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Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) Interviewed on Polls Showing Black Men Will Vote for Donald Trump in Larger Numbers than for Previous Republican Presidential Candidates; Kamala Harris Campaigns in Swing States in Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney; Some States Seeing Record Early Voting; Republicans Trying To Challenge Elon Musk's Million Dollar Giveaways to Registered Voters; Trump, Harris Fight to Clinch Crucial Votes Two Weeks from Election Day. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired October 22, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: There's so much discussions around polling showing Black men voting for Donald Trump in larger numbers this time around. With this in the backdrop, what do you think black men are leaning, and why do you think they're learning more towards Donald Trump than any other Republican candidate in the past?

REP. GREGORY MEEKS (D-NY): Well listen, clearly, this man is unfit to be president. You know, sometimes when you look and make your decision you should also judge a person by their character. Dr. King said you look at someone by the -- by the -- by their character, not by the color of their skin.

And so, here is a man who clearly continues to talk about Black men in a negative way. That's all he's ever done. Just look at his history. His history is from the beginning -- not renting out to Black people.

How many Black men has he ever hired in his business, ever? Look at his personnel.

All he's done is the people that he's ripped off. The few people -- the few minority individuals that he might have done business with, most of them at some point lost money as a result of him because he is a guy who himself has gone bankrupt six times.

So I think that what Black men is looking and asking for, and I think that the vice president has correctly said is they're asking questions. You know, more Black men will vote for the vice president than anybody else other than Black women.

So they're asking questions, and I think that the vice president is answering those questions and talking about what she has done and what she will do, which is what any voter should be doing. So I think that in the end you'll see that Black men will vote in huge numbers for the vice president of the United States.

SIDNER: Congressman Gregory Meeks, thank you so much. I appreciate your time this morning.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Two weeks to go, everyone. John's favorite day of the year, the day he gets to remind all of us of the definition of a fortnight. The focus for the candidates today and the lawsuits that are already starting to fly.

Right now, in Israel, America's top diplomat Tony Blinken is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These talks coming at a new moment of uncertainty as regional stability and a potential ceasefire hang in the balance.

And growing calls for an investigation from former Republican officials. Why Elon Musk's plan to give out $1 million a day to registered voters might break the law.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: Two weeks, that's it, 14 days, that's all that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have left in this historically tight race, at least in the polls. And this morning, a deluge of brand-new campaign details are dropping faster than a mic at an eight-mile rap battle. Eminem in a rare public appearance will make a rare political endorsement and introduce former President Obama when he visits Detroit tonight. Before that, Obama hits the critical battleground state Wisconsin with Tim Walz as Harris takes a break from the trail for TV interviews, and as Donald Trump soon sits down for a roundtable with Latino leaders.

With just 14 days until Election Day in America, let's bring in CNN political director David Chalian to tell us the one big thing they need to know no today. David, what is that takeaway?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, you said it. It's two weeks to go until we count the votes. As you know, Sara, more than 15 million people have already cast their vote in this election. The election is very much underway. But as voters are dialing into this race and prepare two weeks now to watch, of course, right here on CNN, the vote returns unfold, it is important to take stock of where we are and what that means for when we'll know a result, and patients will be in order here.

So just looking at the blue wall states, those three yellow battleground states you see there in the Great Lakes region, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We know that in Michigan and Wisconsin, the big city population centers of Detroit in Michigan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they may not report all their vote until about 4:00 in the morning on Wednesday. Obviously, we'll need to see what that vote is to understand what the total state of play in those states are. So maybe no projection on Tuesday night from those states if it is as close as polls suggest.

And in Pennsylvania they can't even process the mail ballots until Election Day, until the polls open. And so therefore, Sara, given that half the electorate may end up voting by mail, voting early, it's going to take a little while for folks in Pennsylvania to process, unfold, flatten, and count all those ballots. We may not have a result there until Wednesday perhaps.

[08:05:08]

So this may take a while given the fact that David Plouffe, the senior adviser to the Harris campaign, Sara, says some of these states are going to be decided by less than a percentage point.

SIDNER: Which is crazy. People have to be prepared for that. A lot of people nervous about that as well, how long it might take to get a result. Harris is now sitting down with NBC for an interview that will air tonight. She also, of course, has a CNN town hall tomorrow, 9:00 p.m., with Anderson Cooper. What is she hoping to do with this and get out of this?

