through my eyes. my mother, who lives in tampa, florida, she called me on the phone and i put her on speaker phone and she said a prayer for us, for the country, for the play, and she said, just trust god. that play, this production has been touched since my mother blew life into it. zoe dortch, katie holmes, come on, john boy from "the waltons. " you can't lose! [ laughter ] >> and a little blessing from your mother. that is all the time we have for today. thanks for watching. come back tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. eastern for the week's highlights. until then, enjoy your weekend. good morning, it is

saturday, october 19th. i am melissa menendez with thompson and steele here in washington dc. we are entering the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. jamie harris will be with us to discuss races up and down the ballot. new this morning, america's public sector unions rallying behind vice president harris, the leaders of the largest teachers and public records union joining us. dangerous rhetoric on the campaign trail raising new fears of political violence. grab your copy, we are getting so close. welcome to the weekend. weeken there are just 17 days until election day or the and uploading -- of boating. many have already cast their ballots. this morning, in-person voting begins in detroit and north

carolina set a turnout record with more than 350,000 ballots cast. georgia shattered records with more than 1 million early ballots accepted in just the first four days of early voting. the election is literally happening right now and only one candidate has the pedal to the floor. i am talking about vice president harris. she has been on a month-long reaching voters wherever they are and even going on fox news but as she looks to expand her support while the ex-president is hiding. basically, politico reports trump is "exhausted." it is reporting harris highlighted last night. >> if you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world! >> oh, goodness!

msnbc, kimberly atkins, joins us at the table. >> please don't take her celsius at this hour of the morning. with three or four of those in the cup. so you have got early voting going on. and the numbers are big. georgia, north carolina and elsewhere, big. you have cavalier is doing something. take a minute and think about the fact that 80 something days , 90 something days, she actually started a campaign for the presidency. and her campaign trail is manic. donald trump, meanwhile, i am exhausted, i am 2:tired. i cannot talk to anybody. i cannot see anybody. how does this in the next two weeks focus america's attention in the way we haven't seen before? the activity of the harris campaign and the disorder

resident to engage by the trump campaign? >> i think one smart thing that the harris campaign is doing is realizing that different kinds of voters come to their decisions at different points so when you get to this point, within two weeks out, voters who are still making up their minds are starting to tune in in a different way and she is meeting them where they are and being very careful about how she is choosing to do her media. there was this meredith by republicans that she was afraid of the media, that she was dodging it, that she needed handholding. now all of a sudden, she is being desperate. this is a carefully planned campaign and she is executing it very well. >> meanwhile, the trump campaign -- >> exhausted! that was a word that came from a member of his own campaign. trump's decline is to dangerous to ignore.

we can see the decline in the former president's ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently or demonstrate a command of english language to say nothing of policy so why are republicans and the press holding trump to a different standard? that is the question. >> it is a different standard! >> for the republicans, clearly, he has been the leader of that party now for almost a decade so they don't really have anywhere to go. you see them trying to backup the bench with more trump people like jd vance. perhaps there is a conference level where they have waiting in the wings and that is okay and i think it should be alarming for other people. i can tell you he is more dangerous than donald trump. >> because he actually has an ideology. >> he has the mental acuity and the bigger to actually carry it out.

i think for the press, it is very difficult to break out of old ways of covering things. especially when you have someone who is a former president there is all kinds of different being given to him in a way that was not given to joe biden which i think is really shocking. the press were in a frenzy or three solid weeks to get joe biden to step down from the race and donald trump cannot even -- and he has asked questions about childcare or affordability of exit. he starts talking about hannibal lector or he starts talking about his daughter. he does not make any sense in the press is looking at this and even worse, trying to seen wash it. he was talking about nothing. >> his jam session with christine -- >> a hole jam session. let's put it on the screen. the trump folks when they saw that, really riled up. the political rights as for the

one contentious interview he did this week, with the bloomberg editor in chief, john middleweight. trump later complained that he was only after learning -- vice president harris going on fox news sitting down for what was a contentious interview and i think it was contentious on brett's part and not the vice president. she matches energy. she was asked multiple times in an interview about president biden and so forth and talks about how her presidency will not be a continuation of the biden's. and later on with our own peter alexander, she refuses to criticize the president and many people have been like, why isn't she criticizing joe biden? and she is like look, even mike pence stood with his president until he didn't after-the-fact and it is not what vice presidents do. she is carving her own path on the campaign

trail. the double standard is appalling and galling. kamala harris canceled a cnbc interview, a 60 minute interview, we would not stop. >> and contentious for her is her pushing back when brett was mischaracterizing what donald trump met and he was calling democrats and the american people the enemy with them -- within but the interview with donald trump was when he was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power and trump said, it was peaceful. and john middleweight said, i guess peaceful as compared to venezuela. how can you call january 6th peaceful? and donald trump proceeded to defend january 6th and everything that happened on that day. those are not the same definition of contentious. >> can i just say and folks often say and it is oftentimes in the media apparatus and we have all heard it where people know who donald trump is, people are still trying to

