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Twitter and Elon Musk Under Fire; Election One Day Away. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 07, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:45]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Ana Cabrera in new York.

It's almost halftime for the Biden presidency. And after tomorrow, it could be a whole different game on Capitol Hill, the strategy, the players about to be put to the test. So far, more than 41 million votes have already been cast in this midterm election. And we are on top of all the critical matchups.

Let's start in Nevada. Gary Tuchman is in Clark county for us, a county that's poised to decide a key Senate race that could decide which party controls the Senate.

And, Gary, Senator Cortez Masto is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection. Can Dems afford to lose her seat?

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, that's right.

In this dynamic state, where the population has doubled over the last 25 years and tripled over the last 35 years, there are three high- profile races., as you said, there's one that's above them all, and that's the U.S. Senate rate.

The Democratic incumbent, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, is considered the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent senator in this race. She is facing Adam Laxalt, the former attorney general here in Nevada, who joined the lawsuit to challenge Nevada's 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won by more than 33,000 votes.

The governor's race, Governor Steve Sisolak, first-term governor, he beat Adam Laxalt four years ago. He faces Republican Joe Lombardo. He's the sheriff here in Clark County, Nevada. He has stayed away from election denialism.

But someone who hasn't stayed away is a candidate for secretary of state. That's an important job, because you look over all the elections in the future, the Republican challenger there is Jim Marchant. Jim Marchant has said that the people here in Nevada haven't really elected anybody since 2006. He says, rather, they have been installed by the deep state cabal.

The person facing him is Cisco Aguilar. He's an attorney, a former staff member of the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. We will know the results pretty quickly here in Nevada after the polls close at 7:00 Pacific time tomorrow night -- Ana.

CABRERA: All right, Gary, thank you for being there for us there in Nevada.

Keep in mind, this is the first midterm election where all registered voters automatically receive mail-in ballots. Officials started processing and counting those two weeks ago, and those counts will be released after the polls close and may account for more of those early results. So set your expectations accordingly.

This is a state where we could see a blue-to-red shift as the counting continues.

Let's go to Arizona now.

Sara Sidner is in Maricopa County, another key county in a battleground state that could decide who controls the Senate.

And, Sara, there in Arizona, this could all boil down to the Latino vote.

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

And we should mention that, here in Arizona, the largest bloc of voters are actually independents or those who are with a third party, so not Democrat or Republican. And then following the independent voters, the second largest number are Republicans, and the third largest number are Democrats.

Now, as far as the Latino vote goes, this is a really important voting bloc here in Arizona. Now, this is Maricopa County, where we are standing. We are standing outside of a place where folks can vote. I just want to give you a look, very, very slow traffic, but people are coming in. And they are voting.

You should know that, in this particular county, about 85 percent of votes are cast early, whether that is mail-in, whether that is walking them in, or whether that is going to the polls a bit early. So, you're going to hear very early some of the counts that happened about an hour after the election closes.

But I will tell you that the Latino vote represents about 19 percent of Arizona's electorate in 2020. That is from exit polls. They could be a very important voting bloc in these midterms -- Ana.

CABRERA: And, again, the Senate state there is in play, the governor's race also a toss-up, and, this weekend, more threats?

SIDNER: That's right, there was a delivery, according to authorities, of an envelope that was containing some sort of suspicious white powder that basically prompted Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a Republican, to shut down her headquarters in Phoenix.

There have been also -- there was a break-in to the secretary of state, who is a Democrat, to Katie Hobbs' office, as well in the weeks leading up to this. So there is real concern. And there are security forces here.

[13:05:01]

You will see this fence here. That is new that has been put up. And it's a temporary fence outside of this particular area for voting. So, there is concern about security and there are measures in place to try and deal with that -- Ana.

CABRERA: Sara Sidner, thanks for your reporting.

