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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump, Harris Vie For Sunbelt States With 5 Days Left; Trump: I'll Protect Women Whether They "Like It Or Not". Aired 4-5p ET

Aired October 31, 2024 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:01]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Okay. Well, you know what? We have a little bit of time so we can dance.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: You've got to do it. Let's see there it goes.

KEILAR: And then I think that's like a --

SANCHEZ: Rumba, like 1, 2, 3, uno, dos, tres, cuatro.

I feel Jake Tapper shaking his head and rolling his eyes at us right now.

Don't go anywhere. THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER starts in just about five seconds. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

(MUSIC)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Only five days left until the end of the 2024 race, maybe.

THE LEAD starts right now.

The final stretch as presidential transition starts to come into view. New hints today on who might be in a Trump administration and who is already out.

Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris calling out Donald Trump for saying he would protect women, quote, whether the women like it or not.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Listen, it's just -- it actually is I think very offensive. This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: And she galvanized voters on that message. We'll see as she takes her campaign out west.

Plus, efforts to stop a terrifying, dangerous, viral trend -- subway surfing. It's become a social media challenge and it has claimed lives

(MUSIC)

TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

Let's cue some election music, please.

The scariest part of the day, Halloween, only five days left, left. Only five days left to enjoy the sweet, sweet election jam. Nearly 61 million Americans, 61 million have already cast their ballots. You beautiful people, look at you voting in droves, good for you.

Both major candidates flooding the airwaves with TV ads hitting key battleground states out west to make sure the election does not slip through their butter fingers. Got it? And what looks like a deadlocked race. Every word matters.

For example, take a listen to Trump at last night's rally in Green Bay, battleground Wisconsin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to protect the women of our country. I want to protect the women. Sir, please don't say that. Why? They said we think it's -- we think it's very inappropriate for you to say. Why? I'm president. I want to protect the women of our country.

Well, I'm going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I've got to protect them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Trump in a garbage man costume of sorts also hopped on a Trump campaign branded garbage truck. He's trying to galvanize supporters in the wake of President Biden's latest gaffe, where he Biden seemingly referred to Trump supporters as garbage. So he insisted that's not what he was trying to say.

For Vice President Harris's part, she says Trump's comments on women are, quote, offensive to everybody. Adding this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: It actually is very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right, and their ability to make decisions about their own lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: In just moments, we're going to bring you to her rally in Phoenix, Arizona.

But, first, we're getting some new insights into a possible second Trump term. Trump's transition co-chairman Howard Lutnick visited CNN's Kaitlan Collins, and said that anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy a Trump supporter, would actually not be in charge of running the Department of Health and Human Services even after Trump said RFK Jr. could, quote, go wild when it comes to his health agenda. But Lutnick is apparently unfamiliar with the quackery RFK Jr. has been pushing for 20 years about vaccines hotly disputed by all credible medical and health officials.

Lutnick said that he sat down with RFK Jr. for two-and-a-half hours and I suppose because Lutnick does not apparently know anything about this issue, he left hoodwinked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD LUTNICK, TRUMP-VANCE TRANSITION TEAM CO-CHAIR: So I spent two- and-a-half hours this week with Bobby Kennedy, Jr., and it was the most extraordinary thing because let's face it, we've all heard on the news, all sorts of sort of snarky comments about him. And I said, so tell me how is it going to go? And he said, why don't you just listen to me, explain things?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I've been listening to RFK Jr. explain things for 21 years, and it's just utter nonsense and it's false and it's full of lies and Lutnick then repeated that nonsense. RFK Jr. alleges is huge conspiracy or pharmaceutical companies pay off health officials to ignore medicines that cause autism. I mean, it's insane.

Lutnick showed himself rather credulous, even more credulous than RFK Jr.'s own family who wrote five years ago in 2019 quote, RFF Jr. is our brother and uncle. He is tragically wrong about vaccines. We love Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but he is part of a misinformation campaign that's having heartbreaking and deadly consequences, unquote.

[16:05:06]

That's from his cousins and siblings. Trump's transition co-chair, however, bought into the conspiracy theory of these payoffs and secret data.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROSSTALK)

LUTNICK: I mean, let's give him the data. I think it'd be pretty cool to give them the data. Let's see what he comes up with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let's see what he comes up with.

