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Soon, President Biden Addresses the Nation; Sources Say, Trump Could Announce Staff Picks Within Days; Trump Makes Big Gains Among Latino Men. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 07, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Happening soon, President Biden will address the nation following Donald Trump's victory. What we are learning about Biden's message as the Democratic Party tries to figure out what went wrong.

Plus, preparations are ramping up for Trump's promised mass deportation of migrants as his allies are now jockeying for cabinet positions, new CNN reporting coming to you on the behind the scenes strategy of the Trump transition.

Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

All right, let's begin over at the White House. It's going to be a busy day over there. CNN's Arlette Saenz joins us live.

Arlette, in the next hour we expect the president to address the nation on Trump's election victory. What do we expect the president to say?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, this will be the first time President Biden is speaking publicly since voters decided to send Donald Trump back to the White House next year. The president is expected to offer some reflections on the results of the election and talk about the way that the country needs to come together to move forward.

The president also is expected to talk about the transition process. Aides have insisted that Biden remains committed to ensuring that there is a peaceful transfer of power because that is something that Trump did not afford to Biden back in 2020 when he had thrown up many roadblocks in the transition process and did not concede the race to the president.

Now, Biden yesterday did speak by phone to congratulate Trump and invite him here to the White House. And sources say that meeting could potentially happen as early as next week.

Now, Biden yesterday, in a statement, he praised vice president Kamala Harris saying that she ran a historic campaign under extraordinary circumstances. And the call last night also said that she was the best vice president that he could have asked for. But there will be a lot of questions going into the speech about whether the president will address what exactly went wrong for Democrats. In the last 48 hours, there has been a lot of soul searching, a lot of questioning about the messaging and strategy in this race. And many Democrats are pointing the blame directly at President Biden. Many frustrated with the fact that he decided to pursue a reelection bid at the age of 80. And then once he did drop out, that it left very little time to mount a campaign against Trump.

So, these are all questions facing Biden in this moment. But it is clear that the loss of this race to Trump could very well impact the president's legacy. There is also Trump has said that he wants to undo some key initiatives from Biden's time in office. And Biden is now facing this new reality where his predecessor, the man that he once to beat in 2020, will be returning to the White House next year. These remarks today, hoping to provide the country with some advice on the way forward following these election results.

ACOSTA: All right. Arlette Saenz, thank you very much.

We're hearing that the president elect could start announcing picks for top posts and his administration within days. CNN's Alayna Treene's in West Palm Beach, Florida, tracking that.

Alayna, what names are you hearing?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, there are a lot of names being thrown around right now, Jim, as you can imagine. I mean, really, even in just the hours before Donald Trump was officially announced that he had won the election, that the jockeying had began and really begun to intensify with people trying to throw their names out to top people within Donald Trump's inner orbit, to Trump himself and really I'm going to pitch themselves and their loyalty to him. Of course, we know loyalty is one of the things that he values most, particularly in an administration where he wants to surround himself with people who will not hold him back.

Now, there are two positions I want to say that I think Donald Trump cares about the most that are the most important for us to focus on. The first is attorney general. We know Donald Trump has massive plans for the Department of Justice and also that in the past, in the closing days, when he was leaving the White House back in 2021, he had said privately that one of the biggest regrets of his time in office was who he had selected for attorney general, specifically looking back on Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr.

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So, this is going to be a very big role for Donald Trump. Some of the names that we have heard include Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who, like Donald Trump, had faced an impeachment. We've also heard Matt Whitaker, who we know had served in an acting attorney general role back in his first administration, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, someone who's been very loyal to Donald Trump, a big ally of his in Congress. And then also one name, I should say we've heard of John Ratcliffe, his former director of National Intelligence as well. But one name that we've heard has been pitched to Donald Trump directly is Mark Paoletta. He had served also in the first administration, someone who has remained close to Donald Trump, has a lot of -- a big legal background, I should say.

So, those are just some of the names under consideration, but, again, a big deal, given how important the attorney general role is to Donald Trump.

Also I think chief of staff, who is going to be the one in the White House with him day in and day out helping kind of run what is happening both in the Oval Office and throughout the administration. We know that Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, is definitely someone who has been floated. I will say, though, however, Jim, that I've heard, many people believe she may be better in a different type of role, a bit of a more outsider role, someone like a counselor or a senior adviser. They have compared to that to what we saw with Kellyanne Conway, his former 2016 campaign manager, and what she did in the Trump White House.

Other names we've heard are Russ Vought, who has been running a policy think tank, really, in D.C., has been very close with Donald Trump in helping him prepare, or really, you know, anyone, but really, I should say, the Trump administration, prepare for if he were to win. We've also heard Brooke Rawlins, who ran the America First Policy Institute, Bob Lighthizer, his former trade representative. So, a lot of names being batted around.

