The Final 5: October 30, 2026

And Gonzaga, and you're good to go on this. I'll take that. Let's get in here. All right. Love Oakton, where they're at. You're on the right track. Here's my issue. St. James. All right. I think St. James has made St. Francis look bad. Yeah. Team saw the film. Yeah. And St. James was the architect of that film. So I'm not going to hold them against that. I'm going to have St. Louis as my one. And St. John's down. I agree with you. I love it. Mesa, we're going to get your thoughts next week. But right now, we have got to move on. That's going to do it for Fox 5's Friday Night Live, the Final Five with Sydney Persing. That's next. Is that a helicopter? Oh, ooh. Do you want to see a nice helicopter? How do you like the helipad? See, that's landing right now. I'm going to have a helicopter. Yes, Mr. President, that is a helicopter. Tonight on The Final Five, Trump takes that helicopter as part of his trip to Florida to rally the vote. The Green Party candidate for governor in Maryland makes his case to voters. And why a former Google engineer says to stop investing in retirement. Hint, it has to do with AI. This is your Final Five. Let's do this. Let's do this. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. I am Sydney Persing. Campaigns, they are feeling spooked tonight, and not because tomorrow is Halloween. It is because this is the very last weekend before Election Day. And what happens Tuesday, we know it is critical to determining the president's next two years in office. And no one knows that better than Republicans, who are fighting tooth and nail to squeeze out a victory. President Trump has been crisscrossing the country, holding rallies, including tonight in Florida. We'll get to that in just a moment. But first, let's talk about the administration's efforts to weigh in on the elections. In California, a federal appeals court has rejected the DOJ's emergency bid to set aside mail-in ballots tied to more than 20,000 voters the Trump administration claims are non-citizens. The two-to-one ruling today, it leaves California's election procedures intact just days before the midterms. That ruling is a major setback for the DOJ, which has doubled down on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voting voter fraud. And then there's, of course, Alaska, where the federal investigation into a Senate race there just keeps on growing. This stems from allegations that Democrats helped another candidate named Dan Sullivan run against the Republican incumbent, also named Dan Sullivan. Despite their sworn statements to the contrary put a man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot in order to continue the public with Highly think of it. They wanted to continue the public dialogue. They wanted to say that there was a man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. He's a great esteemed senator to lie so casually, so repeatedly, so comfortably. It's genuinely sociopathic, and they lied again and again and again when everyone knows the truth. The only reason that Dan Sullivan has a fake Dan, a decoy Dan, running against him is because Democrats orchestrated it. The Justice Department announced today that it's adding investigators and prosecutors in Alaska and has issued more than 30 subpoenas now in this case. A big motivator, the New York Times investigation released this week alleging that the Democrat Mary Peltola and National Democrats purposely recruited the other Dan Sullivan to confuse voters and boost Democrats' chances of winning. By the way, that is the same New York Times the president and his allies call fake news and dishonest and biased. Peltola says she knew nothing about other candidates except for her. herself and the incumbent. This is just another distraction. It's another diversion. Every day it's some new, you know, look over here moment. Not Dan Sullivan, registered Republican incumbent, voted for this war in Iran 14 times. Nobody at the New York Times cares about affordability in Alaska. It's already been settled by Alaska's Supreme Court, by the way. It rejected the effort to kick the second Dan Sullivan out of the race. As for the voters, they don't seem to be buying the Justice Department's case. Did it impact your vote at all? The latest news? Yeah. Not a bit. Can you tell the, can you? Can you tell who's who here? Absolutely, yeah. You've got Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. And then you have Sullivan Dan, who's a registered Republican and incumbent. And I don't even have my glasses on. It's pretty clear it's in black and white. It's very clear. It's hogwash. I don't care about it. And the real Dan Sullivan, he's failed us all. Let's move on to Florida now, where President Trump held a rally in Daytona Beach tonight. He's trying to rally the vote for Republicans, and that includes Congressman Byron Donalds, who is running for governor. When you're choosing a leader, when you're choosing the next governor of the greatest state in all of America, we can't have wishy-washy. We can't have a flim flam artist. We can't have a snake oil salesman. We can't have a con man. We cannot have a fraud. Make of that