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>> the u.s. economy added 12,000 jobs in october as hiring slowed. hurricanes helene and milton likely reduced employment last month. the job numbers were expected to be constrained by the southeast hurricanes and several worker strikes. the report comes just days before next week's historic election and a key federal reserve meeting. the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% according to the labor department. host: this morning ws the author of a new book american reckoning, inside trump's trial and my own. before we get to your book, let's begin with your column in the new york times yesterday. what if democrats win the white house and congress tuesday? your title is posed as a question. how do you answer it? >> just briefly, this is a piece

about what would happen if the democrats swept. and you would get a lot of a kamala harris has promised for the middle class actually enacted into law. i go through the various legislative impediments, the filibuster and other things you would get. you would get the roe v. wade decision that used to be the law of the land, it would become law. so abortion would basically be off the table as an issue because congress would have passed a law returning us to the situation that we have before the dobbs decision in all these concerns about women dying. not just concerns, women are dying because doctors are afraid in a number of states to provide them with medical care because of state laws that make it difficult for them to do so.

all those concerns would go away on the subject of reproductive rights. but there's a whole series of other issues that relate to what was proposed. remember, her key line in the closing moments of the campaign is donald trump has an enemies list. i have a to do list. contrary to what the earlier caller said, this is not just for black people. that is a complete misrepresentation. it is for the american middle class indigo through better affordability at the grocery store and on housing with very specific proposals for childcare, a child tax credit which would help basically all americans and left the child poverty rate in half. i could go one with the agenda, but you get the idea.

basically, the democrats would not be able to go too far, and their proposals according to the wharton school where donald trump went, according to their calculations, harris's proposals would have only one fit of the impact on the deficit that trumps proposals would have. mostly because she would end these tax breaks for the very wealthy and use the money that was going to the very wealthy for some of these programs for the middle class. so that is what she is offering the country and we will see how people respond. >> democrats have a thin majority in the senate. one third of the senate is up in this election. many are predicting that republicans flip the senate, they are then in control. with that unlikely scenario, why write about it?

guest: i just want to give a sense of what could happen if ted cruz lost in texas. we simply don't know what is going to happen. i think all of this horserace coverage is at this point kind of a waste of time. nobody knows who's going to win this presidential election. anybody tell sure what is going to happen, don't listen to them. there are too many variables. it just doesn't make very many sense. polling is kind of broken in this country. we heard earlier from sean spicer about the real clear politics average. those include a lot of republican sponsored polls.

we simply don't know. i am much more focused on the states in the selection rather than the horserace, and the stakes here are immense. to understand them, just look at this morning's wall street journal. one of the most highly decorated and reviewed military officers this country has produced in a generation. he was responsible for killing osama bin laden. and he said that donald trump has the maturity of a 15-year-old boy who can't be trusted to be returned to power. what he is offering is with george washington specifically rejected when he established the idea of the peaceful transfer of power. george washington was all about reaching out, not spreading hate. his farewell address warned against conmen.

donald trump is a con man and a chaos agent. he was talking about is a great record in new york. i've lived in the new york area for 40 years. he didn't build new york. this company was put out of business and was ripping people off. he was employing illegal aliens in the construction of trump tower. not to mention was going on now. if i could just add to general mcraven's voice. i think we all know that when general kelly, who is donald trump's chief of staff and general milley, head of the joint chiefs, they both knew the

f-word, fascist, when describing donald trump. whether one thinks that goes too far or not, people can decide. but that is a very significant thing. when you have all these people who worked with trump who were coming out and saying he should not be returned to office. nikki haley just last night reiterated what she said during the primaries. she said i don't take anything back that i said during the primaries, and during the primaries she said he was dangerous. now for her own political reasons she's coming on board, but she stood behind what she said during the primaries which is what republicans privately know, he's dangerous. and i would just as people, if the shoe was on the other foot, with say that back in the obama days that obama's chief of staff and the chair of the joint chiefs and the obama years, if they had both said barack obama

is a fascist, would you have wanted to vote for him for reelection in 2012? of course not. the people around him are saying this man is dangerous, and we need to listen to that and have a real gut check before going in and voting. harris, you might agree or disagree with her policy, the biden administration didn't do enough on immigration in at 2021 and 2022. only now is it starting to come under control. trump rejected a deal that was proposed by a conservative in the senate in the last year. you don't like harris on immigration, you think grocery prices are too high.

even though she's promising to crack down on predatory pricing, which trump with all of his corporate connections has not done. but let's assume you agree more with trump on the issues just for the sake of argument. this is not about those issues. this is about who do we trust? it is about character over country. it is why so money republicans, not just liz cheney,. conservative, but many others have come together and they are shouting as loud as they can. this man is unstable, he is not fit to be president. and i just want to add one more thing. i know you want to get to the calls, but i like to focus some on the cruelty. we don't want a cruel president.

everybody has got their own example of what really upsets them, and mine comes from just the week before, when trump was talking on more than one occasion about the enemy from within. remember that? that is a stoleni -- joseph stalinist term. like when because people vermin. he was asked who is the enemy within, that he says is more dangerous than china or russia. the enemy from within. and he said that he would use the military or the national guard again. and the names he mentioned were adam schiff and "the -- pelosis." he wasn't just talking about nancy pelosi who he is very angry at because she helped talk joe biden into getting off the

ticket, which i write about in my book. he wasn't just mad at nancy pelosi. he said the pelosis. nancy pelosi is married to a man named paul pelosi, who when he was 82 years old there was a break-in in their home in san francisco and a trump loyalist broke in and fractured his skull with a hammer. when he was still in the hospital, donald trump was laughing about it repeatedly, telling jokes, hatching conspiracy theories that made it seem as if it was paul pelosi's fault. and now, years later this man who just happens to be married to nancy pelosi is the enemy within? any want to use the national guard, the military against paul pelosi? who is now 84 years old?

