Trump says he 'shouldn't have left' the White House in 2020; Harris pitches Gen Z voters
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris made some of their final pitches to voters over the weekend. Paste BN Congress & Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin talks through the allies Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would have in Congress if elected. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Donald Trump would seek to remove fluoride from water if elected. Quincy Jones has died. Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise gives us some surprising facts about apples.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, November 4th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today we're 24 hours out from election day, plus we take a look at the potential allies in Congress for each candidate if they were to win, and we remember Quincy Jones. Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris spent their final weekend before election day making a last pitch to voters.
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Trump yesterday rallied voters in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia while Harris made several stops in the battleground state of Michigan. Trump told the crowd in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that he shouldn't have left the White House in 2020, going further than he has previously and claiming that he defeated President Joe Biden.
Harris took the stage at Michigan State University making a direct appeal to Arab Americans promising to end the Israel Hamas war in Gaza. The Sunday stops came after Harris made an appearance on Saturday Night Live. And according to reports, Trump was given free airtime during NBC's NASCAR coverage yesterday to compensate for Harris's appearance. The federal communications commission's equal time rule requires American radio and television broadcast stations to provide equal access to competing political candidates.
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Whoever wins the presidency tomorrow will have plenty of work to do alongside a new Congress. I spoke with Paste BN, Congress and Campaigns Reporter, Riley Beggin, for more. Happy almost election day, Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Happy almost election day to you too.
Taylor Wilson:
So you wrote about some of the allies on Capitol Hill either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would turn to in Congress should they win on Tuesday. Let's start with Trump and the Senate, which is expected to flip to Republicans next year. What would his relationships look like there?
Riley Beggin:
His top vice presidential picks came from the Senate. Of course, JD Vance is currently his vice presidential nominee, but Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott were two of the finalists and they remain people who he would go to if he's the president. Marco Rubio in particular is very well versed in foreign policy is someone he'd go to. He has some friendships in Alabama Senator, Tommy Tuberville, Tennessee Senator, Marsha Blackburn and Montana Senator, Steve Daines, who is the chair of the Senate Republicans campaign arm. Another person I should have mentioned, Senator Tom Cotton, who has long been sort of on the spearhead of conservative populism in the Senate, one of the early members to really align with Trump. And then there's Rick Scott of Florida who is sort of home state senator. They were friends since he was the governor of Florida. I mentioned Rick Scott also because he is running to be the next Senate leader. We have a big shift coming up in November. The very famous Mitch McConnell is stepping down from leadership, leaving an opportunity for a Republican to replace him.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so Riley, as for the house, you write in this piece, "Trump has typically had more diehard allies in this chamber." What would these relationships potentially look like if he were to win?
Riley Beggin:
Some of his closest friends in the house are people who probably are the ones you're seeing on television very frequently. They're some of the big bomb throwers, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, those are the sort of people that Trump has had a really close relationship with for a while. He also has a pretty stacked roster of friends in the Florida delegation where Mar-a-Lago is of course. So Byron Donalds is someone who has become a prominent feature on the campaign trail for Trump this year, Mike Waltz, and then there's some folks who he's also had longer relationships with.
Jim Jordan has been in the house for longer than some of the folks I just mentioned. He helped start the House Freedom Caucus, which Trump initially endorsed Jim Jordan to succeed former house speaker Kevin McCarthy. Though of course now he has a pretty good relationship with the speaker of the House, which is different than his relationship with Mitch McConnell. Johnson is somebody who helped defend his claims to winning the 2020 election, despite there not being evidence of that. And Johnson is likely to face a leadership challenge, especially if they lose the house. But he has said that Trump backs him and that they're now close friends.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so shifting to Kamala Harris, she's a former senator herself. Where do her Senate relationships and contacts stand after four years as vice president? And who would she potentially lean on?
Riley Beggin:
She was in the Senate for four years, which might seem like a long time to some people, but for the Senate it's actually not that long. We have a lot of people who have served there for many decades, of course, but in her time there, she did create some strong friendships that her team and her allies say would be really helpful for her if she becomes the next president. Someone who has mentioned a lot is Catherine Cortez Masto, the senator from Nevada. She's shown up on the campaign trail for her a lot. The two of them became close when they were both attorneys general, so Harris, Cortez Masto, and then Tammy Duckworth and Maggie Hassan came into the Senate at the same time. The four of them remained sort of a posse of female senators who have supported one another.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Riley, it seems like her closer relationships maybe are in the Senate versus the house, but does she have allies already established in the other chamber? What might those relationships in the house look like?
Riley Beggin:
Something I found pretty interesting is that despite her relationships really being focused in the Senate, she's made a big effort to build relationships in the House since she's become the presidential nominee. And there's been a lot of reporting showing that that's paid off. That house Democrats feel like she's really drawn them into the fold, is asking them to participate in the campaign in a way that they kind of felt a little bit left out before when Biden was the nominee. I think people who stand out as potential allies, Congressional Black Caucus chair, Steven Horsford, Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair, Nanette Barragán, and the chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, Judy Chu, three people who she asked to be in her box when she accepted the nomination at the DNC. The Congressional Black Caucus really was sort of the jumping off point for a lot of her relationships in the house and sort of is the foundation of her friendship with Hakeem Jeffries who would be the speaker of the house if Democrats win.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Riley Beggin covers Congress and campaigns for Paste BN. Thank you Riley.
