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Eminem To Join Obama At Rally For Harris Tonight In Detroit; Trump To Head Back To Battleground NC Tonight; Harris & Trump Make Final Push With 2 Weeks To Go; Hostage Families Protest Outside Blinken's Hotel In Tel Aviv; Israeli Strike On Hospital Outside Lebanon Kills 18 People; In Meeting With Netanyahu, Blinken Pressed The "Need To Capitalize" On Sinwar Death To Drive End To Gaza War. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 22, 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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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Just two weeks to go until Election Day, and the candidates, of course, are battling for every vote. While former President Donald Trump targets Latino voters and heads to a key swing state, one of rap's biggest stars is set to take the stage for the Harris campaign in Motor City.

Plus, Secretary of State Tony Blinken back in the Middle East. What we're learning about his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the White House tries to revive stalled ceasefire and hostage talks.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And new scrutiny of the world's richest man as he campaigns for Donald Trump. Why some former Republican officials are questioning whether Elon Musk's latest effort to get out the vote might be illegal.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Any minute we are expecting to see former President Barack Obama taking the stage with vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, in Wisconsin. That is Bradley Whitford, I believe, on stage right now ahead of them. And early voting kicking off there today in the critical battleground state.

Obama is then going to head to Detroit for a get out the vote rally where he's going to be introduced by Eminem, who, of course, is a Detroit native.

SANCHEZ: As Obama campaigns with "The Real Slim Shady," former President Donald Trump is traveling to swing state North Carolina for a rally tonight. A state that Trump has won twice, but where polls show he's currently neck and neck with Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's take you now live to Greensboro, North Carolina, which CNN's Kristen Holmes is tracking Trump's rally tonight. We can also actually go to Madison, Wisconsin, where CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is. That's where Tim Walz and Barack Obama are expected to speak at any moment.

Priscilla, what more do we know about this campaign strategy from the Harris team today?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, they are certainly trying to capitalize on early voting. Early voting kicks off today in Wisconsin. And the location of this rally is also notable. This is Dane County. It is a county that President Biden won by wider margins in 2020 compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016. It's also a county that Obama did well in back when he ran in 2008.

So Obama and Tim Walz will be delivering a message that we have heard repeatedly from the Vice President over the last several days, which is trying to underscore the stakes of this election. Expect more of that over the next several days from this campaign as they try to hyper focus on the risks and threats that they say a second Donald Trump term poses.

Now, in addition to all of this, as you just mentioned, Obama will be going to Michigan, yet another swing state, and also a state, by the way, that Vice President Kamala Harris was in a few days ago to also kick off early voting in Detroit. And then he's going to join the Vice President in battleground Georgia on Thursday for their first campaign appearance together.

So taken together, what this is, is the campaign bringing the star power to pull supporters to vote early and to make sure that they can lock in their coalition. That includes by more exposure for the Vice President with interviews, traditional and nontraditional, but today with Telemundo to try to appeal to Latino voters.

The reason for that is while she polls well with Latinos, more - better than for President Donald Trump, when you dig into those numbers, it's lagging behind Democratic nominees and she's evenly split among Hispanic men with Trump. So today in that interview, the focus for the campaign is for her to appeal to them with her economic proposals centered on affordability. Brianna? Boris.

KEILAR: All right. Priscilla, thank you so much.

Let's go now to Kristen Holmes, who is in North Carolina.

Trump was there all day yesterday. Kristen, tell us more about the campaign's big final push there.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, four events in two days, and we do expect him to be back again next week. I mean, one thing to keep in mind is the fact that North Carolina was always going to be a critical battleground state. It delivered Donald Trump his narrowest victory in 2020.

But one thing that has changed is the Kamala Harris ascension to the top of the ticket. When Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket, they believed that it was in the bag, that they had won North Carolina and they didn't need to do quite as much campaigning here.

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Now, polling - recent polling shows that while Donald Trump does have an edge, it does seem as though the Democratic ticket has more energy, enthusiasm and support in North Carolina than it previously did when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket. So you're seeing him here today. You're seeing him yesterday. One, going over the rules of early voting. Early voting has started in this state and trying to drive these voters, these supporters who are showing up at these events to the polls now, getting them out as quickly as possible, trying to rack up those numbers early.

