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Trump Using Falsehoods to Driver Voters to Polls for Midterms; NYT: Secret Service Broke Up Fight Between Kelly & Lewandowski. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 23, 2018 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SETH MEYERS, HOST, NBC'S "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": President Trump today blamed Mexican police and military for failing to stop a caravan of migrants from entering the U.S., adding, quote, "I have alerted Border Patrol and military that this is a national emergy [SIC]."

[07:00:19] Yes, we can't have a bunch of people coming in who can't write in English. We'd have to make them all president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Our thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you "CNN TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That is an assault on our country.

In that caravan you have some very bad people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's fearmongering, trying to pretend that this small number of impoverished Latin American refugees are somehow Middle Eastern terrorists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn them around right there. It's an invasion. Treat it as an invasion.

TRUMP: We've got so many people voting illegally in this country, it's a disgrace.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't have a voter fraud problem in this country.

BARACK OBAMA (D), FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Unlike some, I actually try to state facts. I believe in facts. I don't believe in just making stuff up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is waging a war on truth and succeeding at it.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

CAMEROTA: All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

President Trump resorting to fearmongering and falsehoods to turn out the Republican vote in the midterms, just two weeks from today. The president is focusing some of his biggest lies on this caravan of thousands of desperate migrants who are working their way north. The president is insisting, without a shred of evidence or facts, that there are dangerous people embedded among the migrants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: As the caravan -- and, look, that is an assault on our country. That's an assault. And in that caravan, you have some very bad people. You have some very bad people. And we can't let that happen to our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: His claims are getting stranger by the day. The strategy seems designed to scare voters by constantly repeating a false threat. But the president is not stopping there. He claims to know specifically what kind of dangerous people are traveling with the migrants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You're going to find MS-13. You're going to find Middle Eastern. You're going to find everything. And guess what? We're not allowing them in our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That was the president. I'm standing in a completely different place now. And his pitch is coming into focus with early voting beginning today in more than 20 states.

Tomorrow the president hits the campaign trail again. He goes to Wisconsin there, a state he was very proud of winning in the 2016 race.

Today the biggest names from both parties fanning out across the country to back their party's candidates: former vice president Joe Biden; Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris are the headliners for the Democrats, focusing on Florida, Arizona and Iowa.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also in Iowa for the Republicans.

CAMEROTA: OK. So let's bring in CNN's senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny; Republican strategist and CNN political commentator Kevin Madden; and the former director of communications outreach for Hillary Clinton's campaign and our newest CNN political commentator, Jess McIntosh.

Jess, great to have you here.

BERMAN: I'm back here, by the way. I just want to note how quickly I came back.

CAMEROTA: How do you do that?

BERMAN: I'm in a lot of places.

CAMEROTA: That was hyper space.

OK. Jess, great to have you. So something strange is going on with the president.

JESS MCINTOSH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He's making more and more outlandish, really unhinged claims. I understand fearmongering. I get it.

MCINTOSH: Right.

CAMEROTA: But don't they have to generally have a germ of truth to make them believable to voters?

MCINTOSH: Usually, yes, although Trump's base seems caught in a particularly insidious inclusive bubble, where he can perpetuate lies; and they just don't go -- they go unchallenged, because all they do is listen to the same sources that are repeating the president's lies.

What's really interesting is that this close to a midterm election, they are simply unable to talk about any of the issues that voters are actually interested in voting on. They have no plan for healthcare. We have seen them fail to replace Obamacare with anything for years now. Their tax plan backfired hugely. There is no plan to increase wages, jobs. These are the things that people are actually going to turn out for, and Republicans simply can't campaign on them.

BERMAN: Well, look, I think the Republicans have a different message there.

What I'm interested in, Kevin, is why the president thinks this is effective, because clearly this has been planned, and a lot of it was going on last week while people were focused on Khashoggi. If you turned on FOX News, they were talking about the caravan. They were talking about immigration.

Why is he saying these things and why spread some of the lies?

KEVIN MADDEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I think the president, if you -- if you look at the footage from yesterday's rally down in Houston, and then you compare it to 2016, when the president gets out on the campaign trail, this is one of the -- these issues are the ones that he's most comfortable talking about, because I think for him, they help draw the contrast between his opponents and also remind his base voters about what's at stake.

[07:05:07] And what I would disagree with, Jess, is you know, immigration is an issue that everybody is always talking about. I think there are very clear differences on that issue. And in the two weeks right before the election, when you're trying to juice your base, you do tend to talk about and focus on the differences and the contrasts that you have with the other party.