After all, what's the worst that can happen? Well, I'll tell you. Take a listen to Dr. Paul Offit from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, talking to us about how RFK Jr.'s vaccine lies helped lead to a measles epidemic in Samoa.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. PAUL OFFIT, DIRECTOR, VACCINE EDUCAITON CENTER, CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHA: Immunization rates dropped. There were 5,600 cases of measles and 83 deaths in children in Samoa, all less than four years of age as a direct consequence of his lobbying efforts. That's what disinformation does. It kills.

Samoa's a small island nation of 200,000 people. We have 300 million people. So imagine what it could -- what could be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: CNN has reached out to more than half a dozen major health agencies, medical groups, public health organizations for reaction to this anti-childhood vaccine rhetoric in our current political climate.

In response, so far, these groups remind us that vaccines remain safe. And dependable and help save lives.

Let's hit the campaign trail now CNN's Eva McKend is at Harris rally in Arizona, and Lucy Kafanov is at the Trump rally in New Mexico.

Eva, Harris is set to speak at any moment. How much is immigration going to be the part of her message in that border state?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, it's certainly expected to be a part of the message here in this border state, but I should underscore that it's not the only issue of importance to the Latino families here in this crowd. There also urgently concerned about the cost of living.

So, she will talk about the opportunity economy in her vision for bringing down those costs. But on this issue of immigration, we hear the vice president trying to thread this needle here talking about border enforcement, but also making a passionate case for immigrants and path way to citizenship.

I spoke to an immigrant rights activists about this. Here's what she told me. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEJANDRA GOMEZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LIVING UNITED FOR CHANGE IN ARIZONA (LUCHA): We could see a lot more but what we have seen in when she was here at the border, we saw that she spoke about comprehensive immigration reform. And the truth is that Trump wants to deport our communities and with Kamala, we know that we can organize with her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: And so, Jake, voices like that are so important because her LUCHA Arizona is responsible for knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors. Now, I'm going to leave you with Los Tigres Del Norte. They are on stage now. They are a part of this effort to drive turnout and get out the vote. The campaign having a little fun with their Latino celebrities surrogates as well, like her on the vice president up here in Vegas with Jennifer Lopez -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Eva McKend, thanks so much.

Lucy Kafanov to you in New Mexico now, Trump spoke to supporters in Albuquerque, Biden won New Mexico by about ten percentage points in 2020. Does Trump think he could actually win New Mexico?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, according to Donald Trump's own words moments ago, Jake, Donald Trump falsely claimed that he did win New Mexico twice. He kicked off this rally here in Albuquerque with more blatant election lies about a rigged vote. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm only here for one reason, they all said don't come. I said, why? You can't win New Mexico. I said, look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: That is completely false, Jake. Donald Trump lost New Mexico by hundred thousand votes four years ago. This is a heavily Democratic border states. A majority of voters here are Hispanic and Native American. Six of the seven office holders elected statewide harm is banning all are Democrats at lucky when the state to the large Hispanic electorate bloc here. He's trying to sort of use the inroads that Republican recently made amongst Latino voters, especially men, and he was very open about making an overt way for these voters.

He said, quote, it's good for my credentials with the Hispanic community. He also said to the crowd and I quote again, quote, don't make me waste a whole half a day here.

The other purpose for this visit begun there is a very competitive local race for the house seat in the second congressional district where a Democratic incumbents is facing off a challenge by a Republican Yvette Herrell. She spoke earlier so Trump trying to use some of his MAGA star power to turn out the vote for her, Jake.

[16:10:01]

TAPPER: Oh, yeah, sure. They have competitive congressional district there, absolutely.

Lucy Kafanov in New Mexico, Eva McKend in Arizona, thanks to both of you.

Let's bring in our panel.

I could be mean and make this all about childhood vaccines and whether or not Trump lost in Mexico twice. But I'm not going to. Let's talk about some other stuff. I want to start with this controversial ad that features Julia Roberts. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIA ROBERTS, AD NARRATOR: In the one place in America, where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you make the right choice?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sure did, honey.

ROBERTS: Remember, what happens in the booth stays in the booth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: You're a Republican woman, what's your take on that? Because it's obviously targeted at Republican women.

