Minnesota mayors in Democratic cities endorse President Trump
Andrea Zupancich, mayor of Babbitt, Minnesota, joins Tammy Bruce with insight on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," September 3, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS HOST: Hey, Jason. Great stuff. Thank you so much. Your book of course always important. And it's terrific to be taking over here now. Thank you very much, sir.
I am Tammy Bruce in for Laura Ingraham and this is The Ingraham Angle from New York City tonight. Joe Biden, the king of flip flop. In just four days, this man has done a complete about face on three major issues. Mollie Hemingway and Matt Schlapp are here to expose it all. Plus, Biden didn't get that post-convention bump he wanted, but President Trump sure did. John McLaughlin and Tom Bevan break it all down and give us a sneak peek into some internal Trump campaign polling, you don't want to miss that.
And Laura is here. Don't you worry with Raymond Arroyo for a very special Thursday follies, the best of Biden in the basement. How could they choose? You won't want to miss that either.
But first, the Biden campaign must be getting some alarming internal polling on Wisconsin, because after trashing President Trump for visiting Kenosha, Joe Biden made a seemingly impromptu trip to the battle scarred city today where he met with the family of Jacob Blake and hosted an entirely scripted town hall. Well almost entirely scripted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello, my name is Portia Bennett. I'm just going to be honest, Mr. Biden. I was told to go off this paper, but I can't. We need the truth. And I am part of the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: When Trump visited Kenosha earlier this week the media was incensed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump just wrapping up a controversial visit to Kenosha Wisconsin.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: The White House has promised a unifying visit but that would be a gross departure from what we have seen from the president.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: The president in Wisconsin today not focused on the pandemic but instead as former Vice President Joe Biden puts it, fanning the flames of the nation's racial tensions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Not that there is any bias there. Keep in mind that local officials were adamant that the president come to town to offer comfort and support to the victims of Left-wing rioting and looting. So, who asked Biden to visit? In fact, the head of the NAACP begged him not to come. But here's how the media spun Biden's little day trip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe Biden is coming here to Kenosha, Wisconsin with a message of healing.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Today the former vice president focused on a different battleground Wisconsin, trying to promote healing in Kenosha. BALDWIN: Joe Biden there in Kenosha, he wants to fight for the soul of this nation and that is precisely what he is trying to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Wow. Really amazing isn't it. From what I saw Biden was more doom and division than hope and healing. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Said they're very fine people on both sides. No president has ever said anything like that. The generic point I'm making is that it legitimizes, it legitimizes the dark side of human nature
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: That by the way is a lie that has been debunked. The president never said that. He would do directly and immediately repudiated Nazis and white supremacists. But Joe Biden continues to mention that.
But joining me now is Steve Cortes, Trump 2020 Senior Adviser and Chris Hahn, Former Aide to Senator Chuck Schumer. We'll sort of forgive him for that. And host of the Aggressive Progressive Podcast. All right you guys. Welcome Aboard. Thanks for joining me.
Steve, now obviously the American people can make a determination about the difference in how these two men have been treated. But what is this that they can't afford to have Wisconsin break for Trump again. Is that what's leading and behind all of this when it comes to their attitude and how they present these two stories.
STEVE CORTES, TRUMP 2020 SENIOR ADVISER: Absolutely. I think they know how critical the state of Wisconsin is and the upper Midwest will be in general. It's fascinating to me Tammy because Joe Biden snubbed the Badger State just a couple of weeks ago when he would not go there to accept the Democratic nomination even though the convention was officially still located in Milwaukee.
He claimed at that time that the science wouldn't allow him to travel there. Well, the science hasn't changed over the last two weeks. What has changed perhaps is the political science and the reality of polls tightening all over the country, betting markets tightening and the realization within Team Biden that they have to get on the road that their basement bunker strategy of limping into the finish line and trying to run out the clock and win by default is not going to work.
BRUCE: Yes. You know Chris, people say of course you shouldn't listen necessarily to a politician say but to what they do. And now we do have a very different kind of approach. It was just a short two weeks as Steve mentioned where they didn't go to Wisconsin citing the Coronavirus and now, he's there. And that's a good thing, he's there, I think. What are your thoughts on that? How can you explain that?
