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H.R. McMaster is Interviewed on Biden's Cabinet Picks; Millions of Americans Need Food Assistance. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired November 24, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:56]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: President-elect Joe Biden's national security team is coming together. When you look at the list, very experienced individuals, relative moderates in a number of these positions. You have Alejandro Mayorkas going to DHS, Avril Haines, first woman director of national intelligence.

With me now is President Trump's former national security adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. We should note he's the author of a new book, might be worth reading at this time of transition, "Battleground: The Fight to Defend the Free World."

H.R., good to have you on this morning.

LT. GEN. H.R. MCMASTER, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Hey, Jim, great to be with you. Happy Thanksgiving.

SCIUTTO: Thanks very much.

Another former colleague of yours from the Trump administration, General Mattis, retired General Mattis, he wrote a piece in "Foreign Affairs" talking about how the nation should return to cooperative security over Trump's America first. The president's attacking Mattis this morning, calling him a failure, et cetera.

But I wonder, big picture, if you had ten minutes with President-elect Biden, would you recommend that, a return to sort of a more old school approach to the world, alliances matter, American exceptionalism, et cetera?

MCMASTER: I guess, I mean the advice that I would give is just, let's focus on what the alliances are for and then galvanize other countries to work with us on our greatest challenges.

For example, China's campaign of cooption, coercion and concealment, various forms of economic aggression that put us at a significant disadvantage. You know, China's aggressive actions internationally. Russia's campaign of sustained political subversion against the United States and Europe in particular. The catastrophe that we see in the greater Middle East. The danger of jihadist terrorist organizations, right? I mean alliances have to be more than a better atmosphere at cocktail parties with our European allies, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: And so -- and some of our alliances, I'll tell you, Jim, are pretty strong, right, and there will be elements of continuity in our alliance with Japan, for example, or you're seeing some of the breakthrough in the middle east associated with the Abraham Accords. I mean I think you -- the administration will want to not define its foreign policy only as in opposition to the Trump administration.

SCIUTTO: Right.

MCMASTER: Certainly there are areas to improve, but there are areas of continuity as well.

SCIUTTO: But it will be a big change, will it not, to restore a cooperative relationship with NATO or South Korea or Japan, right?: I mean some of the president's most blistering public criticism has been of allies whereas he's made some very friendly, cozy statements and moves with the Putins of the world, the Kims, the Erdogans.

MCMASTER: Yes, the overall message to NATO, I think, can be delivered in a much more productive and different way. But the overall message I think is one that the Biden administration will continue with because it was a message in the Obama administration as well, which is, hey, we need you to share more of the collective defense burden.

And this is the same (INAUDIBLE) these days, mainly a Germany, you know, who only spends about 1 percent of their GDP rather than the 2 percent that was pledged in the Wales Conference. Germany's a wealthy country. It can afford, right, to contribute more to our collective defense.

And, of course, there have been calls within NATO, across NATO, for reforms that make us more competitive against what you suggest is a very significant threat --

SCIUTTO: Right.

MCMASTER: And that's that campaign -- and you've written about this, this campaign of political subversion by the Kremlin.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about specific news. President-elect Biden has said he will try or is considering getting back into the Iran nuclear deal. Is that doable? I mean will U.S. allies, will China, will Russia, who signed on the deal, will Iran buy that?

MCMASTER: Yes, I think it would be a disaster, Jim. You know I think trying to turn the clock back to 2016, I think it's a fair criticism of the Obama administration foreign policy that it's greatest achievement was the empowerment of Iran across the greater Middle East in a way that was disastrous for security in the region, it perpetuated the sectarian civil war, helped set conditions for the rise of ISIS and allowed Iran to almost really place a proxy army on the border of Israel.

[09:35:05]

So I think we (INAUDIBLE) Iran --

SCIUTTO: But Iran is closer -- it's closer to a nuke today than it was under the Iran nuclear deal. It's got -- it's got, you know, hundreds of kilos more of enriched uranium than it had when the deal was in place.

MCMASTER: That's if you trust Iran to have adhered to the deal to begin with, right? I mean I -- I think, you know, what you have Iran now saying is, hey, we're going to violate this nuclear deal by reimplementing our nuclear program, which, by the way, they denied that they ever had, right? So I think, you know, what was concerning about the Iran nuclear deal is its weakness, its weakness in terms of verification.

You know what, the ink wasn't dry on the deal before Iran said, hey, these are the places you can't look at.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: But what it really did is it gave Iran a huge payoff and funds that it used to intensify its four-decade long proxy war against, you know, the great Satan, the little Satan, Israel, and the Arab monarchies and it really helped create a humanitarian catastrophe of colossal scale across the Middle East.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

Do you think there's a sigh of relief from U.S. allies, not just in Europe, but in Asia, South Korea or north of the border, Canada? I mean we know the way this president has attacked allies over the last four years.

