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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Election Day is 50 days from today. That's seven weeks and one day. Early voting and the mail-in ballot process are already underway depending on your state. President Trump held an outdoor rally in Nevada on Saturday, another indoor rally on Sunday, Joe Biden had no public events. The last two stories from NPR's Asma Khalid who's covering the Biden campaign are Republicans Are Knocking On Doors. Democrats Aren't. Biden's Says That's OK and Biden Campaign Reaches Out To Voters Via Phone And Text. Will It be Enough? We'll talk with NPR's Asma Khalid in a minute. I just want to mention first though that I watched the Bob Woodward segment on CBS on 60 Minutes last night. Woodward's first interview since his book came out. I realized that in addition to the big reveal from last week that everyone's been talking about, that Trump downplayed the coronavirus as no worse than the flu while saying to Woodward, it was much worse than even a strenuous flu. There's another one like that. Not getting much attention. In public, Trump and his campaign will not acknowledge that there is systemic racism in the United States, but to Woodward on tape, he did. Here, for example, is Mike Pence speaking for the campaign at the Republican convention saying Biden believes there is systemic racism and making that sound like something to hold against Biden.

Mike Pence: Joe Biden says that America is systemically racist and that law enforcement in America has "An implicit bias against minorities."

Brian: Mike Pence at the convention seeming to accuse Biden of holding those views. Here from a few days later is what happened when Trump was asked about systemic racism by a reporter.

Reporter: Do you believe systemic racism is a problem in this country?

President Trump: You just keep getting back to the opposite subject. We should talk about the violence that we've seen in Portland and here and other places.

Brian: He didn't want to say out loud publicly to a reporter at a news conference that there is systemic racism in America. Listen to this exchange with Woodward.

Bob Woodward: I think there is systematic or institutional racism in this country.

President Trump: I think there is everywhere. I think probably less here than most places or less here than many places.

Woodward: Is it here in a way that it has an impact on people's lives?

President Trump: I think it is and it's unfortunate but I think it is.

Brian: "Is there systemic racism in America?" "I think there is everywhere." "This has an impact on people's lives." "I think it is and it's unfortunate." The president said there to Bob Woodward. To me, this is a big deal. In the year of the current movement for Black lives, Trump runs for re-election on poo-pooing the idea there is systemic racism, but he knows it's a problem and he admits it. Where his public and private statements line up, however, is that white people believing they have white privilege is to Trump drinking the Kool-Aid. Here's Woodward's next question.

Woodward: Do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me and I think lots of white privileged people in a cave and that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country? Do you see?

President Trump: No, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? [chuckles] Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.

Brian: Trump apparently believes there is institutional racism everywhere and it affects people's lives. He said that in clip one, but won't admit it publicly. Despite believing there is systemic racism, he doesn't think he or other privileged white people need to work to understand the anger and the pain that Black people feel. Self-awareness? I thought as Trump campaigns hard on race in various ways, those reveals from the Woodward tapes deserve to be highlighted and there you go. Now to NPR's Asma Khalid covering the Biden campaign. Hi, Asma. Thanks for coming on with us again. Happy 50 days to Election Day.

Asma Khalid: [chuckles] Only 50 days, right?

Brian: Right. Feels like 50 years. Trump did two in-person rallies in Nevada this week. We can talk about why that's controversial, but if I'm reading this right, Biden did no public events of any kind this weekend, is that true? If so, why not?

Asma: Joe Biden has been having more public events lately. To my knowledge, he did not have any key battleground state visits. He visited church a couple of times on Sunday as he tended to do. He attends services always. In addition to that, it was his granddaughter's confirmation. That's what he spent his day doing on Sunday. This week, he'll be in a couple of key battleground states, notably Pennsylvania, Minnesota, which is an interesting [unintelligible 00:05:56] state because it's one Democrats have not lost for nearly 50 years as well as Florida. One thing Brian, I think that's worth pointing out is that even as Joe Biden has begun to campaign more rigorously now in some of these key states is the style and the way that he is campaigning compared to the style in which we see President Trump. They're just worlds and worlds apart. I was with Joe Biden in Kenosha, Wisconsin the other week. He might have a small event with a dozen people, say, in her church, but in comparison, you have Donald Trump holding these massive airport rallies with thousands of people. I do have questions about if Joe Biden is in a key battleground state and he holds an event with half a dozen people and gets some local TV news interviews, does that generate enough buzz that he needs to actually travel to that state? Can it compare to, say, what Donald Trump generates in terms of buzz and enthusiasm when he visits the state?

