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Interview With Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA); Biden Campaigns In Pennsylvania; Trump Refuses To Condemn Right-Wing Extremist Group During Debate. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 30, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: But then he took a turn and pivoted to Joe Biden, talking about what Joe Biden has and hasn't said about Antifa, similar to the way that you saw the president do so on the debate stage last night.

And, of course, this comes after hours of fallout here in Washington that followed the president on his way back from Cleveland, where you saw people who were even typically his allies, people like Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina on Capitol Hill, saying it was a comment the president needed to clarify it. He said, if he didn't think -- if he wasn't going to clarify it, then obviously the president stood by what he said.

But now, of course, you are seeing the president gives some Republicans some leeway here by saying he does not know who the group is, and he wants them to stand down and let law enforcement do the work, is what he told reporters just there.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: And, Kaitlan, the president can say he doesn't know who the Proud Boys are.

But the fact of the matter is, it's eerily similar to exactly what he says when he is -- when he has been presented with something that he does want to answer to in the past. It seems his way of getting out of having to answer it or inoculate himself from having to take a stance.

I mean, just remember back to 2016, when CNN's Jake Tapper asked him very specifically if he will denounce David Duke, if he wants David Duke's support. And he says, I don't know who David Duke is.

And he seems to be taking a very similar, same tactic here. There's no chance, Kaitlan, that the aides within inside the White House don't have that answer for him who the Proud Boys are and can't give him more detail had he wanted to hear it.

COLLINS: Also, look at the context in what -- in which this was brought up last night.

It was when Chris Wallace was asking the president to denounce these white supremacist groups. He was making very clear in what realm he was referencing the Proud Boys, because then you saw Chris Wallace giving the president that opportunity. And the president said, I will denounce them, but he said, give me a name. What name do you want me to denounce?

And that's when Joe Biden stepped in and said, the Proud Boys. The president repeated the name the Proud Boys.

So, it is very clear, if you were using context clues, what this group was, if the president is maintaining the story that he has no idea who this group is. He knew what it was.

But instead of taking that chance to say, OK, I denounce them, the president instead gave them this new tag line that they have been celebrating today, the stand down and stand by, basically saying this suggestion to be at the ready.

Certainly, that's the way they took it. So, of course, you have got to look at the context here of what it was brought up, how the group reacted to it. They certainly didn't take it as any kind of denouncement from the president. But now he is trying to clean up those remarks several hours later, after we got a lot of blowback from some of his usual allies.

BOLDUAN: Let's see if the damage is done, if this clears anything up for anyone who cares, and should really, on the president's stance on this.

Kaitlan, thanks so much. Kaitlan's at the White House for us.

All right, let's talk about this now with CNN Sara Sidner, who has done in-depth reporting on the Proud Boys and groups like it. And also joining us is Rashad Robinson. He's the president of Color of Change.

Sara, the president says he doesn't know who the Proud Boys are. Why don't you help inform him?

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: OK, I shall.

And it's interesting that, if he doesn't know who a group is, then why is he repeating their name and then giving them what they saw as an order or a rallying cry to stand back and stand by?

So, by the way, those words are now printed on shirts that they're selling. They are going to be using it as a recruiting tool. It makes them more well-known. And they're going to be trying to get more people into their group.

Now, the group that the president is talking about in the debate, the Proud Boys, say that they are not white supremacists. They have people from all different racial backgrounds that are members of this group.

However, they have certainly been involved in what one judge called political violence and intimidation. And there is a case in New York, where you are, in Manhattan, in 2018 where there is video of them shown beating these anti-fascists all dressed all in black. And the Proud Boys, something is thrown at them, and they come at them, and there are a bunch of them kicking, beating.

And two of them were convicted for attempted assault. This is the video there that the police put out. Looking at what happened there, you see, there's one person in the red hat. And so the Proud Boys, just a melee there, and two of them were convicted of this.

And you see them over and over again. What they usually do is, they show up, they have a rally, saying it's about free speech, or about their own anti-fascism against the far left. And they come completely armed to the teeth with body armor on, and they say every time, we're -- this is only for defending ourselves.

But that's not how New York saw it. They have also said they are not a hate group. They are suing over being called a hate group. But that's not how the agencies and organizations that track hate and that track hateful behavior see it.

They have been studying them for a long time and they are adamant, the ADL telling me today, this is a hate group, full stop, looking at all the things that they have done and said over time -- Kate.