CHALIAN: Her main goal in these final two weeks is to raise the stakes of this election in minds of voters. And I imagine that is what you're going to see her do. You noted I think she's sitting down with Telemundo. She's sitting down with NBC News. And in each one of these interviews that she's doing, also going to do a CNN town hall tomorrow with us in suburban Philadelphia in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, their main goal, her main goal has been to draw a sharp contrast with Trump on every issue at every moment of the day. And I'd be surprised if that's not what comes through in these interviews she's doing today because their goal is to remind voters of the negatives of Donald Trump, because we see in a lot of polling that a lot of voters remember the positive sense of the economy or having more money in their pockets. And they, the Harris campaign, believes a second Trump term could be far more dangerous, and they want to remind voters of that as they go into the voting booth.

SIDNER: We are in the final stretch, David Chalian. It feels like it came so fast. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. John?

CHALIAN: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. With us now, CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein and Republican strategist and former RNC communications director Doug Heye. Gentlemen, Vice President Harris spent an entire day in the three blue wall states -- a phrase, I believe invented by Ron Brownstein, nice to have you here -- yesterday with Liz Cheney, a Republican. The three most important states in this election, a whole day with just two weeks left, I want to play a little bit of sound from that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ CHENEY, (R-WY) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, I can't be public. They do worry about a whole range of things including violence. But they'll do the right thing. And I would just remind people, if you're at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody. And there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th.

(APPLAUSE) (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So that was the message sent, Ron. And the question is, to whom? Is it just Republicans or is it a little more complicated than that?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, look, I thought that was the message that was targeted precisely at the voters who are most available to her in the places where they are most available to her. If you kind of look at these three states that fell out of the blue wall in 2016 and Biden put them back in in 2020, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, key to his improvement there was that he ran better than Hillary Clinton did in the big suburban counties, the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia, the wow counties outside of Milwaukee, Dane County, which is Madison, as well as Oakland County outside of Michigan -- outside Detroit. That's where she was in.

And in 2022, John, it's important to note the Democratic gubernatorial candidates generally ran better than Biden did two years earlier. That was the first election after the Supreme Court rescinded the nationwide right to abortion. So I'm just back from Oakland County myself. I think if you look at these places, they are the community he is where Harris is most likely to improve on Biden's 2020 performance, particularly with college educated white women, maybe also some of the non-college white women in those communities. And the Cheney appearances, I think, was precisely targeted to try to increase the permission structure, to slice away a few more points of those votes, maybe some among people who identify as Republicans, but certainly among independent voters who had previously voted Republican, mostly on economic issues, but find Trump a threat to their rights, their values, and are receptive to the message that he is a threat to democracy itself.

BERMAN: Doug, to what extent are these the swing voters, the Haley voters, maybe, from the primaries, who by the way, weren't all registered Republicans?

DOUGLAS HEYE, FORMER REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Look, you're talking about the same subset of voters, right? Some of them are registered Republicans, some of them are independent, and they're looking for, as Ron said, that permission structure to vote for Harris. But they also want to hear from Kamala Harris. So the events that Harris did yesterday with Liz Cheney speaks to some of their concerns. But these are the same voters who are saying to the Harris campaign, look, we don't like Donald Trump, but we know who Donald Trump is. Who are you and what do you want to do? And I think the real vulnerability for the Harris campaign here is that age-old question of the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.

[08:10:00]

You always go with the devil you know. They know Donald Trump. They need to get to know Kamala Harris, and time is ticking on that.

BERMAN: I want to ask you, we just had David Chalian on, and all of us who've covered politics for a long time, we swear an oath every four years that we're not going to focus overly on the early voting because one vote today counts as much as one counts on Election Day. But --

HEYE: Yes.

BERMAN: But there are some interesting things happening in Nevada where they voted early for some time now. After three days of early voting, more Republicans have voted there than Democrats. This is not something that we have seen the last few elections. Is this -- what is this a sign of? What are the possibilities here, Doug?

HEYE: So I try and disregard early voting as well, even though I usually vote early. And look at North Carolina as well, we see Republican numbers are up, Democratic numbers are down compared to 2020. But I'm not looking at the Republican or Democrat numbers. I'm looking at the unaffiliated voters in North Carolina. And what are they going to do? What have they done already? And over the next two weeks, where are they? That's what's going to be what decides this election. Thats what the Harris-Cheney event was about yesterday, speaking to those voters.

But if you voted early, obviously you've already made up your mind. And so those voters who are not voting early but unaffiliated but are voting on Election Day, they're still up for grabs. Either candidate could get them.

