Meet the Press NOW — September 23

If it's Monday, the most important issues, the most important battlegrounds, and the most important takeaways from our new NBC News poll. With just 43 days to go. Plus, federal prosecutors released new evidence in the second assassination attempt to former President Trump, including a chilling letter allegedly written by the suspect saying, quote, this was an assassination attempt, but I failed you. And Israel launches an extensive deadly bombing campaign targeting Hezbollah across southern Lebanon, warning civilians living there to evacuate fast as the cross border conflict continues to escalate.

Hi and welcome to the press now on my nobles in Washington. With just over six weeks to go until election Day, Vice President Harris and former President Trump hitting the trail, campaigning in key battle grounds this week as our brand new NBC News poll shows Harris building momentum nationally even as Donald Trump holds an edge on key issues and as Democrats try to go him into another debate before Election Day. Our new NBC News poll shows the vice president leading the former president 49 to 44among registered voters. That lead, though still within the margin of error.

But it does mark the first time the Democratic candidate has led in our poll in more than a year. Harris's favorability has surged since she got into the race in a way that no politician has seen since George W. Bush in the wake of 9 11. It comes as Harris is agreeing to another debate, but Trump is refusing.

Join me on the debate stage. Let's have another debate. There's more to talk about and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations that I think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies. What's your plan?

What's my plan? And we should have another one before election Day. The problem with another debate is that it's just too late. Voting has already started.

She's had her chance to do it with Fox. Now she wants to do a debate right before the election with CNN because she's losing badly. She's done one debate, I've done two. It's too late to do another.

I'd love to anyways, but it's too late. The voting is cast now. Candidates are going to be hitting the trail and key battlegrounds this week looking to shore up supporting states that could make or break their respective paths to victory. For Trump, that means visits to Georgia and North Carolina and Ross Belt states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Harris is also focusing on Pennsylvania before turning her attention out west to Arizona and Nevada. If the candidates hit the most important battlegrounds, we are getting a clearer picture into the issues that could decide the race. According to our new poll, the top issue for voters remains the cost of living, following by threats to democracy, the situation at the border, the economy and abortion. A voter say Vice President Harris would do a better job of protecting immigrant rights and handling the issue of abortion and that she has the necessary mental and physical health to be president.

But the former president leads on securing the border as well as the handling of the economy and inflation. Joining me now is our NBC News team. Steve Kornacki is the big board to break down our latest poll. Nasha Burns in Penny, where the former president is campaigning today.

And senior White House correspondent Kelly o' Donnell has the latest on the Harris campaign. Shaquille Brewster talking to voters in battleground Wisconsin. So, Steve, let's start with you. This, of course, our first NBC News poll since Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Give us your biggest takeaways. Yeah, I mean, a couple things. Obviously, you mentioned the headline that five point advantage for Harris over Trump. But put this in some context.

The previous polls we had going back a year when it was Biden versus Trump in our polling, look at what the results were. Very consistently, Trump led, Trump led, Trump led, Trump led. And there was a tie one year ago in September20,20, months after Biden exits, as you say, our first poll with Harris as the Democratic candidate and Harris leads. First time you see a Democratic lead here, first time you see that Democratic number this high, this is three points better.

Harris is 49 than Biden's best over the past year, 46. So it just illustrates how significantly things shifted when Harris replaced Biden as a Democratic candidate. And this is interesting finding from the poll, too. It's interesting.

Kamala Harris is the incumbent vice president in what remains in unpopular administration. But asking folks which candidate better represents change by a 4,738 margin, our poll, they're saying Harris and not Trump, the former president. So, Steve, what about the picture behind the numbers? What does that tell us?

Yes, take a look here. Gender, the gender gap. I think one of the biggest stories here in this, Harris leading our poll because look at this. Among men, Trump has a sizable lead.

He's beating Harris by 12 points among men. Among women, Harris has a much more sizable advantage. Look at this. It's 21 points, 58 to 37 in Harris's favor among women.

So you can see how that nets out in her favor, giving her that lead nationally. But also just take this in some perspective here. That would be a gender gap, 21 and 12 of 33 points. Now, we talked in 2020, in 2016 about seeing historically high gender gaps in those presidential Elections.

This would obliterate those gender gaps. This has been a staple the gender gap has been since 1980 of American politics. But if we see anything like a 33 point gender gap in November, that's absolutely off the charts even by modern standards. And the other key finding here, demographically I think break this down by race.

It's among black voters 857 Harris over Trump. Now historically this is what you call sort of a normal finding. Democrats have typically won the black vote by margins that look like this in presidential elections. Why this is significant is it did not look like this when Joe Biden was the democr candidate.

Joe Biden was lagging. He was often in like the 60s among black voters in polling. And there are still some polls out that have Trump doing better than this with black voters. But I think you also saw a lot of polls that were Trump versus Biden where Trump was in the mid high teens among black voters, which is a low number overall.

