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Biden Takes Questions For First Time At The Podium Of Briefing Room; Tonight: Trump To Hold Town Hall In North Carolina; Today: Harris Campaigns In Battleground Michigan; Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) Discusses About Kamala Harris Campaign Strategy; UFC Star Discusses Why Trump Appeals To Some Voters; Trump & Allies Using 2020 Strategies To Cast Doubt on 2024 Election. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 04, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:01:20]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. I'm Boris Sanchez, live in the nation's capital, alongside Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Great to be with you.

SANCHEZ: Alisyn, we're grateful to have you. Brianna Keilar obviously has the day off.

And we begin here in Washington, D.C., where just moments ago, President Biden made a surprise visit during the White House press briefing, his first time ever taking questions there as president and he took quite a few. He seemed to relish his exchanges with reporters.

CAMEROTA: Yes, they basically had to drag him out of there. The President spoke about everything from the ongoing crisis in the Middle East to the latest positive jobs report numbers. He was also asked if he believes the upcoming election will be free and fair and peaceful.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm confident it'll be free and fair. I don't know whether it will be peaceful.

The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn't like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.

If you notice - I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he'd accept the outcome of the election. And they haven't even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I'm concerned about what they're going to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. So let's bring in CNN Senior White House Correspondent, Kayla Tausche, and senior contributor for Axios, Margaret Talev.

Okay. So Kayla, tell us about the moment in the room, the surprise, when President Biden walked in and what he said.

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, there were audible gasps in the room when President Biden walked through the sliding door from lower press into the briefing room for the first time in his presidency. That's a customary thing for his predecessors to have done, but it's the first time that Biden himself has stepped out to take questions from reporters in that format in nearly four years time.

And so you can imagine that there was quite a clamoring of hands raised. And his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, moving along quite quickly to get to a handful of questions before ushering him out of the room.

He appeared in good spirits. He really wanted to talk about a couple of economic wins, not only the positive jobs report surprisingly so earlier today, but also the tentative agreement between dock workers and foreign port operators to have a 90-day pause on any potential strike and to try to work out their differences.

But the bulk of the questions that he got from reporters concerned the Middle East, considering the fact that the region is still on tenterhooks and there's a possibility of a response by Israel and a tit for tat engagement that could further inflame the region. And he was asked about what he believes would be appropriate for Israel to do. And he said that the Israelis have not concluded how they're going to respond.

And when he was asked specifically about comments that he made earlier this week that set markets into a tizzy and spiked the price of oil, that he essentially left the door open to them striking Iran's oil reserves, he said, "If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives."

So certainly suggesting that he would prefer that Israel did not strike those oil reserves, just as he said earlier in the week, that he would be opposed to Israel striking Iran's nuclear facilities. He said that the U.S. and Israeli teams are in constant contact more than 12 hours a day. But as for potential call between him and the Israeli prime minister, he said he's not necessarily jonesing for that, but it will happen when it happens and when the U.S. feels that Israel has made a conclusion about how to respond.

SANCHEZ: Yes, he seemed to chafe at a reporter the way she phrased the question. He felt that she was suggesting that he wanted to talk to Netanyahu, but Netanyahu didn't want to talk to him.

[15:05:00]

The President clearly wanting to be as explicit as possible about where that relationship stands.

Margaret, to you, as a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association, I imagine you were surprised to see President Biden come out there for the first time in his presidency with just a few months left in office.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it's - honestly, under sort of the old school ways that things used to operate unimaginable that you would have a president wait that long to come address reporters from that briefing room and there are different rooms that are appropriate for different conversations.

Obviously, you know, you might have an address from the Oval Office or from the East Room or something like that. But what he did today is precisely what a president would do when communicating with the American people in the press corps on sort of daily developments. But remember, this is a president whose successful campaign in 2020 came amid COVID and sometimes dubbed the basement campaign.

