power in this last week, hoping that it will help drive enthusiasm, which will then translate into votes.
And she's also banking on a surge of women in this final push to help get her across the finish line. And then she's continuing to take her closing message on the road.
She's blitzing the all-important state of Wisconsin today, then tomorrow she's in Georgia and North Carolina, then heading back to Michigan on Sunday.And Brad, we do now know where she's going to be on election night.
She will be at her alma mater at Howard University in Washington.
That'll be really interesting imagery and historical precedence there too. Hey, Mary, at this point, there are so few undecided voters, like truly people who are like, they both sound good to me.
Like how much focus, and you kind of touched on this, how much focus is on convincing people to show up for you and how much is on convincing them to show up at all?And like, do you have to home in on a particular message to those voters?
It's a bit of both, right?She's out here doing this big get out the vote effort, but she is also still trying to reach those unicorn voters, that small sliver of voters who are somehow still up for grabs.
And so yes, she's been hammering home this message of unity.
So let's approach this with the spirit that is about bringing folks back together and reminding everyone the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.
So let's approach it that way.Promising to be a president for all Americans.That, of course, is intended to reach those independent and dissatisfied Republicans who may still be considering backing Harris.
But yes, she is also, of course, hammering home at the issues.She too is talking about the economy and pitting her plan directly against Donald Trump's.And she's seizing on new comments from her opponent.
I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.I'm going to protect them I'm going to protect them from migrants coming in.I'm going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things.
Harris pouncing on that, calling those comments offensive.
He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.
We know, of course, she has been zeroing in on the issue of abortion, a key focus of this campaign.She slams Donald Trump for repeatedly boasting of appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
And then, of course, Harris continues to make that overarching argument that has been at the core of her campaign throughout, that Donald Trump is simply unfit to hold office again, that she is the candidate who will preserve American democracy and believe in the ideals that this country is founded on.
Well, and we hear about Harris trying to, like, take these moments that Trump has created and, like, attacking those.Are there vulnerabilities for the Harris campaign right now in the final days?
Well, Donald Trump is certainly trying to keep alive and keep the focus on those comments that President Biden made earlier in the week.
It's hard to forget that image of Donald Trump earlier in the week arriving at his rally, you know, in a garbage truck.An obvious reference to the president's comments that seemed to suggest that he was calling Donald Trump supporters garbage.
Kamala Harris, of course, quick to distance herself from that.The president and the White House insisting he was not calling Donald Trump supporters garbage.
But yeah, look, the Trump campaign is trying to take as many shots as they can as Harris, wherever they can.And Harris, too.That's what happens in the final days of a race, Brad.
All right, Mary Bruce there on the campaign trail in Vegas right now.Be careful, Mary.You know what they say about staying more than one night in Vegas.Get to your next swing state.Viva Las Vegas, Brad.OK, thanks so much.Bye.
Now, of course, campaigns are not just won and lost by what the candidates say.They're also shaped by what's happening in the lives of voters.And this week, we're getting our last indicators about how the economy is doing before the big day.
Let's go to ABC's Elizabeth Schulze, who covers economics.Elizabeth, a year ago, I would have told you that Biden's reelection bid would have depended entirely on the Biden economy, but a lot has changed, right?
Like, namely, Biden's not in the race, and I guess his economy appears to be doing okay.
And frankly, Brad, we're in an economy right now that looks pretty good for anyone who is trying to run on it just on the surface when you look at the numbers.So today we get a new read on jobs, the last jobs report before the election.
It's expected to show a little bit of a downshift in hiring, mostly affected by some of those hurricanes that we saw. last month and how that might have slowed down hiring in those states.
But overall, when you look at the unemployment rate, the number of people who are looking for work right now and are able to find a job, that rate is sitting near a 50 year low, 4.1 percent.It's been at this steady low rate for several months now.
And that's a number that any president would want to tout.It's something that President Biden does try to tout.
When you look at the inflation data, which has been haunting the Biden administration because we saw that spike in prices a couple of years ago, that has been improving.
And now inflation at 2.4 percent, the annual inflation rate, is sitting at a three year low.And overall, the economy is growing.You look at the GDP report, which we also got out this week, the first read of GDP, the
how much overall the economy is producing over the last three months, that was still pretty steady.When you look at consumer spending, it's steady, it's strong, it's fueling a lot of growth in the economy.
So big picture, hiring is still solid, inflation about where it should be in a healthy economy, and the overall American economic growth has just been chugging along.So the fact is, This is an economy that's solid.
But as we've talked about for so many months, a lot of voters aren't really content with a solid economy.They're still feeling sticker shock from inflation a couple of years ago.
