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Trump And Biden Campaigns Head To Battleground States; Police Pepper Spray Peaceful Protesters In North Carolina; Pollsters And Reporters Assess Likely State Of Presidential Race Day Before Election; Joe Biden And Donald Trump In The Final Sprint For Votes Before Election Day. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 02, 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]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Iowa, a state that Donald Trump won big four years ago. President Trump travels to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. More than 93.5 million Americans have already voted. That is a staggering number, just staggering. Now, I think it is safe to note there is anxiety around the country, some businesses are boarding up, fearing possible unrest after the election. Plans are now underway to put up a new fence around the perimeter of the White House.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: It could take days for all the votes to be counted, but CNN has learned that President Trump is preparing to declare victory before the count is complete if he feels like it.

And adding to the country's chaos, a surging pandemic, more than 81,000 new coronavirus cases reported yesterday, the most ever on a Sunday. So what is the president doing about this surge? Well, overnight he told a rally filled with mask-less supporters that he may fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Alexandra Field. She is live in Pittsburgh. Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, good morning. People here in Pittsburgh are already lining up to drop off their mail-in ballots. This close to the election, they're being warned not to put them through the postal service, do it in person. Everyone else is being urged to get to the polls. Both campaigns locked in a battle for the state of Pennsylvania, barnstorming in the final hours before Election Day.

President Donald Trump will be making a four-state swing today, including a stop in Scranton. He's dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to Erie and Latrobe. As for the Biden campaign, they are bringing in the star power to try and seal the deal here in the keystone state. You've got Lady Gaga campaigning with Joe Biden in Pittsburgh. You've got Senator Kamala Harris with John Legend in Philadelphia.

This is a state that Trump was able to flip with just 44,000 votes back in 2016. It's a state the Democrats want back. Joe Biden delivering a singular message now to try to appeal to a broad swathe of voters. He's telling them he's the best leader to get them through the COVID crisis.

(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, to beat the virus, we've first got to beat Donald Trump. He's the virus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: More than 6 million people voted in Pennsylvania in 2016. This time around, some 3 million people requested mail-in ballots, 2.4 million of those ballots have already been returned. And Alisyn, this is giving the campaign some critical data. It lets them know where people voted already and where they need to go to turn out the vote now. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Alex, thank you very much for all of that.

So President Trump will be very busy campaigning today. He'll hold five rallies in four battleground states. His first stop is North Carolina. That's where we find CNN's Suzanne Malveaux live in Fayetteville with more. What's happening on the ground, Suzanne?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Secret Service is conducting their sweep as the rally goers are just beginning to enter. It is going to begin in about three hours or so. This is a must win state for the president. The polls showing it very, very tight here. This is where he captured the state by 173,000 back in 2016, but also a state that went to Barack Obama in 2008.

North Carolina voters are shattering all kinds of records, early voting records. We have seen 4.3 million early voters, that's 62 percent of all registered voters here have already cast their ballots. That is 95 percent, if you could imagine that, of all those North Carolina voters of 2016.

Not everything has gone smoothly, not everything has gone well. National attention, however, this weekend out of Graham, North Carolina. That is where several hundred peaceful marchers who were simply trying to go from the courthouse to a polling center -- multiracial, multigenerational, they actually did a silent vigil for George Floyd in the street. That is when local authorities told them to clear the street, go to the sidewalk.

Apparently not fast enough for these authorities, pepper spraying the crowd. Social media showing pictures and video as well of children who were throwing up from this pepper spray, a woman in a motorized wheelchair as well impacted by the spray, about a dozen folks arrested.

When it was all said and done, the reverend who led this group, Reverend Greg Drumwright, making a statement yesterday outraged by all of this. Police authorities defending their reaction. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIEUTENANT DANIEL SISK, GRAHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT: I understand that some people were saying we pepper sprayed children and other, disabled folks.

[08:05:01]

Again, I want to reiterate we never directly sprayed anyone in the face. It was all directed towards the ground in an effort to disperse the crowd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Governor Roy Cooper is saying that it was unacceptable, that it was an example of voter intimidation, that those marchers say they'll be back on Tuesday, on Election Day to assert their rights. There are several voters, many people who are nervous about tomorrow because of what they've seen over the weekend. John?