CHRIS HAHN, AGGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE PODCAST: Well, I think it's good that he went there. There's only two ways to run unopposed or scared. The Fox News poll that came out yesterday had him up 8 points in Wisconsin. So, I don't know what magic polls everybody else is reading, but the poll that this network took has him up pretty substantially in Wisconsin.
And I think it was good that Joe Biden went there with a message of healing. Joe Biden, you're talking about Joe Biden maybe staging some comments there in this clip, but President Trump couldn't even get the people who own the business to come out and be in a picture with him. Instead, he got somebody who used to own the business because he needed his photo op in front of a building.
Donald Trump also didn't meet with the family of the man who was shot seven times in the back that started some of this protest in Wisconsin. Look, we need a president who's going to turn the temperature down. Donald Trump doesn't do it because he doesn't respect anybody but himself. We see what what's come out tonight about having said to General Kelly about his son, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that really needs to get examined.
BRUCE: Chris.
CORTES: Chris, are you saying Chris that it would have been healing? Are you saying Chris that it would have been healing for the president to emulate what Joe Biden did, that would have been healing for him to meet with Mr. Blake's father, with Blake Senior, who is a virulent anti-Semite and a complete racist and bigot and follower of hate monger Louis Farrakhan? Would that have been healing? HAHN: I don't think Donald Trump is capable of healing anything, which is why this nation is going to send him packing in November.
CORTES: OK.
HAHN: This nation's president, who cares about people, not just rich people, not just his own family, Donald Trump cares enough - racial justice. This president doesn't care about anybody.
BRUCE: Chris, let's just - people are going to make their decision on November 3rd here. They've gotten to know the president. But I do want to know from you, we do know that in that - when he was in church and had a few people there in the church, we do know of this young woman who was told that she had to ask a question that had been handed to her and she didn't want to do that. Why would they think that young black woman couldn't compose her own question or should have to read what the team wanted her to read? Was that a bad move? I think you might agree that that was a bad move on behalf of Mr. Biden.
HAHN: I never like having public meetings where things are scripted. That said, I don't know what she wrote down or who told her to write it down. Neither do you. Neither does anybody else. And I also like to see the rest of that clip--
BRUCE: I'm going to believe her. You're not going to believe her.
HAHN: I would like to see the rest of that clip.
BRUCE: He doesn't want to answer.
HAHN: I'm sure Joe Biden handled whatever question she did very well because he cares about people and people in a way that Donald Trump surely can't.
BRUCE: Yes.
CORTES: Chris, I would say--
BRUCE: She wasn't - just a minute, fellas. She wasn't able to ask question. She left. But what the reveal was, was that Joe Biden didn't feel comfortable even taking an unscripted question and didn't trust that young black woman to issue a question that was important to her and to her community and that was her point. That was her point.
(CROSSTALK)
BRUCE: And you know, we see that all the time, all the time.
HAHN: When Trump goes to church--
BRUCE: Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you. Chris, thank you. And he takes so many questions and has been. We're waiting for, of course, Joe Biden to take more, but maybe we're seeing why he can't.
Now, Wisconsin may not be the only swing state Joe Biden has to worry about. Minnesota may not be as blue as the Biden campaign thinks, especially now that six mayors from Democrat cities in blue collar iron mining districts have declared they'll be voting for President Trump in November.
In an open letter, they wrote, we didn't choose to leave the Democratic Party. The party left us. Now, that's, of course, we also know that is a statement from President Reagan. Many of us can relate to that. One of those mayors, Andrea Zupancich, mayor of Babbit, Minnesota, joins me now.
Mayor, thank you so much for joining us. It's a heated time for those of us who enjoy politics. I want to ask you, have other mayors or other local officials expressed similar views to you or are they worried, to say the least, about perhaps what the economic ruin Biden would bring. Tell us, what are your thoughts on that and what other people may be saying to you at this point?
ANDREA ZUPANCICH, MAYOR OF BABBIT, MINNESOTA: Yes, definitely. All of those points, those are their biggest concerns about what's going to happen in the economy if it goes the other way. And I can tell you, one more mayor has stepped up now. So, there are seven of us in the group, Mayor Vreeland from Hoyt Lakes.
