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Trump Irritated by Saudi Involvement in Khashoggi Killing; Trump Scaremongering with Immigrant Caravan More than 1000 Miles from Border; Kamala Harris Hits Campaign Trail in Runup to 2020; Stacey Abrams Took Part in Protest Where Flag with Confederate Design was Burned; Judge Hears 2 Lawsuits Against Brian Kemp on Voter Suppression; Trump: "You Know What, I'm a Nationalist". Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 23, 2018 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00] A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR & COLUMNIST, REALCLEARPOLITICS: It's hard to imagine what the narrative is going to be, depending on the outcome, but it could be quite controversial in terms of him blaming people.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Let me get your thoughts, Max, on the murder of this journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Clearly, the president is deeply irritated that this all happened. He wants to have really good relations with Saudi Arabia and wants the U.S. to sell a lot of arms and have other trade deals with Saudi Arabia and sees this as an irritant.

MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Right. It's telling that he is irritated more about the fallout from the murder than the murder itself. He is more irritated by thing like Canadian milk than he is the murder and dismemberment of this journalist. That's a president that has no moral compass. Today, I wrote about he is practicing a new dollar diplomacy. He doesn't care about American values. All he cares about is the bottom line in a very business-oriented kind of way and a wildly exaggerated idea of how much money we will make from the Saudis. He has this mythical $110 billion Saudi arms deal that creates will create a million jobs when the Saudi entire defense employs 330,000 people. So he has these massive economic benefits that he gets by kowtowing to the Saudis. But at the end of the day, he looks weak and feckless and he is ignoring this horrible crime, which has shocked the entire world.

BLITZER: Because he is obviously deeply concerned about the role the Saudis have played, from his perspective, and a very positive role as far as Iran, for example.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Right. It was months ago that the U.S. was hoping that the Saudis could help forge this Middle East peace plan by ultimately buying out the Palestinians and getting them to go along. Where is that now? Now you have this roadblock to the relationship itself. You can sense the administration acting like, what do we do now? You also hear the president seeming to believe that the Saudis can conduct a credible investigation of this. You also saw that in relation to Russia. The last time he met with Putin, he seemed open to the idea of Russia interviewing people there as part of the investigation. This is the same president who puts doubt on the U.S.'s own Justice Department and Intelligence Community. It's this bizarre world.

BLITZER: It's going to continue for a while.

Guys, thank you very much.

President Trump escalating his rhetoric against this migrant caravan, even though they are 1,000 miles or so from the border or the distance from Miami to Washington, D.C. We'll take you there.

And Senator Kamala Harris making her first impression in Iowa as a potential 2020 presidential candidate. You will see what happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:37:21] BLITZER: President Trump has a strong warning for the thousands of migrants heading north through Mexico right now. He told "USA Today" that he will send as many troops to the border as necessary to stop this caravan, calling the journey, quote, "an assault on our country."

All of this as his own administration contradicts the claim that there are, quote, "Middle Easterners" hidden in the caravan.

The migrants have a very, very long way to go, more than 1,000 miles. That's roughly equivalent to the distance from Miami to Washington, D.C.

Let's go to CNN special correspondent, Bill Weir. He with the caravan right now in southern Mexico.

First of all, Bill, tell us what you are seeing.

BILL WEIR, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we are seeing here is the town square, which is about 50 miles north of the Guatemala/Mexico border, turned into an encampment. The caravan has halted today not out of fear of law enforcement or the president's tweets, but out of respect for the dead. One man fell, a Honduran man fell from an overcrowded truck yesterday so they decided to pay their respects.

As you can see, people grabbing some shade in the searing Mexican sun here. Children playing blissfully unaware of the journey they are on right now. We are seeing incredible hospitality from the Mexican locals bringing bags of clothes and big pots of tortillas or other food for them.

Everybody is determined to get back on the road at about 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. Yes, to give a perspective of how far we are and how long it will take, when voters go to the polls in the United States in a couple of weeks, the caravan will still be south of Mexico City. It's another eight-day walk to the entry point in Brownsville, Texas. Most of them, as they study maps - there's one right now.

Senior? Senior? (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE). Can I see that? (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WEIR: Is that a map?

