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Georgia Early Voting Surges; Trump Under Oath; President Biden Announces Plan to Lower Gas Prices. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 19, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Steve Bannon and his master plan to reshape the United States government and the Republican Party. CNN's special report, "Divided We Fall," begins 11:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday right here.

Thanks for your time today on INSIDE POLITICS. We will see you tomorrow.

Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello, and thank you so much for joining us. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.

Just minutes from now, the power of the presidency and the pressure on your wallet. President Biden will announce a move to help keep energy prices down for Americans less than three weeks now before the all- important midterm elections.

The president will announce the release of another 15 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Reserve. Of course, in the past few days, gas prices have been dropping in some areas, but, on average, they're still up 17 cents a gallon from a month ago.

Of course, the cost at the pump factors into the economic worries voters will carry to the polls. And it could be a problem for Democrats, since they're the party in power.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is at the White House.

Phil, what do we expect to hear from the president?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You know, Ana, there are not a lot of levers the president can pull in an international economy and in a global market like the oil market.

This, what the president is going to announce today, is one of them, both an actual action, and that is announcing the sale of another 15 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but also in sending a very clear message to that market.

And that message will be he is willing to go back in and tap that reserve for more releases in the future if he believes it's necessary. Now, that 15 million is actually coming out of the barrels earmarked of an 180 million unprecedented announcement the president made in March. It was supposed to be released over the course of six months. There's still about 15 million left.

That is what the president will release. But, as you noted, even though we have seen some stabilizing in gas prices over the course of the last couple of days, there was about a month of those prices, which had been dropping for nearly 95, 100 days, starting to tick upward.

That is very poor timing, given, as you noted, just how commingled gas prices and electoral prospects seem to be. That is not just tossing that out there. The president's approval ratings, the party's in power's approval ratings all pretty directly correlated to where gas prices stand.

Consumer sentiment also pretty directly correlated. So this move coming very obviously less than three weeks before the election, but also underscoring that the economy and prices are such a critical issue for consumers across the country, none more so than gas prices, the president tried to address that directly with one of the few tools he has in deploying barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Ana.

CABRERA: OK, we're standing by for the president's announcement any moment, and we will bring that to our viewers live.

Thank you, Phil Mattingly.

Some good news from the IRS, of all places. It could mean some more money in your wallet. The IRS is adjusting the tax code for next year, which could help Americans deal with these rising prices.

And CNN's Matt Egan is here to explain.

Matt, walk us through these inflation adjustments. What can people expect?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Ana, normally these adjustments are subtle. Not anymore, because of high inflation.

Let me show you what we mean. Check out the deductions, the standard deduction up by 7 percent. These are the biggest increases for deductions since the cost of living adjustments were introduced in 1985. For individuals, the standard deduction was almost $13,000 in 2022. That goes up to almost $14,000, an increase of $900.

And for married couples, it's going up by $1,800. Now, the IRS is also bumping up the income threshold for tax rates. Let me show you what I mean. If you were making $90,000 a year in 2022, you were in the 24 percent rate. But now, because it's all been bumped up in 2023, you're actually still going to be in the 2022 -- you're going to be the 22 percent rate, same story where all of the thresholds have been bumped up for joint filers.

At the end of the day, this means, because of high inflation, there's a bit of a silver lining, less money to Uncle Sam, more money in your pocket. CABRERA: And Americans might need that extra money, Matt.

Some top CEOs are warning that prices are going to keep rising?

EGAN: Yes, that's right. Companies are raising prices for two reasons, right? Their costs are going up and because we're all paying the higher prices.

Let me show you one example. Nestle makes Gerber baby food, Kit Kat candy bars. They just reported their best sales growth in 14 years. They raised their outlook. They actually said that, if you dig into your numbers -- their numbers, you can see that this is the most organic growth, actually came from price hikes. They didn't sell more stuff. They raised prices.

And they said more price hikes are coming. Similar story with Disney. Now, Disney, of course, has a lot of pricing power. It's a powerful brand. They just raised prices. It now costs almost $1,100 for one day to go to Disneyland in California.

That includes parking. It does not include food or souvenirs. That is up from $988, so 10 percent increase. That is ahead of the rate of inflation. If you zoom out, you can see that corporate -- corporations are still doing really well.

