Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Harris and Trump Close Out Campaigns With Sharply Contrasting Messages; Race to Replace McConnell; How Election Night Will Unfold in Key Battleground States; Just Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired November 04, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have the privilege, I have the blessing of being able to travel around our country. And I'm telling you guys, we're good. We're good. We're good. We really are. I mean, every -- I go into rooms with people who, again, seemingly have nothing in common and have everything in common, rooms of people of all kinds of different backgrounds, of ages coming together in this sense of just the collective. We're good.

And so we're going to keep doing this work with the optimism that it requires to be strong. Everyone here knows in the context of your family, in your life, when you believe something is possible, you put in the hard work and you know, it's good work. Hard work is good work. It's joyful work. And we get the job done. Let's get this done. Thank you all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We've been listening to Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a canvassing kickoff event in Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is obviously a room of campaign workers in which she talked about doing the hard work, the good work, she described it as. She said, let's enjoy it these last 24 hours of campaigning.

The Vice President there sharing some optimism for the future of the country, talking about going into rooms where there are very different folks that don't share much in common but who are coming together to do as she said, good work. She said to the crowd, quote, we're good. She obviously has multiple events throughout Pennsylvania today, really focusing on the commonwealth.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: That's right. Four more stops there today. I mean, you know where her focus is and it is in Pennsylvania. And she's going to end her day surrounded by a celebrity studded event, just a huge blowout in Philadelphia.

Also this hour, former President Trump is set to focus on must win Pennsylvania, which holds the biggest electoral prize of all the swing states. He's scheduled to speak in Reading just moments from now. And he did begin his day with a stop in North Carolina. And he'll also be heading to Michigan later today. Our correspondents are live for us all over the trail. So let's begin

with CNN's Eva McKend. She's with the Harris campaign there in Pennsylvania. Eva, the candidate's messages on this election eve could not be more different. Talk to us about what more we're hearing from the Vice President.

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris and Brianna, the sign behind me reads a President for all. And that really speaks to the strategy here in the closing hours of this contest. You hear the Vice President not even mentioning the former president by name, you know, calling him the other guy because the campaign tells me that she is focused on a message of unity and bringing coalitions together. You know, at this point, the former President's comments, his record have now been well litigated, and it is time to excite people about the election and her affirmative vision for the country. But they also think that they can message directly to the Puerto Ricans in this state, more than 30,000 of them right here in Allentown. They are trying to build off of that event at Madison Square Garden about a week ago when that derogatory comment was made about the island. They think that they can seize on that and use it as an opportunity to talk about the Vice President's long support for Puerto Rico.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: My commitment to Puerto Rico is long standing. Even when I was in the United States Senate as a representative of California, I took on a responsibility for myself of also prioritizing the needs of Puerto Rico because I was aware that Puerto Rico did not have a U.S. senator. And so I was responsible for getting more resources to Puerto Rico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: So she's just going to be barnstorming this state. After Scranton, she heads here to Allentown. After Allentown, she is in Reading. And then after that, she ends the day with big rallies in Pittsburgh and in Philadelphia. Boris, Brianna?

SANCHEZ: Eva McKend, thank you so much for bringing us the latest there. Let's go now live to CNN's Steve Contorno, who's in Reading, Pennsylvania, with the Trump campaign.

Steve, talk to us about the former President's closing message in these last 20, 25 or so hours.

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Well, when he was in Pennsylvania just a day ago, he said that he, quote, shouldn't have left the White House in 2020 after losing the election. So that was the message he gave to the state just a day ago. The signage on the wall here says Trump will fix it and dream big again. And that is certainly the message his campaign is trying to get across. But at these rallies, he continues to attack his political rivals. Take a listen to what he had to say earlier today in North Carolina. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And Michelle hit me the -- I was so nice to her out of respect. I was (inaudible) saying she hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? But remember, she ripped up the paper behind me. You know, she could have gone to jail for that.

