'She's Lazy as Hell'
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It's Wednesday, October 23rd, right now on CNN This Morning. She's lazy as hell. 13 days to go, Donald Trump bashing Kamala Harris on the trail, taking aim at her schedule with that insult, plus. Donald Trump said, I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. The Harris campaign looking to seize on a new report in the race's final days as the Trump campaign pushes back, and. Would you consider if you win and he's convicted a pardon for former President Trump? I'm not gonna get into those

Pardoning Trump? The vice president won't say whether she would pardon the former president if she wins. And... Lock him up politically. President Biden's message for New Hampshire Democrats on the potential of a second Trump term.

All right, 6 a.m. here on the East Coast, a live look at tonight's stage for CNN's Presidential Town Hall featuring Kamala Harris, moderated by our own Anderson Cooper. It's going to take place in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania at the center of it all. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

Just 13 days until Election Day, and this morning, a stark warning from Donald Trump's former chief of staff, the retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, about what a second Trump term would mean for America. Certainly, the former president is in the far right area. He's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators. He has said that.

So he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist, for sure. Kelly going on the record with The New York Times, the paper reporting that Kelly decided to speak out now because he's deeply disturbed by these comments from Trump.

It is the enemy from within and they're very dangerous. We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are the Pelosi's, these people, they're so sick and they're so evil. This as the Atlantic reports that while he was president, Trump said, quote, I need the kind of the generals that Hitler had, people who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.

Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg attributes that to two sources who heard the exchange. The Trump campaign denies that he said it, but John Kelly told the New York Times this. He commented more than once that, you know, that Hitler did some good things too. And of course, if you know history, again, I think he's lacking in that. But if you know what history, you know, Hitler was all about, it'd be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good.

So while Trump is spending his final days on the trail telling locker room stories about Arnold Palmer, serving up fries at McDonald's, it's worth remembering that he's also said this. He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no, other than day one. We're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator.

Trump's campaign has said, of course, that was just a joke. Maybe it was. But when Trump has been given the opportunity to explain his comments about using the U.S. military against the enemy from within, a comment that led John Kelly to speak out now, Trump has responded this way.

But again, he's a political opponent of yours, but he's an enemy. No, he's a, well, he is, of course, he's an enemy. He's an enemy. That's an enemy from within. That's really, that is a threat to democracy. These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at Shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within. She lied. She was supposed to protect the Capitol.

So, with less than two weeks until Election Day, with many of my sources in both parties pointing to signs that momentum is with Donald Trump in these final days, it is worth marking a moment when one of the people who knows Trump's first presidency best, who was in the room with him for years and has devoted his own life entirely to serving the United States of America, tells us this. He's certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about.

and what makes America, America in terms of our Constitution. - What makes America, America. Joining us now to talk about all of this, Elliott Williams, CNN legal analyst, Jonathan Alter, the author of "American Reckoning," Kendra Barkoff, former press secretary to Joe Biden, and Matt Gorman, the former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here. Jonathan, you've spent a lot of time thinking about history. You've seen and covered a lot of that American history.

everything, our media environment is so fragmented, everything flies by us so fast now that it seems sometimes in these final moments of the campaign you can lose sight of what we're really grappling with here. But when the headline in The Atlantic is that Trump wants his generals to be more like Hitler's generals, and you have these comments on the record from Kelly, who's been very careful about how and when he decides to speak out,

it does collectively make a significant statement about where we are. Yes, we're at a moment of national truth.

This is the most significant election since 1864, when if Abraham Lincoln had lost, there would have been a separate peace with the South, as Trump said last week. He favored we would have had a confederacy, no abolition. So this election is as big as that. We now have the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, top military officer. They both use the F word, fascist.

This is not a drill. And when he talks about, you know, enemies from within, he's not just talking about political rivals. He said the Pelosi's, plural. This poor 82-year-old man, a husband,

of Nancy Pelosi, who had his skull fractured. Trump is joking about it when he's still in the hospital. Now he's saying that because of Paul Pelosi's connection to Nancy Pelosi, he's an enemy from within, too. Anybody who is in any way connected to any of his rivals is subject to the full force of his government if he is returned to the Oval Office.