what you will. Anyway, let's turn to President Trump. He was once again heckled tonight. That's happened at all his rallies this week. And it's never just one time. And it seems like it's kind of starting to get to him. By the way, there's never been such excitement for a midterm. Shut up. Shut up. Dope. Shut up. Loser. What a loser. Get him out of here. But the Democrats also gave us the word trade. Another protester. They're paid by Soros. And he's a cheap guy. 250 bucks. Can you believe it? It seems the president doesn't think it's possible some people might hate him for free. He also doesn't seem to think he's to blame for much. For example, he keeps saying voters should pretend he's on the ballot. It's his way of motivating the Republican base to vote red. But whenever the president is asked why candidates are struggling in the polls, he says, why are you looking at me? I'm not on the ballot. And he says it certainly cannot be because his policies are weighing candidates down. Go and check your 401ks. Your 401ks are up 69%, 72%, 57%, 79%. 99%. So, and I had a man come up to me and say that he was having actually quite a bad marriage. His wife thought he was an illiterate financially. She said, sir, she thought it was a stupid person. And now My 401k is up 71% and she loves me so much. President also had some special advice for black and Jewish voters tonight. The same advice you might remember he gave in South Carolina yesterday. If you're black or if you're Jewish and you vote for Abdul, you're not smart. I'm being nice. If you're black or if you're Jewish and if you vote for Abdul, you're crazy, okay? You're crazy. The Abdul Trump is referring to there, of course, is Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for Senate in Michigan. El-Sayed has received a lot of attention from Republicans, and some of what he's faced has flat out been Islamophobic. But El-Sayed seems pretty comfortable fighting back. He called me Abdul Ramadan. Now, if you don't know this, Ramadan is the month in which Muslims fast from dawn to sunset. I mean, the thing about it is groceries under his leadership have gotten so expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if he's like, listen, we could just do Ramadan for all. That's Donald Trump's approach to groceries. Groceries got too expensive. Listen, just fast all day. Why are you fasting? I can't afford food. We are mere minutes away from Halloween, one of the spookiest places in the country, the U.S. Capitol. And when Fox News chief congressional correspondent Chad Pergram isn't covering hearings and chasing down lawmakers, he's sometimes hunting ghosts in one of the spookiest buildings in America. We join Chad in mid-report on the midterm elections. In Ohio and Michigan, this is the most expensive midterm in history, and come Wednesday, we'll know which side controls Congress. On Capitol Hill, Chad Pergram, Fox News. Clear? Clear. You thought we'd show you everything that happens here at the Capitol. But when the lights dim, the shadows stretch, and the Capitol falls deathly silent, congressional phantasms sometimes appear. Join me on this journey. You dare. Ha, ha, ha, ha. President and former Congressman John Quincy Adams died near the Old House chamber after yelling no, opposing a bill honoring military officers. Visitors claim that Adams' emphatic no still echoes through the Capitol. There is also the legend of the demon cat. Mysterious overgrown feline known to prowl the Capitol just before national emergencies. Its paw prints are visible near the old Supreme Court chamber. And then there is the ghost of Kentucky Congressman William Talby. Journalist Charles Kincaid gunned down Talby on a Capitol stairwell after a dispute. Splotches of Talby's blood are still visible on the marble. Next, we trace the fall. It's coming from inside the House of Representatives. Talby's ghost supposedly trips reporters, including yours truly, when I tried to get a comment from then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They're here, you might say, when the next class of lawmakers comes to the Capitol after the election. Members tapping at the House chamber door. And those who lost return never more. But some spirits never leave the Capitol. Don't listen for yea or nay. Perhaps for boo. On Capitol Hill, Chad Pergram, Fox News. And a very happy Halloween to Chad. Final Five is back after this, and we're going to talk to the Green Party candidate running to be Maryland's next governor. We'll be right back. And four candidates will be on the ballot on Tuesday, trying to become the governor of Maryland. There is, of course, sitting Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat who's hoping to remain in Annapolis. One of his opponents hoping to stop that from happening is Green Party candidate Andy Ellis, a longtime Maryland resident who believes the state is sick of a two-party system. His platform, it includes stopping data centers and getting big money out of politics. Andy Ellis is here with me up late tonight on The Final Five. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so let's just jump right in. Right in to the numbers, if we can. I know you have seen these. A UMBC poll earlier this month put Governor Moore at 51 percent. Dan Cox at 24% and you at 3%. Looking at that reality just four days away from Election Day, what does success look like for your campaign? Well, first off, if we get 1%, the Green Party stays on the ballot for the 2028 election. And so that's a way that the state law works in Maryland for third-party candidates. So that's the first sign of success. If we get 3.5% or 4%, that's the best performance for a third-party candidate in the state of Maryland since the Civil War. And we think that would be really good history to make. And, you know, I think the other thing I would say about that poll is it showed about 25 percent of people aren't voting for either of the two parties at the time of the poll. And we think that gives us a real good opportunity to talk to folks about why the two-party system is flawed and why we deserve something better. So we're going to talk more about your thoughts on the two-party system. One more question on that poll. In a statement when it was released— You said your campaign had a better shot at second place than Dan Cox has at overcoming Moore to win in November. You were 21 points behind him at that point. What did you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to be closer to Dan Cox than Dan Cox is to Wes Moore. Really? That happened in the 2022 election. The Green Party candidate was closer to Dan Cox than Dan Cox was to Wes Moore. Despite that polling gap? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we're going to finish second. Like I said, we have about as much chance of finishing second as Dan Cox does of finishing first. And I think our argument is that that condition sets up a really good opportunity for people to vote the way that they want without having to feel like there is a risk that they're going to vote for me and get the person they don't want into office. So back to the two-party system, you know, polling really does suggest that Americans Do not like it overall. But there's not a whole lot of direction when you look at that polling over the last several years about what people think or want it to be replaced by. What is your vision for how you want us to get there and how you think realistically, given what we're looking at, we could get there? Yeah, so, I mean, I think Maryland is well poised to have a multi-party system. The fact that we have multi-member districts in the lower house of delegates makes it easy for us to set up a system like proportional representation where we could have people from different parties being elected. In the short term... And the easiest things that we can do are to increase debate access for third parties. There was a bill in the General Assembly last year that would have done that. We can make ballot access easier for third parties. We can pass something like ranked choice voting or proportional representation that makes it easier for voters to vote outside of the two-party system. And we can expand the public finance system we have right now in order to make sure that it is giving all parties equal access to those funds. I think those things are first steps that we could do right now with bills that were in the General Assembly last year. And we could move off of that to a place where we do eventually elect a Green Party governor, a Green Party candidate for governor. One of the greatest criticisms I know you have heard that people bring up about third-party candidates is that you're taking a vote away from a progressive candidate who might have a chance to win, and you position perhaps a more conservative candidate in this instance to possibly have a chance. What is your response to that criticism? First of all, this election, I don't think there's any risk of Dan Cox winning. That's why we made that statement. It's been pretty clear to us that the results aren't going to be different this time than they were last time. Dan Cox is going to lose by double digits. And so there's no risk of progressives who vote for us helping to elect Dan Cox. The second thing I will say about that is we are taking votes away from both parties. There are people who voted for Cox in 2022 who are voting for us this time. There are people who voted for Moore in 2022 who are voting for us this time. And there are people who didn't vote in 2022 who are also voting for us this time. Real quickly, though, would you have still run even if it was a closer race? We started running this race four years ago. And, you know, we were running because of that 1 percent that we talked about. according to state law, in order to stay on the ballot. So we would have run, and it would have been a different race if we had had a close race. If, say, Ed Hale had won the primary, it would be a different race than it was if Dan Cox won. I want to—one last question before you go, because I know opposition to data centers has been crucial to your campaign. And we hear, when we report on these stories, just so much fear from folks in Maryland about the expansion of these data centers and possibly having one in their community. What would sort of be your message? To voters, to