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♪ welcome to "squawk alley." john forte is on assignment today. let's get to the top story, the campaign trail. one week away from the presidential election. national polls are tightening as new reports question donald trump's financial past and putin and russia. and hillary clinton is in hot water with those new e-mails. john? >> less than seven days to the election. we're getting close. take a look at how close the race is getting in the polls. average of national polls by "the new york times," realclear politics and huffington post.

real clear 2.5, "new york times" down to 4.. huffington post 5.6. what's that mean for the electoral map? he has to take that lead that mitt romney had and build it up to 270. battleground states all across the country. there's a difference between some of those battleground states. let me start with four. now trump has a very good chance of winning. florida, ohio. we've also got nevada and iowa. all of those are states where donald trump has a good shot. however you go to the next tier. those four would only get him to 265. these are tougher states for donald trump. hillary clinton has clear leads in all of them. and then, finally, two states, north carolina and arizona where hillary clinton has been very competitive with donald trump could take those away. that makes the electoral climb

that much harder. here are the battlegrounds across the country. let's do the reverse for democrats. because they've got the uphill climb here. first of all, they've got two, which look very good for them. wisconsin, ron johnson. illinois, kirk. both of them are vulnerable. next tier of races. all these republicans are vulnerable but they're all running fairly competitively so democrats have got to figure out a way to get a couple of those. and then one other category. that is nevada, where harry reid is retiring and his seat is vulnerable. joe heck could win that state which means democrats have a higher hill. the hill is really high when you take a look at the house of representatives. there's only about three dozen

competitive races. democrats would have to run the table with almost all of them. very difficult. and donald trump's closing in the polls makes it more difficult. forecasters saying no more than 20 for democrats in the house. we'll see in a week, guys. >> john, we mentioned the headlines in the top of the hour, comey e-mail stories on the clinton side, flurry of news yesterday of varying degrees regarding donald trump. is all of that noise at this point? is it really about get out the vote? are we in that period already? >> yes, we are. of course, a significant amount of the votes have already been cast. early voting has become so widespread across the country. at least a quarter of the vote in this entire election is already in the books. people look at the polls and what we can tell is that american turnout is more difficult for hillary clinton to sustain than it was for barack obama for obvious reasons.

however, she is doing better with hispanics, many of whom were turned off by donald trump and with college educated white voters. on your point, carl, a lot of it is noise at this point. e-mail stuff which exploded last friday or this tax information that's come out in the "new york times" today, it is hard for it to move the needle. that doesn't mean that things don't tighten in the end and partisans come home to their candidates but it is difficult to reshape core opinions in the electorate about hillary clinton and donald trump. those are pretty well fixed. >> john, there's still so many people who are undecide voters. is that normal to have such a large portion of the electorate not have made up their mind at this point in the election?

when do you expect people to make a decision? >> i don't think there are that many people who are undecided. there are some people who are ambivalent about their preferences but the true number of undecideds has gotten pretty small. many of those people will end up not voting. what we've seen is the support for the third party candidates, gary johnson and jill stein, has been dwindling down and that support has generally gone to hillary clinton. but, you know, there is a group but it's not a particularly large group of undecided. that's a consequence of the polarization of approximate politics. >> we'll talk to you in a few minutes, john, i'm sure. john harwood. thing heating up. we're joined now by political analyst, serve as adviser to howard dean. john just said the words

partisans coming home to their party and explaining how these polls tightened at the end. we noticed casic writing in mccain. >> i've already voted, wrote in a candidate as well. i wrote in paul ryan. but for the same reason as john ca kasich did. the race may tighten as we go into these final days and i think that the scandal of last friday gives trump momentum at a time when his campaign is in a death spiral. we were talking about a potential hillary clinton land slide. that looks less likely to me. her victory still seems pretty solid to me. >> christy there's been no predictability throughout this election cycle. analogies being made to brexit, whether this is america's brexit

moment. even that came down to the fact that it was raining that day and that kept people from going out and voting. are we going to get to election day and it's all going to depend on turnout? >> yeah. well, i mean, yes and no. of course, turnout is incredibly important. the reason we're not going to get to election day and not know where it's going to be, you can read into those tea leaves quite a bit. it you look at, for example, florida right now, clinton campaign is doing a masterful job of turning out low propensity voters, people who traditionally don't necessarily vote in elections, but they would necessarily be with clinton. the question for them is just whether or not they're going to get to the polls. they've been working on turning out their base which, in the end, is much, much more important than getting those republican independent voters, which they spent a lot of money trying to court. >> christy, you mentioned people

