The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle starts now. Tonight the final sprint to election day. The first mailin ballots go out. Why some republicans want him to stop the personal insults. And where the polling stands nine weeks out in this very tight race. We have experts standing by. And democrats put reproductive Freedom Front and center in florida. What voters are saying as the 11th Hour gets underway on this tuesday night. Good evening once again. It is great to be back with you. We are now just 63 days away. Three days away from the first ballots going out. North carolina starts mailing out ballots this friday and early voting in the crucial State Of Pennsylvania begins in less than two weeks. Political insiders are using words like dogfight to describe the race. Recent polls show harris has a narrow lead with trump nationally and the race is tighter in key Battleground States, the one that decided all where polls are showing a virtual tie in many of them. At this point republicans are going all in on one strategy. To bring down harris instead of trying to improve their candidates likability. That debate is one week away from tonight. My colleague takes a close look at where the race stands. Reporter tonight the final stretch of the 2024 president ial race is underway. But good afternoon, pittsburgh. Reporter Vice President harris will return to pennsylvania on thursday campaigning with President Biden yesterday. But Donald Trump is trying to pull us back. Including back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize. Reporter the former president will be in the state tomorrow. Hes blasting harris for changing her position and opposing a Ban On Fracking A Key Industry in pennsylvania. She has vowed repeatedly that we will ban fracking and the people of pennsylvania are smart. Reporter later he will go to wisconsin and North Carolina , where the first General Election ballots will be mailed out friday in a razor thin race. She has a backbone like a ramrod. And she has the moral compass of a saint. She knows what shes doing. Reporter the former president was on the attack. But i dont know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed her country. The inflation, the bad economy, but, to me, the worst is what they have allowed to happen to our border. Reporter the next major milestone is the debate. An official for the Harris Campaign said she will continue her prep thursday in pittsburgh while Trump Campaign officials say Tulsi Gabbard is helping him sharpen policy attacks. Tonight harriss team is calling for change to the rules. In the last debate at the request of the Biden Campaign, microphones were muted to prevent interruptions. Now the Harris Team want some unmuted at all times. It is going to be a show. Lets have our leadoff panel, and we need them. I have to get educated. Susan, set this up for us. People are Plugging In after labor day. We are two months out, and it seems more and more likely that this is going to be very close until The End. What can you tell us. We are all Plugging In, but the good news is, its a short sprint to the Finish Line and in many ways this will be the shortest general Election Campaign we can remember. Campaigns of been getting longer and longer, but because of the events in the summer with the change, it will be a short campaign. The map is still the map and they have brought some states back into play that looked distant for Joe Biden, but there were states that he won in 2020 and now were looking at the same six or seven competitive states that were competitive in 2020 and they will decide once again. Im struck i the fact that the polls essentially have not changed very much since The End of the convention. Right now harris is leading Donald Trump as her previous predecessors were leading him at labor day. But they ended up finishing with a much tighter Margin than the Margin that they had a labor day. I think that is why everyone is anticipating it will be too close to call for the selection. Lets zoom out. What you sing across the country in the president ial race but also the race for control of congress . Im in North Carolina right now where the race for governor is up for grabs. But you are seeing an electorate that looks like 2022 with the Trump Voters that usually dont turn out. Youre not seeing the deterioration in the suburbs. And you are seeing Rule Organizing for trump and attempts to reach out to voters who were never engaged. The candidates are saying something that trump has never experienced. He has never run against someone who can draw enormous crowds and hes run against less popular democrats and he also has an opponent who has gotten more popular since entering the race. Her favorable ratings and you do see that if you go around the country in suburbs and places where people were not engaged and they are completely engaged. And the democratic enthusiasm is increased. Donald trump is not talking policy or plans. I came back thinking, lets go headtohead and show her platform versus his . But hes trying to drag her down. What do you make of the way she and her campaign have dealt with the attacks so far and how it is going over with undecided voters specifically . What weve seen is Vice President harris brushing those attacks aside and she continues to lay out her vision for middleclass americans and continues to draw the contrasts. Even though its a shortened campaign season, and shes trying to introduce yourself to the american people, but this is a long election season. There is no such thing as election day. The early ballots are going out and voters are starting to make decisions and shes out there and making this reproductive Freedom Bus Tour happening and shes getting ready to go into this debate were she will continue to make the case against Donald Trump. S Campaign wishes that he could be speaking to issues like immigration, which is an issue that americans find an issue. But thats not what hes talking about is continuing to go to his playbook of Racist And Misogynist tropes that are not landing on Vice President harris. Susan, lets talk about the debate. What is the fight they are having about open microphones versus closed microphones . But this is an example where, be careful what you wish for. The Biden Campaign found out to their Detriment Back in june that providing guardrails for trump that were enforced is not necessarily a good thing if your goal is to show him unhinged. Then dont provide the means of locking them in. The Harris Campaign is now saying, no, let him, if he wants to make a fool of himself on national television, lets make sure he can go ahead and do that. And i think they are banking on the idea that he cannot control himself and that he will come across as nasty and parading and possibly out of control in a way that many people think he was in the first debate with Joe Biden in 2020. That is the argument they are having right now, and it speaks to probably the mindset of harris and her campaign going into this important debate next week, which is they need to make sure that it is Donald Trump and his fitness for office that is somehow at the center of attention in this debate. Joe biden was at the center in the first debate and it ended up taking hiS Campaign. Now, they want the scrutiny to be on trump and his fitness for office. I think she