They look at prices and even though the rate of prices has slowed, prices are still high.We've not seen a huge price drop.So they're looking at what they're paying now versus what they were four years ago.And they say, well, it's a lot more.
And that is why we've seen in a lot of the polls
former President Trump leading Vice President Harris on the issue of the economy and something that we've seen the Vice President really try to shift her messaging to focus on how to tackle what she calls this cost of living crisis, especially for voters who are feeling like the economy right now is just not working for them and hasn't been working for them over the past four years.
Well, and so let's talk about, like, the candidates.Let's do kind of a final check-in, the final gauge on which each candidate would mean to the economy.Like, let's start with Trump, right?
If Trump wins on Tuesday, Elizabeth, what happens in a Trump presidency when he takes over again?
OK, so when you think about Trump's economic agenda, he's thrown a lot out there.But one idea he comes back to rally after rally, speech after speech is tariffs.
We're going to call this policy Build It In America Plan.Because when foreign leaders and CEOs call me up to complain about our tariffs, my answer would be very simple.Build it in America.
Very simple.The former president wants to impose what he calls sweeping universal tariffs, basically taxes, fees on all products that are coming into the United States from other countries.
You would charge those companies more for bringing their products into the U.S.And the idea is that would raise money for the U.S.
government and would encourage domestic manufacturing here because companies would be more incentivized to produce products. within the United States.
Now, of course, when you ask economists what do those tariffs actually do, they warn it could ultimately result in higher costs for consumers.Because the fact is, Brad, we are in a global economy.
We import a lot of products from a lot of other countries all around the world.And just kind of stopping that and thinking that those companies and countries
wouldn't be bringing goods into the US, we wouldn't be shipping goods out because of isolationist policies like tariffs.Not super realistic.More realistic, you would see those companies kind of pass down those costs, higher prices for consumers.
That's the traditional logic.It's some of what we did see actually happen with products that had high tariffs under Trump's first administration.The other policy that he really focuses on is another pillar of his first term, which was
lower tax rates, especially for corporations.The former president really wants to extend those tax cuts.It was kind of his signature legislative accomplishment in his first term, lower tax rates for companies.
and for individuals and small businesses.
So we brought the rate down, and you saw this, from close to 40% to 21%.And you've already had that.Nobody thought it could be done.We got it down to 21%.Now we're going to get it down to 15%.But only if they build it in America.
Does that make sense?Those tax cuts actually expire next year.So no matter who becomes president, it's going to be a big debate in Congress.And if the former president wants to extend them, and go even further.
He thinks companies should be paying even less in taxes.He says this is a way to generate more economic growth because the more you pay in taxes, the less companies are investing and hiring.
That's a traditional idea we've seen from a lot of Republicans and the former president certainly want to say this is something that would be a priority if I win.
Okay, that's really helpful.So tariffs and taxes are like the main things that you and economists are thinking about here.What about Harris?Is her campaign just, does it end up being, I won't do that stuff.
Like, I will just continue Biden's policies, things will stay as they are.
No, and a lot of the underpinnings of the vice president's campaign have been ideas we've seen put forward under the Biden-Harris administration, but she's taken them a step further.So think of housing, for example.
We've heard President Biden talk a lot about the need for affordable housing, but Vice President Harris as put forward policies that would kind of dramatically expand the government's role in trying to make housing more affordable.
We will work with builders and developers to construct 3 million new homes and rentals for the middle class because increasing the housing supply will help drive down the cost of housing.
Trying to incentivize home builders to build more homes, especially for first-time buyers or affordable rental units, kind of
basically giving them tax credits to try to build houses, which we know is a big problem when you think about why prices for homes are so high.There just are not enough homes out there.
She also wants to give a tax credit for first-time homebuyers, $25,000 in down payment assistance.So this idea of how to make the cost of living more affordable.She's talked a lot about expanding the child tax credit.
Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a middle-class tax break that includes $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child's life.
something that we had seen momentum for under the Biden administration didn't actually end up happening.
She wants that child tax credit to be a lot higher to help with the cost of high childcare, to help with the cost for families when they're thinking about day-to-day prices.
And then the vice president, ultimately, Brad, has proposed some ways to pay for these policies, at least, would be raising taxes on corporations, which is different from former President Trump, and on the wealthiest Americans.
So bringing in more revenue for the government by making some of those big corporations pay more in taxes and by making the top 1% pay higher taxes, too.
Right.And as I hear you say it, both of these platforms rely so much on Congress that they will be very dependent on winning the House and Senate or working with those lawmakers as they come into office.Elizabeth Schulze, thanks for the primer.