But historically that would be very high for Republicans. And Democrats were very worried about the black vote and underperforming historically with Biden as their candidate. This poll at least that's not happening here. Remarkably different race since the Democrats change the top of the ticket.

Steve Konaki, thank you for that. So let's go now to Dasha who's in Pennsylvania as we mentioned. Dasha, despite trailing in the national head to head, voters still favor Trump on some key issues that they care about, immigration, the economy. Are we hearing him address any of those issues today?

Well, these are the issues that his campaign, his allies really want him to focus on, to not get distracted, not get baited by the Harris campaign as he has in the past. So earlier today he was at an event where he did focus on the economy. It was focused on farmers talking about agriculture, talking about energy. A Senate candidate, David Cormick was there who running against Democrat Bob Casey.

And the two of them really honing in on listening to the stories, the lived experience of those farmers people who are in charge of our food production here in the state of Pennsylvania. So this was an economy focused, farmer focused message on this panel today. The question is what are we going to do at the rally tonight? And of course he's going to head to the South Georgia and North Carolina next.

We all know what's going on in North Carolina there. The gluten trial pick mired in a scandal. This is some of the Trump is endorsed. The Harris campaign sees this as an opportunity in these eastern seaboard states.

House concern is the Trump campaign about Mark Robinson's role on the ticket? Well, look, Harris have already narrowed the margins in North Carolina to say that the former President won in 2016 and in 2020 by a narrower margin. And now it's a really competitive race there. So really, any number of things could tip the scales here.

And there is concern among the former president's allies that Robinson could drag down the Trump van's ticket is why you've been hearing and are reporting that allies are trying to convince him to rescind his endorsement of Robinson. But we have not seen that yet, and it doesn't sound like he's planning to do so, at least at this point. And Donald Trump also appearing to reject the idea of another invitation to debate. Kamala Harris said that she would debate that second debate in late October.

Is this Trump just trying to, you know, set the stage for more negotiations on this, or is this a done deal? We're all done seeing presidential debates. Well, look, right after that first debate, you saw him go into the spin room, which was a surprise, everyone. And you heard him say, I don't think we need another one after this.

And now he's really doubling down on that. Over the last few days, since Harris made that announcement that she's expecting a debate with stand out on the 23rd, he has said time and time again that is simply too late, he believes, to have another debate. But right for context, he did have debates in October in both 2016 and 2020. It was October 19th and 16th, October 22nd, not so far from the 23rd in 2020.

And there's a long history, getting back to 1960, of debates in the second or third week of October. So this would not be unusual, but it seems he's sipping that line, but I'm going to President Trump at some point, change his mind. It doesn't look, it doesn't look like that right now. They're right.

Yeah. Nothing's ever a done deal. Completely right. All right, let's move to Kelly at the White House.

Kelly, Vice President Harris. She's going to spend her time in some Sunbelt states, Arizona, Nevada, over the weekend. What's our strategy for winning over voters there? Well, one of the things we're seeing is that the campaign wants to demonstrate that not only is the blue wall, which is often associated with Democratic success in the upper Midwest, important, but they believe there is room in the Sunbelt to expand their support, and they'll be looking at some targeted approaches.

In some places, as in Arizona, as example, there's outreach to the LDS community, the Mormon Church, to find those voters and to try to make an appeal. Also in Nevada, of course, union workers are very important and there's been a lot of push in hospitality industry, especially with how much Las Vegas is a magnet for international visitors as well as people all over the US So that's part of it. But the campaign is also clear to say they want to demonstrate that she will compete and work for votes in all of those critical battlegrounds, whether it's the Sunbelt, the blue wall states of the upper Midwest and also key states like you were just discussing North Carolina and also of course, Georgia. So the battleground is clear and how they're spending time is an important measure of where they think they can win.

And the Harris campaign also says they don't believe that Donald Trump is showing that he is going to all of those places with the same degree of emphasis. That's another line they would like to show for contrast to voters. Yeah. And she's also very busy unveiling new policy proposals.

We're expecting a new economic proposal on Wednesday. What do we know about those plans? Well, interestingly, we don't know a lot at this point and we've been talking to the campaign awaiting details about what she will roll out and they're not giving the specifics yet. We expect that will happen in Pennsylvania, the important commonwealth battleground.

Part of what they talk about is showing the contrast to Donald Trump. And we've already heard her talking about ways in which his views about tariffs, the Harris campaign believes, translates to attacks on middle Americans and middle class Americans because of the higher rate of cost that can result from tariffs. So they will look to fight that argument. We know polling suggested Donald Trump does well on the economy and this is an area where being a part of the Biden Harris administration may be a drag on some of her support because of all that has passed in these last three and a half, almost four years with inflation and concerns about cost of everyday goods and so forth.

Inflation is down. Prices to some degree in certain sectors are coming down. And she will try to make the argument that she has ideas for how to incentivize and how to support first time home buyers and small businesses. But the specifics we're still waiting to see.

And of course, we should forget about President Biden. He has a busy week. He's about to play in New York. He's going to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly.

