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Biden and Trump in the Final Sprint for Votes before Election Day; Biden and Trump Set for Showdown in Pennsylvania on Election Eve. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 02, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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


[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: And we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. this is New Day. It's a very exciting day here, very exciting next however many hours.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Well, after Halloween, it's always exciting, because you get to eat all the candy.

CAMEROTA: Maybe I'm hopped up on candy.

BERMAN: Can we talk about something else?

CAMEROTA: I am, because the most consequential Election Day of our lifetimes is one day. Joe Biden and President Trump are making the most of the final hours by blanketing battleground states. Biden will campaign in Ohio and hold three drive-in rallies in Pennsylvania.

President Trump travels to four states today, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which he won in 2016. More than 93.5 million Americans have already voted. And tensions are rising across the country, businesses boarding up, fearing unrest after the election.

Plans are also underway to put up another fence around the perimeter of the White House.

BERMAN: So you keep on hearing certain people saying, Election Day is one day away. Let me make clear that the votes cast yesterday, the day before, one or two weeks ago, they're every bit as valid as the votes cast tomorrow. And there will not be a winner until the votes are all counted, whenever they're counted, which is what makes this new claim from the Trump campaign so absurd and frankly undemocratic that the president might declare victory before the count is in, that he thinks it should all be done Tuesday night. That is not true. It has never been true, period.

Now, there is other major news this morning. There is a pandemic in this country surging beyond control. More than 81,000 new coronavirus cases reported yesterday. That is the most ever on a Sunday. It's the fifth highest since the pandemic began.

What's the president doing about that? Well, overnight, he suggested he fight fire Dr. Anthony Fauci right after the election.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Alexandra Field live in Pittsburgh. Obviously, it may very well be that no state is more important than Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh and its surrounding region crucial to that state.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the campaigns are absolutely showing us that, John. They are spending these final critical hours barnstorming this state, both campaigns very much in the hunt for the high-stakes prize that is Pennsylvania.

We've seen them here over the weekend and again today. President Donald Trump will be in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Vice President Mike Pence will be doing his duties in Erie and Latrobe. You've got former Vice President Biden in Pittsburgh accompanied by none other than Lady Gaga, Democrats trying to bring a little more star power with John Legend, who will be appearing in Philadelphia with Senator Kamala Harris.

What exactly is at stake in Pennsylvania? Well, you've got 20 electoral votes on the line. This is a state that President Trump flipped back in 2016 with just 44,000 votes. This year, you've had 3 million mail-in ballots requested, 2.4 million of those ballots have already been returned. That means, in these critical hours, both sides are trying to get their voters to turn out.

Biden trying to appeal to a wide swath of the voters, sending a message that he is the president or would be a president that would stand in stark contrast to the current president when it comes to the handling of the coronavirus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're going to beat this virus. We're going to get it under control. But the truth is, this is -- the truth is, to beat the virus, we've first got to beat Donald Trump. He's the virus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: Now, while we can't overstate just how critical Pennsylvania is, the bottom line is that we will have to wait for results here. It could take days, with all of those mail-in ballots coming in, none of them have been counted yet. They can't be counted until Election Day. Even so, you've got several counties that have suggested they won't start counting those mail-in ballots until the day after election. So, hang on, you'll have to wait, plenty of other states to watch. John?

BERMAN: Yes, waiting and that's okay. Alexandra Field for us in Pittsburgh.

You know Pennsylvania is important, because both candidates are going to be there. President Trump, Joe Biden will also be all over the state today, following something of a surprise rally this morning in Ohio. CNN's Gary Tuchman live in Cleveland. Ohio, Gary, is a state that President Trump won handily. Yet, Joe Biden late in the game announces a trip there this morning.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, John, a lot of interesting things happening here. I'm going to show you some impressive dedication. Election Day may be tomorrow, but early voting is not over yet here in the state of Ohio. All 88 counties are early voting.

[07:05:00]

All 88 counties open up at 8:00 A.M. Eastern Time.

These people have been in line since before 6:00 A.M., the people in the front of this line. It was snowing this morning when we got here, and right now, the wind chill is 27 degrees. Yet this line is getting longer and longer as people want to vote on this last day of early voting.

