Xhabir Deralla: With only a little bit more than one day before the key political event in the United States and globally, the United States election, we are seeing this political process as one of the most important, if not most challenging process in the world, and probably in the recent United States history, if not in the entire history of the United States when we speak about elections.
With extremely divisive rhetoric, at least by the Republican nominee, Mr. Trump, with avalanches, if not hurricanes of disinformation, misinformation and false narratives, such as they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats and pets, or other false narratives that we’ve heard, including already preparation of the part of the Republican, or more precisely, MAGA followers, that the elections are going to be stolen, and as well as heightened security measures all across the Unites States., having in mind that the tensions are quite high, and the election race between the nominees Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the race is neck to neck, very tense and accompanied with a lot of intrusion from foreign, global foreign centers of power, mainly from Moscow, there is evidence of Russian influence already in the past as well as in this election process.
With all that said and with everything that still needs to be revealed, I am speaking to Kim Devlin, a political strategist from the United States. it’s 1.00 pm in New York and 7.00 pm in Skopje North Macedonia, and I would like to say hello Kim, how are you?
Kim Devlin: I’m good. I’m anxious, but good.
Xhabir Deralla: I can imagine. Well, I don’t think I can imagine how busy and anxious you are, but that means that I should go on straight forward with the questions that are most pressing at the moment, so I’ll just go with the questions. What’s the situation on the election battleground now in the United States, only one day and a half, let’s say, before the election day?
Kim Devlin: So, you know it seems to be a dead heat, like nobody can declare. The only two people in the entire United States who seem to be clear about who wins are the two nominees, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and their respective camps. But, you know the polls seem to be dead even, especially in the battleground states. And you know, I have to tell you, I’m not sure how much I really trust the polls much anymore. I mean, certainly, I rely on them on in my own campaigns that I work on. It’s like, you know, if you don’t, to me, if you don’t utilize your polling to help at least play into your strategy, then you’re kind of flying blind, and I don’t ever like to that.
You know it’s like even I have become cynical, which is really sad because I’ve never, ever, ever been cynical. But then I’m like, well, how much are they playing up this “dead heat” for the media, so people stay tuned in? I mean, to be honest, it certainly helps both campaigns for it to be a dead heat, because then you have your supporters thinking they need to work more and more and more, which is great, you know, which is good. I have to imagine both campaigns like that, but I don’t know. I mean we’ll know the results when we know the results. But there have been things that, you know, some people say, well, the polling, you know, doesn’t account for all of the votes. You know, like, Trump always underperforms in the polls. But they said that in 2020 and he very solidly lost in 2020. So you know, I mean, Interesting fact that I harp on all the time here in the US and that is Trump, again my opinion, Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He did win the Electoral College, which made him the president. I’m not sure how much Russian influence went into that. I think quite a bit. But the facts are that he lost the popular vote, won the Electoral College. That was in 2016. Maybe 2019, which were not federal elections, but there were a lot of municipal elections around the country, and the Republicans did terrible. The Democrats actually did really solid. And 2018, I’m sorry, you did have federal elections. The Democrats and the congressionals did much better then expected in those elections. Then you had 2020, which Trump clearly lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College, which President Biden became the president from that. And then you had 2021, which were again, municipal elections around the country. Democrats did great, Republicans did terrible. You had 2022, which I’m in New York right now, I’m actually on Long Island, we actually did not do well in the congressionals on Long Island, but it had nothing to do with the presidential. It was a complete and total local issues here. But the rest of the country, the Democrats did terrific. The Republicans did terrible. So the fact is, Trump is not really that successful on election day. You know, we’ll see what happens on Tuesday. But he, he’s lost far more than he’s won, which is strange since he has served as the president for four years, and it’s even stranger when you think about his influence over the Republican Party and at least probably half the country.
Xhabir Deralla: Yes, exactly. But you know, it seems, at least from across the ocean, that the narratives that are promoted by the campaign of Mr. Trump, are quite visible. And now we know that the Russian and few other global propaganda centers are helping him in spreading the misinformation and the false narratives, such as the cats and dogs, eating cats and dogs. What are the main narratives now of the MAGA followers of Mr. Trump, and the MAGA followers that are actually capturing the attention of the United States voters, but also of the global attention?
