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Inside Politics
Michigan Auto Workers Remain Divided As Election Day Nears; Elon Musk Pouring Millions Into Electing Donald Trump; AOC Slams Trump, Musk: "They Are Making Fun Of Us". Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired October 22, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:33:06]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: ?In Michigan, more than 1.1 million voters have already cast their ballots. That's more than 20 percent of the vote total from the 2020 election already in with exactly two weeks to go.
CNN's John King recently returned to the state as part of his All Over The Map series and there are few voters watched more closely in Michigan than auto workers.
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JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Signs of the season, Macomb County, Michigan. These suburbs just north of Detroit are a blue-collar bellwether. Joseph Knowles about to send a message, about to defy his union leadership, about to vote Republican for president for the first time, about to vote for Donald Trump.
JOSEPH KNOWLES, MICHIGAN VOTER: At this point now, I'm desperate. So I'm willing to try anything right now to make sure that I can fulfill my responsibility and to take care of my wife and kids. That's all I care about.
KING (voice-over): Knowles is a union auto worker, one of 1,100 just laid off by Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler and Jeep. He blames corporate greed the most, but doesn't stop there.
KNOWLES: The second blame, I will put it on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Why? Because of the EV's mandates. I thought the Democratic Party was for the worker class people, the average Joe like me. That's what I thought.
KING (voice-over): There are more American auto jobs now than at any point of the Trump presidency. But auto workers supporting Trump here echo his attacks on Biden's clean energy incentives and his claim illegal immigrants are to blame for lost jobs.
KNOWLES: But if you do it the wrong way, I think you should get round up and just thrown out. I have no problem with that because it jeopardized my way of providing for my kids if they take jobs. KING (voice-over): Knowles waves off friends who call Trump racist, says he doesn't believe Vice President Harris is up to the job, and he spars with family members who say he should stay a Democrat.
[12:35:03]
KNOWLES: Oh, man, I took it from my mom, from my auntie, cousins, my sister. They came at me.
KING (voice-over): Bill Govier is a 30 plus year union worker at Ford, and he has this side business cleaning car underbodies. When we first visited four months ago, he was a fan of Robert Kennedy Jr. Now, he will cast his third ballot for Trump.
BILL GOVIER, MICHIGAN VOTER: RFK joining Trump effectively, I couldn't script it any better the way I would like it to be. I love the idea of Donald Trump being the commander in chief. I love the idea of how Donald Trump handles the nefarious characters in the world.
KING (voice-over): Govier believes more than half of UAW members at his Ford plant will vote Trump. He says Harris laughs too much and he can't take her seriously.
GOVIER: So what is it? You're the incumbent who wouldn't do anything different, or are you the underdog that wants change?
KING (voice-over): And he says critics take Trump too literally.
GOVIER: You know, he does it for effect. I don't believe that Trump really believes someone's eating cats and dogs. I don't believe that he's going to call the National Guard out and at gunpoint round up every migrant and force them across the border. I don't believe that for a second.
KING (voice-over): Count this early vote in Wayne County for Harris, and count Tonya Rincon as a Democrat who long ago lost patience with Ford co-workers who shrug off Trump attacks on immigrants, on judges, on vote counts, on critics.
TONYA RINCON, MICHIGAN VOTER: There's a lot of people that they just take the crazy with Trump as it's baked in the cake and we're just willing to ignore it. Whereas if we heard that out of our loved ones, we'd be like, OK, grandpa, it's time to take your keys.
KING (voice-over): Rincon just retired from the Wayne assembly plant and is helping the UAW register and turn out voters. She says her June bet that her local would split 50-50 in a Trump-Biden race is still about right with Harris now atop the Democratic ticket.
RINCON: There's a little bit more enthusiasm among some of my female co-workers. A couple of my male co-workers are pretty ambivalent about Harris. We may have lost a tiny margin of support because sexism is a real thing. You know, they're just like, you know, I'm not sure she can do it. I don't think the country's ready for a female president.
KING (voice-over): Walter Robinson Jr. says there's more energy since the switch to Harris, but also more offensive chatter on the assembly line.