So it is right now, if you look, again, the president is just making a very direct, simple appeal to the base voters he believes are important to helping Republicans win in -- in November.

CAMEROTA: Jess, just to rebut that, how do you know people don't vote on immigration? Maybe that will drive people to the polls.

MCINTOSH: Immigration is certainly going to drive the Trump base to the polls. That is certainly a motivating factor for them. It is not a motivating factor -- and I would like to separate the idea of immigration as an issue and lying about a caravan full of people.

That is actually nothing to do with our overall substantive immigration policy, but he's absolutely right. That's going to help Trump drive out that base that gets really riled up by the fearmongering and the racism.

BERMAN: Jeff Zeleny, our intrepid White House reporter who was at the rally in Houston, pressing the White House for all sorts of things. I'm sure they provided you with a comprehensive list of the Middle Easterners who are part of this caravan, yes?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: In the words of the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, she said there absolutely is evidence of Middle Easterners being in those caravans. Asked to provide such evidence, no answer.

So the reality here is there is no specific evidence as far as we know, or we certainly think they would provide that.

But the reality here is I was in Houston; I was at that rally yesterday, a giant rally by all accounts. Was it 100,000 people who RSVP'd as the president said? No, it was not. The Houston police chief said there were 3,000 people outside and 18,000 inside. That is a big rally. That is a bigger rally than virtually anyone else could draw; and that here is the issue for Democrats.

This is a message the president is carrying. He is nationalizing these midterm elections, which usually isn't how it works. Usually, midterm elections are much more local affairs. And it's one of the reasons we're seeing sort of a divergence of views here. Yes, so many voters are looking for pocketbook issues, but the president clearly sensing that that wasn't firing up his base enough, so is talking about this.

And I can tell you, inside the arenas, inside the rallies, it works without question. The bigger unknown question here, as we'll find out in 14 days, what affect is it having on independent voters in swing states, other places where he isn't going? Outside the rallies, this could be having a much different effect. But I can tell you, Democrats are much more worried about the outcome

of the election than they have been at any other point of this year here. So the president knows what he's doing. He's firing up his base.

BERMAN: Jess, he just said you're scared. Are you?

MCINTOSH: Yes, of course. The stakes are very, very, very high.

BERMAN: Not just the stakes but are the signs pointing to Trump?

MCINTOSH: I mean, the signs are pointing to Democrats having a good night. I say that with all of the caution and the optimism that I can. I'm taking absolutely nothing for granted, and I don't think anybody in my party is.

I think the big question is what does the electorate look like? We are seeing some insane numbers coming out of early voting. In Georgia the first day of early voting, it was up 300 percent. The first day of early voting in Houston drew crowds of 2,000. We have simply never seen numbers like this, which means that we may not be looking at an election that is made up of Trump's base and the progressive base. It might be made of a lot more Americans than usually turn out, which I think would be a wonderful thing.

CAMEROTA: Really fascinating. That's really interesting.

MADDEN: And that has to be the concern for many Republicans, because while Trump's rhetoric may play with base voters, one of the big worries that you have to have is that one of the demographics that's going to effect, are very large in many of these battleground districts for the House which are in suburbs are going to be suburban women. And suburban women don't have the same reaction as base voters do when you have very divisive rhetoric on things like immigration.

So this could be counterproductive for a lot of those Republicans in places like -- in the suburbs and places where I am right now, like Chicago or, you know, places like -- outside of Philadelphia where there are a lot of battleground races that are going to -- that are going to decide whether or not Republicans are able to keep the House.

MCINTOSH: Kevin is absolutely right. In fact, talking about immigration to those suburban, college-educated women, they think about the family separation. They think about the kids who are still being detained. That is the opposite of a motivator for them.

So he might be sacrificing what was pretty typical a Republican voting bloc, white women. He might be sacrificing them to play up that base.

CAMEROTA: Jeff, explain one more time. I understand that fear is a motivator, but why can't the president run on the economy? Why can't he run on the unemployment rate having gone down, I mean, his accomplishments? Why has he rejected that so outright?

ZELENY: It's a great question. And the president does, of course -- he's still talking about the economy, but it's in a very different way.

[07:10:00] The reality is about a month or so ago, I was told by a couple people who speak to the president all the time about this. They say he was resigned to essentially losing the House. Republicans were going to lose the House. He and others wanted to flip the script here and fire up the Republican base.

So he is essentially reverting to what he did in 2016 because it worked. He believes all of these things work.

Yes, there's record unemployment. You know, there's certainly so many things to talk about, but why is he talking about a new tax cut at this point? He promised last night here in Houston a 10 percent middle-class tax cut right before the election. That's not happening, of course, we know, but one of the reasons he is talking it now, because he hasn't been really selling the tax-cut plan from last year. He hasn't been talking about this as much.

