>> welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you from new york. today on the program, with two days to go until one of the closest and most consequential elections in american history, i have a great political panel to talk about harris, trump, tuesday's vote and the legal challenges that have already started. then, i talk to the former british prime minister, boris johnson, about whether he sees himself as a british trump. whether he has any regrets and why he says nato needs to let ukraine in now.

>> if putin wins, we'll have terrible, terrible repercussions. >> but first. here's my take. as the election draws nearer and people consider the pro's and con's of the two major candidates, i have to confess, for me one event stands out in bright lights. one i can't forget. it's january 6, 2021. i'm not thinking so much about the violence that broke out on that date. terrible, as that was. those actions were quickly condemned by people from across the political spectrum. by democrats, of course, but by republicans like mitch mcconnell, ted cruze, lindsey graham. to me, the most frightening aspect was not the event outside the capitol but inside it. after the violence had ended and order had been restored. the house finally reconvened that night to certify

the election results that had been sent forward from the states. remember, this is after dozens of objections and many of the states had been considered and rejected. dozens of court cases had been filed and dismissed. after all those legal procedures had been followed. after a violent assault on the capitol, donald trump and his allies still urged his supporters to reject the results. reject electors and, in fact, nullify the election. and the majority of house republicans, 139 of them, readily assented and voted against certifying the election. had they had enough votes, well, we don't know what would have happened. it's possible trump could have managed to stay on as president. let's also not forget that trump pressured his vice president, mike pence, to misuse his role, as the person who presides over the counting of the electoral college votes. that job explicittedly laid out

in the constitution is a ceremonial one. trump wanted pence to claim, for the first time in american history, that he had the authority to reject electoral votes. singling him out to an extent that the mob outside the capitol chanted hang mike pence. he repeatedly attacked the vice president on social media. if pence done what trump asked, america would have faced a constitutional cry is, and it's unclear if joe biden would have taken office two weeks later. as george w. bush said of the day, this is how they're disputed in a banana republic. this history is worth repeating because sometimes in life a single choice at a crucial moment reveals character. leaders of nations often face such tests of greater or smaller magnitude. he decided not to use force to hold together the soviet empire.

lyndon johnson supported civil rights bills. al gore graceically accepted the controversial supreme court decision awarding the 2000 election to george w. bush. trump faced such a test and failed. it's worth noting mike pence succeeded with flying colors. not only that, trump has never shown a moment's doubt or remorse about asking congress and his vice president to overturn the election. in fact, he's continued to wish they had found some way to let him stay in power. as trump's base quickly returned to him and his support grew, those who had denounced the violence reversed course and jumped back on to the bandwagon. businesses that said they would never support candidates who were election deniers somehow forgot those pledges. billionaires that spoke out went silent for a while and

then found their way back, hoping to carry favor with the man increasingly the republican front runner. some still condemn the violence. even wish trump had done more to stop it but say nothing at all about the action at the center of that day that took place after the violence. an attempt to overturn a free and fair election. the father of the american constitution james madison famously constructed a system in which there were many checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power or the rise of a dictator. if men's were angels, no government would be necessary. madison understood that it wasn't enough to simply device institutions. he explained he hoped the people will have virtual and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. if not, he noted, we are in a wretched

situation. no theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure. we may be about to embark upon an experiment to see whether our institutions, checks and balances can hold, even when leaders try their best to bend them. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. just two days to go before tuesday's election, and a new des moines register poll of iowa that came out yesterday had kamala harris up three-points against donald trump in a state that was safe for trump. they called it a clear outlie yarr. a new college poll shows that the two candidates are essentially even across seven key swing states. joining me now to discuss all this is ron

brownstein and emly, staff writer for the new york time's magazine and a senior research scholar at yale law school. ron, before we get to the polls, the recent flurry of polls, the big take away seems to be the realignment we're seeing is around the deepening divide of gender and on college education. how does that translate geographically? what does that mean for the seven key states? >> yes. generally, fareed, what we've seen in this election is our traditional divisions along race and age are narrowing. and our divisions along the lines of gender and education are widening. the assumption for most of the year has been that that left harris in a better position in the rust belt battleground states. michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania than it did in sunbelt, georgia, north carolina southeast, arizona and nevada in the

