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Campaigns Zero In On "Blue Wall" Battlegrounds; Trump Campaign Spends Heavily On Ads Attacking Harris On Trans Policies; Dodgers, Yankees Set For Epic World Series Matchup. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired October 25, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, it's 5:29 a.m. here on the East Coast. It's a little bit earlier in Las Vegas, Nevada where it's 2:29 a.m. A live look at the Strip. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

With just two weekends left before Election Day tens of millions of Americans are already heading to the polls. More than 30 million people have already cast their ballots in early voting periods across the nation. And this includes a key battleground state in the Rust Belt, Michigan where J.D. Vance was trying to fire up volunteers and supporters to get out early while attacking critics from the previous administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: John Kelly didn't come out of his own volition. I guarantee he talked to somebody on Kamala Harris' campaign beforehand. And we've got to ask ourselves why are the media and most importantly why is Kamala Harris talking about a disgruntled former employee instead of the fact that under her leadership grocery prices are up 25 percent in the state of Michigan?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The other vice presidential running mate Tim Walz leaning on the historic nature of Kamala Harris' campaign to try to drive voters to the polls.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. TIM WALZ, (D) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Kamala doesn't talk about it, but it is damn past time we just quit talking about the cracks in the glass ceiling and tear the damn thing down and have madame president. Tear it down.

To the men here think about the women in your lives -- those that you love -- daughters, wives, moms, everybody -- neighbors. Their lives are literally at stake in this election. That's what this vote means.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, there is no one better to talk about voting trends across key battleground states than my guest.

In his most recent piece he writes about Harris trying to build a coalition of traditional minority voters and suburban families, writing, "If Harris is to prevent Trump's re-election under a more explicitly authoritarian banner that incongruous electoral alliance among voters whose lives rarely intersect in other ways may represent the last line of defense for American democracy.

And joining us now the author of that Atlantic piece, Ron Brownstein. Ron, good morning.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Hey, Kasie. Good morning.

It's always wonderful to see you.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

HUNT: Explain more about what you were saying there.

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. Well look, if you look at the modern Democratic coalition it is overwhelmingly a metro coalition, and the Republican coalition is strongest outside the metro. So you really could draw an imaginary beltway around every major city in the country. Whether in a red state or a blue state, Democrats are getting stronger inside the beltway and Republicans outside that beltway.

So what you see -- particularly in the three former blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that Trump knocked out of the blue wall in '16 and Biden put back -- is that the Democratic hopes are on maintaining their traditional advantage and getting a big turnout in the urban centers, and then continuing to grow in the white-collar inner suburbs.

Places like Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester, and Bucks outside of Philadelphia. Oakland County in Michigan. Kent County around Grand Rapids. Dane, which includes Madison, as well as cutting the Republican lead in the WOW counties outside of Milwaukee.

You know, Trump is basically executing a pincer movement on Democratic traditional strength in those states. He is very likely I think to run up the score in Trump country. He's running against a mixed race woman from California who he's tarring as a liberal. Probably going to win those heavily white, blue-collar, smaller communities by even bigger margins than he did in 2020. He's trying to crack away at the Democratic advantage in those inner cities, particularly among Black men.

And where does Harris go to find the votes to offset that? It is these large inner suburbs with a lot of the white-collar Republican-leaning voters that she is certainly targeting with her messages and all of these endorsements, like Fred Upton, the mayor of Waukesha in Wisconsin, that have come out for her in the final days.

HUNT: Yeah -- no -- they -- those -- pulling those threads together, it just -- it makes so much sense. It's really fascinating. Ron, you talk -- you also have a CNN piece --

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

HUNT: -- where you talk about how these different voting groups are changing. How the electorate is changing and what that means.

Can you dig into that a little bit --

BROWNSTEIN: Oh, yeah.

HUNT: -- because we've talked about working class white voters as kind of a -- you know, a bedrock in American elections but there are some significant changes to that.

BROWNSTEIN: Oh, yeah. Look, over time, the pattern is very consistent Kasie, literally going back decades. Over every four-year election cycle those non-college whites decline as a share of the electorate pretty consistently between two and three points every four years. And the difference is made up by an increase in minority voters and to a somewhat lesser extent an increase in college-educated white voters.

Now the former blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, non-college whites are a bigger share of the electorate there than they are nationally, but they are declining there too. And, in fact, in that piece the great Bill Frye -- you know, the demographer at Brookings --

HUNT: Yeah.

BROWNSTEIN: -- has calculated from the latest census data that non- college whites, the cornerstone of the Trump coalition, are actually declining by more than the national average in Michigan and Wisconsin, replaced almost entirely by the college whites who are moving Democratic.

