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Senate Playing Field Is Shrinking As Election Day Looms; Biden Meeting With Pentagon Leaders Amid Rising Tensions With Russia; NATO Chief: Putin Must Not Use "False" Claims About Dirty Bombs As A Pretext For Escalation. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 26, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not a hundred percent clear. That's why they want to bring in these other agencies and try to get more technology to kind of look into that area. See if it's something that they actually need to do to start digging. So that's where the investigation stands right now. We talked to a state official who says it's very much in its infancy stage.

This is something that could take four months. So of course, guys, we're going to stay on this one so interesting and bizarre at the same time (inaudible) ...

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Lots of questions.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Brynn Gingras, thank you.

GOLODRYGA: And it is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you. Nearly 12 million voters across the country have already cast their ballot for the critical midterm elections. More than 4 million of those ballots have been turned in throughout Florida, California, Georgia and Texas. Candidates are facing off in some of the final debates of the campaign season after the highly anticipated showdown between Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania.

GOLODRYGA: Democrat John Fetterman released a new ad criticizing Republican Mehmet Oz's response to abortion. Oz barely mentioned the debate during a campaign event in just the last hour and said he focused largely on crime.

In the race to control Congress, the focus for both sides is narrowing to the most competitive races. New money is being injected from both sides as well, a sign of just how high the stakes are in these midterms.

CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza joins us now.

So Chris, where do things stand for the battle of control of the Senate? CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS EDITOR AT LARGE: Broadly because I want to see talk about what we're looking at, so let's just go to the map broadly. Now I'm going to write on this. There are 35 seats up, 21 of those are Republican 14 are Democrat. Fun fact, it's actually 35 races in 34 states, Oklahoma has two Senate races, but that's neither here nor there.

Okay. Let's talk about where the races are. The Senate playing field is shrinking and shrinking to these races. Look, it's not complicated why. Paul - Adam Laxalt point 2 percent average lead you just mentioned Fetterman-Oz, 2.3 percent edge for Fetterman. Warnock, in Georgia, 3 percent, but I think everyone expects this to be very, very close.

Now, these are the three that I think are majority makers. And by the way, this is DC, this is an RC, this is a DC. Remember 50-50 in the Senate right now. Where's our second tier? Okay. These are other races that could come along J.D. Vance, ahead of Tim Ryan, but not by a huge margin. Ted Budd, this is a race, I think, we're not talking about as much as we should. He's running into someone named Cheri Beasley, this is a close race.

Ron Johnson, this surprises me, up 3.4 percent, why? Because he was behind Mandela Barnes, Lieutenant Governor, this summer. Johnson run a really effective campaign.

And then there's this one, if we started at the beginning of the election cycle and said who's the most vulnerable, who's the most endangered? Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock in Georgia would be the two, but Kelly has maintained a pretty solid lead here and there are questions as to whether Republicans are fully committed to Blake Masters, the Republican nominee.

So that's - if we add that up, that's three races here, that's four races here, that's seven. I think that's where the Senate majority is going to get decided.

BLACKWELL: So we got those seven races there. At this point what races seem less likely to (inaudible) ...

CILLIZZA: Yes. Yes, so Victor, I call them sleeper states. I don't want to say that it's impossible because I've learned covering elections over time. Nothing is impossible. It's - until all the votes get counted, I don't want to say this is a loss or this is a win. But these are unlikely to flip.

New Hampshire was a state Maggie Hassan had weak numbers. It was a state that Republicans really targeted at the start of the election. Gov. Chris Sununu was expected to run, he did not run. Hassan 5.3 percent lead over Dan Bolduc, the Republican nominee who has been an election denier.

Michael Bennet, Colorado is a blue-ish state but not a solid blue state, but he continues to lead by 8 percent. I think that one's falling off the board. Now, this one to me is stunning, Chuck Grassley. He's been in the Senate for longer than I've been alive and I'm not that young. But there is polling out that suggests - quality polling out that suggests he's only a few points ahead of his Democratic opponent, Mike Franken. The overall lead, he has a 6.9 percent. I would be stunned if in an election that looks like it's moving toward Republicans, Chuck Grassley loses.

And then Marco Rubio, this is a state that seen massive amounts of spending. Val Demings, the Florida Congresswoman has raised a huge amount of money. But Rubio, if you're up a solid six, six and a half percent, it doesn't mean you can coast for this last 13 days of the election. You still got to run and do everything, but you should feel pretty good.