This is dead serious, Casey. People have to wake up and understand our whole system is at stake in this election. Well, and of course the question, and this is something that John Kelly has talked about and focused on and been quoted as talking about, is the use of the United States military and the ways in which when Trump was in office, he would suggest and Kelly would have to push back on

on using the US military in the United States of America. And we didn't play the initial comment yet that Donald Trump had made about using the United States military in the context of Election Day. So let's just watch that as a reminder. The bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.

And I think they're the and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can't let that happen. Matt Gorman, a number of Republicans have been asked about those comments. They've struggled to answer questions about that. Him saying that is is why, according to The Times, Kelly decided to do all of this on the record. Does this make a difference? And.

It does seem as though it's hard to defend. Do you think if Trump is president again, that the same kind of guardrails that existed in a first presidency where you had these military officers staying and doing these things would exist again? I'm skeptical. It will matter, right? I think in setting aside, I have some skepticism about the Goldberg story for some other reasons, but I think setting aside this, I think under two weeks, I think the noise is just at an all-time high right now. And also, let's just be honest.

We're an extremely divided country and the fact that if this is going to move anybody in the margin, I think it's very unlikely at the moment. And especially because we just live in such two completely different universes on this sort of thing. So I am very skeptical at this point in the game if this is going to matter at all. And candidly, after reading the article, nor should it in some respects, but that's a whole different thing.

Kendra, I beg to disagree with you on the nor should it piece. I mean, we should be very scared about our future should there be a Donald Trump presidency number two. He has said he wants to use the active duty military for the George Floyd protests.

He has disrespected our military every step of the way, both alive and dead. And the fact that people can't remember, Hitler killed millions and millions of Jews and other people. And the fact that he wants his generals to be more like Hitler, we should be really scared. And it should be a wake-up call to every American. Well, and Kelly also recounts

that he tried to explain to Trump that in several instances, Hitler's own generals actually tried to take him down because of what he was doing. - Look, the big question for people to decide in the next two weeks is whether the tax cut and federal judges are worth it, because the trade-off is this gamble. And at this point, it's not even a gamble given what

how the first four years of the Trump administration went and what it appears you would get without the guardrails of the John Kellys and other people to restrain his impulses around him, is it actually worth it? And many people right now seem to think that it is. As somebody had said, it's a very close election and that's just for people to decide.

Jonathan, one of the other notes in the Atlantic story that stood out to me is that Goldberg reports, Trump has responded incredulously when told that American military personnel swear an oath to the Constitution and not to the president.

And that is really the central thing that makes America different from other countries. That and the peaceful transfer of power, and we know about his response to that. So this is a man who has routinely violated his oath of office. It's to uphold the Constitution, not a license for his personal power. He admires dictators. Vladimir Putin is the only person in the whole world he's never said anything critical about.

and he wants to be a strong man. So America has to ask itself, do we want an American Putin? That's what's on offer in this election. And, you know, Republicans can rationalize it as much as they want.

They don't want to face the truth here. They know the truth. They're trying to like they think, I don't know, that somehow it'll be restrained in a second term. Please. We know that that's not the case. So this is a moment for conscience of every Republican, every independent. They really have to ask themselves, am I willing to take this risk after John Kelly, Mark Milley,

Tom Esper, all of these people who worked for him said, Mark Esper, this is a dangerous man.

Do you really want to go into the polls, pull the lever for a dangerous man, a threat to our Republic? Really? - Even if you don't go as far as saying a dangerous individual, the words that have come out of his mouth and get explained away as jokes or casual talk or whatever else are quite concerning and ought to be quite concerning. And I think there's a rush, and I think this is what Jonathan's getting at, there's a rush to sort of explain them away. That's a pretty big gamble to take.

particularly based on what you already know about how this person would be likely to govern based on those around them. Matt, are you confident if Trump becomes president again that he won't cross a line in how he uses the U.S. military? I think so, for a couple reasons. It depends also who he staffs us with. And that's also the interesting part is, as we talk about this, who will go into that Trump administration, right? And I think that's the open question at home with this.

