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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Clinton on the Campaign Trail; Can Trump Stay on Message in Last Days of the Race?; FBI Draws New Questions with Sudden Release of Old Investigation Files; Son of Jeb Bush Endorses Trump. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired November 02, 2016 - 04:30   ET

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

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[04:30:46] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Hillary Clinton like we have not seen her before, see what made this moment happen?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is the biggest scandal since Watergate.

ROMANS: Donald Trump hammering Clinton on e-mails. Sticking to the script. Can he stay on message in the last days of the race?

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BERMAN: All right, a new FBI move draws questions of sudden release of files from a 15-year-old investigation of the Clintons, with less than a week to go before Election Day.

Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone, I'm John Berman.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. It's 31 minutes past the hour. Welcome, everyone to the last final six days to go in the race for president. And the development, folks, changed by the hour. Here's the very latest. Hillary Clinton overnight angrily lashed out at a Trump supporter from the podium at a rally in Florida. Donald Trump's campaign just hours ago denouncing a showed support from the KKK's official newspaper. The FBI, out with the statement, defending itself after tweeting out documents from a long- closed Clinton investigation from a long dormant twitter account. And the Cubs won. That has nothing to do with politics. I just wanted to let you know.

BERMAN: That's what -- there's no bullet point for that on the screen right there.

ROMANS: Cubs win. BERMAN: All right, with less than a week to go the candidate they are on the trail deep into the night. We saw something from Hillary Clinton at her event that we have not even before. This happened at a rally in Fort Lauderdale. And she really went right at protester who called her husband a rapist. Watch this.

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CLINTON: I love this country. I think we already are great. Now, I think we can be greater. And, you know, I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump. It is time for us to say no. We are not going backwards. We're going forward into a brighter future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Hillary Clinton calling out the cavalry this week, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Former President Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine, Chelsea Clinton. You can see they are all out there on the trail crisscrossing the country.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us by the phone now from Orlando, Florida with the very latest. Yesterday, he was at a parking lot in Chappaqua. Today he's in Orlando. The international man, a mystery of Phil Mattingly. What's the strategy in Florida today?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the interesting thing is you just kind of laid everything out, Christine, in terms of -- the clear advantage that the Clinton campaign has with six days left. And that's of surrogates.

Joe Biden is down in Florida today. President Obama is in North Carolina. Elizabeth Warren is in Nevada. Bernie Sanders is in going to stop in Michigan. And what Donald Trump has that nobody else does is the seemingly inability to get tired going through three, four, five, six rallies a day.

What Hillary Clinton has, you see surrogates going to very specific states targeting very specific demographic. This morning as I was making my delicious hotel coffee to the built and own of John Berman, you guys were bringing up how there are clear concerns in the Clinton campaign with the black folks. You just let President Obama and Michelle Obama two places like North Carolina. And you have a clear advantage trying to rally those supporters. So that's one element of it.

But the second element of it is that allows Hillary Clinton to do what she's doing today which just go to Arizona. Obviously, a traditionally a Republican state, a state that Democrats don't usually look through to have an advantage in. The Clinton campaign sees this as a true battleground state.

You talk to their advisers, they'll say, we're not trying to span the map with Arizona. This isn't a thing to try and draw Donald Trump's ad dollars or something like that. They really believe because of early vote, Hispanic turnout that they have an opportunity there. Hillary Clinton will be on the ground in the state. We're going to talk about ways to fore close Donald Trump's path, through the White House path. And the 270 electoral votes, if they win Arizona, yeah, that's just about does it guys.

BERMAN: So Arizona is offense, Phil. But there's some ad spending and some travel that we just learned about overnight that definitely smells of defense. The Clinton team and also the super pac spending money in New Mexico, in Michigan, in Colorado and Virginia and then Hillary Clinton herself going to Michigan which was supposed to be fairly blue at this point.