And we also know that Republicans generally do show up at the polls on Election Day. However, you're also seeing a big early voting push, not just from Donald Trump and his campaign, even though Donald Trump himself has had mixed reviews on early voting, but also from Republicans as a whole, again, trying to bring people out early in case anything could happen on Election Day, particularly in a battleground state like this.

SANCHEZ: Now, Kristen, you have some new reporting on Donald Trump recording an interview with Joe Rogan's podcast, tell us about that.

HOLMES: Well, Boris, this is a big deal for the Trump campaign. I mean, Joe Rogan has more than 14 million followers on Spotify. His podcast is consistently ranked as one of the top podcasts, and it actually reaches into a community that Donald Trump's team has been trying to tap into, which is essentially low propensity voters, people who don't generally show up to the polls, but also people who don't generally engage with politics using traditional media. But they might listen to podcasts.

We know Donald Trump has used this effort to try and reach out to these different voting blocs time and time again. But Joe Rogan would really be kind of the cherry on top because of the fact that he is so popular. And one of the things that I had heard back when RFK decided to drop out and endorse Donald Trump was that Donald Trump's team was actually hoping that this would help with the relationship with Joe Rogan to get this interview on the books.

Because remember, Joe Rogan and Donald Trump have not had a perfect history. Joe Rogan essentially said that all politicians but RFK Jr. were manipulative. And then Donald Trump slashed out at Joe Rogan. So it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out when they sit down together in Austin, Texas, at Rogan's studio there on Friday.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes, live for us in Greensboro. Thank you so much.

Let's discuss with our political panel now. We're joined by Gloria Borger, CNN Political Analyst; and Alex Thompson, a CNN Political Analyst and national political reporter for Axios.

Gloria, first to you, I want to ask you about this new reporting from CNN's Isaac Dovere. He's reporting that the Harris campaign. He's confident that Trump is going to continue with his references to the enemy within, alluding to what he describes as radical left lunatics. He's talking about Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, suggesting the military go after them.

The Harris campaign is hoping that he continues doing that so that they can point to that and show voters that she's the actual change agent and the rational candidate in this race.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, he is continuing to do that. We saw that today. So I think that's a pretty good bet. And in talking to people inside the Harris campaign, I can tell you that it's taken this turn and what they want to do, they believe there are like 4 percent undecided voters in all the battleground states. I mean, who knows? But that's what they think.

And that the concern of those undecided voters is about his temperament. And what they're trying to do is over and over again say that he is unstable, that he is a risk to the country.

Now, it is difficult for them, and they admit it, when you have a 60 percent sort of disapproval rating of the way things are going in the country. You know, two-thirds of the voters think things aren't going well. To convince people on that case alone that Donald Trump shouldn't be president.

Now, she believes she has introduced herself to the American public, but I think she's still got some work to do on that front to talk to people about what she's going to do as president. But they're really leaning hard into this argument.

ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And to your point in terms of her introducing herself, that's why she was originally avoiding national media. This week, she is not going to battleground states today. She's only going to battleground state tomorrow. That's because she's doing national media. She's doing Telemundo today. She's doing NBC News later today. And then she's doing a CNN town hall on this network tomorrow night.

BORGER: Right.

KEILAR: To Gloria's point, Alex, I wonder, yes, we know this the enemy within comment. It's un-Democratic, you know, this idea of using your power to target your political opponents. But in terms of temperament, it's really a known quantity with Trump. Does this work to move voters, this argument that Harris is making?

THOMPSON: I mean, this is a big risk and Democrats are completely divided on this. The fact is that Kamala Harris has shifted her strategy on Trump just in the last month. If you look at - go back to July, August, they were trying to sort of mock him, make him sort of dismissive of him and they've now really gone back to the Joe Biden strategy of warning about it's not joy, it's like darkness, essentially, and they are trying to motivate it.

But to your point, do - there's a question of, have people already made up their minds about Donald Trump.

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And that 4 percent that you're talking about, are they more uncertain about her or are they more uncertain about him and that's the risk.

BORGER: Yes. And the campaign is saying, you know, that they admit that there is some uncertainty about her. But the argument that as the other choice, he is so risky and unstable that people would be willing to sort of say, you know what, I can't take that risk.