BERMAN: Yes, hopefully they will not be deterred to go cast their votes. Suzanne Malveaux, thanks so much for being with us.

Joining us now, CNN Political Analyst, Maggie Haberman. She's a White House correspondent for the "New York Times," Mark McKinnon, former adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain and the executive producer of "The Circus," also with us, Joel Benenson. He is a pollster who worked on the campaigns of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. What an august group this morning.

Maggie, let me just start with you. You are so well sourced inside the White House and the Trump campaign. What are they saying this morning?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, they've been signaling surprising amount of optimism given the polls that we're seeing, John, over the last couple of days. There is widespread recognition that the president is likely to lose the popular vote by a wider margin than he did in 2016, and that he can, in their minds, hopefully eke out a victory either with a win in Michigan or a win in Wisconsin or in Pennsylvania.

That's certainly possible. Pennsylvania is pretty tight. I think that they are well aware that it's very possible that if there is not a clear call by tomorrow night, they are going to drag this out over several days and fight over ballots. They're not keeping that a secret. The president is, according to everyone I have spoken to, volatile, that he is up and down in terms of how he is perceiving this. They are very happy with what they're seeing on the ground in terms of crowds, but again, as you know as well as I do, crowds in a presidential race do not indicate every metric of voter engagement.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joel, on the flipside, what are you seeing, what positive signs are you seeing that signal a Democratic win that you may not have seen in 2016?

JOEL BENENSON, POLLSTER, OBAMA AND CLINTON CAMPAIGNS: I think there are a couple of things, Alisyn. Number one is a very important dynamic, in 2016 you had both candidates had very high unfavorable ratings, about 57 percent, they were both what we call underwater. Right now, Vice President Biden's favorable rating is 51 percent favorable, 44 unfavorable. Donald Trump's is still about 13 points underwater.

I think the other things that are going on here are a couple of voting blocs that Trump needs to win. Suburban voters are 49 percent of the electorate nationally. Donald Trump carried them by four points in 2016. Right now, Joe Biden is leading with suburban voters by 17 points. Also similarly, your poll this weekend showed Biden winning with seniors by 11 points, voters over the age of 65. This is a critical voting bloc. Trump won them by seven points.

So Trump is campaigning, and I think they know it, that there's erosion around the coalition they built last time. This doesn't mean this race is over by any means, but there are certainly indicators here with these groups where Trump's margin is shrinking. The third one I would throw in would be white non-college voters. They're a significant part of the electorate. Trump won them by 37 points last time.

And right now, according to your poll, he's only leading them by about 16 or 18 points, so his margin has been cut in half there. I think that's why they're scrambling in a lot of these battleground states. They know they're under pressure here pretty heavily with groups they are underperforming with.

BERMAN: All right, Mark McKinnon, your turn. As we sit here --

CAMEROTA: Tiebreaker.

BERMAN: -- on Monday morning, with 34 hours until the first polls close in Indiana and Kentucky, what do you see? Where are we headed?

MARK MCKINNON, FORMER BUSH CAMPAIGN MEDIA ADVISOR: Well, 2016 caveats, blah, blah, blah. But let me just point this out. If you would have asked me or you'd have asked Joel Benenson back in February, what are the worst possible things that could happen to President Trump for his reelection, you would say the Democrats nominate a centrist, pragmatic nominee, by the way, from Pennsylvania, the key state in the crown jewel of the Midwest that you have to win, two, there's a global pandemic, three, the president contracts that virus, four, the virus spikes in all the swing states in the last week, and then the president goes negative on doctors and Dr. Fauci, the most popular infectious disease expert in the world. I'd say that sets you up for a pretty problematic strategic scenario for winning.

CAMEROTA: But that was last night, Mark. Do you think that saying that he would fire Fauci after the election, do you think there's still time to sway voters heading to the ballot box? Do you think that that will have an impact?

