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New Elections Polls Shows No Clear Winner in U.S. Presidential Election; U.S. Election Workers Face Increasing Threats to Safety; Hillary Clinton Talks about 2016 Loss, November Election; Soyuz Spacecraft Undocks from International Space Station; Police Believe Deadly Alabama Shooting was a Targeted Hit. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired September 23, 2024 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Several senior officials have stepped down from Mark Robinson's campaign. He's the embattled Republican candidate for North Carolina governor. Robinson is facing fallout after CNN reported he made inflammatory comments on a pornographic website over a decade ago. He is the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris says she'll deliver a speech this week focusing on her vision for the economy, which is consistently a top issue for voters.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump will rally supporters in the coming hours in Pennsylvania. It's a battleground state that will play a key role in deciding the next president.
Trump's presence in Pennsylvania comes amid new poll numbers that show him trailing Harris 49 percent to 44 percent according to the survey from NBC News. That figure reflects Trump's lowest level of support in a poll that meets CNN standards since Harris became a candidate.
But this is still a very tight race, as CNN's Poll of Polls shows no clear leader between the two nominees.
On Sunday, whilst Trump urged his supporters to vote early in the states of Minnesota and Virginia through tele-rallies, his Democratic challenger raised $27 million in New York.
The Harris campaign says that is the largest amount raised from a single event since she moved to the top of the ticket.
Donald Trump is scoring a somewhat unexpected endorsement, meanwhile, from the mayor of the first U.S. city governed entirely by Muslims. Amer Ghalib serves as the mayor of Hamtramck in the battleground state of Michigan.
Trump reposted Ghalib's endorsement shortly afterwards on his Truth Social page on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Trump is already raising doubts with no evidence about the integrity of the upcoming vote, and that's making things even more tense for election workers who are facing increasing threats to their own safety. CNN's Brian Todd has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hazmat teams respond, and an election office in Iowa is evacuated. According to CNN and the Associated Press, suspicious packages containing powder were sent to election offices in at least 19 states this week, North Carolina confirming it was one of them.
KAREN BRINSON BELL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORTH CAROLINA BOARD OF ELECTIONS: We have learned that there was one in the mail stream to us, and it was intercepted.
TODD (voice-over): There were no reports of actual hazardous material in any of the packages, but it's part of a significant and very dangerous spike in recent months and overall, since the 2020 election of those types of acts.
MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Election officials, workers, and volunteers in communities across the country have been targeted with heinous acts and threats of violence.
TODD (voice-over): In Durham County, North Carolina, this past March, according to the county elections director, a man showed up too late to the polls and was told he couldn't vote in the primary.
DEREK BOWENS, DIRECTOR OF ELECTIONS, DURHAM COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA: When the individual told our chief administrator at the precinct that if I can't vote with a ballot, I'll vote with a bullet.
TODD (voice-over): Law enforcement responded, but Derek Bowens says the man soon left the scene.
Last year, a series of suspicious letters, some laced with fentanyl, were sent to election offices throughout the country. The near constant threat of violence has led to an exodus. Many experienced election officials stepping down this cycle, some citing harassment.
CLINT HICKMAN, BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CHAIR, MARICOPA COUTY, ARIZONA: I've had death threats. My family has suffered through threats.
TODD (voice-over): For those staying on the job, the measures they're taking to try to stay safe are mind-boggling.
BELL: And it really adds to the anxiety that we have about doing our job.
TODD (voice-over): In Durham County, workers at polling places this year will be equipped with panic buttons.
BOWENS: They can actually press a button, and that will alert emergency services to respond, and it will use Bluetooth technology for their exact location.
TODD (voice-over): The central election office in Durham County will be like Fort Knox, bulletproof glass at the front desk, a de- escalation room for people who are upset. And, incredibly, they've had to install a separate expensive filtration system for hazardous mail.
BOWENS: We have a mail room that has a separate exhaust system, so if there are any hazardous substances that come out as a result of mail, it will be contained to that room and will be pushed out through a separate exhaust system.