[13:05:07]

Profit margins, which shows how profitable companies are, are really high, almost 11 percent right now. Context, that is just shy of the record set last year, and it is well above the average since 1993.

I think that this shows that companies have been able to pass along many of these costs to consumers. Hopefully, Ana, it means that they're not going to be in a rush to cut costs by laying off workers.

CABRERA: So if sales and demand are still so strong, why are so many CEOs warning of a recession still?

EGAN: Yes, Ana, a lot of companies are worried about a recession.

Look at this; 98 percent of CEOs are preparing for a recession in the next 18 months. And this is really all because inflation is high and the Fed is serious about trying to get it under control. The Fed is rapidly raising interest rates.

And you can see that, during many of the past peaks for rate hikes cycles, what followed was a recession. We had the recession in 1990, recession in 2000, recession, of course, in 2007-2008, and, in 2020, although that was about COVID.

People are worried that it's going to happen again, the Fed could overdo it, and end up slowing this economy right into a recession.

CABRERA: OK, every day, there's a new headline and a new development.

Matt Egan, thanks for staying on top of it. Turning now to former President Trump's legal battles, sometime today,

Trump is scheduled to face questions under oath in the defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll. Now, she alleged in a book that she was raped by Trump in the '90s.

She sued Trump in 2019 after he accused her of -- quote -- "totally lying" about the incident.

CNN's Kara Scannell is on this.

How is this set to go down, Kara?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a federal judge paved the way for this to happen last week, because Trump had tried to put off this deposition because this case is fairly complicated.

There's an issue that's up on appeal. The judge said, look, you have been sued in 2019. There have been delays all along the way. He said that Trump was not even turning over documents to E. Jean Carroll, as he was supposed to, calling that inexcusable.

So he said he didn't want Trump to run out the clock anymore. And so the depositions were on. E. Jean Carroll gave her deposition last week. Trump's giving his today. It's all shrouded in confidentiality, unless and until they make this public.

So, this -- we may not learn too much today about what happened, what he was asked or what he said. But he has continued to deny this claim, deny her allegations of rape. And the judge, though, overseeing this is saying we need to keep moving this forward.

He has set the trial for February. There's this issue that's out on appeal, but it is very unclear when and if the appeals court will take this up. So the judge is just plodding through with this, saying Trump and E. Jean Carroll are in their 70s. They need to get moving on this.

And there's an added wrinkle to this, is that Carroll has said she's going to sue Trump under a new New York state law that goes into effect next month. That law allows people who have said that they have been sexually assaulted to bring civil actions against the people they say did this years after the encounter.

So she has said she plans to do that when this law goes into effect. And the judge says that the deposition today is just as important for that potential future lawsuit.

CABRERA: Right, because the statute of limitations is always a constraint on a lot of these cases. So that opens up the door for a big development in this legal realm.

Thank you very much, Kara Scannell. We will see. That one's not going away. We will see where it goes.

And Trump may soon face a new subpoena any moment now from the January 6 Committee. Take a listen to committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney when she was asked about this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): We all felt that our obligation is to seek his testimony, that the American people deserve to hear directly from him, that it has to be under oath, that he has to be held accountable.

And so we will be issuing the subpoena shortly both for his testimony under oath, as well as for documents. And we will take whatever next steps we have to take, assuming that he will fulfill his legal obligation and honor the subpoena. But if that doesn't happen, then we will take the steps we need to take after that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Let's discuss all this and more with Joseph Moreno. He is a former federal prosecutor and FBI consultant.

Joseph, the key word there is, the subpoena is coming shortly. It was almost a week ago that the committee voted to subpoena Trump, so what are they waiting for?

JOSEPH MORENO, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, Ana, it's great to be with you.

Yes, it's a little puzzling why the committee chose to kind of take this action at this point. Had they done this a few months ago, they would have definitely had the benefit of the calendar working a little more in their favor.

So I expect the subpoena will come probably within the next few days. And I would love to be a fly on a wall during conversations between former President Donald Trump and his lawyers, because I can almost envision Donald Trump wanting to go and kind of be an agent of chaos and plead his case before Congress, and his defense lawyer saying, absolutely not, no.

[13:10:16]

Because, of course, anything he would say to Congress will be admissible in any Justice Department case against him. So, I got to think there's probably a real push/pull here, but the likeliness of actually hearing from Donald Trump very minimal, I'm afraid.