So, how fast could we know Arizona's results? Absentee ballot counting begins as soon as the ballots are received, and those counts are usually released in the first report of the night. We know Democrats typically prefer to vote early or by mail, while Republicans often prefer to vote in person Election Day. So, again, we may see a blue- to-red shift, with Republicans gaining ground as counting continues there in Arizona.

Let's head to Pennsylvania now. The Senate race here is so important, and both parties are making it a priority. The current president, two former presidents all campaigned in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

Let's bring in CNN's Jason Carroll.

Jason, you're in Philadelphia, where Democrats really need to drive up the vote totals to win tomorrow night. But, right now, there are some issues with a few thousand ballots? What's going on?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, there is a lot of anxiety on the ground here on the part of some voters here.

We're here at City Hall here in Philadelphia, where, inside, we have seen a number of people who have lined up. And what they're doing, Ana, is they're trying to check to make sure their ballot is going to be counted. This is after what happened in the state Supreme Court. Last week, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court basically ruled, saying that any ballot that was not dated properly or that was undated cannot be counted.

And so, as a result, the city's commissioner's office here went into action. And what they did was, they printed out the list of some 3,400 ballots, that would be listed as ineligible and not be able to be counted because they didn't have the proper date or were undated.

Allegheny County printed a similar list of about 1,800 people. But here's the deal. Early this morning, we heard from the acting secretary of state, who basically says they don't have statewide numbers yet in terms of how many people this affects. They have reached out to 67 counties, haven't heard back from them yet.

Obviously, Democrats say this is going to hurt them because Democrats vote by mail-in more than Republicans. And that is something to consider when you're looking at the Senate race here, which is so close and crucial to both parties -- Ana. CABRERA: Jason Carroll in Philadelphia for us, thank you.

And I want to caution, Pennsylvania is a state where we may not know the results for days. Officials there can't start counting those absentee ballots until polls close on election night. And, even then, counties are still not required to begin counting those ballots for three days.

Because of this, the early results will be mainly Election Day votes. And you may see a red-to-blue shift there in Pennsylvania as the vote count continues. All counting has to be done within eight days of the election. So we will be watching very closely.

To Georgia now, where it's been an ugly fight for the state Senate seat, a seat that, until 2020, had been solidly Republican.

Eva McKend is traveling to the get-out-the-vote events today.

Eva, the early vote was big there in Georgia and the races are really close right now.

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, that is correct, Ana.

And that really speaks to the battleground nature of this state. And what you see is the candidate speaking to that, really trying to message to those independent voters, those voters who have not made their mind up as yet.

Incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, on the campaign trail, he often talks about his willingness to work with Republicans if ultimately Georgians benefit. Over the weekend, in his hometown of Savannah, he was suggesting that he wanted to be in the mold of the late Senator Johnny Isakson. That really speaks to how he has characterized himself.

He has dismissed his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, as not fit to serve in the United States Senate. Walker, meanwhile, has argued that Senator Warnock for the past two years has been more focused on advancing President Biden's agenda, namely, his economic agenda, and not concerned enough with everyday Georgians.

So, we are seeing both of these candidates hone in on their closing arguments, Georgia a state that could determine the balance of power in Washington. And also, uniquely, this state, if neither candidate gets above 50 percent, we could be seeing them campaign for another month if there is a December 6 run-off -- Ana.

CABRERA: All right, Eva, thank you.

I just want to reiterate what she said there. In the Peach State, it could be weeks before we know the winner in that Senate race, because if neither candidate gets 50 percent of the vote or more on Tuesday, it goes to that run-off. And that would take place in December.

Also, keep in mind, you might see a red-to-blue shift here like we saw in 2020, as vote counting continues past election night.

Tonight, former President Trump is lending his star power to the Ohio Senate candidate for Republicans, J.D. Vance. But sources are telling CNN he's also discussing a possible big announcement of his own, that he's running in 2024. That could come during that rally in Ohio. We will see if that happens.

[13:10:14]

But that could have a lot to do with the mixed messages he sent over the weekend in Florida when it came to backing up Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

CNN's Steve Contorno is on this.

