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New House GOP Plan Spotlight Inflation, Border Security; Dems To Focus On Abortion Rights, Hitting The GOP's Medicare And Social Security Proposals; Trump Lawyers Waging Secret Court Fight Over 1/5 Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 23, 2022 - 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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[15:01:59]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: It is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. Good to have you. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

Forty-six days until voters decide which party will control Congress. And today both parties were out selling their messages. President Biden was with voters in Washington. And in Pennsylvania, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy unveiled his party's midterm message with one major focus inflation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I ask everybody across this country, could you afford to give up one month of your wages? One month of your wages? The sad part is these Democratic policies has already taken one month of your wages. So now the struggle that you have is you're living through 12 months with only 11 months pay now, because inflation is so high.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, President Biden wasted no time in responding directly to McCarthy's plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the course of nearly an hour, here's a few of the things we didn't hear. We didn't hear mentioned the right to choose. We didn't hear mentioned Medicare. We didn't hear mentioned Social Security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Let's bring it now CNN Senior White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly. Phil, it seemed like either party, they're prioritizing different issue sets.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's almost like a parallel track election at this point, 45, 46 days out from those midterm votes. One thing about this day, which I think is actually a really great window into things, you don't need to be a savvy political operator to actually know the issues that each party thinks they can win with or at least do better, perhaps, than they were expecting in the case of Democrats. Perhaps as you saw it in the agenda that the Republicans laid out, the focus on those agendas, as you noted, most particularly on inflation and the economy, also Border Security, security general - generally when it comes to policing and also energy issues as well.

Those are critical issues that Republicans have seen in their polling that matter a lot and issues that they thought for much of this year would lead them to major victories in the House and potentially taking the U.S. Senate. The reason why Democrats feel like they have some momentum right now and some ability to turn back that tide and the tide of historical precedent on a midterm election was on an issue that the President spent a lot of time focusing on. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Justice Alito said that woman can decide the outcome of this election, paraphrasing some quote in the actual decision. Well, he ain't seen nothing yet. I don't believe the MAGA Republicans have a clue about the power of American women. Let me tell you something, they're about to find out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: And, guys, as you know well, the decision the President is referring to in those remarks is the supreme court decision to strike down Roe versus Wade. It has juiced the Democratic base that we've seen in poll after poll after poll over the course of the last several weeks, Democrats believe that it is a really important accelerator as they try and ramp up enthusiasm over the course of the next several weeks and it's not just the President.

[15:05:04]

You've heard it from the White House Chief of Staff, the Vice President, pretty much any Democrat you talk to. Guys, more than $40 million has been spent on television advertising related to abortion rights by Democrats in just the last 30 days, this is clearly the message they think they can win with and it's the message the President went with today, guys.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Phil Mattingly, thank you very much.

Let's discuss all of this with former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh. We also have CNN Political Commentator and former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings, and Democratic strategist Aisha Mills. Great to have all of you here in studio.

Scott, I'm going to start with you, because I thought that President Biden did something interesting and a little bit different today. So not only did he lean into as Phil just said there, abortion and MAGA Republicans, he also talked about gun safety. But he didn't entirely avoid the economy.

What he did instead was he tried to remind people. He said when I took office, there were - remember there were food lines. There were people in cars, stretching miles, waiting for food. And he said that he's created 10 million jobs, basically, on his watch or 10 million jobs were created. I'm not sure about his language. Ten jobs were created on his watch. So do you think that that's effective to do both talk about all of that?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think you can see where the Democrats put their money on, what issue they think is the best for them and they spend most of their money on abortion, and they spend most of their time talking about that. I don't actually think the President's talking points on the economy are effective. You just look at the national polling that's come out. Voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on inflation and the economy and that's why McCarthy's announcement today focus mostly on inflation and the economy.

The most disciplined Republican campaigns are going to be inflation, economy, crime, border, inflation, crime, border, inflation, crime, border, if you can stay on that, you have a chance to win. And the NBC poll that came out Sunday, they asked a simple question, what's more important, the candidate's views on cost of living or abortion, 59 percent cost of living, 37 percent abortion. There's a big bucket of Americans who want to hear that economic message.

BLACKWELL: Congressman, Scott talked about discipline. Here is the one page commitment to America. These are essentially talking points and I think that's the point. I'm not dismissing it, but this is something that they believe that members of the party can rally around without getting into the specifics. Can members of the party stick to this over the next 46 days?