He's also going to be on the View on Wednesday. It'll be his first sit down interview since the Democratic Convention. How's the president preparing for all this? Well, certainly the UN General assembly will be his last time to speak to this world body at a critical moment when there is a world on fire in certain parts.

The Middle east is certainly in a. In a position of great concern for the administration about an expanding war, ongoing concern for Ukraine. So it's an enormous platform where he will try to make an imprint on world leaders. And then going to the View is one of those opportunities.

Proximity, being there in New York, sitting with the ladies of that panel show. He's been there a number of times before, and it might be a chance to hear the president reflect not in a typical news environment or a speech environment, but to have more of a conversation and to perhaps reach a different audience. And embedded in that will be his effort to try to help Kamala Harris. He is certainly trying to campaign for her.

This isn't billed as a campaign event, but certainly he'll want to make some of those messages known as well. Okay, Kelly o' Donnell at the House. Thank you for that. And let's find out what voters are thinking.

You're the ones that are ultimately gonna decide all this. Jack, you're a key swing county and a key swing state. Tell us why Door county is so important. Well, Ryan, this is one of those true bellwether counties that has sided with the winner of the presidential election in every election going back to 1996.

When you look at the demographics, we have a higher percentage of older voters, a large white, working class group of voters here as well. And it's an area where you have very tight margins fairly routinely. I don't know if you can also tell by me. It's also just a pretty beautiful area to be.

Some people call it the Cape Cod of the Midwest. So we wanted to make sure we came here to talk to voters, these swing voters, to see how they felt. And we've talked a lot about the apparent momentum. I didn't hear what she'll bring to the country, but I just heard she's a candidate.

I am surprised at how strong she is. I honestly kind of didn't know she was there for a few years because I didn't feel like she did a lot. I was very negative about it. I just think she wasn't like a nobody, didn't even know who she was.

And she's done a reasonably good job of marketing. I definitely have come to the conclusion that she's capable. I mean, and she proves, she's proved that in the debate. And she's proved that since then.

So I said that in July. No, no. That's why we're struggling. And you know, Ryan, those conversations that you just heard, they reflect the sentiment that we saw in the new NBC News poll, that historical rise in favorability for Vice President Harris.

That's something I've heard from voters here as well. Even those who say that they're not ultimately going to vote for her, don't side with her, don't love her policies or the Democratic Party. They say that they view her, many of them, fundamentally different than they did, differently than they did back in July. Ryan.

Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. That interview just was pretty revealing about kind of the thought process that some of these voters are going through. Was it your sense that they became more familiar with her and more comfortable with her just because she got to the top of the ticket, or was it her debate performance? Was it a combination of both?

Talk me through the thought process of some of these voters. It's a combination of both, and it really depends on which voter you're talking to. For many of them who said that they didn't have a positive opinion or view of her in the past, they pointed directly to that debate performance. They liked what they saw from her.

They got to hear from her for the very first time. For others who said that they were already planning to vote for President Biden, their traditionally Democratic voters, what it did was take up the enthusiasm that they had for this ticket. You know, the Harris campaign actually reached out to us earlier today. They saw we were here doing this reporting, and they said that in this county alone, they've had more than 300 new volunteer signups since Harris moves to the top of the ticket.

And that just shows you it's not just about winning people over, but it's about building that enthusiasm. While that number doesn't sound like an astronomical amount, it represents about 1% of the population in this county. When you have those tight margins, as you see in Door county regularly, as you see in the state in Wisconsin regularly, that can ultimately make a difference. Yeah.

In a race that is so tight and a race that we thought was already baked, everybody already made up their mind. It is very interesting to hear voters talk to you in real time about how they're changing their minds. Chef, thanks for being out there. Appreciate it, as always.

Coming up, a key Republican weighs in, likely dooming Trump's latest effort to change the election laws in Nebraska to tip a close election in his favor. Plus, multiple global conflicts escalating and looming over world leaders as they gather this week at the United nations with President Biden set to deliver a major speech tomorrow. You're WATCHING ME the PRESS now. And welcome back.

With the polls continuing to show a very tight race between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, some Republicans are making another push to change the way Nebraska allocates its electoral votes. Here's Senator Lindsay Graham with Kristen yesterday advocating for a winner take all system in Nebraska. I think Nebraska has been talking about this for years. It is a very close election to my friends in Nebraska.

That one electoral vote could be the difference between Harris being president or not. And she's a disaster for Nebraska, Nebraska and the world. Now, that change would take away Harris's chance of winning just one electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd District, which voted for President Biden in 2020. However, Republicans lack the necessary support in the state legislature when the issue came up several months ago.

And one of the Republican holdouts has reiterated his opposition to changing the law earlier today. Joining me now is Nebraska Republican Republican congressman who happens to represent that Omaha area congressional district at the center of this push by his party. Thank you so much for being here. And I want to ask you now say Senator McDonald has reiterated his stance against changing the rules today.

