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CNN This Morning

Final Stretch For Early Voting, Campaign Stops; Biden Makes Appearance For Harris In Scranton, P.A. Today; Trump Calls Liz Cheney A "Disgrace" At Michigan Rally; CNN Investigates V.A. Voter Purge Program, Finds Mistakes; Final Jobs Report Before Election Day Shows Economy Added 12K Jobs; Final Jobs Report Before Election Day Shows Economy Added 12K Jobs; How Philadelphia's Suburbs Settle Close Races In Pennsylvania; Some MAGA Voters Preparing To Undermine Election If Trump Lose. Aired 7-8a ET

Aired November 02, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:25]

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. It is Saturday, November 2nd. I'm Amara Walker.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Glad you're up early. We've been waiting for you. I'm Victor Blackwell. This is the last day of early voting for people in two key battleground states: Michigan and North Carolina.

Now, tomorrow is the last day for people in Wisconsin. Here's a look at our early voting numbers as we enter the final stretch. Look at this, 68 million ballots cast already. It's also the last weekend for presidential candidates to campaign and they are crisscrossing the map to hit as many battleground states as possible.

Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Atlanta and Charlotte. Her running mate Tim Walz is in Arizona. Former President Donald Trump will be in North Carolina and Virginia. His running mate, J.D. Vance, will be in Vegas and then in Arizona.

WALKER: Harris and Trump held dueling rallies just miles from each other in the Milwaukee area on Friday night with very different messages. Wisconsin is a key state for them both. Our latest polling shows Harris is leading Trump by about six percent there.

At Harris's star-studded rally, she zeroed in on union workers promising to create good-paying jobs and promised to listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. I will listen to experts. I will listen to the people who disagree with me because you see, unlike Donald Trump, I don't believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I'll give them a seat at the table. That's what a democracy is about. That's what leaders do.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WALKER: Meanwhile, Trump railed against the Green New Deal and his

rival.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT: If she can't handle an interview, then she can't handle certainly President Xi of China, President Putin, he would have never done it. She can't handle anything, but she's not equipped for that. She's not a president. She'll get overwhelmed, meltdown, and millions of people will die.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: Trump also doubled down on slamming former Republican Representative, Liz Cheney, who he said earlier this week was a war hawk who should be fired upon.

BLACKWELL: President Biden is making an appearance today in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Of course, he's hoping to help V.P. Kamala Harris in the run-up to Tuesday's presidential election, but Biden's role in Harris's campaign has been limited. It's notable, especially after Biden's most recent gaffe Tuesday.

While speaking to Voto Latino, he tried to denounce Trump because a comedian at the former president's New York rally called Puerto Rico garbage. But he ended up making a garbage reference that offended Trump supporters.

CNN Senior White House producer, Betsy Klein, joins us now from Washington, D.C. So, tell us about the president's schedule today. What's it look like?

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE PRODUCER: Well, Victor, President Biden will be rallying union workers in his hometown of Scranton. And of course, this could be one of his final campaign stops of the 2024 cycle. And it comes as you mentioned, he has emerged as somewhat of a liability for the Harris campaign in these final days.

Of course, he remains unpopular. His approval rating stands at about 38 percent, according to CNN's polls, and he has been prone to gaffes. And we saw that just this week as he appeared to call supporters of former President Trump garbage. Certainly, an unwelcome distraction for the Biden White House team and the Harris campaign as they spent some time trying to clean that up.

And in these final days that are so critical, the plan for Biden is, as ones who are cellist, is to be in do no harm mode, Victor and Amara.

BLACKWELL: So, what does do no harm mode look like for the president?

KLEIN: Well, Victor, if you just look at what President Biden has been doing since he dropped out of this race on July 21st. On the road, he has made just five appearances alongside Harris on the campaign trail. He's made six political appearances and otherwise has mostly done official White House events touting his accomplishments. There's been 19 of those.

