welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world, i am very good cigar you 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 talked to the former british prime minister boris johnson about whether he sees himself as a british trumpet. whether he has any regrets over brexit, and why he says nato needs to let ukraine in now. >> if putin wins, we will have terrible, terrible repercussions. >> but first, here is my take.

as the election draws near and people consider the pros and cons of the two major candidates, i have to confess, for me, one that stands out in bright lights, one that i cannot forget, and it is generally six, 2021. i'm not thinking so much about the violence that broke out on that day, terrible as that was, those actions were quickly condemned by people from across the political spectrum . by democrats, of course, but also by republicans like mitch mcconnell, ted cruz, nikki haley, and lindsey graham. to me, the most frightening aspect of what happened on january 6th 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 set forward from the states. remember, this is after dozens of rejections and many of the

states at 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 effect, nullify the election. and the majority of house republicans, 139 of them, readily ascended and voted against certifying the election. had they had enough votes, well, we don't know what would have happened with it as 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 a person who presides over the counting of electoral college votes. that job explicitly laid out in the constitution is a purely ceremonial one, but 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 such an extent that the mob outside the capitol chanted: hanged mike pence. he repeatedly attacked the vice president on social media. had pence done what trump had asked, america would have faced a constitutional crisis, and it is unclear if joe biden would have taken office two weeks later. as george w. bush said of the day, this is how election results are disputed and 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. decided not to use force to hold together the soviet empire. lyndon johnson supported civil rights bills, even though he knew it would shatter the democratic base in the south. al gore gracefully accepted the controversial

supreme court decision, awarding the 2000 election to george w. bush. trump faced such a test and failed. it is 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 has continued to wish that they had found some way to let him stay in power. as trump's base quickly returned to him and his support group, those who had did announced the vilest reversed course and jumped back on the bandwagon. businesses who said they would never support candidates who were election deniers somehow forgot those pledges. the nurse who had spoken out as a matter of conscience went silent for a while, and then found their way back to mar-a-lago, hoping to gain favor with the man who was increasingly the republican front runner. some still

condemn the violence, even which trump had done more to stop it, but say nothing at all about the action at the center of that date 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 were angels, he noted, no government would be necessary. but madison understood that it wasn't enough to simply devise institutions. he explained that he hoped that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select a man 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/farid 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 generally considered safe for trump. the trump campaign called the pole a clear outlier. and a new new york times siena 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, a senior editor of the atlantic and a senior analyst at cnn. and emily, staff writer for the new york

times magazine and a senior research scholar at yale law school. ron, let me start with you. before we get to the polls, the most recent polls, the big take away seems to be the realignment we are seeing is around the deepening divide on gender and on college education. how does that translate geographically? what does that mean for the seven key states? >> yes, generally, fareed, what we have seen this election is our trip traditions along the race and age are narrowing, and our divisions along lines of gender and education are widening . the assumption for most of the year it has been that that left harris in a better position in the rust belt battleground states, michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin than it did in the sun belt battleground states, georgia, north carolina, arizona, and nevada, but some of his latest polling is sending us conflicting signals , as is often the case when you

get this many surveys this close to an election. >> the but when you look at that iowa poll, and this is by the so-called article of iowa, if governor harris wins iowa, you have got to assume she is going to win pennsylvania and michigan. >> absolutely. and even if she doesn't, look, we have this big flurry of poles in the final stretch of the election here, and you can't swear them all with each other, there is no way to line up the results, they don't tell you a perfectly consistent story, but i do think they tell you a few things. first, we are looking at more states that are this close this close to the election at any point since 2000. you have to go back to bush-gore defined this many states that were this close. having said that, on balance, i think you would slightly rather be playing vice president harris's and in the final 48 hours. a couple reasons. one, starting with those new york times polls, the seven states that will decide the election,

they only have trump leading and one of them. they have harris narrowly leading in four of them, and they have two tied in a way that i will come back to. second, if you look at the new york times poll, harris has narrowed bidens deficit since 2020 among white voters and all three of the rust belt battlegrounds, plus georgia and north carolina. the difference is that they show her researching back toward 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 are donald trump, you're looking at polls that have you on the tide 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 in the new york times poll leading towards harris. finally, these are very close states. the polling era could be such that anyone can with them. you have got to look the stuff that is actually happening, and what is