figure out who kamala harris is. we don't know her. that is not an excuse to not cover donald trump aggressively, to scrutinize what he is saying, why, why, why, why, why? >> that is the media. the press has been enamored with donald trump not since the 2016 race but going back in the days in new york particularly among the new york press corps and how they covered businessman donald trump. donald trump is the guy who will call up and pretend to be somebody else talking about donald trump and promoting donald trump and they played the game. they knew who it was and they still wrote the story and they wrote it as if it were a serious story about whatever the subject matter was. that hasn't changed. and the reality for the press right now, i think to both of your points, there is this intentional approach to donald

trump. and i keep saying, he is an asymmetrical player, you cannot apply symmetrical standards to an asymmetrical player and that puts the vice president in a very difficult spot because she has got to be two things at once , both conventional to the point about well, i am not going to go out here and blow up the guy who is my boss, right? before i get the job. and two, create that name for herself so that voters can "get to know her." how the you don't know the vice president serving in office for four years, i can tell you what you probably don't , because the press did not cover her for four years. they basically said back and ignored her and the stories they did about her were basically hit pieces that came out of the democratic party. so the reality of it is, she is now in these days in the 89+ days that she has been running a campaign doing something that no political athlete has ever

done before and she is doing it backwards and in high heels so how does she, now, close these two last weeks? >> i think she continues pressing her message. i think one reason why the press is treating her different is that she is new for the press because they have not been covering her to your point. donald trump is the candidate that they know and there is so much built-in that they still have a muscle memory from his four years in office and they are not taking a step back looking new at this race and what the stakes are. >> muscle memory was messed up. >> it was. it was. it really was. the thing is, she has not distinguishing herself from joe biden. she is. there are policies that are different and there are nuances there. also, she is a leader and she understands the fact that you only have one president at a time and you don't come out and give an entire new foreign-policy stance

that is contradictory to the current president. >> not with the sitting vice president of the united states of america. that is not how it works! can i just say i did not expect you to out feminist me, simone. >> i don't even know what else i need to say. former president jimmy carter lived long enough. he is like, i am just looking forward to voting for vice president kamala harris and he had his opportunity to vote for her at the center. he mailed in his ballot just this last week. >> it is really amazing to see former president whether it is jimmy carter saying that was his goal or whether it is barack obama going out on the campaign trail for harris, the leaders are backing this candidate. where is george w. bush? where is mitt romney?

>> all of the republicans are like, i got something else i need to do right now.>> even though -- has been on a bus for kamala harris >> talking to people at mcdonald's. >> he was only three years younger than trump. two months, actually. >> the dnc chair joins the conversation as democrats make a last push. we are following breaking news out of israel. according to benjamin that yahoo 's spokesperson, a drone strike launched toward the prime minister's home near tel aviv. the prime minister and his wife were not at home at the time. there were no casualties and we will bring you up dates as we get them. we will be right back. ht back. with golo i have more energy. i'm able to work and stand on my feet 10 hours a day and to me golo means a happier life a more successful life.

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the harris canteen says it is working to make sure black voters feel seen and heard. this week, the vice president released an agenda for black men hosting a series of events designed to reach black audiences and as part of those efforts, the dnc held a soles to the polls call yesterday highlighting the stakes of this election to black voters. >> in donald trump, we have an extreme self-centered candidate who has an unprecedented disdain for democracy and our constitution. let's not forget who trump has

always been, a man willing to hurt others for his own profit and notoriety including the black community. >> please welcome to the table the democratic national committee chair, kimberly harris. >> you are now with us because you are out on the road. tell us what you are seeing and hearing and your take on the vice president's very targeted strategy this the last week speaking directly to a large flock of black voters -- block of black voters. >> just getting back on the road tomorrow, going to north carolina but i was going with governor shapiro witmer and devers on a blue wall tour. these governors of wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania who are out there on a trail making sure that we win those blue

states. and you know, i am proud of the work we see right now coming from the vice president and governor tim walz because they are everywhere. you know, watching the vp right now is like watching michael jordan in the nba finals. she is hitting every shot. we saw her this weekend the interview that she did this week. we saw her handle hecklers and at her recent event. she is in a zone, right now, and unlike i have ever seen in a politician in a very long time so what it is is that we have got to do our part as the role players on this championship team. you've got to get the assist and make sure she has a ball in her hand because she is going to shoot it and it is going to go in. but we have got to do our part and that is what we are doing right now. we are reaching out to voters where they are. she is talking to voters in every median that she can because the state does the