[14:05:02]

You're not allowed to do that. She said, I think, I think Nancy Pelosi is a disgrace. And by the way, the press will say, oh, he rambled. No, that's not rambling. You know what that is? That was genius. That's the wee.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Now, the fact that Donald Trump was spending one of these final days in North Carolina shows just how concerned his campaign is about that state. He was there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday spending time in a state that they really didn't expect to be so competitive at this point. Back when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, they were starting to shift resources out of North Carolina into the blue wall states. But with Harris there, it has become incredibly competitive. And you can tell by the time and energy that they have put there of late that they are really, really focused on holding that state. Those closest victory in 2020 was in North Carolina.

Later today, he'll be, like you said, in Reading, Pennsylvania, right behind me. And then he has another stop in Pittsburgh as well, crisscrossing this other battleground that he has put a lot of effort into. Reading is in one of those battleground counties that we are seeing both campaigns fight for Bucks County. Donald Trump lost it by just four points four years ago and a result that was really reflective and mirrored closely the statewide results in this race. And he has put a lot of effort and energy into trying to increase his margins here. I will say the turnout today so far for this event is quite thin. There is a lot of empty seats left in this arena. And Donald Trump is now supposed to speak in the next hour here.

So I'm not saying that's a sign about what we can expect in Pennsylvania by any stretch or in this county, but Donald Trump has built his brand around his ability to turn out large crowds. And so far in the stops today in North Carolina and here in Reading, it is noticeably thin here.

KEILAR: All right. We'll have to see if that changes in the next hour. Steve, thank you so much for the report.

Let's bring in our panel now. We have CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger. We have CNN Political Analyst and National Political Correspondent for Axios, Alex Thompson, Republican Strategist and President of Valcour, a global public strategy firm, Matt Mowers, and Democratic Strategist, Chuck Rocha.

Okay. To you guys, I just wonder, size up where we are right now, your description of this final day of campaigning, how you see the race.

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I think what you're seeing right now. Let me take you inside the campaigns. Half the people that are going to vote in most of these states have already voted. This is called get out the vote. And you got to know exactly who you're going to get out of each one of these counties. The President and other campaigns have captains there. They have precinct maps. And we know this morning, for example, in Pennsylvania, I polled all the Puerto Ricans who have yet to vote. And there's 87,000 of them who haven't voted. The good news is there's over 120,000 of them who have already voted.

So there's a strategy to go turn out those Puerto Ricans who were offended by what happened at Madison Square Garden. It's just one of those. Think about over hundreds of offices, over union halls in Pittsburgh, over what's going to happen with the rallies. The rally is to energize folks who not maybe are going to be torn between Donald Trump or her. It's between who's going to go vote and who's going to sit at home.

MATT MOWERS, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, if you're talking to the Harris campaign, you're going to need all 80,000 of them. Because if you look at where turnout is right now, early voting, absentee voting today in Pennsylvania, the gap between Republicans and Democrats is more than half. You had actually a Democratic lead of over 1.1 million votes going into the election in 2020.

Today it stands about 400,000. And that's the type of number that the Harris campaign recognizes. This is why you see the Vice President there doing, was it, four stops today because they have a turnout problem right now. You talk to any Democratic strategist, Republican strategist, turnout is down in Philadelphia. Right now, if you were the Harris campaign, you were sweating going into tomorrow because you have to try to get a lot of people show up to vote who don't normally show up on Election Day. And that's the thing that I think we're looking at the difference voting patterns between Republicans and Democrats.

Traditionally, Republicans show up on Election Day, always win the Election Day vote, Democrats don't. And they're now going to be much more dependent on Election Day turnout. I think also another reason you're seeing them focus so much on North Carolina and Pennsylvania is that both campaigns, if you ask them, think that there's some numbers in Wisconsin that show that Trump is maybe already walking into a win in Wisconsin tomorrow. And that's why you're seeing so much focus in these other two states.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Doesn't Donald Trump also have to worry about turnout among the voters that he has really tried to get, which is young man who don't, you know, generally come out in large numbers. You know, they're low propensity voters. I mean, she's trying to turn out voters who vote largely women, for example. But what about that?

