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Trump Intensifies Anti-Immigrant Message On The Trail; Trump Suggest Using Military Against "Enemy From Within"; WAPO: FEMA Officials Relocated Amid Report Of "Armed Militia"; Harris Makes Direct Appeal To Black Voters; Harris Targets Back Men With New Economic Plan; Rep. Clyburn: I'm 'Concerned' About Black Men Staying Home Or Voting For Trump. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 14, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on "Inside Politics", fearmongering. Donald Trump is using violent and dehumanizing language to claim without evidence that criminals will invade America if he doesn't win. It's dark, dangerous, and an integral part of his get out the boat strategy.

Plus, blue wall blitz. Kamala Harris is camping out in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and she's making a direct plea to black men, as Democrats fear they could sit this election out or even vote for Donald Trump.

And securing the vote, we have new reporting this hour on officials in swing states across the country working aggressively to guard against post-election drama.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics."

We start with Donald Trump's closing campaign message. It focuses on the same anti-immigrant rhetoric that fueled his rise in politics. Here's just some of what we heard over the past few days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world. They're very, very, very sick with highly contagious disease, and they're let into our country to infect our country.

To expedite removals of Tren de Aragua, and other savage gangs. There are many savage gangs. Ms.-13 is probably even -- even meaner. We're going to throw them out so far, you wouldn't believe it.

From prisons and jails, insane asylums, mental institutions, from Venezuela, from the Congo, all over, and she's resettled them into your communities to prey upon innocent American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: His violent language isn't just about immigrants, here's how Donald Trump responded to a heckler at his rally in California on Saturday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Back home to mommy. She goes back home to mommy. Was that you, darling? And then she gets hell knocked out of it. Her mother's a big fan of ours. You know that. Right? Her father, her mother. No. You always have that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And then yesterday on Fox, he said Democrats are more dangerous than foreign adversaries like Russia and China.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they're being inundated.

But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the -- and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary, by the military, because they can't let that happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Just want to underscore what you just heard. The former president, candidate for president, is suggesting deploying the military to handle people he calls radical left lunatics on Election Day.

We've got an amazing group of reporters with me to talk about all of this and more. PBS' Laura Barron-Lopez; Semafor's Dave Weigel; Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, and CNN's very own Jeff Zeleny. Well, happy Monday, everybody.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Happy Monday. Here we go.

BASH: Here we go. It's really unbelievable and believable all at the same time. Jeff Zeleny, can you just kind of give us the big picture of what we just heard and where the Trump campaign strategy is? Because a lot of times when Trump talks, it's like, OK, he's just being Trump, and he's kind of going off script and not exactly what his campaign wants him to do. That's not what this is.

ZELENY: This is the script.

BASH: Right. ZELENY: I mean, this is, exactly what his plan to find those voters who may not be -- you know, they like him. They're on his side, but they may not be motivated to vote to get out and vote. I mean, he is trying to use immigration, mixing it in with crime as a rallying cry to his base.

This is absolutely a base election and trying to widen the base because he knows that, he has a ceiling at probably 47, 48 percent or so, which is enough to win an election. But to broaden out his base and find some of those, voters who are necessarily -- sporadic voters and other things to try and gin them up.

One difference here is he is not the president of the United States. He's not the commander-in-chief. He cannot mobilize the military in November.

[12:05:00]

If he wins, he can on January 21st. But his calls to mobilize the military if the election goes bad, that is not going to happen. Joe Biden is the commander-in-chief. So that is one difference.

But look, vis-a-vis the big race, 3 weeks out here, the big picture is he is trying to inspire and rally people who agree with him rather than, spend any time in the middle. Although he is in the Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs today, the question hanging over all this, does this rhetoric help Kamala Harris? Up until now, it really hasn't.

BASH: Yeah. But I agree. Obviously, that's an important point. He's not the commander-in-chief, he doesn't control the military, but there are militias that listen to him. I mean, just look at North Carolina, which we'll talk about in a second.

I want to show everybody some of the overall vote count of Republicans recently, including Donald Trump to kind of give people a sense of what the Trump strategy is. You can see there, John McCain, this is obviously the popular vote, 60 million votes; Mitt Romney, 61. Donald Trump, 63. Donald Trump, who lost in 2020, got 74 million votes.

And, Dave Weigel, I want to read what, a text from our friend and colleague, David Chalian to me this morning who I thought said it so brilliantly. They mined more ground of Trump aligned areas and struck more oil, and they believe that there is more of that oil to strike. Meaning, there are more people who haven't voted. It's not just about pulling over, swing voters or Democratic voters. It's people who haven't voted, and that is a big, big part of what they're trying to do.