TODD (voice-over): Derek Bowens says he felt that sense of fear in recent days when he was leaving his office late at night.
BOWENS: I had the thought of looking around me, making sure that there was no one, you know, coming up to me or trying to get in close proximity. I actually thought about my life for the first time.
TODD: One election security advocate we spoke to says the exodus of experienced election workers has presented the challenge of getting new workers up to speed before Election Day. But he was quick to try to tamp down the rhetoric of conspiracy theorists and fear mongers, saying he's confident that those challenges won't translate to problems or chaos on Election Day.
Brian Todd CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sat down recently for an in-depth interview with CNN's Freed Zakaria. During that conversation, Clinton talked about her new book, Something Lost, Something Gained, her endorsement of Kamala Harris and her 2016 loss to Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[04:35:00]
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's a relay race. People do their part. They try to open doors or break through ceilings in order to make it possible for somebody to come after them.
And as I, you know, write in the book and in the epilogue to the audio version that I read, I didn't know how I would feel because obviously it was a huge disappointment not to win in 2016.
But when President Biden withdrew and endorsed the vice president, I immediately, along with my husband, endorsed her as well. And it felt right. It felt exciting, exhilarating.
I think she is not only absolutely equipped and ready to be president. I think we need somebody like her right now, Fareed.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR, GPS: In what sense?
CLINTON: This is an election not just between two people, two tickets, two parties. It really is an election between democracy and autocracy, freedom and oppression. But also between leadership that wants to bring us together to do big things, to demonstrate America is fully ready to be as prosperous and as focused at home and leading abroad -- because the world needs that. And so the contrast between the two visions of our future could not be more stark and different.
I think Kamala's campaign has demonstrated, as it's already been written and talked about, a level of energy, even joy.
The contrast is the Trump campaign. It's dark. It's dystopian. It's filled with, you know, attacks on different kinds of people, finger pointing and scapegoating. That's a very different view of who we are as a people and what we should aspire to.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: This week, leaders from business, government and civil society will come together for the Clinton Global Initiatives annual meeting set to take place in New York on Monday and Tuesday.
In a German state election, the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz won a vote, in Brandenburg, meanwhile, but just barely. The SPD narrowly defeated an effort by the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Projections give the Social Democrats 30.7 percent of the vote, with the AFD getting 29.4 percent.
The AFD leaders told cheering supporters it is the party of the future. While it is strongly anti-immigrant and pro-Russia, its narrow loss comes just three weeks after AFD became the first far-right party to win a German state election since World War II.
Voters in Sri Lanka elected a new president who calls himself a Marxist. The left-leaning politician won in a landslide with more than 42 percent of the vote. This after the incumbent led the nation through an economic meltdown by imposing austerity measures that left voters angry. At its peak, inflation in the South Asian nation was 70 percent.
Turnout was strong, with some 75 percent of eligible Sri Lankans casting a ballot. Crowds took to the streets to celebrate. The new president represents the People's Liberation Front. He beat his nearest rival by more than a million votes.
In the coming hours, world leaders will gather for discussions focused on our world's future and how the U.N. will help it develop. That's part of the two-day Summit of the Future, centered around a document called the Pact for the Future, which world leaders adopted on Sunday.
It's seen as a blueprint on how to address critical issues in the world, like conflicts and climate change. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said this type of summit was needed given the current state of the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONIO GUTERRES, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: I called for this summit because our world is heading off the rails and we need tough decisions to get back on track. Conflicts are raging and multiplying from the Middle East to Ukraine and Sudan with no end in sight. Our collective security system is threatened by geopolitical divides, nuclear posturing and the development of new weapons and theatres of war.
Resources that could bring opportunities and hope are invested in death and destruction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: The Summit of the Future will wrap up today and the U.N. General Assembly is set to begin tomorrow.
Live pictures coming to us as the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft undocks from the International Space Station, bringing home two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut. Tracy C. Dyson is the NASA astronaut. The cosmonauts are Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko.
Dyson's mission has spanned 184 days in space. That includes covering nearly 3,000 orbits of the Earth and a journey of 78 million miles, would you believe?