I will say it is still early, particularly because we know that Donald Trump was really not entertaining serious conversations about who he would pick for his cabinet or for other administrative posts. He thought -- you know, he's superstitious. He didn't want to get ahead of himself, but they are very much working on this now, and also, I've heard, have begun the vetting process for some of these people. Jim?

ACOSTA: Yes. Alayna Treene, I mean, the selection of Russ Vought for chief of staff would be very interesting. Obviously, I mean, he was one of the co authors of Project 2025. So, that would obviously send a signal that Donald Trump was very much into Project 2025, even though he said he wasn't during the campaign.

Alayna Treene, thank you very much.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres of New York. CNN has been projecting he is going to be reelected in his New York City district. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

President Biden is scheduled to speak during the next hour. What do you want to hear?

REP. RITCHIE TORRES (D-NY): I mean, hoping that the president can just give us hope, because it's going to be utterly despairing and depressing to live through the cycle drama of Donald Trump of a second Trump presidency. And I worry that Donald Trump is more emboldened than he's ever been and that a second Trump presidency is likely to be more vindictive than the first. And one of the fundamental differences between his first presidency and his subsequent presidency is the fact that he now enjoys absolute immunity, and he seems to be intent on exacting revenge against his political enemies.

ACOSTA: And to that point, I mean, just a few moments ago, Alayna Treene was laying out who might serve in a Trump administration once he gets back into office, and one of those names she mentioned was Russ Vought who worked at the OMB under Donald Trump in the first administration. He was a co-author of Project 2025. Donald Trump out on the campaign trail, he attempted to distance himself from Project 2025.

But if Russ Vought becomes the White House, chief of staff, what do you think that means? Because as you know, Project 2025 laid out a lot of ambitious goals for a Trump administration, one of them being cleaning out the bureaucracy, the government bureaucracy here in Washington and filling them with Trump loyalists.

TORRES: Look, we know that Donald Trump has nothing but contempt for the norms of liberal democracy. You know, we all saw him inspiring insurrection against the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. And I often ask myself, you know, what if Donald Trump had a vice president who was willing to block or delay the certification of the Electoral College? What if he had a attorney general who was willing to open sham investigations into false claims of election fraud?

So, I worry that he's going to appoint people who are willing to do his worst bidding and were willing to enforce his worst instincts, which would be even worse than what we saw in his first presidency.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, what do you make of Vice President Harris giving that concession speech yesterday at Howard University here in Washington? She conceded the election. When Donald Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, he did not concede the election. He still has not conceded the election. What do you make of that?

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TORRES: I mean, Vice President Harris did the right thing. And there's one party in America that accepts the results of an election and that accepts the results of an election and that is committed to facilitating the peaceful transfer of power, and it's the Democratic Party. And that's one of the fundamental differences between the Democrats and the Republican Party, particularly under Donald Trump. And we saw that with the gracious concession speech from Vice President Harris.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, I want to share a social media post you placed on X, Elon Musk's social media platform. You said this, quote, Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party, end quote. What did you mean by that?

TORRES: Well, I have a concern that the far left is pressuring the party to take policy positions that are deeply unpopular among most Americans. You know, one example is defund the police. Keep in mind that Donald Trump's gains among Latinos long predates the 2024 election. He made gains among Latinos in places like the Bronx back in 2020 during the public backlash against defund the police, and he built on those gains decisively in the 2024 election.

If you were speaking to the far left, then you could be forgiven for thinking that defund the police is a popular movement in America. But if you're speaking to working class people of color, then you would realize that there was never a mass constituency for a movement like defund the police. And so we should be taking positions that aren't mine with the majority of Americans.

Now, I want to be crystal clear, the majority of Democrats never endorsed a movement like defund the police.

ACOSTA: Yes. I was going to say wasn't that largely kind of abandoned by the Democratic Party? I mean, you know, I just -- I wonder if that's maybe unfair criticism on your part, Congressman.

TORRES: I don't think so, because the far left has a outsized microphone and therefore has an outsized impact in shaping the perception of the Democratic Party. And, look, the election cycle was not completely depressing. There was a ray of light in New York, right? We saw an impressive transformation of the Democratic Party in New York State under the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries. We saw victories from candidates like Laura Gillen, Tom Suozzi, Josh Riley, Pat Ryan. And the common thread among all of them is all of them are left of center Democrats. Like the center left is capable of winning the swing districts that we need to win to make Hakeem Jeffries the speaker of the House.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Richard Torres of New York, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.

TORRES: Of course.