who wouldn't otherwise vote. they capture likely voters, people who have voted before. do you think that there are errors in polling that make it hard to capture exactly what the outcome will look like? >> that's always a question. we look at a state like nevada, for example, where barack obama won by a much large r margin. they're not capturing as much of the hispanic vote accurately. so that's certainly possible. in fact, that's more likely to play out in hillary clinton's favor than in trump's. >> if we game out how you see the race right here, trump coming back from essentially a very low bottom how does the democratic party strat enjoys their period between november and january and the first hundred days? what would that even look like?

>> i think that's very difficult. i take no joy in this as a republican, or as an american. comey announcement virtually assures that republicans will do almost immediately what they wanted to do anyway, which is to investigate hillary clinton. there's not going to be much of a honeymoon in my view. but that's not good for the country. it's not good for the democrats or the republicans. when the dust all settles, we'll have to see. i think the republican leadership in the congress is going to be much more willing to work with a president clinton on a substantive agenda than people think today. hillary clinton worked well with her republican colleagues in the senate. speaker ryan, who i expect will continue to be the speaker, has a substantive agenda, is quite willing to sit down with a

president clinton to talk about common points of interest. they've got to get to that fast or we'll be overwhelmed by scandals and that's not good for anybody. >> does that involve chopping off an entire arm of voters who see speaker ryan and other centrists, as you might say, republicans, as traitors? >> that's -- the fight within the republican party is assured, no question about that. trump faction has certainly been created, reject a whole bunch of things that republicans believe trade, immigration, national security. we'll have an argument within the party. but it's not clear how intense that argument will be going forward. paul ryan is the only thing that unites the house republican caucus. that's why he became speaker really against his own wishes after john boehner stepped down. any attempt to go after paul ryan will only produce chaos not

another alternative. >> that's a high hill to climb, christy, even if -- i mean, who knows what happens within the senate and the house but is the democratic party prepared for that kind of a lack of a honeymoon? >> i don't think they ever expected anything but a lack of a honeymoon. this campaign has certainly been no honeymoon for the clinton campaign. clinton supporters or as americans i don't think we expected anything other than gridlock in congress. that possibility increases when you're looking at -- what this fbi story does, i absolutely agree with vin. it lessens the likelihood of a clinton landslide and probably helps rks a bit but increases the likelihood of even more gridlock. >> we have to get through the next six days and change. i imagine we'll be talking to you before then. christy and vin, thank you so much, joining us from d.c. the markets are in negative

territory. s&p is declining for the sixth consecutive session, currently eyes its longest losing streak of the year, currently down four points. the dow is down 23. nasdaq is down nine. ism manufacturing mostly in line. china manufacturing pmis were better than expected. shares of large l brands quarter guidance below blow expectations, blaming slowdowns in its victoria's secret brand. blackberry closing a deal with ford to become the automaker's tier one. blackberry will be the centerpiece for ford's connected car efforts. term of that deal were not disclosed. gannett. major currency swings hitting sony's bottom line. fallout on that coming up and 2016 presidential election, deep dive into trump's quote legally

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gannett dropping its bid to buy tronc after months of negotiations. shares of tronc falling on that news. david is back with more on that. >> as you said, carl, this began last spring, of course, when tribune came with an unsolicited

bid to buy tronc. it was named tribune and has changed its name during the course of the fight that's gone on many, many months but concluded earlier today when after seemingly reaching a deal at least on price of $18.77 a share for tronc, tribune -- its financing became, let's call it, squishy -- excuse me, gannett's financing became squishy and its board of directors, i'm told, started to express real concern about a potential deal in light of two consecutive quarters of soft finances at the company. so withdrew, even though there was really the possibility of replacing banks who had withdrawn from a potential syndicate to finance the deal with other banks, there seemed to be concern about both the cost of the financing and 600 basis points and again the concern overall about the deterioration of financial performance at gannett which comes off a lousy quarter last