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 and charlie kirk, so it is not clear that they can match that. obviously, the polling says either one of them can win, but those factors that i just cited, i think would give you a slight thumb on the scale for harris in these final moments. >> the key to that, emily, is women. because as ron described, it is plummeting support for democrats among young men of color. and the hope that harris has is it is all going to be made up, more than made up by women. what is your sense? >> you know, harris has been running strong understanding abortion rights. most women are pro-choice. they can see that

trump did not defend abortion rights when he was president, based on his choices for the supreme court. so, that is 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 non-college-educated voters. there is a big gap among those groups, and women respond to crosscurrents, right? some women who are not college-educated are going to vote in the more kind of class solidarity with the men in their lives, even though they are also a majority pro-choice, so we will just have to see how all those dynamics play out in these battleground states. >> stay with us, i want to ask emily when we come back, she is a legal scholar. donald trump is already well over 100 legal challenges this time around. the election -- [ inaudible ] what does all that mean, will this election be decided in the courts? when we come back. >> [ music ]

closed captioning brought to you by gelt. one key plank of the republican party's strategy is to cast doubt on the outcome of the election and it is already well underway. the gop has been involved in an unprecedented number of pre-election court cases, as many as 130, according to the party itself, many of them attempting to restrict voter access. back with me is emily, staff writer

for the new york times madison and researcher for yale law school, and ron, senior political analyst at cnn. emily, can you explain to us what exactly -- what is the trump campaign's strategy, what are they alleging, and are they able to get courts to decide these things? >> you know, i think they are really throwing spaghetti against the wall, and the idea is, as you said, to sow doubt, kind of even before the election, suggest there are reasons to think that the rules are not fair, that the system is rigged. but it is really important to remember that 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 actually overturn the results. it is not a few people voted who weren't supposed to. you know, there is 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 is important to remember that in

2020, the courts were a really important bulwark against the kind of , you know, or frivolous charges that the trump campaign brought that time around. so, i think we can and should expect the courts to follow the law and make sure that, you know, people are -- have their votes counted, and that the results that the majority wants are the ones that the country gets sprayed >> but you read reports of the many counties, each of these counties often have to certified these elections, and there are counties where people -- it seems like they are setting themselves up to say we are not going to certify, unless trump wins. if that happens and there is 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 is important to remember, these county officials, their job is not to be the referee, it is to

be the scorekeeper. it is a ministerial role. so, if local county officials refused to certify the vote, and the state officials, often the secretary of state, can step in and sue and go to court, and say you have to certified 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't subvert or overturn the will of the majority. >> as far as i can tell, pennsylvania is ground zero where a lot of this is happening, and part of that is because we have this crazy system, in my opinion, in america, were not just every state, but every county within the state can have different requirements and rules for ballots and how they are counted and when they are counted, right? >> right, well, 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 you didn't use the privacy sleeve when you submitted your absentee ballot. and also, pennsylvania allows counties to have some different rules about when absentee voters can fix mistakes , when counties tell them they have made a mistake, and then whether they can do what is called securing the ballot to fix the mistake. so, that unevenness is a kind of issue that pennsylvania will be going into this election with. it is only going to matter if the election is very, very close. and we did, i think, have a commonsense helpful ruling from the united states supreme court this week, saying that people whose votes will not be counted because they made a minor error of not submitting the inner privacy sleeve envelope, that those people can cast provisional ballots. and that makes sense, just for ensuring that 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? it is so far not clear exactly how it will go. >> short answer i think is yes. you know, it reminds me in some ways of the situation in florida in 2000, where you had a state supreme court that was controlled by majority democratic appointees, and republicans felt they had the trump card because of the u.s. supreme court with majority republican appointees. this time in michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, states that are you 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 are going to rule expansively toward -- 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 once? certainly, john roberts , historically, his desire to have the supreme court be seen as above politics has been extended only as far as cases that directly implicate the immediate electoral interest of the republican party, shelby county, citizens united, there is 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 community decision this year was a willingness to go pretty far toward putting a thumb on the scale of an election, so 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, why? >> yeah, look, joe biden won philadelphia, the four suburban

counties outside of philadelphia, pittsburgh, and its immediate suburbs, it's entirely possible harris will have to win them by more, in order to overcome what will be probably further movement toward trump in small-town and rural parts of pennsylvania. the president is there. democrats in 2022 ran better among college-educated voters. not only in pennsylvania, but also michigan and wisconsin and the governor's races than they did in 2020. don't forget, fareed, in 2020, january 6th had not happened yet, the dobbs decision had not 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 college votes exactly. >> okay, so, election of 340 million people is going to be decided in a handful of suburbs in maybe three states, possibly one state. ron, emily, thank you so much , this was just

terrific. next up, boris johnson on donald trump, tuesday's election, and much more. >> [ music ]