Four years ago, Donald Trump won the state handily, by more than 8 percentage points. Well, right now, the polls show The race is too close to call. Donald Trump needs to win the Buckeye State. Joe Biden doesn't.

And that's why it's so interesting what the Biden campaign decided just yesterday to make a last-minute visit, in the last full day of campaigning, here to Cleveland where we are right now, ten minutes up the road, he will have a campaign event later today. If Joe Biden can win here in the state of Ohio, it could be a big exclamation point on a large victory nationwide.

Yesterday, I talked to the Republican secretary of state. He told me that the early voting, which has lasted for 24 days, today is the 24th day, has been record-setting. He expects more than 50 percent of all of the registered voters in the state to have voted early. I also asked him about Donald Trump's complaint about mail-in ballots and counting votes after Election Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK LAROSE, SECRETARY OF STATE OF OHIO: Every legally cast ballot deserves to be counted and will be counted by our boards of elections and reported as part of our final certified result at the end of November.

TUCHMAN: Which is ten days after Election Day. So with that putting pressure on your shoulders as Republican the secretary of state, when the president talks about he wants the results by November 3rd, you don't agree with that?

LAROSE: That's not the way elections work. It's just simply not. That's not how elections work in Ohio or most any other state.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TUCHMAN: A reminder that if you vote tomorrow on Election Day, today on the last day of early elections, or three weeks ago, every vote is as valuable. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Gary, thank you very much that.

Joining us now, we have CNN Political Analyst David Gregory and Tim Alberta, he is the Chief Political Correspondent for Politico. Great to have both of you.

Tim, I want to start with you because I know that you've spent 2020 talking to voters around the country. And so at this -- you know, the 11th hour, basically, what are your thoughts on what makes this day different than anything we saw in 2016?

TIM ALBERTA, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Boy, how much time do you have? The two elections just actually have very little in common. I know that most of us are suffering from this collective PTSD from 2016 and obviously, there are some similarities.

But the fact of the matter is, Donald Trump is now the incumbent president, the unpopular incumbent president, who is responsible in the eyes of a healthy majority of voters for the poor management of a pandemic that's taken 225,000-plus American lives. And four years ago, he was the swashbuckling insurgent challenger in a change election with all of the fundamentals on the ground in his favor.

And so, Joe Biden has caught a lot of flack and rightfully so, I believe, for sort of staying out of the public eye in this campaign and sort of running from a bunker in some instances. But that has been in service of an overarching referendum strategy to keep the focus on the president in this election. Make this a pure referendum on his performance. And that has largely been successful.

And so the president is in a very different position than he was in four years ago. And I think, obviously, what you sense from voters on the ground, Republican and Democrat, is a lot of angst, a lot of uncertainty, because of the messaging they hear from the president, from the administration. This idea that some votes should not be counted, might not be counted. We're going to have to wait and see. Maybe he'll declare victory early.

I have been on the ground in six battleground states in the last nine days and that is a pretty consistent through line. I'll tell you, Alisyn, the one group of people who are the most nervous about this, who I have spent a lot of time talking to lately, are county clerks, elections officials.

They are very nervous about what happens if Trump races out to an early lead on the evening of November 3rd and then, as they're counting over the next 48 hours, Joe Biden overtakes the president and then the president starts tweeting about what's going on in these states, what's going on these in these municipalities and his supporters start getting worked up, they want to know, yes, where are these ballots coming from? What happens then?

This is a big of a powder keg and there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the potential for it exploding in the next 72 hours.

BERMAN: It was interesting, and, David Gregory, I'll put this to you, hearing from the Ohio secretary of state talking to Gary Tuchman moments ago, the Ohio secretary of state, who's a Republican, who said of President Trump's remarks and the Trump campaign's spin on this that Tim is talking about, that's just not the way elections work.