quarter and one that wasn't particularly good prior to that. when these two companies began talking, gannett's stock price was higher. result of a combination would be positive for both shareholder bases and, therefore, questions why board of directors would be hesitant to go ahead. others, i'm told, were willing to step up and do the job. gannett not trading much at all. shares of tronc are down dramatically. it began at 12.25, went up from there. there was a prospect of a proxy fight next march if tronc didn't come to the table but they d 18.75 had been an agreed-upon price but couldn't get there at the end because gannett terminated. of course, a lot of this reflects ongoing weakness

overall in print, print advertising. we see it almost every day in terms of layoffs, reorganizations. not just of tronc or gannett but time down 30%, "new york times" 18%, news corp. down 21%. >> tribune hired bankers years ago to try to sell the whole company before it ended up splitting up. this has been a target for a very long time. i'm wondering if you think any buyer would have the same issues that gannett had if it were to try to solicit another deal. >> i think they might. i think that's true. michael farrow, the man who runs tronc, who also, for a long time, was opposed to any deal, believes the strategy he's pursuing will eventually deliver the holy grail. we'll see on tronc. they're reporting earnings after the bell today. they said in a press release couldn't they have at least

waited to see what our results were before making a decision to terminate? >> maybe they shouldn't have changed the name. >> tronc's an interesting name. yeah. >> i still call it tribune. >> i prefer to call it -- >> legendary brand. >> i know. they want you to be thinking about the future, what he claims is the ability of artificial intelligence to help transform the delivery of ads and so many other parts of the business. >> we'll see what they say when they report earnings. you'll be on it. >> yeah, we'll be following. >> thanks, david. all eyes on square and embattled ceo jack dorsey. and doubling down on his support of trump, but is it enough to win the hearts and minds of the valley? we'll discuss that on the other side of this break. y with just one tap right from the alert. wow, i guess we don't need the kid anymore. custom alerts on thinkorswim. only at td ameritrade.

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welcome back to "squawk alley." final jobs number before the election is coming up friday.

all the major indexes are in the red for october, their worst performance since january. check out the price of rbob gasoline. trading at the highest levels since june because of a colonial gas pipeline explosion in alabama where reports are that one person died, five injured. that, raising questions, kayla, about wholesale distribution of gasoline at a time where already inflation was leading gasoline higher all around the country. >> of course, it had been lower throughout much of the year. we are reminded that supply issues can change that very quickly. sony reporting a plunge in fiscal second quarter profits, battery business and stronger yen. company had lowered its earnings forecast earlier in the week. currency, i don't know how some of these companies manage. they'll admit to being as clueless as most traders when it comes to currencies, very hard to read in periods of dollar weakness or in this case dollar

strength. >> it's hard enough for american companies to manage staring down boj a japanese company even harder. >> they did trim their cpi forecast but leaving gdp intact. >> square reporting third quarter results after the close today. investors continue to focus on management issues at the company and jack dorsey's dual role as ceo while also running twitter. they did have a big boost last quarter from the fact that they are migrating to content readers, headphone jack from the latest iphone. they have prominent retails base at the apple store. that's what's driving a lot of its sale. >> we'll see what square says after a few other large names. electronics arts, gillian, noble energy and etsy. the earnings parade does

continue ahead of more media names later in the week like facebook, fox and so forth. normally this time we would be counting down to the european close. this week's close is at 12:30 eastern. as you may know sometimes daylight savings time ends on europe on sunday. so european markets currently slightly in the red as the dow maintains some slight losses. the close will return to this time on monday after most americans turn their clocks back an hour this coming weekend. >> i chose to go to london this weekend so i'll be missing the fall back. ill timed to say the least. cover of the new york time this is morning, donald trump's quote illegally dubious method to avoid paying taxes. and making the case for a donald trump presidency. did he convince his colleagues in the valley? next.

entering mosul, advancing towards its center. military vehicles seen driving in the southwest of the city. mosul is the final isis in iraq.