So with all of the sort of noise in the air and chaos in the air, nothing is breaking through like immigration does. So that is one of the things here at the end of the day. And the White House and the president is willing to sacrifice, you know, some of those seats, perhaps, in swing districts, you know, for the greater good.

And they have the blessing of geography here. Look at that Senate map. It's almost impossible now for Democrats to win control of the Senate. That was not the situation just a few weeks ago here.

So look for him to go to red states, red areas, but he's not going to a lot of the places that he won in 2016. This is a base election, and it's a fear election. And, you know, there's not really much of a response on the Democratic side. Yes, Barack Obama was out yesterday; Joe Biden was out, but it's no one that has the megaphone of Donald Trump.

BERMAN: The question is, to me, is it a fact election? I just want to play, because I'm dying to know, Kevin, from a Republican standpoint if this matters at all.

MADDEN: Of course.

BERMAN: I want to play what the president said about the Saudi jobs, or the jobs in the United States that will be created by the Saudi arms deal. Listen to the president over time on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're talking about over 40,000 jobs.

It's 450,000 jobs.

It's 500,000 jobs.

Six hundred thousand jobs, maybe more than that.

Talking about over a million jobs. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So for people who care about facts, Kevin --

CAMEROTA: Or jobs.

BERMAN: Or jobs, that makes your hair hurt, and you have fantastic hair, I might add, Kevin. So I'm going to ask you. But does it matter politically? Clearly, the president is just making stuff up, or lying depending on how you want to say it. But does it have any impact to the midterm voter?

MADDEN: I mean, no. I mean, I think the vote -- well, yes, but the voters don't really argue, particularly the ones that he's trying to appeal to, they don't argue over whether or not the facts on the number of jobs is right as much as they would make the case and begin to argue that the president is right, that there are jobs at stake.

And so -- but this is -- the president does this all the time. I think this is one of the problems where you have with staffing is when the president cites a wrong number, there's really nobody strong enough inside his inner circle to confront him and say, "This is wrong. We're going to continue to have problems trying to defend a wrong number. It's going to distract from your core message if you keep repeating it."

There just isn't anybody around there to confront him on that. That's one of the problems that we've seen over the last two years inside this White House.

BERMAN: Or they just don't care. But that, you know, it's an interesting talking point.

Jess, welcome. Again, it was great to have you here. Come back.

Kevin always great to have you.

Jeff Zeleny, you're the man.

ZELENY: Great to be with you.

CAMEROTA: OK. So what's going on here? Are the president's lies becoming more brazen? Does he not know what he's saying?

Joining us on the phone, we have "New York Times" White House correspondent and CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman, who had a story about this very thing on Friday.

Maggie, great to have you.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (via phone): Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, why does he sound -- I mean, some of the claims that he's making are just unhinged. They -- they have no rooting in reality. So is something going on -- HABERMAN: Yes, I don't know if they're unhinged or they're just

insane. Right? We don't know.

CAMEROTA: Right. Honestly, this is not rhetorical. What's going on with the president? Is his grip on reality loosening?

HABERMAN: I don't think this is his grip on reality loosening. I think that we are seeing what we saw with him in 2016, which is he will keep saying what he can get away with for as long as he can get away with it.

I think that if he was, you know, reminded of exactly where the jobs are -- the job numbers are in terms of the Saudi arms deal, I think he would acknowledge it. I think that he sees a value in pushing the number up always. I don't know that it's the people internally,, necessarily, can't confront him or that they know it just doesn't change what he does. He doesn't care, and we have seen that over and over and over again.

I don't know that I think this is worse, but I certainly think that it is an increase in the -- it goes up, it goes down metric that we have seen with him in terms of time also.

CAMEROTA: But I mean, when we play the video of him in the space of just a couple of days being so all over the map with the jobs that he claims are connected to the Saudi arms deal, are people in the White House comfortable with that?

HABERMAN: I think that people in the White House have become pretty numb to a lot of what happens. So I think that if you took this on its own and separated it from things, they would -- they would say, "Yes, this is a problem." I think when you put it in the middle of everything else that he has done, I think it feels just like another day to them.

[07:15:10] CAMEROTA: You know, I want to get to your new reporting on a fight that happened between Corey Lewandowski and John Kelly in a moment, but before we do that, I want to get to the caravan, because John Kelly in 2015 had a lot of words of compassion for the migrants who were going to make this really deadly, dangerous trip with their children. He understood. Having worked in Central America as a general, he understood what the challenges were; and he expressed a lot of compassion for the migrants.