[05:35:05]

Pennsylvania less so -- less of a change. On a national basis the non- college whites are declining two points as a share of eligible voters. Again, from '20 to '24 they might be as little as 38 percent of the electorate. Twenty-twenty was the first time they fell below 40 percent in census data -- still a little higher than that in some of the other things like Pew and validated -- Pew validated voters or catalysts.

But in Wisconsin and Michigan, right, this kind of dovetails to what we were just talking about. The parts of the electorate are growing are these kind of white-collar suburban communities with college- educated voters that Harris is an audience for Harris' democracy message.

It's interesting. One other quick point. You know, the big debate in the Democratic Party, which you've been hearing, is do you close on Trump as a threat to basically rights, values, and democracy, or do you close on Trump as -- or do you close on Harris being someone who will fight for you as a middle-class family? Obviously, there's a demographic difference in who you're targeting. That first message is aimed at those white-collar votes; the second one more with the blue- collar.

She has found a pretty elegant solution in that clip you played before that brings it all together into one phrase. He will come into office with an enemies list. I will come into office with a to-do list is really an attempt to bridge that difference among Democrats about who you are talking to and what you are saying to them.

HUNT: Yeah, really interesting.

Ron, I mean, I'm sure you're having so many conversations with people about where this race is -- where it stands right now. Who is likely to prevail on Election Day. And I will say the preponderance of conversations I've been having with people -- Democrats, Republicans, kind of across the board -- is that Trump seems to be at -- to have an advantage at the moment to have perhaps the momentum behind him.

I always look to see how that momentum is shifting in this period that we are in right now -- which way is it going? Because I have found historically that kind of tells you the most about where things might land. Obviously, in 2016, we had the Comey letter 11 days out. So I'm not saying we couldn't see some sort of surprise that could shift things like that.

But I'm curious given your deep knowledge of these pieces of the electorate and what you see where you think are moving right now.

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. Well look, I think we've kind of moved back to where -- strangely where we started. No question, Kamala Harris has regained a lot of the ground that Biden lost among non-white voters, but she hasn't regained all of it. It was -- it was an impossible mission to regain all of it given how many, particularly Latino, families feel that they are worse off now than they were four years ago.

And as a result I think it is really hard -- she will be more competitive in the Sun Belt battlegrounds but it's going to be hard for her to actually tip any of them. Nevada, maybe, but that's something Democrats have won in the past. North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona could be very hard for her in the end, which means she's kind of back to where Biden was. That she has to sweep the states that Trump knocked out of the blue wall in 2016 -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And you can kind of the rank them in that order of her chances of doing so.

I think I may have said to you, but I certainly said somewhere on the air on -- in the summer that on October 25 she will probably wish that she'd picked Josh Shapiro even though I know there were a lot of other issues that might have come up with his candidacy.

And here we are on October 25, and Michigan I think looks pretty good for her. Wisconsin is right at the tipping point to go either way, but Democrats do have a strong organization there. And Pennsylvania looks like -- you know, kind of the decisive battleground in this election. And the question will be if you look at Philadelphia, the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia and Allegheny, Biden won them by 910,000 votes, OK, and won't he state by 80,000. Trump is probably going to win the rest of the state by more than the 830,000 he did last time. And the question will be whether Harris can pump up the margins just a little bit more in those six big counties, as well as the Lehigh Valley, to some extent, but mostly those six counties.

And, you know, Josh Shapiro was on the ticket this conversation would be a little different about who has the Electoral College advantage.

HUNT: Yeah, it definitely could be. It's a very -- it's a very good point.

Ron Brownstein for us this morning. Ron, I'm always so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me, yeah, from the East Coast.

HUNT: All right. See you again soon.

All right --

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

HUNT: -- ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, Madison Square Garden has had its share of headliners where it's soon going to add Donald Trump to that list.

Plus, in sports, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford heats up against the Vikings. The Bleacher Report coming up next.

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[05:44:25]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, CBS "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Aides say for three straight presidential campaigns, Trump has mused about holding a rally at Madison Square Garden, adding he has just been obsessed with this.

Maybe he just wants to take over for Billy Joel. Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, bing-bing bong. Person, woman, man, camera, Joe DiMaggio.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: This weekend Donald Trump will be kicking off his campaign's closing argument with a splashy, long hoped for rally for him at Madison Square Garden. It's his home city's most famous arena.

[05:45:00]

As our next guest reports, "The event is a play for the candidate's id. Headlining Madison Square Garden represents the fulfillment of a long-time dream for an outer-borough kid who always has a New York state of mind, even after he technically became a Florida man."

Ever since announcing the event earlier this month, Trump has not exactly been shy about his excitement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We just rented Madison Square Garden. We're going to make a play -- we're going to make a play for New York. It hasn't been done in a long time.