Now, the people you're talking to are low propensity voters probably. And so the choice also is, will they just stay home or will they actually come out and vote?

SANCHEZ: The Trump campaign, Alex, is pursuing those low propensity, sort of disengaged voters in their own way. I think that's part of Joe Rogan's audience, right, his podcast audience. These sort of independent bros, right?

THOMPSON: Yes. Yes.

SANCHEZ: What's the wisdom of going after that audience? And also, what do you think that conversation is going to be like?

THOMPSON: It's really a Mars versus Venus election in so many ways. And again, the Joe Rogan is a perfect contrast with the podcast that Kamala Harris is doing on Friday, which is with Brene Brown. And Donald Trump has basically been on every bro podcast known to mankind. Stuff that I've never heard of that, you know, any bro I know has never heard of.

BORGER: Because he's a bro.

THOMPSON: Yes, it's completely true. And yes, I think that in the same way that Trump is going after those disaffected bros or low propensity bros, she's going after the low propensity gals, too, who may be motivated, especially by abortion rights and fearing that a Donald Trump presidency would really restrict their bodily autonomy.

KEILAR: Yes. Brene Brown, Joe Rogan, what different vibes, and you know what's a completely different vibe even than that is Eminem, right, who is going to be on the trail in Michigan tonight. He's introducing Obama, as we expect to happen. And it just reminded us of a moment of Eminem actually lambasting Trump. This was 2017. It's actually quite a long appearance that he did at the BET Awards. But this is just a moment that I think sort of emulates the larger picture.

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EMINEM: The rest of America stand up. We love our military and we love our country, but we (expletive) hate Trump.

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KEILAR: I mean, he had some really tough words. And I wonder what you guys think. Is this the kind of alarm that he might be sending tonight? And is it the right message for this point in the campaign? What do you think, Gloria? BORGER: Well, I think, you know, he's not going to change much from the way he was because he accused Trump of brainwashing people. And I don't know whether what terms he's going to use because Obama will be there, so it's kind of it's kind of hard to say. But I think he's going to be very strong, and anti-Trump and talk about the risk he poses to the country, which, by the way, is exactly what Obama has been doing.

Obama has been saying, you know, if he were your grandfather, you'd get on the phone and say to someone, you know, should we take away his keys or something like that? And I think that, you know, that jives with the message that you hear from the former president on the on the trail. He's been very strong on that.

THOMPSON: And I'd add - just the other thing I'd add is they're going after the same Joe Rogan voter, it's same voters that Trump's going after by going on Joe Rogan.

SANCHEZ: I'm curious, Alex, North Carolina for Trump, three stops there yesterday, more stops today. This is a state that he won by a very slim margin back in 2020. Does that signal to you that there's some real concern from the Trump team there?

THOMPSON: Oh, yes. I mean, this is - if he loses North Carolina, that is a huge alarm. They had always, you know, Kristen was talking about this earlier, they thought they had it in the bag when Joe Biden was the top of the ticket. With Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, you've seen the Trump campaign come in and spend a lot of money late.

And, you know, to the Democratic campaign's credit, they were spending money on North Carolina even when Joe Biden was in the race. They always thought that this was a potential way. And I can tell you back in 2020, the Biden campaign thought that North Carolina was going to be what ultimately Georgia was.

BORGER: Right.

THOMPSON: Their internal data had it very, very close until about two weeks to the - before Election Day and they shifted resources to Georgia. So they feel pretty bullish.

BORGER: And don't forget, you have the Mark Robinson controversy ...

SANCHEZ: Oh, yes.

BORGER: ... there, which is going to hurt Trump. Although, Trump denies he knows anything about it whenever he's asked about it. But if people are going to vote straight, you know, they're going to probably try and avoid Robinson. So I don't know what the poll differential is now, but I ...

THOMPSON: It's huge.

BORGER: ... yes, he's losing. So that doesn't help them at all, yes.

THOMPSON: Yes. The last thing I'll just add is the reason it's so important is because the math, Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes, North Carolina is 16. There is a path for Kamala Harris to win this election with winning North Carolina and losing Pennsylvania.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

BORGER: It's important.