MCKINNON: I think it's pretty cooked in. It just will reinforce feelings that people already have. Trump supporters don't like Fauci, and Biden supporters love him. So I just think it's going to reinforce feelings that people already have.

[08:10:09]

But that's a motivation in the last 24 hours is key. In 2016, the one thing, I try and ignore the data and say as a campaign guy, where is the momentum? In 2016 it felt kind of like there was a wind at Trump's back. It feels today like there is a wind at Biden's back.

BERMAN: Let me just say one thing. The president can't really fire Anthony Fauci.

CAMEROTA: Right.

BERMAN: So not only does he make a point of raising the possibility, or at least humoring the possibility at a rally last night, he does it in a way that he can't even execute it, right. So he gets all the negatives from musing about firing Dr. Fauci, and if he wants to, he can't do it. So there's that.

Maggie, obviously the Trump campaign is going hard at Pennsylvania, and we know why. That's very obvious. Obviously, we know that they've been on the phone with everyone projecting a more positive tone than they have certainly two or three weeks ago. But even in the positive tone, you do hear concerns about certain places. Georgia keeps coming up in Trump world. They're nerve bus Georgia. Why?

HABERMAN: They're nervous about Georgia, they're nervous about North Carolina. And these are two states where there are a lot of suburbanites who are really not happy with the president's conduct. They are also two states where there are high black populations who they think can turn out for Joe Biden and against this president. And again, it is interesting, as you say, they are seeing this in their own numbers.

Over the last two days I've heard more optimism about Georgia from the Trump campaign. And I just, John, do want to asterisk this, that I don't pay a ton of attention to everybody's projected optimism or, frankly, pessimism in the final days. They're saying what they need to say. However, they have seen Georgia and North Carolina as two trouble spots over the last two weeks at least, and that is alarming to them.

BERMAN: I get it. I want to make clear, you're telling us what you're hearing from them. They would not be doing their jobs if they weren't projecting optimism to you and the rest of us.

HABERMAN: That's right. But it is true, those are two spots that they are concerned about. They're concerned about Arizona as well for similar reasons. And when you are an incumbent president heading into an election, and three states that are key to a victory are on this much of, in their perception, a knife's edge, it might be much worse than that, that's very problematic.

CAMEROTA: So Joel, one of the things that I'm hearing from the Trump sources is that part of the reason they're optimistic is because they've registered so many more Republicans, they think, than Democrats have, and that they think that they're turning those out, that there's a narrowing of the gap between, at first registered Democrats were showing up a lot in early voting, and now somehow registered Republicans are. Do you put stock in that?

BENENSON: I don't know whether anything they say is accurate or not. What I know is we have a history of very close elections in this country for president. We don't have a lot of blowouts. So we know in 2016 it was extremely close. I'd say the only things that are different now is that we're seeing the Trump campaign play, as Maggie just pointed out, a little more defense than in the past. So I think the reality is closer to the truth than professing being more sanguine about registering voters.

I also think they know that, if you look at the three states in what Democrats always call their blue wall, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, there's no question those states have tightened, but they're not anywhere near as much as they had tightened in the days before the election in 2016. Biden has slightly bigger leads right now in Pennsylvania than Hillary Clinton had. He has bigger leads in Michigan than Hillary Clinton had at this point. Wisconsin is about the same. If Joe Biden wins those three states, he's going to be president of the United States.

I think that's why the Trump campaign knows they're on defense, not just in those states, but they're playing defense in any other state. If they lose North Carolina and Arizona, it gets very hard to see them getting to a map of 270 electoral votes.

BERMAN: I feel like I'm getting smarter just speaking to Joel Benenson and Mark McKinnon and Maggie Haberman here, but not smart enough. There's still room for more growth. So friends, don't go anywhere. We're going to keep talking to you.

There's a lot of other news this morning. The FBI is investigating this incident involving a Biden campaign bus and a group of Trump supporters. We'll have more on that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:08]

CAMEROTA: Back with us, Maggie Haberman, Mark McKinnon and Joel Benenson.

Great to see all of you guys again. Thanks for sticking around.

We've talked a lot about Pennsylvania. Let's talk, Mark, about Florida. What are you looking at?