KRISTIN DAVISON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: It is. And Julia Roberts. I think she's from Georgia, so they found a swing state actress to do it.

You know, we all talk about the women vote both on campaigns and hear on TV. And we lump women altogether as if they're one monolithic. We all think the same thing. It sounds like an ex-husband or ex-boyfriend talking about their ex-wife or girlfriend here.

The truth of matter is, there are women who will go to the polling booth and tell all their friends that they are voting for Trump and they'll go and vote for Harris.

But there's also going to be a lot of women who go to Lululemon with their friends and Pilates class and say how terrible Trump is and they're going to go vote for him because not every female voter isn't abortion driven voter. Yes. It's a motivational issue for --

TAPPER: I don't think they talk about abortion rights in there.

DAVISON: No, that's how we typically talk about the women's vote. And that's what Harris is running all of her mostly all of her ads targeting women on and yes, the party has there have been words and said things that don't help the issue, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like when you look back at the 2004 campaign, we had security moms.

These were suburban women who maybe weren't too happy with the Bush White House, but they care about the safety of the country. I think we're going to see a lot of suburban women this time around who, even though they really don't like Donald Trump said, what he said last night and J.D. Vance's comments and the whole thing.

But at the end of the day, they are worried about crime in their community, about inflation, and about but security.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It goes deeper than that. I mean, Trump has struggled with women voters since the first time he ran. I mean, this has been a longstanding problem and we were seeing in polling and focus groups early as 2018, where women were proactively bringing up not even about abortion. They've -- the fear of like, you can't even have the TV on when he's on the air with your children in the room or just the meanness that they don't like or the policies. I mean, there are plenty of Trump policies.

DAVISON: Outside abortion.

FINNEY: Hold on, I let you finish. Won't you let me finish?

You know, there are plenty of other policy even under Donald Trump because he did try to repeal the Affordable Care Act. You know, it was harder for poor women to have access to the full range of health care services like prenatal care.

So women understand the stakes of a Trump presidency in multiple -- I agree, we are not a monolith. We care about a range of issues, but I would also say that there are a range of reasons why women will be voting for Vice President Harris and they may not vote for Trump.

TAPPER: There is -- I come back to you because Mike and I have nothing to say about this topic.

FINNEY: You knew women. You know --

MIKE DUBKE, FOREMR TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I found that ad incredibly insulting.

TAPPER: You thought it was --

DUBKE: Totally. As a -- as a -- my wife and I argue about politics all the time. We're on opposite sides of this.

TAPPER: Is that right?

DUBKE: To watch two women wink at each other like we're going to lie to our husbands but we're going to do --

TAPPER: No, I think the first one was a Democratic woman. That was my assumption that the only the MAGA woman was lying in this ad. That doesn't make it better. It reminds --

DUBKE: No, I'm like this is -- they've got some marriage problems they've got -- they got to work out.

FINNEY: That's a whole other show.

TAPPER: Well, one of the things that's interesting is there's this theory of the case, and I don't know if it's true, but Democrats are saying openly about the secret women's vote, okay? So it's not just Julia Roberts or whoever paid for that ad.

Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat running for Senate in Michigan. She posted on Twitter or X, quote, there's a phenomenon I've been hearing about on the trail, the secret women's vote here in Michigan.

Now, I mean I don't know if that's real or wishful thinking and maybe well find out.

DUBKE: Republicans are saying the same thing.

TAPPER: About this, about this.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVISON: I do, I do. I think there's a secret women vote of -- women who -- look, when you hear some of the things that some of the surrogate say. Yeah, it's not great. There's a podcast bro culture that most women, I think Nikki Haley said it, it's -- we wish that maybe they'd be a little bit worried, a little bit differently.

But at the end of the day, women are balancing their family budgets. They're making hard decisions on whether send their kids to soccer camp, or whether they can pay for the nanny. They're trying to figure out how they get prenatal care. They can afford, you know, caregiving older parents. There are a lot of issues that women's balanced every single day that I think will outweigh whether or not they like the tone that someone took in a speech.

TAPPER: Is there any data behind the ad and the Slotkin comment or is it just vibes? I mean, obviously, you have Liz Cheney out there.