[15:05:05]

BOLDUAN: Rashad -- well put and explained, Sara.

Rashad, the president -- as Kaitlan's reporting, the president seems to be trying to clean things up, if you will, as one says when they make a gaffe.

I'm not sure this is a gaffe, though, then. I'd like to your take and if you think he cleaned anything up.

RASHAD ROBINSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COLOR OF CHANGE: I actually don't even know if he was trying to clean things up.

It's a difference between actually trying to clean things out and maybe trying to move stuff under the couch or move stuff under a table, so it's not as visible, so everyone can move on. And, in fact, we're not going to just move on, because what we're dealing with here with this president, has been years of giving space, of being in relationship, of being unwilling to condemn white nationalists, from Charlottesville, from before he started his campaign, to even the years while he was on the "Celebrity Apprentice," going around the country with a racist conspiracy theory about President Obama.

Nobody has any reason to believe this president, that he does not know who the Proud Boys are, and that he's not sympathetic, at minimum, to their causes, and hasn't been enabled at every turn by social media platforms, by corporations who have looked the other way on the racism because they were getting tax cuts.

So many folks are responsible for what we saw last night, in terms of a president of the United States giving orders to a white nationalist group in the midst of a really contentious time in this country.

BOLDUAN: And if we're -- and if we're being real well, we all can understand one thing as well, getting back to I don't know who the Proud Boys are. The president claims quite often to know everything about things that he doesn't know anything about, which would be just like widespread voter fraud, which has not materialized since 2016, when he claimed it did. It has not materialized now. He continues to say that, believe me, I know a lot about it.

So you think that he could know something about what he's talking about here. So you just cannot believe that talk.

SIDNER: Kate...

BOLDUAN: Go ahead, Sara.

SIDNER: I mean, all he has to do is ask somebody. There are people -- he's the president of these United States.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

SIDNER: He has people to do the research for him, if he doesn't want to put it into Google.

But like, literally, you can go look, and you can go search. You can see their point of view. You can go on YouTube. And you can also see the point of view of all of these organizations that track groups, far-right groups like the Proud Boys.

It is unconscionable that the president of the United States used the name of a group and now says, well, I don't know who they are.

Find out. You're the president of the United States.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Take it a step further, Sara, when he says, I always denounce any form of any of that, when he was pressed repeatedly on, do you denounce white supremacy, what he was also saying the first time he was asked.

Just to be very clear, he said white -- he was asked, white supremacists support you, do you welcome that? And his immediate response was, I want law and order. And he had to be asked again about condemning white supremacy. And then he says that, "I always denounce any form of that."

And I'm curious if this -- when -- if the -- as the president says that, what impact does that have on these groups?

SIDNER: It's huge.

Because what it is to them is, it is absolutely something that emboldens them. They see it as his approval of them, and that he is with them. We have seen this over and over and over again. To me, the moment that happened last night during this debate, while millions of people are watching this, was another "fine people on both sides" moment. That is how everyone who has been impacted, for sure, by white supremacists and white supremacy saw it. When you watched that, it was another one of those moments where you don't want to feel shocked because you have heard some of this rhetoric before. But you know that this emboldens those who want to further the cause of white supremacy.

And white supremacists, neo-Nazis, you name it, the KKK, they see this as an approval, not a tacit approval, but an explicit approval of what they're doing and what they believe.

And they believe the president believes what they believe.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: Yes.

And it wasn't just the statement that he made about the Proud Boys. It was also the statement towards the end around his supporters, and as it relates to voter and voter suppression and voter intimidation, which there is sort of nothing more sort of connected to the history of black people and our ability to express our will through the vote is to also at the other end be suppressed, being attacked on the vote.

[15:10:02]

There's a Facebook post right now that I have had direct conversation with leadership at Facebook. Up until two hours before the debate last night, we're trying to get them to pull down this post from Donald Trump Jr. calling on -- to enlist an army of Trump supporters to go to the polls.

We watched the looters and shooters posts that landed on Facebook in the height of the George Floyd uprisings.

We have watched this president stoke sort of his supporters, white nationalist groups, giving them sort of the permission to rally and to mobilize and to leverage social media platforms that use targeted marketing, that use radicalization, that use all sorts of tools to sort of bring people in.

Yes, this president is responsible for so much of the hate that is happening in our society, but he is not acting alone. He has been enabled by so many that have put their profits above the sort of safety and the security and integrity of either systems or our democracy in this country.