And looking at his trips to battleground states, he's made nine trips to Pennsylvania so far. Today will be his 10th, two trips to Wisconsin and one trip a piece to battlegrounds, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina. But certainly, Pennsylvania is a place where he continues to enjoy a lot of support particularly among working class voters and older voters.

But it is a place where the race is quite deadlocked about 48 percent a piece for Trump and Harris according to CNN's poll of polls, somewhere Harris is going to be three times on Monday for three separate rallies. And some optimism from the Harris campaign as they tell CNN that in these final weeks as voters that are undecided make up their minds, they say that the voters are breaking for Harris at about double-digit margins.

[07:05:26]

So, we'll certainly be watching that very closely on Tuesday. And today will be a fitting coda for President Biden and his hometown of Scranton.

BLACKWELL: All right. Betsy Klein, watching it at all for us from Washington. Thanks so much.

WALKER: All right. Joining me now are Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein. Gentlemen, good morning. Thanks for joining us.

Ron, let's start with you. And as we've been saying, both Harris and Trump, they are spending a lot of time in these battleground states. How do you think Harris's strategy is playing as she has made these repeated trips to these Southern battleground states targeting specific groups, especially black voters?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, at the best, you know, we have all this public polling showing that the seven states of both sides are competing are, you know, within an eyelash of each other. Probably, the most states that have been this close, this close to the election since 2000, and you don't have to rely on the public polling to tell you that or even at private polling.

The fact that the candidates are still going to all of these states in the final weekend, unless it's a really elaborate head fake, they believe they are all in play. There is still a tiering, though, and a hierarchy. I mean, if you look at the polling pretty consistently, the erosion in Democratic support since 2020, the decline in the Democratic vote, the cracks in the coalition, have been primarily among voters of color, especially Latinos, but maybe to some extent among black men.

We'll have to see. And that creates challenges for Harris in the Sunbelt, where those voters are a bigger share of the overall electorate and certainly a bigger share of the overall Democratic coalition. On the other hand, the polling shows Harris largely holding Biden's support from 2020 among white voters, which was a notable four or five-point improvement over Hillary Clinton's support, four years earlier among white voters. And that leaves her in a very competitive position in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the three states Trump dislodged from the blue wall in 2016, and the states that provide the clearest pathway to her to reach 270 electoral college votes.

WALKER: It's really wild to think we're just three days out from the election and we're talking about such thin, razor thin margins. Larry, on the campaign trail, Trump has doubled down on his comments about Congresswoman Liz Cheney, that she should be put in a firing line and have guns trained on her face. Arizona officials, they're now investigating if Trump's comments violated state laws.

But you know, many have become desensitized to Trump's rhetoric, even when he uses these kinds of violent depictions. But we are not used to seeing him trying to clarify his comments. He says that he was making the point that Cheney wouldn't go into combat, even as a war hawk, as he called her. Is he worried about losing undecided or moderate voters? Should he be?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR POLITICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Oh, he absolutely should be. He went way too far on Liz Cheney. And I think it's having an impact. The Harris campaign, at least, says it is having an impact on the remaining undecided voters.

I don't know how they can track them. There are so few of them, relatively speaking, but apparently, they say that it's caused these undecideds to break toward Kamala Harris. Now, we'll see once we have a chance to analyze the data from a nonpartisan perspective, but it couldn't help him.

This is extreme rhetoric from anybody, much less a presidential candidate, and surely Trump's staff encouraged him to walk some of that back, except he didn't. He doubled down. That's Donald Trump. And it reminds people what the next four years are going to look like, what they're going to look like if Donald Trump is back in the White House.

WALKER: Ron, it's fitting that you recently wrote about the shifting electorate on CNN.com. And we talked about this and how that might impact the election. You found, what stood out to me, that the number of white voters without a college degree has decreased by, I think it was two percentage points, and that women make up 52 percent of eligible voters. These are all factors that could, might, work against Trump.