will be focused on doing that not just with the rules on microphones, but how can she prod at trump in the effort to show him to voters as out of control. I expect that is what you will see from the Vice President in that debate. The former president spoke on a podcast about what he considers to be his debating prowess. Ive done a lot of debating only as a politician. My first debate was the rosie odonnell debate. But ive done well with debates. I became president. What are your thoughts on his assessment of his Debating Skills . I think he has had success or come across as the victor in previous debates and what Vice President harris is remembering the 2016 debate when he was kind of stocking Hillary Clinton on stage, and she described that behavior as weird even then. But what weve seen Playing Out , especially on Social Media is the Vice President getting under his skin as hes been posting on truth social about her. And that is a dynamic that voters can see Playing Out in real time on a debate stage, and thats a victory in whatever points she can get across in terms of policies that shes planning to implement , should she be elected president. In terms of the tactics he has used in prior debates, its unclear whether he will be successful against Vice President harris in that setting because up until this point, he is not figured out a strategy with how to deal with her as an opponent. And might be a very short sprint, but its not Something Either Candidate from spending. Both sides are set to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few weeks. Does that any of that change votes . It is good to be in a Swing State where im seeing this because from the Trump Campaign, the republican messaging has been about the names of victims of crime that are blamed on Kamala Harriss policies as a Da In San Francisco and the democratic message is about spending and personal expenses and they are talking past each other when they have the money to go on the air and another tell is that democrats are outspending republicans in a couple of states in North Carolina and in wisconsin. You can see republicans have made a large bet on pennsylvania with that messaging. It almost worked against Joe Biden but he might all the money is going to like Barry Weill and Willie Horton Advertising trying to drive down the impression of Kamala Harris. What are people bitter telling you . So youre in North Carolina, and we know the candidates and their campaigns are saying on the airwaves. What are voters telling you . There actually is some joy and im laughing at that word. But i talked to Democrats Today and it confirms what ive seen that they were unenthusiastic under Joe Biden and people are worried about trump coming back into office and when i talked to a sample, they are worried about Lgbt Rights Banishing and a conservative candidate for governor wants to shorten a 12 Week Ban on abortion. And i talked to Voters Today and im hearing more worries that this could be the last election and that communism could be on the way of Kamala Harris wins that her first comments about unions and she might drive the country into a depression. I heard this in previous cycles , but it was a calm her mood a month ago when they were confident that Joe Biden would be the nominee and lose. Theres a lot more Panic And Panic and fear for what will happen to the country immediately if harris wins. None of that panic is rooted in truth. These are Conspiracy Theories being pushed by far right groups. None of which has any connection to the truth. There are some specific things that conservative voters that ive talked to, yes, they were it will happen because they heard about it happening somewhere else. We saw this at moms for liberty over the weekend. Trump was talking about gender policies in schools and the way he framed it was that kids go to school and they come home with gender operations. That is an example of the fear i hear from republicans on the Ground Organizing and what is motivating them to come out and they thought they had an election that they were confident about is going to somebody they dont know very well and there was a rumor spreading about the Vice President today that i saw debunked before i saw the story. By the time i saw that had been debunked, i shared 1 Million times. Theres a lot of misinformation going around about the Vice President. The Trump Campaign is focusing on her actual record on crime, expanding her role in various criminal policies to blame all crime on her. Under the surface, im detecting more worried about harris that are based in reality. Perhaps those republican voters should be most worried about the republican campaigns that align to them. Thank you so much for starting this off tonight. Before we go to a break, i wanted check in on trump media stock. But i was watching a. s company closed the day down more than 7 . It is down more than 60 over the last three months. At one Point Today it dipped low 18 for the first time since it began publicly trading. We are now just weeks away from Trump Thing able to cash in on his nearly 59 stake in the company, the company that essentially does nothing but provide a blank slate for him to post on Social Media. And the agreement to hold off on selling will expire later this month as the president ial race is in the final stages. His stock, despite it being down 60 , hes currently worth more than 2 billion. 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From the republican standpoint, this Threepoint Gap that he has right now, thats better for him than it was in 2016. He trail by five. From harriss perspective, what would be the most official way for her to get to 270. All sorts of possible paths. But we look at the state polling, all of it is close and a lot of it is very close, but the democrats are doing a little bit better. So if harris were able to carry these three states. And for the sake of argument, if you turn them blue, you see what it does. It brings her to exactly 270 electoral votes. If she starts losing these states, one of these three that the Trump Campaign is investing in got two things would happen. Harris, because pennsylvania is the largest of the Swing States, it would take two states from the Sun Belt for her to make up for the loss of one pennsylvania, but also if trump were to get pennsylvania, that would open up for him is cleanest and most efficient path to 270 and it would be get pennsylvania, Hold On to North Carolina. This is the only one of the core states that he carried in 2020. If he hangs onto that in georgia. George wendt for Joe Biden by just under 12,000 votes. If trump can win georgia back with holding onto carolina and flipping pennsylvania, trump is that exactly 270. I want to bring in my friend whos the director of polling at Harvard Kennedy School Institute Of Politics and Mark Murray is here. Our senior political editor. The polls give us a snapshot in time and it shows that here is this is a dramatic transformation in the contest that We Saw before that debate to happen with Joe Biden and even the Debate Aftermath where it was Donald Trump who is slightly ahead. And in many of the Battleground States and the national polls, but as you pointed out, this is really close contest. When steve was showing the national averages and having harris at 48 and trump at 45 , just a thre