And I just signed on Madison Square Garden. I hope you guys -- hey, you guys have to come.

KYLE FORGEARD, HOST, "FULL SEND" PODCAST: We'll come. We'll be there.

TRUMP: Oh, I want you to come. And I'll sell it out very quickly.

We sold it out in less than three hours and -- but people are going to come anyway. We have big screens outside. It's going to be unbelievable. So some anyway. I mean, come. Maybe you get in -- I don't know. But it sold out very quickly. It's a fantastic -- it's going to be fantastic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining us now, national political reporter for The Bulwark, Marc Caputo. Marc, good morning. Nice to see you.

MARC CAPUTO, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE BULWARK, AUTHOR, THE BULWARK'S "MAGAVILLE" NEWSLETTER (via Webex by Cisco): Hey.

HUNT: Clearly this is something Trump is fixated on. He always talks -- when he does these events in New York you can kind of hear it in his voice that he is really focused on the place, and Madison Square Garden occupies a very unique spot in that.

Tell us a little bit more about what this means. And, I mean, clearly, New York's not in play at the presidential level. There are some House races that might flip on this. But I also keep coming back to the reality that at this point all politics is national, no?

CAPUTO: One hundred percent. We do have not only national politics, but the national media is essential headquartered in New York. So Trump knows that having a big splashy rally in Madison Square Garden not only kind of fulfills that childhood dream of being a kid in Queens who looked across the river and saw Manhattan and saw New York and said I want to take over the place and build buildings, but he said he always wanted a garden and he's probably going to do it.

The campaign said that they had more than 100,000 inquiries in just a matter of a few minutes once they announced this. So it looks like after they retrofit everything about 18,000 people will be able to get in. And as you just played from that clip there, Trump has been telling people I'm going to sell out. I'm going to fill the Garden, so apparently, he is.

HUNT: Well, I guess we'll see.

CAPUTO: Yeah.

HUNT: We will be able to look around and fact-check that when the moment -- when the moment comes.

I also want to ask you -- this is something --

CAPUTO: This fact-check --

HUNT: Yeah, go ahead.

CAPUTO: -- would it matter anymore anyway?

HUNT: Wow.

CAPUTO: I was saying does fact-checking matter anymore anyway? I don't -- you know.

HUNT: It certainly -- we are -- we are at a -- at another point in another inflection point --

CAPUTO: Yeah.

HUNT: -- on that -- on that question, for sure.

Marc, I want to ask you about something else that you have been reporting on because it's something that I'm curious when this campaign is all said and done, depending on how it shakes out, if we're going to look back on this as something that made a difference, and that's the way that Donald Trump's campaign is spending money behind a messaging -- an ad that messages around transgender people.

And you write this. "In the past five weeks, Trump's operation has spent more than $29 million on TV ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants in detention.

The campaign's elevation of transgender issues above the economy constitutes one of the biggest bets in presidential politics. The former rates as among the least important to voters according to public opinion polls; the latter their top concern.

The trans-heavy focus also seems to conflict with months of insistent from the Trump campaign to the pundit class that the ex-president will win because of inflation and gas (sic)."

And I do want to play a little snippet of this ad because it kind of -- it takes the message and distills it really quickly. Let's watch it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kamala supports transgender (INAUDIBLE) in jail with our money. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And again, I think it's so interesting you point out the disparity on how -- on what people say is important to them versus I'm playing this ad because they're spending so much money to put it on TV.

Do you think it's having an impact?

CAPUTO: I don't know, but I do know that the Trump -- you know, Trump himself does a lot of things to self-sabotage and you wouldn't say he's really kind of professional the way he carries himself as a candidate -- totally atypical.

He, however, has a team of very professional, incredibly experienced people around him and they market test, they ad test everything they put on air. And so it would be hard for me to think that they didn't have data -- in fact, they say they do have data showing that this ad series works.

[05:50:00]

But to your point, we're talking about $30 million and five weeks spent on TV over this, and that's way ahead of the economy or economic-related messages of about $5 million. It just blows everything out of the water. Add to that about another $11 million for a total for $40 million from the super PACs backing that are also advertising about transgender-related issues.

Now the real question is just why? Why would you do that? And John McLaughlin, one of the pollsters for Donald Trump, had said these races -- these presidential races, executive races become an issue of character. It's not as much about policy plans as it is character. And this issue -- they believe and their research, they say, shows that Kamala Harris' character comes under question from people when they see her talk about these matters and when they see the ads advertising about these matters.

Now, Donald Trump has had quite a bit of character troubles, especially as of late from the accusations that he groped someone years ago -- or a woman years ago -- to his former chief of staff saying he was making praise-worthy statements about Hitler. And so it is a battle about character as well as about policy on both sides.