southwest. some of the late polling is sending us conflicting signals, as is often the case when you get this many surveys this close to an election. >> but when you look at the iowa poll, and this is by the so-called or cal of iowa. if kamala harris wins iowa, you got to assume she'll win pennsylvania and michigan. >> absolutely. and even if she doesn't. look, we have this big flurry of polls in the final stretch of the election and you can't square them all with each other. there's no way to line up the results. they don't tell you a perfectly consistent story. i do think they tell you a few things. first, we're looking at more states this close to the election at any point since 2000. you have to go back to bush, gore to find this many states this close. having said that, on balance, i think you would slightly rather be playing vice president harris' hand in the final 48 hours. a couple reasons. one, starting

with the new york times polls. the seven states to decide the election, they have trump leading in one. harris is narrowly leading in four of them and two tied in a way that i'll come back to. second, if harris has narrowed biden's deficit since 2020 among white voters in the three battlegrounds plus georgia and north carolina. the difference is that they show her resurging back traditional democratic levels of support among black voters in north carolina and georgia but not in michigan and pennsylvania where they have her plummeting into the 70s. if you're donald trump, you're looking at polls tied in michigan and pennsylvania with harris probably recording an unrealistically low level of black support in them. you can't feel great about that. two other quick points. late deciders leaning towards harris. finally, these are very close states. the polling era could be that anyone could win them. you

have to look at what's happening them. what's happening on the ground is a massive democratic get out to vote effort. 800,000 doors knocked on in pennsylvania yesterday. they say 700 to 900,000 phone calls in michigan and wisconsin. we just don't know what the republicans have in response since trump chose to outsource the get out the vote operation to elon musk. it's not clear if they can match that. the polling says either one can win. those factors would give you a slight thumb on the scale you'd rather be harris in the final moments. >> the key to that, emily is women. as ron described it, it is plummeting support for the democrats among young men of color. the hope that harris has is it's all going to be made up. more than made up by women. what's your sense? >> you know, harris has been running strong on defending

abortion rights. most women are pro-choice. they can see trump didn't defend abortion rights while he was president based on the choices for the supreme court. that's a strong incentive for women who care about that issue to come out for harris. at the same time, you know, ron was talking about the difference between college educated and noncollege educated voters. there's a big gap among the groups. women respond to cross currents. some women who are not college educated are voting in a more class solidarity with the men in their lives. even though they're also majority pro-choice. we'll just have to see how the dynamics play out in these battleground states. >> all right. stay with us. i'm going to ask emily when we come back. she's a legal scholar. donald trump has already issued well over a hundred legal challenges this time around. the election is two days away. what does all that mean? will this election be decided in the

courts? when we come back.

>> one key plank of the republican party's strategy is to cast doubt on the outcome of the election, and it is underway. the gop has been involved in an unprecedented number of preelection court cases. as many as 130, according to the party itself. many of them attempting to restrict voter access.

emily, can you explain to us, what exactly, what is the trump campaign's strategy in terms? what are they alleging? are they able to get courts to decide these things? >> you know, i think they're throwing spaghetti against the wall. the idea is to sow doubt and before the election suggest their reasons to think the rules are not fair. that the system is rigged. but it's really important to remember that, you know, in order to overturn the results of an election in court you need to have evidence of fraud or irregularity to the point that it would overturn the results. it's not a few people voted who weren't supposed to. there's always human error in elections. and our laws are constructed to allow for a little bit of that so that we can have the outcome that most people want. and it's important to remember that in 2020, the

courts were a really important bull work against the kind of more prief louse charges that the trump campaign brought that time around. i think we can and should expect the courts to follow the law and make sure that people are, have their votes counted and the results that the majority wants are the ones the country gets. >> you read reports of many counties. each of these counties often have to certify these elections. there are counties that people are, it seems like they're setting themselves up to say we won't certify unless trump wins. if that happens and there's a certain date by which it all has to happen, what happens? does the court force the county to decide? can the court decide for the county? >> yeah. they can. it's important to remember, these county officials, their job is not to be the referee. it's to be the scorekeeper. it's a