DAVE WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Oh, that's been their theory for months. That explains his media strategy, which even as they were goading, the vice president to do more traditional media, they were doing a lot of friendly media that reaches audience that don't trust them in the MSM, Joe Rogan listeners, et cetera, et cetera. Not Rogan himself. The podcast in that lane. And also nonwhite voters. Because one thing I'd add to Jeff is, the immigration message undergirds everything, and it is a conversation starter in these sorts of media. What is his plan? And I'm not saying all these plans would work. But what is his plan to lower prices, get mass deportation. What is the plan to make FEMA funded so that it's able to respond to disasters?

Well, immigration. That's the problem. Mass deportation. What is the what is the solution for crime? It is mass deportation. And that is a message that it might get, a hostile reception in some media. Maybe the Philadelphia Inquirer, I don't think, is going to review that very well if he says in Bucks County.

But in the media, he's reaching out to into the voters he's reaching out to, a lot of trust there. Yes. I don't trust the mainstream media. I bet this I bet this is true, what he's saying. I bet there are as many migrants in the country as he's saying.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICS ANALYST: But there are voters I mean, I disagree a little bit with Jeff just based on some of the voters that I've talked to. Because there are Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020 who are not voting for him this time around because of his rhetoric.

BASH: Is it because of his rhetoric or because of January 6th?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, it's not just because of January 6th, but it's because of his continued rhetoric saying that he didn't do anything wrong. There was a Mormon that I just spoke to, who said that the fact that Trump couldn't even say that he did something wrong or regretted what happened on January 6th, just further pushed him away from him. And it also is the immigration rhetoric.

It's -- and all of that is under this banner of character. And the fact that he's losing these, you know, conservative, independent minded, you know, more to the center Republicans that used to vote for John McCain and Mitt Romney. And now are there enough of them in the swing states? That's a big question that Harris is trying to answer. But she's winning a lot more of them, potentially than Biden did.

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICS REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah. I think that she's really giving voters, posing a central question of not just were you better 4 years ago than you are now, but who do you want to run this country? What type of person do you want to run this country? Do you want a chaos magnet? Somebody who delves in these kind of racist tropes, who talks about mass deportation when you really get to the nuts and bolts of it, that's going to be an incredibly difficult thing for any president to do?

Or do you want somebody who is going to provide you what the Harris campaign feels that she's giving is kind of the steady, even keeled leadership that's not ideologically based, but it's about pragmatism and partisan.

But I would say back to Jeff's point, though, I think a huge part of, the conversation is that Trump is going back to his messaging from 2016. Yes. It is evolved because he is evolved as a person, and the country has evolved since he first ran in 2016, but it is totally a red meat based of -- red meat for his base because of what motivated in 2016, he is now talking about it again. I mean, Ms.-13, when was the last time we heard that?

BASH: Well, I would argue it's devolved, not evolved --

WRIGHT: True.

BASH: Because he is going deeper and darker.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

BASH: Again, intentionally so.

ZELENY: Because he's trying to find some of those voters. I mean, to Laura's point, there are a lot of the independent, moderate Republicans who aren't going to vote for him. That's why he is trying to find likeminded people who maybe haven't voted before. So -- and that is the question there. I was in Arizona last week, and that is, ground zero for that. I know both of you guys have just spent some time there as well.

BASH: Yeah, we're going to talk about Arizona in a minute, but you're exactly right. I just want to get to -- I feel like this is one of those times where we can say all things can be true. He is intentionally going for this sort of the author authoritarian look, if you will.

[12:10:00]

Because they believe, and they're even surprised that it not only helps with people who haven't voted in a while or maybe ever, not just sort of white working class, but African American, Hispanic. It's a socioeconomic situation that they're finding in the Trump campaign rather than a ethnic situation, or even maybe even a geographical situation.

And yet some of what he says can be really dangerous in the real world even right now. Just "The Washington Post" headline about what he said last week and the week before about North Carolina Hurricane. Recovery officials in North Carolina relocated amid report of armed militia.

According to a FEMA spokeswoman, some FEMA teams helping disaster survivors apply for assistance are working from a secure disaster recovery center because of the threats that they are receiving. And they are receiving such threats because of the lies that Donald Trump and others are spewing to these people who genuinely need and can get help from the federal government.

WEIGEL: Yeah. And that and that's a couple weeks after Springfield, Ohio. There were threats received there. The same sort of elevation of an issue without much of a consideration for how it was being affecting people in the town, and then sort of a blase response when there when there were threats to the school saying, well, those are for foreign actors tonight from Ohio. That wasn't that wasn't serious. All of it also rebuts what the Harris campaign is saying and doing. Because if you're in Arizona, if you watch TV there, it's pretty nonstop paid media from the Trump campaign that's negative about her policies. Positive from Harris. The Harris positives are often people who work for Trump don't support him anymore.

