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Harris, Trump Barnstorm U.S. Battleground States; Jennifer Lopez Gives Speech at Harris Rally in Las Vegas; 158 People Killed by Devastating Floods in Spain; Israeli Military Resumes Strikes on Southern Beirut Suburbs; Saudi Foreign Minister: Palestinian State is Only Way to Move Forward. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired November 01, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Both candidates, barnstorming the battleground states.
J-LO, SINGER AND ACTRESS: It wasn't just Puerto Ricans that were offended that day. It was every Latino in this country.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: When you know what to stand for, you know what to fight for.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Look at how they've treated you. They do treat you like garbage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely devastating pictures there out of Spain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, the most important is to save the largest number of lives possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster and Christina Macfarlane.
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Max Foster. It's Friday, November the 1st, 8 a.m. here in London, 3 a.m. in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, where both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be campaigning in the coming hours.
With just four days left to go to the race for the White House, more than 62 million people have already cast their ballots in early voting. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have been crisscrossing the handful of battleground states experts say are likely to decide the election. The two held dueling rallies in Nevada on Thursday, taking shots at one another and urging voters to cast their ballots as soon as possible. And they'll do the same today in Wisconsin. Kamala Harris enlisted more star power to get her message out to
voters in the key swing state of Nevada on Thursday, as actress and singer Jennifer Lopez joined her at a rally in Las Vegas. J-Lo used her time to urge supporters to get out and vote as early as they can. The Puerto Rican superstar also condemned the joke made by a comedian at Trump's rally in Madison Square Garden, where he called Puerto Rico a, quote, island of garbage. And both women worked to highlight the differences between the vice president and Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JENNIFER LOPEZ, SINGER/ACTRESS: It's about us, all of us no matter what we look like, who we love, or who we worship, or where we're from.
Her opponent, on the other hand, doesn't see it that way. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels. It wasn't just Puerto Ricans that were offended that day. OK. It was every Latino in this country. It was humanity and anyone of decent character.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We will win because here's what I believe. When you know what to stand for, you know what to fight for.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: And we all know we have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We're done with that. We're done.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, speaking earlier in Reno, Harris blasted Trump for comments he made in Wisconsin, saying he will protect women, quote, whether they like it or not.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what's in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Well, Donald Trump is also sprinting towards Election Day, hitting three southwest battleground states on Thursday. In Arizona, he spoke at right wing personality Tucker Carlson's live tour event. Trump used violent rhetoric about former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who's been a harsh critic, saying she should be fired upon with guns.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump campaigned in Nevada and spent much of his time on stage making false claims about migrants in the state of U.S. cities. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And now, of course, what's happening is you go to towns and cities all over the country. You can't have a hospital anyway because the migrants have literally taken over the beds. They've taken over the schools.
They've taken over. Your son has a seat in school and he no longer has it because a migrant is giving they're giving him. Actually, they're saying you go first. The migrants go first. Migrants go first. Look at look at what's happening.
[04:05:00]
Look at what's happening all over the country. The schools are bursting at the seams. The hospitals are a disaster. You go to the hospital, you have a problem, you can't get in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Well, in New Mexico, Trump urged Latinos to vote for him. At one point, he said his rally was aimed at boosting his, quote, credentials with Hispanic voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Don't make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK. Look, I came here -- you know, we could be nice to each other or we could talk turkey. Let's talk turkey, OK? First of all, Hispanics love Trump.
I'm here for one simple reason. I like you very much and it's good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Trump also falsely claimed that he actually won New Mexico in the 2016 and 2020 elections. In fact, he lost by wide margins to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The race remains tight, especially in the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, where new CNN polling shows Harris and Trump neck and neck.
CNN's Harry Enten gives us a closer look at how these states could prove a backup path for the Harris campaign if they underperform in the Great Lakes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: The big blue wall runs through the Great Lake battleground states. That's Kamala Harris's best path. You know, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. That would get Kamala Harris to 270 electoral votes.
But let's just say there's some leakage in that great big blue wall. Let's just say that Kamala Harris loses in Michigan. Well, then she drops below 270 electoral votes. But you know what would get her right back over it? Let's just say we give her the state of North Carolina. She gets up to 271 electoral votes. So the bottom line is these southeast states can very much sort of prove as a backup path potentially for Kamala Harris. Let's just say we're going to put Michigan back in the blue, but we give Pennsylvania away to Donald Trump.