All right, well, 13 days still ahead here on CNN This Morning. Generation Z voters will dive into how changes in that demographic could decide the balance of power in the next Congress. Plus, election security, how officials across the country are working around the clock to fight misinformation ahead of November 5th. And lock him up, President Biden raising eyebrows with his comments about Donald Trump. I know this sounds bizarre. It sounds like I said this five years ago, you'd lock me up. We gotta lock him up.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. It's October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer does not run in my family, and yet here I am with stage three breast cancer. That's anchor and senior national correspondent Sarah Seidner. She revealed her diagnosis on air to the world this past January. It is hard to say out loud. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I know this sounds bizarre. It sounds like I said this five years ago. You'd lock me up. We got to lock him up. Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That's what we have to do. It took a moment there. President Biden eventually added the word politically to that remark about locking up Donald Trump.

Of course, though, it did not take the Trump campaign very long to call on Kamala Harris to condemn the president's comments. They said this, quote, Joe Biden just admitted the truth. He and Kamala's plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent, President Trump, because they can't beat him fair and square. Biden was, of course, nodding to a line used by Donald Trump and echoed by his supporters for nearly a decade now. We heard it at a rally just last month.

We're bringing them in at levels that nobody's ever seen, and we're doing it by stupid people like Kamala. She's a stupid person. Stupid person. I don't care. I don't care.

All right. Our panel is back. We've been having a conversation about Americans, America's norms. And of course, this is something that was introduced with Trump's rallies and Hillary Clinton. But Kendra, I mean, Joe Biden saying this, I mean, it does seem to me that if they want to convince Americans that they're that Trump is incorrect in saying that there is a politically motivated thing here, they got to keep their noses clean 100 percent of the time. What did what did you see from the president there? Should he have gone that far?

I mean, he clarified his remarks. He said, lock him out. And politically, I think he said those remarks, but he pretty quickly clarified it. It wasn't hours later. But look at the end of the day. Politically. He said, lock him out. I think the fact that people are jumping on it is pretty ironic, given the fact that

We just saw a clip of Donald Trump saying, you know, she's this, she's that, maybe she's on drugs, maybe this. I mean, the fact is, this is what Donald Trump makes stuff up day in and day out and just throws stuff out there. And he, you know, he's all about the chanting. I think it's, this is just an ironic thing from him. I mean, this started at the 2016 convention when, you know, former General Flynn is leading chants of lock her up, Hillary Clinton.

So it's pretty rich for them to be complaining about at this point. It's always a whataboutism with this crowd. Yeah, but there's a couple things going on here. More than anything else, it was such a profoundly stupid thing for the president to say. Here's why. It played directly into the central point that Donald Trump and folks around him have made, which is that the country has this overweening Justice Department top

down from the president going after its rivals. Now, that's not true. It's patently false. But people buy it and believe it. And Donald Trump has been spreading that nonsense all along. By merely saying the words, he walked off of them and backed off it. By merely articulating it, even as an accident, he gave fire to that nonsense. Now, to be clear, and I want to echo Kendra's point, this isn't a both sides thing. We've spent the last...

19 and a half minutes of this program talking about comments from Donald Trump about dictatorship, the use of the military, calling his opponents stupid,

and on and on and on. It's not that, it's entirely unfair to pick one Joe Biden comment, a pretty egregious one, compared to everything Donald Trump has done. - Joe Biden's been Donald Trump's best circuit the last three weeks. I mean, you have him essentially tying himself with Kamala Harris. She's been responsible for everything he's done in the administration, rebutting the story with DeSantis and her and the phone call over the hurricane. And now this, you can see why they don't want him out that much. - Yeah, that's for sure.

