Maryland Gov. Wes Moore weighs in on Harris’ push for a key voter demographic and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin discusses the DOJ’s lawsuit over voter rolls.
This is a rush transcript of ‘Fox News Sunday’ on October 20, 2024. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I’m Shannon Bream.
With just two weeks until Election Day, President Trump and Vice President Harris look to energize critical voters that could make or break them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: November 5th, 2024 will be liberation day in America.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will win because we know what we stand for.
BREAM (voice-over): With a race in a dead heat, Trump and Harris make their final pitches to America as polls show both candidates struggling with key voting blocs.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore joins us exclusively on the vice president’s full court press to shore up support from Black men, and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin on the commonwealth’s battle with the DOJ over efforts to purge non-citizens from its voter rolls.
Then, our legal panel discusses the election battles taking shape and the litigation that could take center stage after the ballots are counted.
Plus —
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Well, this is not the end of the war in Gaza. It’s the beginning of the end.
BREAM: Fallout from the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7th attacks.
Our Sunday panel on whether his death puts new pressure on Israel and Hamas to restart ceasefire and hostage release negotiations, straight ahead on «FOX News Sunday».
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BREAM (on camera): Hello from FOX News in Washington.
We begin with some of your top headlines.
At least seven people are dead and six critically injured after a crowded ferry dock collapsed on an island off the coast of Georgia Saturday. Many were elderly descendants of slaves who were at an event honoring their ancestors.
Israeli forces say they struck Hamas targets in northern Gaza and Hezbollah facilities around Beirut this weekend. Iranian backed Hezbollah militants fired rockets into northern Israel and launched a drone that came down near Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home. He was not there at the time.
President Trump is set to crisscross Pennsylvania with a number of events today while Vice President Harris is focusing on battleground Georgia. In a moment, we will talk with Governors Wes Moore of Maryland and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.
But, first, we’ve got team coverage on the campaign trail. Alex Hoff with the Vice President in Atlanta and Mark Meredith covering President Trump in Pennsylvania.
Mark, we start with you. Good morning.
MARK MEREDITH, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Shannon, good morning to you.
Former President Trump is going to be all over Pennsylvania today, determined to gain any momentum he can in this battleground state and the candidate himself is also pushing back against reports promoted by Democrats, including his opponent, that he’s exhausted in this final stretch of the campaign.
Overnight, Trump rallying thousands of his supporters in Latrobe, that’s outside of Pittsburgh. He told the crowd that he believes voters in Pennsylvania have an ally in him and that he believes they should also send a message to Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore. Vice President Kamala, you’re fired! Get the hell out of here. You’re fired!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MEREDITH: Our latest FOX survey finding Trump leading Vice President Harris overall when it comes to voter preference. But in the battleground states which will determine this outcome, Harris has the advantage by about six points.
I mentioned we’re going to see Trump at the town hall here where I am, but he’s also going to be stopping at a McDonald’s somewhere in this state today, clearly an effort to counter an attack by Vice President Harris. She completely — she repeatedly talks about her time working at McDonald’s as a young woman and Trump says he wants to show how it’s done — Shannon.
BREAM: We look forward to the video, Mark. Thank you very much for that report.
Joining us now, Alexandria Hoff, live in Atlanta, with the other side of the ticket.
Hey, Alex.
ALEXANDRIA HOFF, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Shannon. Yeah, the vice president is welcoming both entertainment and political star power to give her campaign a final boost of enthusiasm. Yesterday afternoon, pop star Lizzo helped at a get out the vote rally that happened in Detroit, and then here in Atlanta, Usher voiced his support for the vice president. At her evening rally here in Atlanta, Harris said this about her competitor’s rally style.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Have you noticed, he tends to go off script and ramble? And generally for the life of him cannot finish a thought, and he has called it the weave. But I think we here will call it nonsense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOFF: Well, Harris did praise Georgia’s historic early in-person vote totals in just five days, more than 1.3 million ballots have been accepted. Coming up on Thursday, former President Obama will travel to Georgia to campaign with the vice president for the first time side by side. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will do the same in Michigan next Saturday.
And Harris will also be joined by former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney. That’s going to be a series of moderated conversations. Those will take place across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — Shannon.
BREAM: Critical states.
Alex Hoff reporting from Georgia — Alex, thank you very much.
Joining us now, Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
Governor, welcome back to the show.
GOV. WES MOORE (D), MARYLAND: It’s great to be back with you.
BREAM: Good to have you.
Okay. So let’s start here. A lot of headlines the last few weeks about Black voters specifically and the campaign’s efforts to try to reach them.
Here’s some FOX News polling and it shows us that while the vice president clearly maintains a large lead with this group over President Trump, we now show her lowest level of support with Black voters since she became the nominee at just 67 percent. Both President Biden, Secretary Clinton, they were in the 90s.