ministerial role. if county officials refuse to certify the vote, then the state officials, the secretary of state can step in and sue and go to court and say you have to certify the vote by a certain date. so the county officials really have limited authority here. however determined they may be to throw sand in the gears. the courts, the law exists to make sure that, again, they can overturn the will of the majority. >> and as far as i can tell, pennsylvania is ground zero where a lot of this is happening. part of that is because we have this crazy system, in my opinion, in america, where not just every state but every county in the state can have different requirements and rules for ballots and how they're counted and when they're counted. right? >> right. this is a vulnerability in pennsylvania. pennsylvania, first of all, allows votes not to be counted for kind of small technical reasons. like you didn't put

the date on the envelope or use the inner privacy sleeve when you submitted your absentee ballot and allows counties to have different rules about when they can fix mistakes. when counties tell them they've made a mistake and do what's called curing the ballot to mistake the mistake. that unevenness is an issue pennsylvania will be going into this election with. it's only going to matter if the election is very, very close. and we did, i think, have a common sense helpful ruling from the united states supreme court this week saying that people whose votes will not be counted because they made the minor error of not submitting the privacy sleeve envelope, they can cast provisional ballots. that makes sense for ensuring someone who is told your vote you cast by mail can't count can still try to cast a provisional ballot to make sure they can vote in the election.

>> ron, first, tell me what is your sense of whether or not the supreme court, are they banking on the supreme court, the trump campaign, to bail them out? so far it's not clearly exactly how it would go. >> short answer is i think is yes. it reminds me of the situation in florida 2000 where you had a state supreme court that was majority democratic appointments and republicans felt they had the trump card with the supreme court. this time, in michigan and pennsylvania and wisconsin, the states that i still think are most likely to decide the election, you have progressive or democratic majorities on all three state supreme courts. so i think by and large, they're going to rule expansively towards including as many votes as possible. and the question will be, how far will this supreme court go in overturning their decisions and ruling in a way that trump wants. certainly

john roberts', his desire to have the supreme court to be above politics have extended to cases that directly have the republican party. there's a whole long line of them in 2020, as you point out, they did not go that far to overturn results for trump. but what we saw in that immunity decision this year was a willingness to go pretty far towards putting a thumb on the scale of an election. the supreme court is a real wild card as this litigation proceeds. >> and briefly, ron, can you just explain to us, pennsylvania likely to be the decider. not just pennsylvania. probably a handful of suburbs outside philadelphia. right? >> yeah. >> why? >> look. i mean, joe biden won philadelphia, the four suburban

counties outside philadelphia by 910,000 votes. it's entirely possible harris will have to win them by more to overcome what will be further movement for trump in small town and rural parts of pennsylvania. the precedent is there. democrat this is 2022 ran better among college educated voters. not only in pennsylvania but michigan and wisconsin in the governor's races than they did in 2020. don't forget, fareed, january 6th hadn't happened yet. harris can but she probably must run even better in the white collar suburbs of all three states in order to hold them and of course, if she wins all three of them and omaha, she will reach 270 electoral votes exactly. >> the election will be decided in a handful of suburbs in maybe three states, possibly one state. ron, emily, thank you so

much. both of you were terrific. next up, boris johnson on donald trump, tuesday's election and much more.

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>> few figures have loomed as large over british politics as boris johnson. the conservative politician has played many roles. along the way, he's made history. >> i will be advocating. >> in 2016 he championed the controversial brexit vote to leave the european union. three years later, he moved and his

conservative party won a landslide election with the largest majority since margaret thather. after three years in office, he lost the top job over several scandals. now he's telling it all in his new book, "unleashed." >> it's great to see you. >> you came of age politically. i remember you and you were very much that. i look at what suddenly the republican party has become under trump. it's essentially protectionist, nationalist. it's largely against limited government. trump wants to spend more on all kinds of entitlements and give people tax free overtime and tips. and yet you support him. i don't understand that. the republican party under trump sort of essentially believes in the opposite of everything margaret thatcher did. how could you support trump?