Next up on Start here, there are official poll watchers and then there are election vigilantes.Why officials are preparing for both after the break.
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A majority of Americans say they have confidence that ballots for president will be accurately cast and counted in the election on Tuesday.But among Republicans, that faith is significantly lower.
Fewer than a third trust the process, according to Gallup.
And while election fraud in this country is vanishingly rare, when you think it's real and that nothing's being done to stop it, that leads to some of the most suspicious among us to start inserting themselves in the election process.
Republican and Trump challengers claim they couldn't do the job they were credentialed to do and allowed to do by state law, to watch the counting of Detroit ballots.
Over the last four years, a small army of people have been recruited to watch over the casting of ballots. But are they creating the very problem they wish to solve?And could they be used to tilt the election toward the candidate of their choice?
Let's go to ABC's Devin Dwyer, who's been spending time in the world of so-called election vigilantes in this, the final installment of our series, Protecting Your Vote.Devin, we saw suspicion at polling places four years ago.
Some of that is honest questioning of what can be a pretty confusing process.Others appeared to be acting in bad faith.I mean, how has this evolved over the last four years?
And poll watchers, Brad, have been part of American elections for generations.These are partisan volunteers who are recruited by the parties to stand watch.
They basically have no responsibility other than to watch people cast their ballots and watch the election workers count the ballots.But what we saw in 2020 was that a number of these partisans began to insert themselves into the process.
create some obstruction, engage in threatening behavior, also be the grounds for future legal challenges.
She suggests that what she's recording is someone delivering thousands of ballots in the middle of the night saying they saw certain things, nefarious behavior, filing objections.
This lady could have simply cracked her window open.And as a seven action news representative, I would have gladly told her that it was a box full of batteries.
And now, as we're on the cusp of Election Day 2024, there's a real concern that vigilance is turning into vigilantism on the part of particularly conservative volunteers and conservative voters who have started to take matters into their own hands based on, you know, the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen.
There's a difference between someone taking the law into their own hands as one person or getting really interested in the elections as one person and an organization of such people, right?
Are we sort of beginning to see the latter, a really organized movement here?Well, this is really a point of pride, Brad, for Republicans.
We can never go back and repeat 2020, but we can learn the lessons from 2020.
But the Republican National Committee this year says they've got over 175,000, a groundswell of these volunteer poll watchers, poll workers, and lawyers to be dispersed mainly in Democratic precincts in these key states.
Have you seen any evidence of fraud so far?No.You've been out watching?
No.Recently in Virginia, I met Jeff Fuller, a former Army Special Operations Officer and a Republican poll worker and poll watcher.He oversees the poll watching effort in Prince William County, Virginia.
And what do poll watchers actually do?What are they looking for?
You know, is the voter, when he comes in, is he asked his name and address?Does he give his name and address?And can the poll watcher hear that?
Fuller describes himself unabashedly, Brad, as a 2020 denier.He just doesn't believe that the last election was run fairly.
I guess you could call me a 2020 election denier in the sense that I thought it was ridiculous.
Despite the fact, as I put to him, that more than 60 court challenges did not legitimize those concerns.Bill Barr, the Republican attorney general, obviously said there was no widespread fraud that cost the election.
He is adamant that he saw it and he is recruiting others to be on the lookout this time to see the same thing.
I think he got away heavy on the transparency question because That's what generates a lot of these conspiracy theories and who could have done what to who and so forth.
We were there, Brad, when he was testifying before the county election board, urging them to have added transparency at every single step of the ballot handling process.
Prince William County in Virginia, which is sort of a purple district in what used to be more of a swing state, has a good bit of transparency.And Fuller admits that, that they run their operation pretty well.
But he says there's one part of the process where there aren't observers.And that's as those poll workers are curing ballots, ballots that were screwed up in some way so far, they have not allowed observers to see that part of things.
And the fact that the board goes, looks at it, is fine. But it doesn't calm me down when I think about the role of the parties in making sure all this stuff is copacetic.
But the other side, Brad, says, you know, how much is enough?I mean, we have cameras installed.They have closed circuit TV.You can stream it online.They have volunteers at all these places.
It's almost as if the critics say that they are simply looking for a pretense to bring challenges.
What I'm also wondering, Devin, if you're one of these election workers or even if you're just a voter going to a place to drop off something and you see people who are clearly partisan, who clearly are looking for a reason to flag the cops or even cause a scene themselves, does that convince people not to vote in the first place or not to take part in the process?
Is there an intimidation factor here?
Oh, there's most certainly is an intimidation factor.And that's one of the concerns this year that independent election watchdogs have.And we have seen it on the ground.
