Transcript of Trump Rallies For Republicans, Israel Election Results, Fed Interest Rates Meeting

Republicans want the president to answer concerns about the economy.

Instead, he talks about old grievances and one candidate's butt.

I started off by studying his ass.

I just wanted to—

Will his rallies push tushes to go vote?

I'm Steve Inskeep, with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. We don't know yet who will be the next prime minister of Israel. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has a clear path to form a coalition government. Arab-led parties hold the balance of power, but neither side wants to partner with them.

And the Federal Reserve meets today to decide whether to raise interest rates again. Inflation is still climbing and wages are not keeping up. Why do investors think the Fed will hold rates steady for now? Stay with us. We've got news you need to start your day.

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Ad spending in the midterms just hit a new record.

According to AdImpact, which tracks this stuff, political actors have spent more than $11 billion. Ads are one way candidates get their messages to voters, and another is rallies. President Trump has been on the road getting his message out.

NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is here to talk about the president's final push. So, Danielle, what is the president saying?

Well, he's going to all these places with tight races, including some typically red states like Texas, also Mississippi and Kansas. And he is giving something of a typical closing message saying, hey, vote for so-and-so, the GOP has lowered your taxes, the Democrats are extreme. But he's also not exactly sticking to that message. And ahead of the midterms is when that discipline, of course, matters. Now, last night in Texas, he rallied voters in Lubbock for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, While last night also, by the way, Democratic candidate James Talarico, candidate for Senate, also rallied voters in Lubbock. And as Trump sometimes does, he went in all sorts of directions.

Yeah, so tell us exactly what he did touch on.

Sure. Well, there's this thing lately where he talks about Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted's butt. The context is that Trump tells a story about how he recently found out Husted was a pretty good college football player, which led to Trump appraising his body. And so now it's become this extended comedic riff about Trump checking out Husted's backside and how Trump thinks the press is unfair in covering it.

And I made the mistake of saying that I started off by studying his ass.

I just—

It gets laughs from the crowd, but it's not clear what it does for voters in Texas or, for that matter, how it helps Husted defend his seat, pun intended. Yesterday, he also bragged about his health. He had a section about a news story from years ago when Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took a genetic test about her heritage. Really, it just kind of went on. In addition, he's been posting on social media about daylight savings time, also a long rant about comedian Bill Maher. Now, all of this isn't really what you might expect the median voter to care about, which might reasonably be the economy or gas prices.

Right. Yeah. So, I mean, how is he helping his party?

Well, I think there are a couple of ways to look at this. One is that his lack of discipline is a problem. I mean, this is an unpopular president who's putting himself at the center of the midterms. And these rallies really are still very much Trump rallies where he tells his stories, talks about his grievances. He's complained, for example, about how he didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize.

But—

and this is, of course, just not the Republican closing message. Here's Republican strategist Alex Konant.

Republicans very much want this election to be a choice between the Republican agenda and the Democrats' socialist agenda. You know, I'm not sure that that message is breaking through, you know, with all the other stuff we get from Trump. But the point of the travel is, is the travel.

So, Danielle, the idea being that what Trump says doesn't matter as much as just showing up?

Well, both matter. And when it comes to these rallies, to Conant, the case is simple. It's that Trump is still just really, really good at energizing the GOP base. Midterm turnout tends to be lowish and the base still loves Trump. So the theory is that there are quite a few gettable MAGA votes that still could be turned out. Now, all of that said, it's still true that Trump is showing up in very red states to do this. So if— and it's if— he needs to get extra votes in a red state, that signals a problem for his party.

That's NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben.

Thanks a lot.

Yeah, thank you.

The election in Israel is still too close to call.

Israelis voted yesterday and nobody has a majority. One of my kids asked yesterday how Israeli elections work, and here's what I said: Israel's legislature is the Knesset. It has 120 members. Israel has many parties, not just 2, so nobody ever gets a majority, which means that after the vote, someone tries to build a majority coalition to become prime minister. To do that, Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot each would need to assemble 61 NPR's Daniel Estrin is covering Israel's historic election, the first since the October 7th attacks.

So, Daniel, what do those results mean so far?

With a majority of the votes counted so far, the race is in a deadlock. We don't know who will be declared the next prime minister, whether that's Benjamin Netanyahu or the center-right Gadi Eisenkot. For now, it looks like Eisenkot will have the support of the majority of lawmakers in Parliament, and that's thanks to what looks like a historically strong performance by Arab-led parties. They want Eisenkot to be the next prime minister. But most of Eisenkot's camp has been very resistant to forming a coalition with Arab parties, even though it would help them win. That is because after the October 7th attacks, there has been a lot of mistrust and demonization of Arab political leaders. And so no one has a clear path to forming a majority coalition right now.

Okay. So how are Israelis feeling about that?

