Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It is the last day of campaigning ahead of the US election and Kamala Harris and Donald
00:10Trump are crisscrossing the key Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania and Michigan today
00:16in a last ditch attempt to win over voters. Some 78 million Americans have already cast
00:23their ballots. But as Harris and Trump fight for the small handful that remain undecided,
00:30here's a little of their closing messages.
00:34So church, we have two days, two days until we decide the fate of our nation. And here
00:45is what feeds my spirit as I travel across our beautiful nation from state to state and
00:51from church to church. I see faith in action in remarkable ways. I see a nation determined
01:00to turn the page on hatred and division and chart a new way forward to crooked country.
01:06And we're gonna make it straight. We're gonna make it straight. And it's not an easy thing
01:10to do. They'll want to put you in jail because you want to make it straight. Think of it.
01:17They cheat on elections and you call them on it and they want to put you in jail. Think
01:22about it. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. But I love it. You know why? Because
01:28we've proven something. We've shown something and we're going to get it fixed and we got
01:31to win this election. It's all up to now. I mean, we got two days. We've been working
01:36for nine years. We did a great job.
01:39Well, I'm very pleased to welcome to the programme live now, John Rick MacArthur. He is the president
01:46and the publisher of Harper's Magazine. It's a November issue that you're looking at the
01:50front cover of there. Focuses on Trump and his impact on the Republican Party. Welcome
01:56to you. Thanks for joining us today.
01:59Thanks for having me.
02:00Look, Trump in that soundbite we just played talking about the United States being a crooked
02:05country. It is a rather dark vision of America he's been painting in the last couple of days.
02:13How do you view Trump's language, his strategy as we enter these final hours before voting?
02:21Well, it's also laden with irony because he's a crook. He's a convicted criminal. So for
02:28him to talk about making the crooked straight, which, of course, also sounds religious from
02:34the Bible, is sort of remarkable. And what I see increasingly is a return to the idea
02:43that this is a referendum on Trump. It's not about Kamala Harris. It's not about Democrats
02:49versus Republicans. It's really a referendum about Trump. And Trump seems to be trying
02:55to beat himself in some ways.
02:57Yesterday, I see that at a rally in Pennsylvania, he actually went off script and said that
03:04he never should have left the White House. He should have just stayed, which is absolutely
03:09bizarre and feeds into the idea that he's a fascist who wants to take over the country.
03:15And at the same time, he doesn't really come up with anything specific that he can do to
03:22straighten the crooked country. He just warns that there's going to be an election stolen.
03:28He's going to have the election stolen, which is also kind of self-defeating. Instead of
03:32saying, I'm looking forward to winning tomorrow, he says, in effect, I'm expecting to be robbed
03:39tomorrow, which is a very odd way to campaign politically.
03:44It's worked well for him up to a point. And Kamala Harris is a weak candidate, quite frankly.
03:52She's not an effective counterpuncher. And she speaks in cliches and bromides. But as
03:58long as he keeps shooting himself in the foot, like his rally in Madison Square Garden, where
04:05he let the comedian call Puerto Rico a garbage dump or a pile of garbage, he's beating himself.
04:15You talked about Kamala Harris there, and you said that in your view, she's a weak candidate.
04:20Explain to us why you believe that.
04:22Well, she doesn't stand for any. She never says I stand for this or I stand for that.
04:27She only talks about standing for the future, turning the page, ending division.
04:34But she doesn't say how she's going to end the division. The fundamental problem with
04:39the Democratic Party is since Bill Clinton ran it, it's been the party of free trade,
04:45the party of Wall Street, the party of deregulation, the party of high finance.
04:50And there are millions and millions of angry, blue-collar, working-class people in the United
04:55States who have vowed never to vote Democrat again because they lost their jobs because
05:02of NAFTA or permanent normal trade relations with China. There's a deep, deep resentment
05:08in the working class, which they have not addressed. They just keep saying, try to think
05:13positively. And if you're making half what you made 20 years ago, inflation-adjusted,
05:19it's hard to say, oh, I'm with the program. I'm with the positive people. I'm not with
05:25the dark, negative people who support Trump. They're very angry.
