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Trump and Obama Face Off in Midterms; Trump on U.S. Troops at the Border; Trump Sticking by Saudis. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 02, 2018 - 13:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:00:12] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington. Thanks very much for joining us.

Up first, the nation's first African-American president campaigning for two candidates, hoping to break down barriers in their states. Former President Barack Obama is on the campaign trail today with just four days to go until the midterm elections. President Obama is in Miami to campaign for Andrew Gillum in the Florida governor's race. Gillum could become the state's first African-American governor. Later today, President Obama heads to Atlanta to campaign for Stacey Abrams in the Georgia governor's race. Abrams could become the first African- American female governor in U.S. history.

Not to be outdone, President Trump heads to Georgia and Florida this weekend to stump for the Republican candidates for governor.

Let's get the very latest on the Obama event right now. Our correspondent Randi Kaye is in Miami.

Randi, what are you hearing from voters over there about President Obama's influence on this governor's race?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are getting an earful, Wolf. Let me just set the scene for you here at the Ice Palace Film Studios in Miami. It is a packed house. We talked to so many people who took the day off from work. I think a lot of people are here to see a former president, maybe even more so than Andrew Gillum, who, of course, is running for governor.

But we are talking to a lot of folks here about the influence that Barack Obama has on this race. Many of them say that he can really bring in the young people. You know, even though Andrew Gillum is doing well with young people, he's doing well with women too, but they think that Barack Obama can really bring in both of those groups. They say that he is still, you know, the picture of class, in their opinion, and that people need that in this political climate and so they think he can have a real influence.

They're also saying that he can bring in not only women, but the left leaning independents. Those who, you know, are sort of on the fence about what to do. They think Barack Obama is the guy to do that and close the deal there. And they also think that he can also bring in some of the Republican who maybe are unhappy with their candidate, with the president, and the political climate as well, and perhaps they're looking for a change. They are hoping that Barack Obama can close the deal here in Miami for not only Andrew Gillum, but also for Bill Nelson in the Senate race, Wolf.

BLITZER: Very, very dramatic and very consequential elections about to take place.

Randi Kaye in Miami, thank you very much.

President Trump is counting on momentum from his numerous campaign stops to help Republican candidates next week. But at his rally in Missouri, the president lodged this complaint.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We did have two maniacs stop the momentum that was incredible because for seven days nobody talked about the elections. It stopped a tremendous momentum. More importantly, we have to take care of our people and we don't care about momentum when it comes to a disgrace like just happened to our country. But it did, nevertheless, stop a certain momentum.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's bring in our political analyst David Gregory and our chief political analyst Gloria Borger.

To be clear, Gloria, maniacs killed 11 innocent people at that Pittsburgh synagogue and threatened the lives of public figures with those bombs. That's what the president was referring to when he called them maniacs and that, you know, set back the momentum, he said, that was going on.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, he's been -- he's been saying this since he first tweeted it on October 26th. He said, you know, very unfortunate what is going on. Now this bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows. And then you heard him repeat it right there. And he seems to be struggling a little bit, don't you think, like, well, of course we have to take care of our people, but, on the other hand, it affected me and the campaign and it couldn't have come --

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: There's no filter. It's just everything that's on his mind comes out.

BORGER: Right, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for me --

GREGORY: Yes, for me, right.

BORGER: Is exactly, I think, what he was saying. And that's just disgraceful.

BLITZER: He's seemly looking for scapegoats if the elections on Tuesday turn out --

GREGORY: Right. BLITZER: Don't turn out the way he wants.

GREGORY: Well, nobody's surprised at his insensitivity of those remarks, right? We've all been around this long enough.

I think it's a window into how rattled the president is. He's rattled about the gyrations in the stock market. He got good economic news again but he's been at war with his Federal Reserve chairman. He's trying to make nice with the Chinese to try to get a trade deal because, again, if he's really thinking about himself, he's looking at the prospects of 2020 and the economy and potential recession. That has him worried.

And, again, so much of what he's been doing with this caravan and raising the specter of an invasion, which it's not, is to shore up the Senate with a hard line immigration message, understanding, as I think he does, that the House races are really beyond his grasp because he's really toxic in a lot of these races.

BORGER: And that's why he took on Paul Ryan the other day because Paul Ryan disagreed with him on birthright citizenship.

GREGORY: Right.