CABRERA: OK, we're waiting on the subpoena. That's when the clock really starts ticking on getting a response from him.

Meantime, the special master is working in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation. And he's now expressing some frustration that Trump lawyers are trying to argue certain documents are both personal documents and covered by executive privilege. Judge Dearie, the special master, says there's incongruity there.

Joseph, what do you think?

MORENO: Ana, if the Trump team thought that they were going to get some kind of advantage by having Judge Dearie serve as a special master, they were sorely mistaken.

I mean, this is a law and order, by-the-books national security judge who was the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn before he was nominated to the bench. So he's the last person that's going to tolerate any kind of nonsense or games or delay. And so he's going to want to hear the facts.

He's going to want to understand why the Trump team is making some strange arguments. You can't have personal property that's also the property of the executive branch. So, if there's executive privilege, then that privilege belongs to the branch, not to the person, even if you were the president.

So this Judge Dearie, he is not going to go along with any kind of strange theories. He's a by-the-books guy, and he's going to expect that from both sides here.

CABRERA: And I want to turn to some new clips we obtained exclusively from journalist Bob Woodward's upcoming audiobook, "The Trump Tapes."

And in one clip, Trump apparently shares top-secret letters from North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect.

I haven't -- with anybody.

BOB WOODWARD, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Understand. Understand.

TRUMP: And don't say I gave them to you, OK?

WOODWARD: OK. I ...

TRUMP: But I think it's OK. Normally, I wouldn't -- I wasn't going to give them to Bob. You know, what, did you make a photostat of them or something?

WOODWARD: No. I dictated them into a tape recorder.

TRUMP: Really?

(LAUGHTER)

WOODWARD: Yes.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CABRERA: Now, these letters from Kim were missing from the National Archives, which contributed to this DOJ investigation.

Do you see this tape recording as being useful to the DOJ investigation in some way?

MORENO: Ana, maybe not directly. It might not be directly admissible. But it's certainly useful, because it shows a pattern here, right?

It shows a person who, at best, was extremely careless with classified information, which, of course, is the very issue that we're dealing with now and these boxes of documents that were down in Florida.

It also shows that there's a lack of any kind of process about declassification here, and you have former President Trump basically saying, this sounds like classified information, but I'm willing to show it to a journalist.

So it might not be directly admissible in a court of law, but, certainly, there's a pattern here, and it shows either real, real sloppiness or something even worse, a knowing willingness to share classified information, either way, really bad for the former president.

CABRERA: Joseph Moreno, great to have your insights. Thank you very much for taking the time.

MORENO: Thanks, Ana.

CABRERA: It is the first major election in Georgia under a restrictive new voting law, but that's not stopping record numbers of people from casting their ballots early.

Plus, what if I said you can lower your risk for serious health problems without moving a muscle? Well, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Hear about a new study.

And ever wonder why mosquitos love some people more than others? A new study reveals the answer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:18:17]

CABRERA: We're back.

And any minute now, President Biden will detail his latest move to try to bring down energy prices and give Americans some relief at the gas pump. We will bring you those remarks as soon as he takes that podium.

Now less than three weeks left in the midterm campaign, and serious star power is about to enter the fray in Georgia. Later today, "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will stump for Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, according to "The Atlanta Journal- Constitution."

And then, tomorrow, Oprah will host a virtual event for Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams. Even before those celebrity cameos, early voting turnout is surging in the Peach State.

CNN's Ryan Young is on the ground with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Georgia is energized...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think this is a really critical election.

YOUNG: ... as the balance of power in Congress and some key state level positions are being decided in these midterm elections.

REBECCA HILL, GEORGIA RESIDENT: This is going to be a close race, two big races, the Senate and the governor's race. And I want to make sure my vote is counted.

YOUNG: Turnout for the first day of early voting here in Georgia nearly doubled that of 2018's midterm elections, setting a new state record, according to state election officials.

TONY BACKUS, GEORGIA RESIDENT: It was very busy. And it's very encouraging that people are taking the opportunity to vote, so that we won't have any nonsense about votes not being counted properly.

YOUNG: More than 131,000 Georgians cast their vote on Monday, these numbers almost as large as the state's first day of early voting turnout in the 2020 presidential election, according to Georgia's secretary of state.