[16:15:02]

FINNEY: Yeah.

TAPPER: But is she a phenomenon or is she kind of a unicorn?

FINNEY: I don't know that -- Liz Cheney may be a unicorn for other reasons, but I think the challenge here is that again, if you're a woman and you are in the sandwich generation, yes. Guess what? Kamala Harris is going to let you have help, home aid help for your sick loved ones.

So I think it's anecdotal. There's not hard data and that's one of the challenges of this election. There's a lot of things that we can't measure in the polls.

Polls are not picking up, for example, the 300,000 young people who registered to vote after several phenomenon in terms of different people endorsing. We don't know who the -- what they are, where they are.

TAPPER: Stand by. We got a lot more to discuss and maybe I'll bring you in a little bit more on the next one.

DUBKE: Maybe.

TAPPER: Mike, if you play cards right.

Kamala Harris just arrived in Arizona. We'll listen out for her new lines on the stump if there are any new lines on the stump with just five days left in the race. Plus, Elon Musk and other names floated to play well in Trump's administration if Trump wins. What that could look like and policy specifics from both Harris and Trump what they've both said about an issue that hits home for so many of you prescription drug prices.

We're going to break down their plans coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:20:08]

TAPPER: Back with our 2024 lead, as a clearer picture emerges of Donald Trump's plan to remake the government if he is re-elected, that plan could heavily feature billionaire Elon Musk.

Last night, Trump's current transition coach here, Howard Lutnick told CNN's Kaitlan Collins what Musk's role in a Trump administration might look like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP

LUTNICK: He's not coming into the government. He can't sell SpaceX and Tesla.

COLLINS: He's not going to officially come in?

LUTNICK: No. So what he's--

COLLINS: So one person--

LUTNICK: He's going to be adjacent to it, think, adjacent to it, and writing software for the government, and then giving the software to the government, and helping the government.

COLLINS: So --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, Lutnick was referencing the fact that Musk's many companies including SpaceX and Tesla, have a profit-motivated interest in business with the U.S. government, which could of course result in a major conflict of interest. But Lutnick's definition of Musk's role sounds a bit different from what musk has said publicly that he would be enabled to, quote, start from scratch he would be tasked with a massive downsizing of the federal government.

With us now to discuss and also his book, Republican Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida. He's a retired Army Green Beret and author of a brand new book called "Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret".

Most of this interview is going to be about your book, but I do want to ask you, since were five days from the election, there are a lot of officials and key battleground states telling CNN that they're struggling to combat the immense amount of falsehoods coming not just on Twitter, but from mosque and spreading on Twitter. One Arizona Republican official says, they've tried hand-delivering Musk notes to get them to tone down nothing work.

You write in the book that you're a big mosque admirer, and I understand why is inventing and his risk risk-taking. I totally get it. But on this issue, mighty be better if he turned it down when it comes to allegations of election malfeasance that aren't proven, especially because he could become a central figure in a second, Donald Trump presidency.

REP. MIKE WALTZ (R-FL): Well, Jake, let me take that back part of that first. I mean, look, he's revolutionized, not one, not two but there were three different industries. I remember everyone saying when he bought into Twitter that it was going to completely crater. He eliminated, what, 70 percent of its employees because he thought it was too bloated and was one of the reasons it was under -- it was not profitable and it's -- it's working.

And Lord knows, when you have a Pentagon that cannot audit itself year after year after year, when you have a massive bloat in our bureaucracy that many Americans feel like is not working for them or if you look at what he did for SpaceX just ten years ago, he was having to sue the federal government, having to sue the air force to even have a shot. And now he's responsible for 80 percent of our launches and is completely reinserted. America as a dominant player in space when the Chinese and Russians are literally trying to take our constellations out that would send our economy back into the dark ages I welcome his input. I welcome private sector input, and I certainly welcome more efficiency when it comes to the private -- or when it comes to the bloated federal bureaucracy.

And as I say in my book, that adaptive mindset that bottoms up leadership Green Berets specialized in unconventional warfare and he is certainly unconventional. We should take those ideas on board.

TAPPER: So I take your point when it comes to SpaceX and Tesla, I'm not sure that they've reached the profit margins and goals on Twitter. And there's also all sorts of other stuff in terms of hate speech but I don't want to know about that --

WALTZ: Better than where they were, better than where they were.