MCMASTER: Yes, I think so. Among many of the allies that the president has been rather insulting toward, I mean, I think that there is a sigh of relief. But, again, I hope that the conversations are about, hey, what are we going to do within the alliance to overcome these really dire challenges that we're facing these days.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: And so I think, as a -- as I said, I mean it has to be -- more than just a better atmosphere at the cocktail parties, right? We have a lot of work to do to overcome these challenges.

SCIUTTO: One thing that few expect to change, right, is a confrontational relationship with China. I mean you have this bipartisan waking up to China's violation of trade agreements, you know, et cetera, stealing U.S. ideas, et cetera.

Where does Biden then take that relationship? I mean are we on a course for a conflict with China? MCMASTER: Yes, I wouldn't call it confrontational. I would say

competitive. I think, Jim, you know, what the Trump administration did and what I was a part of in that, you know, that first year of the Trump administration is to examine the assumption on which our China policy was based, which is that China, having been welcomed into the international order, would play by the rules, as it prospered it would liberalize its economy and liberalize its form of government. And what we see now is really a rage of hostile actions by the Chinese Communist Party.

Just since -- since the COVID pandemic, China's become much more aggressive at extending and tightening its exclusive grip on power internally --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: And more aggressive at exporting its authoritarian mercantileist (ph) model. If China succeeds, Jim, the world will be less free, less prosperous and less safe.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: And so competing is what we need to do in a transparent way and, as you suggest, right, with allies, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCMASTER: Because China will take a divide and conquer approach against us. So it's very important that the United States, Japan and the European Union, the others of the world's largest economies in particular, engage in forms of economic competition that are going to be immensely important to our future.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, retired, let's keep up the conversation.

MCMASTER: Thanks, Jim.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Always good to hear from him.

OK, so ahead for us, as we think about Thanksgiving, think about how lucky you are if you can feed your family for a Thanksgiving meal. Tens of millions of Americans cannot. We're going to take you to a food bank trying to alleviate some of that pain.

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[09:42:53]

SCIUTTO: Well, this is a sad fact in this country in 2020, but right now there are millions -- millions of Americans who are hungry, struggling simply to put food on the table.

HARLOW: Food banks across the country, as you can see right there, trying to help, trying to keep up with the need.

Our Brynn Gingras joins us at one in East Rutherford, New Jersey. They are have a bit of a pre-Thanksgiving food giveaway.

Good morning, Brynn.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Poppy, good morning.

Yes, and you can see behind me, these are a group of volunteers at the East Rutherford YMCA getting ready to go to their stations and start handing out this food.

Now, these volunteers are here every single Tuesday since April making sure people in this community are getting meals, are getting fed as unemployment skyrockets. And I can tell you what they say is the difference between April and now is the need just gets greater and greater and greater.

They would give about 50,000 meals a month back in April and now they're seeing well over 100,000 meals a month.

And, guys, keep this in perspective, we are in one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country and this is the kind of need that we are seeing.

Now, the people that are lining up right now, they're going to come through this area and pick up a meal that could feed their families for about the next two weeks or so. And we talked to many of them and they say that their loved ones have lost jobs, that the need has just gotten worse. Some line up weekly. Some visit food bank to food bank to food bank all across the state trying to get meals for every single day of the week.

Take a listen.

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SCOTT WOLANSKI, NORTH ARLINGTON, NEW JERSEY, RESIDENT: It's tough, you know, you've still got everything going on, bills to be paid and, you know, I'm lucky I still have a job and, you know, but it's what's going on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They forced my husband to retire early so we can get the benefits. And it's hard to find a job today. And I would do anything, you know, to just find something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRAS: And that woman has two young children of her own. She has been in line since 4:30 this morning, still waiting to get those two boxes of food.

[09:45:00]

Guys, it's also so important to notice -- or to mention, rather, these food banks, these places that donate so much food, the YMCA donating much of this themselves, they're also in need. You know, the president telling me they need money. You know, they talk about airline bailouts, but these -- these non-profits, they need money as well. They're possibly just a few months from closing their doors and, of course, this as the need is just getting greater and greater in the communities surrounding them.

Guys.

SCIUTTO: Brynn, I'm going to ask you in the break where best folks listening now can donate to causes like that, to keep food banks like that open.

GINGRAS: Absolutely.

SCIUTTO: And, folks, if you're watching, we'll make sure to share that on Twitter. But, Brynn Gingras, thanks so much for bringing those stories.

HARLOW: Thank you, Brynn.

GINGRAS: Yes.

HARLOW: Ahead for us, a dark money mystery in Florida.

SCIUTTO: A so-called ghost candidate may have thrown a state Senate race to Republicans.