Here's a map now. These are the maps that they are studying. We are way down in the south there. When they hit Mexico City, many try to catch trains. And while Brownsville is the closest entry point, which is 1,000 miles from here, the safest, they tell us, is to jump a train and go over to Tijuana on the Pacific side as well, even though it's twice as long.

Gracias, senior.

What is your route?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To go to Mexico City.

WEIR: OK, you speak English. Can you come down? Can you talk to us?

I'm Bill. Nice to meet you.

What's your plan? How do you plan to get across the --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to go to Mexico City to get a job there.

WEIR: You want to stay in Mexico, yes?

That's a good point, Wolf.

(CROSSTALK)

[13:40:06] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I want to stay in Mexico. The people here are going to stay in Mexico.

WEIR: Going to stay in Mexico.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want to stay in Mexico.

WEIR: More than 1,000 have filed for asylum to stay in the states.

Are you from Honduras?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honduras.

WEIR: Why did you leave?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I leave because no good jobs.

WEIR: No jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you find a job, they don't pay.

WEIR: You are not fleeing violence or --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, violence.

WEIR: Violence as well?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a taxi driver there.

WEIR: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I left my job. I quit because of the pay.

WEIR: Right. Right.

You are aware you are breaking the law, right? People say, why don't you do this in a law-abiding way. Why don't you go home and fill out the paperwork and wait until they call you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. No, we don't go home because we leave home because of no job. We don't want to get back there.

WEIR: OK. What's your name?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jose.

WEIR: Jose, thank you for talking to me. Mucho gusto.

There you go. There's one of about 7,000. Everybody has a different story and a different plan, Wolf. As I tell them -- some are lucky enough to have cell phones and are aware of the news. They may not understand that the visuals of this caravan moving together is such a perfect political foil for the president of the country of many other destinations there. But as he said, this option is better than staying at home.

BLITZER: Very quickly, Bill, I know you and the other reporters and producers and camera crews, they are doing what the president told them to do, go to the middle of the crowd and you will see Middle Easterners. How many Middle Easterners in that caravan have you spotted so far?

WEIR: Zero. Of course not. None. The truth is that the president also fails to mention in the next breath is that 99 percent of these people are Christians. They are Catholics and Protestants. Most of them are putting faith in a Christian God to make it north. The insinuation that there are Muslims in this group, who knows. There are 7,000 people here, but if I see somebody roll out their prayer rug and bow to Mecca, I will make sure to let you know.

BLITZER: Bill Weir, doing great reporting for us. Bill, thank you very, very much.

President Trump officially calling himself a nationalist now. I will speak live with a key member of the Congressional Black Caucus. We'll get his reaction.

Plus, hours before the debate between candidates in Georgia's gubernatorial race, video surfacing from the early 1990s of Democrat Stacey Abrams taking part in a protest where a state flag with a Confederate symbol was burned. You will hear what her campaign is saying about that.

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[13:47:28] BLITZER: Right now, we're exactly two weeks away from the midterm elections. It's the final push to get voters to the polls with control of Congress clearly on the line. Many possible 2020 presidential candidates are also hitting the campaign trail, and doing so very hard, including Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, of California. She's making numerous stops today across Iowa.

Let's go our national political reporter, Maeve Reston, in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Maeve, what's the message you're hearing from the Senator today?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: It's so interesting. Obviously, she's here to push the early vote for the midterm elections. She's going from campus to campus and so some to some of the smaller tavern events, talking to votes, and talking about her plan for middle-class tax cuts, which is on the president's mind. What Kamala Harris needs to do in Iowa if she runs for president is $z really connect with that coalition of younger voters that were attracted to Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. She's been out meeting with a lot of them today, getting them excited and activated. Last night, in Des Moines, she had a crowd of about 500 people, a real human crush, to kind of touch her and hug her. There was a lot of electricity in the air. Clearly, she's a favorite here. And when you talk to people all over Iowa, they have a list of 2020 candidates they are looking at right now, but she is at the top of a lot of people's list -- Wolf?

BLITZER: We're going to continue to watch it with you.

Maeve Reston on the scene for us in Iowa.

This just coming into CNN. Right now, a judge is hearing a pair of lawsuits against Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the state's Republican gubernatorial candidate. The lawsuits are accusing the Georgia county of voter suppression, especially for the handling of absentee ballots. Brian Kemp claims there were no violations.

All of this as the Democratic Candidate Stacey Abrams is also defending herself for attending a protest in 1992 where a Georgia state flag with the Confederate battle design on it was burned.

Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks, of New York, joins us.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

I'll show the video. This is back in 1992. We'll get your reaction as we play the video.

What do you think of this uproar that has developed, at least the controversy? [13:49:53] REP. GREGORY MEEKS, (D), NEW YORK: Well, Wolf, I think

it's move ado about nothing. If you look at what the protest was about, it was about the segregation flag that was put into, the symbol that was put into the Georgia flag back in 1956. It was put in to talk about we did not want to have -- you wanted to desegregate folks but to have segregation. Her opposition was, let's remove what divides us. Let's remove in the Georgia flag what divides the people of Georgia and not go back to the time of racism and Jim Crowism, of which we fought for a long time to end. Ultimately, that battle she had in 1992 was successful because the people of Georgia came together to remove that symbol out of the Georgia state flag.

BLITZER: What's your take, Congressman, of what's happening in Georgia with these absentee ballots?

MEEKS: Again, it seems to me that what some of the Republicans are trying to do in Georgia is go back to some ugly times where you prevent, particularly African-Americans, from having the right to vote and trying to purge people from the voting records. It's similar to the times at which you had to count how many marbles were in a jar, things of that nature, as opposed to doing whatever we can to let as many people as possible vote. It seems as though my Republican colleagues, particularly in Georgia, is trying to limit the people from voting. I don't know why they got fierce of allowing their citizens to vote and let, as a democracy it's supposed to be, let the one who has the most votes win. They are fearful of having a fair election.

BLITZER: It's a close contest according to all the polls in Georgia right now.

Let me play a moment, Congressman, from President Trump's rally last night in Houston that caught a lot of people's attention. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can't have that. You know, they have a word. It sort of became old fashioned. It's called a nationalist. And I say really we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK?

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: I'm a nationalist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. So what's your reaction to that, Congressman?

MEEKS: My first reaction to that is a synonym to a nationalist is a chauvinist. That apparently is what this president is. And to say that we are better than or -- it reminds me of the kind of words that came from people like Hitler, who thought that, in Germany, he was a nationalist. And the kind of people that this president seems to like, those who are repressive dictators, those are the individuals that generally use that kind of phrase and those kind of words. Whether you're looking at Mr. Putin, whether you're looking at what has taken place with the king of Saudi Arabia now, all of those individuals, or Kim Jong-Un, they are individuals who keep within their societies and not working with others outside of their societies and suppress individuals within those societies to win the goals of what they're looking for. So those are very dangerous words but I think it reveals who we know this president is.

BLITZER: Well, I just want to be precise, Congressman. You're making a comparison between the president of the United States and Hitler. I want you to explain exactly what you mean. Because obviously this is controversial.

MEEKS: Well, what I'm saying is that using the word of nationalism and a nationalist, meaning that, when you looked at Hitler, he was talking about German for the Germans and that's it and anyone else was again them. So it seems as though this president is saying that it is only about Americans and Americans above anything and everyone else and that is a dangerous precedent. That's what I'm saying. You know, you go to any dictator, you know, that advocates that kind of theory, you see that they are actually impose -- or poses a threat to everybody within our society and without the society. So there's a book that Secretary Albright recently wrote that I suggest everybody read, the dangers, and this is the language utilized by this president, and how it was similar how it was utilized in the '20s and '30s by individuals who our paths don't want to follow.

BLITZER: Just to be precise, you see parallels to what our president is saying, as compared to what Hitler was doing back in the '30s?

[13:55:05] MEEKS: No, I'm said what Hitler was saying, that's what I'm saying, what Hitler was saying about nationalism. Those Socialist presidents -- heads of states back then. What he was saying, was able to gear the people up so they do what they did and how they led it, was using language like that. That's how they built themselves up to be the dictators that they were. I'm saying that language that the president is utilizing is a very dangerous language that we must be very cautious about. I would advise the president that he should not, because when you look at what makes up America, it's many nationalities and many people from all over the world because it is immigrants that have made this country great and those who were enslaved in America. We don't want to go back to that past and those kinds of tendencies. That's not who we are as Americans.

BLITZER: Congressman, thank you for joining us.

MEEKS: My pleasure.

BLITZER: Still ahead, a passenger is charged with groping a woman on a flight. His defense? The president says it's OK. We have details. Stay with us.

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