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Michael Smerconish Talks About the Presidential Election; Vance Comments on Being Trans for Ivy League Entry; Cuban Comments About Women Around Trump; Managing Election Season Stress. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 01, 2024 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[06:30:00]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND CNN HOST, "SMERCONISH": Underperforming again in the polls, because you know what happened in 2016, you know what happened in 2020. In three runs for the presidency, he's never been in this strong of a position, even though you wouldn't say that he's leading. But if the polls are off, as they were in the last two cycles, then he wins. Or is there some level of overcompensation by the polling outfits because of what went wrong in 2016 and 2020?

Me, I look at all the data. Like you, I know the polls. The polls say margin of error stuff in the battleground states, she's probably ahead in the national polls by a Hillary margin, not by a Biden margin. The betting markets favor him. Is that because the bro vote is laying a lot of crypto on Donald Trump? I don't know. The stock market seems to suggest it's an incumbent's election. That would be Harris. The cultural touchstones, is it a Ted Lasso world or is it a "Yellowstone" world? That's more subjective. The pundits, you know, the two Nates, the FiveThirtyEight.

And in the end, Kasie, nothing would shock me. If you said that - that Harris ekes out a victory, it wouldn't shock me. If she wins convincingly, it wouldn't shock me. If he ekes out a victory or wins convincingly, that wouldn't shock me either. G vote. It's fun to talk about all this stuff, it's insightful, it's important, but in the end, we don't know.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I mean, look, it's, honestly, the best part. And - is that it's - at the end of the day it's up to the voters. And as much as we can try to figure out what they're collectively thinking, my gosh, the number of times that they've surprised us in recent election cycles.

But look, Michael, I'm so glad you raised the question of how or whether the polls are capturing accurately what the electorate is going to be, because you rightly point out that mistakes were made in recent previous years. The pollsters have tried to compensate for understanding that there are more sort of hidden Trump voters, right?

There is this question, though, Liz Cheney and other female politicians have been out saying there is a secret female vote, right, that there is - are women out there who are not telling their husbands, they're not telling their families, they're not telling the pollsters that they don't like Donald Trump, and that that may make one of those scenarios where Harris wins by a little or by a lot more likely.

I want to show you a little bit of how Charlie Kirk and Jesse Waters, two figures on the right, have been talking about this possibility, and get your take.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE KIRK, CO-FOUNDER, TURNING POINT USA: It is the embodiment of the downfall of the American family. She's coming in with her sweet husband, who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go, you know, and have a nice life and provides for the family, and then she lies to him saying, oh, yes, I'm going to vote for Trump, and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth.

JESSE WATERS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: And if I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) judge.

WATERS: That violates the sanctity of our marriage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE), yes.

WATERS: What else is she keeping from me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why would she have to lie to you?

WATERS: What else has she been lying about?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why would -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: I'm interested in your reaction to how those two spoke about this particular topic, but also whether you think this secret vote exists in the first place.

SMERCONISH: It might. I mean, I think that the Harris campaign believes that it does, hopes that it does, so much so that you know of the - the Julia Roberts commercial, which I thought was pretty effective.

It's a week of hysteria. Thank God it's Friday. When I think about, you know, all that has taken place this week, and I am not minimizing the comedian at Madison Square Garden. The joke was appalling. They should have flagged it. Trump should have immediately come out and condemned it. But to go from that to the garbage truck, the White House apparently manipulating the transcript with the apostrophe reminds me of that book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," Mark Cuban and the comments that he made about the Trump - I think, in the end, this is all a wash. I really believe it's a wash.

Allan Lichtman, he of the 13 keys, said to me yesterday on radio, in the end it's about governance and how well the incumbent party has been governing. I think there's some truth in that. But soon we're going to find out.

I just hope, in the end, it's clear, because I'm fearful of what next Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday look like. And it's kind of funny, Kasie, because you've got Philly burb cred, I've got Philly burb cred. It's amazing to be living where I'm living, watching what I'm watching, and to see that it might all come down to the very area where I have spent all of my 62 years.

HUNT: Yes, it is actually a remarkable reality. I feel that way too. Obviously, I'm not - I'm not living there at the moment like you are.

Michael, how concerned - I mean we're going to talk to Sanjay Gupta later in the show about the sort of levels of anxiety that are going on around this election. Do you think that anxiety is warranted?

SMERCONISH: Is it warranted? I think it exists. Is it warranted? I don't know. I would like to think that our system has guardrails. Some would say it barely held four years ago. But I think we're in a position where we can control this outcome.

[06:35:01]

I just think it's very important to continue to remind the public that Tuesday night might not tell us who the victor is. And that doesn't mean that there was any tomfoolery involved. It just means that the way in which we run our elections, it's like we create a pop-up Starbucks every four years with a largely volunteer force. And guess what? Stuff's going to happen. And when stuff happens on a minor level, it doesn't mean that there's a major pattern of fraud or some type of chicanery.