BRUCE: Great.
ZUPANCICH: Yes, it is. And I think people are more are stepping up more now and they're realizing, you know what, we are a silent majority and we're done keeping our mouths quiet. We need to keep going forward and we need to keep plugging away and doing how it's going because it's going so well, regardless of the Coronavirus. But I feel that there are a lot of people that are going to be voting for Trump that are just lying low right now.
BRUCE: Would you say also that perhaps people are seeing that these are issues that actually transcend partisan politics, that this is now about the future, it is about the economy, and that this is - that's where the commitment has to be, is more to your community as a whole or to your family than to perhaps the party that you've belonged to for so long as a Democrat.
ZUPANCICH: Absolutely, everyone is working together, and that's what's very important and we're seeing it, the way he has helped the miners, with the mines that we have going on, there's tariffs, everything else that is going on, he is actually someone who does what he says he's going to do. And that's what's refreshing and needed right now. And I've got emails from all over yesterday, all week, actually. And I had a gentleman call me from Georgia today, and he said he had voted for Obama the last two terms and he voted for Trump this time.
He said he's sick of things being made elsewhere. We need to make all this stuff in the United States again. We need to bring this back. And that includes mining. We have the safest strictest standards in Minnesota, and that's what we need to focus on and not rely on other countries.
BRUCE: Well, Mayor, thank you. Thank you very much. Great stuff and you speaking up, of course, I think will be inspirational to even more than that extra one you've just got. Thank you so much for joining us. Great job. Nice meeting you.
Now that it is hurting him in the polls, Joe Biden is finally condemning the violence in Kenosha and elsewhere. But why hasn't he specifically called out the factions behind the mayhem like Antifa or the Marxist group Black Lives Matter? Victor Davis Hanson has an idea. He says Biden's embrace of the radical Left has put him in a socialist straitjacket with no easy way out.
Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow joins me now. Victor, thank you so much for coming on this evening. I appreciate it.
Now, I love the way you put things, everyone does, it is terrific to see you, and especially during this time when people are trying to figure out why people are doing strange things like why would Joe Biden, who is known for perhaps being a generally nice guy and perhaps even a moderate, what do you mean by socialist straitjacket? Because that is very evocative. Tell us about that.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION SENIOR FELLOW: Well, it works on a number of levels. For about 90 days, he really was a virtual candidate and he had a steady lead in the polls because he looked at that violence in the street where Portland, Seattle is useful. Anarchy and chaos supposedly reflected badly on the commander-in-chief. And then, as Don Lemon put it, suddenly things changed. These polls that your prior guests deprecated, there's a lot of other polls and they as well showed a gradual increase in Trump support.
And then suddenly it was this, we can't have this devil's bargain anymore with the hard Left. We've got to come out and sort of say something that they shouldn't do this where they were perfectly happy to see a precinct burned down or 700, not happy, but they were willing to tolerate that. And now they're not so useful. And yet they can't really come out and attack BLM and the tactics of Antifa because they've embraced, they being the Harris and Biden team, the socialist agenda, the whole thing, the new green deal and reparations and wealth tax.
And this is just the beginning, Tammy, because they have all these contradictions down the road. He's already stepped into fracking. During the primary, we're going to stop all new fracking. We're going to phase out fossil fuels. And he looks at this purple swing state paradigm and he says, wait a minute, that's going to be about as popular as supporting BLM. And now, we're going to see the same thing with guns. And he's in a paradox. And every time he contextualizes and backs off on that agenda, his base is going to say, wait a minute, we were going to use you to carry this agenda through good old Joe from Scranton. You can't renege on this deal. He's a prisoner.
BRUCE: If I could argue here for a second, if I could argue, though, for a second that, in fact, he could appeal technically to a broader base, that is how you become president. You appeal to a larger group of people. And he's got his vice-presidential pick. He has the nomination.
Maybe this is a time if you're going to alienate a group, maybe you alienate the group that is burning down American cities while embracing the group that is not. Is that perhaps why he's beginning to flip flop in this case and realizing that somebody has advised him incorrectly? Or maybe there's chaos?