So as you can see all these races, the margins are just a little bit bigger than in those seven races I showed you before.

GOLODRYGA: So Chris, there's been a massive infusion of spending from both sides as Election Day nears here.

CILLIZZA: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Where exactly is this money going?

CILLIZZA: So I always say, Bianna, follow the money. I didn't come up with that, I think someone in more Watergate might have come up with that one.

[15:05:01]

But follow the money when it comes to campaign spending and this is really important.

So in New Hampshire, I just mentioned, Dan Bolduc is the Republican nominee.

Mitch McConnell's Super PAC is called the Senate Leadership Fund. They took $6 million out of New Hampshire and then the next day they put $6 million into Pennsylvania. Now, they've already - they're already really heavily invested in Pennsylvania, but they put even more money in.

In Arizona, which you've seen some of these I mentioned earlier, some of these national groups have gone away from Arizona thinking Blake Masters can't win. Well, Trump's Super PAC, which is sort of newly active has put $1.8 million into the state of Lake Gabby Orr of CNN, someone reported that.

And then Joe Biden is basically saying, let's spend what we need to so we're not drastically outspent 18 million. I hate to say this, because look, $1 million is a lot of money, but 18 million, given how much is being spent in these races is a drop in the bucket. But this is the one to look at. Out of New Hampshire and into Pennsylvania. That suggests that Republicans believe, as we mentioned, we're really shrinking that map down to these three. Pay attention to these three. These are the majority makers or breakers. Bianna? Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right, Chris Cillizza. Thanks, Chris.

CILLIZZA: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, let's focus now on Pennsylvania. CNN's Jeff Zeleny is in Pittsburgh. So Jeff, you're following the Fetterman camp. Is his campaign worried about the fallout from the debate? They really lowered expectations leading up to it.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: And they certainly met those low expectations. There's no question about that. But the reality is they are trying to change the subject and they did that earlier this morning, placing a new ad on abortion, really trying to draw attention to three words that Mehmet Oz said during the debate last night that are still reverberating, that was local political leaders.

He said that local political leaders should play a role in deciding abortion rights. Of course, he was talking about how the federal government in his view should not have a role in deciding this in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. So the Fetterman campaign and Democrats are up with an ad trying to tie him to Republican gubernatorial candidate here Doug Mastriano, who differs from Oz. He does not believe exception should pertain to abortion in the case of rape, incest or life of the mother.

But there's no doubt the Fetterman campaign is trying to change this subject because they know it was not a strong debate for their candidate. They know that, of course, he has been recovering from a stroke for several months. But they know it simply was not enough to probably answer the question in the minds of some voters is he fit to serve in the Senate.

Now, going into this debate watching it, voters if they supported him, they likely came out of the debate supporters. Many voters we talked to today said exactly that. The voters who had questions in their mind certainly left with questions as well. Particularly look at this answer on fracking what Fetterman said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN FETTERMAN, (D) U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IN PENNSYLVANIA: I've always supported fracking and I always believe that independence with our energy is critical.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is that 2018 interview that you said, "I don't support fracking at all." So how do you square the two?

FETTERMAN: I do support fracking and I don't - I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So if voters were looking for an answer to how his views have evolved, they simply didn't get one, you can see a sort of a sense of confusion on his face. Now, he's been talking about this before. But it was simply in the moment, he could not keep up with the speed of the debate, at least in terms of communicating out loud. But that does not necessarily mean that some voters will hold it against him, some may. That is one of the things we will have to wait for the next 13 days to see how voters process the debate itself.

Of course, fracking is very - a huge issue here in Pennsylvania. It's a method of extracting natural gas from the ground that employs thousands and thousands of Pennsylvania voters and it certainly is important. But going forward, Fetterman will be holding a rally here in Pittsburgh tonight.

The next stage of his campaign, the burden is on him to try and move the needle from last night. We'll see if they do it. Victor and Bianna?

BLACKWELL: Jeff Zeleny for us there setting the table in Pittsburgh.

Let's extend the conversation now with CNN Senior Political Correspondent Abby Phillip and CNN Political Commentator Scott Jennings.

Abby, let me start with you, because we really don't know why the answer on fracking was so bad. We don't know if it was auditory processing or if he just didn't have a good answer to it. The campaign wants to move on. Is there any indication yet with the National Party, what those outside of Pennsylvania Democrats believe about that performance if they're losing confidence?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you're right. We don't really know what went on with the fracking answer. I mean, I think the reality is, is that there's not a really good explanation outside of politics for the changing in positions both for Fetterman and for Oz, by the way, on fracking.

