Final midterms push as candidates rally across the country

Mark Hamrick for his analysis on the state of the economy heading into the midterms. Now, I want to now get to the talks of the rally and what to expect as we head into this final stretch for the midterm elections. I want to bring in conservative political analyst Brian Maloney to join us now. Good to see you there, Brian. You too. Happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. The countdown really is on here with just two days to go until Election Day. As you can see in our box here on the bottom right-hand corner, we are expecting a rally soon from President Donald Trump. What do you see as a strategy on his end in this homestretch? Well, it's been an unbelievably busy news day in politics, and Trump just gave a mini press conference about 20 minutes ago where he addressed the bombshell announcement today that Democratic Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan is endorsing Republican Mike Rogers for the U.S. Senate race, which was an absolute shock to everybody and happened without warning. Democrats are furious over this, and it does seem like it might sway the race a point or two, and it was already a neck and neck race. So Trump was reacting to that when he stepped off the plane and was heading into the rally that will be beginning shortly and answered a whole bunch of other questions. One of the questions is about Haley Stevens and her personal safety. That was one of the first questions that came up from a reporter. Is she getting threats? And she is getting threats. So there are a lot of huge things going on, and we're just two days from the midterms. Absolutely unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, that was a big announcement and a shocker for Democrats to see that Haley Stevens, who was the former opponent of Michigan Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, she is now endorsing the Republican candidate. You mentioned President Trump did speak about it as he was landing in Ohio. Republicans appear to be more so welcoming this shift on behalf of Stevens moving on, of course, to Roger's side. How does that change the calculus at all? Well, so essentially what accounted for the change in terms of Haley Stevens and her perspective is that she was preparing to attend an event with El Sayed and was told that her presence was not welcome. And she felt that she was treated with disrespect and had already been kind of wavering on him for a while and had asked him, essentially, and this is the crux of the dispute, that there were three things that she needed from El Sayed. One was to denounce Hamas. Two was to recognize Israel and its right to exist. And three, to denounce that crazy ad that blamed inflation in America on Israel, which was such a strange, one of the weirdest TV ads I've ever seen. And El Sayed would not do any of those things. So Haley Stevens then abruptly switched And announced that she was endorsing Mike Rogers and not only did that, but then suddenly appeared with Mike Rogers at an African-American church this morning. And I absolutely shocked the D.C. political establishment where people are just reeling from this today and nobody saw this coming. And you have a neck and neck race now that. Might have just moved one or two points toward Mike Rogers. Do you think that this might be enough for Stevens, for her supporters? Of course, it was a tight race between her and El-Sayed back in the primary, that this actually might move the needle. What segment of voters do you think this might actually move the needle for towards Republicans in that case? Well, remember that Haley Stevens nearly won that primary battle against El Sayed. You may recall, and Trump referenced this about 20 minutes ago as well, the fact that the polls had El Sayed ahead by 20 points. And then on election day, it was less than a point. I mean, it was extremely close. So Haley Stevens had more moderate Democrats, more mainstream Democrats, and even somewhat liberal Democrats in her camp, whereas El Sayed is, you know, said to be more of an extremist and more of a Mamdani socialist. And this Hassan Piker connection has dogged him through the campaign. And even weirder, you know, he's had this connection to Tucker Carlson, who has gone all the way to that to that end now. And I mean, Michigan is the weirdest political place on the planet right now. And everybody's just trying to figure out where the tea leaves are going next and trying to read what's going on. But the bottom line is Stevens brings a formidable block of voters with her. And I mean, even if only just a small percentage of her voters end up voting for Mike Rogers, it puts them over the top. No question. In response to questions from reporters earlier today just about this endorsement about the change, El-Sayed said, quote, I actually don't think about Haley Stevens. What do you make of that remark? I don't believe it at all. He tried to change the subject and say that he was more concerned with inflation or what somebody was paying for something or sending their kids to school. And that was his response to that whole thing. But there's just no question that seeing what happened cannot be a good thing for him. But he brought it upon himself. I mean, I think that treating her, treating Haley Stevens badly. And for her to switch her endorsement at the last second like this and upset the race was a huge, huge error. It's like, you know, it's an own goal here, basically. And I mean, I think it's one of the biggest blunders I've seen in politics by anyone this entire year, to be honest. And Stevens, you know, Haley Stevens is just going where she felt she needed to go. But I do think that, you know, Haley Stevens needs to be very careful right now about the repercussions of what she's done today. It was very bold, was very courageous, but there are people, some people are very angry about it. And that's something that needs to be addressed. I want to turn to the rally we are expecting soon from President Donald Trump in Iowa. It has been notable that he has decided to campaign pretty heavily in states that voted pretty strongly for him in the presidential election. A lot of this appears to be. Due to the dynamics on the ground in Iowa, for instance, there are a lot of concerns about the cost of living concerns and pricing concerns. Do you expect that the president will touch on that while he's there? Or what would be your messaging strategy, given what's happening on the ground there? Well, I think these are rallies today that were not expected to be held. They were briefly canceled and then put back on the calendar. Trump has done an unprecedented 28 rallies since October. I've never seen a president do anything like this in my lifetime, and I don't know if we ever will again. He has made winning the midterms, he's used every ounce of his energy to do this, and the results will, I think, come in on Tuesday. We'll see. To what extent this has benefited Republicans? To go to two rallies a day in two different states and then fly back to Washington or Mar-a-Lago each night. I mean, I don't know how anybody does it, much less an 80-year-old. But the amount of energy, he stepped off the plane there a little while ago, and he seemed like he had tons of energy. I mean, I don't know how he does it at 80, but whatever his secret is, I want to know about it, because bottle it up and sell it. I mean, the guy has energy. He loves these rallies. He loves talking to people. And that's what he's continuing to do. So this is going to wrap it up. Apparently, there's one more event coming up in D.C. at the Reflecting Pool that he referenced about 20 minutes ago that I hadn't heard about. So there's some kind of D.C. event coming up that might be tomorrow. I don't have the details. It's the first time I've heard about it. But he addressed it for a moment when he stepped off the plane. We'll have to watch for any new details on that one. On Iowa in particular, we're talking about the candidates in that race. Do you see this as being a close race? I don't think it will be a close race, no. And I don't think Kansas will be close either. I think we're going to see which polls were accurate and which ones were not very shortly here. You know, we have a very strange midterm map this year. Some states where Republicans are doing very well, you know, and I think Iowa and Kansas are among them, Michigan, even possibly Minnesota. But we also have states where Republicans aren't doing as well, like Virginia and North Carolina and a few other places. And we have Texas where I think Republicans look really strong. So when you look at that map, what you get is a very inconclusive kind of determination of where the American electorate is at, because that None of that really corresponds to the usual way that we think about red and blue politics, red and blue states. So we don't have our normal kind of mindset here at work. So we're gonna have to figure out, the mood of the American people right now is strange and unpredictable. And I don't think people are very happy right now. They're not happy with the cost of things. They're not happy with the economy and jobs, etc. They're not quite sure what to do about it either. You know, they're not necessarily happy with Trump, but they also didn't really see where Democrats were providing an alternative to that. And that's where this came down, where Democrats, I think, missed some opportunities to run some moderate candidates where they could have scored some easy victories. Texas is one of them. All these states that we're talking about right now are included. Michigan, Iowa, Kansas. More moderate candidates would have done very well for Democrats. They chose not to do that. OK, I mean, well, the top issue right now is the economy. And we do know that voters in Iowa are looking to hear what the president has to say on that issue in particular. O'Brien Maloney, we appreciate your analysis, as always. Thank you so much. All right, we're going to take a short break and we'll be back with.