And then, after the debate performance in June, there's just been very little incentive to be out there. His team, for most of his presidency, has sought to minimize his give and take exposure with reporters to try to avoid gaffes. And that strategy has not always helped. But today is something different. He has only a limited number of days remaining in his presidency and a rare moment where really good news for him and his legacy. And the White House is also very good news for Vice President Harris, who is on the campaign trail today.

So this combination of the port strike being suspended or ended while they go back to the table, that will last through the end of the year and into January. And this jobs report, both good in terms of numbers and good in terms of wages that, in theory, could inspire not just Americans' confidence, but voters' confidence. What president would not want to get out there, make some good news for himself and try to make some good news for the person who he hopes will carry on and win another term in his, you know, in his place?

CAMEROTA: Yes, but the timing was interesting, Boris, as we noted, because that was the exact moment when Vice President Harris was speaking in Detroit about the port workers' strike being resolved. So she wanted to talk about it. And then the President made this surprise appearance.

And Kayla, I'm just wondering, I know this is an inside the beltway question, but Boris and I were wondering, do their communication staffs coordinate? I mean, did he know he was stepping on, you know, Vice President Harris' big moment of being able to talk about that on national television?

TAUSCHE: Well, I think that he would feel that because it, you know, he's the sitting president and his administration is currently in office, that he also deserves the right to talk about it, too, considering that it was his officials who were at the table with both parties urging them toward a deal. I'm told there was a 5:30 AM Zoom call yesterday where essentially they floated the idea of an extension.

So, certainly, I think he believes he has the right to take credit for something like that. But he also fielded a question about Vice President Harris, and he used the opportunity to give her a lot of credit, equal credit for all of the work that his administration has done, saying that the teams work very closely together and that she's had a seat at the table for nearly everything that they've done.

So, you know, at some point, you know, that there will be a lot of oxygen being taken up out of the room by Vice President Harris, her campaign. And then, as we now know, President Obama campaigning for her next week. But, you know, he also wants to be able to tout his record and his accomplishments, which is why I think we saw him out there today.

SANCHEZ: Yes. You have to imagine that there were some folks on the Harris campaign that were not so pumped to hear from President Biden at that moment, especially because she's in Michigan, Margaret, and she's trying to tout this major port worker deal as significant unions, the firefighters union, the Teamsters Union have declined to endorse a candidate for president, seen as a blow to Democrats. I'm wondering what you make of that and also the fact that she herself hasn't actually done a press conference like what President Biden just did since she became the Democratic nominee.

TALEV: As a journalist and as a member of the public, I think presidential nominees should be available for questions from the people who represent the public and can voice the questions of the public. So on a personal and professional note, I'd like to see more of it.

I think managing the political relationships with unions, especially unions where a large portion of the membership are white men, has become increasingly difficult for the Democratic Party as Republicans have sought to sort of subsume that that place and have had success culturally, even among union members who say, okay, maybe the Republican Party doesn't always represent my union interest.

[15:10:08]

But culturally, I'm in more agreement with them. That's a challenge for her. But I think the end to that strike is good economic news. There could have been major spillover effects if that had continued through the end of this year and the jobs report numbers are good news. And that is good news for Harris. It is also good news for the sitting president.

And I'm with Kayla on this one. I think, you know, there's protocol, a lot of political protocols behind the scenes for who goes first and who waits. But the President gets to talk when the President wants to talk. And anyone, including his running mate, who's running a campaign, also has the ability to delay their own - or rearrange their own starts in speech. I don't know what the behind the scenes communications were yet at this point.

I'll say one more thing. You flagged it in showing the video clips at the beginning of this segment. It is noteworthy that President Biden addressed his concerns about former President Trump. I think part of his thinking on this messaging, and you'll hear it from Vice President Harris as well, is that former President Trump's messaging, JD Vance's messaging and the GOP messaging has all been that the economy is terrible and it's not getting better and it was better during Trump.

And it's really on Democrats at this point in the closing last weeks of this campaign to try to reframe that narrative, not just by talking about good indicators and stats, but by reaching people emotionally and saying, you don't have to feel that way. It's it isn't really that way. And I think that is what you're seeing him try to do. We'll see how successful it is.