So, everybody just cool down, have a cocktail, settle in. It could be a long couple of days.

HUNT: It could indeed. And we will be here 24 hours a day on CNN until we figure out what the answer to that question is.

Michael Smerconish, so grateful to have you. Thank you so much for being here.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, as always. Thank you.

HUNT: Yes. And come back next Friday because we're going to have a lot to talk about. For our viewers, remember to tune in to "SMERCONISH" tomorrow morning, 9:00 a.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.

All right, coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, the normal gay guy vote. Senator J.D. Vance explains how he believes Trump will win a very specific voting bloc.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote -

JOE ROGAN, HOST, "THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE": Oh, sure.

VANCE: Because, again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:40:51]

HUNT: All right, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J.D. Vance facing some pushback this morning after making some eyebrow raising comments during his three hour interview on the Joe Rogan podcast that aired Thursday. Vance suggested that white, upper and middle class students are incentivized to identify as transgender to get admission into elite U.S. colleges. He also said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote -

JOE ROGAN, HOST, "THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE": Oh, sure.

VANCE: Because, again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone. And now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it that they're like, well, no, no, no, we didn't - we wouldn't - we didn't want to give pharmaceutical products to nine year olds who are transitioning their genders. We just wanted to be left the hell alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, so let's watch also what he said about admission to colleges and the incentives around people who identify as transgender.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you are a, you know, middle class or upper middle class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like, obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle class kids. But the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.

If you become trans, that is the way to reject your white privilege.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: OK. The panel is back.

Um, Jonah Goldberg, what do you make of what he said here, stipulating that clearly this cultural issue of transgender people has been a message that the Trump campaign has put a lot of money behind and that they think does resonate with some voters.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Look, I'm a - I'm a - I'm a - I'm a persistent critic of J.D. Vance. I don't - I don't like the way he necessarily phrased these things or talk these things. I think a lot of people actually understand what he's getting at. The higher education establishment, there is this - there is - there is this widespread understanding, as someone who sent their kid to college and went through that process and all my friends are of that age with their kids, that there are certain shibboleths, or what the sociologist Rob Henderson would call luxury beliefs, that if you put in your college essay, that if you identify in certain - some way that pings on the radar of identity politics, it is a - it is - it is an added value in the application process.

Now, whether it's identifying as trans, you know, I don't - whatever. I think non-binary is one of these fashionable terms that the kids these days like to use a lot. But -

HUNT: Jonah Goldberg, comma, not a kid these days.

GOLDBERG: Yes, exactly.

I wasn't even a kid when I was a kid. So, like it's like - my other point is that I think he's getting at something that a lot of people - it's sort of like everyone talks about, you know, don't take Trump literally, take him seriously. That kind of applies to what he's dog whistling and talking about there. There's a real thing there that I think a lot of people understand, even if you can easily nitpick the language that he's using. And I say this as a non-J.D. Vance fan.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Now, but the thing is, you can say the words DEI - or the letters DEI in the context of college applications all you want, but just look at the data. And right now I believe its 60 percent of college students, I think, and don't quote me on the number, are first generation college students. Colleges go out of their way to draw people from diverse places in the country.

HUNT: Sure.

WILLAIMS: And so, getting - being trans isn't going to get you into college. Being a white kid from Kentucky whose parents didn't go to college will get you into college. And so it's a little rich -

HUNT: Well -

GOLDBERG: I think it's a point system across the spectrum.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yes. No, no, but I just -

GOLDBERG: I agree with you on the point that it's not just this sort of lefty coding (INAUDIBLE).

WILLIAMS: But - yes. But I - but I - but I don't want to overvalue the trans point. But the simple fact is, it is a little rich hearing that from J.D. Vance.

Now, it's a point that works.

GOLDBERG: Fair. Fair. That's fair.

WILLIAMS: It's a - it's a - it's a point that works. And people hear the letters DEI. People hear about the idea, the vestiges of affirmative action over years are sort of in people's heads and it whips them up. But (INAUDIBLE).

HUNT: Is there a normal gay guy vote?

BRAD TODD, PARTNER, ONMESSAGE INC., CO-AUTHOR, "THE GREAT REVOLT" AND REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Uh, well, I think there's a taxpayer vote. And I think that's probably what he's talking about.

But, you know, on this transgender agenda question, this is a place where Republicans have about 80 percent of the country agreeing with their position. Democrats are in the - Democrats like Kamala Harris are in like the 20 percent position.

[06:45:01]

The more that that topic is up this week, the better it is for Republicans up and down the ballot.

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: But, I mean I think it's a fear tactic that Republicans are using. And I think that then Donald Trump steps on himself and says he wants to shoot Liz Cheney. So, I mean, the - the - I don't think it gets very far.