this is sick stuff. we can have a person that sick, that cruel as our president. host: american reckoning: inside trump's trial. which trial are you talking about? guest: i was in the courtroom every day for the hush money felony trial in new york city in one of the most dramatic events i've ever covered watching that jury say guilty, guilty, guilty 34 times. just addressing some of the republicans and independents in the audience, i agree with former republican governor of arkansas asa hutchinson, a former prosecutor, and he respects our criminal justice system, as i do. we cannot elect a convicted felon as president of the united states. he was convicted.

we don't want to undermine our criminal justice system by having a felon be our president. host: and wendell sentencing happened in that case? guest: november 26. and basically if trump wins, it is likely that he would be sentenced to probation, and if he loses, most observers who cover this court and cover the new york criminal justice system say that there is at least a 50% chance the judge will sentence into a short-term. host: alabama, chuck, independent. guest: doing well. caller: this is something that has always bothered me about especially biden. when he started his campaign, he

brought up charlottesville. i read that whole transcript. journalists were asking him about monuments. he said there's good people on both sides about tearing down monuments. so either biden lied to us or he doesn't know what he's talking about. so when are people like c-span going to admit that there's people on both sides that he was talking about monuments? he wasn't talking about the kkk or whatever. it pisses me off. guest: you make a very good point. if you look at the whole context, it is not as joe biden -- not as bad as joe biden was making it out to be. but joe biden does not on the ballot and there are a lot of other examples of donald trump spending time with nazis. he had dinner with two nazis.

he doesn't say he regrets having dinner with them. in terms of race, i've been around long enough to remember the central park five. these were five black kids who were wrongly accused of raping a woman in central park and they went to prison for it and later, another person confessed to the crime. dna evidence cleared them. one of the central park five is now a very well-regarded member of the new york city answer, and donald trump wanted them executed and when told years later they didn't commit these crimes, he doubled down on it because he never backs off anything. if he had his way, they would be dead now for a crime they didn't commit. and we could go on about a number of other things he's done.

they were just flat out racist. and we could spend a lot of time talking about that. but the main thing is when you start to use hate, it is just not the american way for him to be rubbing these wounds raw over and over again. harris, whatever you think of her issues, she wants to turn the page, and something she said the other night was very important. she said donald trump wants to go after what he calls the enemies from within. his political rivals. kamala harris wants to bring those rivals into the white house and work out compromises on the issues that face the american people. she's very focused on a different kind of future.

do we really want people to go inflation was lower when trump was president? that is true, because we have these terrible supply interruptions during covid. never russia attacked ukraine, which by the way, trump doesn't care about. eastern europe, which would basically destroy nato, but when he said this, when russia did this, the price of wheat skyrocketing because russia and ukraine had control of a good chunk of the market. so there were a bunch of external reasons for inflation. that sent inflation higher in other countries than in our own. having said that, let's say you blame biden for inflation. that's not really very significant. when you look at this as a

choice between a standard issue democrat who believes in our system, peaceful transfer of power, basic respect for his arrival vs. an authoritarian who wants to model his presidency on strong men like those in hungary and russia. we don't want an american strongman. that is not the american way. and if you don't believe he wants to be a strong man, just listen to what he says. he talks over and over about retribution. he talks about suspending the constitution. he says he was joking but it is a little hard to tell. he wants to be dictator for a day. that is not the american way. even if it was just one day, which it wouldn't be, of course. and i think everybody needs kind of a gut check before they go to

the polls. this election is fundamentally not about higher prices at the supermarket or whether harris, who actually has a plan to do something, whether her plan is better than trump's, which is a 20% across-the-board tariff. either liberal or conservative, not a single one think that is a good idea because they say the cost, you would have what mark calls insane nation. all i'm saying is that the bigger issue is autocracy vs. democracy. host: several people waiting for you. david in new york, independent. caller: hi. i just want to say one thing.

when the election is getting bad and things are getting the bad, donald trump said they should go bankrupt. and then his that i do not like paying overtime and i do not like this nothing talking about leaving. the garbage truck, he couldn't. host: got several things there. guest: he is too old if item

with the carter said nobody over 80 should be serving as president. as far as what you said about trump wanting the auto industry to go bankrupt, that is just true. that was his position at the time. let them all go bankrupt. and more recently he said it doesn't take much skill to build a car. he was really missing autoworkers. he's pretending now that he is prolabor, but his administration was very anti-labor. people need to not look at his publicity stunts like working at mcdonald's and working a garbage truck. the garbage thing, people forget it was trump who first used that word. he said that the people around harris were garbage. and then he talked about a

trashcan nation. he's been talking down the united states. he's been very critical of labor. earlier we had a caller asking whether he would cut social security and medicare. trump has been trying to run away from this. this is something that flashes everything including social security and medicare. he said just the other day that -- would have a major position in his administration. he is the author of project 2025. jd vance wrote the introduction to a book by the current author of project 2025. so they are very much on this anti-worker agenda that just helps their billionaire friends like elon musk. muska now wants to cut $2

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