BERMAN: And Ron, I do suppose every four years this is the one time when the phrase "cannibalism" is OK, because the question is, are Republicans finally getting their act together in early voting but somehow cannibalizing some of the Election Day vote they've enjoyed the last a couple of cycles?

BROWNSTEIN: And that's what makes it, John, so complicated to try to really divine too much from early vote, because those questions are really critical and hard to understand with full transparency this far from the vote.

One thing that is clear, the story that I have today on CNN.com, Bill Frey, the great demographer, has calculated from the latest census data that the change in the composition of the electorate that we've been experiencing over the last generation has continued between 20 and 2024. And what that means is that the non-college white voters who are the cornerstone of the modern Republican coalition, especially in the Trump era, have continued to decline by about two points as a share of eligible voters, replaced equally by an increase of about a point each among college whites and people of color.

What's really significant to me is that in Michigan and Wisconsin, two of the former blue wall states, the decline in non-college whites as a share of the vote exceeded the national average, replaced mostly by the college whites, or the kind of voters that Liz Cheney and a Kamala Harris were focused on yesterday. But in Pennsylvania, the change was less than the national average. And that could be a critical distinction in a race that looks like a butterfly effect race, where like kind of what any flutter in the environment might be enough to change the dynamic between these two coalitions that are utterly antithetical in what they want for the country and almost exactly equal in size.

HEYE: And John, the increased number of early voters tells us that voters have confidence in the system. So when I look at North Carolina, and these numbers are huge, we have 15 percent of -- by the end of today, we'll have 15 percent of voters who have already voted early, it tells us they have confidence in the system, that the vote is secure, that the count will be accurate, and ultimately, that the state boards of election, North Carolina being a key one, obviously Georgia and Nevada, Michigan as well, voters believe in the system. And that's important and something that gets lost in the process of all the crazy arguments we've heard over the last days, Arnold Palmer excepted.

BERMAN: An encouraging sign, not talking about Arnold Palmer. I'm talking about the early voting. Doug Heye, Ron Brownstein, thank you both very much.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: Former Republican officials now urging the Department of Justice to investigate what they think is Elon Musk's illegal $1 million a day giveaway to some registered voters.

The new details this morning on what a toxicology report found was in Liam Payne's system after the former One Direction star's death in Argentina.

And secretary of state Tony Blinken meeting right now with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the United States is seeking, hoping to revive hostage release talk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:48]

BOLDUAN: A push this morning from Republicans trying to challenge Elon Musk's million-dollar giveaways to registered voters.

In a letter obtained by CNN, 11 former GOP officials and government attorneys are now asking both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Pennsylvania attorney general to investigate what Musk is doing in key battleground states.

CNN's Marshall Cohen is looking into this. He's got more. Marshall. What does this letter say?

MARSHALL COHEN, CNN REPORTER: Hey, Kate.

Well, the letter is asking for an investigation into Elon Musk because of this stunt that he launched over the weekend, where he is going to be paying a million a day to people who sign his petition in support of the Constitution.

The problem here though, as we've already reported is that, it might not be legal because in order to get that money, you need to be a registered voter and you need to live in a swing state and federal law is pretty clear that you cannot give inducements or prizes or cash in exchange for registration.

So, let's take a look at that letter from these former Republican officials calling on the Justice Department to take a look at this. They say, "We recognize that they are framed as payments for signing a petition, or for referring voters who sign. But many of the payments are restricted to registered voters, so anyone who wishes to get paid must first register."

[08:20:13]

That's the crux of the problem here.

The signatories to this letter, they are former Republican governors and lawmakers and Justice Department officials, they're anti-Trump, but they think this is important for the rule of law, Kate.

I also want to make clear that we have reached out to Elon Musk's super PAC for comment on this situation, they haven't answered and Musk has defended his sweepstakes on his social media platform.

But the scrutiny keeps on rising. I want to play for you a clip from last night, one of the top election officials in Phoenix, Stephen Richer sat down with our colleague, Erin Burnett. And by the way, he's also a Republican.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN RICHER, MARICOPA COUNTY RECORDER IN ARIZONA: This is unchartered territory.

It starts to look like this type of thing that your attorneys would advise against. But he comes from a world in which you sort of shoot first and then ask questions later. And so, I guess he's bringing that start-up mentality to his new political interest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: All right, so we did reach out to the Justice Department. We reached out to the Pennsylvania AG's office to see if they had anything to say about this letter and they got the letter and they declined further comment.

BOLDUAN: Okay. Marshall Cohen, thank you so much -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Just in to our NEWSROOM this morning, dramatic new images of the aftermath of that tragic dock collapse that left seven people dead in Georgia. The video is just ahead.

