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Democrats Hope to Unseat King; September Unemployment Rate; Bomb Suspect in Court; Uncle Rips Miller as Hypocrite. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired November 02, 2018 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Steve King, just in case you didn't know, supported a candidate for mayor in Toronto, who has espoused neo-Nazi views, and during a tour of Europe, after visiting Holocaust sites, met with neo-Nazi-ish parties in Austria as well.

Let's bring J.D. Scholten. He's a first-time political candidate who is running against Congressman King. CNN, I should say, reached out to Congressman King to appear on our show. His office did not respond.

J.D., thank you very much for being with us.

Why should you be --

J.D. SCHOLTEN (D), IOWA CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Thank you for having me. Good morning.

BERMAN: A congressman -- why should you be a congressman in Iowa, other than, besides just not being Steve King, what are you?

SCHOLTEN: Right. And that's what we've been talking about from day one is, we're not just a healthy alternative. We're out there fighting for things. And as we've gone around, I've been to all 39 counties three times and the last time we did a town hall in all 39 counties and we're listening and engaging with folks and we're talking about health care, we're talking about his depressed agriculture economy and we're talking about how we're all frustrated with what's happening in D.C. and the need to clean things up and to not allow special interests to dictate our democracy anymore.

BERMAN: I read some statistics that over the last three days, since Steve Stivers, who runs the National Republican Campaign Committee, condemned Steve King. You actually received, like, what, is it $350,000 or is it $600,000 in your campaign coffers?

SCHOLTEN: I'm not 100 percent sure, but it was pretty much since the poll that showed we're within 1 percent and then just -- it's -- other things have kind of escalated it. But we've probably received about $800,000 since 11:00 on Monday night.

And we were already at -- within 1 percent at that point. And so we're just blasting our message out. And so what we've seen, there's been three polls. One at -- showed we were 10 percent behind. That was the Emmerson poll. Our poll showed we were within 6 percent. And then now this change (ph) poll showed we're within one. And all three show the same thing, that he's vulnerable, that his favorabilities are low, and then the more that people know about us, the more people are going to vote for us. And so we're here working our tails off and more confidence every day.

BERMAN: I've seen pictures of you traveling around in that RV. You had to hire a driver because you were just getting too busy. But you're driving around in this RV, which I think you're still sleeping in.

SCHOLTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: When you travel to these towns, do people who have voted for Steve King in the past -- and, look, the vast majority of people in your district have, have you heard that his voters are concerned with the things he has said, or do they just accept it?

SCHOLTEN: Yes, no, they're definitely concerned. And we were in Rock Valley yesterday, which is a place probably Democrats haven't been to in years. And we just kind of did an impromptu thing and had about 20 folks just show up on the spot at a gas station and having coffee. And I hear a lot of the same things that, you know what, our Republican friends haven't liked King for years, but they haven't had somebody who they trust. And so we're out there trying to show, hey, I may not be a Republican, but I'm going to show up. I'm going to fight for you. And that's how we're earning votes left and right.

BERMAN: The president has been out campaigning around the country. He's talking about immigration. Immigration is a big issue in Iowa.

SCHOLTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: What's your specific plan?

SCHOLTEN: Well, here's the thing, when we had our first town hall, a woman came up to me and it was a very emotional experience and it's something I'll always remember, and she goes, J.D., I just became an American citizen and my first vote is going to be for you. And she said it took 17 years and $17,000. And our system's broke. And so you look at -- we have two pork plants in the district that are -- one just opened up a year ago and the other one's about to open. And their directors have said that we need an immigrant workforce.

And last harvest when I was in Green County talking to the grain elevator down there, they said the same thing, they needed 39 people for their harvest, to help with the harvest, and they didn't get one American citizen. So there's a need for a workforce in this district. And so it only makes sense that we got to have strong borders. One one's -- I'm not denying that. But in this district, we need to have a visa program to match our modern economy and we need a pathway to residency and we need a pathway to citizenship. And you -- if you want to become a citizen you -- and earned the right to become a citizen, you should be able to have that.