HANSON: Well, he's sort of kind of maybe flip flopping, he doesn't really condemn the violence, he says this on the one hand and on the other. And the reason is that what you said is perfectly logical. The center of gravity in the Democratic Party is Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate America. This very hard Left, BLM and sympathy for Antifa, the universities, the foundation. As you say, they have very little popular support, but they have enormous cultural and media clout. And if you're confined in a basement for 90 days and you don't go out to a place like Kenosha until recently, you really don't know what's going on in the world.
And they were shocked that these polls started to change and now they're trying to readjust. And they say they're being told by Hollywood and the Left; you can't renege on this deal. You were supposed to bring our agenda.
BRUCE: Great point.
HANSON: We were supposed to cause chaos. And I think they're trying to readjust, and they've got a whole slew of issues that they're going to have to address in the future.
BRUCE: Well, it certainly, sir, does not sound like leadership, does it? It sounds like a circus that there's no real foundation of vision, there's no vision. There's no direction. And if you're going to be moving based on where a poll goes and that's certainly not what President Trump does, you're going to be spun around, I think, pretty quickly.
Victor, thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it. Great insight.
HANSON: Thank you.
BRUCE: Now, earlier, we questioned if a young woman at the Biden event was asked to read a script from the campaign. We just confirmed moments ago that, in fact, it was a statement from Black Lives Activists in Kenosha, a group she is a member of. Now, coming up, does anyone really know what Joe Biden's platform is anymore? In the last week, he's tried backing away from the radical policies, he once endorsed. But are voters buying it? Mollie Hemingway and Matt Schlapp are here to react.
Plus, a Virginia university will be teaching a class on how to overthrow the government. Charlie Kirk explains why this is just another reason to divest from colleges. Coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, if the scientist says, shut it down.
BIDEN: I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientist. There's going to be no need in my view to be able to shut down the whole economy. I get asked by David a question, if I was asked to shut everything down, I took that as a generic question, if - am I going to follow the science.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Four days and three backtracks, a brand-new record for Joe Biden, you just heard his complete flip flop on shutting down the economy, but that wasn't the only one. Biden promised during the debates to ban fracking as well until Monday when he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again. I am not banning fracking.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: And back in June, Biden said he would force all Americans to wear masks for three months until yesterday when he said he actually would not order a nationwide mandate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: You know, you can't do things the Constitution doesn't allow you the power to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Now joining me now is Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at the Federalist and Fox News Contributor as well. Also, with me is Matt Schlapp, American Conservative Union Chairman. Hello, you two. Welcome aboard. Thank you very much for being here.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Great to be here.
BRUCE: Now, Molly, let's start with you. Doesn't Biden have a duty when we just think about the nature of what the point is running for president? Doesn't he have a duty to be honest to voters about his actual policy positions? Or is this an indication that perhaps there is no foundation to any policy positions that he's adjusting is with my conversation with Victor that he's suggesting, based on what he thinks certain groups want to hear at the time?
HEMINGWAY: Well, what's really interesting, you had a guest at the top of the show saying that the polls indicate that this race is over, that Joe Biden has won, that he doesn't need to do any campaigning. And that's actually true, that if you believe the polls, they do suggest that that's that he doesn't need to even campaign. So, looking at what he's actually doing is just tremendously interesting. And his campaign appears to be in a bit of a panic.
He did come out strongly saying he would shut down the economy if elected, that he would require everybody to wear masks. He said nothing at his convention about the violence that's gripping cities. And now all of a sudden, he's dramatically changing his positions. I think that's because they know that these messages that he had put out are not resonating with voters and they are a bit worried about having states that we're told are totally his - there's no way that they can be lost. I think he actually is very worried about it.
BRUCE: Well, Mollie because and to Matt, we know that that was an issue with Hillary. Is this - and this seems to be a Democratic problem of presuming that your base will simply do as they're told that they don't expect independent thought. They don't expect things to change, that you've already been won over and that's good enough. After Hillary's debacle, is it possible they started this campaign with the same mindset?