MOWERS: No, you're right. And you do have a number of low propensity voters that need to show up. You look at all the polling traditionally this year, which is very different from any election cycle we've seen recently. Donald Trump does better with registered voters than likely voters. In part, it's because of that support he has from the more infrequent voter, the lower propensity voter. However, a lot of those voters are showing up.

If you break down the early vote totals right now, there's a higher percentage of low propensity Republicans voting than there are low propensity Democrats right now in these key states. That's why the --

ROCHA: If you look Trump --

MOWERS: -- (inaudible) is so optimistic.

ROCHA: If you look at the early vote numbers that we're talking about here, I went and looked at the Republican early vote numbers because they are up.

[14:10:04]

And I give that credit because Donald Trump for the first time has said for years, he said, don't early vote, don't vote by mail. So he told his people to vote and they are voting. 43% of the Republicans who have voted early are people that voted last time on Election Day. So they're eating into their Election Day vote.

Now, as a strategist, they may have more people show up, but I would bet against that of folks who normally don't show up. So are they really cannibalizing their own vote?

ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And what -- just one note of caution about just all the analysis about early voting is that we're comparing this to 2020 when there was a pandemic.

MAN #1: Absolutely.

THOMPSON: Right? And many of the early voting rules were greatly expanded. In some ways, 2016 would almost be a better comparison. I just think in some ways, we don't understand how voting patterns have shifted from 2020 to 2024.

MOWERS: You know, you are right about that. But I will say if you go back to 2016, 2012, 2008, Republicans rarely, if ever, lead on early votes going into election Day or doing as well as they are. So this isn't even just comparing to four years ago. This is going back to historical numbers in '08, '12, and '16 as well.

THOMPSON: But early voting has greatly expanded since 2020 in a way it wasn't in 2016,2012.

BORGER: You know, it's interesting, though, because those numbers are up. but you've gotten a mixed message from Donald Trump. I mean, sometimes, he's at rallies and he complains about early voting, saying that there's, you know, a lot of tomfoolery going on with early voting. And then he says, go and vote early. So I think there's been a little bit of a mixed signal from the candidate himself about -- don't you think, about early voting? MOWERS: Well, but there has been in the past, and he has conflicted.

But clearly, there's a Pied Piper method going here because you're seeing the increase in turnout right now. It's the reason why, by the way, the Republican National Committee were the ones who wanted to ensure there were extra days of early voting, in person early voting. Absentee mail in voting is different. Republicans still have a skepticism of it. You go to the grassroots level.

BORGER: So does Trump. Yeah.

MOWERS: But in person early voting, they've embraced, they've adopted, and they're using and it's bearing out of the data we're seeing.

SANCHEZ: I just want to shout out Brianna because she asked one question. And look at the discussion that it --

KEILAR: (Inaudible) my job easy.

SANCHEZ: We're already (inaudible). I have a question for you guys because there was this poll that came out over the weekend in Iowa that has created all sorts of opinions and all sorts of arguing online especially. What did you think, Matt, when you saw that Kamala Harris was leading Donald Trump in this one poll in Iowa among women by 20 points? Ddo you think that reflects a broader sentiment?

MOWERS: I think there's a few things at play here, right? One is Iowa is Iowa. It's not a battleground state this year. You don't have millions of dollars in television ads, you don't have candidate visits, you don't have a turnout operation turning out lower propensity voters, right? So the campaigns are kind of on their own, so to speak. It is at the whim of the national media, so to speak, and how voters are going to be able to actually get their information there. So that's one piece.

The other piece I'd say is that if you talk to most operatives on the ground, you remember Iowa is one of the largest homes of the Obama to Trump voters, right? More counties, I believe, than just about any other state who voted for Obama twice and have voted for Trump twice. You have a lot of these voters who do not always participate in the polls. You hear about the silent Trump voter. Iowa is the epicenter of some of that. So there's a little piece of that as well. You've got the fact that there's a unique circumstance in Iowa. You also do have a six-week abortion ban which has driven some, you know, response from particularly women in Iowa as well. Do I think Donald Trump's at risk of losing Iowa? I don't. But it may not be even the same margin as four years ago, but it's very Iowa-specific.