[07:10:02]

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's not the way elections work. Remember 2004, when we were covering President Bush, who is trying to win re-election, did win re-election, and that night when Ohio wasn't coming in definitively, some Bush advisers pushing the news media to call it for Bush. But other advisers telling the president, look, you can't put a crown on your head. You have to wait. And he did wait and it was resolved the next day when Ohio results finally came in.

I mean, I agree with Tim. I think the president's strategy is clear. He knows his best route at this point is going to be a squeaker. If he can hold on to the battleground states that he won, then it comes down to the upper Midwest, potentially, maybe we will be talking about Pennsylvania in a way where we have to wait for these mail-in votes so we can try to undermine confidence, try to raise the specter of fraud. Because votes are coming in totally legally, totally appropriately, to be counted starting at 8:00 P.M. when the polls close in Pennsylvania tomorrow night on election night. It's what the state legislature worked out. It's what the Supreme Court has affirmed at the moment. But there will be that pressure, because President Trump has said that he'll sue.

I do think before we get to that point, if that happens, it's worth noting, two factors. One, unlike 2016, people know this president now. They know what he's done in office. Like it, dislike it, they know. So he's not the insurgent anymore. The idea that people said in 2016, well, what have we got to lose? Let's shake things up, let's go over Trump. He's being looked at in a different way.

You'll also note that Biden today and Kamala Harris today, even in Pennsylvania, are not just trying to run up their totals in reliable Democratic areas. They're actually trying to diminish the lead in Trump country in that part of the state. It's really telling of where Biden's strengths are that he's going to try to diminish that strength, because without Trump running up his numbers, rural areas, working class areas, it becomes very difficult to do what he did before.

CAMEROTA: Tim, record-setting early voting, we're up to 93.5 million. And so beyond the fact that we're voting in a pandemic, what does that tell us about where the electorate is?

ALEBRTA: You know, what's interesting is that I think that it's almost taken as gospel that turnout has to go up every four years when, in fact, it doesn't. Turnout dipped in Bill Clinton's re- election. It dipped in Barack Obama's re-election. So this is not a straight upward trajectory. What's fascinating is that the theory of the case from the Trump campaign, you know, over last 18 months has been, look, if we can create a voting universe that's very similar to the voting universe in 2016, keep it right around 140 million, give or take, then we probably have a very good chance of recreating those same margins that we were able to ride to victory, a very narrow victory, obviously, four years ago.

That's not going to be case. Whether President Trump wins re-election or not, this voting universe is going to bear almost no resemblance whatsoever to the voting universe of four years ago.

And there are a couple big drivers of that. For one thing, what you see with the youth vote, the 18 to 29 vote, it's just -- it's pretty extraordinary. And it's not something that we would have expected, you know, eight months ago. There was just no data to suggest during the Democratic primary that there was going to be any surge of enthusiasm for a Joe Biden nomination. And yet, that's what we've seen.

So, when you look at some of these key demographic groups, obviously, the president's coalition in 2016 was not just white working class, you know, diner-goers in the Midwest. He had a significant chunk of support from college-educated white suburbanites. He had significant support from independents and he had significant support from seniors. His support among all three of those very reliable voting blocs is down. And when you couple that with a surge of young voters, now entering the electorate, those are all red flags for the president.

And, again, it's not to say that he cannot win, that he has no plausible path to victory, but if you're looking at some of these forecasting models that predict we could see turnout in the range of 165 or 170 million voters total when it's all said and done, it's just very difficult to see how the president can win in that scenario, because his own team never modeled that scenario.

BERMAN: And Tim has been talking to people around the country and has also noted that so-called shy Trump voters who may not have existed or mattered in 2016, I know you're seeing just as many people or more that might be shy Biden voters and the types of people who wouldn't necessarily show up on your T.V. screen over the weeks leading up to the election.

[07:15:03]

David, last to you, and we're talking about what matters. Obviously, the pandemic matters, maybe more than anything. And so it was striking last night to hear President Trump muse about firing Dr. Anthony Fauci. Listen to this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election. I appreciate the advice.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: So there you go. And, look, I know that these days are about motivating your base, but there are maybe some persuadable voters still out there and I wonder how that landed?