All right, Jonathan, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you coming through and enjoy your perspective. Thanks for being here. All right, coming up next on CNN This Morning, state election officials working to stop a growing wave of misinformation as the election nears. Longtime elections attorney Ben Ginsberg is going to be here to discuss.

All right, welcome back. Parts of the eastern U.S. have yet to see a drop of rain this month, a potentially record-breaking streak, dry streak, impacting those changing fall leaves that we all love to admire. Let's get to our meteorologist, the weatherman himself, live and in person, Derek Van Dam. I am here, not a figment of your screen imagination. It's wonderful to have you here. What are we looking at? Yeah, so this leaf peeping industry is actually a multi-billion dollar industry along the East Coast, so they pay attention to the weather, how it impacts the fall colors.

just like this leaf peeper extraordinaire. I love this time of year and the dry conditions are certainly impacting it. But here's the current state of the fall foliage right now. If you're looking for those maples, they are looking fantastic right along the coastline of Maine.

through Connecticut. The Aspens are on fire right now near Flagstaff, Arizona as well. A bit of information, did you know that in deciduous trees, leaves are actually yellow and orange? It's the chlorophyll and the photosynthesis that actually makes them change colors once we have that autumn season.

move in in the cool weather, then we start to lose the sunlight and that removes the chlorophyll and the changes of the colors exceed. Now look at this, this is what's happening across the mid-Atlantic. D.C. peak is coming, but it has been very dry, so that means a vibrant peak, but it'll be shorter lasting this time. 23 consecutive days, both New York and Atlanta, without a drop of rain from the sky. In fact, we could go the entire month, which would be a first in Atlanta's history, without any rainfall, and of course that is going to impact the drought.

the leaf peeping industry. And look at this warmth. This is convertible weather, Casey. It's looking fantastic. A little cooler, though, the next couple of days. But the extended outlook shows that above average temperatures for our kids heading into Halloween. All right. Well, today is too hot for the Corvette. But Friday looks great. The natural air conditioning just take off that top. Yeah, for sure. All right. Derek, come down for us, Derek. So grateful to have you. Thank you.

All right, still to come here on CNN This Morning, Congress, of course, has notoriously terrible approval ratings, unlikely to be changing anytime soon. We're gonna discuss some new findings from focus groups with Generation Z voters with the longtime pollster Frank Luntz, plus Tim Walz going after billionaire Elon Musk for his recent appearances with the Trump campaign. I'm gonna talk about his running mate, his running mate, Elon Musk. That guy

is literally the richest man in the world spending millions of dollars to help Donald Trump buy an election.

This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. He has this power to be able to take very vulnerable people and he exploits it for profit. I'm talking to Robbie Parker about the death of his daughter at Sandy Hook. He exploited me and my daughter for profit and he exploits his listeners for the same thing. How he helped sue Alex Jones' Infowars and won. And what he thinks of election year gun politics.

Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app.

All right, welcome back. From unsubstantiated claims that voting machines are altering votes to suggesting that election officials are undermining the electoral process if it takes multiple days to count ballots, election misinformation has been making the rounds on social media well before ballots started to be cast. Now, with just 13 days left until Election Day and early voting well underway in multiple states, voters are

CNN reports that state and local election officials have their hands full combating these kinds of falsehoods in real time, and they're preparing for it to get worse. Donald Trump speaking at a roundtable in Miami this week, suggesting his team is preparing for, quote, bad things, referencing the 2020 election, which, of course, he still claims that he won. Let's see what happens, because it all doesn't matter, because, you know, bad things happen. Some very, very bad things happened last time.

And but this time we don't have COVID and it's going to be a lot harder for them to do bad things. So we're going to see we have tremendous people. We have tremendous. We have a lot of lawyers working. We have lawyers working, numbers of lawyers that nobody's ever seen before because we're not going to play games. Kamala Harris preparing for a different kind of scenario, telling NBC News that her campaign has teams in place for a hypothetical scenario in which Trump prematurely declares victory. Of course.