I know that you have come out in support of changing those rules. Just, I mean, you understand the press of politics as well as anyone. What are the odds that this rule is going to change by election day? Very unlikely.

I know Senator McDonald, our friends, but he said by himself there's two other Republicans that are unknown right now, which means they're three votes short, maybe two votes short. And so this will likely have to wait till after the election and we can debate about it in the future legislature. And Senator Gallagher represents this district and he campaigned on it. And so I understand where he's coming from.

I just want to know from our vantage point stand where I said I wish every state did what we did. If every state did what we did and went by a district would be a much more democratic process. You get the candidates out to more states than just the four or five states. The problem is we only one of two states.

It brings in a lot of outside money. It favors one side over the other clearly. And it and so it causes distortions when you're one of two states not doing what are take off. But can you understand the concerns about changing the law so close to election day?

Yes, I do. And I think it would have been better off if this could have been handled in the Spring I believe that what Sultan does in the future legislature to tackle this. This came up also 2016 and the Republicans were one vote shy. And I gotta point out we didn't always have it this way.

In the early 1990s and before we were winner take all it was a Democrat governor and it was a Democrat state senator at the United Council who pushed a change toll we have now. And so I would a lot of people realize that we prior to the early 90s we also were wonder take all I mean you've won in this district pretty consistently. Even though Democrat may vote for Democrats at the presidential level. Can you just convince your Republican friends to help President Trump and win that district as opposed to trying to change the rules right before election day.

There's definitely a pros and cons to this. There's two points on this and as I already mentioned, if every state did what we did our country I think we'd be in a better spot Now I readily acknowledge that now when it comes to this election. President Trump called me last week and I talked to his team. If he could focus on what he did as president like prior to Covid the economy grew faster than inflation.

Wages are going faster. Inflation border we energy independence. We'd have all these Russian invasions stuff going on. And he could look to a lot of positions that fight for Harris had in 2020 that are way outside the mainstream.

If we had a disciplined campaign and focus on those issues I think he would do very well in district But I think we get sight or at least his campaigns have sidetracked on issues that take them not on the chorus she said will make a difference. My job as a candidate is to focus on the chorus. She said make a difference our district. That's how we've been able to win in a 5050 district.

So it's RPI of zero. It's not an R2 or D2. It's evenly split down in the middle and it's got a really work hard and it's a win. And this is my last question.

We have other stuff that we need to talk about. I wanted to put up something wrapped up in the Wall Street Journal from earlier this month. You said we live in the greatest country in the world to maintain our greatness we need more focus on consensus building and less on hating our fellow Americans. We need a country over party agenda.

We need the moral courage to do what's right. We need more statesmen and fewer partisans. I wonder why you told me at the beginning of this interview that you were hoping Republicans signed on with because it wouldn't hurt Senator Graham, I should say said that one of the reasons for fellow Republicans was just because it would hurt Kamala Harris's campaign. Doesn't that run contrary to what you're suggesting in this op ed of trying to fight through the partisanship when it comes to issues like these people have different reasons for the winner take aisle or opposing it?

I would just tell you my key point is one side of the aisle is getting $7 million added to the Omaha area and the other side's getting zero. And so it really creates a disorder fear for one party. You love it because you have a huge cash cow of money coming in and the other party has very little of that coming in. So probably affects three to five races down ballot on our side.

Let's just be honest there. Again, I think the Facebook thing would be to say we should all do what Nebraska is doing because I think it's a better way to go. But it's a hard thing to get that to happen. The Constitution gives it to the states to decide.

And so Nebraska, 1992, I believe it was in the early 90s, decided to learn to take Colorado by district and in one of those two states it has some consequences and we feel on our side of the aisle such as I'm just being candid with you there. You want trivia to be right at editorial. I went to a state party meeting. I said, hey, I'm not a Republican first.

I'm a Christian first. I'm an American, I'm a Republican. And I was taken back at some of the anger, well, why don't you be Republican first? And I said that's this culture that we're in today of you got to win at all costs and that's more important than being right or doing the right thing.

I think that hurts our country and I see that around. It's more important to win than to do the right thing. And it's not good for the country. Okay, let's move on to talk about our topics.

I appreciate you answering all the questions on that. I specifically want to talk about about your trip to Ukraine. You recently met with President Zelensky. You talked about how he wants clearances to use weapons to strike inside Russia.

He's going to be with President Biden this week. How would you recommend Zelensky make his pitch? I would say, Mr. President, the Russians are bombing our cities.

When I arrived, by the way, in Kiev on a Saturday morning at 1 in the morning, Keev was Being attacked by Russia. When I was a Kharkiv, the Russians bombed an apartment building and created 35 casualties. So President Biden, the Russians are bombing our cities every single day and you're not allowing us to attack the bombers when they're on the ground. This lengthens the war.

It creates more Russian Ukrainian casualties. It's creating grit black. And in the end, it's playing in the hands of President Putin who's doing this invasion. I think that's how I would try to.