I mean, a couple of years ago during the midterm elections, there was an armed poll watcher that was trailing ballot officials in Texas.
In North Carolina in 2022, a number of poll watchers were accused of blocking access to voting machines, getting in the way, raising so many incessant objections that the poll workers couldn't even do their jobs.
And there's also evidence, and we've talked about it on this podcast, Brad, of these poll watchers, vigilantes going even further, not just getting in the way, but threatening violence.
You change the way you do things, how you talk about things, what you share on social media, how you arm your house and arm yourself.
Tina Barton is a Republican, former election official from Michigan, who was seriously threatened after the 2020 vote.
Hi, Tina Barton.This is pissed off Patriots of America.
She shared with us that voicemail where the threat is, you know, gives you goosebumps to hear.
We will take you out. your family, your life, and you deserve the throat to the knife.
That individual ended up pleading guilty in February of this year.And just last week, I was able to go down and watch him be sentenced to 14 months in prison.
Tina Barton travels the country.She was in South Carolina recently briefing state election officials there about how to turn down the temperature.
Something comes through and a threat comes through to your life that it will be investigated. and hopefully there will be justice served as it was in my case.
The good poll watchers, so to speak, like Jeff Fuller, the Republican from Prince William County, Virginia, acknowledge that poll workers are human.
We do not distrust the election officers.They're all good people.But people can make mistakes.
These examples, let's be clear, have been relatively few.Everyone acknowledges that and no one wants to be engaging in hyperbole about what has happened.
But there is a concern when you talk about 175,000 Republican poll watchers this year, that is a very significant uptick in numbers that things could be different.
Yeah, such high stakes for wherever you are in this, right?Because obviously, the people who are doing this ballot watching, they consider it high stakes, and yet so high stakes to make sure every American feels like they can do their job and vote.
All right, Devin Dwyer, thank you so much.Thank you, Brad. Okay, one more quick break.When we come back, hadn't this thief ever heard that's nacho cheese?One last thing is next.
This podcast is supported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.For more than 75 years, AU has supported freedom without favor and equality without exception.Learn more at au.org slash podcast.
And one last thing.Well, this really stinks. For the last week, the cheese world has been beleaguered by a shocking heist involving almost 50,000 pounds of cheddar.
It was a hoax.It was just, it was theft.It was fraud.It was just, I mean, it's nuts.
This is Tom Calver, who appeared on Instagram in a warehouse that would usually be full of those big wheels of aged Westcombe cheddar.You know how the champagne only comes from the champagne region?
Some cheese snobs think this is the only place where you're able to get true cheddar.Recently, he got an order from a well-known cheese company called Neal's Yard Dairy.
Niels said, hey, we got asked to send this big French distributor several truckloads of your cheese.So he prepped the order.It got picked up.Only problem is Niels had put in this order without actually getting payment from that French distributor.
And only after all this cheese had been shipped, did everyone realize those truckers weren't real cheese distributors.They were scammers.They took the cheddar and ran.
We basically sent out a load of cheese through Neil's Yard Dairy to France, and it's been stolen.
This was cheese fraud on a massive scale.Two other artisanal cheese makers have been caught up in this as well.
And when you counted all these cloth-wrapped wheels that have been handed over, it added up to about $400,000 of some of the highest quality cheddar on earth.
Tom Calver says Neil still paid him in full, despite never getting that money from the customer.They just took this enormous hit.But yesterday, there was some great news.Police have made an arrest.
A 63-year-old man in South London was detained on suspicion of fraud and handling stolen goods.The cheese itself, though, apparently still has not been recovered.
Celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver took to Instagram to warn people to beware of black market cheddar.
I mean, I don't know what they're going to do with it, really.I mean, are they going to, like, unpeel it with the cloth and then cut it, cut the skins off and grate it and get rid of it in the fast food industry, in the commercial industry?
He also points out that because Neal's keeps so many other small batch cheese makers in business, this swindling could be felt in cheese shops around the world.In the meantime, if you see a deal that's too Gouda to be true, it probably is.
Same mold story.Am I right?As always, I'm happy to work with the sharpest team in the biz.So start here is produced by Kelly Torres, Jen Newman, Vika Aronson, Anthony Ali, Mara Milwaukee, Cameron Chertavian, and Amira Williams.
Ariel Chester is our social media producer.Josh Cohen is director of podcast programming.I'm our managing editor, Laura Mayers, our executive producer.Thanks to John Newman, Tara Gimble, and Liz Alessi.
Special thanks this week to Chris Berry, Maryam Khan, Luke Brueggemann, and Cindy Gally.I'm Brad Mielke. I'll see you next week. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.
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