But also, when you consider the fact that women are currently outpacing men in early voting, the statistics are 55 to 45 percent. This is according to Catalyst, which is a Democrat-aligned data firm. Is it a mistake that Trump hasn't done more to court women voters?

[07:05:03] BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, that data, that number you cite is probably the single reason for the shift in democratic mood from kind of pretty pervasive gloom say a week ago to something that what are they calling nauseous optimism, here on the on the brink of the election that that women are comprising such a high percentage of the, of the early vote in a year when it looks like we will have an historic gender gap.

You know, as you point out, correctly, women are a majority of not only eligible but actual voters, not only nationwide, but in every swing state. And that means that Donald Trump has to win men by more than Kamala Harris wins women, really in all of these states. And he has to do that at a time when demographic change continues to just kind of sand away at the edges of the Republican coalition.

If you go back really since the 1970s, white voters without a college degree have declined about two to three points every four years as a share of the electorate to be replaced by voters of color and college educated whites, both of whom are going to vote majority for Harris.

So, you know, from election to election, usually you don't feel this. It's kind of like a tremor and a shift, a slight shift in the landscape. But in a year that is this close, particularly in those three former blue wall states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it could matter. Particularly, I would just add, in Michigan and Wisconsin, the decline, and all of this is analysis by Bill Fry of Brookings. The decline in non-college whites who are Trump's core is greater than the national average.

So, again, typical year might not matter. This year, everything matters.

WALKER: You know, nauseous optimism probably also speaks to the anxiety that so many voters are feeling, right, because this race is so incredibly close. There is so much uncertainty. We're just three days away. Larry, let's talk quickly just about the swirl of disinformation, misinformation we're seeing, particularly here in Georgia.

We just saw the Georgia Secretary of State debunking this purported video of Haitians illegally voting, saying it's likely the product of Russian troll farms. You've heard U.S. intelligence say that Russians are stepping up their efforts, more sophisticated efforts, to meddle in the 2024 election. How vigilant do we need to be? And how do you see this potentially impacting, how much impact might this misinformation have on the election?

SABATO: Well, Amara, it's bound to have some impact because people believe what they see and they believe what they read on the Internet, and I think we all know by now we shouldn't, but it's just human. If you see a video and it looks reasonably good, you think it's true. Or even if it doesn't look reasonably good, you think it's true.

This is really a major problem. It was a problem in 2020. It is becoming a very serious problem this year right at the end of the as you would expect, and going forward is going to be worse. It's worth noting that Brad Raffensperger is a loyal Republican -- I think he's endorsed Trump, but I know he's a conservative Republican.

He's very concerned about this. It matters what senior people say including, by the way, George W. Bush, if you ever does say something on this election. It matters. It's a symbol. It reaches people, and that handful of undecided, they're looking for signals right now to make up their minds at long last, so that they can they can vote responsibly.

So, artificial intelligence and all of the made up aspects of the campaign are really getting deep into the roots, and we all ought to be worried about it.

WALKER: We should be because it's causing a lot of confusion and chaos. Larry Sabato and Ron Brownstein. Thank you both.

And be sure to tune in for CNN's special coverage of election night in America. It starts Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

BLACKWELL: All right, just days before the election day this week, the Supreme Court allowed Virginia to continue its purge from the state's voter rolls. The reason for the purge and the important message to those who have been impacted, that's ahead.

[07:14:12]

Plus, the jobs numbers came out on Friday and, yes, jobs were added, thousands of jobs, but way off the projection. So, what does it mean now? How could that impact this election?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:19:05]

BLACKWELL: The Supreme Court gave the state of Virginia the go-ahead to purge voter rolls of an estimated 1,600 suspected non-citizens. But some of those people purged did not even know it. That is, until CNN Correspondent, Renee Marsh, contacted some of them. And here's what she found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RENEE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just weeks before Election Day, daily purges from Virginia's voter registration rolls. Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin calls it an effort to prevent illegal non-citizen voting, something that rarely happens.