HUNT: All right, coming up next here on CNN THIS MORNING, keeping their advantage with women. How the Harris campaign, seizing on Donald Trump's comments about protecting women, quote, "whether they like it or not," end quote.

Plus, is the election stressing you out? You are not alone. Doctor Sanjay Gupta is here to help us all cope with it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm ready for it to be over.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I bet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it's getting more and more difficult to listen to all the vitriol and that sort of thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:50:02]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

Just four days out from Election Day 2024. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris wrapped up late night events in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada. It was really just hours ago. There was one large and important group of voters on their mind, women. Kamala Harris looking to drive up her sizable advantage with female voters, seizing on the former president's recent comment that he would protect women, quote, "whether the women like it or not."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the same man who said women should be punished for their choices. He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what's in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women. We trust women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: One of her most vocal supporters on the campaign trail, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, was not making Harris' job any easier yesterday, catching heat for his own comments about the women around Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Turns out Donald Trump is not even asking Nikki Haley for her help to try to reach her voters. What do you make of that? And do you think having people like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and other Republicans with Kamala Harris is going to put her over the edge with these Nikki Haley supporters?

MARK CUBAN, AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN: Yes, I mean, yes, it will put her over the edge with Nikki Haley supporters. Donald Trump, you never see him around strong, intelligent women, ever. It's just that simple. They're intimidating to him. He doesn't - he doesn't like to - to be challenged by them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, here was how "The New York Post" answered that, with the faces of women supporters and people who are around Donald Trump.

Who wants to take this?

Meghan, why don't - why don't I start with you?

HAYS: OK.

WILLIAMS: A strong, intelligent woman, Meghan Hays. There you go.

HUNT: Who we are happy to have at the table. I mean, look, the language that Trump uses here, this whether they

like it or not, I mean, it definitely hits a certain way when anyone is talking about you like that. That said, you know, Cuban was not terribly complimentary of the women that are in Trump's orbit. And there are women in his orbit.

HAYS: Totally. And I just think that some of these people on the periphery should probably stay out of it and let the former president and the vice president make their final arguments here and let them go at each other, because they're both saying enough for us all to talk about.

But I do think - but I do think - I think that what he was probably trying to say is, at the rally at Madison Square Garden there was like five or six speakers to these, you know, 20 some men that spoke. And I think that was the point he was trying to make. I don't know that for sure, but it just - it seems like that's the point. And it also seems like Trump can never get ahead of himself with women, and he continues to insult strong women. So, it was just, I think, drawing conclusions of like, what are all these women around you saying to you? Why aren't you staying on message?

TODD: I think Mark Cuban's never met Susie Wiles, who - who is Donald Trump's campaign manager, who's one of the -

HUNT: Who did tweet about this, yes.

TODD: One of the strongest women in politics that I've ever worked with. And Cuban can be an idiot, frankly, and he doesn't know what - he's in a field he doesn't know what he's talking about.

I also think, though, that the gender gap, we're treating it a little bit too much with crayon in this race. The fact is that Donald Trump may well carry married women. He will definitely carry women with kids in the home. What we have is a marriage gap and a parent gap more than we have a gender gap. And you see it on the men's side too. Men with kids in the home are going to vote for Donald Trump much more than single men are. It's a lot more complicated than we make it a lot of times.

HUNT: Yes.

So, we do - one woman who, of course has been the focus of Donald Trump is Liz Cheney. We talked about her at the top of the show. We now have her response. It was just posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter. There it is. She says this, quote, "this is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant." And she hashtags it, women will not be silenced.

Jonah.

GOLDBERG: It's a good statement. I'm going to - and I've been sitting here mulling Brad's defense of the statement, and I think he got a better point than I, granted, at the beginning. I still think what he said was outrageous and grotesque. But, that's part of the problem, right, is that Donald Trump speaks in ways - sort of like Mark Cuban, that does not allow for nuance shades of gray, exceptions to the rule.

I have lots of criticisms of these women. Not all of them, though, right? But so when Mark Cuban says all of the women around Trump, period, there are no smart, intelligent women around - strong women around Trump, that's just not true. Donald Trump does have a lot of not great people, men and women, around him, and Cuban doesn't know how to talk about this kind of stuff. Trump likes to sound so macho and so tough that it freaks people out. And so like the clip about him saying, I'm going to protect women no matter what, if you actually listen to the broader part of it, he's got a perfectly fine point, which is that the commander in chief is supposed to protect Americans regardless of who they are, regardless of their gender.

[06:55:09]

But often when these things about sort of men are from Mars, women are from Venus kind of things, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And the way Trump talks, I don't blame women for -

HUNT: Whether you like it or not?