its top climate change negotiator telling reporters the world as moving in the direction of balancing environmental protection with economic growth. new poll of 1500 adults shows 81% ranked obesity as the most serious health problem, tied with cancer and ahead of heart disease. however, one-third of obese people say they've never spoken to a doctor about their weight. butterball's turkey talk opens today. first time ever, they'll be able to text their cooking questions 24/7 heading into the week before thanksgiving. that's our cnbc news update. let's get back over to "squawk alley." >> courtney, thanks so much. hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, donald trump's taxes. a closer look at the "times"

story and probably more. robert frank is back. good morning, robert. >> trump used a little-known provision in the tax code to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. it was all legal at the time. it appears so. it's unclear whether the irs accepted or rejected that maneuver this is a follow-up story to the $960 million loss that trump used to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades. early '90s, remember, his failed casino left him with a lot of debt and lot of losses. he used those losses to offset potential income taxes. we didn't know until last night is what he did with that debt. according to the times, trump personally guaranteed more than $ 00 million in loans, much of that never paid back. but when you don't pay back debt or it's forgiven, you have to count that debt as income and you have to pay taxes on it. the times saying he was able to avoid the tax by exchanging equity in his company for the debt even if that equity was worthless at the time or worth

little. this practice was later banned by congress. trump's lawyers at the time warning him that this could be challenged by this treatment. we do know that he was audited for this period. what we don't know is the result, whether it was allowed or whether trump wound up paying the tax. the trump campaign saying, quote, there's no news here. the "times" story is, quote, a criticism not just of mr. trump but of all taxpayers who take the time and spend the money to comply with the complex tax laws. we're learning just how complex those laws are every day with this election campaign. back over to you. >> robert, definitely a must read today. thanks to you. staying with the election, paypal's co-founder and silicon valley entrepreneur peter thiel doubled down on his support for trump also warning of a possible bubble forming in silicon valley. take a listen. >> insiders have somehow have been doing very micro policy adjustments and letting these

massive bubbles inflate on their watch. so i think there is an argument. the trump point that he has made repeatedly that hillary is experienced but it's bad experience somehow resonates with me a lot. >> let's bring in roger mcnamie and try to dissect what thiel said. welcome back. >> good to be here. >> on the political front, he said that trump can viscerally feel the decline of america. thiel wants to deliver that message. what do you think? >> i respect peter thiel's right to have his own political views no matter how much i may disagree with them. i'm not bothered at all by the fact that he is a trump supporter. the challenge that we're dealing with in this election is the tremendous asymmetry of the candidate he happens to support

has scheduled court dates about fraud trial and potentially a rape case scheduled between now and the end of the year. and, you know, it seems to me that a little bit of perspective would be helpful here, but my point is, he is entitled to whatever views he has. as far as i'm concerned, he should express them just like everybody else. and, you know, i'm not bothered by that part at all. my issues with peter thiel much more relate to corporate governance and having his views associated with businesses that i would like to invest in, which i think, you know, can do better without him. >> he's trying to make the point that silicon valley and d.c. are doing just fine but they're not in touch with the heart of the country where the economy is not doing so well. do you think silicon valley is looking in a different set of facts than the rest of the country? >> i think that that statement is overly simplistic.

it faces enormous challenges right now that we've had this 50-year period of tremendous creativity. and in the beginning it was really built around a very idealistic view of changing the world. personal computer and the internet. as silicon valley matured we are now involved in something where it's just viewed as the economic promise land. if you want to get ridge really quickly this is where you come. there's been a real change in the culture. and peter thiel was one of the early leaders of that new wave and one of the most successful players in it. i would actually suggest that while the typical person at silicon valley is a northern california liberal, the people in the entrepreneur class and in the senior management class are not. in fact, i think there's a very deep libertarian streak there. as a consequence, political engagement has historically been less important to silicon valley

than it would be to executives in other parts of the country. >> to thiel's point, he used that adams analogy, arguing that the valley has either forgotten or never knew the restrictions that are in place if you have to actually make things as opposed to find ways to transfer data. is that a fair criticism? >> i think that's a completely reasonable criticism. i think the problem is the candidate he supports has absolutely no history of recognizing that issue himself. so, i think he is right in the diagnosis, wrong in the prescription for what to do about it. but again that's my political view against his. we're both entitled to those views. i do think the challenge in the valley is that we have lost what i would characterize as the central cultural thing that distinguished it, which is to say the fact that there was this optimism, this notion that you took risks and it really was