CNN got access to the list of 1,600 people and called over 100 of them. While we did identify non-citizens, we also found many citizens who are eligible voters.

Are you a citizen?

Some of them were even born in the U. S. and had voted in several previous elections without problems.

RACHEL XU, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY STUDENT: It's a bit confusing that, like, I registered and now I'm not?

MARSH: George Mason University student, Rachel Xu, spoke to CNN from her dorm room. She didn't know she'd been purged until CNN called.

XU: I was originally born in China, I immigrated here about six years ago. I got my citizenship like a year ago, but that doesn't change the fact I still have the right to vote. So, that's really weird.

MARSH: She's still not sure why she was purged. Neither is 21-year-old Abdullah Al-Mosawah, who even sent CNN a picture of his US passport as proof of citizenship. He learned about Virginia's daily voter registration purges on TikTok, then realized he was affected.

"I wouldn't say it feels great," he told CNN. CNN reached out to Governor Glenn Yunkin's office about what we found. His press secretary said in a statement, "Governor Youngkin has been clear every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by same day registering through Election Day."

Youngkin has driven the narrative that illegal voting is a problem in Virginia, saying the purge addresses it.

GOV. GLENN YOUNGKIN (R-VA): That just provides further, further comfort across the Commonwealth that this election will be secure, it will be accurate.

MARSH: Youngkin and other Republicans have followed Trump in stoking fears over voter fraud. Trump baselessly claims illegal voting is part of the reason he lost the 2020 election.

TRUMP: Removing illegal voters off the voting roll should be a big priority for this country.

MARSH: While the Virginia purge involves a relatively small number of voters in a state not considered a battleground, voting rights groups worry about the chilling effect of the purge on eligible voters.

ANNA DORMAN, COUNSEL, PROTECT DEMOCRACY: It's also causing a lot of fear within immigrants and new citizen communities more generally who are getting this information via social media and through the grapevine and hearing that there's some sort of issue and that people could be prosecuted for felonies.

MARSH: As for Xu, she says she won't be deterred and plans to re- register and cast her ballot for the very first time on Election Day.

XU: I'm a citizen. I still have my right to vote.

MARSH: Well, the most important message for any voter in Virginia who has been purged, if you are a citizen and eligible to vote, you can use Virginia's same-day registration process to vote in person at early voting locations through this Saturday or at your polling place on Election Day. But voting rights advocates say these purges just make it more difficult for certain voters to exercise their right to vote. Amara, Victor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Rene Marsh, thank you. Commonwealth. At the top I said state of Virginia, I could hear the whole Commonwealth saying Commonwealth. So, Commonwealth of Virginia. Former President Donald Trump is already sowing doubt about the presidential election results three days before the votes will even be counted. I was faithful followers of preparing to undermine the election if Trump loses. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:27:25]

BLACKWELL: The last jobs report before the election was released on Friday, showed that just 12,000 jobs were added last month. Analysts say two major hurricanes and labor strikes played a role in the lower numbers. Joining me now to discuss, Jeanna Smialek Smiley, Federal Reserve and Economy Reporter at the New York Times. All right, so first, what does this tell us about the economy, because yes, we know those events have been but what beyond the events did we learn?

JEANNA SMIALEK, FEDERAL RESERVE AND ECONOMY REPORTER AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Very little to be honest, so we know that the numbers were very muddled by these, these events. And so, we don't know much about how quickly employers are trying to hire at the moment given how disrupted these data were. What we do know is that the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1 percent. So, it did not take up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that that figure was not hugely affected by any of these disruptions.

And so, I think the takeaway here is that whatever your view of the labor market was last month, it shouldn't have shifted much with this report because the combination of a lack of clarity and the fact that the unemployment rate is steady just basically keeps us where we were.

BLACKWELL: Voters say the economy is the most important issue they have from the very start of the campaign. How much at the very end now are these candidates talking about this report?