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[09:50:16]

SCIUTTO: Now to an election mystery in the state of Florida. In three state Senate races, supposedly liberal candidates made it on the ballot but did not campaign and held no fundraisers.

SCIUTTO: It appears that these were ghost candidates and that they were backed by dark money with the aim of siphoning votes away from Democrats. Might have worked.

CNN's senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin explains.

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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It was the closest of races, incumbent Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez lost his Florida state senate seat by just 32 votes. The Republican challenger who won, Ileana Garcia, a founder of Latinos for Trump. But there was a third candidate in the race playing the role of spoiler.

His name, Alex Rodriguez, sharing the same last name as the Democrat in the race and promoted as a liberal. Alex Rodriguez got more than 6,000 votes. Jose Rodriguez says the straw candidate cost him his seat by pulling away Democrat votes.

GRIFFIN (on camera): Have you met him, seen him, talked to him? Has he been involved in any debates? JOSE JAVIER RODRIGUEZ, FORMER FLORIDA STATE SENATOR: I didn't even know what he looked like until after the race and investigative reporters tracked him down.

GRIFFIN (voice over): In state senate district nine, Democrat Patricia Sigman lost to a Republican by just 2 percent of the vote. Here, once again, no one ever saw the supposedly liberal third candidate.

PATRICIA SIGMAN, FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE: She had no website. She never participated in any of the debates or forums. Never showed up anywhere. She wasn't even registered to vote until she filed.

GRIFFIN: In these races and one other, ghost candidates in Florida were supported by mysterious PACs, which sent out hundreds of thousands of dollars in mostly identical advertising mailers making those candidates seem liberal. Yet CNN has learned the people behind the mailers were all Republicans.

BEN WILCOX, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, INTEGRITY FLORIDA: This is a new one for me.

GRIFFIN: Ben Wilcox, research director of the non-partisan watchdog group, Integrity Florida, says no doubt someone running a dark money campaign impacted at least one state senate seat, possibly two.

WILCOX: Florida is (INAUDIBLE) regulated when it comes to financing of campaigns, but it's probably legal. But, you know, it really shouldn't be.

GRIFFIN: Here's what we know.

Two brand new political action committees registered on the same date at the same minute and one day later received a combined $550,000 in donations from the same company. The paperwork says the packs were started by two young women who's social media is filled with pictures of beaches and boats, but CNN could find no evidence either of them or their PACs had ever been involved in politics.

Then, on the very same day both PACs paid the same printing company all of that $550,000 for the flyers. It's their only expenditure. The printing company and one of the PACs are linked to this man, Alex Alvarado, a Tallahassee-based Republican consultant and former Republican congressional intern. The printing company is run out of this house, owned by his mom and stepdad.

The PAC started by a friend of his girlfriend's. And despite being involved in ghost candidate advertising with very liberal and progressive ideas, every one of them is a registered Republican. That even includes the ghost candidate, Alex Rodriguez, who was registered Republican until this election. And none of them are talking.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been looking for Alex. Is he around?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. He'll be back tomorrow, though.

GRIFFIN: That's actually Alex Rodriguez, who lied here to a local Miami TV reporter about his own identity.

The money flowed into the PACs from one company, Proclivity. It's registered in Delaware as a corporation under the name Richard Alexander.

GRIFFIN (on camera): What or who is Proclivity? The trail ends here at a strip mall in Atlanta, Georgia. This is where Proclivity has a mailbox drop but nothing else.

GRIFFIN (voice over): Democrats like Patricia Sigman are calling for an investigation into who paid for all of this.

SIGMAN: They don't run in order to win. They run in order to just try to siphon off votes. And, you know, they don't have a website, they don't campaign, they don't show up, they -- they're ghosts.

GRIFFIN: Florida's Republican senatorial campaign committee denies any knowledge whatsoever of the mysterious money that helped in three of their races.

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SCIUTTO: Drew, as you know, there have been a lot of allegations of fraud in this election from the president, really all of them unfounded. This, a very dirty political tactic.

[09:55:02]

Is it legal or is it illegal fraud?

GRIFFIN: You know, the concern really, Jim, is that it is legal and this could start a trend across the country. But whether it's legal or not, nobody in Florida seems to be investigating this. Of course Republicans control most of -- just about the power structure in Florida.

It would be up to Republicans to find out who's behind all of this. And in our reporting, in local news reporting, in local newspapers in Florida, there just doesn't seem to be any curiosity among Republicans in finding out who was behind all this.

HARLOW: That is such a fascinating, such an important piece, Drew. I hope the lawmakers there in Florida are watching, and across the country. Kudos to you and your producers.

Drew, thanks very much.

GRIFFIN: Thanks, Poppy.

HARLOW: Sixteen days after the polls closed, President-elect Joe Biden can finally, formally, begin his transition, but resident Trump making very clear once again this morning he will not go quietly.

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