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Trump's Supreme Court Pick Meets GOP Senators on Capitol Hill; Tonight's 1st Trump/Biden Debate Could Be Defining Moment In Presidential Race; Police Break Up 1000+ Person Party Near FSU Campus; Biden Condemns Facebook as "Foremost Propagator of Disinformation"; Trump Administration to Defy Judge's Order by Ending Census Early. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired September 29, 2020 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:33:55]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court weeks before the election has galvanized voters on both the right and the left.

Barrett headed to Capitol Hill today to meet with Senate Republicans who have already vowed to confirm her to the nation's highest court.

Vice President Mike Pence is just one of several White House officials accompanying her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We look forward to a vote in the Senate in the near future and to fill the seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Because the American people deserve a justice like judge Amy Coney Barrett. The American people deserve nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.

So, thank you, Leader, for the warm welcome today. We look forward to working with you.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Leader McConnell, if Judge Coney Barrett is confirmed, should she recuse herself from any election-related cases?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's it. Let's go. Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Minority Leader Chuck Schumer clinging to hope that he can persuade a few GOP colleagues to delay the vote. Schumer pledging that Senate Dems will, quote, "keep fighting." A delayed vote however is likely. [14:35:03]

And now to tonight's big presidential debate. This is first one between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And you can see it here tonight on CNN.

This face-off is just hours away now. And it could be a defining moment in the race for president.

Ryan Lizza is with us. He is chief Washington correspondent for "Politico" and he's a senior political analyst here at CNN.

Ryan, sources tell CNN that Trump has largely resisted doing formal debate prep. I think at this point, the tabulation on how much formula debate prep he's done is around two hours. That's wild. That's what it takes to make dinner.

OK, so. But you actually say that Trump -- a fancy dinner, but still. You say Trump is being underestimated going into tonight's debate. Tell us why you say that.

RYAN LIZZA, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think so. You know, I spent the last couple of weeks watching all of the Republican primary debates from 2015 and '16 and the three general debates against Hillary Clinton.

And I have to say watching them, especially knowing that it all ends, that he wins the nomination and he wins the presidency, he was a much more sophisticated and savvy debater than I think he is given credit for.

He dominated the debates, the Republican primary debates in 2015.

Now, he said a lot of things that were false. He lied. He -- the tone of a lot of his attacks was personal. So he did a lot of things that were just completely outside of the norms of traditional political debate.

But he really was able to keep himself as the center of attention in those Republican debates, which helped keep him in the news and helped keep him as the polling leader, really, through the entire primary.

You fast forward to the general election, very different dynamic. It's one-on-one rather than one-on-nine in the Republican primaries.

He comes into those fall debates with Hillary Clinton. And it's worth watching them again. Because he's not quite as manic and filled with grievance and throwing out as much sort of Trumpy stuff as he has been, frankly, in the last year.

And, you know, I talked to Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton's top aide, who played Trump against Hillary.

And he told me a story about how he launched a series of attacks in debate prep against Hillary Clinton on immigration, on job creation, and on some of these other populist issues that he owned in the fall. And she sat down in debate prep and said, wow, he's right --

KEILAR: Right.

LIZZA: -- these are really hard attacks to counter.

And he was a much better debater than, frankly, I personally remember, re-watching them.

He was able to sort of come into those debates -- he was still Trump but kind of a debate version of Trump that I think, if he puts on over the next three debates, he will -- he may exceed expectations.

KEILAR: But how -- this report has come out in "The New York Times" where it shows that for many years, he paid nothing in taxes and in 2016, 2017 he paid next to nothing in taxes.

He has 200,000 COVID deaths to answer for. No one thought this country was going to get away without some deaths, but a lot of those were preventable.

He has record high unemployment in addition to that damaging information out of "The Times'" report.

Does that change this debate?

LIZZA: That changes everything. That's the reason why this is so much different, of course, than 2016, is that, in 2016, it was very easy for him to run as a populist outsider against the establishment. And Hillary Clinton was a good target for that.

Now he has a record and, objectively, a poor record when it comes to COVID.

I'm a little more skeptical about how much, frankly, the tax issue will matter, but we'll see how Biden uses that against him.

But the economic record and the record on coronavirus, which is probably the most important thing right now, that is very difficult for him to kind of bob and weave and explain away in the way that he did when he was frequently pressed on his vulnerabilities in 2016.

And, frankly, Joe Biden has been a more of an elusive target for him than Hillary Clinton. So no doubt about it, there are some major differences.

KEILAR: I know we will all be watching. And I'm curious after the fact what you're going to say about it.

Ryan Lizza, thank you for being with us today.

Our special live coverage of the debate will start at 7:00 Eastern right here on CNN. You can also see the debate here on CNN after that.

Still ahead, President Trump's commerce secretary says he plans to ignore a court order and end the 2020 census count next week instead of the end of the year.

[14:40:00]

Plus, more than a thousand people gathered for an off-campus party at Florida State. I'll talk to the police department that had to break this up, next.

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KEILAR: This just in. Florida is reporting a big spike in coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, more than 3,000 new cases.

And despite those numbers, many college kids are still having parties. There was one near Florida State University in Tallahassee that got so extreme police had to break up this party that included more than 1,000 people.

I want to bring in Alicia Turner. She is the public information officer for the Tallahassee Police Department.