And the fact of the matter is, is, this cannot just be about defeating Trump and his relationship to white nationalists. It has to be defeating Trumpism, and the people that would be willing to go along with it, as long as it doesn't hurt them, or if it gets them profits in the end.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

And, Rashad, taking on Facebook and holding them accountable for how effectively the ban on just, for example, the Proud Boys on that social media platform, when they were banned back in 2018, how effective or not it has been, is something that I know that you have been taking on very directly and continue to.

And, as we see from this conversation, those kind of -- holding those kind of feet to the fire is only going to be more needed, when we hear conversations, narratives, rhetoric from the president still today, 30-plus days out from the election, on the South Lawn of the White House.

Sara, thank you for your reporting always. Rashad, thanks for coming on.

All right, I'm going to go -- let's go now to Pennsylvania. We're taking a live look at Joe Biden. He's out on the campaign trail. He's speaking to supporters in Pittsburgh right now. And this is just one of the stops on his tour of Western Pennsylvania.

He was also -- he was also in Eastern Ohio.

Let's go to CNN's M.J. Lee. She's in Pennsylvania, where Biden's going to be heading a little later today, different part of Pennsylvania.

M.J., what -- talking about what Joe Biden is saying post-debate, he spoke out this morning. What's the position today?

M.J. LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, clearly, Kate, the 2020 campaign continues today after last night's incredibly chaotic debate.

And, as you mentioned, what that looks like for the Biden campaign today is a multistop tour through Ohio and parts of Western Pennsylvania. I know we're seeing some pictures of Biden speaking in Pittsburgh right now. And, ultimately, tonight, he's going to end up here in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where he is going to have a drive-in- style rally.

This is obviously a way of doing campaigning amid the pandemic. And what we are hearing from the Biden campaign and Biden himself today about last night is that they feel like there could not have been a more stark contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on that debate stage.

They are making the case that you didn't really see a clear message or a vision that was laid out by the president. They have described him as having been erratic and having been angry on the debate stage.

And they're pointing in particular to two things that they believe Trump failed to do yesterday. The first one is really getting into the details of the coronavirus pandemic, and really sort of recognizing the widespread suffering that continues throughout the country because of this public health crisis.

And second, of course, is what you were talking about just now, his refusal on the debate stage to disavow white supremacists. I just want you to take a listen to how Joe Biden summarized what he thought was really Donald Trump's performance last night on the debate stage earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Trump's constant disregard and unwillingness to speak to COVID, and the fact that 205 million people -- thousand people have already died and over seven million are infected, and it's likely to get worse.

He didn't want to talk about it at all. In terms of election legitimacy, he made it clear that he didn't think this is going to be -- if he lost, it wasn't going to be a legitimate election, already began to plant seeds of doubt in the legitimacy of this election.

I don't know any president that has ever done that before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Biden also told reporters that he was constantly attacked last night by the president and that he hopes that the debate commission can find a way to try to help the both -- both of the candidates speak without interruption.

Clearly, the commission agrees with this. They said earlier today that they're going to try to make some changes to make sure that future debates can be more orderly -- Kate.

[15:15:05]

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's huge news coming from the debate commission just a short time ago.

We're going to have much more on that element of this whole thing coming up.

It's great to see you, M.J. Thank you.

Still ahead for us, President Trump using the debate stage to try once again and repeatedly to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, making multiple false claims about Pennsylvania in particular.

The Lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is here to respond.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Welcome back.

I want to play for you an important moment from last night's debate that deserves more attention. It deserves attention because it gets at the very core of American democracy, the president of the United States trying to create fear and distrust around the voting process and the system.

[15:20:05]

And he's doing so by blowing small incidents completely out of proportion and completely making things up in some instances. Before I play this, I also want to say once again the president has no

basis for the -- quote, unquote -- "bad things" that he's warning of.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it.

As you know, today, there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They were called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch.

You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: With me right now is the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.

Thank you so much for being here.

Poll watchers thrown out in Philadelphia, I can lay out how that is factually not true, but you are the lieutenant governor of the commonwealth. What do you say?

LT. GOV. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): It's an absolute lie. And they know that too.

But the whole chaos is the objective. You saw that at the debate last night. That is their centerpiece of a strategy is to foment chaos, to create the basis for challenging results that don't match their desired outcome.