This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some were killed. This is a serious matter.

All right, our panel's back. Joining us to discuss Republican elections lawyer Ben Ginsberg. Ben, wonderful to have you on the show. Great to be here. We, of course, have known each other for many presidential election cycles, and you have seen so much in your long career.

But what we are seeing now in this moment is, it seems to me, a unique and historic challenge for our system. What are you most concerned about as we look to Election Day and

especially in the wake of the doubt that Donald Trump sowed in many Americans' minds about the 2020 election, what we could see this time. One long term, one short term. The long term is that all these unfounded challenges about the election system are corroding faith in a basic American institution. And that has really negative ramifications for whoever wins this election because it's just much harder to govern if a third of the country doesn't believe in elections.

and the peaceful transfer of power. The short-term worry is that somehow voters will not be able to cast their ballots in all the jurisdictions. And something might happen on election day that all the overheated rhetoric will lead to certain events. Now, the positive sign is that in going around the country and talking to election officials,

they are so much better prepared than in 2020.

that community leaders around the country are much more stepping up to support election officials. We've urged people across the political spectrum to kick the tires of the election system, and election officials are really historically transparent in being able, in being willing to answer all the questions of people no matter how much they doubt the veracity of the system.

Is there any place on the map where you are particularly concerned? Well, the seven battleground states are really the places of greatest concern. But would you pull out any of those, I guess, is my question. Well, there are sort of nasty histories in all of them. We've got a system where each state is different.

We have a fierce federalism. We believe in local control of our elections. And so any of the seven states knows that it's got certain issues to deal with. But again, the election officials in each one of those states are preparing for contingencies in a way that they weren't four years ago. Right.

Right. So back on December 4th of 2020, you were writing, looking at this issue. So to take people back in time, Donald Trump at this point has spent about a month, uh,

filing lawsuits, making challenges to the election, but we have not yet hit January 6th, 2021. But even at that point, you wrote this, the country was lucky that President Trump and his reelection campaign were so inept. He ultimately lost by a wide margin and his challenges to the results have been farcical. His rhetoric ramped up in inverse proportion to,

ramped up in inverse proportion to his ability to produce evidence supporting his charges of systemic fraud or rigged elections and the United States might not be so lucky next time. What if the 2020 election had been so close as it was in 2000 and the outcome hinged on a state or states

with truly narrow margin. How would the country have fared under a Trump-style assault on democracy's foundations? Trump's attempts to negate millions of votes by challenging state certifications revealed cracks in those foundations. Some shoring up is clearly needed before the next election cycle begins. Now, you've talked about how they are better prepared. But do you think this shoring up that you, again, warned about before we saw what happened on January 6th has actually happened? And this election is likely to be incredibly close if we're going to believe the polls.

I do believe the shoring up has happened and that all Americans are being are going to be able to cast their ballots and that those ballots will be counted securely. Now, that doesn't mean that the rhetoric won't be just as heated last time. But remember that the things we were talking about in December and took place.

were part, there were then ongoing lawsuits in each of those battleground states. And in none of the 64 cases that Donald Trump and his supporters filed was there any evidence of fraud, absolutely none. And as a result, that will put the rhetoric this time, if it's similar,

in an historical context about there just is no proof of fraud. So Donald Trump having all these lawyers and all these people in polling places is actually good because they will be witness to whatever happens. They will either find things wrong on election day and they'll be fixed, or if there is no evidence to be produced afterwards like last time,

then you'll know that the election was totally legitimate. - You know, I commend your sunny optimism about faith in the system and American people. I think courts will see it that way, having recognized that there were 64, 65 baseless challenges.