Brian: What about Kamala Harris? Is she doing as little in public?

Asma: She's been doing some events as well. She'll actually be in California tomorrow, her home state, to address the wildfires that have been spreading in [unintelligible 00:07:10] throughout the West Coast at this point. She has been visiting some key states. She and her husband both were in Florida the other day and Florida is an interesting state because earlier this summer, it looks like Democrat advantage there. I believe there's 29 electoral votes at stake.That's quite a prize and it's a state that has been a trouble for Democrats at some point in the past. At this point, it seems like the race there is narrowing quite a bit if you look at public opinion polling and to me, that's interesting because we have not seen the lead that Joe Biden had before the convention shrink in a host of states. Florida seems to be running counter to that trend. The race definitely seems to be narrowing there.

Brian: What would you say in general about how Harris is campaigning or her central public roles in the Biden-Harris campaign overall?

Asma: She like Joe Biden is holding these smaller-scale events. This is something that Democrats tell me they universally believe is important. They feel like it can't just be that they talk about public safety and then they hold large scale rallies. They feel like they need to conduct themselves in public putting safety first. They feel like holding large scales rallies is not responsible. They don't feel like what President Trump and some other Republicans are doing is responsible. This is not just something you hear singularly from Joe Biden. This is something I've heard from state Democratic Party leaders. It's something I've heard from Democratic affiliated groups, say, an organization like BlackPAC. Groups that would be knocking on doors for Joe Biden are not doing that. When you talk about Kamala Harris, she likewise is not holding large scale events. She's holding much smaller events. In terms of her role, I think that she has tried very much to be this lead prosecutor. Fulfilling that prosecutorial role that I think often a running mate does to attack Donald Trump on a host of issues, but most notably the pandemic. You were mentioning Woodward's book at the outset of the show. That is something which we've heard both Harris and Biden take issue with. They feel like the president really, in some ways-- I think they called it a dereliction of duty that they feel like he was irresponsible in terms of how he addressed the pandemic. By hearing his words, they are hoping to bring attention to that repeatedly. That's something we've heard from Harris over the last few days.

Brian: Listeners, help us report this story. This one is for Democrats. We did a call-in for Trump supporters last week after the Woodward book came out for you to respond to that. This one is for Democrats today. If you are a Biden campaign volunteer-- Any Biden campaign volunteers listening? What does the campaign have you doing? 646-435-7280. Asma just mentioned how they're not going out and knocking on doors in person like the Trump campaign is. We'll talk more about that in a minute. If you are a volunteer for the Biden campaign, what do they have you doing? 646-435-7280. Help us report this story. If you are simply a Biden supporter, are you happy with the Biden-Harris campaign gameplan? If not, what do you think they should be doing more of or less of? Biden campaign volunteers, Biden supporters in general, 646-435-7280, or if you just have a question for NPR's Asma Khalid covering the Biden campaign, 646-435-7280. Biden did go on CNN with Jake Tapper last week after the Woodward excerpts were released. I'll play a clip of that. In this excerpt, Tapper asked about another revelation from the book that we haven't even mentioned on this show that Trump said out loud to Woodward that the US has a new secret, previously secret, nuclear weapons program of some kind.

Jake Tapper: One other revelation from the book is that Trump appears to have revealed a new classified US weapon system, the existence of it to Woodward. He said, "I have built a nuclear, a weapon system that nobody's ever had in this country before." Woodward says his sources confirmed the existence of this classified weapons system. What's your response to that?

Joe Biden: I can't speak to the system, but it's not a surprise. You wonder why people in the Intelligence Committee wondering from the very beginning whether you could share data with him because they don't trust him. They don't trust what he'll say or do. He seems to have no conception. I know I sound-- but he seems to have no conception of what constitutes national security. No conception of anything other than what can he do to promote himself?

Brian: Joe Biden with Jake Tapper on CNN last week. Asma, how is the Biden campaign trying to use the Woodward book revelations in general? You touched on it a moment ago. Tell us more.