And the Trump response is, that's right, they don't work for me because I'll be unleashed in a second curve. I can get stuff done for you.

BASH: Just quickly because we're out of time. I want to just -- I don't want to lose sight of what Mark Milley told, Bob Woodward. "No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he's a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country."

Now this is according to a Woodward book. We have not seen him come out, sort of publicly. Certainly hasn't endorsed, Kamala Harris, but this is the kind of rhetoric, and the point of view of somebody who was the chairman of the joint chiefs when Donald Trump was president.

BARRON-LOPEZ: That's right. And there's, Donald Trump's rhetoric that you played earlier, Dana. I mean, he is saying out loud what he is going to do and this idea that somehow not to take him seriously, I think is ridiculous at this stage, you know, 10 years in.

And he is saying that he would very well use the Insurrection Act to be able to round up migrants, undocumented migrants that have lived here for years, and potentially even use it against American citizens. And it should be --

WRIGHT: But I think the last point is that voters don't necessarily take him seriously. It's not the media, although you could argue whether or not the media is covering him perfectly or not. But enough voters don't necessarily take the things that he is saying seriously, and that presents a problem for the Harris campaign.

BASH: Yeah. All right. We're going to talk a lot more about the Harris campaign, what she is doing in general, but also specifically their strategy today and tomorrow. Why is she doing worse than Joe Biden did in 2020, specifically with black men? We'll talk about it and what she is trying to do to change that, after a break.

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[12:15:00]

BASH: Vice President Harris is spending the final weeks of the campaign making a direct appeal to black voters who worry Democrats aren't fully on board with her, and they worry that black men aren't fully on board with her candidacy. One tactic is hitting Trump's record on race relations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: When he was a landlord and would not rent to black families, sued for it when he took out a full page ad in the New York Times against those five teenagers, black and Latino who were innocent --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep.

HARRIS: Saying they should be executed, the first black president of the United States, and he had birthed their lives. And now you look at black immigrants, legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and he gets on a debate stage and says they're eating their pets? Come on. This man is dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: She's also unveiling a new economic plan today that's tailored specifically to appeal to black men. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has the details. Priscilla.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Vice President is clearly trying to lock down her coalition by doubling down on black voter outreach and trying to fill the void when it comes to her economic agenda and laying out what her proposals are. That includes, according to, campaign officials, forgivable loans to entrepreneurs up to $20,000, apprenticeship promotion, and legalizing recreational marijuana among some other measures.

Now taken together, this is a sweeping plan, but it is also an indication of how the campaign is trying to shore up support among black voters. Because while she still wins the majority of black voters in polls, it's the erosion that are concerned about when compared to previous election cycles.

And in addition to that it's the fear that some black voters may decide to sit out the election and not vote or to vote for former president Donald Trump.

[12:20:00]

So, she has been engaged in interviews, all of this today in extension as well, of her visit in North Carolina where yesterday in Greenville, she attended a church service and over the course of the weekend met with black faith leaders and elected officials.

But part of her message here in Erie, Pennsylvania tonight is also going to be, something rather new line of attack against former President Donald Trump, suggesting that he is not being transparent about his medical records or his fitness for office by, for example, sitting out that 60 Minutes interview. So you can expect that she's going to tease that line of attack out more over the course of the week.

But certainly her travel over this week is going to be very focused again on appealing to black voters tomorrow attending that radio town hall with Charlamagne tha God who have most of the listeners are black voters, and then also going to Michigan multiple times this week. So clearly, the campaign, again, trying to lock down that coalition, knowing just that we are in that final stretch. Dana. BASH: Thank you so much for that reporting, Priscilla. Appreciate it. And, this is a theme that I, focused on State of the Union yesterday. I want you to listen to what both Senator Raphael Warnock and Congressman James Clyburn said about this question of black men and black men not being as enthusiastic about her campaign as they have been in the past about other Democratic candidates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): I don't think that there'll be significant numbers of black men showing up for Donald Trump. We got to talk to everybody because our coalition is broad. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are doing the work that every candidate has to do. You got to earn people's vote.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Yes. I am concerned about black men staying home or voting for Trump. Black men, like everybody else, want to know exactly what I can expect, from Harris administration --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What are you hearing from your sources?

WRIGHT: Yeah. I think that there is concern, not just with black men, but, the Vice President's softer numbers with black voters in general, particularly when you compare them to 2020 or other previous cycles of what Democrats were able to get. In part, because of this idea that I reported on in length is that a lot of folks did not feel that her campaign put enough emphasis or attention on courting black voters since August.

I wrote a story last month about how the black political class across the country felt that she wasn't putting enough money into messaging for black voters and certainly not enough of that messaging or that money was going through black vendors.