Kim Devlin: So, from the campaign itself, it’s fake news, but it’s not coming in from outside, bad actors, it’s actually the Trump campaign and his supporters, especially the MAGA supporters. I mean if you listen to them, you know, we have their word “illegals”, you know, running our country, you know, taking over our country, and it’s only because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that, you know, our economy if you elect Kamala Harris, you know, we’ll have no jobs, we’ll have no trade. Donald Trump actually said yesterday that if Kamala Harris wins, that the United States will go into a deep depression, Hoover style, within three days. So, they’re really ratcheting up the rhetoric. I think it comes from desperation and kind of, you know, his strategy, which seems to be throw everything up at the ceiling and see what sticks. And the sad part is that some of it sticks. The good news is it really only sticks to the people who are already supporting him. So, that’s what the campaign itself, the MAGA force itself is putting out there. You had mentioned the influence from the outside, you know, nations. Yes, definitely Russia, I think also Iran, China, and they’re much more sophisticated than they were like in 2016 and even in 2020. They’re much more sophisticated, they’re actually much harder to track down, which is scary. They’re making full use of artificial intelligence, in that you know if it’s Chat Gps or whatever it is because in fact the FBI just recently sent out a notice that there were two videos that were being shared pretty widely that were complete and total fake videos, and they have been tracked back to Russian, to being created in Russia, although they don’t know exactly the origin of who did it, but they’re in Russia, they’re in Moscow. So, one of them are, you know, you had mentioned the eating cats and dogs, which were the Haitians, and I think it was Springfield, Ohio, I can’t even remember now. Totally ridiculous, totally fake, totally made up. But now they have this video that seems to be making rounds online of Haitians, “illegals”, voting in our elections, like going in to vote early.
Xhabir Deralla: With several different ID cards. That was the misinformation. The total disinformation actually.
Kim Devlin: It’s flat out fake. And I know that you know, you probably being the head of an organization, you know you have to be a little diplomatic, potentially on how you talk about. I once worked for Media Matters for America, which was a watchdog type group here in the US, media watchdog, and we too were not allowed to use the word lie or fake, it was misinformation I think.
Xhabir Deralla: We use slightly euphemistic expressions. But they are fake, they are like lies most of the time
Kim Devlin: And the thing that is harmful, and so there is another video, a second video that the FBI alerted to, which was it shown someone, we have what we call absentee, or mail-in balloting here in the US, and anyway, those ballots have been mailed in. In most states, they are not counted until after the polls close on election day. That may even be every state, every state I’ve worked in, which are 15 states, you have to wait until the polls close, before you can count them. But supposedly there was a woman that looked like she was in an election center and there were paper ballots, which were the early vote ballots, the mail-in ballots that had all voted for Trump and she’s tearing them up. That’s fake. But the reason that they are so harmful is because those are not being targeted to the MAGA voters, those are being targeted to the swing voters or the undecided voters. And if they really believe that, you know, these videos, and it’s hard to not to believe these videos, you know, because they look so real, then that is potentially, you know, definitely would hurt the Democratic ticket, the Democratic nominee. And they’re fake.
Xhabir Deralla: Absolutely, absolutely harmful it is especially because regardless of the demand to the social networks to take those posts down, you know, once the disinformation is out, and I know this from the experience with the disinformation monitoring team that I’m working with within Civil. And it is that once the disinformation is out, it’s very difficult to debunk it and to make people reconsider what they saw and to make them, to convince them that this is fake. It’s much more easy to spread a lie, disinformation than to suppress it then, or to challenge it with actual facts.
Kim Devlin: So, I’m very scared about the American way of life going by the wayside. I’m very scared about the opportunities that will not be there and the freedom that will not be there for so many Americans, especially younger Americans. My parents are elderly. I get scared of the kind of, you know, safety nets that are in place right now for the elderly in our country, that they’re not going to be there. And we’re the lucky ones. Right. And so when I think about the less fortunate Americans, I mean, my heart just breaks. My fears are those. And I don’t think they’re unfounded. I think that they are. I mean, you just have to listen to Donald Trump and what he talks about and what he says. I do fear one of my big fears right now is not enough Americans are taking it seriously. So, if I can delve into a little story, an anecdote, I think it may have been two or three weeks ago, but Kama Harris had a, they had a town hall on CNN with Anderson Cooper, and they had a group of undecided voters in Georgia, which is one of the battleground states. And I think it was eight people. I think it might have been four women and four men. And they were truly undecided. And people say, oh, how can you be undecided? It’s not that they don’t know anything about it, honestly, they don’t like either candidate. And so they’re undecided. And I’m not saying this, I know who my candidate is, but in their way of thinking, they’re undecided on the lesser of two evils. Okay, so that’s what they’re undecided about. But they were undecided. Just that day, it was reported in the New York Times that General John Kelly, who had been chief of staff for Donald Trump in the White House, said that Donald Trump had verbally said to him that he admired Putin and that he wished that he had generals like Hitler had. And that was reported. It was all over the place leading into this town hall. Kamala Harris, of course, mentioned it during her first answer and several other times. So then post town hall, they do an interview with these eight undecided voters who had viewed the town hall, were aware of what John Kelly had reported, you know, had said that Trump said to him. And the thing that was so alarming to me, it wasn’t that they didn’t care. It said it was nothing to them. It was just like an annoying insect. The Americans are exhausted by Donald Trump and his rhetoric to the point where most Americans just tune it out. They either think it actually will not happen, or like some of these voters said, they said, you know what, he lies all the time. So, he is a liar, which I find disqualifying to be president. But it actually is working in his favour right now in a weird way, because these voters who are undecided and very well may vote for him totally concede he’s a liar. But because they know this about him and they don’t find it disqualifying, they don’t believe half of the thigs that are coming out of his mouth. And so they are not taking these threats that he’s making seriously. And that is what really scares me about how people will vote, either up to this point during the early vote or mail-in balloting, mail-in voting or who will vote on Tuesday. So, that’s a big fear of mine.
