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New Day

President Trump and Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Have First Debate; President Trump's Comments to Group Connected with Political Violence Draws Criticism; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is Interviewed About Last Night's Presidential Debate Between Trump and Biden. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired September 30, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

BERMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And the president of the United States refused to condemn violence by white supremacist groups. The president of the United States refused to tell supporters to remain peaceful after the election. The president of the United States refused to obey the simple debate rules his own campaign agreed to. He did this, a new low in presidential debates.

The lazy headlines and analysis will say this was chaos, a both sides thing. But dig deeper. He did this. And what's remarkable this morning is how many Republicans, including some of the president's staunchest supporters, now think the president hurt himself last night.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: It appeared that Joe Biden was trying to have a normal debate. He started speaking directly to the camera over President Trump's constant interruptions. But Biden took his own shots, calling Trump a clown, a racist, and the worst president ever. Biden also slammed President Trump's response to the coronavirus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Between 750 and 1,000 people a day are dying. When he was presented with that number, he said it is what it is. It is what it is because you are who you are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now, CNN political analyst David Gregory. Also with us, CNN political commentator Scott Jennings. He's the former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a columnist at "USA Today," and Bakari Sellers, he's a former Democratic South Carolina state rep and the author of "My Vanishing Country." Great to have you all of you here this morning.

David Gregory, I want to start with you. You've covered a lot of presidential debates. Have you ever seen one like the one last night? Have you ever seen a candidate, and I'm speaking of President Trump, conduct his part of the debate like that? What was your takeaway? DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it was just such a

disaster and such an embarrassment for the country. And I think what these debates are really about is the narrow slice of the electorate that's tuning in that wants to actually learn something, that wants to take the candidates' measure, is able to do that. And I think that's what was so difficult. On our air, late last night in Ohio, an undecided voter was saying, there's a lot of things that Trump says that I actually agree with, but it's the manner in which he says it that just sways me toward Biden. And I thought that really captured it well.

I just think it was so hard to follow in its ugliness, so hard to learn anything. I came in to the night thinking there was a lot of pressure on Biden. He had to show he was up for the job. I think he did that. I think he did it well. He had his moments where he didn't handle himself as well in, I think, an impossible situation, but he was able to demonstrate he could be there, he could go for 90 minutes, and he could make his case, especially directly to the American people.

I also thought he needed to inoculate himself a little bit from the charges that he was going to represent the extreme left of his party. I think he mostly did that. I am the Democratic Party, he said. I think Republicans can make hay with him not answering the question about packing the court, which will invite suspicion. But I think those play lower down when you have Trump's performance as it was.

BERMAN: Bakari, what did you see?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Last night, it was just a cluster. It was difficult to watch. My 15-year-old daughter was watching the debate with her girlfriends from Charlotte Christian, and they all were just consumed by the sheer chaos of it. I looked at Donald Trump last night as the equivalent of having a racist toddler, just an 18- month-old running around with matches and a Confederate t-shirt on. It was beneath what the presidency should be.

I thought Joe Biden did everything he was supposed to do last night. I thought he did everything he could do under the circumstances. And I don't know if we've ever said this on CNN, but I felt really bad for Chris Wallace last night. The simple fact that he was sitting there having to attempt to comb through this chaos, it was as if he was trying to sweep ocean water as it comes ashore. It was just so difficult last night.

And I wonder, and I wanted to ask -- throw this out to people who have been watching the debates, like David, far longer than I, but I wonder if Donald Trump would have just come into this debate and been calm and been serene -- I don't know if it's possible, but just actually not act as if he did, would people be looking at this differently? Would he have put Joe Biden on his heels, because Joe Biden at the end of the night, he actually looked presidential. And again, Donald Trump just looked like a racist toddler.

INGRAHAM: I'm going to let Scott answer that. Scott, your takeaway? SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I think

there's a difference between being on offense, which is what Trump probably wanted to do, and being offensive, which is what he wound up doing. He actually tied Biden up, as David said, on a couple of issues, the court packing Biden didn't have an answer for, tied him up on the Green New Deal. Biden said he was against it, then he said it would pay for itself, then he said he was against, but it's on his website.

[08:05:06]

So he actually had a couple of moment where he tied Biden up, but he never stopped talking long enough to let it sink in. And so I think that was stepping on his own strategy in this case. I look at this through the lens of audiences. Who does Donald Trump need to win the election? He needs to recover some women who are really -- that's the gap in his job approval. He does OK among men. Women don't like Donald Trump, they haven't. The gap is getting wider. And he did nothing last night to correct that. I don't think he helped himself with seniors on coronavirus. He didn't look into the camera and say, I know you're vulnerable, I have your back. I thought that was a priority.

