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Americast

Americanswers! Who is Mark Robinson? And could he cost Trump the election?

Americast

BBC

News, Government, Politics

4.33.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Republican Mark Robinson’s campaign for governor in North Carolina has been put in doubt after CNN published a report claiming he posted racist and explicit messages on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.

Does the scandal present a risk to Donald Trump of losing the crucial state in November?

Plus, we answer your questions on the electoral college voting system.

And, with October just around the corner, Anthony and Miles speculate on what could emerge as this election’s ‘October Surprise’…

HOSTS:

* Anthony Zurcher, North America correspondent * Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department for Homeland Security

GET IN TOUCH:

* Join our online community: https://discord.gg/qSrxqNcmRB * Send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 9480 * Email Americast@bbc.co.uk * Or use #Americast

This episode was made by George Dabby with Catherine Fusillo. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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Americast is part of the BBC News Podcasts family of podcasts. The team that makes Americast also makes lots of other podcasts, including The Global Story, The Today Podcast, and of course Newscast and Ukrainecast. If you enjoy Americast (and if you're reading this then you hopefully do), then we think that you will enjoy some of our other pods too. See links below.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:04.7

Hello, it's Anthony and I'm here in Traverse City, Michigan where J.D. Vance, the Republican

0:09.2

Vice Presidential nominee is going to be having a campaign appearance tonight.

0:13.2

But right now we're doing AmeriCancers and I am joined by a long-time friend of the podcast, Miles

0:18.5

Taylor, Miles, welcome back.

0:20.5

Anthony, great to be with you.

0:21.9

I'm with you from Manassas, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C.

0:25.6

where a lot of our stories have a nexus for better or worse today.

0:30.1

All right, well, let's jump right in and start with a question that we received from Richard in Spain and he writes hello everyone

0:36.6

You've often talked about the October surprise what do you think it'll be this year and given how immovable the polls are you think it'll make any difference

0:45.6

October surprise miles why don't you first tell us what what exactly is an October surprise

0:49.9

obviously I guess it takes place in October, right? And we're almost in October.

0:54.7

Yeah, don't be fooled.

0:56.2

This is not Halloween, but this is the American political equivalent of Halloween, and it really

1:01.0

dates back to the 1980s.

1:02.6

So when Ronald Reagan was running against incumbent

1:06.7

Democratic President Jimmy Carter,

1:08.8

there was a lot of worry that somehow Jimmy Carter would find an end or solution to the hostage crisis in Iran where

1:18.0

you know Western hostages were being held and Republicans in particular were worried that if Jimmy Carter could negotiate a way to free

1:26.2

the hostages, it would give him this sort of political boost in the sprint to the final election and might

1:32.4

deliver him re-election.

1:34.4

Now of course that didn't end up happening. Ronald Reagan won and then Reagan was able to get

...

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