In this case what's just interesting and unique is not only is former President Trump's presidential campaign the first one in history to make this the subject of general election advertising but that they have just gone all in on this messaging so late in the game.

HUNT: Yeah. And it's also worth noting -- I mean, we throw around these super PAC numbers a lot. The campaign itself -- every dollar that they spend -- those lower-dollar figures, they go way farther for the campaign than they do for the super PAC because of some of the rules about how campaigns are allowed to buy ads at lower rates. So in reality, it means that there are a lot more people than it may seem who are going to be seeing these campaign ads.

The Bulwark's Marc Caputo. Marc, thank you. Very grateful to have you today.

CAPUTO: Thank you, Kasie.

HUNT: All right, time now for sports. Rams' quarterback Matthew Stafford throws four touchdown passes to lead his team to victory over the Vikings on "THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL."

Carolyn Manno has this morning's Bleacher Report. Carolyn, good morning.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. The Rams, Kasie, are getting healthy at the right time, and as you saw last night it really matters.

The team's two best receivers, Puka Nacua and Cooper Cupp, took the field together last night for the first time since week one, and they made an instant impact. Cupp hauled in one of those four touchdown passes from Matthew Stafford. Stafford had thrown just three such passes in the Rams first six games of the season combined. Cupp hauled in five catches for 51 yards, including a 27-yard grab for a key first down late in the fourth quarter.

But this one was not without controversy. Rams' linebacker Byron Young sacked Minnesota's Sam Darnold for a safety with 1:36 left, grabbing him by the face mask and twisting him to the turf in the end zone. The officials did not call a penalty, and the play could not be reviewed. So the missed call sealing L.A.'s 30-20 win.

Klay Thompson is off to a great start with his new team. Thompson set the Mavericks franchise record with six threes last night, the most made by a player in a Dallas debut. The five-time all-star finishing the game with 22 points, seven rebounds, and three steals as the Mavs beat the Spurs 120-109.

Luka Doncic led the team in scoring with 28 points, describing himself as "rusty" after missing the preseason with a calf injury.

And the New York Liberty putting a celebratory punctuation mark on what's been a banner year for women's basketball. Fans treated to a tickertape parade in the Canyon of Heroes to celebrate the franchise's first WNBA championship. New York became the first team in league history this season with back-to-back 30-plus win seasons over the last couple of years.

And yesterday marked the third parade for a women's sports team in New York City. The last time New Yorkers broke out the tickertape was in 2019 for the U.S. Women's soccer team when they won the World Cup. That was memorable, too.

And the World Series getting underway tonight, Kasie. There is serious hype around this one, as you know. The L.A. Dodgers, with their Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, hosting Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees in game one. This is the 12th time that these legendary teams have faced off in the Fall Classic, but they haven't met in the World Series in 43 years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AARON JUDGE, OUTFIELDER, NEW YORK YANKEES: This is where the real fun starts. You know, during -- you know, for years, as a kid watching the Yankees play in the World Series and win the World Series -- just that excitement and the emotion how the city comes alive is something definitely special and I'm looking forward to doing that with this group.

DAVE ROBERTS, MANAGER, LOS ANGELES DODGERS: You know, you could easily argue that on a -- on a global scale, the Yankees and the Dodgers are the most followed, the most supported, the most visible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANNO: And as you might expect, Kasie, fans are spending for this highly anticipated showdown. The average price on the secondary market around $1,700 right now. That's the priciest ever. Just to put that in perspective, that's more than double last year's average ticket price -- that according to reseller TickPick.

So two iconic franchises going head-to-head. Everybody's ready for it if you've got a little bit of extra cash laying around, that is.

[05:55:00]

HUNT: I know. I have a lot of thoughts about, like, Yankee Stadium being so expensive on a day-to-day basis anyway. I feel like baseball -- like, everybody should be able to go see a baseball game and you really can't if you're in New York. But that said, the series is going to be epic. I'm rooting for the Dodgers.

Carolyn, thank you. I really appreciate it.

MANNO: Goodbye.

HUNT: All right, straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, Donald Trump's backyard, the Sunshine State -- can the Democrats pick up a surprising Senate seat in Florida? We're going to talk to the Democratic challenger to GOP Sen. Rick Scott, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Plus, Kamala Harris rolls out the A-listers in Georgia with another major name. Really, I mean, there's only one, maybe two, on this list headlining for her tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": In Atlanta, Bruce Springsteen headlined a rally with Vice President Harris and former President Obama. Yeah, that's right, Bruce Springsteen and Obama. Between the two of them the rally should be over near Thanksgiving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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