And he did not lay out a second term agenda, which continues to be a failing of his campaign. A lot of incumbent presidents forget to do that in the first debate, but he's been forgetting to do it for several months. And at some point, you can't just say let's fight about the last four years, I've got to tell you where I'm taking this country. And we didn't see that either.

So all the way around, I just think -- let's just say you're a Trump supporter today and you wanted to say they fought to the draw. Well, that doesn't help you because you're already behind, so it's another lost day.

BERMAN: Yes, I think that's a really --

GREGORY: And I'm not sure, if I can just say, I think for those people who like Trump or maybe they're on the fence, but they want to hear him. And they may like that he's a streetfighter, that he'll break all of the rules of the debate and get in there and call out Biden. I'm still with Scott, which is, OK, then what did you achieve behind tying him up on the ropes? Because the truth is Biden on the virus, I think that he really wanted to say not just that Trump has done so poorly, but this is what leadership under a President Biden would have meant in the face of this pandemic. I think he did that in parts. I don't think Biden was as fluent as he could have been. I don't think he was able to lay out as much of a vision for the future of that. Why? In part because he had this pugilist coming at him disrupting the event.

So I don't think Trump laid out any of that vision, other than I've done this greatest job. So that's where he lost opportunities. I think Biden was vulnerable blaming Trump for the economy, saying this is your recession. I think Biden could have done more, yes, we have to open up as a country, we have to open up the economy, but we've got to do it better than how our president has done it. Those vulnerabilities, to Scott's points, I think were lost. They couldn't have been exploited by the president because he, in this case, had no real plan for the debate. I think it was our friend David Axelrod who said Trump seems angry about being behind, and he indulged that anger in the debate. I thought that was really true.

BERMAN: Scott laid out three things that the president didn't accomplish. In some cases, he actually accomplished the opposite. In some ways he actually moved further away from those three goals that Scott laid out there. And Bakari, I'll add a fourth, which may be the most important. In an election for an incumbent, the incumbent more than anything would like to make this a choice, not a referendum. President Trump wanted to make this a choice between Trump and Biden. He wanted to make this election more about Biden than it is right now, and he did the opposite. He really did the opposite with his behavior alone, Bakari.

SELLERS: I think there was some of us who wanted Joe Biden to be more sharp and pinpointing, dig deep on the president and his taxes or, as David said, talk about coronavirus with some level of precision. But at the end of the day when you look at the tape, it's very, very difficult to do that with the way that Donald Trump was behaving.

There were two moments, there were two moments in this debate that I think stick out. The first is that we all know, and even Scott, he may chuckle about this, that the president of the United States, I call him a liar, people say he exaggerates, however you want to call it, I think we have to be honest about it, but he says things like insulin is going to be as cheap as water. That ain't true. So we know that. People sometimes allow those things to run of their back.

But then you saw a clear difference between the candidates when Donald Trump went after Joe Biden's children, and Joe Biden found himself in the very interesting predicament where he was talking about Beau Biden with such passion, and Donald Trump just disregarded that, as he does our military so often and poo-pooed that, and poo-pooed this man's service. And then Joe Biden pivoted and had a level of compassion for his son Hunter who's been going through addiction.

So I found last night to be that -- at that moment, it was a clear contrast between someone who has those character traits of empathy and compassion versus someone who was just trying to be a bully and trying to just run ram shod throughout the debate.

BERMAN: Do we have that moment? Do we have that moment we can play? Can we play that moment where Joe Biden was talking about Beau and Hunter? We're looking for that right now.

CAMEROTA: OK.

[08:10:04]

JENNINGS: I'll tell you what, John, I'll comment on what Bakari said regarding that moment. There's something about using the tactic of bullying in a debate. People -- and I go back to 2016. He was aggressive, Trump was aggressive with Hillary Clinton, and he bullied her in some of that debate. But people didn't like Hillary Clinton. Her image was always upside down. And so I've always thought maybe the American people that are watching, I like it, he's giving Hillary Clinton a little bit of a rough treatment, and that's OK because I don't like her.

But they don't feel the same way about Joe Biden, and they certainly don't feel that way about him when he's talking about his children. And so when you're bullying someone they actually like, the tactic doesn't work. In fact, it backfires on you. And so, Trump was far more aggressive last night than he was in 2016, but the target of being a bully matters, and in this particular case, Biden just simply isn't as disliked as his opponent was before. Therefore, it renders this less effective.

CAMEROTA: Really interesting insights from all of you. Thank you so much, Scott, Bakari, David. Great to talk to you.