SMIALEK: They are talking about this report a bit because I think they have to talk about a jobs report this close to voting. But I think more in general, they are talking about the economy all the time at the moment. And in general, across this campaign, we've really seen a lot of discussion of prices in particular and of the job market.

Kamala Harris obviously wants to emphasize the job market. It's been very strong. We've had a really good run when it comes to employment growth. Even recently, employment growth has slowed, but it hasn't completely fallen off a cliff. That's good for her to emphasize.

On the opposite side of that, former President Donald Trump has really been emphasizing high prices, the fact that inflation was really rapid, and that people are still really feeling the lingering effects of that era.

BLACKWELL: What's this portend for the Fed meeting right after the election?

SMIALEK: I think that the baseline expectation, what most people anticipate, is that the Fed is going to cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point at that meeting. They have been watching inflation come down steadily and watching the job market slow progressively.

And that combination really suggests to them that they don't need to be hitting the brakes on the economy quite so hard which means that they can sort of gradually lower interest rates, take a little bit of that pressure off the economy and allow things to sort of bubble up a little bit more. And so, I think that we wouldn't expect that plan to change after this report.

[07:30:07]

BLACKWELL: And so, this meeting is next week. It's not before the elections right after the election. If we don't have a projected winner by Thursday at 2:00, how does the uncertainty play into the decision, if at all?

SMIALEK: Yes. So, it's going to make it a fun meeting to cover, because, I think it will make it a little bit difficult for them to talk about the future, but I don't think it will actually affect this individual decision.

But that is a little bit lucky in the sense that they are not putting out economic projections at this meeting. So, they really only have to make one choice. They just have to decide whether to cut rates or not cut rates. And I think they have pre-messaged that they are pretty poised to cut interest rates at this meeting.

So, I think we'll see that that small rate cut. I think the real question is, what does Jerome Powell, who is the Fed chair, say during his press conference, if we don't know who the president is yet, I think he will probably very studiously avoid talking about the election to the extent that he can, but he is clearly going to get asked about it.

BLACKWELL: Absolutely, he is going to be asked about it.

So, let's talk about your latest piece. You talk about working voters and their focus on the economy and what the candidates are saying the working-class voters, I should say.

Latest CNN poll of likely voters shows that Harris and Trump are statistically tied among voters making less than $50,000 a year. But what do we know about how their economic plans, at least, what the experts say about how those economic plans impact those lower income, working class voters?

SMIALEK: Yes. So, if you talk to economists, whether they are at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, or whether they are at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, really, sort of across a range of think tanks and economic organizations. They will tell you that Vice President Harris's plans do look better for people in that population group. She is just suggesting more targeted policies that would sort of funnel money toward them, whereas, if you sort of look at the Penn Wharton budget analysis, for example, it suggests that that's actually better for people at the higher end of the income scale.

And so, sort of the redistribution of these two policy packages looks quite different. But what we are seeing in, as you -- as you alluded to in the polls, is that President Trump -- former President Trump has really solidified, or seems poised to solidify, his base in the working class.

You know, it used to be the case that white working-class voters in particular were heavily unionized, tended to vote for Democrats. But we've really seen that shifting in recent years, and it seems poised to continue in this election.

And so, it's sort of the interesting split screen that we're watching playing out in the electorate at the moment.

BLACKWELL: Jeanna Smialek, three days left, five days until we get the decision from the fed. Thanks so much.

WALKER: Still ahead on CNN THIS MORNING. There were chants of justice outside of a New York courtroom as a trial of marine veteran Daniel Penny began.

Penny is facing manslaughter charges in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely. What happened inside the courtroom is after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:37:44]

WALKER: Here are some of the other top stories we are following this morning. The body of former One Direction singer, Liam Payne was moved from an Argentina mortuary on Friday to a facility where it will be preserved until his family can receive it in the U.K.