TAPPER: I want to talk about --

WALTZ: Better than where they were and look on -- I mean just on his approach, he said, look, if you want to fight information that's on with more information and you start going down a very slippery slope with who determines what it misinformation is. And we just saw, Jake, that had not the campaign stepped in early voting would have been shut down in one county.

You've got allegations of misinform -- or a bad applications in three different counties. It's now been referred to the AG. We should -- we should look into those allegations and we should take him very seriously.

TAPPER: I don't want to spend his whole time talking about Elon Musk. Over the summer, you told "Punchbowl News" that you'd be open to the post of secretary of defense in a second Trump administration. Have you had any conversations with Trump about it?

WALTZ: You know, Jake, one thing to understand about President Trump. He's kind of superstitious. Everybody who's around him knows that. He doesn't talk about it.

He talks about seven swing states and the next rally and how to best get his message out. And what I told "Punchbowl" just to be clear, was, you know, if he calls, you know, I'm a soldier at heart and I salute and move out. But --

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: You're the only Greet Beret in Congress, right?

WALTZ: I'm the only Green Beret in Congress. We're about to add more. And given my positions on Armed Services, on Intel, on Foreign Affairs, and the fact that I've actually worked inside the Pentagon and seen the drastic reform it needs.

[16:25:13]

And frankly, Jake, I think gives you've seen, too, the accountability that it needs. When I'm holding up a bag of bolts to the Air Force secretary, that costs 100 bucks in a hardware store and the Air Force is paying 90,000 and nobody gets fired, nobody gets fired in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and that total debacle that has terrorism roaring back. You need accountability, you need a change of culture, and you certainly need to use taxpayers dollars much more efficiently as we've faced these threats.

And the attributes to do that, I think mirror a lot of what we see Green Berets who are often alone and afraid all over the world. And they have a strategic vision and then they have to figure it out on their own, much like entrepreneurs have to do. And I talk about those attributes.

TAPPER: Right.

WALTZ: How they try -- tried to herd the tribes now and now in Washington, D.C. in the swamp, which some days are much tougher.

TAPPER: So, the book explains how your time as a green beret in your view prepared you for politics. You write in part, quote, in order to speak truth to power, you need more than courage. You need to first discern what the truth is.

As Green Berets, we price our ability to listen to connect, to navigate past emotion and danger, to find out what really matters most. Some of the graves but his regret some of my life are moments when I could have spoken truth to power, but did not, unquote.

And you have a really very -- you start the book with this very powerful anecdote about working with some Afghans who are about to kill somebody and you talk them out of it, then they'll say, okay, great, well, torture him instead. And you talk them out of that and so there's most of the book for people -- first of all, you're giving the money to Gold Star families, all of it. And second of all, people, mostly not about politics.

WALTZ: That's right.

TAPPER: It's mostly about being a green beret but I would love to know. Can you give us an example of a time in politics when you have spoken truth to power, to your own side?

WALTZ: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, I mean, I spoke truth to power in the Bush administration when generals were telling the president that the Afghan army would be able to fight on its own independently, on their watch. In the next 18 months, you know, when that was Jake? That was 2007.

And they were -- they were literally just BS-ing the White House and feeding a bunch of nonsense because, they wanted success on their watch. And we saw that policy drift over and over and over again for 20 years.

I think were seeing it now many cases in Ukraine where we can't define success, we can't define what's in our critical national interests. Is it in our national interests to expel every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine including Crimea? How much is that going to cost? How much is it going to take what red line? And are we willing to cross?

And I've spoken it on Iran as well. In the sense that, you know, we -- we have to defend Israel, but at the same time, Iran is the crux of the issue and we have to support the Iranian people like Mahsa Amini, the school girl who was bludgeoned to death.

That's not nation-building. That's not, you know, what a lot of people want to call it, but America has the lead yet we couldn't have taken out Soleimani if we withdrew all of our forces out of the Middle East like some of my side, say we should do.

TAPPER: Okay. Congressman Mike Waltz, the book, "Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret. Thanks so much for being with us. Best of luck with the book.