JOE WALSH, (R) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, ILLINOIS: Victor, it's really tough when most Republican candidates this year are election deniers, still out there denying the results of the 2020 election. Scott's right, if Republicans can get voters to focus on these economic issues, they'll do well. But the leader of their party, Donald Trump, is out there every day. He's in the news. I think Democrats need to emphasize him more in these election deniers and how anti-Democratic so many of these Republican candidates are.

CAMEROTA: And we will get to those election deniers in one second. But Aisha, I do want to get your take on what Scott said that he doesn't think that Biden is delivering that effective of an economic message. Because I reported on those food lines, we reported on this food lines every day, I had forgotten that there were food lines that stretched for miles when he took office. So maybe it's just not front and center anymore, given that inflation that Americans are feeling.

AISHA C. MILLS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: And isn't that the good thing, though, because people are seeing progress under this administration with regards to their pocketbooks in the kitchen table issues. And certainly the economy may be going into a recession right now. But what is front and center for Democrats and I think for women, writ large beyond party, is what is happening with the Supreme Court, what are the consequences of who we choose to serve in Congress. We saw that fall out in June. And I think that that message resonates beyond what's happening in the short-term with the economy, because people are thinking about the long term implications of this upcoming election. And I believe that that's what the Democrats and Biden are speaking to, by lifting up abortion and making that a central issue.

BLACKWELL: Yes, Scott, on this platform today, it's just a few words, protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers, it's very vague there on the move forward. In previous years previous midterms, this would have been higher on the list. Explain why we're not hearing this?

JENNINGS: Well, look, I think there's no secret that the Republican Party is the pro life party and they've run on that since Ronald Reagan. I mean, we've been a pro life party and actually the principles that Lindsey Graham laid out the other day, 15 weeks, exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother, that's been a pretty standard Republican position for several decades.

So I think that Republican voters, conservative voters and pro life voters expect their Republican candidates to acknowledge the party's long history on that. But if you're trying to run your reelection or your election campaign in this general, that's a good issue for your base voters. but independents, undecided people, folks who have to go to the grocery store, which is virtually everyone, they want to know what you're going to do about inflation and making sure their page paychecks don't feel like they're shrinking.

So it's where you emphasize I think is the key Victor. And emphasis right now for the Republicans is on economic quality of life issues.

CAMEROTA: Okay.

MILLS: Can I answer that, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Sure.

[15:10:03]

MILLS: Well, the other piece of this why there's only a couple of words there for talking points is because it's a losing issue at this point for Republicans. At this point, abortion, the vast majority of Americans believe that women should be able to make health care choices about their bodies, with their doctors, with their families. It is no longer a winning wedge issue for conservatives to be pro life and that's why they're trying to downplay it.

WALSH: It is the dog who caught the car for so many Republicans. So many Republicans, even a lot of pro life Republicans never really thought we'd be here and never wanted to be here. It's changed.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Joe, now let's talk about election deniers because as you know there's a full slate of them in Arizona. And so the - one of the candidates is Republican running for secretary of state is just continuing on with the myth that there was some sort of widespread election fraud. So here's what he just said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK FINCHEM, (R) AZ SECRETARY OF STATE CANDIDATE: Knowing what we know today, there are certain counties that should have been set aside as irredeemably compromised, Maricopa County was one of them. Yuma County was one of them. We have so many votes outside of the law, that it begs the question, what do we do with an election where we have votes that are in the stream, but should not be counted?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Why don't voters demand to see evidence of that?

WALSH: Alisyn, I can't emphasize enough two points, that's not fringe. Among this Republican Party, all you got to do is go up and down the line of all these candidates. What he just said there is not fringe, denying the election. I always say this, Marjorie Taylor Greene, imagine 20 or 30 Marjorie Taylor Greenes as secretaries of state all over this country overseeing the vote next year. That's what we're looking at, potentially.

BLACKWELL: Aisha, how valuable of a foil is the man who is not on the ballot, the former President Donald Trump for Democrats? Because I asked this, we heard the President invoking today, he talked about him in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, but also that he's more favorable. Viewers - voters have a more favorable opinion of him now than they did several months ago.

MILLS: Here's the thing, Donald Trump is always going to haunt this party unless someone figures out how to either arrest or hold accountable legally Donald Trump for all the things that he has done. And that means that he is going to be someone who animates the base, both bases at this point. So it is useful for President Biden and other Democrats to remind us where we've come from, to remind us the consequence in this election of going backwards to what it looked like when Donald Trump was in the White House. And I think that lifting that up is really a way to get people animated and engaged in participating in the election.