That's how I would look at President Biden, try to convince him to change his mind. That's not the view of some of your fellow Republicans who feel that if Ukraine begins a bombing campaign inside of Russia, that could extend the war and increase the hostilities. What do you say to your fellow Republicans who oppose this change in policy? You know, I'm a Ronald Reagan guy, was 13 years old.

I love Eisenhower. Unilateral disarmament or unilateral tying your own hands. Does that work when you're dealing with a barbaric dictator that created this invasion, which is Putin? I have moral clarity what's going on here.

Putin is a via Ukraine want to take him over. He wants to eliminate Ukraine as a country and just make it all Russia, every Ukrainian language and so forth. You don't defeat Putin by allowing him to do attacks that are not responded to or you don't respond back and kind of go after the bombers and the areas of Russia that are attacking Ukraine cities. I think it doesn't bold some.

He's gonna use this blackmail and bullying intimidation. I don't think it works. Who should fear more? I'd rather Putin fearing us instead of us fearing him.

And I think our president, particularly National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are being too tentative and they're doing too much handwriting and it's hurting us. It's hurting Ukraine. I'm in this fight. And before we go quickly we're gonna avoid government shut down this week.

Can promise that I give it a 98 surety that we will not have a shutdown. There's always a 2% final this week I go to speaker's heart. The speaker knows that a shutdown is bad politics has bad governance and to do it right before election it's just plain stupid. Okay.

Congressman Don Bacon. Yo. I was talking to you with straight answers. Appreciate that, sir.

Thank you for being here. Next new revelation to the second assassination attempt of former President Trump and the chilling note released by authorities today, allegedly written by the suspect. You're watching me the press now. Hey guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit down podcast.

On this week's episode, I sit down with one of the biggest bands in the world, Bumperton Sons, as we get the boys together to talk about their new number one album, Prize Fighter and the evolution of that irresistible foot stomping sound. You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts. Welcome back to man charging connection with second assassination. Donald Trump will remain in custody A judge denied bailiff For Ryan Ruth, it comes as we're learning more about his actions in the weeks leading up to weekend's incident at Donald Trump's Florida golf club.

NBC News shots this video from along the property. When it zooms in, you can see a gap in the bushes that line the fence near the course's sixth hole green. We believe that's roughly where authorities spotted Ruth last Sunday. According to a court filing, the suspect spent a month scoping out locations where Mr.

Trump could be, including that golf course. The filing also says that a civilian alerted authorities last Wednesday, three days after the incident, to a box Ruth had allegedly dropped off at his home several months earlier. Prosecutors say that witness opened the box after learning about last weekend's incident. The witness stated the box contained ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools, four phones and various letters.

The court filing included a picture of a handwritten letter addressed to the world that stated, quote, this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you. The filing also included this photo of the that authorities say they recovered from the golf club along a chain link fence in this photo that shows the obliterated serial number on the rifle. NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Pendalan joins me now. A lot to unpack here.

Have they still been able to actually figure out his motive? Had they gotten enough from this to figure out where he was headed? I mean, they're still gathering information, but it's pretty clear from the public evidence that he was extremely dissatisfied and disappointed with Donald Trump. He was really pro Ukraine and actually tried to go fighting the Ukraine wars.

There were a lot of reasons that he didn't like Trump. And it was very clear from the 70s he was planning to assassinate Donald Trump. And they answered the question about how he ended up at the golf course that day to get ticked off, to get lucky? No, he was going there a lot, staking out Mr.

Trump, also going Mar Lago, according to cell phone records. That's pretty alarming. And is there a chance that they could bring additional charges in this case? Yes, in fact, they said in court, prosecutors did, that they plan to file charges under a statute making a crime to attempt to assassinate a federal official or former official that carries a term in prison.

How soon could we see those? Any day now, really. And based on what we know now, do investigators feel that they could have thwarted this assassination? What could they have done to prevent this from happening?

Remember, the Secret Service director was asked that and he sort of said no. He said the system essentially works if we couldn't possibly secure that entire golf course. We had a bubble essentially around Mr. Trump.

And the agents at the lead portion of that bubble saw the gun. But let's raise the question, what if they didn't see the gun? It was one sharp eyed young agent, Secret Service agent who saw that gun. If they had not, it could have been a much different situation.

All right, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the FBI. Today. They released their data on violent crimes across the United States in 2023. Maybe the numbers might surprise some of our viewers.

What do they tell us? It shows that violent crime is down and this is a multi year trend. Violent crime overall down by 3%. But murder down by 11.6%.

That's the largest drop ever recorded. Now, this is coming after a huge spike in violent crime during the pandemic. Murder went up a lot in 2020. But you know, this is going to BL because Donald Trump's out there saying crime is rising.

The stats just don't support that. I mean, crime stats are complicated. You can cherry pick, you can do a lot of things. But this is the FBI data.