[04:35:12] MATTINGLY: Yeah, so I think this is been by far the most interesting development in the last 24 hours. You know, we talked about this yesterday. How did you get a good sense of where the rate stands? Well, look at where the candidates are both spending and where they're actually showing up right now.

And yesterday or over the weekend, Donald Trump going in New Mexico, Donald Trump going to Michigan. If you look at the polling there, I know very smart Republican strategist were scratching their heads and kind of chuckling as if why is he doing that. Well, maybe he's got a pretty good reason. You mentioned Hillary Clinton actually going to Michigan on Friday. There's ad dollars, six-figure ads like it's going up and these four states that poll after poll after poll that show Clinton with five, six, seven-point leads.

The question becomes now, what are they seeing? What are they looking at behind the scenes? I was talking to a Clinton adviser yesterday about the ad buy, about the travel, and they say, "Look, we're flushed with cash right now. This is the last week to spend it. What are we going to do, hold on to it?" For example, 72 hours after James Comey's letter they raised $11.3 million online. That's the money that they're pushing towards these state but the reality is this, John, they're doing this to shore up these states. Whether or not they're seeing major negatives showing up in the awake of that James Comey letter, they say no. But clearly, there's some concern where they just want to make sure that there's -- they're not shedding voters. They're not shedding support in the wake in the last three or four days or because they're actually seeing a drop in numbers.

They feel like they need to put money there and more importantly like in Michigan, they feel like they need to put Hillary Clinton there. I will say and I mention this earlier, another important element, Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin and Michigan. You want to reach out to voters that are kind of looking towards Trump. And that Trump campaign feels like they can pull over. There's no better surrogate to try and block that than sending Bernie Sanders to that state, guys.

BERMAN: All right. Phil Mattingly, action reporter. We can see it in your head shot right there.

ROMANS: Can you do your impression of that head shot?

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: ... Mattingly.

ROMANS: Bye Phil.

BERMAN: All right. Thank you so much Phil. MVP of EARLY START, calling in two mornings a row. We really appreciate it.

ROMANS: Enjoy that breakfast at the hotel.

All right, the financial power of both presidential campaigns playing out in the nation's airwaves. You heard Phil talk about those ad buys. A total of $44 million will be flooding local stations and cable channels. That's according to Kantar Media and CMAG, they follow this stuff.

The Clinton campaign and her super pacs are spending $25.5 million on ads in this final week. Donald Trump's campaign, outside groups are unloading $18.6 million. But those numbers will likely grow. Both campaigns say they are dumping millions more into battleground states.

So far, Clinton, also focusing on national cable networks spending nearly $5 million there. She has purchased $2.4 million worth of ad space in Florida. More than $1.5 million in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Trump is nearly doubling Clinton spending in ads in Florida. This campaign bought about almost $3 million worth of time on cable channels. He's also spending big in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Where you will -- if he lives in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Have fun for the next six days when you watch TV.

BERMAN: That's right. Next Wednesday, you get your televisions back.

All right, this morning, the FBI facing brand-new questions about the timing of some of its actions. The bureau released a new set of files related to the Clintons' past. The release that critics are calling inexplicable.

The heavily redacted documents relate to a 15-year probe of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich. Rich was you remember was a hedge fund trader, financier who donated to the Clinton Presidential Library and Hillary Clinton senate campaign. Joining us now, CNN Politics Reporter, Eugene Scott.

ROMANS: Good morning.

BERMAN: What's in these documents? Why were they released now?

EUGENE SCOTT, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Well, nearly 130 documents, pages of an investigation and to Marc Rich by the FBI, were made public yesterday on one of the FBI's twitter accounts. And this obviously has caused an alarm with the Clinton campaign. But specifically because they were tweeted from an account that's been dormant for more than one year. It hasn't been, normally behaving this way and the timing of this, I think, people who support Hillary Clinton consider suspect.

