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Harris: 'Yes, We Can Say' Trump's Vision is 'About Fascism'; Judge Pauses Controversial Election Rules. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 16, 2024 - 06:00   ET

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

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Wednesday, October 16. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING.

[00:59:57]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's tight. I'm going to win. I'm going to win.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Then vote. We have to win, win, win. We've got to win, win, win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Crunch time. Just 20 days to go. New polls out this morning show a race that is still virtually tied.

Plus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was easy. Five minutes in and out. Everything was peaceful and streamlined.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Shattering the record. More than 300,000 people in the all- important state of Georgia show up on day one of early voting.

And then --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD, RADIO SHOW HOST: Folks said you come off as very scripted. They say you like to stick to your talking points. Some media says you have --

HARRIS: That would be called discipline.

TRUMP: It's called the weave. It's all these different things happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The script versus the weave. Both candidates brushing off criticism of their styles during the end run here.

And the ground game. We take a look at one very influential grassroots group that hopes to move voters in Trump's direction.

All right, 6 a.m. on the East Coast. A live look at New York City on this Wednesday morning.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. We are now just 20 days away from election day, less than three weeks.

A new poll out THIS MORNING finding -- you guessed it -- a race that is truly tied. Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, both with 50 percent of voters behind them when third parties are excluded.

Nationwide, more than 5 million people have already cast their votes by mail or in person. Those that haven't apparently eager to do so. Eighty-four percent of likely voters say they're enthusiastic about voting this year.

And that excitement was on display in Georgia yesterday, where more than 300,000 people cast their ballots on the first day of early voting, more than doubling the record set in 2020.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because last time I waited, the line going around the block, around the corner. Now I'm getting my vote in today.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This election affects the whole country and also the world. So, get up and go -- get out there and vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That turnout apparently not lost on Trump, who's now encouraging early and mail-in voting after spending years criticizing it and claiming, without evidence, that was responsible for, quote, "massive electoral fraud."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So, if you have a ballot, return it immediately. If not, go tomorrow. As soon as you can go to the polls and vote.

Early voting is underway. Get everyone out. Get everyone you know, just get them all out to vote. Go tomorrow.

After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years of the history of our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Harris continued her media outreach yesterday, appearing on "The Breakfast Club" for a town hall discussion, the vice president going further than she has before in her criticism of Trump, following a question from host Charlamagne tha God. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: It's two very different visions for our nation. One mind that is about taking us forward and progress, and investing in the American people, investing in their ambitions, dealing with their challenges.

And the other, Donald Trump, is about taking us backward.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: The other is about fascism. Why can't we just say this?

HARRIS: Yes, we can say that.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Our panel's here: Isaac Dovere, CNN senior reporter; Kate Bedingfield, CNN political commentator, former Biden White House communications director; Matt Gorman, former senior adviser to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you.

Twenty days away. How do the approaches here and, you know, Isaac, Harris had to be kind of pushed into saying this is fascist in that clip there. Trump's campaign responded, saying, wow, this is why Donald -- people tried to assassinate Donald Trump twice.

But of course, questions looming about a peaceful transfer of power. We'll play that clip in a second. But what did you make of her -- her answer there in her interview?

ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: She had to be pushed into saying it. She responded right away. It was not where she started.

I do think that Trump saying that this is different in character from what he said maybe over the weekend when there's an enemy within that might need the military, the National Guard to deal with it. It's not like he's just talking about peaceful roses and happy times every day.

HUNT: The opposite.

DOVER: Right? The rhetoric is high, and the Trump campaign does seize on every time that whether it was Joe Biden or Harris talking about him being a threat to democracy. He is talking in these pretty stark terms, too.

And I think it reflects where a lot of people supporting each of these candidates feel that this election is, that this is an existential moment for the country.

Well, and we do know also -- we don't have the video of it yet. It's going to air on FOX at 11 a.m. today, I believe, Eastern Time.

But let's put up on the screen what Trump has apparently said about these "enemy within" comments, because when he was pressed about this, he -- he actually doubled down. So, he's asked to hear again, who is the enemy within? And he says this: "You know what they are? They're a party of soundbites." He's talking about Democrats. "They are very different, and it is the enemy from within. And they're very dangerous."

And he goes on: "They're dangerous for our country. We have China. We have Russia. We have all these smart -- if you have a smart president, they can all be handled. And the more difficult they are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they're sick and they're so evil."