BERMAN: J.D., is Steve King a racist?

SCHOLTEN: You know, that's not for me to decide. We all have our platforms. When you run for Congress and when you get elected, you have your platform. And for the last 15 months, we've used our platform to talk about the economy, the agriculture and low commodity prices and the need for health care. He uses his platform to talk about that mayoral race in Canada, who no one in the district gives a crap about. He talks about this far right group, this extreme group in Austria. He talks about retweeting neo-Nazis. And that's how he uses his platform.

And, you know what, the district needs a new moral leader, one that unequivocally rejects white supremacy and racism.

[08:35:03] BERMAN: J.D. Scholten, thank you very much for being with us. We do appreciate your time. Four days to go. You can get rid of the RV pretty soon.

SCHOLTEN: I don't want to. I love that thing.

BERMAN: Thanks, J.D.

CAMEROTA: We need an RV.

OK.

BERMAN: His doesn't look comfortable. I'm sorry, I don't know. You should go online and look at the pictures.

CAMEROTA: OK.

BERMAN: We have to get a better one.

CAMEROTA: All right, cool.

A brand-new jobs report is just out. We have all of the breaking details for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: OK, we do have some breaking news. The Labor Department releasing the October jobs report just four days before the midterm elections.

CNN's Christine Romans is here with the numbers.

How do they look?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's really strong, you guys. This was a strong month of hiring here. This is the final kind of economic number heading into midterm and it tells us 250,000 net new jobs in the month of October. September was revised down a little bit, but I wouldn't get too worried about that. That was Hurricane Florence and there were some weather issues there. But look at August, revised higher here. So you're seeing very strong hiring from American companies and that's keeping the unemployment rate here down near this generational low of 3.7 percent.

I dig into these numbers. A couple of things that you guys will be interested in. Wages up 3.1 percent. That confirms the number we saw earlier this week. Wage growth now finally kicking in. Another measure had wage growth at the fastest pace this year in ten years. And that unemployment rate, it would have gone lower probably had not 700,000 people entered the labor market. That is a big number and likely also reflects holiday hiring.

[08:40:01] Let me show you where the sectors are. Leisure and hospitality. A lot of that is -- are those jobs are talking about in the restaurant business and the like. Health care, 36,000. Manufacturing, 32,000. That's an important number to mention there.

I want to see what the market's doing because we're expecting kind of a big day here. The Dow, the last three days, guys, has been up almost 900 points. So it's been a very volatile ride here.

These numbers, though, show you a labor market that is very, very strong.

John.

BERMAN: It actually -- the market might not love because they're going to see wages going up, which could be inflationary because the market doesn't like --

ROMANS: And that means the Fed has to raise interest rates. So watch how the market reacts here over all.

I will say the Dow is off of its highs from earlier, but this is a strong labor market here. It continues to be quite strong. Wages up, too.

BERMAN: All right, a big, big --

CAMEROTA: I don't know who you're looking at over there, John.

BERMAN: Well, she -- Romans is over there. I want to look at Christine Romans.

CAMEROTA: The magic of TV. She's right there.

BERMAN: She's right there. She's right there. They're like, don't look at her. Don't look at her. Look away. Avert your eyes.

CAMEROTA: Oh, there you are.

BERMAN: Avert your eyes!

I spent like four years staring at Christine Romans. It's hard for me not to look at her.

CAMEROTA: I know. I know. The love affair when she walks in is really sweet.

BERMAN: Right, a big job's report, Romans. Thank you very much for bringing that.

CAMEROTA: Thank you. ROMANS: Yes, a strong number.

BERMAN: In about an hour, a serial bomb suspect will appear in a Miami court. Prosecutors want a judge to deny bail and move him to New York to face trail for mailing more than a dozen package bombs to officials critical of President Trump and CNN.

Rosa Flores live in Miami with more.

Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning.

