We are less than six weeks away from
Election Day and only two weeks from
a debate between Senator Reverend
Raphael Warnock and Republican
challenger Herschel Walker.
Joining me now is Chuck Todd,
Moderator of NBC's Meet the Press.
There's still that narrow block of
conservatives who support Governor
Brian Kemp but haven't quite come
over to Herschel Walkers camp.
Walker is trying.
During speeches this week,
he attacked certain school policies
on race and transgender rights.
So, Chuck,
do you think shifting further right
will help him accomplish that goal?
Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
I don't think that's the the Kemp
voter that he's not winning right now.
I mean I don't think it's a base
voter that Walker's not winning.
The the difference between Kemp's lead
and walkers deficit appears to be a group
of sort of more independent leading
former moderate Republicans, if you will.
So I don't think the last thing they want
is sort of to go further to the right.
This is sort of, you know,
if you're looking at it for A to
sort of visualize who this voter is,
it's the college educated.
The Bourbon white male of Atlanta,
and that's the swing voter here.
These are folks that seem to vote
Republican in some of the Senate races,
vote Biden in the presidential they
ended up leaning a Democrat during
the runoffs in the Senate races.
That's the swing voter that if I'm
Herschel Walker and I'm trying to
figure out how to catch up to camp
and close that gap with Warnock,
that's the voter I have in my
head that I'm talking to,
so I this doesn't appear to match to me.
What I think is the where
Warnock is having success,
for instance,
with a certain group of voters that
Kemp is able to win over as well.
Switching gears here,
a big story on the world stage,
which we'll be discussing on Sunday,
is Russia's annexation
plan for parts of Ukraine,
with Ukraine submitting an
application to join NATO.
How serious are things now
when that part of the world,
and what are the next steps for the
US and the Biden administration?
Well, it's it's hard to, it's hard to say.
Like, I don't know how much more.
Seriously, we could say it's like.
If it are knob goes to 10,
turn it to 11, right.
We are at that kind of
stage right now in this war,
you know yet last week, Jake Sullivan,
the president's national Security advisor,
came on. Meet the Press.
And specifically with one message that he
was trying to send publicly, which is.
If Putin uses a nuclear weapon,
there's going to be a catastrophic
response in Russia to that decision.
So what does that mean?
He didn't.
He didn't want to get into any details,
but to give you a hint on what that means,
I'm going to have the Secretary
General of NATO on this week because
at some point Putin seems to be in
his attempt to try to scare the
West away from supporting Ukraine.
He may end up forcing NATO's hand to
have to get involved because if it
gets confirmed that Russia was behind
those attacks on the Nord Stream pipeline,
there's certainly a lot of
suspicion that it was Russia.
If it's confirmed that it is,
that's not an incident NATO
can just let have let stand.
So we are in a dangerous situation.
Some people think we already,
you know,
history books will say World War
Three had already begun.
In this case,
I don't want to sit there and claim that.
But that's the precarious
situation we're in right now.
Yeah. Now, since I do want
to end with this note.
On Saturday, former President Jimmy
Carter is going to turn at 98 years old.
He occasionally makes appearances,
like a few days ago with
the plane's peanut festival.
I wanted to get your thoughts on
Jimmy Carter's life and legacy.
Now, more than 40 years after
he was president.
It's it's remarkable that
he's he's got a chance.
And it's the Carters.
You never first of all,
that marriage is remarkable.
The fact that two of them are still going.
Both of them. On that front, but.
His ex presidency, I mean in many ways,
you know, his his presidency can be
debated by plenty of politicians.
His ex presidency is universally praised
and it's sort of a model of what we
want our former presidents to be.
Elder statesman.
They try to solve some problems.
They get themselves involved in things
that are humanitarian focused first.
You know, he's been a big pro
global democracy former you know,
worrying, helping to to supervise
elections overseas when.
When you're seeing countries trying to
start democracy, trying to embrace it.
So I mean I think his ex presidential,
ex presidency legacy in some ways is as
powerful as anything he did as president.
It's no disrespect to his term as president,
but it's it's how he's conducted
himself post presidency that I think is.
Is always gonna be this?
Peak,
if you will,
of of are a model of how a former
president should conduct themselves.
Yeah, certainly.
Well loved and well respected.
Meet the Press airs Sunday morning
at 10:00 o'clock with a new NBC News
Telemundo poll of Latino voters.
We certainly look forward to
seeing it right here on 11 alive.
Chuck, thank you so much.
Thanks, Jennifer.