Again, talking about Americans. It's -- it's, to what Isaac said, I mean dark.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, Yes. Dark. And, you know, one of the favorite talking points of Republicans right now is that somehow, Democratic rhetoric is -- is what has ramped up the temperature in this country and what has put Donald Trump, you know, in harm's way a couple of times.

But I mean, that's -- you know, he's talking about Americans. He's comparing them to Russia, to China. He's saying they're the enemy within. He's talked about mobilizing the military against them.

I mean, that is divisive, dark language.

So, I think, you know, Harris being willing to call it what it is in that interview I think, you know, first of all, is just recognizing, unfortunately, the -- the brutality of the moment that we're in.

But remember also, part of her task here in this final push is to motivate people who otherwise feel apathetic about the process who might otherwise stay home.

And so, you know, part of her task is to help people understand that this is a moment where staying on the couch and not voting is not an option. And so, I think that's also what she was trying to do by leaning in there.

MATT GORMAN, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO TIM SCOTT'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: A couple things.

Right. The clips there reminded me that it's the friendlier interviews that often get you into trouble as a candidate. And as a comms person, you often worry about them more, right?

Go back to last week. Kamala Harris on "The View." You have Trump on FOX News for both this weekend and obviously yesterday.

HARRIS: Sometimes when you're comfortable, you're more likely to make mistakes.

GORMAN: When you're comfortable, that's where you let things slip. And so, I think that is kind of what you always worry about it.

I think stepping back here, too, this moment reminds me a little bit of early July where, if you remember, we were coming off kind of the Biden post-debate kind of troubles, if you will. And there was a kind of -- really a need by Democrats to please, like, Donald Trump, inject yourself into the story, distract a little bit.

And I think that's what you're seeing. You talked a little bit about it with Brian Stelter at the last part of the last hour, where I think the Trump team is being very careful and judicious about what media they're doing, while I think the Harris team realized that the momentum is not on their side, and they need to get out there and be on offensive more.

HUNT: So, speaking of Trump doing interviews, he -- he got pretty testy in this exchange with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News; said he thought about actually not doing the interview.

But one exchange that really stood out to me was when he was asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he loses the election, or a peaceful transfer of power, period, from President Biden to whoever may get elected next. This was his answer. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, you had a peaceful transfer of power.

JOHN MICKLETHWAIT, BLOOMBERG NEWS: You had a peaceful transfer of power. You had a peaceful --

TRUMP: Power.

MICKLETHWAIT: Come on. You had a peaceful -- you had a peaceful transfer of power, compared to Venezuela, but it was by far the most -- the worst transfer of power for a long time.

TRUMP: There was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol. And a lot of strange things happened there.

I left. I left the morning that I was supposed to leave. I went to Florida, and you had a very peaceful transfer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, let's just remind everyone what actually happened at the Capitol that day. If we could put up the crowds that we saw there, the broken windows, the fights with the police.

Again, Isaac, I think that, you know, this -- this day has been on my mind as we head towards this next election, because you have heard Donald Trump say things that already are raising questions about the results of an election that we have not actually held yet, that we're in the process of holding.

And this is -- you know, if he's going to define this as peaceful, that I think, again, underscores the way that he uses language and, frankly, rewrites history for his supporters.

DOVERE: I think the rewriting history is actually the key part of it. Look, what he said about himself is that I left in the morning that I

was supposed to, as if there is some prize for a president following the Constitution, that his term was up.

But to call that peaceful -- forget about that it -- it is clearly him making no promises to accept this election. And one might think implying that he won't, if he loses.

It is what you see from Trump constantly of a either sure disconnect from reality or an act of effort to rewrite what happened. And that's true about January 6. It's true about other things.

[06:10:03]

In that interview yesterday, he talked about tariffs in a way that -- where he is insisting that he knows how tariffs will work better than every economist who has looked at this, basically.

This is not -- and I think, as people go forward into these next weeks of the election, think about what he would be as president, it is worth considering that he does not talk about things as they occurred, either because he doesn't realize that they didn't -- that they occurred a different way or because he is trying to twist it, always in his favor of how that is and what that means for what a return to the White House would be for him.

That's what he's put in front of the American people. On January 6, on tariffs, on every issue.

He said last night at that FOX town hall, I'm the father of IVF. I mean, I just -- it is hard to reconcile that at all with reality.