Now Kamala Harris is again south of 270 electoral votes. Well, what can sub in? Well, why don't we give her the state of Georgia? Right, it went blue last time. That gets Kamala Harris well above 270 electoral votes.
The bottom line is this. Look, Kamala Harris's best path to 270 electoral votes still runs through that great big blue wall up here in the Great Lake states. But the southeast provides this backup to her.
One little last nugget I'll sort of point out to you. You know, we're talking about the importance of Georgia and North Carolina. When was the last time a Republican won without Georgia? You got to go all the way back to 1980.
Of course, Jimmy Carter was the Democratic nominee. Not a big surprise. He carried his home state. How about North Carolina? You have to go all the way back to 1956.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Thomas Gift is the director of the Center on U.S. Politics for University College London. He joins us from London. Thanks for joining us, Thomas.
I mean, it is so tight, isn't it? If you look at any of the polling and Harry just really explained how it could transpire. But interesting to see yesterday how both candidates were very much focusing on that Hispanic vote. Explain why that matters and who's got the edge, you think?
THOMAS GIFT, DIRECTOR, CENTER ON U.S. POLITICS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON: Well, thanks so much for having me, Max. It's great to be with you. The Hispanic vote is certainly a demographic that Donald Trump has been making inroads with.
He performed reasonably well in 2016, reasonably well in 2020. And I think he's poised to do so again in 2024. One of the things about the Hispanic vote is that there's much more heterogeneity there than we often give it credit for.
They're also not necessarily just single issue voters on immigration. But this is a large and growing constituency in these key swing states and nationally. And so Trump, even if he doesn't win the majority of Hispanic votes, which he certainly will not, just making some dents in the lead that Kamala Harris seems to have would make a big difference.
FOSTER: She seems to have a pretty good edge on mainstream superstars, doesn't she, Kamala Harris? Let's just listen to J-Lo, because she obviously cares deeply about, you know, how Latino voters are being treated in this election. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER LOPEZ, SINGER AND ACTRESS: Kamala Harris is running for the people who dream, for the parents working overtime, the kids studying by streetlight, the teenagers practicing in the basement. She's the only candidate that wants to raise the minimum wage and make college more affordable. Keep the Department of Education and even put a teacher in the vice president's job.
(CHEERING)
LOPEZ: On the other hand, her opponent wants to kill the Affordable Care Act and eliminate the Department of Education.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: I'm just wondering, Thomas, how much difference you think these appearances will make? Because I think a lot of people would assume that someone like J-Lo would support Kamala Harris. So does it actually change the way people vote?
GIFT: Yes, I mean, we have a lot of data on endorsements and generally we think that it doesn't make a gigantic difference.
[04:10:00]
I think the one exception in this race was Taylor Swift, because she can certainly move economies when she says something. But, yes, I think largely it's preaching to the choir. I don't think there's any surprise that Jennifer Lopez is supporting Kamala Harris. That's the same of many Hollywood celebrities and other figures.
So I think on the margins, maybe it can make a difference. But by and large, most of the data suggests that it doesn't.
FOSTER: I guess on the same token, we can also look to Donald Trump's lies. They used to be so shocking, didn't they, a few years ago. But do you think they've almost become accepted now? I mean, we try to point them out when they're there, but does that shift opinion at all?
GIFT: No, we've absolutely become desensitized to Trump's lies. You now, the Washington Post, during Trump's presidency, counted the number of fabrications that Trump made during his presidency. It reached something like 36,000.
In your intro to this discussion, you talked about Trump making false claims, and it's terrific that we're actually pointing them out. But we're so used to hearing phrases like baseless and without evidence associated with Donald Trump that nothing really seems to resonate. There's absolutely a double standard, because if a Democrat says something that's untrue, the entire media sort of goes berserk on it.
But if Donald Trump does it, it's kind of a shrug of the shoulders because we've heard it so many times before.
FOSTER: Well, on that, let's listen to what he said about New Mexico, which he claims to have won twice, which actually lost twice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We almost won it twice. And let me tell you, I believe we won it twice. OK, you ought to know.