MCKINNON: Florida, Florida, Florida, as Tim Russert famously said, and I still have fever dreams from 2000. You know, it's such a key state always obviously. But it's a state that Trump and Republicans have to win or there is really just almost an impossible pathway.

And so, the one thing that could happen is whilst we talk about all of these nightmare scenarios, all the chaos that could happen, the one thing that could change all of that is if Florida goes for Biden; then, it'll be over early, clearly, and finally.

So if you're watching Tuesday night, tomorrow night and the vote comes in for Biden, Florida, you can go to bed.

CAMEROTA: But do you think that's likely? I mean, given everything that you've seen with Hispanics --

MCKINNON: Well, I'd love to throw that to Joel, but my -- what my observation is that Biden is obviously doing better with seniors, which is key to Florida, and now the Trump campaign says we're making up for that with Cuban-Americans in Miami and with African-American voters.

I would ask Joel. Joel, is that enough to -- can Biden make it through in Florida with seniors or can Trump make it up with the Hispanics and African-American voters and non-college whites?

BERMAN: If only we had Joel Benenson here. Oh, wait.

BENENSON: I'm here today. Look, I think Florida we know has historically been very close. You know, Donald Trump won it by one point last time.

I don't think this is a state he owns. They claim they're trying to make inroads there. But you know, at the same time, Trump has an enormous problem.

He ran last time as the outsider. He was the rebel. He was going to shake things up in Washington. He was going to drain the swamp.

He has been President of the United States for four years now and he has presided over the worst pandemic in the history of this country. There are nine million cases, there are almost a quarter of a million Americans dead.

[08:20:10]

BENENSON: He owns that right now. He is responsible for it.

He likes to pass the buck, that's what he is really good at. But Americans know this all comes back to a President who either does his job or doesn't, and in most elections, when there's an incumbent running, or a referendum on the incumbent.

And so I think, yes, there are some shifts happening in Florida. It is a state that Republicans have to win. Joe Biden doesn't have to win it. If he wins it, it is going to be a pretty early -- earlier call that most of us are expecting right now.

BERMAN: Maggie on the subject that Joel was talking about, the pandemic, we understand that the White House is making plans or the President is making plans to hold his Election Night festivities indoors in the East Room with hundreds of people.

Now, I guess it may not sway the election holding a possible super spreader event, but might make people sick. HABERMAN: It might make people sick. It's unclear whether they are

actually planning on testing people or not. But as we know, the rapid test the White House has been using has a high false negative rate in general. And either way, it's quite a closing message for a President who has spent the arc of this pandemic beginning back in February, going into end of January going until now, minimizing it, downplaying it and defying what his own administration has advised about how to handle it.

Certainly, in this case, it's guidance against having a couple of hundred people indoors, and that is what's going to happen. And there are all kinds of issues with this. There's the logistical issue, in terms of getting around Washington. There's the mere fact of all these people in the same room.

Originally, this party was expected to be at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. and it was moved, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is the Trump folks are concerned about the potential for having their liquor license taken away by Washington, D.C. officials who have a cap of 50 or less on gatherings. So that's one issue.

But the other issue, John is, this gives the President some measure of control if the evening is not going the way he wants it, if it is looking like he is in trouble, let's say Biden has a blowout night. This means that Trump isn't required or expected to show up somewhere outside the White House and he can control a little bit more of what he sees.

And finally, it lets him be surrounded by the thing he wants all the time, which is a crowd.

CAMEROTA: Mark, 231,000 Americans have been killed by coronavirus and if this election is a referendum on the handling of coronavirus, it seems that President Trump in these waning days has leaned into that. I mean, just leaned into that, you know, been sort of celebrating the masklessness and telling a FOX TV host to take off her mask and holding this possible super spreader event. They are not trying to avoid that anymore.

MCKINNON: Yes, and think about this, and I've been in a lot of these swing states when the Trump campaign has come through and done these rallies. In every single swing state over the last week, the coronavirus has been spiking.