What the FBI is saying is that account has been not functioning for a while. But it started functioning this Sunday. And this Sunday is obviously for those who have been paying close attention to this, also the day that the Clinton campaign began to attack FBI Director James Comey really aggressively following his announcement that he is instigating the Clinton campaign regarding e-mails again.

ROMANS: What are Democrats saying about timing of the release?

SCOTT: Well, that Brian Fallon called it odd. He said it raises some questions about the motives behind of the release of it. And it continues the narrative that the Clinton campaign has put out, wondering why the FBI is taking the approach that it has towards the Clinton campaign for the last week or the last weekend, should we say.

BERMAN: And the FBI has a released explaining why this happened?

SCOTT: Yeah. The FBI was saying, "By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI's public reading room shortly after they are processed.

[04:40:04] So they're saying this is not outside of the norm. This is what they do. It just happens that this is not what they have been doing for much of the past year.

BERMAN: All right, Eugene Scott covering the latest intrigue with the FBI. Appreciate it, Eugene

SCOTT: Thank you.

ROMANS: All right, Donald Trump heads to Florida today with events in Miami, Orlando and Pensacola. His running mate Mike Pence goes to Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

At a rally in Wisconsin overnight, Trump jumped all over Hillary Clinton's e-mails. And he raised a newly released hack from Wikileaks in which Clinton campaign chair John Podesta told an aide they were "Going to have to dump all those e-mails." Now Trump seem to suggest, Podesta meant erase them which appears false. The context in the general, you know, Washington speak indicate that Podesta meant dump as in release all those e-mails. CNN's Jim Acosta has the latest.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine. Donald Trump is showing off a side that we rarely see out on the campaign trail, message discipline. At a rally here in Wisconsin, Trump stayed on the attack on Hillary Clinton's e-mail saga saying she only has herself to blame. He also went after her campaign manager John Podesta whose e-mails were hacked and released by Wikileaks. Here's what he had to say at this rally in Wisconsin.

TRUMP: In a newly released e-mail John Podesta has been caught saying we have to dump all of those e-mails. Can you believe this? That's Wikileaks. And he also said, to me this made a big -- a big statement, John Podesta, I'll tell you what if he worked for me, I would fire him so fast. He is such a nasty guy. He would -- I would fire him like "The Apprentice," John, you're fired.

ACOSTA: And Trump is reminding people here in Wisconsin and a handful of other states that they can actually change their vote if they cast an earlier absentee ballot but it's an option that's rarely ever used by voters. John and Christine.

BERMAN: All right. Jim Acosta, thank you so much.

This morning, the Trump campaign is denouncing a show of support from the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan. You're looking at the front page right now of "The Crusader". The KKK publication borrows the Trump campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." And it says the way to achieve that greatness is to become a white Christian republic. The Trump campaign quickly distance itself from this newspaper and putting out a statement saying, "This publication is repulsive and their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans uniting behind our campaign."

ROMANS: All right. It is the final frenzied days of this race. Both campaign on storming battleground states, new story lines emerging by the hour. We'll break it all down for you, next.

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[04:46:54] BERMAN: All right. We got six days to go until we choose the next president. We have some new news, potentially, about some former presidents. Let's bring back Senior Media Correspondent, Host of "RELIABLE SOURCES", Brian Stelter and CNN Politics Reporter Tom LoBianco in Washington.

ROMANS: Good morning guys.

BERMAN: Guys, the news this morning is that George P. Bush, who is the land commissioner of Texas right now who has endorsed Donald Trump. He also happens to be the son of Jeb Bush, the nephew of George W. Bush, the grandson of Former President George H.W. Bush. He had an event last night saying I may be the only Bush voting for Donald Trump. And he said that his uncle George W. Bush and his grandfather may potentially vote for Hillary Clinton.

That we knew George H. W. Bush. We've been told that he might vote for Clinton before. This is the first we heard that George W. Bush might. Tom LoBianco, the significance?

TOM LOBIANCO, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: It would be absolutely stunning if your last two Republican presidents voted for the Democrat this time around. I mean you just -- I mean, the most stunning thing, the most currently stunning thing in this election cycle.