Asma: Really the most notable ways in which we've seen Democrats broadly but more specifically, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, referred to the comments in Woodward's book that President Trump seems to have made, were about the pandemic. To me, that's notable because there certainly are other nuggets in the book whether it's about how Donald Trump feels about Black voters or white privilege that might shock some people but I would argue some of those comments actually jive quite a bit with how we've heard the president refer to race and white privilege in public. They weren't particularly surprising. The pandemic, I think, seems notable because we hear explicitly from the president because there's tapes. We hear from him in his own words about how he felt about this pandemic early on and his awareness that it could be, say, spread through the air as he acknowledges to Bob Woodward. That he acknowledges how much more deadly it could be than the most strenuous flu. Then this was happening at around the same time then that publicly it didn't seem like Donald Trump was really telling many of us at all about the dangers of this pandemic, of the coronavirus at that point in time, but also, he himself was holding a number of rallies where we know it now seems that you shouldn't be gathering in large scale groups. We have heard Democrats writ large. He's already even seen a priority of USA. Priority is the super PACs that's aligned with the Democratic Party. They've already put out an ad in both Spanish and English that she's going to be showing in key battleground states that uses the tapes, that uses the president's own words against him. I would anticipate we're going to see quite a bit more of this before Election Day.

Brian: Anything on that disparity that I highlighted at the beginning of the show between how Trump talks about systemic racism in person to the public in general, and what he acknowledged believing about it to Woodward?

Asma: I haven't heard much about that, to be honest, from Democrats. Again though Brian, I would go back to the fact that we've heard so many comments from the president about race over the last few years that what he said privately to Bob Woodward didn't actually seem to be that surprising. I would argue that some folks would say he acknowledged actually that there is institutional racism in this country which is an acknowledgment that I don't know I've always heard him make so clearly publicly. When it comes to the fact that he feels that Black voters haven't really done enough for him politically and that he feels like he's done a lot for them. These are all comments that we've heard variations, I should say, degrees from the president publicly over the last couple of years. He has come out and said that he does not believe that Black people are disproportionately affected by police violence. He has supported the Confederate flag. None of the comments he made to Woodward, I would say, I don't think has been particularly shocking. It's not something I've seen Democratic groups or even former Vice President Biden or Kamala Harris, particularly fuse on. It is mostly the pandemic. I will say that even prior to Woodward's book, the pandemic is something that Biden and Harris routinely, routinely emphasized. That's in part because if you look at a trajectory of President Trump's polling on this issue, it has-- Frankly, I don't want to say plummet. Plummet is maybe a strong word, but it has continuously declined since about March. There was a point where more than half of the country did approve of how the president was handling the situation. The most recent polling I saw that I believe came out just yesterday from ABC Ipsos shows that less than 40% of the public trust the president. Less than half of the country approves of the way he's handling the pandemic. This is an issue the Democrats know politically the president needs to improve on before Election Day. They feel they have an advantage here and they're going to likely continue to hammer him on it.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Julie in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Asma Khalid, NPR's Biden campaign reporter. Hi, Julie.

Julie: Hi, I just wanted to say that I have been canvassing in person in Pennsylvania with two groups. One of them is called CTC Together, it's affiliated. It runs Democratic. It's safety first canvassing and we've been doing this since for about two months. We've been reaching infrequent voters and we've done it very safely. We all have to get tested before we go. We all have envelopes so that we don't-- when we give voter registration forms, we don't touch the voter registration forms. We give the voters masks. We've reached hundreds of people.

Brian: What's the group? CPC Together, what does that stand for?

Julie: It's called Changing the Conversation Together?

Brian: Oh, CTC, Changing the Conversation Together.

Julie: CTC, Changing the Conversation Together.

Brian: It's a Democratic Party group?

Julie: It's not affiliated with the Democratic Party. It's a PAC so that we can do certain things, but it runs Democratic. We are definitely affiliated Democratic. There's another group called the LA LGBT Center. It's called deep canvassing. It's a certain kind of canvassing where we tell stories to voters, where we don't engage in political discussions, but we tell stories to voters, but it's definitely anti-Trump.

Brian: When you say-- Yes, go ahead.

Julie: We've registered voters. We've given voters vote by mail. It's very serious canvassing and definitely runs Democratic.

Brian: This is also interesting. When you say you've been knocking on the doors of infrequent voters in Pennsylvania, means that group CTC Together has lists of people who are registered but don't always vote?

Julie: Yes, what we do is that you have next to their names, we can tell how many presidential elections people have voted in.

