Tamara Keith and Jasmine Wright on the Trump, Harris strategies to win battleground states

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including new developments in two key states that could affect the potential path to victory, if there will be a second debate between Trump and Harris, how Trump is softening his message to appeal to women voters and the Harris campaign gets a win in Nebraska.

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Geoff Bennett: And new developments in two key states could affect the presidential candidates’ potential paths to victory, as each tries to clinch the electoral votes needed to win.

To dive into it all on this Politics Monday, we have Tamara Keith of NPR and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS. That’s a new publication from the nonprofit nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute. Amy Walter is away.

It’s great to have you both here.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio: Good to be here.

Jasmine Wright, NOTUS: Thank you so much.

Geoff Bennett: So we are heading into the final six-week sprint to Election Day.

Tam, you have been keeping tabs on Donald Trump’s travel schedule. What does that tell you about the campaign strategy six weeks out?

Tamara Keith: Well, what I can tell you is that he is in Pennsylvania. He was just in North Carolina. He’s going back to North Carolina again, and he’s also going to Georgia.

So his strategy is this East Coast strategy. If he can win in Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina, but especially if he can win in Pennsylvania, then Harris has a very difficult path to the 270 electoral votes she needs.

And so Trump is focusing on these states. The fact that he is spending a lot of time in North Carolina says that he’s worried about it, because, if he wasn’t worried about it, he wouldn’t be spending time there. But he is. In fact, I think he’s spending more time there than Harris has spent since she became the nominee.

Geoff Bennett: I want to talk a bit more about North Carolina in a second.

But, Jasmine, over the weekend, Vice President Harris said she accepted a debate proposal from CNN for a debate late in October. Donald Trump has ruled it out. He can always change his mind. We know that.

Jasmine Wright: Right.

Geoff Bennett: But what’s the strategy? Why does the vice president feel like she needs another debate?

Jasmine Wright: Look, well, I think that the vice president had a massively successful debate earlier this month. We saw her not just only quell the competency questions that she was absolutely getting from both parties or whether or not she was actually ready to be president, but also they made a lot of money in that 24 hours after the debate, $47 million.

So they want to recreate those moments. And, of course, it’s a little bit of goading Trump, something that they have seen just in the debate and since the debate that has been successful, trying to poke him, really kind of playing this game of, are you or are you not a chicken?

And so I think we’re going to continue to see her up until really it’s basically too late and those dates expire, trying to get Trump again on that debate space, because there is no — or at least they believe that there is no downside into them doing this.

Tamara Keith: Well, and one thing I will note is that the vice presidential debate is scheduled for October 1. In the last president — the first presidential debate between Biden — or between Trump and Harris, Trump was like, J.D. Vance, he doesn’t speak for me.

Well, so is he going to let J.D. Vance and Tim Walz have the last word? I guess we will find out. But part of what the Harris campaign is betting is that, this — Trump may say it’s a closed question.

(Crosstalk)

Jasmine Wright: And I think every time that J.D. Vance has gotten the last word, the former president wasn’t happy about it.

Tamara Keith: Right.

Jasmine Wright: So I think that we will see you after October 1.

Geoff Bennett: We shall see.

Meantime, Donald Trump, it appears, is trying to shift and soften his approach toward women. Speaking in North Carolina over the weekend, he said: “I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe, and secure.”

And this comes as NBC has a new pull out that shows Harris leading Trump by 58 percent to 37 percent among women. That is quite a gap.

Tamara Keith: This is a historically large gender gap. And Trump is doing better with men than Harris is doing with men. That was what makes the gap so gaping.

Trump, in those remarks, also said, and I just want to read this: “Women will no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now where it has always had to be, with the states.”

So he is essentially saying that you’re not going to have to worry about abortion. Your life is going to be great if I am elected president again. And what he’s saying is that it’s with the states, there’s going to be these ballot measures, it’ll be figured out.

I have to say, though, women are not going to stop thinking about it. In fact, ever since Roe was overturned with Supreme Court justices that Trump proudly appointed, ever since Roe was overturned, abortion has become a campaign issue like it wasn’t before.

Before, it was a motivator for Christian conservatives, but it was not a broad-based issue that Americans thought was front of mind in the last couple of decades. Now it is a front-of-mind campaign issue. There are going to be these ballot measures.

And I was traveling with Vice President Harris on Friday, when she went to Georgia with an — a late added rally in the Atlanta area. Specifically, the entire speech was about reproductive health care and what she calls Trump abortion bans in nearly two dozen states. He was responding to that. That — it was a cause and effect.

She did that speech and then he put out this post on social media and then literally read it at his rally.

Jasmine Wright: Because he knows he’s vulnerable on the issue of abortion ever since Roe v. Wade was struck down. This is something that he has actually been probably the most aggressive in his party in trying to figure out how to position himself on abortion.

And we have seen that he just can’t figure out where he wants to be. And so I think you’re going to continue to hear these kind of slightly unserious proclamations that women will never have to worry about abortion again if he’s president because he’s trying to figure out the right language in real time to tell women that he can be trusted on this issue, which is absolutely opposite of the message that the vice president is offering.

Geoff Bennett: Well, we got some news today out of Nebraska. And this relates to the Republican effort to change how Nebraska awards its Electoral College votes.

This was an effort by Republicans to boost former President Trump. And it hit a roadblock in the form of a state legislator named Mike McDonnell. He put out a statement, part of which I will read.

He says: “In recent weeks, a conversation around whether to change how we allocate our Electoral College votes has returned to the forefront.” He also says: “After deep consideration, it is clear to me that, right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”

Tam, how big a deal is this for both campaigns?

Tamara Keith: This is — I mean, in some ways, this returns it to where it was, which is that this was kind of going nowhere. They have been trying to do this. The Republican legislature has tried a few times to make this happen.

What is interesting is that, in the past week, former President Trump, his close ally Lindsey Graham have been talking to these legislators, trying to put pressure on them, trying to make it happen one more time. This is because Trump allies readily admit that he is not winning in this one congressional district.

In fact, Harris and her campaign have spent a lot of time and money and sent — Doug Emhoff is like the second mayor of Omaha.

Jasmine Wright: Living there. He’s got an apartment.

(Laughter)

Tamara Keith: Yes, he’s got an apartment. Yes.

They have spent a lot of time and effort on this one Electoral College vote, because if it comes down to just the blue wall states, then she would also need this blue dot, the Second Congressional District in Nebraska, in order to get to 270. And, obviously, Trump and his allies do not want that to happen.

Jasmine Wright: I mean, there’s no doubt this is a major win for the Harris campaign.

Of course, this guy can change his mind, that we may go through two more rotations of this before we get to November. But, certainly, I have been talking to Harris aides. I was with them in North Carolina two weeks ago, where I asked an aide, really, what’s their path? And they say that they are most comfortable, they feel most bullish about the blue wall path plus Omaha.

And that is where that congressional district is. And so they want to maintain that. And so him basically ruling out switching it, saying that we’re too close to November to do this, this is a win for them, even though it still maintains what is the status quo.

Geoff Bennett: Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, we should say, a former “News Hour” producer.

Jasmine Wright: Yes.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett: Great to have you back. And, Tamara Keith, of course, of NPR.

Thanks so much.

Tamara Keith: You’re welcome.