Who we really speaks to George P. Bush, you know, what makes him different is that he has a future in political office. These are -- they've already achieved the pinnacle, H.W. and W. So George P. is looking for his political future and this is the dynamic for the Republicans right now. This is the balancing act. How do you bridge the past, the bush family and the future which is this base of support that Trump has inside the Republican Party. And that's why George P. is going out there talking like this.

ROMANS: Stelter, this is just another example of how Donald Trump is the outsider candidate and he has -- there's a rift in the Republican Party between the establishment and people who want a new kind of Republican Party.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And the Bush family knows. That the Bush family knows there is that caption to burn it all down. And that's we continue to hear and see at Trump rallies. Even among people who are there's so much pro-Trump as there are anti-Clinton, they don't want these dynasties in power.

BERMAN: And look, Donald Trump may say, you know what, good, this just proves my point.

STELTER: Yeah.

BERMAN: This just proves that the establishment is against me. This is the past. These are the people I'm campaigning against.

ROMANS: If you listen to Donald Trump on immigration, and what the Republican Party has been trying to do on immigration, immigration reform and for years and Donald Trump just, you know, boom, blew it up.

BERMAN: Let's be clear.

STELTER: Right.

BERMAN: The polls are tightening. The CNN Poll of Polls right now, Donald Trump just four points behind. That is tighter than it was before. Another way you can tell it's getting tighter. Tom LoBianco is that Hillary Clinton is not running a positive campaign right now. She's going hard on the attack. Check out this new ad that just dropped.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The roof.

TRUMP: Grab them by the (inaudible) and when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you treat women with respect?

TRUMP: I can't say that either.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, good.

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BERMAN: All right. Before all of the e-mail developments with the FBI and James Comey, we've been told that Hillary Clinton wanted to finish this campaign positive. Tom, that's not the case?

LOBIANCO: Not anymore. You know, if you're a Democrat in this cycle, in a lot of ways you were spoiled by Trump because you did not have to go dirty, because he's making these mistakes and these things were popping up on their own. They kept on happening.

[04:50:03] And I mean it's amazing to think that that 2005 comment was almost a month ago now. And it seems like forever ago because -- especially because this resurgence of the FBI and the Clinton e-mails now. But Clinton has to do something which she is not had to do a lot of before which is try to stick this on Trump. It's using his own words, granted, but they haven't really been forced into this before. And it's not clear if this will work as a strategy. Whether they'll be able to turn the focus back to Trump in the final six days.

ROMANS: Brian, let me ask you a quick question about this FBI Marc Rich dump overnight. You know, it's so interesting to me, it right just up a time when people like to talk about Clinton scandals and Clinton scandals, right? And is this something that's going to last, do you think or is this just a weird coincidence that doesn't affect the next six days of the election?

STELTER: Well, it makes you wonder given all the tensions and it seem to be happening inside the FBI and this was related to that at all. There's no evidence to that but it's where your mind automatically goes to when you see this happen.

I do think we are back to the '90s. We are back to the days of Clinton scandals and that's unfortunately what people can expect if she is elected six days from today. You look at the tracking polls, the minute-by-minute stories of the polls are tightening. The broader sweeping story is that the race has been relatively stable.

And that the poll of polls shows that a four-point lead for into the nationwide. Trump still has to I guess to use a tortured baseball analogy, hit a whole lot of home runs next Tuesday in order to get above 270. Clinton has a lot more advantages than he does but the fact that we see him beating Clinton in that ABC tracking poll ...

ROMANS: Yeah.

STETLER: ... partly because of enthusiasm. His fans' more enthusiastic than Clinton's fans. It makes it as Jeff Zeleny said earlier, a much more interesting race in the final days that we were expecting.

ROMANS: In my world, 370 economists have all signed a letter saying that Trump will be bad for the global economy but, you know, world markets are still worried that polls are tightening and that he has a better chance than they had thought, you know. So it's just been fascinating.