ACOSTA: Coming up, building Latino support really paid off for the Trump campaign, especially among men. I'll continue the conversation on this seismic shift with this very important voting bloc. That's coming up after the break.

Stay with us.

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ACOSTA: Latino men went big for Donald Trump this election. Latino women still favored Kamala Harris, but by smaller margins than they supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Here's what we heard from voters in the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania after they learned Trump was headed back to the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It affects me because I'm Latino. You know how the relationship between Trump and Latinos is. That's him against. The pro is that he's already been president. He already knows how to run a country. It's fine. I agree. I'm not entirely against it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to see how this man is going to come. If what he promises, which was the first thing he said in the early morning, the first thing he's going to do is fulfill his promises of government. And as a Latino, you feel a certain disdain of what his colleagues in Puerto Rico said and how he contemptuously speaks of Latinos. The last minute he wanted to look for them, but this has surprised me a lot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: All right. Let's bring in a panel to talk about this, CNN Contributor and New York Times Journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Vice Chair of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly Luis Figueroa and Domingo Garcia from the political action committee for LULAC.

Domingo, you and I talked about some of this before the election. Let's dig into this now. I mean, your organization endorsed Kamala Harris after your organization really had not been I'm going to ask you a question president has not endorsed anybody in its history. What are you hearing from Latinos and in particular Latino men as to why the election went down the way it did?

DOMINGO GARCIA, PRESIDENT, LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS: I think a lot of Latino man, especially here. I'm in Texas, but across other states like Arizona, Nevada, were concerned that the Democratic Party had drifted too far to the left on cultural issues, specifically abortion, LGBT and energy issues. And they thought that President Trump would do a better job on those issues and align better with them on those issues.

And so, to a certain extent, I think Latino men felt excluded by the Democratic Party and by the Kamala Harris campaign. I don't think that's a fact, but I think that's the message that was out there, and that's why Trump was so successful in getting the Latino vote.

ACOSTA: Yes. Luis, what do you think? I mean, you're a Trump supporter. What happened?

LUIS FIGUEROA, VICE CHAIR, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL HISPANIC ASSEMBLY: So, starting by, by calling half of the country garbage or by saying that Trump was not surrounded by strong, independent woman, I think that resonated with the Latino community, especially here in Florida. What I have seen in Osceola County, 65 percent-plus Puerto Rican-Latino community, they went out and voted for Donald Trump because they could not afford groceries, they could not afford to buy a house. And those policies resonate with the Latino communities, like with all of the Americans, actually.

ACOSTA: Yes. Lulu, I mean, Luis brings up a good point, and it's something that I heard when I was out in Nevada, talking to voters is that, I mean, people were really feeling it in this economy. Inflation just got ingrained, frustrations with inflation. And Latinos are going to vote based on their economic concerns, just like just about any other demographic out there. What's your sense of it?

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Latinos are going to vote that way, but even more so because, first of all, it's a young population, average voting age 27 years old. Second of all, lower medium income, so, you know, they work in industries that are really were really impacted by inflation.

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But I want to just. Bring up two places where the Democrats actually lost big, that is in Starr County and in Miami-Dade County.

ACOSTA: Starr County, Texas.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Starr County, Texas, which is right on the border, and Miami-Dade County, which is in Florida, both Democratic strongholds flipped for the first time in a very long time, Star County for the first time ever.

What does that tell you? Those are very different Latino populations that is Mexican American on the border, and in Miami, Cuban American, Venezuelan American, Colombians et cetera. What are these two groups have in common? They have in common the economy. That was a big thing.

Also to what the president of LULAC was saying, they do feel that the party has gone too far left. But the other thing, and if you look in Starr County, specifically immigration, that is a place. I've been there many times. That is on the frontline of the border issue. That is a place where a lot of the Latinos work in law enforcement to do with border issues.

And so the border issue --

ACOSTA: They were frustrated too.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Even though it wasn't a top issue for Latinos, which it goes against what most people think, it was an issue for them.

ACOSTA: Yes. Domingo, I do want to ask you about this because we've learned that Homeland Security officials are bracing for a seismic shift in immigration policy once Trump takes office. He's vowed mass deportations. I mean, let's just have a little plain talk here. I mean, a lot of folks are wondering why would Latinos vote for Donald Trump if that means he might deport abuela, he might deport members of their household? As you know, lots of Latino families in this country are of mixed status and, you know, a lot of folks are asking on the Democratic side, why would they do this to themselves?

GARCIA: I think there's a disconnect, especially among first, second and third generation Latinos that were U.S. citizens, nobody is going to deport us. Those, whether it's (INAUDIBLE) who just crossed last month, but they got a free hotel and a big Walmart card or whatever, the rumors are out there, a lot are false, but that's the perception.