KEILAR: Yes, it's fascinating.

BORGER: It's an important state.

SANCHEZ: How can we forget about that governor's race in North Carolina?

BORGER: We can't forget about it.

KEILAR: We'd sometimes like to, though.

BORGER: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Yes, that is the preference, no question.

KEILAR: Yes. Gloria, Alex, great to have you both. Thank you so much.

And still to come, seeking a demo - pardon me - diplomatic solution to the escalating conflict in the Middle East, Secretary of State Blinken is in Israel. So what we know about his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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SANCHEZ: Plus, we want to take you inside Elon Musk's recent town hall as the tech titan pours millions into returning former President Trump to the White House.

And later, a major ruling against former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani. What his election lies will now cost him.

These stories and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Now to the latest diplomatic attempt to end Israel's war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one on one today for more than two hours, pressing him over the, quote, "need to capitalize on the death of former Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar." That's according to the State Department.

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Sinwar was, of course, the architect of the October 7th attack, and he was killed last Wednesday. KEILAR: And the U.S. is still pressuring its ally, despite Netanyahu's insistence that Israel's military goals in Gaza remain unfinished. And the prime minister is feeling a lot of pressure on other fronts as well. Their families, as you see here, of hostages held in Gaza, who demonstrated outside of Secretary Blinken's hotel in Tel Aviv. They're demanding a ceasefire deal to get their loved ones back.

For the latest, let's go to CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood.

Kylie, what is the latest on Blinken's visit?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, it's very clear that the message that we have heard from Biden administration officials over the last few days in terms of wanting to capitalize on this moment, wanting to seize this moment of an opportunity to bring to bore an end to the conflict in the Gaza war following the death of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, is the message that the Secretary of State is delivering to his Israeli counterparts, including the Prime Minister, in those private conversations today.

We heard him speak just now for a few moments before his meeting with the Israeli President Herzog. I want you to listen to what he said.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: I believe very much that the death of Sinwar does create an important opportunity to bring the hostages home, to bring the war to an end, and to ensure Israel's security. And that's exactly what our conversations today focused on with our Israeli colleagues, including arrangements for the period following the end of the conflict. It's a conversation that I'll pursue in the region with other partners. But as the President said, this is - and we have to make sure that this is a moment of opportunity to move forward.

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ATWOOD: But, of course, the question remains, are the Israelis and the Americans on the same page here? It doesn't appear that they exactly are, according to the readout of the meeting between Secretary Blinken and Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's office said that they spoke about the progress of the fight in Gaza and supreme efforts to bring home those hostages, but there wasn't a talk about them agreeing to the need for an end to the conflict in Gaza. And of course, we have heard Prime Minister Netanyahu in recent days say that he's going to continue fighting that war even after Sinwar's death.

So that appears to be a point where we will watch, but it doesn't appear that there is agreement yet between the Israelis and the U.S. on this. And then, of course, on humanitarian aid, the necessity for the humanitarian aid flow into Gaza to increase. The Biden administration has been pressing Israel to actually enable more of that humanitarian aid to get in, to make sure that it is distributed within Gaza. That's according to Blinken's message to Prime Minister Netanyahu in their meeting earlier today.

But the Israelis aren't saying anything about that today. So that is an area for us to watch, particularly because the Biden administration has threatened that they will indeed be making changes to their policy vis-a-vis Israel if they don't follow through on some of the demands that the U.S. has made for them to allow this humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

SANCHEZ: And Kylie, what about Israel's strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon? What is the State Department saying about trying to protect civilians there?

ATWOOD: Well, listen, the U.S. has been saying for quite some time now that any strikes that impact civilians, that cause civilian deaths, are something that they are opposed to. It's one of the reasons that they didn't want that campaign in Beirut, that bombing campaign in Beirut, to continue the way it had been in recent weeks. But U.S. officials also recognize, they say, that there is a need, there is - Israel should be able to go after Hezbollah targets inside of Lebanon.

And that is where the challenge is here, because a lot of the strikes that the Israelis have been carrying out have had civilian deaths that have occurred as a result. And so the U.S. is looking at a lot of those incidents, asking questions of the Israelis about some of these strikes. So this is a space we continue to watch, particularly because there is tension between the U.S. and Israel about how Israel is carrying out this campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

KEILAR: All right. Kylie Atwood, thank you so much.