It comes from cities. Every major city is Included this year, 94% of the population covered. And it clearly found for the second year in row that violent crime is trending down. And there's other data that show that it's still going down in the first six months of 2024.

Okay, Kendalin, thank you for that. We appreciate it. After the break, a wave of deadly attacks and counterattacks in northern Israel and southern Lebanon as the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalates yet again. You're watching esno.

Welcome back. Fighting between Israel and Lebanon escalated significantly today. The Lebanese Ministry of health said almost 500 people were killed in airstrikes just a day, which would make it the deadliest day of Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the 2006 war. Israel's military has struck approximately 1,300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the last 24 hours.

During during a meeting with his top military brass, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued this warning saying, quote, whoever tries to hurt us, we hurt him. Even more surprising, seemingly undeterred, Hezbollah launched strikes of its own. The IDF says at least 165 projectiles crossed into Israel from southern Lebanon. Israel has now declared a special state of emergency for the next 48 hours in anticipation of expanded Hezbollah rocket fire.

NBC's Matt Bradley joins me now from Beirut. Matt, what have you been hearing and seeing in Beirut? How does this latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah compared to some of the previous cross border attacks we've seen since October 2nd? Well, I mean, we're talking about since October 7th.

We're talking about how this is the most deaths we've seen in a single day since 2006. I wouldn't be surprised if it succeeded even single day death tolls from the 2006 war that was a month long war that killed nearly 2,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, in a month long period. Now we're talking about nearly 500. And that death toll, by the way, it includes 35 children and 58 women.

And the injury total has now well exceeded more than 1500. We were just at a hospital here in Beirut where we heard there actually weren't that many people who have been hospitalized here from those strikes in Beirut. And that's because, as I think you've seen on your screen, there are just thousands of people who are fleeing from southern Lebanon towards Beirut into northern areas of Lebanon. They're fleeing what is, as you described, one of the worst confrontations between the Israelis and Hezbollah for decades now.

And there's also been these warnings, of course, from the Israelis. This is a very serious situation. And so many Lebanese, after more than a year, nearly a year of fighting over this border, are now very much taking this seriously because the death toll and the scope and the scale and the tempo of the bombardments by the Israelis have picked up so dramatically in just the past couple of days. So we're hearing also that the Lebanese are canceling schools in southern Lebanon.

They're saying for the next of these two days and in the Makao Valley and areas in southern Beirut. So this is a crisis that is affecting the entire nation. Yeah. And we were showing video there of people evacuating.

I would imagine that people that live in this region are accustomed to the skirmishes that go back and forth between Israel and Lebanon, maybe expand on this. Does it seem different this time around? They feel that they cannot take the risk of staying where they are, especially if they're in the southern part of Lebanon? That's a great question, Ryan, because we have to remember that this fighting has been going on at a much, much lower level for the past year.

Ever since the day after October 7th when Hezbollah struck areas in northern Israel that they say are part of Lebanese and Syrian territory. We've been seeing cross border fighting, but it has been largely contained. And the fear since then has always been this, to break out into a fully full war and even a region wide war that could wrap in Iran and the United States, which has naval assets in part off the coast of Lebanon and in the Gulf area. Now we're seeing all of those fears coming to fruition and we're still wondering whether or not this is going to be involves some sort of Israeli ground invasion.

And that is the real fear because that could just, you know, just increase the level of casualties by orders of magnitude. This is not the situation like we're seeing in Gaza where people literally have no place to go. Here, at least they can flee. But everybody who you talk to here, when they speak about what is to come, their minds and their words always go back to 2006, that month long war that, as I just mentioned, killed more than a thousand, well, more than a thousand, mostly Lebanese civilians.

That is the risk that we can see here. There's something in Israeli politics, in Israeli military terminology, called the Dahiyya Doctrine. The notion behind that is that the Israelis will punish not just Hezbollah, but also the entire Israeli population for their tolerance of Hezbollah as a major, not just militant, but political force. They have, you know, ministries, they have seats in parliament.

The Dahia Doctrine, which is named after that neighborhood in Southern Bayou that has been struck twice in the past week and killed several high level Hezbollah officials. This is still on the books. And this is something that a lot of Lebanese fear could once again mean that Israel will essentially exact collective punishment against all of Lebanon. And that's why you're seeing this incredible level of fear among civilians who are fleeing from some part of the country.

Bradley A. Live for us from the root. Matt, stay safe. Thank you for your reporting.

As we mentioned, President Biden and world leaders are gathering in New York over the next several days for the annual gathering of the UN General Assembly. And among the top issues expected to be discussed are these multiple ongoing wars around the world and the search for a diplomatic resolution to them. My NBC News colleague Richard Lewis sat down with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair on the sidelines of the Milk in Asia Summit to discuss how world leaders should grapple with these challenges. Is the most Since World War II, 56 ongoing conflicts or wars globally involving nearly half the world's countries.

This will dominate the United Nations General assembly this week. The Middle east front and center. Underlying all the issues in the Middle east is this question of whether the Middle east can release itself from a politics where the politicization of religion dominates. Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister and former special envoy to the Middle east, was there just last week.