STACEY ABRAMS (D), GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: We need a governor who believes in access to the right to vote, and not in voter suppression, which is the hallmark of Brian Kemp's leadership.

[13:20:05]

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): For someone to say that we have been suppressive in our state, when we have seen turnout increase over the years, including with minorities like African-Americans, Latinos and others, is simply not true.

YOUNG: A major controversy ahead of these election, Georgia's Senate Bill 202, also known as the Election Integrity Act, passed in March of 2021, which many critics say restricts voters.

LAUREN GROH-WARGO, FORMER CEO, FAIR FIGHT: What Brian Kemp did is a strategic, surgical voter suppression law. He said, Joe Biden won by 11,000 and some votes. Of those 11,000-and-some votes, 7,000 of them were provisional ballots that were counted in his race.

So, what did Brian Kemp do? He got rid of provisional ballots on Election Day. What does the Abrams campaign do then? Really push early vote turnout, because Georgians can vote in any location during early vote.

YOUNG: Georgia election officials disagree.

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: The main thing is, it's kind of hard to say you're suppressing the vote. We have seen record turnout. We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

YOUNG: The bill expanded early voting access for many counties, including an additional mandatory Saturday and extended voting hours. Potential issues resulting from some of the bill's other changes, such as time constraints for when one can apply for an absentee ballot and the deadlines for when ballots must be counted, won't be known until we get closer to November 8.

For now, many passionate about the issues at hand aren't waiting until Election Day to cast their vote here in Georgia.

HILL: Voting in person seems like it's important. I have I felt like 2020 was a nightmare in terms of like worrying that somehow my vote would be invalidated, given the politics about Fulton County votes in particular.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YOUNG: Yes, Ana, you remember 2020, such a blockbuster election. So many people showed up to vote.

It looks like this is happening again right here in the state. We're breaking those records in terms of people showing up for early voting. Look at the line here. This line has been surging throughout the afternoon. It really started with that launch push, that first day, over 130,000 early voters, the next day, over 130,000 voters again.

The line is still surging at this point. It goes until 7:00. So you understand there's a lot of passion behind this because people want their vote to count. There's been so much conversation and so many commercials in this area that basically pump you to be full of this voting knowledge and background, making people get in this line and vote finally -- Ana.

CABRERA: It is incredible to see that line that long this far before Election Day. People are pumped and they are wanting to make sure their vote counts. That's great news.

Thank you, Ryan Young.

We know sleep is good for us, but getting five hours or less a night, that could do some serious damage to your heart health. What an eye- opening new study tells us.

And do mosquitoes seem to bug you more than others? Now we know why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:27:50]

CABRERA: Anger, outrage and apologies, an outpouring of emotion at a packed Missouri school board meeting, after extremely high levels of radioactive material were found at an elementary school near St. Louis.

Officials announced that the school will now be closed and students will switch to virtual learning, for now.

Jana Elementary is near a creek contaminated with chemicals used to develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s. An independent report found radioactive levels at that school were more than 22 times the expected amount.

OK, talk about a wakeup call. If you want to keep your heart healthy, get a good night's sleep. New research shows getting your rest may be just as important as diet and exercise.

CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard joins us.

You know, we're going to go back to Jacqueline in a moment. Let's listen in to the president now with this announcement on oil and energy.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon.

Earlier this year, because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the price of oil and gas increased dramatically. And I acted decisively at the time, and thanks in part to those actions, the price of our gas has fallen 30 percent from the summer highs.

Now it's down about $1.15 a gallon from their peak during the summer. Gas prices have fallen every day in the last week. Let me repeat, gas prices come down, and they continue to come down again. They're now down more than 27 cents a gallon in Wisconsin this past week, 27 cents in Oregon, 16 cents in Ohio, 25 cents in Nevada, 17 cents in Indiana in just the last 10 days. And that's progress.

But they're not falling fast enough. Families are hurting. You have heard me say it before, but I get it. I come from a family, if the price of gasoline went up at the gas station, we felt it. Gas prices hit almost every family in this country, and they squeeze their family budgets.

When the price of gas goes up, other expenses get cut. That's why I have been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices since Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused these price hikes to -- these prices to spike and rattled international oil markets.

Excuse me.