folks at home who hear this tonight, is there any reason, in your view, to be optimistic that perhaps people who are fearing this, that it might not come to their town? I mean, what I would say is I've traveled across the state for the last six months in the places where people are fighting data centers. And when we started that process, most of the counties in the state were not under moratorium. But now, a majority of the counties of the state and 80 percent of the people in the state are under moratorium because people in those counties have risen up and gone to their local governments and fought back. And I think that we can take that same kind of energy to the state level. If we get 3%, 4%, 5% historic vote in this election, we take that energy into the General Assembly session in January, and we let folks know in the General Assembly that people are mad, they don't want the data centers, and that we bring that same energy that's been in county governments all year. Andy Ellis, thank you so much for joining us here on The Final Five tonight. We so appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. All right. We will be right back after this. Into the third block. Artificial intelligence, it is the future. But how much time do we really have left? Well, according to a former Google employee, not very much. Machine learning researcher Nate Suarez, who's worked as a software engineer at Google and Microsoft, said in a recent Atlantic podcast that AI is more likely than not to wipe out humanity within the next decade. Comforting. Suarez says he's known this for a long time. So about a decade ago, he simply stopped putting money towards his retirement. He even stopped putting money in his 401k. But Suarez says our collective demise due to AI is not inevitable. He is actively working to stop it from happening. We are rooting for you, sir. But one piece of advice, maybe put a little something aside in case you succeed. Moving on now, it's not very often you literally get to see democracy in action, but travelers at New York's LaGuardia Airport got just that this week. And it all started with dog pee. You see, a dog did its business on a previous flight, leading to a pilot wondering what passengers would prefer, to depart their scheduled time or wait for the plane to be cleaned. So the pilot put it up to a vote. Ask the passengers in this case. He came to the gate, asked for a show of hands of who wanted to deal with the smell to get home on time and who wanted to just wait it out. The outcome of the vote still not clear. The video cuts off before we figure it out. And Delta has not commented on it. But if you want to watch the video, take a look at Democracy in Action. You're in luck. Just look up Jennifer Coffey on Instagram. It is still up. Moving on, insurance companies these days have some outlandish ads that know how to really get attention. Think about the Liberty Mutual Emu, better known as the Lemu Emu, or also courtesy of Liberty Mutual, Liberty Pippity. That last one, though, has caused quite a stir, so much so that in Boston, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Liberty Mutual's headquarters to demand an end to what they call... The company's polarizing Liberty Bibberti mascot. Yes, this is real. The protest was organized by 19-year-old Connor Harvey, whose YouTube video criticizing the fluffy yellow mascot drew over hundreds of thousands of views. The protesters waved signs asking for, quote, liberty from Bibberti. They call the character annoying and repetitive. Going as far as saying it is a fake corporate mascot devoid of real ingenuity. But there's always two sides to an argument, right? We know this. This is a political show. One counter-protester dressed up in support of the puppet. Funny. Up next on The Final Five, who's sleeping soundly and who is tossing and turning tonight? There's too much confusion. I'm starting to speak now. I can't get no relief. Sleeping soundly tonight, a guy you have never heard of, Mike Trouble Lynn is his name, and he made news today with an op-ed just four days ahead of Election Day. The headline behind me, I'm on the ballot for San Francisco supervisor. Whatever you do, don't vote for me. He announced he's not actually an aspiring politician, instead a provocateur who wanted to expose how easy it is to launch a vanity campaign. The whole thing, he said, cost him less than 900 bucks. That low barrier to entry, he believes, harms voters. Agree with him or not, he made his point and is one of few politicians with no nerves heading into Tuesday. And tossing and turning tonight, whoever has the pleasure of managing the president's schedule. Trump canceled two homestretch rallies yesterday ahead of the midterms scheduled for this weekend in Kansas and Iowa. We were told instead he'd reach even more voters by appearing virtually. But then a reporter asked the president if he canceled because he was tired of travel. He bit that reporter's head off and told him to get in shape. Now, all of a sudden, they are back on. Thank you so much for joining us here on The Final Five on this Halloween Eve. Hope you have a great holiday weekend. Go to bed or die.