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For comprehensive identity theft protection, there's LifeLock. Start protecting your identity today with a 30-day free trial at lifelock.com slash podcast. Joining me now is Selena Zito, nationally syndicated columnist. She has written some great columns, got great insight not only from Elon Musk but multiple times with the president. She knows all about Pennsylvania probably as well as anyone and I have yet to meet anyone that says Pennsylvania will not decide the next president of the United States. Selena, welcome back to the Brian Kilmeade show. Thank you so much.
Always fun to be on with you. So Selena, I mean you were there during the assassination attempt and you were with him that day, you were with him after doing the interview, the first one after that and then you were with him as you went back to Butler with that huge crowd and you got that great feeling. Big crowd over in California after that. Then Donald Trump did a Univision town hall, he did a town hall with women's events.
For Kamala Harris, she sparred with, sparred with Bret Baier because she didn't want to ask any questions and she got direct questions. First off, before we get into detail, where do you think Pennsylvania is at right now and what should we be looking at? So at this moment, if the election were today, I would give the edge to Donald Trump and a part of, there's a couple reasons for that. First of all, the rightward move of my state has largely gone unnoticed but it has been incremental but definitely apparent if you're paying attention and so I think that the, you add that with how the party's coalitions have changed and that the working class is now the dominant feature within the Republican party, that is why I would place it in Trump's corner. He is very appealing to the working class.
I have argued for several months that it will likely be a cosmetologist or a welder or a laborer or fireman that decides this election and that's what I'm looking at and the evidence is that it trends Trump. Harris struggles in her state in the same way that Hillary did, only I think a little more so because she has never had to earn the vote of a moderate Democrat or a Republican or an independent voter in her electoral history because she always ran and won in California. Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing that Joe Biden had an advantage, I don't know how you feel about it, Selena, because he lives in Delaware, he represented Delaware, but he always says he's Scranton Joe. Joe Biden would have had an easier time winning Pennsylvania than Kamala Harris, correct?
Correct. So he was able to pick off some of those working class voters who had voted, who had known Joe for 40 years in our state. I mean, I can't, you know, express enough how much time Biden spent in Pennsylvania before, even before he became vice president. He called himself the third president, the third senator from Pennsylvania. But he also did a lot of local elections like state, you know, very small offices.
So he had a relationship there. And that was how he was able to pick off those voters from Trump in 2020. We're talking with Selena Zito, syndicated columnist, spends a lot of her time in Pennsylvania.
And I want you to hear some of this exchange. First off, I also think Joe Biden keeps going to Philadelphia and he keeps being he basically is asking, how can I help? And the only place they send him is Pennsylvania.
And what Trump's doing is he's trying to seal up the rural vote and try to take a chunk of the city vote. She is going into rural areas. Has she been successful? She doesn't have to peel off much. Is she giving enough attention to those areas? Well, you know, the counties that are going to matter the most are one of the ones she was in on Monday night, and that was Erie County. It was the first time that she's been to Erie County. You know, a part of her challenge is, is when she has events, they're not open to the public.
They're invite only. So you're not quite sure if this is enthusiasm or manufactured enthusiasm. Are these the people that were already going to vote for you? Right.
And so that's the end. And that has been the case throughout every every event has done in Pennsylvania. I have been sort of astounded at that approach.
It's very different than Obama's approach in 2008 and 2012. And and I can't understand why. You know, and I hear this from Democrats.
They're like, well, we want to go, but we cannot or we don't know about it. Really? Oh, yeah.
And walls had had an event, three events in western Pennsylvania the other day that people didn't find out about until 20 minutes after the gates opened. So it's nuts. It's insane. It's counterproductive. It really kind of I'm not quite sure what's going on. I don't understand why you're not, you know, trying to, you know, as we all know, politics is about addition.
You want to add people and and that's not addition. That's just keeping the same people you always had. Now, maybe they just wanted to look good, but looking good does not win an election. So you wrote a column, you said Vance's visit, J.D.
Vance's visit to Cambria County was more important than you think. In what respect? Well, this is a county that was Democrat forever. It was only in the past two years, three years, maybe that it went from Democrat registration to Republican registration.
And that this isn't even incremental. It's soared. It's almost 50,000 now more registered Republicans. It's a county like Cambria to watch on election night. If they if Republicans turn is 75 percent of those new Republicans, just Republicans. Remember, some people don't change their party registration. They they they might vote Republican, but they're like a Democrat. But, you know, if that county has a 75 percent turnout, that the election is over.
Understood. So I want you to hear this exchange because one of the big problems with the vice president, she's running as someone who's change. And she actually polls ahead of Trump narrower than ever on the party of the candidate who brings change, even though she's in the white in the White House now, which is, you know, it defies logic. So when asked, how are you different than Joe Biden? She can't tell you.
Well, she was asked that in a roundabout way last night with Brett Bear Cut five. So you're not Joe Biden, you're not Donald Trump, but but nothing comes to mind that you would do differently. Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency. And like every new president that comes in to office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences and fresh and new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership.