GREGORY: Well, I don't think well. I mean, I think it's a frightening prospect. It just gives you a sense of how erratic and ego-driven the president is about criticism about his handling of the virus. And he's vulnerable here and he knows it. Because, you know, we're on Election Day or the eve of Election Day and you have the number of cases surging.

It's clear, you listen to the president in these final days, he's relying on that segment of his support, maybe even lose support, who may think, well, maybe it is overblown, maybe we're doing better than the media says. And he's counting on that level of support.

But we know that people when who are taking a hard look at this pandemic, who have been touched by it, and that so many of us are looking and saying, the president has not been up to the job. It's a crucial judgment.

And in a state like Florida, among older voters, where he loses ground or other of the subgroups that Tim was just talking about, suburban voters who think the president hasn't done the one thing that he needs to be able to do, which is keep people safe and champion the efforts to fight the virus as only the president of the United States can do.

BERMAN: David, it's great seeing you up and about after your battle with coronavirus. Tim Alalberta, you've been doing terrific, terrific work out there on the campaign trail. Thanks so much for the work you've been doing and thanks for being with us this morning.

So CNN's special coverage of Election Night in America begins tomorrow at 4:00 P.M. Eastern.

As we noted, both candidates spending their final hours of this campaign in Pennsylvania, why the Keystone State may in fact be so, yes, key, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: We really are now in the final hours of the 2020 election and both Joe Biden and President Trump will be in Pennsylvania today. Why? Why is the commonwealth so crucial?

John Avlon here at the magic wall to explain. John?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, guys, look, election week is here. And as you said, all of the major candidates descending on Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, in these final hours. And let me just walk through why it's so important.

Let's say for a second the map reverts to the mean, okay? So let's give Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, to the Republicans, all right? Now let's say Nevada and Colorado and the Upper Midwest goes Biden, plus New Hampshire, all right? All of a sudden you're at 258, 258. Let's say you split the top two. You are down to Pennsylvania. That is why everyone is coming here.

This also, well, we have unprecedented turnout. And it's going to blow up a lot of the campaign's models. Early vote turnout in P.A. has been a little bit less than we've seen in other states, which means there is more votes to get on Election Day.

So let's take a look at the state of play in P.A., because a lot about the fight and the battlegrounds we've seen today, okay? 2016, Donald Trump stuns the world by winning P.A. Why? Because he's the first Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1998 to win it. That's a very big deal. And he wins it pretty big, 44,000 votes.

Take a look at where he wins it. Take a look up here and here. Here, you've got the heart of a lot of these so-called pivot counties that went for Obama and Biden twice then pivoted to Donald Trump. Just as evidence of that, look at what happens to the map when we switch it back to 2012. Erie County goes blue. These critical areas, Luzerne, in Northampton, go around Scranton, Biden's hometown, goes blue. And that's why this fight is so key. And that's why you're going to see these areas be so desperately fought over.

Hillary Clinton did pretty well down in the Philadelphia area. Donald Trump's got to keep up his enthusiasm in these red counties where he won the majority of the state. Can Biden drum up votes in Pittsburgh? Can he drum up votes and flip Erie in these key battlegrounds? That's going to be the fight area, that's where they're descending today. It is a game of inches. And this is the key state, there's a reason they call it the Keystone State, and all eyes on P.A.

CAMEROTA: Thank you for setting me up perfectly, John, for this next segment. I really appreciate all of what it looks like right now and all of that data. Thank you.

Joining us now is Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, John Fetterman. Lieutenant Governor, thank you very much for being here.

You are, I think, trying to sound the alarm of what you're seeing in Pennsylvania. You sent out a tweet yesterday saying the president is popular in Pennsylvania. I don't care what polls say, with 700,000 ballots still out there, you need to bank your ballot, use a drop box, get them in and you accompanied that message with this photograph from a Trump rally this weekend and you just see a sea of people.

So, beyond that photograph, what are you seeing that's making you want to sound this alarm?

LT. GOV. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Well, it's just a fact here that the president does remain popular here in Pennsylvania. And I'm capable of reading polls the way anyone else is.