>> [ inaudible ] as boris johnson. the conservative politician has played many roles from a member of parliament to foreign secretary, and then prime minister. along the way, he has made history. >> i will be advocating. >> in 2016, he championed the controversial brexit vote to

leave the european union. three years later, he moved into 10 downing street and his conservative party won a landslide election with the largest majority since margaret thatcher. after three years in office, he lost the top job over several scandals. now, he is telling it all in his new book, unleashed. boris johnson, pleasure. >> great to see you, thank you for having me on the show. >> you came of age politically as a thatcher [ inaudible ]. i remember you when you were a journalist. i look at what certainly the republican party has become with trump, it is essentially protectionist, nationalist, it is largely against unlimited government. trump wants to spend more on all kinds of entitlements, he wants to give people tax free overtime and tips, and yet you support him. i don't understand that. you know, the republican party under trump certainly essentially believes in opposite of everything

margaret thatcher did, so how could you support that? >> hang on. [ inaudible ] i do not wish to get trapped into this. [ inaudible ] >> boris, you said you would support trump, i am asking you why. >> i would say the question is how can someone like me , who is a free marketeer and a free trader and thatcherite in my instincts , i have done some of the things that we did in the last minute, and yes, i do oppose tariffs and i do think that if i look at the uk right now, i will say nothing about the u.s., but if i look at the uk, i think the state is too big, yes, i do. and i think that we need to be cutting taxes. it's in saying, the government just put up taxes by

$40 million, what do they think they are doing? there is no need to do this. the government is astronomically big now in the uk, and we do need to be going in the other direction. >> you were a big spender. [ inaudible ] >> we had to spend about 410 billion pounds on covid, and it was very difficult . >> even outside of that, you were a big spender. [ inaudible ] >> you do need to spend on infrastructure. but the advantage of doing that is that you create a private sector investment. what i wanted to do and what we did very successfully in london was [ inaudible ]. and in london, it's opposite of the most of the rest of the uk. it's the private sector. the public sector is about 25% of the economy, the rest is private

investment, and 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 of government spending, so, if that is the agenda, then i think that needs to be looked at seriously, because i do think there is a case that western democracy like the uk, perhaps like the u.s. as well, the state has got too big. >> let me go to brexit, because goldman sachs says uk economy grew 5% less over eight other countries, and it has significantly [ inaudible ], weaker business investment, and lower immigration from the european union. more importantly, 63% of your country now believes to brexit has been more of a failure than success. 63% don't agree on anything nowadays, so surely that is a resounding argument against brexit.

>> i don't agree at all. you've got to imagine that 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 and give up control of their legal system. >> are we willing to do it? >> i bet they would never do it. it is never going to happen. and i think it was the right thing to do, to come out -- people in america -- america guards its sovereignty , american independence, american freedom more zealously than any other country. >> [ inaudible ] without being part of europe, a small country. >> as for goldman sachs ' statistics, i just remind you, that since the vote to leave the eu in 2016, we have grown faster than germany.

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

former british prime minister boris johnson has been one of the most ardent supporters of ukraine's war effort. reflecting on one of his visits after the invasion, johnson said "i thought i was definitely more popular in kyiv than in some parts of kensington." it is all detailed in his new memoir, unleashed. so, i know that you have been incredibly strong in terms of your support for ukraine. as prime minister, after being prime minister. you must worry that a trump victory would mean the united states would be less zealous in its support for ukraine. >> i do worry a great deal about what will happen in

ukraine, and i think it is 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 patent 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 europe, but in the south china sea, so it has got to go right. now, how is the u.s. election going to affect that? the u.n. discussed all of this many times. before we go on to president trump, just continuing with the current policy that joe biden and our current people -- it's not enough. 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 know what's going on. the ukrainians have done astonishing things, they have [ inaudible ]. but unless they get the permissions to use the storm shutters, unless they get the proper financial support, unless they get a long term solution to their security needs, then we are not going to fix it. >> that enhanced support is even more unlikely under president trump. >> clearly, a lot of people worry about that and a lot of people say that, but i have got to speak as i have found it, and when i was foreign secretary, when i had to deal with donald trump, i have got to tell you, fareed, that on a lot of the key issues, he was very, very solid. so, when it came to iran, when it came to syria, and indeed when it came to russia, to putin and ukraine, he gave ukrainians those antitank weapons , when