Plus, we are in the homestretch of the 2024 election. Millions of early ballots have already been cast, but already lawsuits are flying. What all this means for the election ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:26:08]

SIDNER: Early voting begins today for voters in battleground, Wisconsin, already more than 15 million people have cast their votes two weeks before election day. But lawsuits have been filed in multiple swing states to get out -- some of those votes thrown out.

There will likely be even more legal action which means this election season will not end likely on November 5th.

Joining us now to break down all the important dates, the author of CNN's "What Matters Newsletter" Zachary Wolf, joining us now.

Zachary, the election two weeks away, that is so close. We are really in the final stretch. But that doesn't seem to be the end of this. As soon as those lawsuits are filed, you know, this is going to drag on.

ZACHARY WOLF, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER: Well, the lawsuits and also the counting of the votes. I mean, let's not forget that four years ago, in 2020, it was four days after election day that CNN ultimately projected that Joe Biden would win. It could be just as close today, the polls are just as close and so that sets off this timeline, this post-election timeline, where a lot of stuff is going to happen.

So, people should be ready for number one, trying to figure out who won the thing, that could take some time. Former President Trump, potentially President-elect Trump depending on what happens on election day in the days afterward, he's going to be sentenced in New York on those 34 counts of falsifying business records in November, all of the lawsuits about the election need to be wrapped up by December 11th.

All of the counting issues that's kind of the date that Congress decided after the 2020 election. They put this hard date, December 11th, for this -- they call them Certificates of Ascertainment to be finalized, and that sets up the electors, the people who actually do pick the president in our weird system of government, those people meet on December 17th in state capitols.

So, this process will take place after election day and we need to all be ready for this kind of drawn-out thing.

SIDNER: Yes, it's one thing to tell people to be ready. It's another thing that when it happens and if it is long and drawn out, a lot of worry about what will happen next.

Zachary Wolf, thank you so much for the very good reminder that we need to be patient --John.

BERMAN: All right, given that we have reached the final fortnight, and by that, I mean, two weeks exactly to the day --

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Great language.

BERMAN: --left fortnight means two weeks. What? Medieval?

ENTEN: Sure, why not, I'm a medieval guy.

BERMAN: Okay, it's a good time to check in on where the race is. CNN's senior data reporter, Harry Enten is ready to get medieval with us.

ENTEN: You're going to get knighted.

BERMAN: Yes, how close is this race?

ENTEN: Okay, so when we talk about a historically close race, oftentimes we talk about the national polling, but I wanted to try and dig into the state numbers to get an understanding of how close this race is. Holy cow, from a historical perspective.

So, what I did for all of the years going back since 1972 was I took a look at the final polls and then I basically calculated out what the electoral map would look like and how high up with the leading candidates electoral vote total get.

And what we essentially see is right now the leaders electoral vote total is 276 electoral votes based upon the polls. If you go back since '72 and try and find the closest years, if you go back to 2000, which of course was a historically close election.

At the end of the campaign, the poll leaders electoral vote total was just 281 electoral votes. That's where Gore was in the final polls of that campaign. You go back to 2004, George W. Bush was at 296 electoral votes.

So based upon the polls at this point, we're heading into the election with the closest polls in the Electoral College that we have ever seen, at least over the last 50 years. It's stuff like this that gets me up in the morning and gets me truly excited as a political sort of science.

BERMAN: This is a really interesting way to look at it. I never would have thought of this, but basically what the polls are showing right now, the polls --

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: -- the closest race in terms of the electoral vote that we've ever seen.

ENTEN: Exactly right.

BERMAN: That is fascinating. All right, how about in the key states?

ENTEN: Yes, how about in the key states? You know, it's not just when you tally up the electoral votes.

Harris likely must carry, three of these four states to win. And these are the states most likely to determine the Electoral College. Look at this North Carolina less than a point lead for Trump; Wisconsin, less than a point lead for Harris; Michigan, the exact same thing; Pennsylvania, the exact same thing. Basically, the four states that are most likely to determine this

outcome are all within a point. And when we span this out to the Electoral College. What do we get?

We get exactly this, Harris with that 276 electoral votes, because she carries these great lake battleground states, right? But let's just say we flipped Pennsylvania in the polls don't match result exactly right. What happens? We flip Pennsylvania to red and then we get trump to 281 electoral votes, which is not really much of a long shot given that at this particular point, the race in Pennsylvania is within a single point.

[08:30:58]