Repeatedly, now, Trump is baselessly claiming there's cheating going on about around states. He did so again, moments ago, New Mexico. We're going to dig into the clams, the reality on the ground, next

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:32:49]

TAPPER: In our law and justice lead today, it's ballot watch. Pennsylvania is ground zero for Donald Trump's claims of election fraud. He posted on Truth Social today, quote, we caught them cheating big in Pennsylvania. That's the all caps. I'm just trying to help him with the all caps, sir.

Must announce and prosecute now. This is a criminal violation of the law.

CNN's Sara Murray is joining me now.

Does it work when I do that, with the all caps?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, it's something. It's something for sure.

TAPPER: That's what you say anytime I tried anything weird.

CNN's Sara Murray is joining us now. What is Trump referring to in Pennsylvania? And is there any truth to it because we have seen at least one legitimate issue.

MURRAY: Yeah. I mean, there have been some issues. It doesn't mean that there is widespread cheating. I should also note that last night he said he thought the issues had been taken care of in Pennsylvania. And then this morning he is back to complaining.

So I do want to run through the legitimate issues that are under investigation and those have mainly had to do with Lancaster and York counties.

TAPPER: Lancaster.

MURRAY: Lancaster, sorry.

TAPPER: Lancaster.

MURRAY: We'll work on it.

And whether there were the is these fraudulent voter applications again, this is not the same thing as a fraudulent ballot. This is an application and Lancaster they said that there are hundreds of applications that were fraudulent. There were hundreds more where the information and it couldn't be verified. Again, this is under investigation. These are not people who cast votes illegally.

And in York County, there were 700 questionable voter registration applications that have been referred to the district attorneys office for investigation. So again, these are issues we don't know what the source of these issues are, but they've been uncovered. There under investigation. This is how the process is supposed to work if there are irregularities and these kinds of applications.

TAPPER: And we should just note for those who are only now paying attention to elections. This happens every time, every single time for every single race, city council, mayor, there's always questions and it's -- the authorities look into that and they should.

I want to turn to Elon Musk now, if I can. His influence on the elections in addition to the million dollars giveaways and ill get to those in a little bit. We know he's releasing a barrage of misinformation in different states. Some of it on Twitter or X, how our election officials handling this barrage of misinformation. MURRAY: It's kind of like a second job for them now that they have to

figure out what they're going to do about this fire hose of misinformation coming their way and how they're going to debunk it.

[16:35:07]

A number of them have tried to fact check Elon Musk on Twitter. We've seen that from Jocelyn Benson in Michigan. She is probably had the most traction and trying to do that.

Stephen Richer, who is an election official out in Arizona, actually tried to have a friend slip a handwritten note to Elon Musk with correct and accurate election information I mean, the short answer is there's no way that you can mitigate the megaphone that Elon Musk has with his 200 million followers. The fact that he owns the X platform, the fact that the algorithm is pushing conservative content forward to people and you know, X says that they're still abiding by all of their public policies about election interference, about misleading content.

But if you go onto this platform, if you just go on to the election integrity community that musk has created, you see things that have already been debunked.

TAPPER: Yeah. I just might notice as a Twitter or X user, there's a category of people that I follow up and that's following. But every time I log on, I'm on the for you thing, which is just what Elon Musk and his folks think I should be reading.

MURRAY: You could try --

TAPPER: And it always -- and it always includes Elon Musk.

MURRAY: Yeah, yeah.

TAPPER: But, you know, even if I'm not following him, he's -- it's always his views on things and they're quite often misinformed.

MURRAY: Yes. He's obviously, you know, very pro-Trump. He's got 200 million followers. And so again, he just has a huge way of spreading this kind of conservative misinformation.

TAPPER: But my point is I think he has more than 200 million followers because I think everybody is essentially a follower because he's got this for you thing but I digress.

Sara Murray, always good to see you. Thanks so much. Thanks for keeping an eye on the ballot watch for us.

We're going to go to battleground Georgia next, and were going to speak with one of the top election officials in the state. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:40:51] TAPPER: In our health lead now, U.S. drug prices are nearly triple what they are in other countries. And in this final week of the election, these sobering costs for mate and central at both Kamala Harris's and Donald Trump's campaigns.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Twenty-two-year-old Rose Keller has cystic fibrosis, using a combination of drugs, including Trikafta, a relatively new drug that treats the underlying cause of her disease, she's been able to do pretty well. She graduated college. She\s now on our way to becoming an attorney.