05:31Do you have a sense as to what the actual result will be? I mean, you paint a very flawed
05:37vision of both candidates. We've been hearing that the race is extremely tight. What's your
05:43expectation for the election?
05:46Well, let me tell you, I'm afraid to make a prediction because I'm almost certainly
05:51going to be wrong if I try to make a prediction. I'll tell you what my nightmare is, though.
05:55My nightmare is that Harris runs up a bigger popular vote victory than Hillary Clinton
06:01in 2016, and Trump still takes the Electoral College. I'm not predicting that. I'm just
06:08saying, then you might have riots on the left. It's quite terrifying to think about it. In
06:17the case that it's a dead heat in a lot of these swing states like Michigan, what you're
06:25going to see is a long, long, long recount and no decision. There's not going to be a
06:30decision on who's won for weeks if it's as close as the polls say they are. And I'm very
06:37worried about that, too, because during the long delays about who's won Pennsylvania,
06:42who's won Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, et cetera, a lot of bad things can happen. Don't
06:49forget that what broke Trump in 2020 was Fox News calling Arizona for Biden, which is extraordinary.
07:02His favorite TV network actually plunged a dagger into him. And I'm wondering, again,
07:11whether Fox is going to be straight on this one, because they have a very brilliant election
07:16analysis on Michigan, who's the one who called Arizona. And I'm wondering whether he's going
07:22to be allowed to be honest about what the real results are based on his polling data.
07:29That's fascinating. And there's lots in that that I'd like to unpick if we have the time.
07:32But I do want to ask you, first of all, about early voting. We know some 78 million people
07:38have already voted. Apparently, 50 percent of those are women. Do we know whether early
07:45voting benefits one candidate, one party in particular?
07:51No, but we do know that it benefits chaos. And I'm disappointed that the Democrats and
07:59the Republicans have gone on board with this, because the more voting at a distance or voting
08:07early, voting sort of out of the regular schedule there is, the more challenges there are going
08:13to be. If everything happens on the same day, it's harder for the loser, I think, to complain
08:21because everybody's following the same rules on the same day, depending on which state
08:26they're in. Now you're going to have a huge amount of mail-in ballots, which are going
08:31to be easily challenged or will be automatically challenged if they favor the wrong candidate,
08:40so to speak. So I think it's a terrible thing to have early—actually, I'm not an early
08:45voting person or a mail-in voting person. And it's ironic also, Trump says he's for
08:51it now, whereas before he thought it was a terrible thing and a guarantee for fraudulent
08:57Now, because he seems to think he's winning with the mail-in ballots, he's fine with it.
09:04We'll see what he says day after tomorrow.
09:07Just a final question then to pick up on what you were saying before about there being challenges
09:11in the courts if this result is as close as the pollsters tell us it will be. What do
09:18you think it will take for supporters of Trump, MAGA America, to accept the results if Harris
09:26indeed comes out on top, but by a small margin?
09:28Well, I mean, they'll have to be convinced by the local Republican establishment that
09:35they lost, which is what happened finally in 2020. Local Republicans and even high-level
09:42party officials said, look, you've lost. Face facts. We've done the recount three times
09:49in Arizona or wherever, and every time you come out the loser. And he finally had to
09:54accept reality up to a point. But then, of course, on January 6th, he didn't accept reality.
10:00He urged his supporters to storm the Capitol. So I'm worried about that, too.
10:06You know, liberals are afraid of white riots, of people burning down government buildings.
10:16White Trumpists are afraid of being robbed again, being cheated. And listen, the Democratic
10:23Party is no stranger to election fraud. So it depends on the state. But I think this
10:30is going to be the most closely watched, maybe the most honest election we've ever had because
10:36of the potential of challenges from both sides and because Trump screamed bloody murder in
10:432020 and is still saying the election was stolen from him. He just said it again yesterday.
10:47He should have stayed in power. Should have just stayed.
10:50There's so much on that I'd like to ask you, but unfortunately, we are out of time. John
10:53Rick MacArthur talking to us there. He's the president of Harper's Magazine. Thanks very much.
10:58Thank you very much.