SANCHEZ: Before you go, Chuck, I just want to point out to our viewers this poll has shown some accuracy before, especially late in the game, which is why it's getting so much attention.

ROCHA: Look, this just in breaking news. Don't need a hairy legged man like this to tell you that women are pissed and they're mad. That's what's really going on. And you don't need to --

THOMPSON: You don't have to be some great scholar to figure that out. ROCHA: And that's what you see in this poll. She said six months ago that Donald Trump was winning by 11 points and Ann (ph) was right. And then when the Vice President got in, she redid the poll again and she had the president winning by four. That's just movement over time. I don't think that one poll is one thing, but you see movement over time. I've worked in Iowa since Dick Gephardt. All this white hair on my face is real. I've been in Iowa working for a long time. It's flat, it's got a lot of corn, and it's got a lot of white women who are mad.

THOMPSON: One thing to add to that, the biggest demographic in this country, the biggest voting block, is white women.

ROCHA: Bingo.

THOMPSON: And if there is even just a small shift nationwide in that vote, we could be looking back on Friday and be, that was the key to the selection we were all missing at.

BORGER: Well, senior women in this poll went for her by a two to 1 margin. I mean, that's nothing to sneeze at. And independent women went for her by a 28-point margin. So there's only so much you can extrapolate from one poll. I get it. But when you look at this, you say, well, what's going on with women here? This is -- is this something we can look at in other states, particularly neighboring states like Wisconsin that you were talking about? Is this because these are older women who remember what the country was like with Roe, who may have daughters to be affected by this, by the Supreme Court decision? You know, there are lots of factors in play here. And you know, I think this poll reflects that because of the abortion ban in the state of Iowa in particular.

[14:15:04]

KEILAR: That they more --

THOMPSON: And it wasn't --

KEILAR: I was just going to say, it is hard to hang something. You can't hang anything on one pole --

BORGER: Right.

KEILAR: - -and it is one of the game. But I think what we can say is that once we see what happens with this election, we're going to be able to look back and say, that poll captured something or that poll was an outlier, right?

THOMPSON: 100%.

SANCHEZ: You're the one with the other.

KEILAR: All right. Chuck, and Matt, and Alex, and Gloria, thank you so much. What a spirited conversation. We appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead, there's one big question to be answered after polls close on Election Day. How long will it take to call the presidential race? We're going to take a look at just how long it might take for some key battleground states to go over each and every ballot.

KEILAR: And we are following another important race. It's the battle to replace long time Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. We have more on the behind the scenes jockeying to be the upper chamber's top Republican when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:20:38]

SANCHEZ: For many of us, tomorrow night might be a long one, present company included.

KEILAR: That's right. But there are a handful of states to watch that could give us an indication of how things are going for both of these candidates. Each one of those states has different processes and rules for counting ballots. And we love processes and rules for counting ballots.

SANCHEZ: So much want.

KEILAR: It makes things really interesting, fun, and protracted, which is why we have Zachary Wolf joining us to tell us what to watch for on election night. What should we expect?

ZACHARY WOLF, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER: Well, I mean, the first thing we need to realize is that we're not in a global pandemic anymore. So there's not quite as much mail in balloting going on. So hopefully, that's going to speed things up. And we've heard that in all of these seven states, these seven key states. You can see over the course of three hours, the first polls are going to close at around 7:00. The last polls are going to close around 10:00 in these battleground states. There are other states that go later. But in the battlegrounds between these hours, we're going to see the polls close. And some of the secretaries of state say that things could go pretty quickly, like in Georgia in particular. They think that by 8 o'clock, we could have a pretty good idea of where things are going.

Now, the caveat is, if it's close, anything could happen. It could take a while. And there they are pre-processing the mail in ballots. They've literally taken them out of the envelope, which sounds like a mundane thing, but that really slowed things down four years ago.