There's a wide subset of the population that has bought into the narrative that our election system is broken, can't be trusted, that all systems are part of an overweening deep state coming to take us all down. And I'm not as optimistic that

the same challenges this year, even if baseballs don't still animate a big segment of the population. Kendra, what are you concerned about here? Yeah, I mean, look, they're already putting up fences around the Capitol now, and it's October, because I think there is some concern of what is the potential that can happen. And so, you know, I am concerned about all of these things that people are going to, something catastrophe could happen on election day in terms of

to a polling place or to a voting place, excuse me, I'm concerned about what happens in our United States capitol should Donald Trump say this is not, I won and

There are a lot of things that I think could potentially happen. Always. I mean, that's why we're better prepared because we're thinking about them so much. Remember back in 2020, people weren't really focused on all these problems that could occur. So that's part of the improvement of things. It's a valid point that so many people have this

distrust of the system. It tends to be the losing candidates people who always say that. And, you know, we are in the heightened political season. It is a fair point to worry about that concern. That's the legitimacy of our form of government.

But I think the transparency of election officials and the transparency with which this election will be held and the dedication of all those election officials out there will actually, once you break it down, be good. - All right, we did see quite a few elections officials really step up in 2020 as well. Many of them Republicans, just call up Jeff Duncan and Brad Raffensperger and ask them how that all went. All right, Ben Ginsberg, so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.

All right, straight ahead here on CNN this morning, Gen Zers sounding off to our friend of the show, Frank Luntz, how young people really feel about their representatives in Congress. Plus, will the real Slim Shady please stand up? Barack Obama rapping on the trail in service of trying to get Kamala Harris elected. Give me a sense to describe Congress. Extremely incompetent and unworthy for the American people. Dysfunctional and in disarray.

Gridlocked. Not representative of America. Atrophying. Performers, not legislators. The worst part of the United States government at any level.

this group of generation z voters overwhelmingly negative view of congress is according to polls in line with that of their peers 53 percent of voting age members of gen z say they've got very little trust in congress part of a broader pattern the generation's waning faith in american institutions in many ways their frustration with capitol hill not that dissimilar to millennial or baby boomer counterparts most of it stemming from partisan politics

It just infuriates me how they govern. Things should be passed within a few pages. There shouldn't be hundreds of pages that we try to ram through just to put a bunch of BS together. Congress won't pass common sense bills that are introduced by the other side, just so that the other side doesn't get a win, even when those bills would be good for the country. That's depressing.

It's actually a pretty remarkably sharp take on how Congress often operates. Joining our panel now, the moderator of that focus group, pollster communications strategist Frank Luntz. Frank, good morning. Wonderful to have you back. Good morning. The Times, New York Times, has been doing this great series on these Gen Z voters, why they feel the way that they do, and that's an example that we shouldn't forget about what's happening in Congress. In the end, all of our attention has been on the presidential race,

The Democrats are within striking distance of taking control of the House, and the Republicans are more likely than not to take control of the Senate. This stuff matters. And the same kind of negativity

the same kind of disappointment and even anger exists in these lower offices and it makes me concerned what happens after the election can they come together can they believe that the system actually works yeah well that's exactly kind of what i wanted to hit on here with you because when we hear them talk about congress and again congress's approval rating is historically low people tend to like their member but are frustrated with the whole place

But this sort of basic lack of trust in our institutions is something that kind of goes through, it's a thread that ties it all together. How do you look at that in the context of the presidential race, the race for Congress, all of it? I can accept a lack of trust. What I cannot accept and what we should not accept is the belief that government is actually against us, that they're hostile to us, that they're stealing from us.

In the end, a healthy skepticism is good in a democracy, but not this belief that they're out to hurt us. And another belief, which is that if they didn't exist at all, we'd actually be better off. There's some people in Washington on both sides that want to tear the entire institution down, don't care if it doesn't function, don't care if relief aid isn't given, for example.