So the lead story on all of those news stations and in those newspapers is Trump comes to town in huge rally events with most people not wearing mask, not socially distancing and coronavirus spikes. That's the double header of the story.

So not only is it not a good story, it's doubling down on a bad story for people in those states and we're talking about Florida. You think seniors aren't noticing the issue on the virus spiking? So, you know, in these key constituencies, especially seniors in Florida, for example that we were talking about, not a good strategy.

BERMAN: I think it's getting ever closer to everyone -- MCKINNON: But it is his only strategy. That's all he does.

BERMAN: So Joel -- go ahead.

BENENSON: If I could just throw in one quick thought, you know, when you're running a presidential campaign, you've got two imperatives: you have to reinforce your strengths and inoculate against your negatives.

The coronavirus has been the number one issue on people's minds through this election and Donald Trump's approval ratings on his handling of this virus have been disastrous for an incumbent President. He just keeps doubling down on his negatives.

BERMAN: So Joel, you and Mark have both made a great career out of this whole political consultant thing. What can you do with 34 hours left at this point to make any kind of difference? What's your life like these last 34 hours if you're part of the campaign, Joel?

BENENSON: Usually anxiety. You're really hoping that all of the things you're seeing that are positive are working out for you, that if you've got negatives, you can overcome them.

Look in 2016, we had the whole dust up because of Jim Comey bringing up the e-mails the weekend before the election or about six days out. You know, you don't want to be dealing with your negative six days out and that was really something that I think led to a lot of Hillary Clinton's defeat at the end.

We had to get out from under, the whole e-mail controversy and we couldn't do it. Trump needs to get out from under his failures on coronavirus. But he is completely lacking of any reparative skills as a politician.

He refuses to acknowledge damage, so he consequently can't fix it.

[08:25:10]

CAMEROTA: Mark, your answer to that. What do you think each campaign can do in these sunset hours?

MCKINNON: Well, it was a terribly frustrating time, especially for the ad guy like me in the campaign because there's nothing you can do. So I would generally just day drink and go to a movie.

CAMEROTA: We've been doing that for days.

BERMAN: Why wait? Why wait until the day before the election?

CAMEROTA: And Maggie, I mean, in terms of what they are saying on the Trump campaign, are they aware of the strange optics of coronavirus spreading like wildfire and their big rallies? And does it concern anyone?

HABERMAN: Look, there are some people in the campaign who for a while over the summer was telling the President not to do big rallies. You know, you saw what happened in Tulsa when the President insisted on holding one in June, and a fraction of the people they were expecting to come came because there are people in this country who are very afraid of getting sick.

They have basically forgotten that. The President sees the facts that crowds come out for his rallies as vindication of his position that he is right to be continuing to do it. I think that most people, Alisyn, on this campaign, not everybody, but enough feel like they are held captive by how the President wants to run this. And there are, you know, plenty of examples of candidates who are dominant over their campaigns.

But this President is very different in that respect. It's very hard to get him to change his behavior or to do anything differently, and I think that most people have generally given up trying as hard as they might have several months ago.

BERMAN: Mark, I covered the campaign you worked on in 2000 that went into overtime. What do people need to be prepared for now, no matter what they hear from politicians tomorrow night, in terms of when this election will be over, when we will know whether there's a winner or when there's a winner?

MCKINNON: Well, I think you all have done a good job this morning, as have a lot of other media outlets to make it clear that you wait until all the votes are counted. And in the good news for this election, I think here's my prediction is that all of this waving of the flags of rigged elections and, you know, mail ballots in the rivers, I think has had kind of a reverse effect in the sense that it has really opened people's eyes about the voting process, why it's important, how it's important how you do it.

And I think as a consequence, people are voting early -- earlier and safer making sure their ballots are in, making sure it is secure, and I think it may surprise all of us in the sense that we actually have a clear and concise and definitive outcome, if not early Tuesday night into Wednesday.

CAMEROTA: From your lips to county executives' ears. Joel, Mark, Maggie, thank you all very much.

CNN's special coverage of "Election Night in America" begins tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.

So as coronavirus rages across America, what needs to be done to contain the pandemic? We discuss that next.

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