We're hearing a lot of confusion and a lot of uncertainty. There have been very turbulent hours from the moment voting closed last night. The first exit polls came out and they were showing Eisenkot having the advantage over Netanyahu. I was at Eisenkot's campaign headquarters and witnessed a lot of celebrating and dancing. One of those who was dancing is Eisenkot supporter Maayan Eshel, and she told us she was filled with optimism.

A lot of hope that Israelis will be able to wake up tomorrow to a new day of democracy, of striving for peace.

Many Israelis like her were hoping for a big change after these last few years of war and Israeli far-right leadership. But Israelis went to bed thinking Eisenkot had the upper hand. Overnight, Netanyahu pulled ahead. And this morning, people here woke up to a race simply too close to call.

Wow.

What are the candidates saying?

Both of them spoke in the wee hours of the morning, and Eisenkot gave what really felt like a kind of victory speech, quite premature, I would say. And he had a very clear warning for Netanyahu. He says, Netanyahu, don't you dare use the security of Israel for your political needs. He means don't take advantage of this precarious moment of transition to strike Iran. Netanyahu has been campaigning on that very promise. And Netanyahu gave a speech to his supporters and he said he would try to form the next government. He said, we need to create a right-wing strong government. That's what has to be done.

All right. Now what?

Well, election officials are telling us that they expect to finish counting votes by tomorrow afternoon. And then the next step is that whoever of the 2 main candidates comes out on top, they get the first chance chance to try to form a governing coalition. They'll have 6 weeks to do that. So we'll likely see weeks of efforts, both by Eisenkot and Netanyahu, to try to even attract defectors from each other's camps to try to form a coalition.

That's NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Daniel, thanks.

You're welcome.

The Federal Reserve ordinarily tries to fight inflation by raising interest rates.

Right now, prices are growing more rapidly than the average worker's wages, but investors are not expecting the Fed to raise rates at its meeting today.

NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now. So, Scott, if the prediction is that the Fed will not use its main tool against inflation, does that mean the Fed thinks inflation has been tamed?

Probably not. The most recent cost of living report we got from the Labor Department showed prices in September were up 3.7% from a year ago. That's An even bigger annual increase than the month before. Of course, the spike in energy prices has been a big driver of inflation. And Dan North, who's a senior economist at the insurance company Allianz Trade, says that's getting worse since the war with Iran started 8 months ago. Sometimes on the highway, there's kind of an exit that says wrong way in case somebody exits there. I've got that sign on my charts. It's wrong way. That inflation line is going up, not down. Fed policymakers did raise interest rates the last time they met in September, but investors are betting that with Election Day just around the corner, the central bank is going to try to keep a low profile today, hold rates steady at this meeting, and then maybe raise rates at the next meeting in December.

Okay. So what would change between now and December?

Well, of course, the election will be behind us, and then we'll also have a couple more months to see if that upward trend in inflation continues. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh and his colleagues have all said they're determined to bring prices under control, but they aren't necessarily on the same page about how to do that. You know, the vote to raise rates last month was unanimous, but at the previous month when the Fed stood pat, several members of the committee dissented because they wanted a rate hike back then. Brian Mulberry, who's chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, says we could see a similar split on the committee today. I think that it could be another 9-3 type of a vote, maybe even more divided than that based on people's strong opinions of where the direction of inflation is going. But I don't expect another unanimous meeting at all. Most members of the rate-setting committee have signaled they expect interest rates to go higher this year, even if they're not in a big hurry to raise rates this afternoon.

All right. The broader economy, though, Scott, I mean, how is it faring with higher prices and the prospect, the prospect of higher interest rates?

Yeah, it's really a mixed bag. Some parts of the economy are booming. Of course, there's a ton of money being poured into artificial intelligence that's contributing to higher inflation. But no amount of tapping on the brakes by the Fed seems likely to slow that down. On the other hand, the housing market is in a really deep, long-lasting slump, with mortgage rates north of 7% are not helping with that. Consumer spending so far has been pretty resilient. But Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, wonders how long that can continue at a time when wages are not keeping up with the Lower-middle-income Americans are having a real struggle.

Their purchasing power is actually declining, and that's a pretty uncomfortable place to be, right? And that likely goes to explain to a large degree why people just don't feel very good about the economy. They're pretty upset about the economy.

By contrast, upper-income families, they're feeling pretty good, especially if they have money in the stock market. So they're driving a lot of that spending. We expect a pretty solid GDP report tomorrow for July, August, and September. But that's not much comfort if you're struggling to put gas in the car and groceries in the cupboard. You know, you can't eat GDP.

No, you can't. That's NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thanks.

You're welcome.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, October 28th. I'm Emi Martinez.

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Today's Up First was edited by Rebecca Metzler, Tina Kraia, Raphael Nahm, Mohammed Al-Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Iman Maani. And Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director today is Zach Coleman. Our supervising producer is Michael Lipkin. How does this man put up with us? Join us again tomorrow.

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