So this far right extremist group is praising the president for telling them last night to, quote, stand by. What does that even mean? CNN's Sara Sidner joins us now with more on this hardcore white supremacist group as they have been labeled. Sara, what do we know?

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, we should be really clear that the Proud Boys do not consider themselves a white supremacist group. They have members from many different ethnicities. That doesn't mean that they have not wreaked havoc. They're more like a political fight club, if you will, than a white supremacist group, and have distanced themselves.

But if you look at what the president said, he was asked to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and condemn any violence that they would take part in in the streets in American cities. The president not only failed to condemn white supremacists, he also seemed to egg them on. And this is a huge difference between not just condemning but trying to egg them on.

Let us not forget that just about five or six days ago the acting department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, said during his confirmation that -- during his confirmation hearing that white supremacists have become the most persistent and lethal internal threat in the United States. And the president of the United States is unable to condemn white supremacists, white supremacy and white supremacists? It is stunning.

Now let's get back to the group that was mentioned during the debate, the Proud Boys. Again, they say they're not white supremacists. They certainly have been involved in what one judge called political violence. There was a brawl in Manhattan where two of the members of the Proud Boys were convicted, several others pled guilty to attempted assault during a riot. This is video of what happened. Those are allegedly members of anti-fascist, and now you see the guys in the red hats coming and pummeling them. And so there were several people that were from the Proud Boys convicted in the case or pled guilty.

But what the president said about the Proud Boys basically was an absolute gift to them. He -- what it sounded like made it a rallying cry for them, saying to stand back and stand by. And so what you see reflected in social media -- you don't have to believe me. You just go look at what the Proud Boys were saying on social media. Let's pull one of those up. This is one of the reactions minutes after the president started talking about this. "Yes, sir, Proud Boys standing by," knowing they have been involved in what one judge called political violence.

And so it gives you this idea that this group is going to use this as rallying cry. They've already put it out on their social media. They're using it as a meme, stand back and stand by. And it's dangerous. You look at what the Anti-Defamation League says. The Anti- Defamation League says this is astonishing, that basically he owes, the president owes the American public an apology and an explanation for this, the Proud Boys should stand back and stand by, and they want it right now. This they believe is dangerous rhetoric coming from the president.

CAMEROTA: This is really helpful, Sara, because I thought the ADL had designated them a white supremacist group, but you saying they're more just like a fight club.

SIDNER: Yes, they are a group that shows up at the rallies. They say that they're there to stand against violence, but they often end up being engaged in violence. They're definitely far right wing. But it's been very clear that these groups -- and look, one of the leaders of the groups, Enrique Tarrio.

[08:15:01]

I talked to him in 2019 in Portland, that's where they showed up to battle it out oftentimes with antifascist and Antifa.

And, you know, he was very clear in saying, look, I'm Cuban-American, we have black folks.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK.

SIDNER: We have Asian folks. And so, yeah, this group isn't designated as a white supremacist group.

CAMEROTA: OK.

SIDNER: But sort of a far right group that goes out and sometimes gets in brawls.

CAMEROTA: OK. That's really helpful to know and, of course, the president lumps some of it all this together and refuses to denounce any of this, but thank you very much for exploring all that and clarifying it for us.

SIDNER: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Joe Biden weathered President Trump's incoming at last night's debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our suburbs would be gone and you would see problems like you have never seen --

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: One of former Democratic -- one former Democratic presidential candidate is going to join us to talk about this next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Joe Biden hit back as President Trump tried to frame him as a threat to the suburbs. Here's this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I f he ever got to run this country, and they ran it the way he would want to run it, we'd have our suburbs would be gone. By the way, our suburbs would be gone and you would see problems like you've never seen before.

[08:20:02]

BIDEN: He wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn.

TRUMP: I know so much suburbs so much better.

(CROSSTALK)

CHRIS WALLACE, DEBATE MODERATOR: Go ahead. Wait a minute.

BIDEN: I was raised in the suburbs. This is not 1950. All these dog whistles on racism does not work anymore. What really is a threat to the suburbs and their safety is his failure to deal with COVID. They're dying in the suburbs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is former Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Amy Klobuchar. She is supporting Joe Biden.

Senator, great to see you.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: What are your thoughts on what we watched last night?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, if anyone wanted to know what four more years of Donald Trump was going to be like, they saw it. They saw the bullying. They saw -- he was not like a president on the stage. He was like a heckler at a ball game.