This war in Gaza has been of course, the worst, the most dramatic because it arose out of the terrible attack on the 7th of October. There were three wars before that. On each occasion we've tried to just return to a status quo that we hoped might hold and it hasn't. One important sign of progress leaders now tell him, if you look at the UAE or Saudi Arabia, you have leadership there that is deliberately trying to take their countries out of the idea that you take a religion, turn it into a political ideology and back to the idea that Islam is religion.

It's between you and your God and there's no reason why you can't get on with people of different religions. A lesson Blair learned from one of his diplomatic hallmarks. I learned a lot through the process of peace in Northern Ireland because we were fortunate there that we managed to bring two communities that were at war with each other to peace. And I still believe that it's possible to do that in the Middle East.

Then there's the ongoing war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin not at the UN this week, not facing Ukraine's president and not facing critics. Blair reveals a personal conversation that helps to explain. I actually remember having a conversation with Putin about Ukraine when I was still in office, saying, look, we've got no strategic interest in pulling Ukraine towards us.

Just to reassure you, if Ukraine wants to go with you guys, that's fine. And his view was very, very clear. I forget the conversation. He said, no, they're coming with us.

I said, yeah, obviously if they choose to come with you, that's fine and not if they choose. And I'm afraid that's where the problem is. It's these high level conflict negotiations that help fuel Blair's new how to vote for leaders like the 133 speaking at the General Assembly. If you take a position of power, your job is to change things for the better.

I understand what the point of being in power is if you're not going to try. So you had some aha moments about what you actually got done and how you got it done. Yes, absolutely. One of the slightly shocking things about leaving office is how much you learn after you leave and how much of that you wish you'd known when you were there.

Richard Louis, NBC News, Singapore. So the common swing states, scandals and the changing state of the race. The panel is next. Watching me, the press now.

Welcome back. As we reported earlier, Kamala Harris has a narrow lead over Donald Trump in our new NBC News national poll. It is, of course, within the margin of error, and that lead coincides with a major shift in how voters see her. Back in July, when President Biden was still at the top of the ticket, half the voters we polled actually had a negative opinion of Harris.

But look at this now. The vice president is the Democratic Party's official nominee. Nearly half of respondents have a positive opinion of her. Let's bring in our panel, Shelby.

Shelby Talcott is a reporter at Semaphore Fashion Care, advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. And Sarah Chamberlain is the president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership. You know, Shelby, I feel like we've spent so much of this campaign talking about how voters didn't like their candidate. Now we have a poll that shows that at least half the country actually likes Kamala Harris.

That's got to really be a changing dynamic in this race. Yeah, it certainly is. And I think it kind of speaks to who is winning the sort of war over defining Kamala Harris. Seen Donald Trump in his campaign really try to define her as super liberal, as somebody who is further to the left of Joe Biden.

But it hasn't really worked, clearly, because Kamala Harris's campaign has come out and said that, you know, they've changed some of their positions. They've sort of, you know, restricted a little bit her media appearances, but it's working. They are defining her in a way that Donald Trump's campaign is struggling to. And maybe one of the ways fast that they're being helped by this definition is the amount of money they're spending.

I want to show you these numbers. Spending at the end of August, the Harris campaign outspent the Trump campaign nearly 3 to 1. That is a lot more money means a lot more ads focused on working on Harris's image. How much does that help in define her favorability with the average voter?

Well, it's not only the money, which I think 250 million plus cash on hand is a crazy amount. It's that they've done some great tactics around the convention, how they introduced her at that stage. She obviously did a great job at the debate. So she's nailed the tactics of those major high Profile moments now as you head into the last stage.

That's 50% approval plus is doing a lot of work to help try to reach these late deciders, but they are not there fully. And that's the thing to continue to focus on. They are not decided. And while they might have positive opinions of her, they are not sold on the economy right now.

And I hope that they'll be thinking about creative new and interesting ways to do events. We saw Trump spent today, he was like in this round table with work, farmers and other people, they're mixing up wow and rally style. They're trying to engage in real life and out conversation. We haven't seen it from Harris and we'd love to see more of that Donald stretch and have Republicans lost an opportunity here to define Kamala Harris Was there message to scattershot?

What did they do wrong that is helping her with these numbers? The message was way too scattershot to start with, but hopefully we're bringing that in. We're kind of close. And I think what President Trump did today was a great example of how they're trying to change the messaging and kind of bring it back home.

Hopefully get off the cats and dogs in Ohio and bring it back to what people care about, which is the economy. And I travel the country and people are talking about the economy and immigration and probably a state where they care the most about the economy of Pennsylvania. I admit I let myself do one of those maps where you click the state to figure out red and blue and start coming up to 270. I said I was going to do it in October.

I did it anyway. Shelby, it just seems to keep coming back to Pennsylvania. How poor is Pennsylvania ultimately going to be at the end of this? I mean, Pennsylvania is hugely important.