stakes are extremely high. >> thank you for making sure that your sports metaphor was basketball given that it is the only sport i am understanding and able to follow. the outreach that is happening to latino voters, we saw the advertisements cut this week from one officer talking about what happened on january the sixth that was targeted to latino voters and we saw that from mark antony. i think sometimes we forget that the policy is important. i love the policy. the bigger point is to show the effort, right? to have a headline that says we are prioritizing your vote. that is the view from the campaign. explain to us how the dnc is then backing up those efforts.>> that is right on point. the thing that i tell overstep at the dnc all the time is that everything we do, every message that we put out, it needs to have heart deep because at the

end of the day, i know a lot of democrats are policy -- with at the end of the day, they are just trying to make ends meet and you have to speak to their hearts and their guts. you have to connect with him on a human level. and so what we are doing at the dnc is making sure that those messages are targeted to speak about how these policies will impact you and your family and your community. what does it mean? what does it mean to fight for peter and democracy? how does that translate? i will give you a perfect example, donald trump just talked about eliminating department of education. and talk about policy implications of that but what does that mean in real life? that means that the department, at the department of education, it focuses on disabilities. all of the protections that many of us have for our kids that have disabilities, those who are artistic or have special needs, those things go away.

the head start program, they go away. and how that impacts the communities that desperately need those resources are really, really important. so we are having those microlevel conversations with the american people in the communities so that they understand the impact that these policies and what donald trump is trying to do, how that will impact them and their families. >> kimberly, there is a lot that has been made of this opportunity in the economy, the various components of it with respect to the specifically black men and the black community providing 1 million dollars, 1 million loans that are fully forgivable to black entrepreneurs, educational, framework, launching a national health initiative which is really important because even obamacare did not address the extent of the health care disparities in the black community. you've got polling that shows the choice for president among

likely black voters in swing states, harris at 84%, trump 8% and an undecided, h percent. what is important about that, harris a month ago was that 82% and trump at 12% and you can see some of the shifting but she should not be at 84%. >> yeah and it is very interesting in that this campaign season and over the last couple of campaign seasons, one of the biggest issues has focused on abortion rights and reproductive excess and it has focused very strongly on women and you see that played for a difference for women across the board including black women and i think what has happened is you saw black voters who did not see the message black men directed to them. of course, reproductive rights is a men's rights issue, too, but they did not see that and that is why i think it is smart to go into entrepreneurship, business. trying to housing affordability

and these are all things that men care about. education. that is a big, big issue. the department of education is also in charge of financing for college and higher education. when someone writes their student loans, they write that check to the department of education. so this is something that needs to pivot. i think what was said by the chairman is really important. that black men need to see themselves, latino men need to see themselves in the message that the candidates are giving and what donald trump is giving is just insulting these two populations and then calling them stupid for voting democratic. that is not a message. i think harris is putting forth something. perhaps i would've wished that a little more earlier but that is something she is doing now. >> those who both for kamala harris need to have their head examined. you can do with that what you

will. >> yes, you should. kimberly atkins, thank you. stick around, we have more grilling for you. where ya headed? susan: where am i headed? am i just gonna take what the markets gives me? no. i can do some research. ya know, that's backed by j.p. morgan's leading strategists like us. when you want to invest with more confidence... the answer is j.p. morgan wealth management have you ever considered getting a walk-in tub? well, look no further! when you want to invest with more confidence... safe step's best offer, just got better! now, when you purchase your brand new safe step walk-in tub, you'll receive a free shower package. yes, a free shower package! and if you call today, you'll also receive 15% off your entire order. now you can enjoy the best of both worlds! the therapeutic benefits of a warm, soothing bath that can help increase mobility, relieve pain, boost energy,

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here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need, and the flavor you love. so, here's to now... now available: boost max! i just want you to know, i am reading about the bilingual. michael is like, what? i am like, i just need to work on my spanish. can we just play it for you? >> alicea, what? >> the dnc is making all of these investments in key ballot races specifically with some of the constituencies we just discussed, latino voters. there have been a lot of investments overlapping with these key races. many we want to play for our

viewers a little sample of what folks are hearing across the country. >> my opponent has said that he is 100% opposed to abortion rights. i am trying to lead the way to restore roe versus wade so that we don't see prosecution of women who have miscarried or doctors who are providing healthcare. women are dying because of the current situation. >> the first thing i would do is pass the border protection act. my opponent was against that bill before he could have read it because the text was not out because president trump said he wanted to use it as a political football. >> i am so sick of people who do not understand women's health and do not understand reproductive rights and who do not understand that this is the same one thing and doing another. michiganders do not believe him, he will not protect you. >> it is about my