Xhabir Deralla: I would like to mention the security and safety of the voters and of the voting ballot itself. We’ve seen several incidents in the early voting phase, and there are some fears that the extremist groups might cause interruptions of the voting process. Do you think that the average decent American citizen voter would maybe be afraid of going to the polls on Tuesday? And that might be one of the strategies?
Kim Devlin: I think so, to be honest with you Xhabir, it’s been a strategy for a long time. I mean, honestly, even Democratic campaigns have done it with, for example, African American voters in certain areas that, you know, if you go to vote, if there’s going to be a list of people with outstanding warrants, and if you vote, they’re going to you know, if your name’s on that list, you’re going to get arrested right there at the poll. I mean, that’s been something that’s ongoing forever. As far as do I think the fears are more heightened, they’re certainly trying that. I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s been a lot of reporting that there are people who are too scared to vote. And I, you know, I hope that that’s not the case. I mean, it’s just such an American right that we’re so lucky to have is the, you know, the freedom to vote, you know secretly. It’s a secret ballot. Nobody will ever know who you voted for unless you decide to tell them. So I don’t know. I hope that that’s not the case. What I think is more alarming are people who are actually going to vote, but they’re going to vote with information that is not accurate and not true and that that will influence their vote. And so that is an ignorant vote, in my opinion. And I think there’s going to be a lot of ignorant votes cast on Tuesday and already. And how that affects the election, I’m not sure. But it’s a concern. I believe it should be a big concern.
Xhabir Deralla: So, what are your hopes then?
Kim Devlin: I am just an eternal optimist. Like always, I think Kamala’s going to win. My mother used to call me. I don’t know if you guys would have the same. If this would mean anything to your viewers there in North Macedonia, in the Western Balkans, but Pollyannaish, I’m very Pollyannaish, which means I just always think things will be good. You know, my hope is that Kamala Harris soundly defeats Donald Trump on Tuesday, that the Democrats keep at least one of the houses, whether it’s the US Senate or the US House. I do not believe., quite frankly, I think it’s very healthy for democracy to be some friction. So I don’t really think, I would not personally want to see, like, the whole thing go Democratic or the whole thing go Republican. I think that is like, that’s rife for potential corruption and danger. But my hope is that she soundly defeats him. He will try to, he’s already setting the stage now for, you know, corrupted elections and voter fraud and such. I mean, he’s already doing that in desperation but that, you know, right now we do have systems in place, as we did in January, you know, leading up to him trying to steal the election in 2020 that will stop him. But that he soundly defeated, that he will go away, that’s wishful thinking. But that he’ll never be a candidate on the ballot again, and that although I disagree on policy, almost policy for policy, with the Republican Party as a whole, they used to be normal, and there’s many, many, many normal Republicans. And I would like to see them take their party back and have a two- system, you know, situation where we’re not agreeing, but we’re able to work together in the big things and we’re able to compromise and that the Donald Trump, I mean, the whole MAGA thing is not going to go away because Donald Trump has already shown that it can work. And there are so many people coming up after him, including at this point, his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, but you know what the thing is, they’re not Donald Trump, and not everybody can do what Donald Trump did. Nobody did it before Donald Trump did it. And so my hope is that he goes away, he loses interest, he decides to do something else, and that those who would try to follow in his footsteps do not find much traction. You know I heard somebody say on a Podcast earlier this week, not people like you or me, or my colleagues, but most Americans, most people, they don’t even think about who the president is. Like they just really focus in our country every four years when there is a presidential election. You elect someone, they take office, and you hear their name on the news every now and again when you are paying attention, but for the most part the president of the United States is not this constant president who is going to affect your day or not. And I would like to see our country get back to that and I am hopeful that we can. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Xhabir Deralla: Yes, that does make sense, especially if we know that one of the candidates in the presidential race in the United States right now is obsessed by being president in the public discourse 24/7. However, I thank you very much and I hope the best for the democracy in the United States.
Dragan Mishev