risk and sometimes you were rewarded, sometimes you weren't but you kept trying and people of silicon valley are still open to change. i think, though, that the motivations of the people here are so financial in nature that the things that they're working on aren't as valuable as the things people used to work on and, sadly, we have seen far more fraud in the last couple of years than i can remember at any time in the 34 years i've been here. and so, you know, i think people just want to get rich now and so scams have become part of what goes on in silicon valley. that troubles me deeply. >> we're definitely going to be watching for the ongoing politicization of silicon valley, if that's the way it's going to work out. >> it will be interesting to see if it works. i don't think peter thiel will cause an increased politic politicalizati politicalization. the valley has a huge misogyny

problem. those who supported barack obama are reluctant to support hillary clinton, it's part of this deep-seated misogyny that the valley has been struggling with for decades. >> indeed, gender has been at the top of the list. >> huge issue. >> roger, good to check in with you. thanks. >> always good to be with you. >> getting some breaking news on toyota. let's get to phil. >> toyota sales coming in at a decline of 8.7%, weaker than the edmond's.com estimate of 6.9%. trucks and suvs are in favor and smaller vehicles, fuel-efficient vehicles are not. listen to this statistic last month. prius sales have been slowing down. down 42% last month. that's a new prius. we'll get the full monthly sales rate for the industry coming up later on today. guys, back to you. >> thanks so much, phil. when we come back, one week to go. mark cuban on everything election.

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several big movers. alibaba and spinoff at the top of the hour. see you in about 20. >> scott, thank you for that. shark tank co-host and hillary clinton supporter mark cuban. good to talk to you again. >> thank you, carl. thanks for having me on. >> i'm not sure you commented since the comey news broke friday. >> i have not commented and not in the least. when it first came out, oh, my goodness, what is this? i went back and read the fbi repo reports and interviews of huma abedin. it's pretty straightforward. she's pretty specific in how she dealt with e-mails to get to clinton server e-mail she used a web client. so that's what's on the laptop that they found it's not inconceivable, like nef us who use web clients it might give a big number for e-mails read,

unread on the system but they may not be locally stored on that laptop. and then, b, for her state.gov account, she used an outlook client. if by chance there's an outlook client there, then 99.99% chance that they're duplicate particularly if she used an imap facility to download. for yahoo it's a web client again. when you look exactly how she dealt with e-mails, unless there's something out of left field that we couldn't have possibly predicted and she said something that was incorrect in those interviews then i don't think there's anything at all to worry about. >> we can debate the technicalities of the what the fbi may or may not v bigger picture, do you not worry that this reinforces questions that some undecided voters had about clinton? >> no.

>> her classified information and turning people to donald trump against hillary clinton. >> one, am i worried about how she dealt with classified information? the clinton campaign was ridiculous in how they addressed the e-mail problem. the real question was how does she deal with classified documents. the definitive answer, and again all the fbi interviews, all the 302s that were published, definitive answer over and over again sheerks dealt with classified documents via hard copy. that's why you see in these huma interviews and even judicial watch they're not making a big stink of it. they know that secretary clinton asked for everything to be printed out. every single document that was marked, properly marked as classified was printed out. if you do the homework there's no doubt about how she dealt with classified information. i don't think they did a good job of dealing with the pr aspect of t so, yeah, it could lead some undecideds to question

it, just because of the volume, the consistency of it. but in reality, if you dig deep and you inform yourself, there's no concern there. >> the alleged conflicts of interest at the clinton foundation, this emphasis on loyalty over integrity, some argue why does it not make you think of her as a less than ideal candidate or does it? >> not at all. let's go through the foundation. if there was pay for play any economist would tell you there had to be some sort of risk premium. they're not stupid enough to not ask for additional money for taking risks that could get them in trouble. when you look at what was charged by bill clinton or hillary for speeches or anybody else involved it was market and, in a lot of cases, under market. you look what the foundation actually does, then their task returns. both -- each of the clintons and

foundation. there's absolutely no reason to think that there was pay for play. the concept that somebody got an appointment. i'll say's -- i'll say it out loud. if i ever ran for office, which i have no intention of doing, and i could find the time to have somebody donate $25 million to my foundation in exchange for doing a 30, 45-minute meeting i'll do it every single time, right? this whole idea that this is something horrible that they had these meetings that weren't available to somebody else, to me that's ridiculous. i think every politician in the world does that. and this is much ado about nothing. >> you understand people's frustration that because we've become to that kind of practice we think of it as standard operating procedure. >> it should be standard -- is it bad? again, if i was trying to stop a candidate, i would bring these things up and paint them as being as horrible as possible.