>> well, hang on. i do not wish to get trapped into this very important election that's taking place just a couple of days. >> you said you were supporting him. i'm asking you why. >> what i would say about the question is, how can someone like me who is a free marketer and a free trader and a thatcherite have done some of the things we did. and yes, i do oppose ter riffs. if i look at the uk. i'll say nothing about the u.s., i think the state is too big. i do. i think we need to be cutting taxes. i think it's insane the labor government that just put up taxes by 40 billion pounds. there's no need to do this.

government is big in the uk, and we need to go in the other direction. >> you were a big spender. >> hang on. come on, mate. i spend about 410 billion pounds on covid. >> outside of that, you were a big spender. leveling up agenda costs money. >> you need to spend on infrastructure. the advantage of doing that is that you trigger private sector investment. what i wanted to do, and which we did successfully in london, was you get london, it's the opposite of the uk. the public sector is about 25% of the economy. the rest is private investment. that's what you need. now here in the u.s., i gather that elon musk is going to come in and cut

$2 trillion off government spending. if that's the agenda, then i think that needs to be looked at seriously. i do think there is a case that western democracy like the uk and perhaps like the u.s. as well, the state has gotten too big. >> let me go to brexit. goldman sachs say it grew 5% less over less countries and underperformed because of reduced trade, weaker business investment and lower immigration. more importantly, 63% of your countrymen now believe brexit has been more of a failure than success. 63% don't agree on anything nowadays. surely that's a resounding argument against brexit. >> no. i don't agree at all. you got to imagine, the british public is seriously going to want to go back into the

european union. to do that, they would have to vote to spend an extra 20 billion pounds a year to be spent at the discretion of the european union. give up control of their legal system. >> but they seem to be willing to do it. >> i bet they would never do it. it's never going to happen. i think it was the right thing to do. people in america, america guards its sovereignty, american independence and freedom more zealously. >> we're a vast nation. without being part of europe, you're a small country. a middle sized. >> as for goldman sachs statistics, i remind you since the vote to leave the eu in 2016, we've grown faster than

germany. last time i looked, france, germany, they were all members of the european union. right? what we need to do and what my government would have done had i been spared by my team, what we need to do is take proper advantage of brexit. next on gps, i'll ask boris johnson about his passionate support for ukraine and whether a potential second trump presidency would help or hurt that country's war efforts.

former british prime minister boris johnson has been one of the moa sarden supporters of ukraine's war efforts. johnson quipped that i thought i was definitely more popular in kyiv than in kensington. it's detailed in his new memoir, "unleashed." >> i know you have been incredibly strong in terms of your support for ukraine. as prime minister and after being prime minister. you must worry that a trump victory would mean that the united states would be less zealot in his support. >> i do worry a great deal about what will happen in ukraine. it's the single most important

issue that we face in our generation. in the early part of the 21st century. this is the deciding conflict, in my view. it will set the pattern for what happens for decades to come. if the tyranny, if putin wins, it will have terrible, terrible repercussions for the world. and not just in the atlantic area but the south china seas. it's got to go right. now, how is the u.s. election going to affect that? i know that you and i have discussed all of this many times. before we go on to president trump, just continuing with the current policy that joe biden and our government is not enough. >> you want more? >> even if kamala wins, with the current trajectory, that is not enough. i'm afraid the russians have been gaining territory in the last couple of days. we don't know what's going on.

the ukrainians have done astonishing things. they've taken this huge segment. unless they get the permissions to use the attack systems, the storm shatters and unless they get the proper financial support and a long-term solution to their security needs, then we're not going to fix it for them. >> that support is more unlikely under a president trump. >> okay. clearly a lot of people worry about that and say that. i got to speak as i find. and when i was foreign secretary. when i had to deal with donald trump, i got to tell you on a lot of the key issues, he was very, very solid. when it came to iran, when it came to syria and, in deed, when it came to russia, to putin and ukraine. he gave the ukrainians those shoulder launched antitank weapons. when frankly the previous democratic