Cesar Sayoc is expected to be in court today at 10:00 a.m. Two matters of business at hand here, will bail be granted and will he be transferred to the Southern District of New York to face his criminal charges? Now, the defense has been very tight lipped about their strategy. The U.S. attorney's office sending a letter to the court calling these crimes domestic terrorism and also sharing more evidence that links Sayoc to the mail bombs. For example, the meta data that was on his computer and on his cell phone, the mailing labels. But perhaps most disturbing, that glass shards were inside the bombs for what the U.S. Attorney's Office in this letter said would be to impose maximum harm. Take all that and his long criminal history and the U.S. attorney is arguing that Sayoc should be kept in jail while he waits for his trial and he should be transferred to New York.

Now, all this while CNN gets access to camera video. This is body cam video of an encounter with police that Boca police had back in September. So this was a few weeks before the arrest. You can see in this video that Sayoc is very calm. He's very collected. This is a very friendly encounter. But you can see the stickers on the outside of that van and you can also see the inside of the van.

John. Alisyn.

BERMAN: All right, Rosa. Rosa Flores for us in Miami, watching that very closely.

Rosa, thank you very much.

White House immigration hardliner Stephen Miller, taking heat from his own family. You're going to hear from his uncle, who's not holding back, as Miller crafts this immigration policy of fear. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:47:40] CAMEROTA: The midterm elections are just four days away. And for his closing argument, the president is demonizing immigrants. That strategy comes straight out of a playbook of White House senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller.

Joining us now is David Glosser, who is Stephen Miller's uncle. He had written an op-ed calling his nephew an immigration hypocrite.

Mr. Glosser, thank you very much for being here. And what do you mean that your nephew is an immigration hypocrite?

DAVID GLOSSER, UNCLE OF TRUMP SENIOR POLICY ADVISER STEPHEN MILLER: Our family wouldn't have survived or existed had it not been for the opportunity to immigrate to the United States as refugees back in the early 1900s. Accordingly, of the people that came to the United States, we prospered. We did well. Everything went fine. It wasn't always easy, but we built businesses, employed people.

On the other hand, those that were unable to come after the 1924 Exclusion Act, the Immigration Exclusion Act, all 74 of those were murdered in World War II.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh.

GLOSSER: So Stephen wouldn't have existed. My parents would have probably never met. They probably both would have been killed in the Holocaust with the rest of them. And, of course, neither I, nor my sister, Stephen's mother, would have been born.

CAMEROTA: And so you say that you've watched in horror as your nephew has become this immigration hardliner. He is known as the architect for the Family Separation Act at the border with Mexico. What do you think that's about?

GLOSSER: Well, I'll tell you, I've discussed this a lot in the past and people have been talking about it quite a bit. What it's about, I think there are two -- probably a couple of factors surrounding it.

One is, I think that -- I think that the Trump administration assumes that a good chunk of their supporters are bigots, are racists, and they can appeal to them in this way. I hope they're proved wrong in this election and that people -- people basically have a good heart.

You know, I published that op-ed piece back in August. I expected a million death threats and trolls. It turns out, of the thousands of responses it got, only four or five people, only four or five people trolled the article. Most people I think have a pretty decent heart.

And given the opportunity to see what the realities are, I think they'll -- I think they'll conduct themselves in that way. However, we're getting no moral leadership whatsoever from the president, who is happy to condemn these people who were like our family, like my family, who were desperately fleeing terrible oppression and danger.

[08:50:08] CAMEROTA: If I can speak for your nephew, and this will involve some mental channeling on my part or at least the people who he claims to represent in terms of their feelings about immigration, I think he would say that they support legal immigration, that people should come through the legal channels, that people should, as your great grandfather did, come through Ellis Island rather than showing up at the border in a group of 3,000 people.

GLOSSER: Look, this is, again, a recourse to a tactic known as the big lie. Now, the people that are coming up from Central America now, they are going to present at the border. Each one of them, the few that are going to finally make it to the border, they're all going to be interviewed by Homeland Security experts. If they're going to be -- before they can be admitted to the United States, they have to be able to make a case before an immigration judge demonstrating that they are, in fact, refugees and have reason to fear prosecution of their country of origin.

CAMEROTA: This is our Ellis Island you're saying.

GLOSSER: That's -- our Ellis Island is every port, every port of entry in the country.