But when you try to figure out, okay, how did both sides think this debate went.

[15:10:00]

Just look at what they're doing. Democrats are putting out ads and focusing almost exclusively on Oz's comments on abortion. They are talking about that one moment where Oz said, it's between you, your doctor and a local politician. They are not talking about virtually anything else that Fetterman said at that debate and I think that's pretty telling.

And on the Republican side, I think Republicans certainly felt like it went very well for them, but it's not entirely about Fetterman's performance or his lack of ability to kind of execute the verbal part of it. I think Oz went in with a clear roadmap and that was to hammer Fetterman on crime in particular. And AWS did execute on that roadmap pretty effectively if you look at just what he was trying to do outside of how Fetterman actually performed.

GOLODRYGA: Scott, how big of an error was this on Oz's part when he said those three words; local political leader in terms of appealing to swing voters, suburban women, undecided voters?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: If you watch the exchange, he was responding to a question about Lindsey Graham's national legislation, the 15-week legislation. And he unequivocally said, I don't think the federal government should have a role. This should be decided at the state level.

So I actually think it's a little - they're trying to exploit a moment here, but a moment that is a basic Republican position for many Republicans, which is, yes, states state should have this right to legislate on this matter if they so choose. So I don't actually think it's a huge controversy, especially in light of the fact that all the national polls and state polls we see coming out now show abortion falling down the list and inflation, crime and other issues rising.

That's why I think he focused so much on crime because it appears to be skyrocketing as a local matter in this race and in a couple of others where Republicans appear to be using it to stay on offense.

BLACKWELL: Scott, listen here to - this is Democratic senator, Chris Coons, and the comparison he makes between the performance from John Fetterman and another politician we all know.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): When I watched, frankly, the 2016 presidential debates, I thought it was obvious that Donald Trump wasn't going to win. His answers were halting and he didn't understand the issues and he was combative and aggressive. But millions of Americans voted for him because they liked his attitude. They liked his authenticity and my gut hunch is that a lot of Pennsylvanians when they see John Fetterman in his hoodie and his sweat pants and look at the record of what he's done in Braddock and as lieutenant governor will choose him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: What do you think?

JENNINGS: He's putting a brave face on what was an unmitigated disaster. Fetterman should not have debated. I mean, let's be honest. They knew in advance what his limitations were. They have been not honest. I don't think about - from the beginning, when this health issue happened back in the primary, they told us he occasionally mushes words together and he needed this captioning system and that would make everything okay.

The captioning system obviously did not help him. If you watch the whole debate, that was what was supposed to make this compatible for him. It didn't work. And so I - if I were in their shoes, I would not have put him out there. I know they would have taken a PR hit on it, but this debate, if you talk to anybody who's following this race closely, they'll tell you deep down, this was a huge mistake for them to do this.

GOLODRYGA: So Abby, clearly the Fetterman camp is not being as transparent as many on both sides would like him to be releasing his medical records in that. But it's not as though he didn't approach and talk about the subject. He said, let's address the elephant in the room. And his message seems to be: Listen, I'm on the road to recovery, I will get better. Oz will stay the same. Is that a winning message two weeks away?

PHILLIP: I think it's the best message that he's got. I do think that the best appeal that he has at this moment to Pennsylvanians is to basically say, look, I know a lot of you understand what it's like to be in a temporary situation where you're recovering from something and you don't want people to really look out for that reason. I think that's about as good a message as you can get.

The problem is that I'm not sure Pennsylvania voters knew that that's what they were getting when they made - when Democrats in particular made him the nominee. And I don't know how by and large they will accept that in a general election. I do think there's the one thing that Coons said, that does seem to be a wild card in this race.

Fetterman has been running as the quintessential Pennsylvania. The guy who knows the state better than anybody else. The guy who also is just cooler than you on social media. And I don't know how that's going to play to voters. I do think there is a delta though. The problem he's facing. There is a gap between who he is on social media and what voters saw on that stage and he has to explain that gap to voters between now and Election Day.

[15:15:03]

And if he can't, I think that is also going to be a problem. People might think it's entertaining on Twitter and what have you. But they also want to know, is that really the political figure that I'm actually getting in real life.

BLACKWELL: Scott, I want to challenge what you tweeted, what you just said that this was a massive cover up, right?