Now, there are two states where they're not doing that or two of the battleground states and those are Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They close a little bit later. Pennsylvania, that was a state four years ago. It took four days to determine who was going to win there. That was when we knew that Joe Biden was going to win, when he finally did get Pennsylvania. They're not pre-processing the ballots. It could take a while.

Now, their Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth was on CNN this weekend. And he did say they've done some things to speed things up. They have some new equipment. They're doing some other things so it could go much faster. But if it's really close, we don't know how long it's going to take. So everybody just needs to be patient.

KEILAR: Pack your patience.

SANCHEZ: Pack your patience.

KEILAR: That's her favorite thing to say on this show. And it comes in handy today.

SANCHEZ: Appreciate you setting us up for that, Zach.

WOLF: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Zach Wolf, thank you so much.

KEILAR: Whoever wins the White House, the fate of their agenda may rest with the Senate. So while we do not know who's going to control the upper chamber of Congress after tomorrow, we do know that there will be a big change.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican, is stepping aside. And whoever follows in his footsteps is going to have a big say over what bills pass, which ones fail, and what the rest of the agenda looks like.

CNN's Lauren Fox joins us now live. Lauren, who is seeking this position knowing that they may draw the ire of Donald Trump if he is to be elected president?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, right now, there are three candidates in this race. Rick Scott of Florida, who's long seen as sort of this long shot candidate in the race. And then you have the two Johns. You have John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota.

Now, John Thune is currently the Republican whip. That means he has a lot of insight, a lot of conversations with these members day to day, because he's the one who has to make sure that legislation moves on the floor, and that Republicans continue to be united in decisions about what to do with Democratic control over the last couple of years.

Meanwhile, you have John Cornyn, who used to have that job. Now, both of them have been crisscrossing around the country trying to stump for their colleagues, trying to earn votes of both people who are running for re-election and potentially new Republicans who will come into the Senate. So that is what they have an eye on right now. But they're both raising a lot of money. And we're talking millions, tens of millions of dollars right now for their colleagues trying to win this race. I think it's really hard, though, for some Republicans because they like both of them, right?

You know, you heard Shelley Moore Capito tell her colleague Manu Raju there's really not a bad option between the two Johns. And a lot of Republicans are not saying how they're going to vote. And this matters because of the huge question mark of whether or not Donald Trump endorses in this race and whether members care that he endorses, because this all happens behind closed doors. They have a closed ballot election. They have a secret election, and they come out and they announce who the new Republican leader is. Nobody knows how an individual member has voted.

So that really raises the question, does a Trump endorsement matter in this race? And Markwayne Mullin who is close to John Thune, wants John Thune to be the Republican leader. He's been talking to Trump a lot about this. And his advice for the former President is stay out of the race.

[14:25:04]

KEILAR: Interesting. Okay. So the map, and this is -- I'm not breaking any news here. It favors Republicans. How are they talking? I mean, are they talking like it's a foregone conclusion that they're going to win the Senate or are they being cautious?

FOX: Well, I think Republicans are very confident that they're going to win the Senate. They are being cautious about by how many seats, right? Are we talking a narrow Republican majority or are they talking about a real sweep? And this makes a difference because you have some Republicans who sometimes cross party lines and vote with Democrats. I'm thinking of someone like Lisa Murkowski, someone like Senator Lisa Murkowski. And if Republicans have just a 51 seat majority, it really does empower those Republican senators to cross the aisle and vote with Democrats. And this could matter if you're talking about a potential Trump presidency where those Republicans could block certain nominees that he wants in his Cabinet. You also could have a scenario where Harris wins and these senators cross the aisle and work with Democrats to approve her nominees. So it's a huge, huge question. And it matters a lot if you have 51 seats or 54.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Lauren Fox, thank you so much for the update from Congress. Thank you so much.

Still ahead, inflation is down, but the issue continues to be on voters' minds as Election Day nears. What impact could it have on the race for the White House? We'll discuss in just moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)