MATT SCHLAPP, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION CHAIR: Yes, and I think, look, he's been in politics a very long time. 47 years, and he's playing by these old rules. I can tell certain people one position and I can tell others another position. He clearly told the base this socialist, hardcore radical base of the Democratic Party that I'm going to take the Obama agenda and I'm going to put it on steroids.
But he knows in order to win the presidency that you have to appear to be somewhat in the middle in these purple states. And what we're actually seeing here, I try not to use the L word Tammy, but he's being incredibly deceptive. There is no question that he has signed in blood with the base of his party that we're not going to have any more fossil fuels.
He has signed in blood with the base of his party that there will be no regulations on abortion. And we're taking the nuns back to court because we're going to make nuns pay for abortions. As insane as that sounds, we're going to have all of these no tax increases. There is absolutely nothing moderate or centrist about any of Obama's positions except the titles. He's not for Medicare for All. He's for Obamacare Plus, Tammy, what the hell is the difference? Nothing.
BRUCE: Matt, I've got you. Now, Joe Biden was asked if he agreed with his running mate. I want you to both listen to this about this issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your running mate, Senator Harris, said that the officer who shot Jacob Blake based on what she has seen, should be charged. Do you agree with her? BIDEN: I think we should let the judicial system work its way. I do think there's a minimum need to be charged. The officers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE: Well, Molly, his answers seem kind of jumbled there, but we were looking even during the Kavanaugh situation about the Democrats wanting to get rid of due process, why was it seemed like he didn't want to take any kind of position except for one that was already condemning an officer without the investigation that he also then just called for?
HEMINGWAY: Right. And this is an area where it would be nice for a lot of politicians to wait and allow due process to prevail. And we have seen so many of these riots that have that have gripped cities nationwide. They're happening in part through people rushing to judgment and not trusting the process to work. And sometimes they're operating with flawed information.
And in this case in particular, I think the media have contributed to the chaos by not accurately describing the situation of why the police were even having an interaction with Jacob Blake, what his resisting that arrest was, what that situation was like. And so, you'd really hope that presidential candidates would work to calm things down rather than exacerbate the situation.
BRUCE: Right. Matt, quickly, we got a few seconds here. What's your take on his strange, jumbled answer to that simple question?
SCHLAPP: Yes, once again, you can just tell he's trying to figure out the lane he needs to occupy to try to convince voters that he's their man. And the big problem he has in all this.
BRUCE: Right.
SCHLAPP: You can't be pro-comp and you can't say you're against violence. If you can't call out Black Lives Matter and Antifa and these groups, he won't say their names. You know, why Tammy? Because he is not going to offend the base of his party. And this is the problem for Joe Biden. It's just not believable.
BRUCE: It's a big problem. It's a big problem. And it clearly is not someone who can represent all Americans. So, Mollie and Matt, thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate it.
Now, generally, people go to college to prepare them for their professional careers in fields like the law, medicine, engineering, et cetera. Well, at Washington and Lee University and Virginia, students can now learn how to become professional anarchists and revolutionaries. The school is offering a writing seminar for first year students called How to Overthrow the State, where it will place each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society. It also will have each student produce a manifesto.
Joining me now is exactly who we should be hearing from on this, is Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and author of The MAGA Doctrine. Charlie, it's fascinating, you'd think that maybe they've always had this course and they just called it something else, considering what's going on in American cities these days.
But it's one thing to ask students to learn about history and about what happens even after there's revolutions like in Cuba or in Russia or even in Venezuela. You're going to deal with murdering revolutionaries like Che Guevara. And it's something else obviously to act as if they are one or putting people into a position asking them to relate to that attitude. What are your thoughts on this?
CHARLIE KIRK, AUTHOR OF THE MAGA DOCTRINE: It's rather incredible and Tammy, if people are wondering where the unrest in our cities stems from, we have an instructional course that you can spend $74,000 a year at Washington and Lee to go learn how to overthrow your country. If you want to see where some of this insurrection is actually the root cause of it, it's in our universities.
In New York City back during the beginning, parts of the unrest when BLM Incorporated took over the streets of Manhattan, two individuals that both had passed the bar that went to Fordham University, Princeton and NYU law, they were arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers.