Now you have said Black voters, not monolithic. You got to get out there and earn their vote.
Why are these numbers trending away from vice president?
MOORE: Well, I think, you know, we have to understand that Black voters are sophisticated, and Black voters need to hear, you know, what is the vision? What is the ideas? And what is the — what are the values that we know that we can base our votes off of?
And there’s a natural skepticism that I think a lot of Black voters have and not necessarily about the vice president, not about — about a Democratic Party? It’s about pace of progress in America, is that the pace of progress in America has not been even, and it has not been fair.
And that’s why I think this past week for the opportunity agenda for Black men that the vice president released was so important, because it is detailed policy positions as to what a Harris-Walz administration can do to be able to advance economic opportunities for Black men and focus on work and wages and wealth, and being able to have an opportunity to pass something off to your children besides debt.
Black men need to be — you know, you have to be able to go and make your case, you have to be able to go and make your argument, and I think that’s exactly what the vice president is doing now.
BREAM: So let’s talk about that agenda this week really aimed at specific needs within the Black community. She’s talked about forgivable business loans to help people encourage entrepreneurship, also grants that would go to public school programs specifically for young Black men.
MOORE: Yeah.
BREAM: But the vice president knows that courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, have said that they — they tend to strike down anything that looks like it’s got a race-based preference. A «Wall Street Journal» reporter pressed on that issue and reports this — the campaign now says the programs listed under the Black men agenda will be open to all Americans on a race-neutral basis.
So some feel like this is a bit of a bait and switch saying, we’re going to give specific needs to this voting bloc we need to make progress with, but actually this isn’t specifically for your group.
MOORE: I think what we end up seeing with policy is that the disparities are so distinct when you’re looking at everything from maternal — maternal health to economic advancements, to the racial wealth gap.
You know, the fact that in this country, we have a 10 to 1 racial wealth gap, we’re all very clear that we don’t have a 10 to 1 racial wealth gap because one group worked 10 times harder, that there have been policies that have put in place to make that happen.
And so when you’re looking at the opportunity agenda that’s being laid out about what can we do to actually create measurements of home ownership and providing first-time — providing capital to first-time home buyers, how that, you know, $25,000, the work can be done around addressing procurement policies and procurement laws, and ensuring that Black-owned businesses, minority-owned businesses, et cetera, women-owned businesses are getting the type of resources and supports that they need to be able to grow and thrive. We know that while — that while these are going to have a distinct impact on the African-American community, the Latino community, women, et cetera, and groups who have historically been left behind, we know that there’s a way that you can address policy measures on a broad scale basis, but that will have a distinct impact on groups that historically have been disenfranchised in the past.
BREAM: So, Georgia, «Politico» went down to Georgia, of course, one of the critical swing states. The vice president there today attending church services and other events. They went down to talk to key battleground voters down there, primarily Black voters.
Here’s what one 72-year-old man told him he’s never voted for a Republican presidential candidate before but he’s going to this time.
And this was his explanation. He says: Everything is so high now, groceries are high, clothes, everything, gas. Four years ago, it wasn’t that high. And so, people see the difference in Kamala Harris and Trump, and they want some of what they had four years ago, and I do, too.
So how do you rebut this perception that people have about their own personal circumstances and the way they’ve experienced life under these two different administrations?
MOORE: No, I would say the frustration is real. And I’d say to that person that I understand that we have seen over the process of the past really six-year period that we’ve seen inflationary growth, and it’s not even that things are getting less expensive, they’re just not growing as fast. So I think that frustration is real. And I think we have to acknowledge that and we can’t shy away from it.
The thing that I would say though when you’re looking at the policies that are being laid out by the two candidates, where you have a vice president who’s focusing on things like being able to lower costs of groceries, being able to lower cost of medicine, being able to focus on creating more pathways for home ownership and increasing inventory and making people giving people opportunity to own more than they owe, versus what we’ve heard from Donald Trump when it comes to economic policies — things like the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, which would not only add trillions of dollars to the national — to the national deficit.
When you’re looking at the over the next decade, there’ll be the largest transfer of generational wealth that we have seen in our globe’s history. If you look at the Trump tax cuts, that is not only going to concentrate that level of wealth and people who benefited generationally from wealth, it’ll make closing things like wealth gaps absolutely impossible.
So that person I would just say, I hear you and you’re right. But if you look at the policies that are being laid out, one fundamentally addresses the issues of basic affordability for everyday Americans, and one makes affordability almost a laughingstock.
BREAM: Well, President Trump’s team, of course, you know will say based on IRS data coming from the IRS that people across all brackets benefited under the tax cuts that are going to expire if this new Congress, whoever is running it, decides not to actually extend them, and also unemployment for Black Americans hit a record low under President Trump before COVID.