And so they think that closing the border, like she mentioned about Starr County, a lot of people work there in the energy sector and they work for ICE. 80 percent of the law enforcement on the border, Border Patrol, those are Latino families and they depend on those jobs. So, they see that that is not affecting them, and that's why they actually did support closing the border. LULAC took a position two years ago. There was time to take a moratorium on the asylum claims because there were too many people crossing the border. There was a humanitarian crisis in Eagle Pass, Texas, and in El Paso, that we were seeing just thousands of families there and it was just not tenable. And I think the Democrats lost that and President Biden --

ACOSTA: And the president just waited too long on that, Domingo? The president just waited too long?

GARCIA: He waited way too long. And then Trump just pounced on it and, you know, pounded, pounded and pounded on it and used Latino immigrants as political pinatas and he got a lot of political candy in this election.

ACOSTA: Luis, what are your thoughts on mass deportations? Do you want to see that happen? You're a Trump supporter. Donald Trump, people around, him have talked about mass deportations on a scale that we have not seen since the 1950s when Dwight Eisenhower was president. He had a program at that time called, and I'm just saying this is the name of the program, I'm not using this term, but they called it Operation Wetback. And during that program, there were even some U.S. citizens who just looked Latino who were deployed at that time. Do you want to see that happen?

FIGUEROA: I think first of all, let me start by saying, in 2020, when this started to happen, President Joe Biden assigned Kamala Harris as the border czar. That's the first thing. She had three years.

ACOSTA: Luis, I have to fact-check you. She was not the border czar. But go ahead. I know what you're saying, but she was not made the border czar. I want to say we have to have the facts here, and that's factually inaccurate. Please go ahead.

FIGUEROA: There's a couple of tweets about it. All right, no problem. So, once she was in charge of that, or the vice president for the country, she could have solved the problem in three years. First two years, they had Congress, the Senate and the presidency. They didn't solve the problem. So, they want to use the issue as a political tool for the Americans to vote for them and the backlash. Because now, what we're seeing is --

ACOSTA: But, Luis, my question was, if you don't mind, I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off, I definitely want to have a civil discussion, you know, but, but my question was whether you wanted to see mass deportations. Do you want to see mass deportations?

FIGUEROA: So, the first thing that we need to do is close the border. More than 10 million people illegally entered the country. There have to be deportation. There is no other way around. They have to be deportation. They have to be no --

ACOSTA: Deportation camps?

FIGUEROA: We have to respect the laws.

ACOSTA: Do you want to see --

FIGUEROA: I'm not saying deportation camps.

ACOSTA: Do you want to see people in camps, rounded up and put in camps?

FIGUEROA: Isn't that what you voted for? Isn't that what you voted for?

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FIGUEROA: They are in camps now. More than 300,000 children are missing. So, they're in camps now.

ACOSTA: Lulu, I mean, you know, one of the things that I think we need to talk about is whether or not, you know, folks just had the wool pulled over their eyes, and maybe they were voting on economic issues, but at the end of the day, maybe voting against their own self-interest. I mean, I had to press Luis there on this issue of mass deportations. I don't think a lot of Latinos in this country have really come to grips with what that might look like. We have not seen something like that happen in this country in a very long time.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you know what was really interesting to me? I interviewed J.D. Vance, who is now going to be the vice president of this country. And I was pressing him on the issue of immigration and talking about his comments about Springfield, and the Haitians and how they were not here illegally. And he kept on using this word, I'm here for the citizens of this country, I'm here for the citizens of this country. And I think what Latinos here, especially the ones that voted, is that they are citizens of this country, and that when President Trump is talking, he's not talking about them.

And so it remains to be seen how effective this, quote/unquote, mass deportation is going to be. I think it's very difficult to deport the numbers of people that they are talking about.

ACOSTA: It's going to be very expensive.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Very expensive, billions. I mean, deportations in previous eras have just not been able to capture all the people that they say they are. So, is it going to be effective? Can it actually happen?

And then at the end of the day, this Trump administration will be judged by what it does. And there'll be another election and then people will have to decide.

ACOSTA: And we'll have to see what happens when the cameras are rolling. Because it's one thing to talk about mass deportations and hold up a sign at a political convention, but when the cameras are rolling and people are being rounded up in mass and put on buses or wherever and sent off to camps, obviously, there could be a very different reaction in this country. Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Luis Figueroa, Domingo Garcia, thank you very much for your time this morning. We appreciate it.

All right, taking a look at the Dow this morning, as Wall Street looks to extend its post-election rally, where the markets stand now, that's next.

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