And dare I say, Tammy, what happens on college campuses happens in the entire American culture, it doesn't stay there. And now you see in just vivid color how to overthrow the state. When you send a kid to a college campus, you might be playing Russian roulette with their values. And even worse than this, Tammy, you might be training them to overthrow your government. It's hard to even say.
TAMMY BRUCE, FOX NEWS HOST: And Charlie, we did contact the university. This is what Washington and Lee University told "The Ingraham Angle." Quote, "Course titles are designed to attract the interest of entering students, but the courses themselves all stress and are focused on the importance of persuasive writing. The goal of the course is to teach students with an interest in history to write well and persuasively, not to overthrow the government."
Charlie, I don't think people are worried about these students rising up, but clearly this course, and despite their statement, which seems a little interesting to me, because you could create that with any kind of assignment when it comes to making social change or being persuasive. But this really seems to be normalizing the ideas overall of mass murdering Marxists that have run around the world. Would you agree?
KIRK: Do you get an A if you're most like Fidel Castro? Is that the grading curve? Do you get a better grade if you make a more persuasive argument to create a revolution?
And here's the other thing, I think, to go a level deeper here, why is this not considered controversial, or the university doesn't back away from it, yet if they were to have some sort of course, I don't know, defense of western civilization, how to preserve the American Republican, why America is the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world, that would actually be probably more controversial than a course, whether it be provocative or not in nature to try to attract interest in students, I think is a pretty poor excuse to be perfectly honest, to try to get students to even indulge in the idea of overthrowing the state.
And on a college campus, if it's mainstream to even entertain insurrection, and it's controversial to have appreciation and respect for the culture, that is when you know college campuses have lost their way.
BRUCE: Yes, and especially when one of the things they would be able to write about is exactly what the university system has been doing as well leading up to what has been going on in this country right now. So Charlie, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here.
KIRK: Thank you.
BRUCE: Coming up, Laura is here with Raymond Arroyo for a special Thursday Follies, the best of Biden in the basement. Don't go away.
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LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: It's Thursday and that means it's time for a special edition of the Follies. And this week, Biden finally emerged from the basement and even left Wilmington to campaign in Pennsylvania.
So we thought it was a good time to review the many failings of Biden's basement strategy. For that we turn to Raymond Arroyo, Fox News contributor, author of the forthcoming book "The Spider Who Saved Christmas." Raymond, they tried to keep old Joe down, down below, for as long as possible. But what happened?
ARROYO: That's right, until the polls soured on him, Laura. The amazing thing was how Jill Biden tried to use the basement strategy as evidence of her husband's cognitive fitness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILL BIDEN, JOE BIDEN'S WIFE: Joe is on the phone every single minute of the day talking to governors who are calling him and Nancy Pelosi. He's on the Zoom. He's doing fundraisers. He's doing briefings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall of that Pelosi Zoom call, Laura.
INGRAHAM: Yes.
ARROYO: But what became apparent, and what voters saw was an obviously diminished candidate bungling his way through these orchestrated virtual events. Even his asking Kamala Harris to join the ticket required a script, you'll remember. And Biden never seemed in command or even sure who he was talking to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are you?
JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I don't think you can hear me, but that's OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She just did.
(LAUGHTER)
BIDEN: How are you? Where you speaking to me from? Where are you now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am at home.
BIDEN: Where are you now speaking to me.
You asked other parts of a question, and I can't remember what other ones were. One was what I'm going to do about immigration. What was the other part? Is that it?
I used to think you could defeat hate. I used to. But it just hides under a rock. It hides under rocks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: While the candidate hides under a gray screen protector. Now, image matters, Laura, and seeing Biden confused, lost in conversation, at times wearing a mask at home, left the impression that he is simply not in control or up to the office of the presidency at this point.
INGRAHAM: I know, but then when he emerges, Raymond, I guess for his supporters it's like springtime. It's like the flowers bursting forth with color and vibrancy, and the birds are chirping always behind him, and the bees are buzzing. But then it seems like autumn comes right away. It's like spring comes like that, and then it's autumn right away, and things start deteriorating.