BORGER: And the president was effectively saying, go do your job. Of course, Ryan has raised $70 million for the House. And he's kind of saying, that's your problem. Don't blame me when you guys lose the House, because I'm working really hard.

GREGORY: Right.

[13:05:07] And he really wants a fight.

BORGER: Yes.

GREGORY: What the president wants more than anything is a fight. And in many ways he had that with Kavanaugh. The result of Kavanaugh was that Kavanaugh went to work and had the fight with Democrats. The president liked that. He was seizing on that momentum. And, right, since then, that, I think, has fueled a lot of momentum, but that's waned a little bit and now the president's trying to resurrect it.

BLITZER: Listen to what the president said about Stacey Abrams, she's the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She is not qualified to be the governor of Georgia. She's not qualified. And Georgia's a great state. It's a great, great state. Take a -- take a look -- take a look at her past. Take a look at her history. Take a look at what she wants to do and what she has in mind for the state. That state will be in big, big trouble very quickly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: She's currently the minority leader in the statehouse and she's got a lot of qualifications.

BORGER: She does. And of course he's not specific. I mean he didn't call her a name at least, right?

GREGORY: I don't think he even knows who he's talking about.

BORGER: Yes, right. It sounds like it was this generic --

GREGORY: Right.

BORGER: She's not qualified.

GREGORY: Insert anyone.

BORGER: Yes, insert any name.

GREGORY: She didn't have a reality show, though, on NBC, to be fair.

BORGER: Exactly. To be fair.

And so he's kind of just taking her on because, you know, he wants her to lose. And he hadn't really mentioned her name a lot before now, and Gillum's either, and now he's taking them on directly.

GREGORY: Right.

I -- to be serious about this, I think going back to this point about where the president is rattled, I think he looks at a state like Georgia, Wolf, I think he looks at Florida, he looks at two candidates who are both, according to a lot of smart Republicans, very good candidates. Both happen to be African-American. Both happen to be states that are going to be very competitive in 2020, both are up against Republicans very much in the Trump image who are not seen as very good candidates. So if you really want to look at kind of Trumpism on the ballot, these are two very good states to look at. And a lot of Republicans I've talked to think that Democrats are in very good shape there. So no wonder he's rattled.

BLITZER: You know the -- a former president is in Florida now, will be in Georgia later tonight. The current president, he'll be in Florida and Georgia in the coming days as well. Is this shaping up as an Obama-Trump kind of campaign a bit?

BORGER: Well, I think -- look, I think Obama might like to resurrect himself in terms of helping out state and local officials. I mean, don't forget, when Obama was president, the state level was -- the Democrats were hollowed out. They lost like 1,000 legislative seats. And now, you know, I was just looking at these numbers, Trump won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama in either 2008 or 2012.

So Obama wants to get some of that back for Democrats. And that's what -- that's what he's doing now. So it could turn into a battle, although -- although Obama really does get out -- get out the Republican base.

GREGORY: That's right. BORGER: So, you know, there's a -- there's only so much that I think Obama can do without starting to rally Republicans.

GREGORY: But Obama also -- the wrap on Obama is that he's never had coat tails. He's never really helped lift up younger people in the party. This is an opportunity, if you look at Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum in Florida, those are younger leaders in the Democratic Party if they can win state-wide in big battleground states, you start to talk about them in different ways, as people have already started to talk about them. There's no question that President Obama would love to be helpful in that regard. But, you know, I think, as Gloria says, he can help, he can also hurt, because he'll drive out of Republicans as well.

BLITZER: How much of these races -- competitive races, Florida, Georgia, other states, are really about President Trump?

BORGER: In the states? Everything. I mean this is their -- if ever there were a midterm election that were a referendum on a president, I think this is definitional. It -- this is about Trump. Donald Trump wants it to be about Donald Trump, but he's made a choice here and his choice is he's going for the Senate and he's not going for the House because you can't do the same thing to win the Senate, which is to give the red meat the, you know, to Republican. You need to be more moderate to win in those suburban districts in the House. And I think his play right now is for the Senate because he probably thinks he doesn't have as good a shot, which he doesn't, in the House.

GREGORY: But these governors races are interesting --

BORGER: Yes.