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: And if you can watch your vote counter, if we could bring God down from heaven, he could be the vote counter. We would win this. We'd win California. We'd win a lot of states.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: So, you know, all that, you know, the election programming, the counting of the election is going to be hugely important, isn't it? To convince voters that this was a free and fair election. And the concern being that if Donald Trump does start losing, that he might try to discredit the whole system and the sort of unrest that would come from that.
GIFT: Well, I don't think that there's any doubt that Donald Trump is not going to concede if he in fact loses this election. And we know that because he still hasn't conceded the 2020 election. And a very large fraction of Republican voters believe him. They sort of subscribe to this idea that the election was rigged.
And I think regardless of what the outcome is, if Trump is on the losing side, he's going to say that he has an ax to grind. If it's close, he's just going to say that Democrats, the deep state and his political adversaries sort of twisted the vote in a state here or there to give it to Kamala Harris.
And if he loses big, then he'll point to the polls and say, look, everybody said this was going to be so close. It's about 50-50 going in. How did I lose so substantially? It must be vote rigging.
FOSTER: Well, a few days to find out what actually happens. Thomas Gift, really appreciate your time as ever this morning.
GIFT: Thanks, Max.
FOSTER: Historic rains and flash flooding in Spain have claimed the lives of more than 150 people. That's after a year's worth of rainfall came down in just a matter of hours earlier this week, causing rivers to overflow, coursing through entire towns and doing immense damage. Emergency workers trying to rescue those still trapped and recover the dead.
On Thursday, the Spanish prime minister urged residents to stay inside and warned the danger isn't even over.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PEDRO SANCHEZ, PRIME MINISTER OF SPAIN (through translator): To the citizens who live in the provinces of Valencia and also Castellon, please, the damage continues and please stay home. Don't leave. Stay home and heed the calls from all the emergency services.
Heed all their requirements, all of their recommendations, because now the most important is to save the largest number of lives possible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Valencia have already begun cleaning up efforts, clearing enormous piles of debris from roads and buildings. The storm left thousands without power or running water. The flooding was so intense that satellite imagery now shows parts of Valencia almost disappearing into the sea.
CNN meteorologist Chad Myers looks at how it happened, what's next, and also tells us about a monster typhoon that's just hit Taiwan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely devastating pictures there out of Spain. Some spots in Spain picked up more rainfall in one day than they usually get in a year. It was a cutoff low, a low pressure system that just sat over Spain and did not move.
And if we had a desert over here instead of the Mediterranean Sea, that would not have been a problem. This happens all the time in California, but we don't have a warm Mediterranean Ocean, Mediterranean Sea to move all of that moisture from the water onto the land. And boy, was there moisture almost 500 millimeters in just eight hours.
[04:15:00]
So a half of a meter, 18 to 19 inches of rainfall in eight hours, the before and the after. Closer to the cities here, you'll see what is normally a dry river. It was certainly not a dry river. This was where the water was just pouring out of the mountains. Closer in here, you can see the grass. Sometimes there's not any water in it at all.
But then, boy, there was just a couple of days ago, this water came roaring down. And here you've seen the roads with the cars that have been clogged. Here's the road here. A little bit farther to the north is where all those cars were parked. And the river finally going down a little bit. But all of that mud where those people were stranded.
Now, we will get a little bit of rain. We're still going to get 50 to 100 millimeters more of rain, maybe an inch and a half. Some spots, maybe up to two to three. But not really centered on where the flooding was down here. A little bit farther to the north, maybe closer to Barcelona.
A little bit to the east of there, all the way around the globe as we go to Taiwan. Here's Kong-rey, a 200-kilometer-per-hour wind event that slammed into the east coast of Taiwan during the day. The rainfall came down. The eye came right over. The wind speeds were somewhere around 200 kph. Now, the thing is dying off.
As it hit the land, obviously, we've lost a lot of humidity, lost a lot of moisture, and a lot of spin. But we talk about 500 millimeters in Spain. 1.2 meters already reported from this storm in parts of Taiwan. Now, it will move away from Taiwan. It will even give a little bit of rain to Shanghai, maybe even some more rain on up toward Kyushu and toward, I would even say, Tokyo. It could pick up a couple hundred millimeters, mainly on the west side of Japan.