Riley Beggin:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Fluoride is added to the water systems of more than two thirds of Americans. It's in dental products from toothpaste, the mouthwash, and it's been at the heart of long-running conspiracy theories. And on Saturday, Robert F. Kennedy J. said Donald Trump could try to take it out of water supplies nationwide if elected president. Kennedy who says he's in the running for a position in a second Trump administration centered false claims about vaccines and other conspiracy theories and his failed presidential bid. He also claims without proof that fluoride in US water systems has been linked to a slew of medical conditions. The US Department of Health and Human Services report earlier this year did find that very high levels of fluoride in other countries could be linked to lower IQ levels in children.
But the fluoride levels found to cause such risks were more than twice as high as the amount US officials recommend be added to public water systems. The Trump campaign reached for comment about Kennedy's remarks on fluoride, did not directly address the remark. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Quincy Jones has died, best known as the architect of Michael Jackson's Thriller and the man who helped bring stars together for 1985s, We Are The World, Jones had a long career as a composer and trumpeter who broke down racial boundaries and music and film. Born in 1933, he grew up in gang riddled great depression, Chicago. His mother suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized when he was five, and his father moved his family to Washington state.
When he was 11, Quincy broke into the Armory Recreation Center in Bremerton Washington to steal food. Inside he found an upright piano and as he would later say in interviews, that was the moment that led him from a childhood of petty crime to a life of music. You can read more about Quincy's remarkable life with a link in today's show notes. Quincy Jones was 91.
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Today's apples don't grow giant on trees, could have been picked a full year ago and taste different than they used to. Those are just some of the fun facts about the surprising modern reality of a quintessentially American fruit. I caught up with Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more. Beth, thanks for hopping on. This is about as far from an election topic as we can get this week.
Elizabeth Weise:
There is a desire on occasion to read about something that is not about the election, and we're here to serve the reader.
Taylor Wilson:
Here to serve the reader and the listener. So I want to start with this, Beth, for folks who may not know, how are apples actually grown? What does this process look like?
Elizabeth Weise:
So you probably imagine a large, beautiful pink blooming apple tree out in an orchard. But truth be told, apples, they're a industrial agricultural product, like pretty much everything else we eat, and they're grown on dwarf or semi-dwarf root stock. The trees don't get much above 10 or 11 feet tall because working with ladders is really inefficient and they are pruned such that if you're a gardener, they're like trellised. So they're on wires both to support the weight of the tree and to keep them from falling over in hailstorms and things like that, and also to make them easier to pick.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting. I would've never guessed that. So some, Beth, might be surprised that the apples they get at the store are actually not that fresh. How often are apples stored and really what did you learn here?
Elizabeth Weise:
So one of the reasons that our ancestors loved apples is because did store well. You stick them in a barrel, you can pull them at three months later and they still taste good. Today we can store apples up to a year to maybe even a year and a half. They're picked in the fall, late summer, early fall, depending on the variety. And then they're stored in these large atmosphere and temperature-controlled rooms that are kept at between 37, 38 degrees Fahrenheit. And the most important thing is they're filled with nitrogen and it's like 1% oxygen is allowed.
Because basically if you are an apple and you're picked, what you most want to do in the world is mature and become soft and mushy so that those seeds inside of you can grow into a new apple tree. And we are trying to keep them crisp and juicy and good to eat. And if you put them in low oxygen, apples even after they've been picked, they respire put them in low oxygen and they don't do that and they stay in great shape actually. I mean some varieties last longer than others, but it's very likely that an apple that you're eating today was picked a year ago and you probably wouldn't know that much of the difference.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So I bet there are all kinds of different types of apples. I think everyone has sort of their favorite, but what types of apples do Americans kind of writ large actually, and how does this compare to others around the world?
Elizabeth Weise:
This was actually really fascinating to me. I talked to a guy at Washington State University where they really know about apples. He was from Italy and he said, "Yeah, Americans like sweet apples. 80% of us prefer sweet apples to tart apples." But in Europe that's reversed, and especially in Northern Europe, they like tart apples best, and sweet apples are not as popular though he said as you move further south in Europe, like he said, in Italy, people love sweet apples, but in France and in the Netherlands, they like tart apples.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Beth, as you write in the piece, new apples are always in development. So I'm curious what are the apples that the mad scientists are concocting next?
Elizabeth Weise:
One apple researcher said, "There were red, yellow and green apples, red delicious, yellow delicious, Granny Smith." And that was kind of it. And then we've just had this explosion of amazing apples in the last 20, 30 years. I mean, I still remember when my mom called me and she's like, "I just had this apple. You have to buy these. They're called pink ladies and they're amazing." And they really were amazing. It's still my favorite apple today, but apple producers and apple breeders are still working on still better varieties.
And the one that is coming up, we had the Cosmic Crisp that came out two years ago, and the one we've got coming next is WA 64, and it is coming out of the apple breeding genius of Washington State University again, that should be on the market maybe 2029, 2030. I mean, the thing is when you have an apple, you plant the tree and it's still four or five years before you get any apples off of it. So it'll be a bit, and they're supposed to be really nice. They're supposed to be Swedish, a little tart and crunchy and store well. So yeah, you'll be seeing those in a couple of years.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, looking forward to it. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Fun story here, Beth. Thanks so much.
Elizabeth Weise:
You're so welcome.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back with more of The Excerpt tomorrow for election day from Paste BN.