Sources tell CNN prosecutors are making progress in the investigation into his death, they have interviewed two women who were with him in his final hours, both said they saw him drink alcohol but did not witness any drug use.

Payne died last month after falling from the hotel's third floor in Argentina. More than 200 people have died from flash floods in southeastern Spain, authorities warn that the number is likely to rise.

Meanwhile, Spanish armed forces have rescued more than 4,600 people, but authorities say collapsed roads are slowing down their search and rescue efforts, and train tracks in the area are so badly damaged that service is not likely to resume for weeks.

The trial of a U.S. veteran accused of choking a homeless black man to death on a New York subway last year has begun. The prosecution and defense are presenting very different views of Daniel Penny, in their opening statements.

His lawyer says Penny was responding to a threat and only trying to protect other people on the train when Jordan Neely started acting erratically. But the prosecution argued, the ex-marine "went too far". They said he violated "law and human decency" with the fatal choke hold.

Penny is charged with second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

BLACKWELL: Turning to politics, both campaigns will be heavily focused on Philadelphia suburbs Tuesday night. Enthusiasm for Vice President Harris there could be a tipping point in the state. She almost certainly needs to win in order to take the White House.

John King visited one such community in his final all over the map report ahead of the election.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): -- is a postcard of suburban life. Leafy, friendly.

Philadelphia, just a 30-minute commute by train. Home to Shannon Elliott, her family, and her small business.

SHANNON ELLIOTT, VOTER, PENNSYLVANIA: We have a beautiful college campus, woods, trails, close proximity to a lot of different things, but just often a quiet, a close-knit community.

[07:40:02]

KING (voice over): This is Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware County, a place where Kamala Harris needs to win big if she hopes to claim the biggest of the battleground prizes.

ELLIOTT: A lot of the messages I get are more panic, and so, I feel panicked.

KING: Elliott's vote is not in question.

ELLIOTT: I don't want to go back there. I see how he -- how he treats people and bullies' people. And these are things I tell my teenage kids not to do. Why would I want to see my president doing that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to sign.

KING (voice over): Harris needs to match or beat Biden's 2020 numbers in the suburbs.

ELLIOTT: I'll fix it up.

KING (voice over): But Elliott hears hints of apathy and of sexism, hints of 2016.

ELLIOTT: And I think people were afraid to vote for a woman once it got down to the final choice, and they made a mistake. And now, here we are again with that same decision facing people, and I'm worried -- I'm worried it's going to happen again.

KING (voice over): Delaware County is reliably blue, but there are pockets where Trump runs strong.

KRISTIN CAPARRA, VOTER, PENNSYLVANIA: I am most upset about the lack of a border and the lack of our sovereignty, and how that's eroded in the last three years. And I feel as an American citizen, I'm underserved, over taxed, I'm kind of diminished.

KING (voice over): Kristin Caparra, registered Republican at the age of 18, back in 1988.

The Philadelphia suburbs were red then, but Caparra is outnumbered in her Drexel Hill neighborhood now.

CAPARRA: We vote on different sides of the aisle, but we are proud Americans. The American flag is outside all of our homes, and so, I'm very comfortable there.

KING (voice over): This is her New Jersey beach cottage, Lola and Taylor, her friendly labs.

CAPARRA: Push on to your left there.

KING (on camera): And this is back in Delaware County, where Caparra teaches figure skating.

She believes Trump will run stronger this year because of concerns about inflation, the border, and whether Harris is too liberal.

CAPARRA: Well, I think right now there's a very quiet Trump vote. He does have some bizarre behaviors, but at the end of the day, I feel he is patriotic, and I feel he loves this country, and my version of this country, a little more dealer -- dearly than the other side.

KING (voice over): The suburbs settle close races here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALKER: And that was our John King.

Still to come, Trump supporting election denier groups, one that they are gearing up to undermine the presidential election again. How they are preparing their followers to overturn a potential Harris victory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:46:54]

BLACKWELL: Some MAGA activists are already vowing to undermine the results of the election if former President Donald Trump loses before any votes officially have been counted.