JENNINGS: Oh, yes.

BLACKWELL: Because I watched the debate last night and watch the whole thing thinking, is this who has been on the campaign trail up to this point, because this is not the first time he's been in public speaking, right? I went back and watched the Klobuchar event over the weekend. I watched some of the other rallies.

I just pulled something here. This is just a bit of his conversation with Sen. Amy Klobuchar over the weekend, which was supposed to be the test going into the debate using the closed caption system. Here's John Fetterman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FETTERMAN: He literally doesn't have a plan, other than to talk and that's been a hallmark of his campaign, just not any plans, just - photo ops or just empty kinds of arguments that are hypocritical about the things that they have chosen to support. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Not perfect, but much smoother than what we saw last night. I mean, let's take an unorthodox look at this. He just had a bad night. It wasn't on ...

PHILLIP: (Inaudible) his format (inaudible) ...

BLACKWELL: ... and he just did do well.

GOLODRYGA: Neither are (inaudible) ...

BLACKWELL: It's not auditory processing, because I watched that event and what happened over the weekend with Amy Klobuchar look nothing like what we saw last night.

JENNINGS: Charitably, there's a difference between being questioned by a friendly surrogate and being in a live fire debate situation.

BLACKWELL: But that's the point.

JENNINGS: Where the moderators were - I - by the way, who I thought did a great job of the debate along were asking you tough questions, asking you to defend your record, answering questions from your opponent, that's what you do as a U.S. senator. You go there to debate and you're engaged in sort of a daily back and forth.

You're not always being questioned by the - some friendly person like Amy Klobuchar or you're not always just asked to give a three minute speech at a rally. I think the biggest issue for them is not the health. It's the honesty, the transparency about this. They have undersold this guy's limitations from the beginning.

Remember, at the beginning, it was, oh, he just had a health hiccup and now all of a sudden we're here at the end of October and they're needing this accommodation, which clearly didn't help him. And right or wrong, these debates are a rite of passage for Senate and gubernatorial candidates. You're running statewide, you're expected to debate and you're expected to perform. I just don't know how you could have watched that and said, this was the smart tactical move to stick him out. frankly, this guy's campaign, this guy's family, I question why they shoved him out there.

PHILLIP: Well, I - first of all, I'm not sure that senators are in the live fire situation all the time. A lot of times they're standing on the floor and giving long speeches, but I will say that the contrast, part of the problem for Fetterman was the contrast with Oz. He's a polished television figure. He understood pretty clearly how to do the 32nd pitch, the 62nd pitch.

And debates in this kind of format are really memory exercises. You're taking your talking points and spitting them out and Oz did that extremely effectively. But he also comes from a background where that is what he understands to do. He also prepared, according to our reporting, extensively for that. I think Fetterman, this was never going to be his strong place, and the contrast also hurt him. Maybe if he were up against a different kind of political figure, it would have been perceived differently. But the contrast I think really hurt.

GOLODRYGA: Abby Phillip, Scott Jennings, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Thank you.

The body of an American who was killed fighting the Russians has been returned to the Ukrainian military. How his family is reacting ahead.

GOLODRYGA: And President Biden is meeting with Pentagon leaders as tensions with Russia grows worse, that's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:23:14]

BLACKWELL: The remains of an American man who died fighting alongside Ukrainian forces has now been returned the Ukrainians.

GOLODRYGA: The Russian military transferred the body of Joshua Jones during a two-hour ceasefire in the Zaporizhzhia region. The 24- year-old Army veteran was killed in August. Jones' father told CNN that news of his son's body being returned lifted a burden for his family. Jones is one of a number of Americans who have been captured or killed in Ukraine since Russia's invasion.

BLACKWELL: Happening right now President Biden is sitting down with Pentagon leaders.

GOLODRYGA: It's a routine meeting. But, of course, it comes amid worsening tensions with Russia along with concerns about North Korea and China. CNN Senior White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly joins us now with more.

Plenty of them for - to discuss, what more did we learn?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Bianna, there are no shortage of tensions around the world right now, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region and, obviously, in Ukraine and really Europe writ large. This, as you noted, was not a meeting that was scheduled for any specific purpose, according to White House officials, a fairly regular meeting over the course of the year that the President has with Defense Department officials. But the myriad of concerns that the White House is grappling with right now is significant.