MOORE: Yeah.
BREAM: They’re going to point to that a success as well.
MOORE: Yeah.
BREAM: Now, I want to talk about the Obamas. They’re wildly popular in your party and I would say beyond that, too, with a number of groups.
President Obama though is getting some backlash for his tough love that he delivered out on the campaign trail recently. It didn’t go well with everyone, and that includes Stephen A. Smith who was not a Trump fan.
Here’s what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN A. SMITH, TV/RADIO HOST: You’re President Obama, how do you ignore that? Inflation, the cost of living, the price of gas, the price of groceries, and this belief that there’s an elevated level of sensitivity towards them as opposed to Black folks struggling, if not starving, in this country. Yes, that plays a role, too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BREAM: Makes clear he loves President Obama. He is voting for the vice president but he worries about how that message is landing.
MOORE: Yeah, yeah, and I think what the president, you know, was saying is, is that there can be two things that can exist at once, right? That we do still have a measure of sexism in our society that has to be thought about and addressed. We do have measurements of people feeling like there’s economic pressures.
We’re not watching wages raise fast enough, something that the vice president has actually been talking about, about how can we raise wages for individuals. And then also was saying that having an economic policy that focus on things like apprenticeship programs and trade programs and getting people back into a workforce, having an economic policy that focuses on things like helping our entrepreneurs, be able to gain the capital that they need to go from turning an idea into a growing and a thriving business. That all those things can be true and things we have to be able to address.
We have to make America more affordable for individuals. We have to make ownership more real for people within our — within our communities. And frankly, we have to be able to address the level of skepticism and cynicism that a lot of African-Americans feel about, do they see themselves in this idea of American progress?
We can do all those things simultaneously.
BREAM: Well, and we know you’re busy on the campaign trail, doing those things for the Harris-Waltz ticket. Thanks for dropping in, Governor. Always good to see you.
MOORE: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
BREAM: And joining me now, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Governor, good to have you on the show today.
GOV. GLENN YOUNGKIN (R), VIRGINIA: Yeah, Good morning, Shannon. Thank you for having me.
And thanks for giving us an opportunity to talk about this most important topic in Virginia right now which is the Department of Justice suit when we’re trying to make sure that only citizens vote in Virginia and we’re trying to stand by our Constitution and our law.
BREAM: Yeah. They have instituted a lawsuit against you. They’ve done it in Alabama as well, saying this purge goes in violation of the 90-day quiet period that federal law that says you can’t do systemic or large purges within 90 days.
Here’s part of their lawsuit. They say systemic removal programs are more error-prone than other forms of list maintenance and eligible voters placed on the path to removal days or weeks before election day, may be deterred from voting or unable to participate in the election on the same terms that they would have but for the commonwealth’s error.
You say this is not a mass purge. It’s not systemic and you — apparently, your team has uncovered something else involving the DOJ on this specific case.
YOUNGKIN: Yeah. To be clear, this is not a purge. This is based on a law that was signed into effect in 2006 by then-Democrat Governor Tim Kaine, and it starts with a basic premise that when someone walks into one of our DMVs and self-identifies as a non-citizen, and then they end up on the voter rolls, either purposely or by accident, that we go through a process, individualized, not system — not systematic, an individualized process based on that person’s self-identification as a non-citizen to give them 14 days to affirm they are a citizen and if they don’t, they come off the voter rolls.
And, by the way, they have one last safeguard which is they can come and same-day register and cast a provisional ballot. And so, to des — to describe this as something that’s a purge is completely inaccurate. It’s wholly consistent with the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Constitution and Virginia law.
And just recently, of course, what we found was that back in 2006, the then Justice Department actually approved of this law and said that it is not only further — further constitutional, but we have given it thorough review and we’re OK with you moving ahead with it.
And now, 25 days last week before the election, a Justice Department decides they are going to bring suit after this law has been in effect for 18 years, administered by Democrat and Republican governors. And this is the reason why I believe that Americans and Virginians wonder what the Justice Department is up to.
It’s been in effect for 18 years. It’s been applied universally by Republican and Democrat governors. And now, all of a sudden, when Virginia is getting tight, it launches a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia when we are trying to make sure that citizens vote, not non- citizens.
BREAM: Well, here’s a couple of questions to follow up to that. You talk about the DOJ giving approval back in 2006 or early on in conjunction with when this law was actually passed, as you note, under Democrat Senator who’s now — or excuse me, now Democrat Senator, he was a Democrat governor. But has it been used within that 90-day quiet period before? Is that why the DOJ is honing in on it this time?
YOUNGKIN: It had been used within the 90-day quiet period most recently by Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam. And they said nothing about it at the time.
The reality is that this is not a purge. It is not systematic. It is individualized.