Brian: Fascinating. Last thing, how do you find the receptivity, especially in the pandemic? Here you are a stranger, yes, you're wearing a mask, but you come knocking at their door and you want to have an in-person encounter with them, how's that been going?

Julie: It's been going wonderfully. Yesterday I knocked on 14 doors and I had 6 conversations. People tell you it's part-- we have personal conversations. We tell people about people we love and we ask people in turn about people we love. The first door I knocked on, I told a story about my granddaughter, and then this woman said to me, "When I vote, I think about the husband I lost to COVID-19. I think about that when I go to the polls."

Brian: Julie, thank you so much. That was so interesting. Thank you very much for checking in with us.

Julie: You're welcome.

Brian: Wow, Asma. Pretty interesting, huh?

Asma: That is really interesting to hear that they are knocking on doors. I'm struck by that because some of the Democratic, even affiliated groups, I should say, I'm thinking of Working America, for example. They told me that knocking on doors is in their DNA. They habitually knock on doors almost every day of the year, whether it's rain, snow, or sun, and that they have paused all their operations since March and it's been really hard for them. You go to their website, and you just see instantly that they've knocked and had conversations on doors, they say with nearly 11 million people. It is interesting to hear of at least one organization she mentions that is doing this work. I'm struck by how they're doing it because what I've heard from some organizations is that they don't feel comfortable even if their people are wearing a mask, that the people at the door they feel, may not be wearing a mask and they worry that the people at the door also might not be receptive to getting a knock on the door in the midst of a pandemic. It's interesting to hear Julie say that in her experience that folks have been receptive.

Brian: She said she's giving them masks. Your story from yesterday called Republicans Are Knocking On Doors. Democrats Aren't. Biden's Campaign Says That's OK. How extensive is the Trump door-knocking campaign?

Asma: Republicans, I should say, the Trump campaign says that they are knocking on a million doors a week. It is a large number. Democrats will push back and say that they don't feel like that metric is accurate. In fact, Biden's campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters in a call the other week that she feels like that number, millions of door knocks or attempts that they're making don't really have an impact on voters. In her view, the metric of success is conversations had. Now, I will say Republicans will argue that it's not an either-or proposition that they are knocking on many, many doors a week they say, but they are also having phone conversations, and they are also working at meeting people in virtual spaces. They don't feel like it's a choice that they have to make between one or the other. I specifically heard this when you zero in on a particular state. Again, for example, Florida, which I think is just going to be a key battleground this election cycle. The chairman of the Florida Republican Party said in his view it feels like the Biden campaign is almost nonexistent on the ground. While they might be having a bus tour or a rally or knocking on doors, they just physically aren't seeing the Biden campaign in the same way because they aren't knocking on doors and they aren't physically as present. That all being said, look, I think it is an interesting theory of whether or not you can organize virtually entirely. I don't really know the answer to that. I posed that question to a couple of political scientists who have done a lot of research on door knocking. One gentleman at the University of California Berkeley told me that he feels like-- The issue, again, is having conversations. Can you have a meaningful conversation with someone over the phone? Just as meaningful, perhaps, is at their door? He thinks it's possible and maybe it's more efficient. It's a very untested idea what the Democrats are doing. I don't know that we will know whether or not it works until after Election Day.

Brian: Cheryl in Manhattan. You’re on WNYC with NPR's Asma Khalid. Hi, Cheryl.

Cheryl: Hello. I just called to say that I think the Biden-Harris campaign should be doing on-the-ground campaigning and large events safely in key battleground states. I'm a supporter and a volunteer. I just have online meeting fatigue and there's nothing like being physically present.

Brian: Cheryl, thank you very much. How much of the internal conversation is that among the campaign leadership members, Asma, at all about having large in-person events but with more social distancing than Trump does it?

Asma: It is the question I have asked the Biden campaign for, at this point, a couple of months, and I'm sure I'm not the only reporter. Every time I asked that iteration of a question, I'm told that in their view, it's safety first, they don't think it matters. What I will say is, I did some reporting in key battleground states this summer, and it's a question I posed to Democratic voters like the call we just heard from. I definitely did hear from some Democrats that they felt like there was a way to do this more safely. This was at a point in time Biden was not campaigning outside of the state of Delaware or Pennsylvania. He wasn't flying anywhere. I remember hearing from voters in both Wisconsin and Michigan that they felt like it was possible to have safe events to some degree in some of their states on the ground. I don't know how much of a conversation that's happening within the campaign. The campaign when I asked that seems to dismiss those concerns, but it is a concern that I have heard from some Democratic voters. They worry that if only one campaign, which at this point is the Trump campaign, is really operationally maximizing what's happening on the ground, can the other campaign just do it all virtually? I don't know the answer to that. It's something that I think some Democrats are worried about.