WALTER ROBINSON JR., UAW MEMBER: They have been saying some very disparaging things about the Vice President. Things about how she rolls up through the ranks and some of the things that she might have done. They only had to say that to me once before they understood they can't say that to me again. You know, so they pair what he puts out there.
ROBINSON: DJ Furious (ph).
KING (voice-over): Robinson has a side job as a DJ. And trust he knows how to read the room.
ROBINSON: Before I told you it was about either. Right now, I would probably say it's about 60-40. I believe that it is a very good chance that we -- the Harris-Walz ticket will come out on the winning end.
KING (voice-over): Time to knock on doors and lobby co-workers is running short. Labor leaders are for Harris, but the rank and file are split. Michigan's blue collar battle competitive to the end.
John King, CNN, Wayne, Michigan.
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BASH: And coming up, Elon Musk is pouring millions into his push to elect Donald Trump. Does he expect a return on his very large MAGA investment? We'll talk about that next.
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BASH: Elon Musk is betting big, really betting big on Donald Trump. And Trump just can't stop praising Elon Musk at his rallies.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And I love Elon, by the way. They said, you know Elon Musk? I said, I do. In fact, he endorsed me, like, so beautifully. His endorsement was one of the most beautifully written endorsements. That's in between those rocket ships that go up and down all the time. I mean, how cool was that, though, right? Yes.
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BASH: Now, just a reminder, Musk is the richest person on the planet, worth more than $200 billion. So, the tens of millions of dollars he is pouring into the Trump campaign isn't even a rounding error for Musk. But part of his plan, a legally dubious maneuver to encourage voter registration with a million dollar a day sweepstakes for people who sign a petition he created.
Now the question is, is this bromance a real friendship? Is it transactional? A business partnership? It's a little bit of both. My panel is back with me and we are lucky to have Frank still with us who wrote a terrific piece for The Atlantic, and it is called, "Trump May Be Musk's Trojan Horse." That is the subtitle of it. What do you think Trump, excuse me, Musk stands to gain here?
FRANK FOER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: So, first of all, Elon Musk is incredibly entangled with the government. He has billions of dollars of government contracts, SpaceX, does a lot of NASA's core work. He's got all these contracts with the national security state. He's under investigation for various things. So he definitely needs a patron in the Oval Office.
And if Trump gets in, it's an incredible business opportunity because Trump is somebody who practices a kind of cronyist type of mindset. And so there's that. And then there's this other part of what Musk is probably thinking at this time, is that he's somebody who comes from Silicon Valley and there is this Silicon Valley libertarian fantasy about how the smartest, most super intelligent person, should be the person who has their hands on the levers of government.
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And so, Trump has invited Musk into the heart of the government. He says, you're going to be the guy who's going to get to redesign government to be more efficient. He said he's going to be the secretary of cost cutting. And so for somebody who is a monomaniac like Elon Musk, it's an incredible opportunity to not just get rich off the government, but to impose himself on America.
BASH: And let me just sort of supplement what you just said in a couple of ways. First, I'll show a quote from your piece. "If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own super intelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government, not to mention the business opportunity of the century."
And just on that really important note about the entanglement --
FOER: Yes.
BASH: -- that Musk and all of his billions have, and reliance that they have with contracts from the government. $15.4 billion, that is the amount of government contracts according to the New York Times, that his companies have gotten from the government.
FOER: Right. So he's already deeply entangled. He does all the stuff with the national security state. He supplies communications for the Pentagon. He has classified contracts that we don't actually know the true substance of. He has a $1.8 billion contract that we think is with the national reconnaissance office.
And then if you're the guy who's redesigning government, and you're going to use SpaceX as the template, which means that you're going to privatize all of these things that the government used to do and hand them off to companies. And then his companies are sitting there waiting with this expertise and these relationships that they've already cultivated.
BASH: And then there's the way that he appears to be connecting with Trump voters. Let's listen to some of those voters who my colleague Donie O'Sullivan spoke with at some Trump events.
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SHRAGA FEINBERG, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: He's just so inspirational. What an amazing guy. What I think he offers is being able to use his platform to bring the truth to more people, people that may not otherwise even give a crap about politics.