Steve, first came a jab and then a change in tone.

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Ana, that's sort of emblematic of the relationship between these two men ever since DeSantis started rising as a potential competitor to Trump in 2024, hot and cold.

We have seen -- and we have been starting to see that rivalry seep into the public as we get closer and closer to that decision. We have seen Trump criticizing DeSantis on his TRUTH Social media. We have seen DeSantis actually endorse a candidate in a Colorado Senate race who has been pretty critical of Trump.

And then, on Saturday night and Sunday, we saw this sort of whiplash from Trump, where, on Saturday, he's giving DeSantis a new nickname and, then on Sunday, encouraging his supporters to reelect Ron DeSantis for governor. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There it is, Trump at 71, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent, Mike Pence at 7. Oh, Mike's doing better than I thought.

The people of Florida are going to reelect the wonderful, the great friend of mine Marco Rubio to the United States Senate.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: And you're going to reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor of your state.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: And you're going to elect an incredible slate of true MAGA warriors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: And that last clip you saw of Trump speaking was actually in Miami at a rally he hosted with a whole bunch of other Republican officials in Florida. Not invited was Ron DeSantis. He was on the completely opposite coast

of the state holding his own events, just really showing how much these two men are starting to -- the rift is starting to get into the public heading into Election Day, really overshadowing the final weeks of the race here, Ana, as Republicans are hoping to have a big win on election night.

CABRERA: Steve Contorno, thank you for your reporting.

Now, we have talked a lot about the Senate races, but control of the House is on the line tomorrow too. If Republicans win back the House, all eyes will be on Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who would be the favorite to replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.

And in an exclusive interview with CNN is Melanie Zanona, McCarthy says one of the first things he wants to tackle is a border bill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Will there be an immigration bill on the floor if Republicans win the House?

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I think the first thing you will see is a bill to control the border first. You have got to get control over the border.

You have had almost two million people just this year alone coming across.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: McCarthy's handling of his increasingly pro-Trump Republican Conference is already under the microscope. And, as speaker, he says he'd empower one of the most controversial members of that faction, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCARTHY: Marjorie Greene is going to have committees, yes. She's duly elected by her district...

ZANONA: Yes.

MCCARTHY: ... and has a right to serve.

ZANONA: But you have no red lines in terms of which committee assignments she could get?

MCCARTHY: No. She can put through the committee she wants, just like any other member in our conference that gets elected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: McCarthy also says, get ready for spending cuts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCARTHY: A debt ceiling is, you have hit a limit on your credit card. So if you're going to give a person a higher limit, wouldn't you first say, you should change your behavior, so you just don't keep raising it all the time?

I think we need to look at where -- the waste the fraud and abuse. I mean, Washington has so much wasteful spending, we can curb that and that's what we should start looking at from day one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Let's talk more about the GOP's plans for that number one issue for voters, the economy.

CNN's Matt Egan is here with us.

Matt, what changes if Republicans take control? Do they have a plan for bringing down inflation?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, we heard Kevin McCarthy tell our colleague Melanie Zanona that they are going to talk about spending cuts.

Now, in theory, cutting spending could help with inflation. But I think it would depend on what they're cutting and also when they're cutting spending, because if it's cuts to social safety net programs, like Medicare, Social Security, at a time of high inflation, that would obviously just make the pain worse for families.

We should also mention that the deficit is not just a problem for the Biden administration. This has been a problem really for every president in recent memory, including former President Trump. As you can see on that chart, the deficit has gone up. There's actually been a deficit every single year since fiscal 2001, back during the Clinton administration, every year.

Now, Republicans are also embracing energy dominance as a way to get out of high gas prices, right? We know that is the biggest -- one of the biggest sore spots for voters right now. Now, that -- they want to ramp up oil production by cutting red tape.