ARROYO: Quick fade, yes.
INGRAHAM: And Raymond, Biden couldn't even control what was happening in his own backyard, excuse me, referencing what we were just talking about. So I want to ask, how can he control or run the country?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Trump is out there tweeting again this morning. I call him President Tweety.
The inspector general, to make sure where that money went.
But just didn't focus -- that's the geese you hear in the background.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Like we needed the explainer, OK. This is the problem, though Laura.
(LAUGHTER)
ARROYO: Somebody should be fired at this campaign. The technical glitches, the wildlife going berserk, nature rebelling, he runs afoul of the foul at every turn. I've never seen anything like it. Even when he's traveling.
INGRAHAM: Raymond, you know what I was just thinking? We're so demanding of Biden that we actually demand that his staff or handlers, they can control the fauna and flora, OK. That is not exactly fair, but they should manage it better.
ARROYO: Laura, when you start taping yours show --
INGRAHAM: Maybe the birds are protesting like they did at the RNC.
ARROYO: We don't record your show in your kitchen or outside because people are going to walk up or your children or dogs are going to intervene.
INGRAHAM: I could be dong that next week.
ARROYO: You want to be in a controlled environment. Maybe.
Now, Laura, in an attempt to salvage support because these polls have been sliding, team Biden has now restricted Joe to heavily edited, campaign produced conversations with his running mate, and scripted address without questions. Here he is in a speech to the National Guard recently that got little attention for obvious reasons. I love this home edition of the West Wing pressroom on the back patio.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: A 25 percent share of your deployment started off as 100 percent, now it's only -- they pay 25 percent. They are required to paid 25 percent while their loved ones are deployed in harm's way. Not one, not one who diverts more than $1 billion in National Guard funding to pay for a border wall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Nothing makes sense. They are non sequiturs all over the place.
But this runs to my primary thesis -- people vote based on the vitality of a candidate and the impression they leave on him or her. When you watch Joe Biden -- and forget what he's saying. When you watch him, there is a diminishment here. And the more people see him, the more he goes out -- he went to Pittsburgh this week, the crowds turning out for him were like a handful of people. It looked like they were looking for a bus or something. There were like 12 people standing out on the curb, that was the crowd.
Enthusiasm is down. the more people see Biden, the more addresses like this he gives, the tighter these polls are going to get, and they're going to start to invert. Watch.
INGRAHAM: Raymond, when we were at the RNC on the White House lawn the last night, we could hear those horns going off in the background. So maybe the honking of the geese, that's their equivalent, the conservatives are channeling the geese. That's their response to Biden, honking constantly.
ARROYO: There you go. They're to balance the presentations.
INGRAHAM: Right. That's absolute perfect.
By the way, my friend came from New York, driving from upstate New York all the way to Long Island, and it was Trump signs everywhere. There was like five or six fresh corn, they have nice corn this time of year, and then there were two Biden signs. That was her impromptu poll.
ARROYO: Biden has got the geese, he's got the geese vote, Laura. Don't underestimate the power of the geese, even though some of them are Canadian.
INGRAHAM: The geese are protesting. And they can vote three times as long as it's mail-in geese voting. Raymond, great to see you tonight. Take it away.
ARROYO: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE: Great stuff. Now, could Joe Biden's disaster of a DNC performance actually have hurt him in the polls? Our pollster panel is here in moments to break down the latest numbers. You don't want to miss it. Stay right there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRUCE: Not only did Joe Biden not get any bump from the DNC, that extended Zoom call may have actually hurt him in the polls in key swing states. Back in July, a Monmouth poll showed Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania by 13 points. But now it finds his lead withered the just four.
Joining me now to unpack all of this is John McLaughlin, Trump 2020 campaign poster, and Tom Bevan, you see him on social media, a favorite of ours, cofounder and president of a Real Clear Politics as well. Welcome, gentlemen.