But certainly not out of the question of more rainfall to come, even if the wind is only tropical storm force, maybe even 50 kilometers per hour. It'll still be a rain event.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, ahead, we are getting new images of destruction in the suburbs of Beirut after new Israeli airstrikes. Plus, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister sits down with CNN's Becky Anderson and warns that the security of the entire Middle East is at risk. And later, no ballots have been counted yet in the U.S. election. But some of Donald Trump's supporters are already preparing to undermine the results again if he doesn't win.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: Israel is pounding parts of Lebanon with a series of new airstrikes, according to Lebanese state media. The Israeli military targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight for the first time in more than a week. Now the assault reportedly caused massive destruction, with dozens of buildings leveled to the ground.
On Thursday, the IDF struck near the eastern city of Baalbek for a second straight day, and also in southern Lebanon.
[04:20:00]
Meanwhile, during a speech to soldiers about the battles against Hezbollah and Hamas, the Israeli prime minister said Israel's supreme objective is preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
And an Israeli military source says the country is at a high level of readiness for a possible response from Iran after the IDF strikes against Iran a week ago.
Now according to hospital staff, at least 13 people were killed on Thursday and dozens more injured after an Israeli strike near a refugee camp in central Gaza. Meanwhile, desperately needed medical supplies were destroyed by a bombing at a hospital in northern Gaza. The U.N. says the critical supplies from the World Health Organization had only arrived five days ago.
A spokesperson warning that hospitals are under assault and rescue teams are unable to work. The Israeli military said it's unaware of a strike on the hospital, but it's reviewing the incident.
Salma is here. I mean, away from the rights and wrongs of this. It's just impossible, isn't it, for the, you know, the workers, the families of anyone that's injured? SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And let's begin with Lebanon, because that's what's happening this morning. I know we have images to show you of just this heavy airstrikes, this heavy pounding on the southern suburbs of Beirut, an area that hadn't been hit in the last week.
It appeared, as we were discussing yesterday, that the Israeli military's focus was expanding to the north of Lebanon. They've now drawn back down to the southern suburbs of Beirut. And it comes just hours after the IDF, the Israeli military, had vowed retaliation for some 90 Hezbollah rockets that had been fired towards the town of Metula in Israel on Thursday, where four people, four Thai nationals were killed and one Israeli citizen was killed. That retaliation taking place right now.
Lebanese state media saying the devastation, the destruction is eye- watering, that dozens of buildings have been leveled. Emergency workers are rushing to the scene. We're, of course, working to find out more.
But as this offensive intensifies against Hezbollah, you also have talks on how to end the violence taking place. There's this huge diplomatic effort taking place. President Biden's administration pushing for a deal, a temporary ceasefire deal that would end the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel for at least a month and allow the warring parties to come to the table and find a longer term solution. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave reporters an update on that effort. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: On Lebanon, let me just say that we are working very hard and making progress on reaching understandings of what would be required for the effective implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. This would be the basis of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
And I can tell you that based on my recent trip to the region, the work that's ongoing right now, we have made good progress on those understandings. We still have more work to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ABDELAZIZ: Some progress, more work to do. What Secretary of State Antony Blinken is talking about there is a nearly 20-year-old U.N. Security Council resolution that resolved the last war, the last major war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah. He is hoping that reviving that deal, restoring that resolution would allow some peace, some stability, some security to come back to the region.
Israel's response has been, Prime Minister Netanyahu's response has been, I have to be, the Israeli military has to be able to enforce any agreement. And therefore, if you're reading between the lines there, the Israeli military maintains or retains the right to invade Lebanon if it sees that it is a threat to its security. How can that be a basis for peace? How can these warring parties agree to that? What does that look like? Who enforces it?
A lot of detail there, but the hope for Secretary of State Antony Blinken is just a temporary ceasefire to bring some respite to begin to resolve those issues. And he has a deadline. The election is next week, as you know.
FOSTER: What is the strategy here? I know this is a big question you can't answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway. But, you know, after that horrific attack on Israel, we had Israel, you know, clearly trying to take out Hamas, then take out Hezbollah.
And then you heard the prime minister then talking about how the supreme issue here was Iran and its potential to have nuclear weapons. So are the other, have they always been objectives or are the objectives shifting here?
ABDELAZIZ: I think the debate right now is that Prime Minister Netanyahu's objectives are unclear. These are not my words. These are the words of his own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who has said and indicated time and time again that the military goals that Prime Minister Netanyahu set out in both Gaza and Lebanon, which is primarily to degrade and destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, to erode their ability to attack Israel again, that many of those military goals are near reaching.