ROSE KELLER, CYSTIC FIBROSIS PATIENT: I need these drugs to survive.

GUPTA: But it turns out, survival doesn't come cheap over the past 12 months.

KELLER: Over the past 12 months, I've spent $3,500 roughly out-of- pocket on all of my medications.

GUPTA: The federal report from this year found that drugs in the United States cost nearly three times more than in other similar nations.

Now, pharmaceutical companies will say that premium price reflects the research and development that takes to bring these drugs to market. And oftentimes, that means coming to the United States first and benefiting patients like Rose.

KELLER: In 2019 when the FDA approved Trikafta, the doors opened. All of a sudden, I could start dreaming about, hey, maybe I want to go to law school. Maybe I have post-graduate dreams. Maybe -- maybe there's a whole life out in front of me that I could take advantage of and make for myself.

GUPTA: But on the campaign trail, the candidates both say they have plans to make drugs more affordable. The Biden-Harris administration helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which gave Medicare the largest purchaser of prescription drugs the ability to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies directly. The law also capped insulin prices to $35 a month for all seniors and limited out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those on Medicare to $2,000 a year.

Harris says, all Americans should now benefit from those price caps, not just those on Medicare.

HARRIS: I'll lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for everyone with your support, not only our seniors.

And demand transparency from the middlemen who operate between big pharma and the insurance companies who use opaque practices. GUPTA: Donald Trump also highlights transparency as an issue, saying his administration would, quote, increased fairness through price transparency and further reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

However, the campaign has not provided additional details.

According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, over half of all American do worry about affording prescription drugs and about 30 percent of adults skip their medications or they ration them because of cost.

And for young, people ages 18 to 29, like Rose, that figure rose to 40 percent.

KELLER: In just, I could not live without them. I just can't really afford to have the same and sort of young adulthood that everybody else has. I want to spend time with my friends. I want to go out to dinner. I want to buy holiday gifts for my partner's family, you know? But as of now, I have to make sure that that money is set aside.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And our thanks to Dr. Sanjay Gupta for that report.

Coming up next election security in battleground, Georgia, the operations going on right now to help election workers who may feel threatened as the balance begin to come in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:48:47]

TAPPER: Returning to our 2024 lead, and one of the most watched states this cycle, the battleground state of Georgia. The big headline, there's only one more day tomorrow for early in-person voting in the Peach State. Early voting has been underway since October 15. It is setting records.

Let's bring in an old friend of THE LEAD, Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer of the Georgia Secretary of State's Office.

Mr. Sterling, so only one more day for early voting. How is it going?

GABRIEL STERLING, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, GEORGIE SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE: well, right before I came on, we just double-check with our elections team and we've crossed the 3,650,000 total votes cast, which is over 50 percent of our active voters.

TAPPER: That's quite a bit and how does that square with some of the more dire warnings that were made by Democrats before Georgia's election law was passed.

STERLING: By whatever do you mean, Jake. I mean, they tried to say it was Jim Crow 2.0, that we were going to be suppressing those who were really hard to vote and just the facts don't bear that out. I mean, it's been really easy to vote. We've had no lines everybody who wants to vote can vote and we're just proud of Georgians showing up in the strong away as they have.

And it's every -- it's young, old, black, white rapport all over the state, rural, urban, exurban, suburban.

[16:50:03]

They're excited to get out and vote now it may also be fatigue. Now, it may also be fatigued, and just want to get it over with. Who knows what the drivers are, but were happy to see it.

TAPPER: Yeah. You're also gearing up for election day itself that includes issuing what are essentially panic buttons sorts for election workers. Tell us about that.

STERLING: Well, we have something we deployed at 2022 election. Originally, Secretary Raffensperger wanted to have a tool to allow whole manager is to notify their county elections office, the state elections office and local law enforcement. It's called a poll worker first response text tool. And we thought about a panic button, but a panic button could mean anything. A panic button could be a jerk and the voting area, or you have somebody with a gun, there's no context.