I was thinking this morning of, like, what, some quippy line that I could come up with, like. But I don't -- I don't know what it would be like if -- if he were the father of short red ties. But it makes --

HUNT: There is a plausible argument for that.

Look, I have to say, I mean, were sitting at this table, right? I mean, Kate, you've worked -- you've dedicated your career to electing Democrats to the White House.

Matt, you've done the same for Republicans.

We're able to sit here and have a conversation about what's going to happen, to try to do it in a civil way where we're operating kind of in the same world.

But increasingly -- Matt, I'm really interested in your perspective on this. Like, what happened with FEMA in the mountains of North Carolina this week really, for me, crystallized the degree to which people are living in alternate information universes; where you have federal officials going in, trying to help, trying to give people money that they are entitled to as Americans who are the victims of this kind of a disaster. And they can't do it, because there are people out there who think

that FEMA is dangerous and a threat and are going after them. You know, militia types.

It just really kind of underscored to me the degree to which we are not -- two separate groups of people in America are living in two different worlds.

GORMAN: Oh, there's no better example than this in COVID, right? I mean, imagine if you were like, let's say, an investment banker living in Florida during COVID or a waitress in San Francisco. You lived two very different existences for the better part of two years.

And that, you know, would shape how you would probably view that event. I mean, it's so much -- it's broader. It's broader than purely media. It's broader than where you live. It's broader than how you consume information, from whether it's media online or just the people you live around and talk to.

We live in one country but can have vastly different experiences.

DOVERE: But there's an agency here, though, that Donald Trump is -- he's not the only reason why this exists, the diversification of media, of people paying attention to different things, leaving different experiences in their lives.

But the reason why this began with the hurricane disinformation about FEMA, and everything is because Donald Trump was talking about it.

And we had a congressman from North Carolina who last week, a Republican congressman --

HUNT: Yes.

DOVERE: -- had to put out a long statement on his website that began -- the first thing was "No one controls the weather." That's where we are in 2024.

BEDINGFIELD: Yes. And this is why Trump's continued erosion of people's faith in institutions is so dangerous. I mean, this is why his continued erosion of faith in the media is so dangerous.

Because if there is not an independent arbiter of the facts, before you get to arguing about how to present them or your feelings about them or your opinion about them. If there's not an independent arbiter of the facts, people cannot start from a place of -- we can't function as a society.

I mean, that sounds dramatic, but I think that that's true. And I think that the role that Trump has played in -- in exacerbating and furthering this erosion of faith in institutions is -- is really scary.

And he wields an enormous amount of power. I mean, they're half the country feels incredibly passionately about him and about his leadership. And he uses that to make it so that people in, you know, a hurricane-ravaged area don't trust that they can go get the help that they need.

HUNT: That's an awful --

GORMAN: Trump might have gone to the front and preyed (ph) on this, but this was happening for the last 30 years.

BEDINGFIELD: I agree with that. I'm not -- it's not --

GORMAN: He might have accelerated it.

BEDINGFIELD: No -- no question. But he accelerated it. Absolutely.

HUNT: Well, it's just -- it's just a reminder that 20 days to go, we are hurdling toward something, toward an unknown that has, you know, it's -- it has the potential to be a really significant and potentially difficult chapter in our history.

All right, straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, the legal battle over ballots in Georgia. What a judge has now ruled about hand counting on election day.

Plus, critics call it rambling. We'll talk about what Donald Trump calls the weave.

And the influential group spending millions to turn out religious voters for Trump. We're going to speak exclusively with the chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Ralph Reed will be here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:15:07]

RALPH REED, CHAIR, FAITH AND FREEDOM COALITION: This time, there aren't going to need to be any lawsuits. We're not going to have to go to court, and we're not going to have to wait until 2:30 in the morning for Donald Trump to declare victory. He's going to do it at 9 p.m. at night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: That's an American value. And so, I think that's very important. That is affirmed, you know, in the judicial system. And we'll make sure that we follow the law and follow the Constitution in everything we do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: As Georgia voters head to the polls in record numbers for early voting, new voting rules from the state's election board now being put on hold.

[06:20:01] On Tuesday, a Georgia judge paused new rules passed by the Republican- majority board, which would have mandated hand counting the number of ballots cast at each polling place. This could have significantly slowed down the vote-counting process on election night.