the challenge isn't what they've done, but the marketing, the perception they've created and the clinton's ability to respond to that. when you look at it, there's no substance there no real issue i get your point. if i say going to church is bad and these people go to church every day and that's horrible, horrible, horrible and i paint that as being a negative thing, then at some point some people believe it. and so i think the clintons have just not done a good job of disspelling a lot of the propaganda. >> neither candidate will enjoy all of these issues going away on november 9th. you previously predicted that if trump won the presidency that the stock market would see mayhem. do you still believe that to be the case? >> i didn't say mayhem but said it would definitely fall. yes. for two reasons. you saw it when the comey e-mails came out, what the

markets did. if trump wins i would handicap the likelihood of the probability that he would say something stupid and offensive during a four-year term multiple time at 100%. if he is going to say things that are stupid and offensive that could lead to some sort of military action, not originating from the united states but from another country, that is the worst thing possible for the stock market. because you have a candidate that doesn't know when not to talk, there's nothing worse for the market. the idea that what he could say tomorrow could impact markets worldwide, that's going to pull people out of the market. part two to that is if we see any uptick in interest rates at all, then it's going to look like a great deal just to put our money into treasury or bonds

or something very safe. >> are you positioned either way on, say, equities? >> oh, yeah. >> to leverage a clinton or trump win? >> oh, yeah. if trump wins i'm already hedged. my hedge is up a little bit this week because the markets have been down multiple days in a row. i put on the biggest hedge i've ever put on against all my equities and interest-bearing bonds simply because of what i just said. you know, this is not like brexit where oh, my goodness, there's a big reaction, big selloff and then a big bounce back and things just trickle down. candidate trump -- i don't see any reason to believe that candidate -- if this race would be even tighter if donald trump knew when to shut up. right? he was so close to the presidency and during the debates and post debates and many times, you know, many other times all he had to do was not say something ridiculous and he couldn't do it. and the thought that once he was

elected or if he's elected that all of a sudden now, you know, with all this potential power he's just going to keep quiet and stay scripted, there's no chance that happens. you know the old saying, >> donald trump doesn't know what he is going to say next. there's teleprompter trump, and we get to hear him, and we know that -- is it feels like he is reading the speech for the first time. it's the commentary, oh, wow, this is interesting. then we have this commentary. we don't know who is writing those speeches. is it steve bannon or who it is, says and, you know, we don't know if it's donald trump's position that he is actually stating.

it could be steve bannon's and donald is the puppet. there's so many uncertainties assigned to trump that aren't assigned to secretary clinton that there's no way for anybody to humanly handicap it. that's the ultimate in uncertainty. >> what risk premium would be assign to clinton, mark? >> i'm sorry? >> what risk premium would be assign hillary clinton? >> i would say the risk premium with secretary clinton is that she gets some of her far left, you know -- like i'm not a big fan of the free college tuition and i'm a fan of free trade. you know, it really depends on what happens with the house and the senate as to how you handicap it. let me be clear about something. i don't agree with secretary clinton about everything. i don't agree with her in all of her positions. i think she understands how -- i

think anybody who disagrees with her can go to their representatives and say, look, here's my -- here's what i think. i like to lobby against her. i don't have that same confidence that trump understands his position and understands how government works, understands the concept of checks and balances, and i don't have the confidence that i could just lobby against, you know, him blurting things out. while i don't agree with 100% of what secretary clinton says, i know with those things i disagree on, i can lobby against. when you talk about risk premium with her, you know, it's more defined by what happens 249 down ballot election. >> your answer reminds me of something peter theil said yesterday. let's take a listen to that. >> i don't agree with everything donald trump has said and done, and i don't think the millions of other people voting for him do either. it's not a lack of judgment that leads americans to vote for

trump. we're voting for trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed. >> he didn't say a word about trump policies. he makes my point. he said somewhere else i think that we take what trump says seriously, but not literally. that just reinforces that trump doesn't know what his policies are. peter theil doesn't believe in his policies. what he also didn't say and i think he is suggesting is that he takes along with a lot of other trump supporters. >> he said -- he basically is saying i don't agree with trump's policies, about the i just don't like the other guy so i'll vote for him. that's not an endorsement. that's running away from the