[07:25:04]

And another one just came out and has the vice president up by five points. But at the end of the day, the president has undertaken an unprecedented engagement of small county Pennsylvanians through a level of barnstorming that I can't recall another candidate has done before.

And then when you factor that other issues, like the higher turnout models and other things, I just think it's harder to poll. And I'm saying, if Pennsylvania is winnable for the president, he's handling it well.

But that being said, it's a message to my fellow Democrats. You shouldn't be sitting on your mail-in ballots at all. There's no reason to. You don't use the mail, at this point it's too close to the deadline. You need to deliver it to a secured drop box and make sure you bank your vote. And that's my message. It's like, let's not take that chance. Just bank your vote, very simple.

CAMEROTA: But are you saying that as of this morning in your gut, you think Donald Trump is going to win Pennsylvania?

FETTERMAN: No, not at all. Not at all. I'm just saying that there's a lot that I don't think can be captured fully in polling, and that is the level of engagement that the president's campaign has taken on in Pennsylvania.

I think in the last week, I count either it's his direct events or his surrogates with his family and others, probably over 15 events. And you saw that crowd in Butler, the Secret Service estimated it at 50,000 plus. So there's -- there's an inherent level of popularity there and you have to take that seriously.

CAMEROTA: 50,000 people? I didn't realize that. That photograph, because some people have wondered, was it shot in a certain way that made it seem like it was bigger. You're saying that that's the estimate, 50,000 people?

FETTERMAN: I read the Secret Service estimated the crowd at 57,000.

And my point is simply that don't take my word for how competitive Pennsylvania is. The run-up to having me on to your segment here just said how competitive it is. And I'm just here to remind everyone that's out there with their ballot, their mail-in ballot, they've got to bank it.

And today, the second is the last day to do that without adding to the lines to mark (ph), because we are going to have historic turnout and we need to make sure that you're not jamming up lines from other voters just to trade in your ballot. You need to bank your ballots in Pennsylvania today.

CAMEROTA: President Trump also zeroed in on how key Pennsylvania is and he talked about it yesterday, but he is suspicious, I think, of votes that he doesn't want counted after a certain deadline tomorrow. So listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: But if you take Nevada or Pennsylvania, and everyone knows what happens in Philadelphia. You don't have to say it. But I've read about it for years. And I don't think it's fair that we have to wait a long period of time after the election. If people wanted to get their ballots in, they should have gotten their ballots in long before that, a long time. They don't have to put their ballots in the same day. They could have put their ballots in a month ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Your response?

FETTERMAN: It's lies. It's deliberate misinformation, trying to sow chaos and that's the other part of the Trump campaign strategy, is that they are trying to foment chaos and misinformation and to create confusion both for Democrats in order to -- whether their ballots are going to be counted, or for Republicans, as a justification to question the results.

And the bottom line, is that if you get your ballots in today, as mail-in, or you vote tomorrow, your votes are absolutely going to count. And if there's some court case that ends up at the Supreme Court, that's the ambiguity there. And you just are risking having your vote potentially be nullified if you don't bank your mail-in ballot today or make sure you vote in person if you don't have a mail- in ballot tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: You know, there are seven counties, I don't have to tell you in Pennsylvania, at least, that will not start counting the mail- in ballots until Wednesday, so not on Election Day, but on Wednesday at something like 8:30 or 9:00 A.M. When do you think we'll know the results of Pennsylvania?

FETTERMAN: Well, let me just say, there is no valid reason for those counties to have done that. And if you examine any -- the pandemic isn't a surprise at this point and neither is historic turnout levels. This was able to be planned for.

Cumberland County, last month, in September, voted to canvass at 7:00 in the morning, like every other county was going to. And then they changed their minds. So there's no reason for that.

So when will our ballots be known? That's not -- I'm not sure. Philadelphia said that it might take several days. I think if that's true, that would be more of an outlier. Allegheny County got most of their ballots counted in the primary, really election eve night. Montgomery County, our third largest county, seems to have their situation well in hand. So it's not 100 percent sure.

[07:30:00]

But the election is over when all of the votes are counted. You want to be clear about that. This idea that there's a timeline or whatever.