Richard Arnold: US correspondent says Donald Trump and Kamala Harris still neck-and-neck despite latest polls

Kamala Harris is surging ahead of Donald Trump in the latest major poll.

The Vice President's taken a four percent lead over the former President in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in a New York Times Siena poll.

It's the clearest indication of the candidates' standing in the three battleground states since Joe Biden dropped out.

But US correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking says we're still very early into the race, and the two are still very much neck-and-neck.

“However, the Times says the last three weeks have been the worst for Trump in his entire 2024 campaign as he struggles with trying to find out how to take on Harris.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bushy tail back from holiday, Richard on and welcome back,
thanks way, goodwill right.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Bring us up to speed on the race.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Where are we at? Well?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I think it's what you've just been mentioning is the
place to start. These polls showing that Kamala Harris is
leading Donald Trump in some of the key battleground areas.
He's eded Trump by what that four percent you mentioned
in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, around Michigan, all key states obviously to me,
though this is still an early point, it shows the
race being pretty much neck and neck as it has

(00:30):
been all along. We are yet to see the Democratic
team roll out a lot of their policy ideas. They
say they will present their ongoing economic program soon, but
Harris is yet to be fully tested. Away from the
teleprompters the Democratic Invention coming up next week, the competing
camp still is sorting out debate details. However, The Time
says the last three weeks have been the worst for

(00:50):
Trump in his entire twenty twenty four campaign, as he
struggled sort of in trying to find out how to
take on Harris doesn't seem to know how to put it.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Kamala Harris, You're fired, Get out of here. Yeah, nothing
new there.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
The Rupert Murdo Wall Street Journal put out an editorial
over the weekend headline will Donald Trump blow another elections?
So they are showing some nervousness, aren't they. The Kamala
Harris and Tim Waltz Rallies have been growing their Las
Vegas rally this weekend reached capacity for the site, with
some four thousand folks kept out side because of crowd size.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Concerned.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know, if there's one thing that the Donald so
often focuses on, it is crowd sizes. And the Times
Maggie Haveman reports that Trump is in a bad mood
and called Harris the b wood and a quote mad woman.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So not as sappy as he was before Joe Biden
Withdrew is he?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
No, indeed not.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
And so we're standing by for the closing ceremony. Of
course LA's next excited.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Ah, very much focused on it. You know, all this
is getting underway. A midword that Tom Cruise might have
some featured role in the closing events. And I'm just
Barrett back from Paris myself, where I went along to
some of the Olympic events, including the opening ceremony, which
was got to say, stupendous along the scene, even though
everyone got drowned in the rain. This closure, we'll see

(02:04):
the Olympic torch passed on to la As, the site
of the twenty eight Games, and the city's mayor, Karen Bass,
has been assessing things in the City of Light, and
she says.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's been a wonderful experience being here. First of all,
Paris is beautiful and the way that they have incorporated
the entire city into the Games has been great.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, I got to say, Paris really took on this event.
At every street corner and Paris Metro stopped. There were
volunteers all over the place, French folks who all seemed
to speak English, some of them admitting that they learned
from watching Netflix.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So take that as you will.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
But this was very different from the first time I
was in Paris, when you would speak in schoolboy French
and people would playing English and a certain degree of snottiness.
It was not like that this go round. The scale
of this was huge because of the way they involved
so much of Paris, with the events at so many landmarks,
including the distance swimming in the sund of course, in
the Olympic flame in the Tuileries Gardens next to the loof.

(02:59):
Actually it was not aim it was clouds of mist
lit by led rays in the sphere that would fly
over the city at night.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
So they did a lot of amazing things.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
But Paris, unlike Los Angeles, is in the compact city
center with an incredibly effective underground. Those metro trains run
every few minutes, and seventy five thousand security forces, seventy
five thousand men and women helped to get everyone around.
El A Mayor Karen Bass says.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
It is our goal in Los Angeles to have a
car free games and you know what that means because
we're a very car dependent city. But it means that
if you were going to attend any of the sports venue,
you were going to have to take public transportation. We've
been building out our system, but we're also going to
need a lot of buses, thousands of buses from neighboring
cities and states to help us deliver that.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Car free Los Angeles. That's a pretty dang wild idea.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
I reckon I covered the last LA Olympics and people
were so scared of the freeway gridlock at the time,
many stayed away from work and that was before they
even invented zoom. However, these are big, big events, and
I went to some of the swimming in Paris where
they built a swimming pool as we saw in the
middle of a massive football arena, thousands of thousands of
people having to move in and out of the place.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
The crowds were enormous. Dawning as well.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Got to say, were the ticket prices in La last
time they had lotteries for locals.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
This time in Paris.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
If you say wanted to attend the equestrian events at
the Palace of Versailles, those tickets started at around two
thousand bucks in New Zealand per seat. You know, I
think you want some degree of democracy, don't you? Hope
they find ways to include many people, not only the
super rich. It was also a sign of the times,
obviously when you look at the participants to acknowledge there
were no Russian athletes, with the Russians spending all their

(04:36):
time battling Ukraine. There were refugee athletes who participated without
any national flag. One of the most thrilling things about
the Olympics to me is something that separates from all
other sports. You have people from what one hundred and
twenty plus countries doing things like sprinting and jumping and
diving and synchronized whatever. They'll get maybe one shot at
this in their lifetime at the very top level, and

(04:58):
the excitement factor because of all that just rises to
the max. Exactly good to have you back. Make appreciate
it very much. LA of course, last time when they
actually ran a surplus of two hundred and fifteen million dollars,
it was a while ago. For more from the Mic
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