I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, D.C. Your campaign slogan is a new way forward and it's time to turn the page. You've been vice president for three and a half years. So what are you turning the page from? Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country and have Americans literally point fingers at each other. So she's neglecting the fact that it was eight years of Obama, four years of Joe Biden and her and just four years of Trump.
But she's turning the page from four years ago and she blames Trump for what happens 10 years ago. It was such I just don't understand how you know, you basically know what the questions are going to be. Even your average person who only pays a little attention to American politics knows what the questions are going to be. They're going to be about immigration. They're going to be about how are you different from Biden?
And, you know, they're going to be about the economy. Right. That's none of the answers were forward thinking. None of the answers were answers. You know, it means she basically I was watching in a bar last night and and this woman said to me after that answer, she said she's basically saying, here's my resume and I'm going to do all these awesome things that are on my resume.
But what are they? And a resume is not great for the American people where we're at right now. Right. You know, I just don't nobody wants a left wing, light on crime, D.A. do nothing vice president. They do want somebody to change things, change the tone. But right now they want to change it back to Donald Trump, even if they don't like the guy. Some of them love him, as you know, and some of them don't. But now they say, I'll take his policies. And no one ever no one talks about the foreign policy.
But the foreign policy is such a train wreck. So what do you think? Overall, did she help her?
Did she help herself last night? No, that didn't move one vote. It really didn't move one vote. And in fact, it could have had some subtraction there.
And how do I know that? Because I watched it with people that live in the zip codes that decide elections. Right. But I also watched the reaction of Democrats and and Democrat advocates on on cable news, you know, anchors that are clearly Democrats.
And they literally freaked out. And I think, oh, well, this tells you everything actually, if you're paying attention. Yeah, I want you to hear this. So I think it's almost comically self unself-aware. If that is if that is a phrase that I could work to a great phrase. Right. Unself-aware.
How about that? So to sit there and say that Donald Trump is unstable and unhinged and losing his mind when she served with a guy that we watched deteriorate before her eyes, who she claimed run circles around her whole staff and never said never stops being insightful, interesting and a wonderful leader. So listen to this exchange.
Cut 12. Why is half the country supporting him? Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he's as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the forty seventh president of the United States? Why is that happening?
This is an election for president of the United States. It's not supposed to be easy. I know, but it's not supposed to be. It is not supposed to be so misguided. The 50 percent is stupid.
What is it? I would never say that about the American people. And in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he's the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He's the one who talks about an enemy within, an enemy within talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.
You've called Donald Trump. He's misguided. You say now he's unstable. He is unstable. He's not. Well, you say he's mentally not stable.
He's not. So, I mean, she's the least qualified to make that statement. And when she says enemy of the people, you know what he's talking about. You're talking about you're talking about the the James Comey's of the country. You're talking about the John Brennan, the people who appeared in the Mueller report and all and everything that was found out about the plot to unseat him using a fake Russia investigation. That's what he was talking about.
Adam Schiff working behind the scenes to stab him in the back and impeach him. That's what he was talking about. He wasn't talking about Mr. and Mrs. Johnson living in a suburb in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And again, she's first of all, she didn't answer the question. Nope. She didn't say why. You were asked why. There was no answer that had why in it. It was it went somewhere else. She, you know, she I think she believed if she could masterfully turn this into her sort of event, you know, something that she could control.
But, you know, Brett Barrett is he is he is not someone that suffers falls. He's going to continue to ask questions. And she decided not to answer any of them. And I think that's why this is this event.
This interview is a subtraction. And I don't think she's going to go on Joe Rogan after this. You know what, I think this is my this is what I thought. Selena, Selena's here. I thought she was going to come on and try to be charming. I thought she was going to have the answers down.
You know, she's been up and I and I was talking to other people around Brett Barrett and they were saying, I don't think so. I think she's going to come out firing. I think she's going to come out on the attack. And I just thought, well, if she does, she's not she's going to be counterproductive for because we want to hear what she has to say.
We don't hear that she's tough or just charm everybody. Say you're going to be a leader. Tell us why you changed on the 10 core issues of your 2020 candidacy and you disappeared for three and a half years as vice president. Give us an idea. That doesn't have to be a brawl. I mean, you could answer those questions. These were an opportunity.
But to me, it's a swing and a miss. I appreciate her coming. She was composed. I'd give her that.
She was not rattled. I'll give her that. But who did she win over? Nikki Haley, voter? I don't think so. No, I agree with you.
I saw very little evidence of anything in an enough of a way to have persuaded that voter. Follow her at Zito Selena, Z I T O S L E N A. Get our latest columns. Selena, always insightful to talk to you. Thanks so much. We'll talk again soon. Thanks, Brian. Enjoy Virginia.
All right. Jason in the house, the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Dive deeper than the headlines in the party lines as I take on American life, politics and entertainment. Subscribe now on Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you download podcasts. Listen to the show and free on Fox News podcast plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