And, as a matter of fact, these aren't illegal immigrants. First of all, they're not in the country, so they're not illegal. Number two, the United States laws specifically allow people to apply for asylum. Not everybody's going to be admitted. But what they're actually doing is they're doing everything they can to suppress the admission of immigrants of all types, except for -- except for specific classes of white immigrants, which is not terribly different than an American immigration policy historically speaking.

CAMEROTA: I'm just curious, do you know what Stephen Miller's mother, your sister, thinks about this?

GLOSSER: No. I've made it a point not to discuss politics, you know, with that branch of the family for some while now. The last meaningful conversation I guess was probably back in September of 2016 when we talked about it. She says, I understand you may feel uncomfortable with Mr. Trump, but we feel Hillary may lead the country in the wrong direction. Well, OK, I can -- I can understand that you have political preferences, but this institutional political racism that's been sweeping across the country, focused on vilifying people that you don't know. People who really -- who really are just like us. They're just like our family. We needed to come here. We needed to find someplace to go. And those that couldn't suffered the consequences. So it's -- it's -- to me it's a complete repudiation of the American dream.

CAMEROTA: David Glosser, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this, as well as your family's history. We really appreciate you being here.

GLOSSER: Now there's one thing I'd like to mention.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead.

GLOSSER: I think most of this is simply just something that will be distracted from looking at the attacks on health care, the threats to Social Security and Medicare that we've all paid for over the years. I don't think Mr. Trump has much to offer except for the hate.

CAMEROTA: Well, Democrats are certainly trying to make that point. And we have four days to go to see whose point resonates most in the midterms. But we thank you for being here.

GLOSSER: And thank you for inviting me.

CAMEROTA: John.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:57:08] BERMAN: A doctor in Peru going the extra mile to help families who have to travel a long way for treatment. He's giving parents free shelter while their kids are in the hospital. Here is top ten CNN Hero Dr. Ricardo Pun-Chong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. RICARDO PUN-CHONG, CNN HERO: The journey, it's very difficult. They come here, and it's very expensive to stay here. They don't have enough money to continue their treatments. Sometimes families, they have to sell everything they have. They feel helpless.

So I decided to open a free shelter to help sick kids and their moms. They can stay in our shelter as long as they need. I want them to know that they are not alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Wonderful. Vote for Ricardo as CNN Hero of the Year or any of the others in the top 10. Go to cnnheroes.com right now.

CAMEROTA: OK, a little levity at the end of the week. It is that time of year again when Jimmy Kimmel has parents play a cruel joke on their kids, claiming that all of the Halloween candy is gone. Here are your late night laughs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mommy and daddy got really hungry last night and we ate all your candy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's all gone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is -- what -- (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got really hungry, and so mommy and daddy ate it all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No! (crying).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I ate all your Halloween candy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm very disappointed in you, mommy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry. I love you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you too, but I'm very disappointed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) ate all your candy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's an idiot. He's a freaking idiot. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you still love me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, not anymore because you ate all my candy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So we ate all of your Halloween candy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no, this is fake. I know this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, where's all your candy then? You don't believe that I ate it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, because you have showed us the videos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's the best. He's like, you think I don't remember? You've shown me the videos.

BERMAN: Oh, man, these parents are getting played. I will say there's no need to wait for Halloween to mess with your kids like this.

CAMEROTA: You're right, you can be cruel --

BERMAN: No, absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Play cruel jokes on them any day.

BERMAN: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Such a great point.

BERMAN: That's the message I want to leave you with this Friday.

CAMEROTA: Heart-warming.

BERMAN: Thank you all for being with us.

You're headed to Pittsburgh for I know what will be an emotional weekend.

CAMEROTA: I am. I'm going there tonight for Shabbat dinner and then I'm going to be there for the service tomorrow, the first one since the murders. And I am just happy to be a part of this community. They're opening their arms to so many of us.

BERMAN: Send us -- send them our love.

CAMEROTA: I will.

[08:59:59] BERMAN: All right, "NEWSROOM" begins right now.