And that's what we're seeing happening again and again, and it's accelerating. And we're 40 days out. Imagine three weeks, two weeks, a week out. They're going to file baseless lawsuits of which they know have no legal underpinning.

But, again, the objective is chaos.

BOLDUAN: Yes, and it -- just give the quick details on what Trump was referring to in Philadelphia, there are no campaign poll watchers that have you even yet been certified.

So, the woman who showed up...

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Go ahead.

FETTERMAN: That happened a few days before the election. So, like, there's no legal basis, there's no legal recognition of that. So it's entirely baseless.

But they know that. They're smart enough to know that. Again, they wish to create chaos, because chaos is the objective.

BOLDUAN: The president -- Pennsylvania was top of mind for the president last night, it seems. He went after Pennsylvania more than once. Let me play something else.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Number two...

CHRIS WALLACE, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MODERATOR: OK.

TRUMP: ... they cheat. They cheat. Hey, they found ballots in a wastepaper basket three days ago, and they all had the name -- military ballots. They were military. They all had the name Trump on them.

WALLACE: Vice President Biden...

TRUMP: You think that's good?

WALLACE: Vice President Biden...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: This was addressed already last week, nine ballots discarded in error. The person was caught. It was caught. The system worked.

And, also, for comparison, everyone, nine ballots, nine ballots. There were more than 1.6 million ballots cast in 2016 in Pennsylvania. I just want to put that out there, so people understand what we're talking about here.

But, Lieutenant Governor, why do you think the -- the president's been talking about widespread voter fraud since 2016. Why do you think he is so focused on the commonwealth?

FETTERMAN: Because he's trying to inoculate himself for a result that his campaign doesn't want.

He's a smart man. He can read polls. He understands that there's a gap right now. And by creating and fomenting this type of chaos, using red herrings, isolated incidents like that, you try to create the basis for some kind of challenging of these election results.

And that's unprecedented. You look at the debate last night, remember, it wasn't that long ago the scandal during the debate was Al Gore exhaling too deeply at George Bush. That was the big scandal.

And last night took our American democracy in a direction that no one wants or ever could have foreseen. And that is their M.O. and will be between now on Election Day.

BOLDUAN: And look, we, as journalists, we will continue to fact-check all of these things, as the president very clearly shows no sign of letting up with these false attacks on the system in Pennsylvania. But do you get a sense that, despite the best efforts of Democrats and

Republican officials in charge of elections in Pennsylvania, that his fabrications are impacting voters?

FETTERMAN: I don't. Ultimately, I don't think they will be successful, because here's another fact, is that vote by mail-in Pennsylvania was a Republican bill.

And you can fact-check this. Far more Republicans in our state legislature voted for vote by mail-in Pennsylvania than Democrats. It was a deeply bipartisan bill. And there's not one single elected Democratic official that is accusing of -- red state commissioners of cheating.

Everybody knows that this is going to be a state election, and it's going to be a secure election. Anyone that's saying otherwise has a different agenda. And that agenda is to foment chaos to serve as the basis to challenge results that that campaign isn't going to necessarily like.

[15:25:07]

BOLDUAN: Lieutenant Governor, you're going to be meeting up with the vice president as he continues to travel through Pennsylvania later today.

You gave me kind of your assessment of what a mess the debate was last night. The debate commission says there are going to be -- they're looking at changing the rules to try to bring about some more order.

What do you think of that? What rules, what do you think should be changed?

FETTERMAN: Well, I mean, I don't think that debate changed the underlying dynamics at all of this race, quite frankly, at least in my state.

I have said this before. Donald Trump is very popular in Pennsylvania. We cannot afford to underestimate his popularity in our state. And I have emphasized that continuously.

But you can see right now from the debate and today with these kind of nuisance lawsuits that chaos is going to be the M.O. from here on out. And as long as we vote, you vote, follow the instruction, whether you vote in-person or by mail, it's going to be secure. And we're going to have a result that we know is going to reflect the democratic will of the voters of Pennsylvania, without a doubt, because we have bipartisan buy-in to our voting laws here in Pennsylvania.

And anyone that says otherwise is deliberately spreading misinformation to a different objective.

BOLDUAN: It's going to be a long 30-plus days to the election.

FETTERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Lieutenant Governor, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.

FETTERMAN: My pleasure. Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next for us, for the first time since the season started, NFL play will be disrupted by confirmed cases of COVID.

Details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)