So let me play for you what he said in 2015, and then we can talk about where they are today. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JOHN KELLY (RET.), WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Many of the problems of these countries are a direct result of our drug consumption. A direct result of our drug consumption in our country. Cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, it all comes from my region of the world.

And so yes, they love their children. They love their children as much as we love our children. In many ways they're trying to save their child -- this children's life by putting on to this very, very efficient but still very dangerous network to get them into the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Maggie, that was just a few years ago. John Kelly believed that the migrants were trying to save their children's lives by making this journey. What's happened to that John Kelly?

HABERMAN: That John Kelly has become much harder edged on immigration, as we know; and we have seen it. And I don't know how much has been influenced by this president's desires, or how much of it has been influenced by his own opinion, or whether he has seen something in the numbers or the data or the information that has changed his opinion. But it is striking the contrast between that John Kelly and the one we see now, who has been supportive of much of what the president is doing.

CAMEROTA: All right. So tell us about your new reporting about this fight that happened between chief of staff John Kelly and Corey Lewandowski just outside of the Oval Office.

HABERMAN: Sure. This was back in February, and we started hearing about this last week because of this fight between Kelly and Bolton, which some in the White House are now saying wasn't a thing at all, but be that as it may, you know, we were hearing of an isolated incident.

And indeed, in February, Corey Lewandowski and John Kelly were -- it was the day that the families from the kids who were killed in the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were coming for an event in the East Room. And as that was taking place, Kelly and Corey Lewandowski were in the Oval Office with the president, arguing with each other, accusing each other of this and that.

John Kelly was very angry that Corey Lewandowski had been criticizing him about his handling of the controversy surrounding staff secretary Rob Porter. And this was a real personal issue for Kelly for some reason.

They ended up leaving when the president took a phone call. Kelly yelled that he wanted Corey taken out of the White House. He went to -- Lewandowski yelled something back. John Kelly grabbed his collar and tried to push him up against the wall. Lewandowski, my understanding is did not do anything back, and I'm pretty sure that's true considering John Kelly is a Secret Service protectee, and that would have led to a problem for Lewandowski. The Secret Service had to intervene. They ended up working it out between them behind closed doors for a few minutes and then returned to the Oval Office agreeing to deal with each other.

But it really speaks to a couple things, one of which is, you know, repeated flares of John Kelly's temper, which we have heard over quite some time. It's really rare to hear of a physical altercation in the White House. And don't forget the president has continued to keep Lewandowski by his side in an informal advisory capacity for a long time. So not only is there no punishment for that kind of behavior; there's sort of a reward.

CAMEROTA: Yes. It's also just, I think, hard to gauge John Kelly's comfort level with all of these things when we hear stories about how outraged he becomes with what's going on in the White House.

Maggie Haberman, thank you very much, as always, for sharing your reporting with us.

HABERMAN: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: So the not-so-secret message at the president's campaign rallies, and also new signs of where this midterm election is headed. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:23:18] CAMEROTA: In the final stretch of the midterms, President Trump is accelerating his fearmongering and false claims. Take a look at some of these headlines today.

"The Washington Post" says, "Trump and Republicans Settle on Fear and Falsehoods as a Midterm Strategy." "The New York Times" says, "Trump and the GOP Candidates Escalate Race and Fear as Election Ploys."

Let's discuss with Mike Rogers, former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. And CNN national security commentator and -- for "The New Yorker" Susan Glasser. She's also a CNN global affairs analyst. Great to have all of you.

Mike Rogers, are you troubled by the fact that what the president -- I mean, look, we've known that what the president does isn't often rooted in reality and his claims are fact-free, but they're coming -- they seem to be more brazen. They seem to be more rapid-fire. Even when we have videotape showing that he's making up numbers out of thin air and using all sorts of different numbers, he doesn't seem to be embarrassed about that.

MIKE ROGERS, FORMER REPUBLICAN CHAIRMAN OF HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Yea, and it's more about an exaggeration. There is a kernel of truth, there probably is some job creation. But when he ramps up from 40,000 to a million jobs, clearly there is a discrepancy between the facts and how many jobs that might produce.

CAMEROTA: I think there used to be a kernel of truth, but now, when he's making up things about the caravan, there doesn't have to be a kernel of truth anymore.

ROGERS: Well, here's the -- frustrating for a national security guy who pays attention to these issues. So law enforcement will look at this and say, "OK, we have a few problems we're going to have to worry about." Public health, right? You have to make sure that those folks are not

bringing something that we don't want exposed to the rest of the American population.