But Trump still holds the lead perception-wise over Harris in terms of handling of the economy. And if she cannot shrink that much smaller, it could be a problem in crucial swing states, including Michigan.

CAMEROTA: Okay, Margaret Talev, Kayla, thank you both very much.

SANCHEZ: Meantime, on the other side, on the campaign trail right now, we're about to see a remarkable joint appearance involving former President Donald Trump and a popular Republican governor that he's had a tense relationship with since he lost the last race for the White House. In just moments, we're going to see Trump standing side by side with Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, in an area that's handling the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

You might recall, Kemp refused to go along with Trump's push to overturn the election results in Georgia in 2020. And that resulted in a simmering feud between the two that led to insults from Trump to Kemp as recently as September.

CAMEROTA: So we're standing by for that. And then later tonight, Donald Trump will travel to North Carolina, another state that is, of course, dealing with the aftermath of Helene's devastation. CNN's Steve Contorno is live in Fayetteville, where Trump is set to hold a town hall later tonight.

So, Steve, first, let's talk about, as we've said, this Georgia moment between the former president and Gov. Kemp. What will that look like?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Yes, that's right. These two have not been in a room together since Donald Trump tried to pressure Republicans in the state of Georgia to overturn the election in 2020. And he has had a fractured relationship with Republicans in that state ever since.

Remember, many Republicans in the state actually blamed Donald Trump for the way that he acted after that election, costing them, they believe, two Senate seats in Georgia. And he has continued to feud with the Republicans there in the state, especially Brian Kemp.

It was recently as earlier this year, he said that Kemp was in - to blame for the terrible crime rate in the state of Georgia, blaming him for the state's, quote, "average economy," calling him, quote, "a bad guy, a disloyal guy and a very average governor." I can't think of a worse insult Donald Trump could throw at someone than disloyal. And yet here they will be together in the aftermath of this tragedy and this natural disaster. Trump, as well, has been leaning on Brian Kemp's political machine in

Georgia. So they have been trying to bury the hatchet and move on for the sake of the Republican Party.

SANCHEZ: Steve Contorno live for us in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Steve, thank you so much.

So Vice President Harris is in battleground Michigan, where she's going to speak at a campaign event in Flint later tonight. And earlier she was in Detroit making her pitch to unions during that stop.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If reelected, he intends to launch a full on attack on unions and the freedom to organize. He will ban public sector unions, roll back workplace safety protections and appoint a union buster to run the Department of Labor. And on top of that, Donald Trump will give billionaires and the biggest corporations massive tax cuts like he did last time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:15:00]

SANCHEZ: As the race for the White House enters its final weeks, the vice president is getting some help from Democratic heavyweights, the popular former President Barack Obama will hit the trail to rally support for the Vice President, kicking off a 27-day blitz through key battleground states next week.

I quickly want to give you some live images from Georgia where we are seeing former President Donald Trump shaking hands. This is in Columbia County/. You see Gov. Brian Kemp there in the background. Let's actually listen to the former president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... maybe the worst.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Very brief remarks there from former President Donald Trump. He was describing the damage from Hurricane Helene as he's shaking hands with folks on the ground there. Not the first stop for former President Trump in the southeast since this hurricane swept through, killing at least 120 plus people.

We're going to monitor this sit down between former President Trump and the governor of Georgia. And of course, we'll bring you the headlines as we get them, so stay tuned for that.

We want to open up the conversation now and discuss all the recent developments with Democratic congressman of Florida, Maxwell Frost. He's a member of the Harris campaign national advisory board.

Congressman, thank you so much for being with us.

We were all surprised this afternoon to see President Biden in the press briefing room, engaging with reporters for the first time in his presidency. And we haven't actually seen that from Vice President Harris, a formal press conference since she became the Democratic nominee. She has done way fewer one-on-one sit downs with the press compared to former President Trump. Do you think it's time that the media strategy changed for the Vice President? Would you like to see her do more of that?