GREGORY: Because you can look at Florida, you can look at an issue like this red tide, which has become a very big issue in the state of Florida. So there are more local issues, yet the leadership models tend to be more national. And in this regard, if you look at the candidates, the Republican candidates, in these states, they are very much in the Trump image and in that playbook. And that's, I think what's, you know, kind of being judged here.

BLITZER: I want both of you to stand by. We have more to discuss.

But this is just coming into CNN right now. The United States has lifted sanctions on two top Turkish government officials. In return, Turkey has dropped similar sanctions on the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Now, the Turkish justice and interior ministers were sanctioned in response to the detaining of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, who was released from house arrest in Turkey last month. And so we're watching that story very closely as well.

[13:10:21] Other news we're watching right now, shot for throwing rocks. President Trump firing up his base on immigration, threatening migrants as they near the border with the United States. Plus, devoid of a moral foundation. That's how Jamal Khashoggi's fiance describes the Trump administration's handling of the crisis. We'll discuss that.

And a positive snapshot, a very positive snapshot, of the U.S. economy today. Can the president leverage a nearly 50-year low jobless rate to close out a win on Tuesday?

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[13:15:11] BLITZER: President Trump is leaning heavily on false fears to try to drive people to the polls. He's spreading false information on a refugee caravan. What is true is the fact that as many as 15,000 active duty military personnel could be deployed to the border. That's what the president has said and the president has some pretty extreme views on what those troops should be doing, what they should be prepared to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The maximum that we can consider that, because they're throwing rocks viciously and violently. You saw that three days ago. Really hurting the military. We're not going to put up with that. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. We're going to consider -- and I told them consider it a rifle. When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say, consider it a rifle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right, joining us now, retired four-star General Wesley Clark. He was a NATO supreme allied commander.

General Clark, thanks so much for joining us.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE: Good to be with you, Wolf.

BLITZER: So if these troops are deployed to the border and some illegal immigrants come in and they throw rocks at these Army or Marine Corps or other military personnel, should they fire their weapons, shoot to kill?

CLARK: No, absolutely not. And the military won't have those rules of engagement. The military's rules of engagement will be to absolutely use minimum violence and minimum force to restore order if order is threatened. And if they're under attack like that, they'll defend themselves with non-lethal means to the greatest extent possible.

So when I hear President Trump hype this and raise fear and so forth, I have -- there's two real issues here. One is, he's undercutting the military chain of command. Making statements like this about rules of engagement, it may be great for his political base in a rally, but it's prejudicial to the good order of discipline of the United States armed forces. And as a commander in chief of the armed forces, he absolutely shouldn't do it and he should know he shouldn't do it. But, secondly --

BLITZER: But let me interrupt for one second, general. He's the commander in chief, as you correctly point out. If he gives that order, fire your weapon if these individuals throw rocks at you, do the troops have to obey that order from the commander in chief?

CLARK: No, that order is going to come down through the chain of command. It is not going to come down as that kind of an order. It's going to be rules of engagement. And I'm quite sure that Secretary Mattis and the leadership of the United States Army and Marine Corps well understand civil disobedience training and how we're supposed to respond in situations like that. And you don't use maximum force. You use minimum force. And you don't attack, you defend. You restore order.

So he has it all wrong. And those kinds of orders will not be transmitted down the chain of command. I'm very confident in the men and women who are in the chain of command of the United States armed forces.

BLITZER: Normally you would call a group of thousands of fleeing migrants in that caravan, they're still about 1,000 miles away from the United States, a humanitarian crisis. But the president calls it an invasion. Does calling it an invasion change the rules for the U.S. military and does it justify deploying 15,000 troops to the border?

CLARK: Well, I don't think it justifies the deployment of the troops and changing the name and labeling it an invasion. It isn't an invasion. Thousands of people come to U.S. borders every year. It's not an invasion. So, no, it doesn't change anything in reality, it doesn't change anything in the rules of engagement or U.S. law or international law. It's simply a political stunt.

But, Wolf, it's also true that by doing this he's abusing the office of the presidency. You know, the president of the United States is looked at not only by Americans, but by people all over the world for leadership and guidance and for good judgement and common sound sense. When he simply plays politics with these poor people trying to seek safety in the United States of America, it's disgraceful, honestly, and it's an abuse of his office of the presidency.