I don't think there's any question about that. Obviously, there are no U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine. But U.S. forces are critical in the supply efforts for the Ukrainian military, that is certainly an element here. The President has himself made clear several times his concerns about the potential for, as he noted, the Armageddon type scenario if Russia should decide to ramp up even further in a most catastrophic of way and what the U.S. response would be to that, something officials have secretly given Russian officials an indication of what that would be. But also we have seen, over the course of the last several weeks, North Korea continue missile launches and what a lot of U.S. officials believe is a lead up to a another nuclear test the first in several years.

[15:25:07]

And there's probably no more pressing issue, not just in the Defense Department's kind of agenda at the moment really across the Biden administration than China. Obviously, the President has made clear is more in conflict with China. He believes it is a competition type scenario.

But as we've seen with continued provocations, as it relates to Taiwan, just continue hardening of positions on the economic side and on the defense side, over the course of the last several months, the tensions in that relationship have only risen, and the contact between the U.S. and their Chinese counterparts simply has not matched that over the course of the last several months and no shortage of issues, guys, for them to deal with.

BLACKWELL: Certainly. Phil Mattingly at the White House. Thank you, Phil.

GOLODRYGA: Joining us now is retired U.S. Army General James 'Spider' Marks. Major General, thank you so much for joining us. Let's talk about that and specifically what Russia is saying claiming that Ukraine is about to do and that is detonate a so called dirty bomb.

We've heard a lot about this for the past few days. President Biden was asked about it and he seemed to answer a question regarding a tactical nuclear weapon. Give us the details of what exactly a dirty bomb is.

JAMES MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, a tactical nuke by comparison is a nuclear weapon. In this particular case, the definition of tactical is low yield, shorter distance, but it could be gravity dropped, so you could drop it from an airplane almost anywhere so it's not necessarily related to where the frontline of contact is.

A dirty bomb, on the other hand, is uranium, but it's not highly enriched. So it's not weaponized, nuclear weaponized. But it's uranium plus conventional weapons explosives that are used together become the real problem, because you can have the same radiation kind of effects.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. And I guess the concern, first of all, Russia is known for these false flag operations. And what's alarming is that this was sort of the lead up to the invasion itself. And now we're seeing Russian officials from military officials to President Putin today, once again, claiming that this is what Ukraine is about to do.

Another thing that's alarming about this threat is that unlike a nuclear bomb, you can see the preparation for that, and you hear from U.S. officials that they are following that and thus far they see nothing that would suggest Russia is about to deploy a nuclear weapon. That's not the same in terms of a dirty bomb. How concerning is that?

MARKS: Well, it's very concerning. So what you do in instances like this, without the leading indicators, the intelligence that tells you be prepared for this type of nuclear explosion is what you do is you put your forces in a certain protective posture, which means in terms of where they locate, how they locate protective gear, et cetera, in it - to that possibility.

And if it happens, you're in a better protected position, but it may not occur and so you end up conducting military operations with that enhanced protection. That's okay, that's been very prudent. So that's what's happening on the ground right now in Ukraine, I can guarantee you.

GOLODRYGA: And John Kirby even acknowledged the U.S. was monitoring as best as it could in terms of any movement as far as Russia deploying a dirty bomb. It's interesting western officials have said that the use of a nuclear weapon would then not only instigate a bigger response, but perhaps even more of a conventional response from Western militaries involved in that region, perhaps even going and fighting in Ukraine.

We didn't get a specific answer as to what the response would be if Russia deployed a dirty bomb. What should that response look like?

MARKS: If Russia employs either a dirty bomb or - and it can be determined to be a dirty bomb or nuclear capable weapon system, whether its tactical, low yield, et cetera, the NATO alliance must respond incredibly with a very discernible, very precise, very conventional response. There should not be a nuclear escalation.

Look, in any type of nuclear environment, you want to de-escalate. You don't want to push this thing to the point where you now are in the end of time strategic releases and you have multiple nations that could be involved, right? What you want to do is de-escalate on the nuclear side, but NATO need - would need to be involved conventionally. You would need to have a NATO Alliance forces on the ground in Ukraine not entering into Russia with ground forces but certainly potentially with fires that's the use of artillery rounds, et cetera, and aircraft et cetera.

This would be a three dimensional fight, NATO-led, U.S.-led and the Russian forces would suffer greatly in a very, very short amount of time.

[15:30:02]

GOLODRYGA: And this is coming as Russia conducted its first nuclear exercise since invading Ukraine. Obviously, NATO is doing the same.