REP. MAXWELL FROST (D-FL): I think she's doing a great job. I mean, if you see what she's been focusing on, is having a very aggressive agenda of going out into communities and speaking directly to the American people through these huge rallies and these big events that she's doing. Of course, from big events, but also small events where she's speaking with people, especially students, young people, seniors, folks of different demographics and very close settings as well. And I think this is really part of the reason we're seeing her helping our party with enthusiasm all across the board right now.

So I think she should continue what she's doing. We're seeing a lot more interviews come out. Yes, it's not always with traditional press. We've seen her do a lot of interviews with a lot of cultural media organizations and places like that because she's trying to reach out to voters who might not pay attention to politics right now. But I think she's doing a good job and I think we'll continue to see her do that.

SANCHEZ: Congressman, the vice president has been attacked repeatedly for the Biden administration's immigration policy. And I wanted to ask you something regarding her plans. If elected, she said that she is going to get that bipartisan Senate bill that failed earlier this year through Congress and that she will sign it.

One of your colleagues, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, said that she had a hard time believing Democrats would focus solely on that or even start there. Do you have a hard time believing what the vice president is promising she'll do on the campaign trail?

FROST: Well, that bill, even though many of us had different disagreements with it, that bill was put forth in a bipartisan way in the Senate. And we got - we can't just say that it failed. We have to say why it failed.

It failed because Donald Trump picked up the phone, called Republicans in the in the Senate and said, don't let it pass because I want to campaign on the issue. I don't want to solve it. I want to campaign on it. Make sure that bill doesn't pass. We can't give Joe Biden or Kamala Harris a win. And that's why that bill failed, because of Trump. And I think it's important to know that.

The other thing is in a Democratic House and Democratic White House, the leadership will - the leadership will work with the White House to identify what are the priorities going forth. Of course, immigration is something that's top of mind for people right now and I'm sure we'll have fruitful discussions once Kamala Harris is elected President of the United States and figuring out how do we have both a humane but also orderly process at the border to make sure that we're still in touch with our values of a country, the human right to claim asylum, but also making sure that that process is orderly as well.

SANCHEZ: And Congressman, I want to play a clip for you of a fascinating conversation between CNN's Audie Cornish and MMA star Jorge Masvidal. He's an outspoken Trump supporter, and she asked him why the former president is appealing to young men like him. Here's that clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JORGE MASVIDAL, PROFESSIONAL BOXER AND MIXED MARTIAL ARTIST: We're going to work 12 hour, 14 hour shifts every day, you know, and then at the end of the week, I'm going to count up, see how much money I got. Doesn't take a rocket scientist.

[15:20:00]

These same hardworking dogs are going to be like, no matter how many hours I put in now, I'm still coming up considerably short. Things are considerably more expensive.

SANCHEZ: Congressman, Trump has made gains with both black and Hispanic young men. What's your pitch to try and change the minds of voters like Jorge Masvidal?

FROST: What I would tell him and what I've been telling young voters, especially young men of color across this country, is number one, we got to look at the record here and we got to understand that, you know, Donald Trump and JD Vance keep saying, think about four years ago, think about four years ago.

I remember four years ago. I remember how Donald Trump completely mismanaged this pandemic, which put us in the situation we were in, in terms of the economy. And I remember President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris coming in, fixing that mess, making sure that everyone was vaccinated, had what they need so we can go outside of our homes, get out of lockdown and come back to normal life.

And I always, you know, encourage people to remember that. Sometimes it's difficult to think back to that time. It was a very traumatic time. But in the midst of all this death, all this chaos, our economy in a free fall, Donald Trump was going up and telling people to put bleach in their arms.

When we changed the leadership under the Biden-Harris administration, we got our act together as a country. We were able to go back outside, be with our families, go to concerts, go to work, start our small businesses. And it's part of the reason we're seeing this jobs report that just came out because of these policies actually work. Sometimes it takes a little time for the policies of a president to actually come to fruition so we can all feel it. But I always encourage people to really think about where we were at

the end of Donald Trump's presidency and where we are right now. And the fact that Kamala Harris is talking to the anxieties of a lot of young men. You know, for me, I just did a back to school tour. Every young man of color I spoke with, one of the top issues was housing.