Thank you for being with us.

Can you tell us what happened here?

ALICIA TURNER, PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER, TALLAHASSEE POLICE DEPARTMENT: What we know right now is that our officers first received a call for service just before midnight. Once they arrived, you're talking about 700-plus vehicles and over 1,000 people.

And ultimately, it took hours to clear the scene. We also needed help from the Leon County Sheriff's Office with their helicopter to get in and help safely disperse the crowd.

[14:45:07]

KEILAR: I mean, how do you deter something like this when, obviously, people are just flaunting regulations and the law?

TURNER: I mean, right now, we're just asking for voluntary compliance. We know that people have been cooped up. We know people enjoy socializing and kind of want to get back to normal.

But right now, that's just not something we can do. We're asking for people in the public to try to do what they can to remain safe.

KEILAR: OK. Alicia, I want to thank you so much. This is kind of astounding that folks are doing this. But we appreciate the work that you're doing.

Thank you for being on.

The Biden campaign launching a big attack against Facebook for its role in spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories. We'll have that next.

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KEILAR: In the past few weeks, Don Junior has posted baseless conspiracy theories of a rigged election trying to recruit a so-called election security army.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP JR, SON OF PRESIDENT TRUMP: Their plan is to add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election. We cannot let that happen. We need every able-bodied man and woman to join Army for Trump's Election Security Operation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Keep in mind, historically, something like that has been used to suppress the votes of people of color. It's well documented.

Facebook and Twitter put labels on that video directing viewers to real accurate information about voting.

But neither social media companies said it violated their election integrity rules enough to be removed.

Elliot Williams is a former federal prosecutor and a CNN legal analyst.

Elliot, the Biden campaign has sent this letter. But here we are. It's just a month before the election. Is there really much else they can do when it comes to trying to get Facebook to stop allowing in these misleading posts?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, the thing they can do is try to shame Facebook into acting. Because of the fact that, in the public, the one thing both sides seem united on is that Facebook is doing things wrong.

Look, one of the central -- Brianna, one of the central legal questions of our day is going to be: What is Facebook. Is it a news platform? Is it a social connection platform? Is it a texting app? Is it a political tool?

And all of those things have different standards for what the platform should be allowed to get away with.

The problem is, on Facebook, not unlike TV, like we're on right now, there's no obligation for equal time or even for fact-checking.

So, that can put information out there and not really have a legal obligation to check it or correct it. And that's sort of what the Biden campaign is touching on here.

KEILAR: And when you look at a specific thing, I mean, this goes back to the early '80s, a gubernatorial race where there was this sort of election security squad. And what it ended up doing -- and this was determined -- was trying to

suppress the votes of people of color. A consent decree was put in place. It has expired now.

So, with having it expired, the campaign, Donald Junior can do stuff like this.

But we know what this is about. This is about a racist attempt to suppress votes, Elliot.

WILLIAMS: Oh, this was the 1980s. And we're going back to the 1880s in terms our history as a country with first denying and suppressing the vote of black people.

Look, if you look at what Facebook's own standards are, it's they claim to not allow misinformation about methods of voting, whether votes would be counted, the logistics of voting.

And some of these videos, being put up by the Trump campaign, seem to hit all of those things and seem to be clearly -- even if they're not breaking the law, which seems to be Facebook's standards, they're clearly -- it's clearly not good conduct. And it's clearly suppressive conduct.

So the question is: What do you do about it? And again, Facebook's message seems to be, well, they're not going to make it a crime so, all politicians lie, oh, we'll sort of wash our hands and move on.

KEILAR: Yes.

I want to ask you about the census while I have you. Because the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, just announced that the administration, the Trump administration is planning to conclude the 2020 census on Oct 5th.

And this would actually defy a federal court order, which says the census count has to continue beyond that.

How do you expect the courts are going to handle this? How will they respond to Wilbur Ross?

WILLIAMS: Yes, this particular court has made clear she's quite frustrated with the answer she's been getting. Frankly, she's asked for a briefing by 10:00 p.m. Pacific tonight as to how they actually came to that conclusion in the first place.

Look, there might be some plausible explanation behind why and how the Census Department landed on that October 5th date.

The problem is that, given all of the shenanigans they've engaged in over who gets counted, how people get counted and when, it's just hard to credit them and take them seriously.

And that's why what seems to be frustration from the judge.

I'll tell you, it's not a nice place to be to have a federal judge annoyed with the answers you're giving.

And the lawyer for of the government said the requirement was outrageous. And she said, well, look, what you've done is violate the Administrative Procedures Act and not given an explanation for why you made the decision you did.

[14:55:08]

KEILAR: And super quickly, Elliot, if you close that census early, who do you think gets left out?

WILLIAMS: Again, it's purely a function of black and brown communities, namely, communities that don't speak English well.

This again, like you were talking about earlier, well documented, it's historical, and that's what this really comes down to.

And again, there might be a substantive justification for why they -- again, they use the term "target date." What's that mean? Is that the completion date or whatever?

There might be a reason for it. Who knows? But it's hard to believe it.

KEILAR: Right. We're seeing a pattern.

All right. Elliot Williams, thank you so much.

WILLIAMS: Thanks.

KEILAR: Just in, Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are releasing their tax returns ahead of tonight's debate. What do they reveal?

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