[13:15:01]

U.S. oil production has actually gone up under President Biden, as you can see on that chart, but it has not returned to pre-COVID levels, still about a million barrels per day below the peak under former President Trump.

So, if Republicans can fix that, that would actually help drive down inflation. But, of course, it would also hurt climate. It's hard to have it both ways. One other...

CABRERA: But even right now, regulation is not preventing some of these oil companies domestically from ramping up production. We know there are permits that are left unused right now. EGAN: That's right.

The oil industry would argue, though, that there's a lot of uncertainty right now, because the Biden administration has talked about phasing out fossil fuels.

So I think that the industry would like to have some more certainty, and maybe they would get that with Republicans in Congress. But I think another thing we should talk about, though, is immigration, right, because we heard Kevin McCarthy say the first action would be trying to secure the border, but he didn't talk about increasing legal immigration, right?

And that's actually what economists and even some business groups like the Chamber of Commerce say we need right now, because there's a shortage of workers. For every person looking for a job, there are almost two available job openings. That is inflationary. And economists say we need more legal immigrants to address that.

CABRERA: OK, Matt Egan, as always, thank you, sir.

EGAN: Thanks, Ana.

CABRERA: President Biden is gearing up for his last big speech before Election Day, much of his closing argument focusing on threats to democracy and the MAGA wing of the GOP. But is that message resonating?

Plus, new backlash over Elon Musk's Twitter shakeup, more companies now pausing ads on the social network, as Musk slashes teams dedicated to fighting misinformation.

And the dire warnings are louder than ever before, but is anyone listening? The disturbing headlines coming out of the United Nations climate summit -- when we come back.

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[13:21:05]

CABRERA: President Biden is just hours away from his last big speech before Election Day at a rally in Maryland. That's deep blue territory.

His home stretch strategy? Taking on election deniers.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us at the White House.

Phil, what's the mood inside the White House right now?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, this is a White House that is not -- doesn't ignore the fact that there's both headwinds and history that they're grappling with right now.

The president has acknowledged it, certainly, his top advisers have as well, the headwinds in the form of inflation in particular, the history in the form of the president's predecessors losing dozens and more seats in their first midterm election.

When you talk to White House officials, they say a couple of things. One, they explain the president's argument, particularly the idea of the broader view of democracy and the stakes as it pertains to that in this cycle, twofold, one, because the president genuinely believes it and thinks that this is a critical issue that people need to grapple with in this moment, but also that it's an issue that resonates with Democratic voters in particular.

There's been concerns about enthusiasm among Democrats. And there's a belief, particularly in a number of these Senate races that are very hotly contested, that, if Democrats turn out, they can buck a historical trend that they have seen past midterm elections.

The other is the idea right now that they feel like, even though the president has primarily been focused or centered on deep blue territory -- he will be in Bowie, Maryland, later tonight campaigning for Wes Moore, one of the few Democratic governor candidates that has an opportunity to flip a governor's mansion, in the state of Maryland -- that that is also about enthusiasm.

That's about helping Kathy Hochul up in New York. That's about helping Michelle Lujan Grisham down in New Mexico. Those are seats that they want to save. Maybe they're not supposed to be the most contested, but they feel like the president can have a real impact there. One thing they say more than anything else, they feel like they are in the game in a lot of those Senate races.

The House, though, they may not say it publicly, but privately they acknowledge it's quite a hill to climb there, Ana.

CABRERA: OK, Phil Mattingly at the White House for us, thank you.

Misinformation is a serious concern ahead of tomorrow's midterms and the impact it could have on voting.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan has been digging into election lines specifically targeting the Spanish-speaking community.

What did you find?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN BUSINESS POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY REPORTER: Yes, Ana, well, I think one thing which we know is that, unlike English- only speaking voters in the U.S., Spanish speakers use WhatsApp a lot more, as many people in Latin America do, as they do in Europe.

And that opens a whole new world of misinformation, because, unlike the platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which have some rules in place to push back against misinformation or to fact-check it, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, now Meta, it's a private messaging platform.