[04:25:00]
And Yoav Gallant, the country's defense minister, again saying you can't achieve all of this through military might alone. There's a lot that has to happen at a table, at a negotiating table with talks.
So I think many fear, observers, U.S. diplomats, President Biden's administration, that Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't have clear objectives and clear goals that would provide that exit ramp to this conflict.
FOSTER: Just briefly, the elections obviously on Tuesday in the U.S., there is a suspicion amongst many sort of academics I've spoken to that, you know, Netanyahu's trying to do as much as he can before the election. Will there actually be a shift in, you know, how the U.S. plays into this after the election? Will Netanyahu take it more seriously, the advice he's getting?
ABDELAZIZ: Well, I guess we'll have to ask the next American president, whoever that may be. But so far we have seen a United States that has been unable, if you will, unable to stop Prime Minister Netanyahu's objectives, to slow the violence, to stem this spiraling conflict. Is there another president, another the next American president?
Will Prime Minister Netanyahu listen to that individual who's in the White House at the time? You have to remember, there is also that letter that was issued a few weeks ago by the United States threatening the possibility of holding back arms to Israel. So there are some pressure points that the U.S. could use potentially.
FOSTER: Salma, thank you. We'll find out next week who the new U.S. president will be.
Saudi Arabia says it'll not normalize ties with Israel until a Palestinian state is established. That's what the Saudi foreign minister told CNN's Becky Anderson in Riyadh on Thursday. He also warned that if Israel does not start respecting the rights of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, the whole Middle East is at risk.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: My conversation with Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud explored a whole host of issues as the kingdom increasingly builds its influence here in region and around the world in tandem with its ambitious efforts to build its economy into a global powerhouse.
Now, top of mind here continues to be the regional instability, not least the situation in Gaza that has resulted in more than a year of intense bombardment and unimaginable human suffering.
A form of genocide. Those were the foreign minister's words. If that is the reality as he sees it, here is how he says that reality will impact any future relationship that the Saudis might have with Israel.
FAISAL BIN FARHAN AL SAUD, SAUDI FOREIGN MINISTER: Normalization with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not just a risk, it is off the table until we have a resolution to Palestinian statehood. But I would say more than that.
I would say that it is not just the issue of normalization with the kingdom that is at risk. I would say that the security of the region as a whole is at risk if we do not address the rights of the Palestinians, if we do not find a way to a pathway that leads us to a Palestinian state. Because that's the only way we can ensure that we can focus on the future, that we can focus on cooperation, that we can focus on integration.
So I would hope that the leadership of Israel sees that it is not just the right thing to do, it is not just the moral thing to do, it is not just the just thing to do to give the Palestinians their rights and their state. It is also in the security and strategic interest of Israel to do so. And that's, I think, up to them to decide.
ANDERSON: Well, of course, much discussion here at this Future Investment Conference about how to navigate these uncertain, unsettling times. As well as an ever-present elephant in the room, what happens just days from now in the U.S. elections? Well, I asked the Saudi foreign minister if the kingdom favors either candidate, and spoiler alert here, he doesn't.
But also whether a bilateral deal between Saudi and the U.S. is dependent on what happens with a two-state solution in this region?
AL SAUD: There is one element of the bilateral agreements that we're working on that is very much tied to normalization. And we've made very clear, the Crown Prince in his speech to the Shura Council, made very clear what would be required for the kingdom to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. And absent that, we are quite happy to wait until the situation is amenable.
The other work streams are not that connected, and you know, some of them are progressing quite quickly, and we hope to see moving forward.
ANDERSON: Just days to go before the U.S. election. I mean, literally just hours to go now. Is it clear to you which candidate would be the best for the Middle East in general, in particular for solving the Israel-Palestine conflict?
[04:30:0]
And do you have a candidate that better understands the opportunities afforded by Saudi Vision 2030? And who would Saudi prepare to work with?
AL SAUD: We are quite prepared to work with either administration or either candidate should they gain the trust of the American people. It's really up to the American people to decide.
ANDERSON: Becky Anderson, CNN, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
FOSTER: Well thanks to Becky for bringing us that and we must add Israelis strenuously deny any accusations of genocide.
END