WALKER: Members of the Stop the Steal movement are outlining their plans to stop a potential victory for Vice President Harris.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, spoke to these MAGA activists about how they view the election.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like how much theft can they get away with in order to prevent Trump from winning?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you think he's going to win?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we have a fair election, yes.

O'SULLIVAN: There is no way he can lose fairly?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fairly, there is no way he can lose.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): MAGA world is preparing its followers for a stolen election.

GREG STENSTROM, AUTHOR: They are just going to announce Harris is the winner. We're going to go, we win again, and now try to stop us again. And what's different this time is we're going to be able to stop them.

MARK BURNS, PASTOR: Is there anybody here in North Carolina ready to take this nation back? By any means necessary, say yes, yes, yes.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): They are laying out step-by-step plans to overturn a potential Harris victory. These are not random Trump supporters. These are influential figures in the MAGA movement.

IVAN RAIKLIN, MAGA ACTIVIST: It's all going to depend on what they end up doing. I have a plan and strategy for every single component of it. And then January 6th is going to be pretty fun.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Many of them, like Ivan Raiklin and Michael Flynn, have huge audiences online and are involved in election denying groups that have spent millions of dollars furthering election conspiracy theories.

MICHAEL FLYNN, FORMER UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: And we should know by Tuesday night, by about 9 or 10 o'clock at night, that one party won.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Election officials across the country have explained that we likely won't know the full results on election night. To conspiracy theorists, however, that is a sign of fraud.

FLYNN: In this case, I strongly believe that Donald Trump, if this thing is a fair election, he'll win all 50 states.

RAIKLIN: Now, if it's legit, we don't have to worry, right? But who thinks it's going to be legit? You think they're just going to give it to you? No, this is going to be a fight.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Raiklin has encouraged people to pressure their state representatives not to certify election results if they suspect fraud.

RAIKLIN: We try to play fair. They steal it. Our state legislatures are our final stop to guarantee a checkmate.

RAIKLIN: Be prepared on January 1st to apply the maximum motivation to your state reps, state senators.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): In North Carolina, he and another right-wing activist are going as far to say there should be no election because of the destruction after Hurricane Helene. They say the Republican- controlled state legislature should decide which presidential candidates get their electoral college votes.

NOEL FRITSCH, AUTHOR, NATIONAL FILE: We don't have to do this popular vote in the state stuff for this federal election. We don't have to do it.

RAIKLIN: You got 120 House reps. How many of those are Republican?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Majority!

RAIKLIN: The majority. How about a significant majority?

[07:50:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RAIKLIN: So, then, how is the House body going to likely vote with your motivation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump!

RAIKLIN: For the Republican nominee. What about the Senate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Majority.

RAIKLIN: Majority.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): The idea is fringe and it is extreme, but a Republican congressman endorsed the idea at an event with Raiklin --

REP. ANDY HARRIS (R-NC): I would say, hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been, which would be, if I were in the legislature, not to go, yes, we got to convene a legislature.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): -- before eventually walking it back.

The idea that the only way Harris can win is if the election is stolen is being pushed across hundreds of MAGA media outlets and from the former president himself.

TRUMP: Because they cheat. That's the only way we're going to lose, because they cheat.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): And it's convincing his base.

O'SULLIVAN: What if the results show that Harris won? Do you think Trump will accept that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think anybody will accept that because we know it's going to be a lie. But if that's what it is, it's what it is. We'll go from there. We'll see what happens.

O'SULLIVAN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, I just don't think that Trump is going to lose.

O'SULLIVAN: Do you think he won last time?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, definitely.

O'SULLIVAN: What happens if he loses?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If he loses, we're all going down January 6th.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Donie O'Sullivan, thanks so much.