So, with a texting tool. We have context, we can eliminate that game of telephone that happens sometimes. But on top of that, we've had several different convenings of local law enforcement and local elections officials to kind of get game plan, what to do if a threat action does occur on Election Day.

TAPPER: There's so much concern about vote, voter integrity. Voting integrity, and also there's so much election misinformation out there. Some of it from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Can you talk about the things you're doing to make sure all the votes are counted and that all the votes that are counted, or legal votes from a citizens?

STERLING: Well, we have done more to invest in less maintenance and then any other state in the country, we arguably are the cleanest voting lists in America. We just did a citizenship audit to show that we don't have any noncitizen on the role we found some that have been registered before we were real ID state way back in 2012, most of which have engaged in any kind of voting activity whatsoever, but we went ahead and canceled with those 20 out of 8.2 million.

And what we are seeing is we use voter ID for every form of voting, early in person, mail ballot, and Election Day voting. So we have a very secure system. We know it's safe. We know it's secure and we know it's easy to vote.

And I don't know what's going to happen on Tuesday or the days after when the count comes in. I have no idea who's going to win. I have no idea if its going to be close or if its going to be a blowout by Harris, a blowout by Trump. I have no idea.

I want to play what seems like some pretty good advice you gave voters during a news conference on Wednesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STERLING: This is a tight election and I want to make sure that all the hair supporters and all the Trump's supporters who cant possibly imagine the person that hate winning, it might happen it might happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So what is your advice or even candidates who might have to come to grips with losing or their favored candidate losing?

STERLING: We've had a history of over 200 years of the person who comes up short, shaking the hand of the person who won and moving on, we do it at baseball game until we got a lot of youth baseball championship games go on right now across the country and as one side that wins and one side that loses, but at the end of the game, they all go out and shake hands.

Secretary Raffensperger used as an example, when he saw his grandsons game where his team was winning the entire game at the end, they came up short. We have to get back to normalizing, conceding elections again and that's what we need to see in Georgia. We saw it in 2018. We had a Democrat come up short and not concede. In 2020, we had Republican come up short and not concede.

In 2022, every person who lost conceded and everybody and everybody was a lot less stress. We have to understand these things, take time, but these systems were going to have the most secure election in American history across the country. Georgia included, but across the country. And we know that because we've invested so much time, energy and effort in every state in the nation.

So we have to learn to accept the outcomes.

TAPPER: Yeah, amen to that.

You first burst on the scene in December -- early December 2020. You were telling Donald Trump and those who supported Donald Trump to stop with the misinformation that somebody was going to get hurt. Somebody was going to get killed. Sadly, you're not heated and a month later, not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., that did happen. How does the misinformation today compare with where we were in 2020?

It's at a higher level now, and I know people talk about A.I. And if you don't have a A.I., you have to have one random person, like one random claim. And it gets retweeted by an influencer or put on TikTok. And I just kind of rolls out there and the people have a fertile mind who want to hear it, who reinforces what they already believed.

And one of the things I tell people all the time is if you have a partisan itch that's a piece of social media information scratches, take it with a grain of salt, try to find other sources of information to make sure its real before you started spray reading it yourself.

TAPPER: Gabe Sterling, thank you so much and, of course, we're all hoping for the best for you and all of your hard working election officials and employees. Thank you so much for what you do.

Kamala Harris is approaching the podium --

[16:55:01]

STERLING: We appreciate it, Jake, and we're looking for --

TAPPER: All right. Sorry about that.

Kamala Harris approaching the podium there in Arizona, were going to listen to a bit coming up. Donald Trump is getting ready for a rally in Nevada. And then there's the messages that they're pushing their political ads. We're going to take a look at the tone of some of those next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We're down to just five days. That's right. Five. Count them, five days to Election Day. You know what that means?

It means the sweet, sweet symphonic tunes of CNN's election music.

The focus of both campaigns and shifting out west to a handful a crucial battleground state for both campaigns are hoping to boost turnout, especially among Latino voters for Vice President Kamala Harris. It's a rally getting underway in Phoenix right now.

We're going to listen to some of her remarks live in just a minute, but and I'm also going to be joined by the state's Democratic Senator Mark Kelly for his thoughts on the race.

Vice President Harris next heads to Nevada for two more campaign rallies, including one with singer and actress Jennifer Lopez.