But some of the groups on those, some of those family groups sometimes can have dozens or hundreds of members, and it's sometimes with friends, and it can kind of function more just as a standard social media platform, but with none of those checks in place.

Now, another thing we found was that -- what I found surprising was just how quickly a lot of these QAnon-type conspiracy theories get translated from English into Spanish. And we spoke to one voter in Florida. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA CORINA VEGAS, BIDEN SUPPORTER: In Spanish (SPEAKING SPANISH).

If you stay silent, you're conceding the point.

O'SULLIVAN: What is the phrase in Spanish?

VEGAS: (SPEAKING SPANISH).

You're essentially acknowledging that it's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'SULLIVAN: And that's just -- the conventional wisdom, I think, is, we hear a lot of these crazy conspiracy theories about cabals, et cetera.

The conventional wisdom sometimes is to not address that, to not fact- check it. But, as Maria makes in that point, for her, for her family, it's better if Democrats are out there pushing against it, but specifically the type of misinformation, the same type of election lies, but a lot of it targeting, which is very sensitive to of course, many people in South and Central America, the idea that Democrats are communists, that they are socialist, even progressive, a bad word for a lot of the folks we were speaking to.

[13:25:08]

CABRERA: So interesting.

And, of course, we know that the Latino vote is not a monolithic group, obviously.

O'SULLIVAN: Of course, yes.

CABRERA: But to see what's happening there in Florida, where we know they do have a lot of folks coming from Cuba or who have Cuban heritage or other places where socialism, communism is a bad word, and so that's why it's so potent to have that misinformation.

Let's talk about Twitter for just a moment. We have new reporting about the upheaval there that could really make it difficult for the social media giant to police misinformation, right?

O'SULLIVAN: Yes.

CABRERA: What can you tell us?

O'SULLIVAN: Elon Musk fired half the company right before Election Day.

A lot of those people are the people who were responsible for pushing back against misinformation, for keeping those guardrails on the platform, as we go into a week where no doubt, races, people are not going to accept results, they're going to be pushing conspiracy theories. It's a recipe for disaster.

CABRERA: Right. Thank you so much, Donie O'Sullivan.

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: I think you're going to have a lot of work in the next couple of days. But thanks for being on it.

O'SULLIVAN: Thanks.

CABRERA: We appreciate it.

Let's stick with Twitter for just a moment, because a growing number of companies are now pausing their advertising with the company.

And CNN's Oliver Darcy is following all these developments.

Oliver, what are we hearing from these companies about their decision to step back from Twitter?

OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: Yes, companies, Ana, have just lost faith in Twitter's ability to moderate its platform and keep it free of hate speech and misinformation.

Twitter has come out and said that a lot of the layoffs that happened on Friday really didn't affect the core ability to rid the platform of this sort of stuff. But advertisers, Ana, are just clearly not buying it. And a lot of them are pausing their advertisements.

CABRERA: And so companies like United are among those.

The NAACP is hoping this snowballs, calling for all advertisers to boycott Twitter. Why specifically?

DARCY: Yes, Twitter earns most of its revenue through advertisements.

And so I think the idea here is that the more advertisers pause their campaigns on the platform, the more leverage they will really have to force Musk to take this issue very seriously. Of course, he is stressing again that platform rules have not changed, that they still remain committed to enforcing the current rules on the books.

But, again, advertisers are not buying this. And Musk is growing frustrated. He came out a couple of days ago and he said that possibly naming and shaming advertisers for dropping their campaigns could be next on his list if this trend continues.

CABRERA: OK, Oliver Darcy, thank you.

The climate crisis front and center today at the U.N., now warning the Earth is on a -- quote -- "highway to climate hell." So, what are world leaders going to do about it? A major meeting under way right now.

And Florida still is cleaning up after Hurricane Ian, but it's now bracing for another big storm. We have got details.

Stay with us.

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