Coming up in sports, Los Angeles celebrates a Dodgers World Series championship. Hear the heartfelt thank you from two of their biggest stars.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:55:54]

BLACKWELL: Hundreds of thousands of fans line the streets of L.A. to celebrate the Dodgers' first World Series parade in a generation.

WALKER: Carolyn Manno, joining us now from New York.

Carolyn, yes, I am from L.A. and yes, I even knew how much this meant to fans there.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: It means a ton, and it's a long time coming to your point.

I mean, the Dodgers were able to celebrate that 2020 World Series when because of the pandemic. So, it's been 36 years since they have actually had the parade. And in the most L.A. thing ever, Amara, the Dodgers' team busses somehow managing to get stuck in traffic.

But once that got sorted, an estimated 250,000 of their closest friends were waiting to greet them downtown, with another 40,000 packed into Dodger Stadium for the rally, to hear from the champs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SHOHEI OHTANI, LOS ANGELES DODGERS DESIGNATED HITTER: This is so special (INAUDIBLE) moving. And I'm just so honored to be here and to be part of this team.

FREDDIE FREEMAN, 2024 WORLD SERIES MVP: When I came back after my son got sick, you guys showed out for my family and I -- that was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had on the field. I did everything I could to get on this field for you guys, and I'm glad I did, because we got championship now.

MANNO (voice over): It was such a great team to watch. It's also a really good time to be a Lakers' fan.

LeBron and company up to a strong start this season. King James on fire early in Toronto, draining threes, scoring 14 of his 27 points in the first quarter to go with 10 assists. Anthony Davis had season highs with 36 and 16 boards. This was a road game, but it seems that everybody wants to see LeBron and his son, Bronny, on the court together.

AMERICAN CROWD: Bronny! Bronny! Bronny! Bronny! Bronny! Bronny!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANNO: Those are Raptors' fans chanting Bronny's name, and they got what they were asking for, Bronny clocking in for the final seven seconds of the game. Father and son on the court. L.A. wins by six.

Things a little less lovey dovey between the Celtics and the Hornets. So, check out the bottom right portion of your screen. This is late in the fourth The Hornet's Grant Williams, making a beeline for Jayson Tatum, laying a big body check on his former teammate.

Doesn't even look like he's going for the ball on the play, Tatum walking away, but Jaylen Brown, taking some exception to that before cooler heads prevail. Williams, who spent the first four years of his career in Boston, getting ejected and afterwards, he tried downplaying any ill will, as the Celtics had the last laugh, they win by 15.

In the W, the Indiana Fever had their superstar in Caitlin Clark and a very young, talented roster around her. Now, they have their coach too, after two years with the Connecticut Sun, Indiana native Stephanie White, heading back home again to lead the team that she took to a title in 2012, and then coach for two years in 2015 and 2016 and she certainly has a loaded roster, like I said, guys around her. So, that's going to be an exciting thing to look forward to for next season in the WNBA. Back to you.

WALKER: Great stuff, Carolyn. Thank you so much.

And "FIRST OF ALL WITH VICTOR BLACKWELL" is up next. What do you have?

BLACKWELL: Packed show, three days. Three days left in this election cycle.

(CROSSTALK) WALKER: That's it.

BLACKWELL: And millions of people have already voted. The chair of the Democratic Party in Georgia, Congresswoman Nikema Williams is here to tell us what she thinks about the 4 million plus who voted so far. Plus, we'll ask an election expert about the clues the data shows about who is showing up at the polls and who is not, what we can glean from that across the country.

And can the man who pitched a Muslim ban for his first term rely on Muslim voters to help him win a second? Former President Trump is trying visiting a city where their votes could help clinch a critical battleground. We'll take you to that community and find out why some are backing Trump.

And later, California voters are being asked if they want to ban forced labor. It's called the slavery loophole in the state's constitution.

[08:00:01]

BLACKWELL: So, why is there concern that it might not pass? Someone who helped write the measure, after his own experience, will join us.

WALKER: I'll definitely be watching. Have a great show.