In his order tossing out the rule, Judge Robert McBurney writing this, quote, "This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one's view of that day's fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public."

Another rule which would have allowed local election officials to not certify the election was also set aside. Georgia's secretary of state opposed the election board's new rules and welcomed the judge's ruling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GABRIEL STERLING, COO, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE: Not enough monitors. There wasn't enough processes to put around this. It's just -- it's a bad idea to ever change rules this close to an election, especially on something that can open up the chain of custody like that, which we think is really against the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Panel is back.

Again, this -- we are 20 days out and sometimes with, you know, polling and horse races, it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees.

But the emerging forest is one where there are potential challenges across the map to the way that these votes are being counted; to the way that they are being certified and these electors are being sent to the U.S. Capitol.

As that judge noted, Isaac, memories of January 6 are relevant here.

And I think it's worth noting that the state elected officials in Georgia are Republicans. And while this election board has Republicans on it, it's not as though it's Democrats who are trying to do one thing or the other. These are Republicans who are saying we can't change the rules this late in the game.

DOVERE: Yes. Some of this reminds me of -- I remember in August of 2020, a source of mine called me up and said, what do you know about the Electoral Count Act of 1887? And I said, what are you talking about?

(CROSSTALK)

DOVERE: Now, I ended up reading a bunch about it, then writing an article.

HUNT: Many of us had to go refresh on that. Yes. DOVERE: But the difference of now versus then is that there have been some changes to the Electoral Count Act, but also, everybody is aware of what happens on January 6, and that there is this certification thing.

Of course, it's not like there had not been previous challenges to things in the 2004 election. Yes. But what happened on January 6, as we were just discussing, is different.

The question that is now in front of people is what else can be done, given the changes and the attention to January 6? And the weaker points in the chain of certifying the election are at the local county boards and the state capitals. And that's what you see happening here.

And there is a clear attempt by Trump-supporting officials. And whether they're these people on the Georgia board or Republican members of Congress in Pennsylvania, who have pushed for changing the way overseas and military votes will be counted -- to change the rules in the final weeks here.

And in a way that does seem intended to have there be a result on election night that they can point to, as Donald Trump on election night 2020 said, I won, even though there were still votes being counted.

And then have that sow some doubts, at least, about where things are. And if Harris takes the lead later in that week.

BEDINGFIELD: I think it's also worth noting that the Trump team has been very public about the fact that they have built a lot of their infrastructure, a lot of their legal infrastructure, on their campaign -- and then their affiliated groups -- around challenging election results.

I mean, they've been clear that a lot of their resources, rather than putting them toward the kind of more traditional get out the vote -- rather than dedicating them to efforts to legitimately win the election, they are spending a lot of time both hiring people to contest the results of these elections -- of the election, and also talking very publicly about how that is a big piece of their legal strategy.

So, that should give everybody some concerns.

GORMAN: Look, I'll just say also, we spent the last several years saying that Georgia was interested in Jim Crow 2.0 law, as it was done by -- parodied by Democrats and the media. You had MLB starting to pull out over these lies.

And what we're seeing is 300,000 people on day one, 123 percent more than the biggest record day in 2020.

I think it's a very sensitive area for Republicans, because we heard this kind of lie parroted over and over again. It's easier for people to vote, not harder in Georgia. HUNT: All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, 20 days to go until election day, just 87 days into Kamala Harris's whirlwind presidential campaign, if you can believe that. We'll go behind the scenes.

Plus, Donald Trump hoping support among evangelicals will help propel him to victory. We're going to speak live with the chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:29:10]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Harris polls well against Trump, so I think she has a real shot at winning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of relieved, and hopeful. Like, I feel like I can breathe again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What -- what does this even mean? Like, guys, what is about to happen here? Like I said, I'm still trying to process this, because I'm literally just like damn. Wow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The news that President Joe Biden was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the new Democratic nominee, met by voters on July 21 with a mix of skepticism, confusion, and as you saw there, excitement.

Harris's quick ascension to the top of the ticket gave way to an equally quick campaign. She had just over 100 days to convince voters that she was the right person to lead the country.

As "The New Yorker's" Evan Osnos writes in his new piece, quote, "Harris's sudden arrival at the forefront of American politics summoned the prospect that, as John F. Kennedy put it in 1961, the torch has been passed to a new generation. But it also evoked a less often cited part of Kennedy's formulation .