The Soyuz is expected to parachute to the Earth in Kazakhstan less than four hours from now. The Russian spacecraft launched March 23rd and arrived at the space station March 25th. Dyson spent her fourth spaceflight aboard the station as a flight engineer.
Kononenko is completing his fifth flight into space and occurring an all-time record of 100 -- no rather, 1,111 days in orbit. Chub is completing his first spaceflight. After returning to Earth, Dyson will board a NASA plane and return to Houston. Kononenko and Chub will depart for a training base in Star City, Russia.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: Four people are dead and 17 others hurt after multiple shooters opened fire on a crowd in Birmingham, Alabama. This was the chaotic scene on Saturday night at a crowded entertainment district in the city. Police believe that one victim was the focus of a targeted hit, and that the other victims were caught in the crossfire.
CNN's Rafael Romo has the details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: CNN has obtained a video showing what the scene was like here, Saturday night just moments after the shooting. Before we go to the video, we need to warn our viewers that it may be disturbing for some people.
As you can see, the video captures a scene of panic and shows at least three people lying on the ground as police lights flash in the background. There are several key details that officials have revealed so far.
[04:45:00]
First, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurman says several individuals showed up in a car shortly after 11:00 on Saturday night, got out of the car and opened fire, leaving three people dead here at the scene.
Those victims were two men and a woman. A fourth victim was pronounced dead later at the University of Alabama Hospital. Another key detail is that police believe this was a targeted hit on one person and the other victims were caught in the crossfire. Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurman said his officers found around 100 shell casings here at this site of the shooting.
And this has been a very violent year for the city of Birmingham. In February, four men were shot and killed outside a public library. And then in July, a shooting at a nightclub left four people dead and 10 others injured.
We spoke with a resident of this area, downtown Birmingham, who was part of a group of people who stopped by to lay flowers at the site of the shooting to honor the memory of the victims.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is really personal to me. I care about Birmingham. Jesus has called us to love each other and to love our city. And we want to be known as a city for love around the world, not for hate.
ROMO: We've also learned the White House is coordinating with federal, state and local officials here in Alabama as authorities advance in the investigation into the shooting.
In a statement, the director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, Steph Feldman said, quote: Americans should not have to live like this and we can't let it become normal."
Rafael Romo, CNN, Birmingham, Alabama.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: New details are emerging about the hours leading up to the shocking death of an eastern Kentucky judge, allegedly at the hands of his own sheriff. The community gathered at a high school gym on Sunday for the funeral of Judge Kevin Mullins. He was allegedly gunned down in his own chambers on Thursday by Sheriff Shawn Stines.
Investigators are still looking for motive in the killing. The two men had lunch just hours before the shooting. Circuit Court Clerk Mike Watt says he saw them shortly before noon on the day of the shooting. Watt says they were joking around about national politics when they went down the street to eat lunch. Stines is facing a first degree murder charge and is expected to be arraigned this week.
In just a few hours, the Missouri Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the death row case of Marcellus Williams. He's scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening. Williams was convicted in 2001 of the 1998 stabbing to death of a former newspaper reporter. He says he's innocent.
Earlier this year, the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney's Office argued in a motion that DNA testing of the murder weapon could exclude Williams as the killer. It was then determined the murder weapon had been mishandled, contaminating evidence meant to exonerate Williams. The prosecuting attorney and Williams' lawyer are asking the State Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for a more comprehensive hearing.
We'll be right back.
[04:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: A desperate mother unable to feed her newborn in the middle of the night found a police officer who went above and beyond the call of duty. CNN's Polo Sandoval has that story. Insert formula.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you're curious about how a police officer found himself scrambling through a baby formula aisle in the middle of the night.
CORPORAL HUNTER WILLOUGHBY, MIAMI TOWNSHIP POLICE DEPARTMENT: What the heck's the difference?
SANDOVAL (voice-over): Just ask the overnight shift at the supermarket near Cincinnati, Ohio, where Kim Whitney remembers it well. She was in the middle of restocking shelves when something caught her eye.