administration, when you look at how they responded to putin's invasion in 2014, they did virtually nothing. so i hear what people say. and to say i'm not anxious would be clearly wrong. i am very, very concerned. but i believe on the basis of what trump, donald trump has done in the past, that he will be robust. i really do. just for this instinktive reason. i cannot believe that a guy who is so passionate about his country, about making america great again, which he wants to do. and so convincing about that. would want to kick off his next presidential term by basically allowing the soviet empire to be great again. i can't believe he will allow that to happen. >> would you advise trump to

extend nato membership to ukraine? >> i think it's the only solution. and it has to be done. because, you know, why is hungary, poland, all the vol tick states and pinland now? because russia invaded them. and that has not happened to ukraine. putin has not succeeded. he will never subjogate for ukraine. the only long-term solution is to give everybody the clarify that comes with nato membership. and that clarity means peace and stability. >> i got to ask you. you write in the book that became the big prime minister should be the last big job you hold. but you said politics is addictive. does that mean that you are still addicted to politics and we could expect to see boris johnson back in the arena?

>> the answer is in the pages of "unleashed." i was useful in 2019 because we couldn't get brexit done. i can't see at the moment how i can really do anything similar. but i want to be, of course i want to be supportive of my party. and of course i'm going to do that. i want to stress that the purpose of writing "unleashed" was to explain what brexit britain was all about. to explain leveling up. and if other people are going to drive that agenda forward, then of course no one would be more delighted. i'm living a life of blameless. when i'm not appearing on your show, i'm living a life of blameless

and rustic obscurity. >> pleasure to see you. >> thank you. next on gps, how does china view the u.s. election? would they rather deal with kamala harris or donald trump? .s. pre

it's kamalas harris or donald world's new largest economic powers. officially beijing's government says it has no preference. calling the upcoming election a quote internal affair of the united states unquote. but my next guest says china has, in fact, making careful preparations. joining me is ling ling wei. welcome. always a pleasure to talk to you. tell me, how is china looking at these two choices in this election? >> thank you fareed. it's really great to be back here. so, for the chinese leadership, they are definitely doing scenario planning. privately they definitely have indicated what they want from the next u.s. president. they want predictability. they want some

sort of stability. they want desire from the next u.s. president to soften this tough on china approach. >> do they think that trump is a known quantity and harris is unknown? they've dealt with trump. they've never dealt with harris. how do you think that makes them feel? >> so, yes. they definitely have dealt with trump, you know, during the trade war under the first trump administration. and china's officials were caught off guard by the very high pressured techniques from the trump administration. to some extent, a lot of them were utterly exhausted by the technique employed by trump trying to use ter riffs and other methods to try and extract from beijing. >> what about with harris? do

they worry or are they fine with the idea that she doesn't have much experience in foreign affairs. she, i don't think has ever been to china. >> in their view, harris is an unknown. but based on my conversations with some chinese officials and scholars, there is a belief in beijing that harris would largely inherit the biden approach to china, which is tough. but more targeted and limited in scopes of teriffs and other measures. >> transfer, of course, is proposing or threatening a 60% one in china. do you think that's for real? they must have thought through what the response would be. presumably

they would raise ter riffs substantially. >> that's the most immediate concern for the chinese leadership. china's economy is struggling. a lot of young people are struggling to find jobs. so there has been a tremendous amount of economic stress in china. a tariff war or trade war 2.0 under a possible trump administration would be another huge blow to china's economy. you know, if the first trade war gives us any indication, china definitely would hit back at any additional tariffs. this could potentially lead to a cycle of retaliation and counterretaliation. >> you wrote about how one of the reason's xi jinping is

worried about a trump victory is trump's relationship with putin. explain what you mean. >> yes. during the first trump administration, president trump did try to bring russia closer to the united states. so the worry in beijing these days is that if trump is to win the second term, trump would cozy up to putin again and potentially hurting the relationship between beijing and moscow. in xi jinping's view, putin is a crucial ally in china's standoff with the west. so, you know, the worst case scenario in beijing's view is the so-called reverse nixon. much like former president nixon sorted out china to counter the soviet union during the cold war era. the

fear is trump could cozy up to putin and align with russia to counter beijing. >> fascinating. pleasure to have you on. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week.

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