Let's bring in David Sanger of The New York Times. He's also a CNN Political and National Security Analyst, and he's the author of the book, "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West."

David, how are you looking at the differing information coming out from Israel and the U.S. about what Blinken and Netanyahu are engaging on?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, first, Brianna, no surprise here. Prime Minister Netanyahu has not been on the same page with President Biden or Secretary Blinken for most of the past year.

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Second, the Prime Minister is looking at the calendar, and he sees that if in two weeks Donald Trump wins, all of this pressure, the kind of letters that you saw Blinken and Secretary Austin send last week saying that there could be a cutoff in aid, if there's an American aid, if more relief and humanitarian goods didn't make it to people in Gaza, those letters are likely to come to an end. He's not going to have to worry about that. So he has been playing for time, this entire period of time.

Last Wednesday, when Sinwar was killed, there was a brief flurry in Washington of people saying, starting with the President, this is the great opportunity for the peace deal. Let's now turn the military victory, the tactical victory, into a political agreement. We have seen no indication, none, from the Prime Minister that he's interested in doing anything except proceed as he has been going.

KEILAR: What can Blinken realistically hope to accomplish with this visit?

SANGER: You know, not much. The President's leverage - President Biden's leverage is sort of at a low now, especially since he is leaving office. This may well be Secretary Blinken's last trip to the region. My guess is that since they spoke for two hours and we got about two paragraphs about what they said, my guess is that that letter came up with Secretary Blinken making the case that they're serious, that they would cut off military aid. But, of course, the 30 day deadline for that comes after the election.

The second thing I suspect came up, Brianna, which is we have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the Israeli strike on Iran. We think it's coming. We thought it was going to happen this past weekend or Monday. Instead, they hit some targets in Lebanon. I doubt that they would strike while Secretary Blinken is there. But clearly that's coming soon and that's going to add to a new dimension to this, even if the Israelis are somewhat limited, as the president seems to think they will be.

KEILAR: This leak of U.S. intel about Iran's response, or pardon me, about Israel's response to Iran's attack - missile attack - and what they've been planning and the moving of munitions, highly classified documents. Do you expect that came up or has at least sort of hung this awkward cloud over these meetings?

SANGER: It probably did. Our best guess is that these two documents, it was just two pages that came out, probably came out from someone who had access to it, could be even a fairly low level military official, who maybe wanted to make the point that Israel was getting ready for this attack. We knew it was getting ready for the attack. The president said so. He said so on Friday that he knew when the attack was going to be and how it was going to go proceed. He didn't give any details, obviously.

But it's embarrassing because it reminds the Israelis in a very visible way that the U.S. doesn't trust what they're saying to them and is spying on them. Now, on the other hand, the Israelis at various moments, especially during nuclear negotiations with Iran, have done the same to the United States. So it's not like allies don't watch each other.

KEILAR: There were right wing senior ministers in Netanyahu's government who attended a rally yesterday that called for Israeli settlements in Gaza and the displacement of Palestinians. Is that a fringe position as Israel is discussing a day after plan?

SANGER: It is a bit of a fringe position. And by the way, the right wing has also been calling for striking nuclear sites in Iran when they do the strike, doing something much bigger, using the moment. KEILAR: Which the U.S. is convinced they will not do, right?

SANGER: The U.S. has said to Netanyahu, you shouldn't do. And I think they believe they have assurances he will not. But we'll have to see how that sorts out.

Obviously, the Biden administration has set some parameters about what they think Gaza should look like. They've said it should not be ruled by Hamas. Seems reasonable. They've said Israeli troops should not be there. The prime minister has not fully agreed to that. And certainly, if there were settlements inside Gaza, that would sort of undo the whole sense of what Gaza was all about.

KEILAR: David Sanger, thank you so much for your insights. This is a critical time, especially before the election.

SANGER: It really is. Yes.

KEILAR: Thank you.

Still to come, former GOP officials are asking the Department of Justice to investigate Elon Musk's plans to give away one million dollars every day, but only to registered voters in what battleground states. Why they say the payments are illegal.

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