So we have here a man who's so self-centered and so determined to try to fight this election battle that he's using up the stock of American spree and American values in an effort to campaign for his base. It's a sorry spectacle. And today, in the headlines, there were reports of Nigerians who shoot at people who were demonstrating and quote President Trump as justifying him to kill a bunch of unarmed demonstrators. That's exactly the wrong kind of leadership that we need in the United States. And I would call on President Trump, and I'm sure I'm speaking for many other people here who would say, cease work on that. Go back, be the president of the United States. Let the American people have a chance to vote for what your program is and what you stand for. Don't divide this country. Uphold the Constitution and help pull us together. [13:20:21] BLITZER: And it's not just Nigeria, the Nigerian military,

saying rocks are rifles, as the president has suggested, it's other despotic militaries and governments all over the world. They're watching very, very closely what the president of the United States is saying, and that's giving them encouragement to take very, very dastardly steps.

General Clark, thanks so much for joining us.

CLARK: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: General Wesley Clark, the former NATO supreme allied commander.

In a new op-ed today, the fiance of the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, is demanding justice and calls out the Trump administration for not doing enough.

And with only four days to go until the midterm elections, the Trump fear machine is working overtime right now. Will it be enough to hand Republicans a victory on Tuesday?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:47] BLITZER: It's been one month to the day since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared into the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul, Turkey, never to be seen again. Today his fiance insists there will be no cover-up over his death. In a new op-ed in "The Washington Post" she write this, and I'm quoting, the Trump administration has taken a position that is devoid of moral foundation. Some in Washington are hoping this matter will be forgotten with simple delaying tactics, but we will continue to push the Trump administration to help find justice for Jamal, closed quote.

Meanwhile, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, says it will take at least a handful of weeks before the U.S. has enough evidence to possibly imposes sanctions against the Saudis.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

And I just want to point out, CNN is now reporting that the White House is planning to stick by the Saudis and the crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman. If President Trump won't act on this Khashoggi matter with the Saudis, do you believe Congress is prepared to do something?

REP. STEVE COHEN (D), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, I'm a member of the Helsinki Commission, which is direct responsibilities for the security and cooperation in Europe and spreading democracy there. But we have areas where we broaden our jurisdiction with affiliate members in Turkey is an area that we also have jurisdiction. And I feel confident that the Helsinki Commission, which has bipartisan leaders interested in democracy and the rule of law that will pursue hearings, if not in the lame duck with our Republican leads in January with our Democratic leads. I feel confident that will take place.

BLITZER: Well, let's see if the Democrats are in the majority in the House of Representatives. We'll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday with some late voting.

The president -- let's get to some other issues while I have you, congressman.

The president has been ginning up fear over immigration, sending thousands of troops to the border with Mexico, threatening to eliminate birthright citizenship, to restrict asylum claims. Will fear mongering have an impact when people head to the vote in key battleground states next week?

COHEN: I think it will help get his base out, but it's really sad because a president shouldn't engage in fantasy, falsehoods and fabrications. And that's what he's doing. He cannot, by executive order or through legislation, change the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He -- sending the troops to the border, what a waste. More troops he's talked about, 15,000 that are in Afghanistan, at a cost of $100 million or more that could go to helping people with the drug opioid problems. Just irresponsible use of the government as a vehicle to engage in politics, which in a large way is just to protect the president from the revelations of his indiscretions that I think we're going to see through hearings that -- and the Mueller investigation if it's made public, which it needs to be. And I think it's interesting, there's a Watergate special on the history channel, rival station I guess, but it shows how this is so, so equal to what's going on now. And at Watergate it was the grand jury and the judge in the case that was able to give the relevant committees the information that had been collected by the special counsel. And that may have to happen again.

BLITZER: I want you to listen to the president at a campaign rally in Missouri. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We did have two maniacs stop the momentum that was incredible because for seven days nobody talked about the elections. It stopped a tremendous momentum. More importantly, we have to take care of our people and we don't care about momentum when it comes to a disgrace like just happened to our country, but it did nevertheless stop a certain momentum.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What do you make of the president's complains about these two maniacs ruining his momentum, the shooter in Pittsburgh, the pipe bomber, who was arrested in Florida?

COHEN: Well, both of those were irresponsible positions and immoral, unfortunate positions and statements to be taken by the president. Everything with him is political.

[13:29:57] When he was in Pittsburgh, he didn't talk about the victims, he didn't talk about the anti-Semitism, he didn't talk -- he talked about he was received, how he didn't see the demonstrators et cetera.