So this is an issue that the campaign has had been dealing with for months. And, also, it's an issue, particularly when we talk about black men, that current President Donald -- I mean, current President Biden dealt with when he was still at the top of the ticket. We report on the fact that men in general, were becoming more apathetic to Biden's campaign, particularly when we were talking about the economy.

And so, certainly, there I think there are a couple of different black pollsters who believe that black men will come home at the end of the day because, black men and black women typically vote, largely Democratic and kind of the same numbers. And they don't believe that Donald Trump's insistence on kind of quoting this population will be successful.

But this is not a new issue for the campaign. It's something that they've been dealing with for months and that, in fact, I think people would say that maybe the campaign is just too late.

BASH: Right.

WRIGHT: They've been coming to this issue just now.

BASH: Forgive me. They've been certainly hearing about it.

WRIGHT: Yeah, exactly.

BASH: I mean, if I'm -- f I've been hearing about it as a reporter --

WRIGHT: Listen, I've been hearing about it for months.

BASH: Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure.

WRIGHT: OK? Months.

BASH: And we should also just underscore something that Senator Warnock said, and he's totally right. It's not as if the majority of black voters are going to suddenly either stay home or vote for Donald Trump. The majority of black voters are expected to vote for Kamala Harris. But this is a race that is expected to be on the margin.

So like so many other demographics, the margins matter. And this just gives you what you were talking about, Jasmine, the numbers to look at. If you look at all black voters: Biden, plus 75; Clinton -- Hillary Clinton, plus 81. The polling right now from "The New York Times" poll is plus 63. That's a big marginal difference. And then it's even the same story, may perhaps even a little bit more so, among black male voters.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah. And that's a big question is whether or not this curiosity that some young black men, older black men may have about Donald Trump, whether or not it holds. Because right now in polls, it's showing that on the economy and on a variety of other issues, they seem to be a little bit more in tune with Trump versus Kamala Harris.

When I was talking to black voters, specifically black men in Wisconsin and Milwaukee a few months ago, you know, they said that they wanted to hear from more from Harris on what she would specifically do for them on the economy. They felt like they hadn't seen as many of those specifics, which is why you see the campaign doing this now.

But, again, they heard voters like that were saying that around the Democratic National Convention, so back in August.

BASH: Yeah.

[12:25:00]

BARRON-LOPEZ: And those same voters, you know, were also saying that they thought that they -- they wanted her to also address her past more in terms of mass incarceration and then the Biden Administration passed with that as well. So those are some fronts where they want to go.

BASH: In fact, I played a sound bite from, one of John King's trips. He talked to a black male voter in Wisconsin saying exactly that. He was worried about the fact that she was a prosecutor. I played it for, Congressman Clyburn yesterday. And he said, well, we should want, people of color to be in the position of prosecutors because they understand our position. So they had definitely have an answer for things. It's just a question of addressing it.

Let's talk about the news, which is that, the Vice President is going to sit down on Fox News. This was just announced by Fox News. It's going to happen on Wednesday. She's going to sit down with Bret Baier. According to Fox, it's her first formal sit down interview on that network ever.

ZELENY: Right. She did not do it when she was running for president in 2019, briefly on the Democratic side or as a sitting vice president is significant. It's going to be in Pennsylvania. It shows one thing, that she is willing to take more risks because they believe that this is a deadlocked race on the margin and she needs to do something to try and shake this up.

That's also a sign of confidence in her and that she has performed, pretty well, most people agree, on 60 Minutes on all of this batting practice that's been going on, through podcasts and other things. But, look, now is the time. People are going to be voting very soon. Some are. Actually, millions are. And this is a sign that she is -- again, we see so many lessons from 2016. I think this is yet one more example that they're putting everything out there.

At the end of this, there's not going to be, oh, she didn't go to Michigan, she didn't go to Wisconsin, she didn't do this or that. They're doing everything. I think it's significant.

WEIGEL: Yeah. How did this start? Democrats not going on Fox. It's really 2007, 2008 primary where Democrats agreed not to participate in a Fox News debate, and then they kept boycotting it for years, years.

The media environment has changed. She's reacted to that in lots of ways. We're talking about the last segment in Trump's outreach to podcast. This is another one that you just -- she -- there are narratives about Harris that happen every day, and some are just negative stuff. Some are not getting the word out about what the administration's record is for black men. That's part of the their plan.

Some of its negative stuff that flies out there that she doesn't respond to on the media that conservatives are listening to. Just complete fake stuff. That won't travel very widely. So this seems like a response to that too, and it's not what Democrats did for almost a generation.

BASH: Yeah.

WEIGEL: Because they thought they could avoid Fox.

BASH: All right. Standby. Coming up, election lies, they are incredibly dangerous, they are widespread. We're going to tell you how officials across the country are trying to fight back next.

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