Now, tom, is this all temporary? Obviously, things can change dramatically. This is an indication that it can. And if the race, if the election was next week, these could be taken seriously. But I also thought polls indicate less of something that gives you an exact science or an exact view of something and more of an indicator of a trend. Do these numbers suggest that that is a bigger shift that is happening here?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Certainly, polls give you a snapshot in time, and if you compare a poll, their current poll to their previous poll, that will give you an idea of a trend. The polling, I think, in the broader picture, from the day that the DNC first started, August 17th to today, Joe Biden has lost about a half-a-point nationally in our Real Clear Politics average, and he's lost about one point in the top six battleground states. He is, in fact, exactly where Hillary Clinton was at this point four years ago in terms of her lead in the battleground states.
So I think the polling, the state polling post conventions has been a bit of the mixed bag. There's been some good polls for Trump. There's a good one out today in Florida, for example, Quinnipiac showing him getting a big bump with African-Americans and leading Biden among Hispanics. You mentioned a good poll in Pennsylvania. He's also had some polls, some Fox News polls, actually, in Wisconsin and Arizona that were not so good. So it's sort of a mixed bag at this point.
BRUCE: Yes, we've gotten a look, John, at some of the internal Trump campaign polling first obtained by The Daily Caller, and of course you would know about this. But here is what they found voters care about most - - 20 percent still say it's the economy and jobs, 16 percent said fighting COVID, but only three percent and four percent respectively care most about law and order and racial injustice. So it doesn't mean they don't care about those issues, it's obviously just about if you have got to order them, jobs and the economy clearly would matter the most. John, what does this mean for Trump, and that the looting and the violence seemed to rank so low on this list?
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN POLLSTER: Just one technical point, that poll is from the pro-Trump super PAC, not the internals for the campaign.
BRUCE: OK, got you.
MCLAUGHLIN: But I read the same story, and the issue agenda is moving towards President Trump. From the day that Joe Biden signed that unity statement with Bernie Sanders, he picked Kamala Harris, their convention was an infomercial for us. President Trump's convention was great, it was positive, great contrast.
And with Tom, he's got a lot of polls on his averages that are skewed. Like that Fox News poll that he mentioned in Arizona, you know how many Democrats in that poll? Forty-six percent. The exit polls from 2016 are 28 percent. Where did the 18 percent extra Democrats come from? There's a lot of skewed polls.
The polls that are taken right, like in Pennsylvania, Rasmussen Reports had us tied today. And that Quinnipiac poll, they are coming around and these other polls are coming around where in Georgia, Landmark poll had us up at seven points. So President Trump is steadily gaining every day and moving ahead in the battleground states.
BRUCE: So Tom, he makes a very good point, this is one that Trump supporters have made a lot, which is that Democrats are over polled or that they are skewed. But this does not do any favor to the Democrats either, because then you're moving forward with a completely wrong view of where you stand, which I think was part of Hillary's major problem in 2016.
BEVAN: I think that's right. Listen, in those six battleground states, President Trump in the final analysis overperformed the polls by about 2.8 percentage points. So let's just assume for the sake of argument that he's going to do that same thing and he's going to overperform by 2.8. That would lead him to win a state like Michigan, for example, where he's close. It would lead him to win North Carolina. The problem is he would lose Florida right now because he only over performed the polls there by one percent of he's trailing by more than that.
So really, if you look at the electoral map, he's got 36 electoral votes to play with and still win the election, which means he could lose two of those three upper Midwest states and still win the election so long as he wins the rest of the states, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. And those are right now toss-up states.
MCLAUGHLIN: We are going to win Florida.
BRUCE: Gentlemen, obviously, we've got some --
MCLAUGHLIN: Those exit polls, a lot of those polls, a lot of those polls are just too many Democrats, not enough Republicans.
BRUCE: We've got to go, gentlemen, thank you very much. We have got a lot more time coming up here before the election. Final thoughts when we return. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRUCE: That's all the time we have tonight. Thank you so much for being here with me. I'm Tammy Bruce in for Laura Ingraham. Make sure to check out my show "Get Tammy Bruce" exclusively on Fox Nation. I'm also the president of the Independent Women's Voice Organization at IWV.org and you can learn more about me at TammyBruce.com.
Mike Emanuel and the "Fox News at Night" team now take it all from here. Mike?
END
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