That's a real problem because it's like they're it's like they hate people.

the democratic institutions that keep us together frank i want to ask you about young men in particular because you know you're out there conducting focus groups uh like this one uh john delavolpe who was a biden pollster but is also polls for harvard young people in particular wrote this interesting uh piece for the new york times talking about young men and he says this today's young men are lonelier than ever have inherited a world rife with skepticism toward the institutions designed to promote and defend american ideals like we were just talking about

Men under 30, nearly twice as likely to be single as women their age. Gen Z men less likely to enroll in college or the workforce than previous generations. They have higher rates of suicide. They're less likely than their female peers to receive treatment for mental health. Mr. Trump has tapped these anxieties by weaving a hyper-masculine message of strength and defiance into his broader narrative that undermines confidence in democratic institutions, and it's working. Do you agree with him? Is it working? To a great degree, yes, but let's...

Look at the whole picture. Young women think that Kamala Harris is their hero, that she represents what they want to be at some point in their lifetime. And her ads are completely gender-driven. Trump is doing exactly the same thing on the male side. It's a mirror image of each other. She's doing it in a more positive way. Trump's doing it in a more negative way. But they're doing the same thing. They're dividing the country by gender. You can see it in her ads, in his ads.

And I'm not sure that that's the way to go, particularly as we end this campaign. We need to find ways that you and I agree with each other rather than reasons for us to hate each other. I appreciate that optimistic framing, but I will say in these final two weeks off and everyone's actually doing the opposite. Exactly.

I want to know what your perspective is on, obviously we're in the final weeks here. We're starting to get actual numbers in terms of early vote. It goes a little bit beyond the polling now. We have more to work with in terms of understanding where the electorate is, what's going to happen. A lot of my sources feel like the momentum is actually with Trump at this moment and that that is potentially putting him on track to win on election night, perhaps in a bigger way than the very close polling would suggest. What do you think? Where are you about...

What do you think about where we are right now? I can't call it. I'm not asking you to call it. I'm just asking you to help us understand, like, where is that momentum going? It is heading towards Trump. But what's interesting is that with Harris focused on why she should be elected president, that's when her numbers grew. She's had the best 60 days of any presidential candidate in modern history. And then the moment that she turned anti-Trump and focused on him and said, don't vote for me, vote against him, that's when everything froze.

And the fact is, Donald Trump is defined. He's not gaining. He's not losing. He is who he is, and his vote is where it is. She is less well-defined, and if she continues just to define this race as voting against Trump, she's going to stay where she is now, and she may lose. All right. Frank Luntz, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

All right, 52 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jeffries, indicted on federal sex trafficking charges. He and two associates were accused of recruiting men to take part in, quote, sex events while he worked at the company. Jeffries is out on a $10 million bond. His arraignment is set for Friday.

New this morning, American Airlines fined $50 million for violating rules that protect people who use wheelchairs. Federal investigators say the airline mishandled and damaged wheelchairs and did not give adequate assistance to disabled passengers. American says they've been working on improving how to handle these situations. The Georgia Supreme Court upholding a block on controversial election laws pioneered by Trump allies.

In that state, one of those included hand counting all ballots across the critical battleground state on Election Day. Democrats and others argued the changes could delay the results and cause chaos. All right, let's turn back now to the final 13 days of this campaign. During Kamala Harris's interview with NBC News, she was repeatedly asked about her stance on gender affirming care. Watch her answer.

Do you believe they should have that access? I believe that people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I'm not going to put myself in the position of a doctor. What do you want the LGBTQ+ community to know as they're looking for a full-throated backing from you for trans Americans? I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period.

and should not be vilified for who they are and should not be bullied for who they are. So this topic has become the central theme in a $14 million ad campaign from Donald Trump and his allies in the closing race, closing weeks of this race. Watch. Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.

All right. Our panel is back. Matt Gorman, I want to ask you about this because this is something that the Trump campaign is putting real money behind, which is something I think it's always important to focus on in the final weeks. You can have lots of, you know, shiny objects, but this is clearly a message they're spending on. You saw Kamala Harris answer there. How big of an issue do you think this is in swing states?