You just look at how the candidates where they're going and they're both going to Pennsylvania a lot. It matters a ton. I was just with J.D. vance over the weekend.

He was in Pennsylvania. So it's not just Donald Trump and Kamala Harris that are hitting up the state. It is their surrogates. It is their vice presidential picks.

They understand both of the campaigns understand that it very well could come down to Pennsylvania. And as we've seen in the polls, Penny is extremely tight. It's within the margin of error. We have some polls where Donald Trump is up a little bit, some polls where Kamala Harris up a little bit.

They're recognizing when I talked about campaigns that this could make or break, what are they win? And in the vein of Penny fast, I Want you to explain about what we're talking before about this economic message. My sense is that you feel that the Paris campaign's falling a bit short on how do they make that connection with those working class voters. Maybe their ideals are closer, closer aligned with the conservative side of the ledger, but perhaps their pocketbook needs might foul Democrats.

My humble advice to them is that when she talks about the economy, she doesn't talk about abortion. When you hear her talk about abortion, crime, there's a passionate emotion that comes out. And the first thing she does is she says, let me tell you about people who are struggling making this decision. She puts herself in the shoes of the other and tells you about people who are struggling.

Talks about the economy was the first thing she says, I lived a middle class lifestyle. I worked at McDonald's. She told you about herself. I want to tell you about me.

And I would humbly suggest that at this point where you want to tell people, I know you, I understand. That's why the orchestration messenger, she understands that on the economy, how much do you also understand the John Deere shut down factories that we've got Master lock moving factories in Mexico? How are we going to help the workers here? How do workers stand up against Atlantis?

How do you work with people want to hear a real economic conversation that understands what they're going through. Can Donald Trump do that? He can do that. He has done that.

And that's why it's so close on the economy. I mean, Donald Trump reaches the everyday worker. Maybe he does in his own style that maybe we agree or disagree with, but he does a much better job of it than the vice president. And I agree with you.

She's talking about herself instead of what the needs of the people in that state. And I think that's reflected in the polls too, because consistently, regardless of what the national polling or the state by state polling is, Donald Trump is still ahead of Kamala Harris in terms of things like the economy. So his campaign always sees the economy as something that they really want harp on and hone in on because they see it as winning issue. So we talked about Pennsylvania's one of the big battlegrounds.

Another one that's emerging is North Carolina. Obviously, Republicans are dealing with some problem in North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. I want to play for a little bit of how J.D. vance is reacting to this Mark Robinson scandal.

Take a listen. Do you believe in that? Those are not his hosts. I don't not believe him.

I don't believe him. I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play on the core public opinion. He's going to make whatever arguments he wants to make. I'm sure the news media and others are going to investigate these comments further.

I just think that fundamentally it's Mark Robinson and people of North Carolina get to decide whether he's the governor. And that's what we're going to focus on. Sir, does this matter? Does the fact that they have such a weak guberrioral candidate impact Donald Trump in a state that could be as northern?

Actually, I think it really does. My entire family happens to live in North Carolina and the Gubertorial candidate was never had to start with. He was down the 30s. But I think for the first time you could see him pull the top of the ticket down.

People don't want to turn out to vote. They may stay home. The Democrats are energized in the state. They are definitely going to turn Now.

I don't know about the Republicans and this man is truly a disaster for North Carolina. Would it help Trump, Faz if he resented his endorsement or should he stay far away from his state? I think only helping us. And you're right that at this point chance for Democrats to not make it fully about Mark Robinson because they're going to their own hole with that.

Now continue on a message that doesn't, you know, brings in those voters who are kind of like, I want to be Mark Robinson, but I can't. Well, now you gotta be with us. Yeah. And Shelby, is it the data that hips are the movie saw from getting Vance a way to explain or distance themselves from his campaign at this point?

Well, Kamala Harris's campaign is trying to tie Mark Robinson directly to Donald Trump. So I do think so. This was a very sort of lawyerly non answer. And Donald Trump's campaign is viewing it in in this aspect.

They argue that sure, we endorse him, we've campaigned with him, but it's a separate race and now we have to sort of focus on our own thing and making this into a bigger deal and continuing to sort of proactively harp on it will only further the media stories. And so we'll just sort of fly under the radar and try to get through it. And Donald Trump has shown a capacity to become his own candidate except for anyone else, Right? He has.

But I will tell you, as I said, my whole family's down there. They are getting inundated with Harris tweets and phone calls and TV commercials talking about tying Trump too and quoting his he's greater than King Jr. Which is a disaster. This is why people need to vote primaries.

You wouldn't be in this situation. I have a lot of family working on as well. I echo that. Shelby Fezer, thank you for being here.

Me with appreciate it. I'll be back tomorrow with more MEET the Press. Now the news continues with Hallie Jackson. Right now as the day wraps up, get a scoop on what's been happening with here's the Scoop, a new podcast for NBC News with your host Gazing Studio.

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