DEVIN MOUSSO, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: I was definitely a bit of a Trump hater, I guess.
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So in 2020, you weren't a Trump guy?
MOUSSO: No, no, no. I think I was more on the down the middle, didn't really care about it. I felt everything's just too crazy. I don't want to get involved.
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
MOUSSO: And this is, I guess, is the most involved I'm getting. I haven't gone to any other rallies, and I probably won't.
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MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, the big question is how much is everything that he is doing right now, pouring millions of dollars into his Super PAC. Obviously being a surrogate and a big name surrogate at that for Donald Trump. How much of a difference will that potentially make?
You raised the question of if he is successful at helping to propel Donald Trump back to the White House. I will say, even at a moment like this. When Democrats are so reticent to underestimate anything that Republicans are doing on the other side, this is one area, the paid voter contact that Elon Musk is working on, where there is serious skepticism.
It is really, really expensive. It is not scalable. They do not think that that can replace legitimate voter contact and ground game basically that Democrats feel pretty good about. But, again, this idea that he is out there, he has such a big name ID, he's just famous and has a celebrity status that Donald Trump does, frankly, I think that's where we don't know how much of a difference that will ultimately end up making.
BASH: I want you to listen to what AOC said about Musk and about Donald Trump and how they connect with her argument.
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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: When you have a billionaire just dangling a million bucks to those of us and many of us who are struggling to make ends meet, if they dance for him. You've got Donald Trump putting on a little McDonald's costume because he thinks that's what people do.
They're not trying to empathize with us. They are making fun of us.
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AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Yes, I mean, and that's the pushback against us, at the people who are not already sold on Elon Musk. It's this idea that here you have this billionaire trying to buy the election and that, you know, the American people shouldn't stand for that.
I will say that, you know, I think this reporting is very -- it's so pivotal and it's so important. If, you know, Trump does take the White House and Musk gets in there and tries to make government efficient, though. I mean, I heard those things from Jared Kushner. He -- I remember sitting there, he was going to fix government.
I want to see it happen, because it seems like when Silicon Valley comes in there and they have all these grand ideas about fixing government and making it more efficient, and it seems like that's where those ideas go to die. So, yes.
HANS NICHOLS, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Well, look, I'm going to -- just a quick question for you. Do you know if Elon has changed Trump's opinion on electric vehicles? Because that to me, when you look at the core of Trump's wealth, it's -- I'm sorry, Elon's wealth, it's EVs, it's Tesla. And you don't see many Republicans bragging about their latest Tesla.
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You see plenty of Democrats bragging (ph).
BASH: Yes.
NICHOLS: It's like this great -- so is there any -- and there are all these tax credits that people are going to get for EVs, so do we know if Trump, where Trump is on that?
FOER: Well, I think that actually Musk is skeptical of those tax credits and subsidies for EVs, even as he profits from them, because he has a suspicion that the Biden administration has been putting their thumb on the scale for Ford and (INAUDIBLE) --
NICHOLS: Got it.
FOER: -- against Tesla. But I do think the Jared Kushner thing is actually very interesting, because Kushner may not have reinvented government, but he certainly found a lot of ways to leverage his connections --
BASH: Yes.
FOER: -- in order to get personally --
RASCOE: Yes.
FOER: -- wealthy.
BASH: All right, and we didn't even have time to talk about what Elon Musk has done with Twitter. The fact that Jelly Roll has now gone off of Twitter because he says it's too toxic. That's a whole different conversation.
Don't go anywhere, everybody. We'll be right back.
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BASH: Election Day may technically be two weeks away, but more than 18 million Americans have already cast their ballots. That could be more than 10 percent of the total electorate this year. Today, early voting begins at the crucial swing state of Wisconsin and neighboring Michigan.
More than 1.1 million people have already made their choice. And at perhaps the most critical of all blue wall states, more than 921,000 early votes have been cast in Pennsylvania. And check out all the votes down in Georgia. According to the secretary of state there, at least one in four Peach State voters have already cast their ballots.
Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a break.
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