And then it actually got worse. And I think through it all, as you just saw in the clip, Joe Biden tried when he wasn't spoken over or wasn't being yelled at or personally attacked to lay out his plan for the country, and that's what people are tuning into. And as someone who grew up in the suburbs myself, went to a big

suburban high school, understand the politics of Democrats, Republicans and independents in the suburbs, they want a leader. They want someone that's going to bring competence to the White House. Joe Biden showed that last night.

And I think one of the things you saw is Donald Trump never had a plan, not a plan for fixing what we've seen in this country with our economy, with nearly 30 million people out of work. With people as Joe Biden in this dramatic moment looked at the TV and he said, I want to talk directly to those of you who have someone, an empty chair at the kitchen table.

Well, people have lost loved ones, 200,000 families in this country with 200,000 more potentially ahead before the end of the year.

And so, the fact that Donald Trump came to this debate with no plan and only bombast and anger and hate and in a culminating moment refused to condemn white supremacism -- I think no one is going to forget that.

CAMEROTA: Do you think Joe Biden missed any opportunities? I know that you support him. But do you wish that he had turned the tables more on some of President Trump's attacks?

KLOBUCHAR: Look, it is nearly impossible to lay out a vision at every step of the way when you have a guy next to you literally like a heckler at the ball game, I think everyone knows what I mean, yelling every -- about every, what, 30 seconds at him with some new name- calling, some new mean things, some new crazy thing. That's what he was doing. So, that makes it hard.

Of course when you've been debating for the last year, like I did and so many of our colleagues, Joe's (ph) like I didn't say this, I didn't say that. Well, the one thing that was really great that Joe Biden did is he just let Donald Trump show himself to America, in a way that I don't think people have quite seen. I know they've seen him at his rallies. I know they see all the mean things.

But the way you see him interact with someone, when he's literally applying -- I guess reapplying for the job of governing our country, people are able to see what kind of man he is. And I think a lot of people -- since you started with the suburbs, we're out there, the independents, my state, they've already decided. They were already voting for Joe Biden, and that was another moment that people shouldn't forget from that debate.

Donald Trump is literally trying to stop people from voting. He's -- despite strong Republican support for mail-in ballots, from governors and people all over the place, what is he doing? He's acting because he's afraid that people are going to vote, like people shouldn't vote. Like something bad is going to happen.

That's what he's doing and that's what dictators do. So he's trying to undermine our actual election system and I'd say to people, don't take the bait. Go out and vote. CAMEROTA: Some of our analysts felt that Joe Biden was back on the

ropes a little bit a couple of times, such as the question of whether or not he would pack the court, such as whether or not he supports the Green New Deal.

Did you think that he didn't have ready answers for those?

KLOBUCHAR: Like I said, how can you answer when someone is literally throwing bombs -- verbal bombs at you every other lying (ph). That's what was going on.

But I think what he was saying is -- and he was very clear about this when it came to energy, the climate change is a major threat. Donald Trump has done nothing to fix it and Joe Biden has a plan to bring net carbon emissions down to zero by 2050 and create jobs at the same time. He's been very clear.

He did not sign on to the Green New Deal, but I think what he was talking about was the fact that we all need to act now.

And Donald Trump has done nothing but reverse President Obama and Vice President Biden's work to do something about this, while the fires are blazing on the West Coast and while big chunks of the Greenland ice sheet are going into the ocean, sea levels are rising, and you're seeing worse hurricanes -- not to mention flooding in parts of the country like mine.

[08:25:07]

CAMEROTA: Yeah.

We're out of time, but very quickly, yes or no, do you -- the next debate is a town hall format, OK? So, different than what we saw. The third debate is exactly like what we saw last night in terms of the format -- one moderator, both on them on stage.

Do you think that Joe Biden should go to that third debate?

KLOBUCHAR: Yes. I don't think that Joe Biden should back down from a challenge, and guess what, he said that he's not going to do, at least his campaign is saying that. And that's the right thing, because I think you've got this duty to portray this guy for what he is.

And it wasn't pretty. No one debating Donald Trump can come out of it thinking oh, I was a leader like -- because of how he is. But Joe Biden was able to -- there were those moments like I said where he talked about the kitchen table.

CAMEROTA: Yeah.

KLOBUCHAR: Where his compassion showed through and his plan showed through.

Donald Trump gave America nothing except four more years of this hate and the anger and we're so much better than that as a country.

CAMEROTA: Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you very much. We appreciate you --

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: -- being up early and talking to us.

KLOBUCHAR: It's great. Early, this is nothing.

CAMEROTA: There you go.

KLOBUCHAR: Thanks a lot, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, fantastic. We feel the same way.

All right. So, why did President Trump refuse to condemn white supremacy at last night's debate? We will ask the Trump campaign's national press secretary, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)