They said, man, I can't rent. I'm having a hard time with barriers to entry with housing. I'm scared one day I'm not - might not be able to own. And I'm going to be honest. I've had criticisms for both parties in terms of not having a comprehensive housing platform, but Kamala Harris is the first major presidential nominee to say, you know what, one of the first plans I'm putting forth is a major plan to make sure that we help both tenants and homeowners alike.

And when I speak with young men of color, black and brown men about that plan, they leave saying, you know what, that's someone who's speaking to a direct anxiety that I have. And I think as long as we continue to get that message out there, I'll be on the trail doing it. The vice president's doing it. Tim Walz, a bunch of surrogates are doing it. I think we're going to see that the Vice President is not only going to win by a substantial margin, young men of color, but have the highest youth voter turnout in the history of our country.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Maxwell Frost, we have to leave the conversation there. Appreciate your perspective.

FROST: Thanks for having me on.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

Still to come, new CNN reporting showing how Donald Trump and his allies are using the same strategies they used four years ago to cast doubt on the upcoming election.

Plus, country music star Garth Brooks says new allegations against him are all lies after being accused by a former makeup artist of sexual assault and battery.

And later, how climate change could have fueled Hurricane Helene's devastation in the North Carolina mountains. Those stories and much more still to come on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:27:31]

CAMEROTA: We are just 32 days away from Election Day somehow.

SANCHEZ: Somehow.

CAMEROTA: And CNN has new reporting about how Donald Trump may be planning to contest election results again.

SANCHEZ: If you want to know what's ahead, just look to the past, the 2020 and the attempts that were made in key battleground states to overturn the election. CNN's Zachary Cohen has been doing a deep dive into all of this.

So, Zach, what are some of the similarities between today and what happened then?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Hey, guys. If you look at that recent court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith, a lot of the tactics that he says Trump and his allies try to use to challenge the 2020 election results, they seem to be back in play here ahead of the 2024 election. And one of those is this attempt to spread widespread claims about noncitizens voting. That's something experts say is incredibly rare, but we're already seeing Donald Trump and several of his Republican allies banging that drum just 32 days ahead of the election, as you mentioned.

The other thing we're already seeing is an avalanche of lawsuits challenging voter rolls. This is things like taking issue in key states, claiming that there are dead people on those voter rolls, that states are not maintaining them the way they're supposed to be. Again, this is something that has repeatedly been thrown out in court in the past, but we're already seeing happen in the lead up to this upcoming election.

And the other thing that's popped up only one time in 2020, but we're seeing increasingly more now is this issue of state election boards refusing to certify their election results, right? That's something that happened in Michigan in 2020. It was - it failed. That effort failed. But, I mean, it's something that really concerns election officials coming up ahead of 2024. And then just the general atmosphere of misinformation that exists right now around the 2024 Election, as you guys know, that was a huge problem after and leading up to even 2020.

We're seeing that again ahead of 2024. And it's something that election officials tell us they're really worried to not just convince people of things that aren't true, but could inspire them to take real world action, like show up at voting locations and even potentially carry out violence. That's something we hear repeatedly from people in key swing - key states as election officials are increasingly feeling - or feeling these threats after what happened in 2020.

And ultimately, one voting rights group called this the MAGA playbook for overturning an election, all these things taken together. And it's hard not to notice that some of the same lawyers, especially that were involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 results, they're back in the forefront, again, doing so - laying the groundwork for these things in 2024.

SANCHEZ: Also notable that it's not happening in other states.

[15:30:00]

The majority of this activity is happening in battleground states, so that tells you a lot.

COHEN: Absolutely, the key states that will determine who the president is. SANCHEZ: Yes. Zach Cohen, thank you so much for that.