I think it is for a couple of reasons also, because I was watching football all Sunday and that was where this ad ran, right? And also if you look, the start of the ad has Charlamagne Tha God and his co-host talking about this. And also notice it was flanking Trump in that still. It was African-American men. So it's very clear who this is targeted towards, men and African-American men, even more to put a finer point on it. This is something where I think Republicans feel they can go on offense on a culture war issue. And you see, again, Harris just doesn't have a good crisp answer to this.

And it's an issue. 100%. And going back to Frank Luntz a few moments ago, the points that he'd made about gender divides and men not doing as well in college and having families and substance abuse and suicide and so on. If you put the word black before that, the divide's even more stark. And this hyper-masculine stuff, particularly when it comes to gender, gender-affirming care and so on, really resonates with black men. And there's no question that

if there's one core audience being targeted in those ads as black men. - I mean, Kendra, you can see why, I mean, Harris did seem to have some trouble answering this question.

She does have a progressive history. The beginning of that ad, you know, cites where she had talked about inmates getting care, getting this care in prison. She has struggled with how much to turn to the center in the final weeks of this race. Do you think she could have been stronger in that interview on this? And do you think this is a problem for her or not? I mean, look, I think she has had a message all along with it, whether it's, you know, women's access to health care and, you know, a choice between yourself and your doctor.

uh... making those decisions i mean i think she she did answer the question in the sense that like it should be not her say on whether or not you're going to do something to your to your body and so what i think at the end of the day women and and men or whoever is going to be you know transgender understand where she is on this i do think that the trump campaign is putting these ads in places where you know people will see them and people you know football all of those things but

you know, I think at the end of the day, this is about your own control of your own body, which is ironic given that Republicans basically want the states to dictate, you know, the abortion care and all of those kinds of things.

- I think this is also a danger for Kamala because she started to do interviews where there's no point and no message and no news she's making out of them. She's doing them just to do them. It's always a danger, no matter what party you are, politicians will just do interviews to get out there. And so when the takeaway from these interviews that she spent the entire day doing, prepping, this was NBC and Telemundo were the only ones she did, was that, and talking about abortion,

and not in the way she wanted to, that's tough. Yeah, interesting. All right, we also have this new this morning, James Carville, who, of course, longtime strategist from the Bill Clinton era, has a new opinion piece out in The Times, The New York Times, this morning. The headline runs a little contrary to, I think, what I have referenced throughout the show and throughout the week about

people that i speak to feeling that donald trump may have some momentum behind him here in the final weeks the headline is this james carville why i'm certain kamala harris will win we're constantly told he writes america's too divided too hopelessly stricken by tribalism to grasp the stakes that is plain wrong if the chinese and aoc get that the

the Constitution, and our democracy are on the ballot. Every true conservative and true progressive should get it too. A vast majority of Americans are rational, reasonable people of goodwill. I refuse to believe that the same country that has time and time again overcome its mistakes to bend its future toward justice will make the same mistake twice. America overcame Mr. Trump in 2020. I know that we are better than this. Elliot Williams.

- Is it, I'm certain Kamala will win or he hopes that Kamala Harris will win. That is a beautiful optimistic message that he's putting out there, but it doesn't appear to track where polls are right now, which shows a horse race, particularly in those seven swing states. So it's hard to know, but it's a powerful message that he's laid out. - Yeah, I mean, I think we've said all along, this is gonna be a very, very close race. I think it is closer than people

even imagined it would be, which is why I think the stuff like John Kelly coming out and doing the interview and talking to the New York Times about what he has seen with Trump and the military piece, I think will be more important in a lot of ways than James Carville. Happy birthday, James Carville, also number one. And number two, watch their, watch campaigns actions, not their words. The actions of Kamala Harris campaign tells me that they're at least losing momentum, maybe not losing momentum.

that's more important than I believe what the words of the campaign say. The actions in the interviews and other things? The tactics of the campaign, doing more interviews, trying to draw him out rather than not. Yeah, really interesting. All right, thank you all for being here. Less than two weeks to go. All right, thanks to all of you for joining us as well. I'm always happy to have you. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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