STETLER: Yeah.

BERMAN: Thank guys. Thank you so much.

STETLER: Thanks.

LOBIANCO: Thanks.

ROMANS: All right. Wages are finally picking up speed. But one profession is hauling in bigger raises than the rest

BERMAN: What can it be? ROMANS: Well, if you like ...

BERMAN: What can it be?

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ROMANS: All right. Let's get a check on CNN money stream this morning. Tight polling in the presidential race has investors on edge. Dow Futures point lower. European markets just opened about 50 minutes ago.

Investors, they are concerned about the U.S. election as well. Shares in Asia down. They close with loses. Oil is retreating near $46 a barrel.

And then there's the Fed. It wraps up a two-day policy meeting today. Investors do not think there's much of a chance of a rate hike from Janet Yellen and company. Wall Street will be reading that statement very carefully for includes when increase will happen. The Fed's next meeting is mid-December. The money is on the Fed raising interest rates in December.

Drivers on the east coast, you may get sticker shot for the gas pump of the next couple of days. An explosion along the colonial pipeline in Alabama this week killed one worker. Look at the pictures there. It will likely cause significant supply disruptions in the southeast and the mid-Atlantic.

AAA predicts prices in those areas could jump. This is the same pipeline that was shut down in September after workers discovered a leak. That set prices in the southeast up by as much as 28 cents a gallon. We're already seeing increases prices in the Atlantic, Georgia metro area up 5 cents overnight. Greenville, Spartanburg in South Carolina, 4 cents overnight. Prices in these areas were moving lower before the explosion so these jumps are significant.

Workers across the country are finally bringing home bigger paychecks. Workers driving across the country are earning the fattest raises. Wages for truck drivers up 7.8 percent in October. This is from Glassdoor. That's the biggest increase of the 60 professional groups that follows. The median salary for trucking now $54,000 pays various depending on distance and employers. That's well above other blue collar jobs like machine operators and construction.

Overall pay increase 2.8 percent from the year before, 2.8 percent. We'll see what the government says about wages on Friday as we get the big October jobs report. We're expecting about 170,000 that new jobs, 4.9 percent of employment. But when you're seeing the wages start to increase, that's another sign that seven years and this recovery. The job market is healing and you're starting to feel it at your paycheck.

BERMAN: All right. We got six days to go until the election. Don't miss a second of it, "NEW DAY" picks up right now.

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TRUMP: I'm only a messenger. But you have to say I'm doing a pretty good job as a messenger.

CLINTON: By the time you add up all the people he's insulted, that's more than half the population of the United States.

TRUMP: If we don't repeal and replace ObamaCare, we will destroy American health care forever.

CLINTON: When I listen to Donald Trump dark and divisive vision, I sometimes don't know what country he's talking about.

TRUMP: You can change your vote to Donald Trump. We'll make America great again, OK?

CLINTON: This is a big deal. He cannot take anything, anybody, anywhere for granted.

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ANNOUNCER: This is in NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN" ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, November 2nd. 5:00 in the east.

Up first, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump making what sounds like their closing arguments. Clinton going after Trump's character and lashing out at his divisive vision.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN" ANCHOR: Donald Trump in particular staying on script and off news shows. Blasting ObamaCare, calling Clinton crooked. And here's a new pitch to voters who've already cast their votes in early balloting. He says, change your vote if you didn't vote for me. Now, only seven states allowed that. So please, check first.

We only have six days to go. Let's begin with CNN's Phil Mattingly, live in Orlando.

MATTINGLY: Good morning, Chris. Look, when it comes to the last five or six days. It's all been about one thing, James Comey's FBI letter to Capitol Hill. Clinton campaign attacking him repeatedly. Now, turning the page. The reality is this, from the Clinton campaign looks at the race, looks at the dynamics of the race. They realize they do better when it's ...