There have been, in the past, examples of foreign intelligence services, including the Iranians, by the way, trying to use the southern border to conduct an operation in the United States.

[07:25:00] So if you -- if you want to focus on what the real problem is with that caravan, it isn't those things. You want national security to focus on the challenges that we do have on the southern border when it comes to national security.

He conflates everything, and then blows it up, and that's -- so if you're serious about this problem, I think it makes it harder to try to get to the solutions when you do this.

BERMAN: He's making stuff up. He's making stuff up in some cases, whether it be numbers or about people who are in the caravan; and the question is why. The reason, the answer to why is because it works. Listen to Jeff Flake yesterday here on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Do you have any idea what the president is talking about when he says there are unknown Middle Easterners mixed in with the caravan?

SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: No, that's long been pretty much a canard and a fear tactic. And I just don't think that it's the right way to approach it.

These, for the most part, overwhelmingly, are people who are either fleeing violence or looking for a better life; and that's what's more troubling to me now is who believes this? And he does it, I think, because it still works. It still riles people up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It still works; it still riles people up. He's making stuff up because it works.

And Susan, you spent a lot of time paying attention to the rallies from the president, and you've heard the riling up.

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Well, that's right. Look, I think this is all kind of a big ego play. Right? We're 15 days away from the midterm elections, and President Trump has not resisted the opportunity to try to make it about himself wherever possible.

He's been told, again and again, that history is not on his side when it comes to the midterm elections, that it's very likely that Republicans may even lose the House. He doesn't accept it. He thinks that he, basically, beat lightning in 2016 and that he can do it again in 2018 by following the same playbook. The challenge, I think the reason we're seeing this dramatic

escalation in the -- just the amount, scale and brazenness of the falsehoods, obviously, it's been documented from the beginning of his political career, that lying is endemic in some way to what he does.

But if that's how you are on an average day two weeks before a midterm election, the version of Trump dialing it up is to go so over the top that we're all left, you know, kind of astonished and talking about it. But I'm struck by the fact that, as you point out, his falsehoods tend to be opportunistic and politically convenient. He -- it's not so much an unreality thing, that he's just lying in indiscriminately, but he's doing so, it seems to me, where he perceives political opportunity for him; and that makes it even more cynical, you could argue.

CAMEROTA: So, Mike, are Republicans comfortable with this? I mean, of course, everyone agrees that we need to fix border security and immigration. Democrats have said that; Republicans have said that. When he vilifies a group of people that are nowhere near the U.S. border at the moment -- they're 2,500 miles away, they're actually at the southern border of Mexico -- are you comfortable with that?

ROGERS: No, I'm not, especially in the way that he talks about it is a problem.

Is it a problem for border and law enforcement that you have 1,000 people or 500 people showing up en masse to cross the border? If you have rules, yes, that's a problem for them.

But when you focus on the pejorative side of this, it never helps solve the problem. And that's what I worry about, including cutting funding, by the way, for the very countries that we need to fix the domestic problems to stop them from fleeing their countries in the first place. If you want to get a handle on this, that's where you --

CAMEROTA: You're being practical. You're talking about problem solving. And Jeff Flake, who's bowing out stage right, is leaving Congress. Why aren't other Republicans -- why are other Republicans seeming to go along with this?

ROGERS: I'm not sure if they're going along with it, but they're hanging on for dear life.

I remember when I ran in my district in Michigan, when George Bush came to town to talk about education, I talked about taxes. And when he came to talk about taxes, I talked about education. And -- because I couldn't be tied to George Bush in my district.

And I think a lot of members are -- you'll find them trying to find that same recipe. There are things that people are really happy about that the Republicans have accomplished. They're probably trying to separate themselves a couple of degrees from the president of the United States. So if he's out there talking about immigration, they're going to be at home talking about something different.

BERMAN: In fact, I think the actual trend right now is the opposite. They're hanging on for dear life. They're hanging on to him for dear life.

If you go to Nevada and you look at Dean Heller, for instance, who was projected perhaps to lose that race, he's grabbed onto the president and maybe is doing better now because of his ties to the president. This is working, in many states, particularly in the Senate races. And, Susan, I'm curious to wonder how you think Democrats should fight this.

GLASSER: Well, just to your last point, I think it's an excellent point about Republicans. And I was struck by the over-the-top, slavish paeans to President Trump at many of these rallies. You pointed out Dean Heller, who was very critical of Donald Trump in 2016, when he just came out to appear for him last week, he said everything Donald Trump touches turns to gold. Many of the tributes are as if he was a Central Asian autocrat.