KIM WHITNEY, MEIJER PRODUCE DEPARTMENT: I just looked up for a brief second.
SANDOVAL: At those windows?
WHITNEY: At these windows out there. And I see a flashing light, strobe light going off.
WILLOUGHBY: I know there's people in there working somewhere.
SANDOVAL: Hunter Willoughby, a Miami Township police corporal, had been desperately trying to summon backup from inside the store after hours.
That's him banging on the window. When that didn't work, Willoughby reached for his flashlight.
WHITNEY: And I see the officer with his light going on.
(INAUDIBLE)
WILLOUGHBY: You may not be able to help me. There is a mom who has, she said her milk dried up and she has no -- she can't find anywhere to buy formula. Is there anywhere anybody in here can turn on a cash register?
WHITNEY: He wanted to know if we could help. And I said, I'm sure we could. And bring him in and call Bridget up. She handles him from there, takes him down to the baby aisle. BRIDGET WILLIAMS, MEIJER OVERNIGHT LEAD: Once he picked out the baby formula, we start to walk back to the front of the store and I asked him, I think we might need a bottle.
WILLOUGHBY: Her baby's a week old, plus she's --
WILLIAMS: Does she have a bottle?
WILLOUGHBY: I did not have a plan B. This was, this was plan A, B and C. So I, when I came here, I wasn't leaving.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): Formula and bottles finally in hand. Willoughby rushed to Willough.
MCKENZEE POOR, MOTHER: You got to smile for him.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): The infant that's all smiles today, but not that night. The infant was crying uncontrollably and growing fussier by the hour after going without her regular feeding.
POOR: There was no store open that I could get formula from. And I was breastfeeding before then.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): With no formula, Mckenzee Poor called police.
WILLOUGHBY: I completely understand how, when a baby is, you know, inconsolable, how hard it is, especially as a new parent.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): Corporal Willoughby insists his late night formula run simply falls under the serve aspects of the job. He also defers any appreciation to his backup that night.
WILLOUGHBY: From Kim to Bridget to, there was another employee that I talked, they were like over -- they went above and beyond.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): But those employees insist this father of two with a badge was the true hero.
POOR: Thank God for this officer.
SANDOVAL (voice-over): Polo Sandoval, CNN, Miami Township, Ohio.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: The reigning two-time Super Bowl champion, Kansas City Chiefs are still unbeaten after a close win against the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons took the opening kickoff and drove 70 yards for a touchdown. But Patrick Mahomes shook off an interception to throw two touchdown passes. And the Chiefs stopped Atlanta twice on fourth down in the closing minutes of the game for a 22-17 win.
[04:55:00]
Las Vegas Aces star A'Ja Wilson is this year's WNBA Most Valuable Player. All 67 panelists of sports writers and broadcasters voted for the 28-year-old superstar, making her the first unanimous winner of the award since 1997. It's Wilson's third time earning the title.
The Aces are going for an historic third consecutive WNBA championship. They defeated the Seattle Storm in game one of their first round series on Sunday.
Meanwhile, WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark says injuries during the team's postseason game didn't make her lose her cool. Clark was hit in the eye less than two minutes into the Indiana Fever's first postseason game against the Connecticut Sun. The Fever lost that game 93-69. It's the team's first time reaching the postseason since 2016. Game two is Wednesday.
Now to the stories of the spotlight. And despite multiple new films in the cinemas this weekend, none were able to scare away the top- grossing movie dominating the U.S. and international box offices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The living, can they co-exist?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, made by Warner Brothers Pictures, part of CNN's parent company, surpassed the $300 million mark, according to Variety magazine. It's the third week in a row the film has sat at number one.
And finally, a budding social media sensation, Pesto, the penguin's star power and stature are only growing. Described as a walking feathery poop machine, the nine-month-old king penguin is already towering over his parents. He's also starting to lose some of his baby feathers, and swimming lessons from his dad are on the horizon. So you're fully updated on that story too.
Thanks for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster in London. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up next after a break.