frankly, the previous democrat administration -- when you look at how they responded to putin's invasion , they did virtually nothing. so, i hear what people say. and to sound not anxious would be wrong, i'm very, very concerned, but i believe, on the basis of what donald trump has done in the past, that he will be robust, i really do. and for this instinctive reason, that i cannot believe that a guy who is so passionate about his country, about making america great again, which he wants to do, and is 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 that he would

allow that to happen. >> would you advise trump to extend nato membership to ukraine? >> i think it is the only solution and it has to be done, because you know, why is hungary, czechoslovakia, the czech republic, and finland now, why are they all members of nato? because russia has invaded them in the last 100 years, and that has not happened to ukraine. putin has not succeeded. he will never subjugate ukraine, right? those people are going to fight and fight and fight for their freedom. the only long-term solution is to give everybody the clarity that comes with nato membership. and that clarity means peace and stability. >> i have got to ask you finally, you write in the book that maybe this big prime minister should be the last job you hold in british politics. you say politics is addictive. does that mean that you are still addicted to politics and

that we could expect to see boris johnson back -- >> the answer [ inaudible ]. no, i think that i was useful in 2019 to get brexit done. you know, i can't see at the moment how i could really do anything similar. but of course i want to be supportive of my party. and of course, i'm going to do that. but you know, i want to stress that, you know, the purpose of writing "unleashed," was to explain what brexit was all about, to explain leveling up. and you know, if other people are going to drive that agenda forward, then of course no one would be more delighted. [ inaudible ]

when i am not appearing on your show, i'm going to be a rustic obscurity. [ inaudible ] i'm very happy. thank you. next on gps, how does china view the u.s. election? would xi jinping rather deal with kamala harris or donald trump? >> [ music ]

who would china prefer as

the next u.s. president? whether it is kamala harris or trump will help shape a very rocky relationship between the world's two largest economic powers. officially, beijing's government says it has no preference, calling the upcoming election an internal affair of the united states. but my next guest says china has in fact been making some careful preparations. joining me is the chief china correspondent of the wall street journal. welcome . as always, a pleasure to talk to you. so, tell me, how is china looking at these two choices in this election? >> thank you, fareed, it is really great to be back here. so, for the chinese leadership, they are definitely doing scenario planning. they have definitely indicated what they want from the next u.s. president, they want predictability, they want some

sort of stability, they want a 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? you know, they have dealt with trump, they have 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 again, china's officials were caught offguard by the very high pressure to techniques from the trump administration, and to some extent, a lot of them were utterly exhausted by the technique employed by trump , trying to use tariffs and other measures to try to extract concession 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? i don't think she has ever been to china. >> in their view, yes, paris is unknown, but based on my conversations with some chinese officials and scholars, there is the belief in beijing that harris largely would inherit the biden approach to china , which is tough, but more targeted and limited in scope in terms of tariffs and other measures. >> and trump of course is proposing or threatening is 60% tariff in china. do they think that is for real? and do you have a sense , if trump were to do that, they must have talked through what their response would be. presumably, they would raise tariffs on america

very substantially. >> that really is the most immediate concern for the chinese leadership. because china's economy right now is struggling. you know, we have seen various level of our local governments running out of money, unprecedented property crisis in china, a lot of young people struggling to find jobs, so there has been a tremendous amount of economic stress in china. a tariff award 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 counter retaliation. >> you wrote about how one of the reasons xi jinping seems to

be 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 is that if trump is to win a second term, trump would cozy up to putin again , potentially hurting the relationship to 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, you know, [ inaudible ] china to counter the soviet

union during the cold war era, the fear is trump would cozy up to putin and align with russia to counter beijing. >> fascinating. a 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.

san francisco's leadership is failing us. that's why mark farrell is endorsing prop d. because we need to tackle our drug and homelessness crisis just like mark did as our interim mayor. mark farrell endorsing prop d, to bring the changes we need for the city we love.