issue. as far as business, find me one entrepreneur that donald trump is invested in. found me, you know, one company that donald trump has or one businessperson that has come out and said donald trump has mentored. let's find some examples of what he has done to support busine business -- >> i can easily point to a sheldon adelson. >> the money that at least the last time i looked in open secret, he gave money for down ballot races. he did not give money specifically to donald trump. now, his newspaper did come out and say and support him, but it wasn't a ringing endorsement. >> do you think texas has any chance of being competitive? >> yeah, i do, actually. it's shocking. you know, at the beginning of

the race i was -- the amount of hate i experienced going around dallas in other cities in texas was enormous, and now it almost the exact opposite. there's more and more people coming up and thanking me for standing out and saying i have listened what you have to say, and i'm voting for secretary kwlin. >> a lot of them are saying i'm voting for secretary clinton at the ballot and republicans down the ballot where there are a few races. you know, it will be interesting to see what happens. i don't think her winning texas is out of the question. >> yesterday kelly ann conway, trump's campaign manager, said clinton's campaigning in texas was just a head fake. what would you say? >> you know, there's -- secretary clinton's campaign is very much data-driven. if there's one thing that we learned from all the wiki leaks from john podesta is they talk about everything and explore

everything and argue about everything. you know, then they make a decision, and we also learn that it's very -- they make very data driven decisions, and she's not going to come here and waste her time unless she thinks there's a chance. >> mark, i hope you don't mind me asking. when is the last time you had a personal interaction with trump? >> it was right after he won the primary. he asked me what happened because i said something publicly that he needed to start learning the issues because, you know, i had been supportive of him and was -- would make the point that at some point you have to dig down and understand what's behind what you are saying. you can't just say it. he asked me what happened, and i sent him a detailed e-mail.

>> i was supportive of the fact that he was candid. he is now 100% scripted. he is not so much candid anymore. particularly when it comes to issues. the things he originally talked about, even though i disagreed with him, but he barely even talks about anymore. other than the off the cuff remarks, which are typically ridiculous from trump. we're hearing what steve bannon or whoever is writing his speeches has to say. >> he was ripping on obama care because of some of the pricing that came out, and he blurts out that, you know, his employees are suffering because of obama care not realizing that he has insurance for them. he has demonstrated again and again. he doesn't even understand what obama care really is or how it works. you couldn't ask him -- >> what's that? >> not to say these premiums are not a concern. >> no. it depends on what state you're

in. if you want to discuss obama care, you have to understand what the three r's are, how they work, the fact that, you know, not every state fulfilled their reimbursements. there are a lot of issues. to me obama care is one of the biggest start-ups of all time. they made certain projections that didn't work out. it doesn't help the people in those states, obviously. it's very painful for them. at the same time if you want to have an open and candid discussion about obama care, away you would want to expect from a candidate from candidate trump, then you have to understand those things. he has made no effort to learn those things. it's like headline porn for the

candidates. like i said to him directly, he should understand the basics of obama care, and he obviously does not. >> the trump says it will go on an ad blitz in the next week. >> expanding map of swing states. >> maybe i read it wrong, but he said he was putting in $10 million to get $25 million worth of advertising in the last week. that's total trump talk, right? >> they're going to sell him $25 million worth for $10 million. it's great, but still just a drop in the ocean. >> the campaign said it will spend $25 million. how much do you think clinton will put up? >> i have -- just look at her report. you know, she files all the cash she has, cash on hand, and, look, there's plenty of services that will tell you exactly what's being purchased in terms of advertising.

rather than putting up $10 million or even $25 million for $25 million in advertising, most likely they're putting up whatever the amount is and getting less than that because they're having to buy last minute ads. that again just shows how he approaches business. >> you took us to the top of the hour. thanks for calling in. good to talk to you. >> i appreciate the time. >> mark cuban, billionaire investor. host of shark tank. >> thanks so were. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner. our top trade this hour. the stretch run. just one week to go now until election day. stocks off the worst month since january. just how volatile are things likely to get? with us for the hour today, stephanie link,