GOLDBERG: Yes. I do not blame women in the slightest, or men, for being - getting a hard case of it ick from it.

HUNT: Yes, all right.

Look, we - we are - we are running out of time here on a Friday, so we thought this would be a good point to address what everyone at home seems to be talking about. It's certainly what I hear from people when I am asked about the election, which is - which is frequently. It's on everyone's minds.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you mean why am I anxious? Of course I'm anxious. There's an election in six days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's one week to the election and I am so stressed out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm too anxious. Maybe ask me after Election Day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you just kind of wish you could just hide under a rock because you just wish the election would hurry up and come.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I wasn't able to pinpoint exactly what the source of that anxiety was. I wasn't sure exactly why. It's the election. It's the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: If you are anxious about the election, rest assured, you are not the only one. In fact, according to a recent poll, seven in 10 Americans report feeling anxious or frustrated about the 2024 presidential campaign.

With less than one week to go before the big day, it is hard not to feel tense living in such a divided country with so much at stake. In a new "Chasing Life" podcast episode out today, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta helping us learn how to navigate our polarized world by having difficult but oftentimes necessary conversations.

And Doctor Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

Sanjay, it's so wonderful to see you.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Thanks for having me.

HUNT: This is such a dominant thing right now. What should people be doing between now and Tuesday to try to sit with all this?

GUPTA: Yes, first of all, those clips make you kind of anxious just watching those, right? I mean, I think everyone is certainly feeling this.

Let me - let me start with the good news, which is that our bodies and our brains are incredibly biodynamic. So, as stressed or as anxious as you may feel, you can quickly revert as well. And the key is, you know, develop - developing some strategies.

One thing - you know, it's interesting, Kasie, I think that there's - there's some evidence, if you talk to evolutionary biologists and stuff, that in some ways humans are sort of hardwired to be suspicious of one another. It's kind of how we survived in our - in our earliest days. That's what the argument often is. And there's this guy, Peter Coleman. He's a - he's a psychologist, and he runs this thing at the - at Columbia University known as the Difficult Conversations Lab, which I just found so fascinating that a lab like that even exists.

But I had a chance, as you mentioned, to talk to Peter for the "Chasing Life" podcast. Just - I want you to listen to this, and I want to explain it afterward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. PETER T. COLEMAN, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: You know, there's some neuroscience research that just looks at, you know, when you see a tweet from somebody on the other side that says something you think is inane and you experience a sense of outrage and a kind of taste for retaliation, that it triggers parts in the brain that, you know, are triggered by narcotics. So these are, you know, addictive substances.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: So, I - the - the argument that he's essentially making is that there's a lot of outrage out there. There's a lot of polarization. And that in some ways we're sort of addicted to it. And he's talking about a part of the brain, when he was just talking about this, known as the amygdala. It sits there. It's sort of the seat of emotions. When it gets fired up, sometimes people want that to happen over and over again. So they - they seek out outrage. So, there's a clue immediately in terms of how to sort of deal with it.

But let me just, again, make a little bit more of an optimistic point that most of our human existence, at least early days, we needed to - to cooperate to survive. That's what's really part of our DNA. It wasn't until we started to claim land and claim things and things like that, that we actually started to develop more polarization.

So, overall, the odds are on our side, Kasie, in terms of our evolutionary biology.

HUNT: Well, I am happy to hear that.

Sanjay, briefly, you list ways to reduce stress, exercise, control your environment, practice positives, get good sleep.

We had Molly Ball from "The Journal," "Wall Street Journal" on earlier. She wrote a piece about this. And she said that people are turning to things like cocktails and edibles at this stage. Would you recommend that?

GUPTA: You know, I mean, I think you need to find a break from the stress. That - I think that - that is - that really the key. Everyone says, I want to obviate stress from my life. I want to obviate anxiety. You can't really obviate stress from your life. You need a certain amount of stress in your life to get out of bed, to study for an exam, to, whatever, go vote.

The key is to find the breaks from it. That is - I think that's sort of a shift in how you think.

[07:00:01]

People are like, I'm just done with it. No, you can't be done with it. But finding the breaks.

HUNT: Yes.

GUPTA: So, if you had that list again up there, exercise and movement is probably the best thing that you can do overall just to get endorphins going in your body. Just taking that first step really makes a big difference. Controlling the environment, Kasie, I'll leave you with this, getting off social media for a while. That really does -

HUNT: Get off - get off the - the socials. I - I will take that advice.

GUPTA: Just for a little bit. Just - HUNT: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, very much appreciate your calm approach to this.

GUPTA: Thanks for having me.

HUNT: Thank you for being here on this Friday.

I don't know, who's anxious about the election?

GOLDBERG (ph): Who isn't?

HUNT: All right, a reminder, you can listen to that latest podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks to our panel. Try not to be so anxious this weekend, those of you watching at home. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.