Brian: Sarah in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi. I'm glad to get to participate in this conversation because I've been doing both letter writing, which is something we're asked to do where we add a personal note to a brief form letter encouraging people to vote. I've made phone calls three times, and I won't do the phone calls anymore because they won't let us leave a message. They say they're interested in our having a conversation, but people won't answer the phone. I just counted it up. 98 phone calls in those 3 times and I spoke to 6 people.

Asma: Wow.

Sarah: I didn't want to do it because I thought this is taking me an hour, hour and a half each time. I'm not connecting with anyone. At least if I write these letters, and someone reads the letters, maybe that will have an effect. I did work on both Obama campaigns and Hillary's campaign. I'd be happy to go back to door knocking. The one thing I would ask if the Biden campaign allows us to do this is that they make sure they give us enough literature to leave at the door of anyone who doesn't answer because that's our only way of letting this person know we reached out to them.

Brian: Interesting. Sarah, I'm going to leave it there for time, but Asma what were you saying wow to?

Asma: I was just going to say real quick that in terms of doing drop-off of literature, that is something the Biden campaign did tell us that they are planning to begin doing soon. While they may not have the, say, face-to-face conversations at this point, they do intend to start going door to door to do some campaign literature drop-offs.

Brian: Roseanne in Fairfield, New Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hello, Roseanne?

Roseanne: Hi, Brian. I've called a few times. I'm definitely a supporter and I think they've been very responsible both Harris and Biden. My concern is what I've read in The Times recently, how someone wrote in about-- they have to pay attention. I think Biden has [unintelligible 00:27:04] to white men because many of them feel disenfranchised. I think that's very important right now to realize how they feel, especially white working men, many and hopefully are working. Also, I think he has to even more so talk about the lawlessness and the crime. Many people are very, I've talked to people, very afraid about that. I just think these things are very important. Another thing, I have to say I'm so disappointed in Republicans. They're just not the Republicans I know of years ago and can't believe that.

Brian: Roseanne.

Roseanne: Just these couple of criticisms. Yes, everything virtual, I agree. [chuckles] No, guys have to try to get more in-person kind of things with small groups, maybe [inaudible 00:28:05] .

Brian: Roseanne, we're going to leave it there for time. We're going to lose Asma in two minutes and I want to go to my Maya in Inwood, Manhattan, real briefly because Maya's going to be your opposite number in terms of the tensions pulling the Biden campaign from supporters. Maya, hi? You’re on WNYC and I apologize in advance. We have about 30 seconds for you.

Maya: Yes, thank you, Brian. The white supremacist piece, they brought Angela, the sister of federal agent under Hill. Early on, Steven Carrillo, a staff Air Force Sergeant was part of a white supremacist Boogaloo movement that needs to be exposed. Blaming BLM and their support is when white supremacy was and is the issue and they use Angela horribly because those folks want to purge and exterminate her family because she is Black.

Brian: Maya, thank you very much. I don't know the particular case that Maya is talking about there or the particular people she's referring to. Asma, maybe you do. We hear in those two calls the tension that the Biden campaign must be dealing with internally. They're not doing enough to reach out to disaffected white man, disaffected from the Democratic Party, or they're not being explicit enough about white supremacy.

Asma: The Biden campaign is really trying to build this broad coalition. To me, it's been a fascinating thing to watch because you see all kinds of voters who say that they're going to plan to vote for Joe Biden this November, who may not traditionally have been gung ho about the Democratic Party. I say that there's disaffected Republicans. There are folks who believe deeply in the Black Lives Matter movement who maybe aren't supported fully by some of the members within this coalition. You talk to people and overwhelmingly the number one reason they are supporting Joe Biden is because they want to defeat Donald Trump. That is singularly the reason you hear from people. I do think that this tension between members within this broad coalition is likely to continue because it's a hard coalition to unite and they're really united only by opposition to Donald Trump.

Brian: NPR's political correspondent, Asma Khalid, covering the Biden campaign. Asma, always great. Thank you so much.

Asma: My pleasure. Take care.

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