BLACKWELL: All right. Forty-six days until the vote. Aisha Mills, Joe Walsh, Scott Jennings, thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, guys.

BLACKWELL: Shocking images, we're just getting news into CNN, the Ukrainian defense ministry has just posted this side by side of one of its soldiers. This is before and after he was released from Russian captivity. His body, you can see here, just deteriorated. Today, separatist leaders in four occupied Ukrainian regions are voting on whether to become part of the Russian Federation.

U.S. officials believe that the results will provide Vladimir Putin the pretext he needs to justify his war on Ukraine.

CAMEROTA: But Russian civilians are fleeing their country or trying to in droves after Putin announced he would deploy 300,000 reservists to replenish his weakening troop presence, flights out of Russia are also in high demand. Some men say they fear a full fledged draft could be in their future.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: War is horrible so it's okay to be afraid of war and (inaudible) of such things.

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CAMEROTA: CNN's Nada Bashir joins us now. So is this mobilization effort really unfolding as quickly as it seems to be, Nada?

NADA BASHIR, CNN REPORTER: Look, Alisyn and Victor, we are already seeing social media video emerging purportedly showing dozens if not hundreds of men being drafted in to be part of this latest partial mobilization as described by President Putin. And we've seen those videos of what appears to be tearful goodbyes between families, family saying goodbye to their fathers, their husbands, sons, brothers, friends as they are drafted in to be part of President Putin's war in Ukraine.

And, of course, there has been some tension, because in addition to that mobilization effort, we are as you described also seeing somewhat of an exodus. We're seeing cars lined up for miles, hours of waiting along Russia's border towns in an attempt to flee Russia, to leave the country and attempt to cross the border to escape the potential of being drafted in to this war effort or as the Kremlin has described it, a special military operation in Ukraine. And it's not just by land, although we've heard from officials in both Finland and Kazakhstan, for example, reported - reporting a surge in the number of people attempting to cross their borders.

[15:15:08]

But as you laid out there, it's also a surge in the number of flights. We're seeing people attempting to leave Russia by air to visa free countries, those flight tickets, the prices for those are soaring now from a couple of hundred to now a couple of thousand dollars. So you can see there's a sense of panic and the demand really for people to get out of Russia as quickly as possible.

But in addition to that, we are also seeing protests breaking out and it is remarkable to see these anti-war demonstrations given the tightly controlled conditions that people are living under in Russia. Victor? Alisyn?

BLACKWELL: Nada Bashir for us. Nada, thank you.

CAMEROTA: So Donald Trump's attorneys are fighting a secret court battle right now in an effort to keep a federal grand jury from obtaining any information from his inner circle. We have CNN's exclusive reporting next.

BLACKWELL: And it's the final hour of trading for the week and the Dow is now below 30,000, slipping about 630 or so points on the day. What's behind the steep losses, ahead.

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[15:20:37]

CAMEROTA: Now to a CNN exclusive, lawyers for former President Trump are waging a secret court battle to block witnesses from sharing information about January 6 with a federal grand jury. Those witnesses reportedly include aides to the former president who have received new subpoenas in recent weeks.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Zachary Cohen help break this exclusive report. Zachary, what do you know?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Hey, Victor and Alisyn. That's right. What we're learning right now is that the Justice Department's investigation into the events of January 6th in efforts to overturn the 2020 election has really entered a critical juncture, a key turning point that could really shape the way that this investigation plays out going forward.

Now, the Department of Justice is really for the first time we're learning that they're confronting this question of privilege. And specifically, whether or not Donald Trump can assert executive privilege or client-attorney privilege to really prevent or block some of the witnesses from sharing certain pieces of information that prosecutors want to learn.

Now, we know that this decision will ultimately determine what the Justice Department can ask key witnesses, people that really were in Trump's inner circle while he was president. That includes former White House attorney Pat Cipollone and former White House counsel Pat Philbin and also aides to former Vice President Mike Pence who all four of them we know have already gone in and asserted some sort of privilege over questions that they were asked by prosecutors.

Now, this has been happening in private. As you mentioned at the lead- in, grand jury proceedings are secret in nature and this is really the first window that we've gotten into what is going on behind closed doors as the Trump team and Justice Department prosecutors are trying to convince a judge that either attorney privilege and or executive privilege applies and should shield some of the testimony that the department Justice wants or if the Justice Department can ask these witnesses to bring them back in and ask them questions that they want the answers to.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Zachary Cohen, thank you very much for sharing this new reporting with us.

And joining us now is former Federal Prosecutor and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. Elie, can Donald Trump block his aides from testifying to the grand jury?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: (Inaudible) not think he ultimately will succeed if you look at the case law on this. It's quite clear that typically prosecutors are able to overcome executive privilege and get this key evidence. I think the most important take away from the story here is we now know that the Justice Department is fighting to get these conversations. They're trying to get evidence of conversations between Donald Trump and his most inner circle advisors and not everybody has done that, by the way.

The January 6 Committee, for example, did not want to have this legal fight and they did not have the time to have this legal fight. But we know DOJ is dug in and thanks to this new reporting from Zach and Evan, we know that DOJ is having this legal fight as we speak. If they win, they will get access to those crucial communications.

BLACKWELL: Let's turn now to some new reporting on Congressman Matt Gaetz. Career prosecutors at the DOJ have now recommended against charging the Congressman. Now, this was an investigation into potential violations of Federal sex trafficking laws, his dealings with a 17-year-old girl. What do we need to know?

HONIG: Well, Victor, this is a surprising outcome and I'll tell you why. We don't know exactly what evidence DOJ has behind closed doors. We don't know how prosecutors are weighing that. Perhaps, it's a close call. We can defer to the Department of Justice. But here's what really I find confusing and surprising and really bordering on prosecutorial practice.

The reporting that we have is that the reason this case is not going forward is because prosecutors have decided they can't rely on the word of Joel Greenberg. He's their star cooperating witness. This is the associate of Matt Gaetz, who pled guilty to an astonishing array of crimes ranging from sex trafficking to perjury, to fraud.

But here's the problem, you do not give a cooperation agreement to a guy like Joel Greenberg, unless you are first convinced that he's reliable and corroborated. You make sure that you have that first, then you give the cooperation agreement and then you charge other people based on that information.

And what's happening here is they gave Joel Greenberg this sweetheart deal, this cooperation agreement and now they're deciding they can't use him. So they've done this backwards. They've crossed themselves up and they've left themselves without a viable way to charge Matt gates.

CAMEROTA: Elie, I don't know if you know the answer to this or if there is an answer to this, but could they rely on the young women?

[15:25:02]

I mean, the underage women that he was supposedly somehow involved with?

HONIG: Sure, Alisyn, they could rely on any other sources of evidence. They could rely on victim testimony and other by standard testimony, financial records, phone records, anything prosecutors would rely on any case. But it was clear that they intended at some point or hoped Joel Greenberg would be the keystone of their case.

And I should say this, there's nothing wrong with cooperating witnesses. I mean, I used plenty of cooperating witnesses who had done really bad things during my career as a prosecutor. But the thing is, you don't sign somebody up as a cooperator until you have fully vetted them and you are committed and ready to use their testimony. They clearly did not do that here with Joe Greenberg and as a result, they've left themselves, what, in their judgment is insufficient evidence.

BLACKWELL: The Mar-A-Lago documents' case, Donald Trump asked for a special master, he got one. He wanted Raymond Dearie to be the special master, he got him. And now this just isn't going the way that he'd hoped, obviously. He has claimed on television, not in the courtroom, that the FBI planted documents or that everything was declassified. Now Dearie says, prove it.

HONIG: Yes. It's going disastrously for Donald Trump here, Victor, even though he asked for it. The only thing that he's really succeeding at is drawing out delay, which has been a tried and true tactic in the past. But yes, the Special Master Judge Dearie has now called out two of Donald Trump's central claims, declassification and this notion that evidence was planted.

But this is what happens when you come off of TV and go into courts. Judges will issue orders, as we saw earlier this week saying, okay, by next week, I need your specifics, where are you on this case and what is your proof of it. And Donald Trump's lawyers are sort of running out of time here. They've been threading a needle. They've been tap dancing in court, but they're going to be out of time next week when that deadline hits, and they're either going to have to commit to this or they're going to have to change course one way or another.

BLACKWELL: We'll see. Elie Honig, thank you.

American diplomats and service members have been experiencing the same symptoms but no one can explain what causes them. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us to discuss the medical mystery Havana Syndrome, next.

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