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Inside Politics

Final Sprint: Harris, Trump Blitzing The Battlegrounds; Today: Harris, Trump Both Campaigning In Wisconsin; Trump Escalates Violent Rhetoric With New Attack On Liz Cheney; Cheney On Trump: "This Is How Dictators Destroy Free Nations"; Georgia Officials Warn Of Fake Viral Video Claiming Voter Fraud; MAGA Activists Are Preparing To Undermine The Election If Trump Loses; Trump & Allies Push Debunked Claims Of Voter Fraud In PA; Trump on FRK, Jr.: "I Want Him To Work On Health". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 01, 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 HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, the final countdown. It's T minus four days and 62 million Americans have already cast their ballot. As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump lift the battleground with their closing arguments to that little, little sliver of persuadable voters.

Plus, RFK Jr. is known for pushing wild, debunked conspiracy about vaccines. And now Donald Trump says he will let Kennedy quote, do anything he wants with health and vaccine policy if Trump is back in the White House.

And $2 billion, that's how much has been poured into presidential political ads this election season. We'll break down the ones that work with the best two political strategists. Two of them, at least, will be here.

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

You just over 80 hours left in one of the tightest races in presidential history. And both candidates are heading all over the battleground map. Kamala Harris is making three stops in Wisconsin today. Donald Trump is also courting the cheese head vote and adding another event in must win Michigan.

And check out where else they are heading before election day. You can probably sense a theme here. Harris and Trump may be hitting the same swing states, but their closing messages are worlds apart.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As president, I pledge to you to seek common ground and commonsense solutions to the challenges you face. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress. DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will stop the massive criminal. And you see it. You see it, the criminal invasion, horrible, some horrible, deathly people. We're not going to allow it. They're destroying our country. We will stop it immediately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Jeff Zeleny is live for us in Milwaukee. That is where Donald Trump will be later today. Jeff, you and I have covered just a few of these presidential races. I want to know from you, you have been out on the trail so much, talking to voters, been at these rallies. How you would kind of headline this race, where it stands right now? Give us a headline of a sense for our viewers four days out.

JEFF ZELENY, CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, I think the headline from Wisconsin would be wild card Wisconsin. There are so many variables playing into the final weekend and hours of campaigning. And there's our feelings of anxiety, certainly uncertainty, no clear leader. And that is true when you talk to voters.

I met one voter yesterday, a Republican voting for Harris, she said, Wisconsin always decides things by a sliver of a sliver, and that is absolutely true. Of all the blue wall states, Wisconsin has been the closest in the last two presidential elections.

So, this is something of a tie breaker, if you will. Donald Trump won in '16, he lost in '20, but this is not a repeat of 2016. And here is why, Vice President Harris is on her way to Wisconsin for three stops right now. She was here on Wednesday.

We covered the 2016 campaign. We never stepped foot in Wisconsin in the entire general election. So, this is not 2016. This is not the Hillary Clinton campaign. However, so many different variables. But in the final hours here, a couple things we are watching, the suburbs around Milwaukee. Here the WOW counties, if you will.

How many Republican or moderate or independent voters is Kamala Harris going to get? However, in Dane County, Deep Blue Madison. How many suburban Republicans, independents will Donald Trump get? So those are the two places where, you know, are really going to drive the decisions here.

But tonight, there is no question. As Donald Trump is speaking in the same arena where he accepted the nomination in July, everything has changed. His closing message is far darker than it was the last two elections. And you and I were both there. We remember how he issued a call at the beginning of the speech for civility. He had just been survived an assassination attempt.

Now, of course, this campaign is closing in a very dark fashion that may motivate some Harris voters. It may motivate some Trump voters. But the bottom line is, even though more than a million voters here have cast their ballots, there's a feeling of uncertainty on both sides.

[12:05:00]

BASH: And speaking of the voters who matter the most here, what are you hearing from those you talk to there?

ZELENY: So many conversations this week, and we've been following some voters as they've made their decisions. And listen to the reasoning behind how one man, Dave Flannery is supporting Kamala Harris, and Caroline Quinlan is supporting Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE FLANNERY, WISCONSIN VOTER SUPPORTING HARRIS: The discriminatory talk and all that sort of thing. It's -- I don't believe that's who we are. I'm going to vote for a person that I think has the vision that wants to expand women's rights.

CAROLINE QUINLAN WISCONSIN VOTER SUPPORTING TRUMP: It's the most obvious choice to me, because it comes down to issues and what those issues are -- and again, it's the economy, the border. I think we really have to take a look at the border and security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, for all of the polling and for all of the suggestion that, you know, there is a gender gap, there is no doubt about it. But our conversations also defies some of those statistics. Many women supporting Donald Trump, many men supporting Kamala Harris, but it's on issues, the economy, inflation, immigration, so important.

But Dana, one thing as we finished our final sort of drive through Wisconsin, the gas price is below $3 a gallon. The lowest at any point I can remember this year, it is nationally as well. Could that have a factor? Again, so many wild cards hanging over this Wisconsin race. But one thing is clear, both Trump and Harris see it as their path to victory. That's why both of them will be here tonight.

BASH: I love when Jeff Zeleny plays gas, buddy. But more importantly, I love hearing from you and your reporting and analysis from the road today and every day. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it. Joining me now at the table are other trip for reporters, Hans Nichols of Axios, the Cook Report's Amy Walter and The National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. Thank you so much all of you for being here.

Amy, you wrote in -- I think it just came out today that this is yet another year, Donald Trump defines the election.

AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT WITH AMY WALTER: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of remarkable to think that we are now in our third election where Donald Trump is on the ballot. And it looked at some points during this year that maybe this election was going to be a referendum on Biden or Bidenomics. Certainly, the economy and what the Biden administration has done or hasn't done is a big factor here. But we're closing out this campaign much as we closed out, well the last two little campaigns. Talking about Donald Trump, and more specifically, the fact that he's not talking as much about the issue where he is the strongest, which is the economy.

Instead, we had -- how many days have we been talking about garbage, whether it was the Puerto Rico garbage question, or whether it was Biden and whether there was a missing apostrophe. That is not -- I don't think where you want to be closing, if you are the Trump campaign closing on outrageousness and who is saying what versus having a very clear and disciplined message on who's going to be stronger on the economy.

BASH: You are nodding.

RAMESH PONNURU, EDITOR, NATIONAL REVIEW: Yes. I mean, for the entirety of this election year, the conventional wisdom, which I think has had some reasonable basis for it, has been that to the extent this is a referendum on Trump. It's bad for Trump. He loses a referendum on himself.

And yes, it looks like it is shaping up as a referendum on Trump, and Trump is doing quite well. He's incredibly competitive. His favorable numbers have risen. He's in a better position in a lot of the polling than he was in 2020 or in 2016.

BASH: I'm going to -- and yet, you're and yet, he continues to say things not that -- not just that are dark, which is intentional, because he's trying to find never before voters and voters who are low propensity voters. And do it with the kind of rhetoric that we keep hearing from him on the -- on the economy, on immigration, but it's also -- it continues to be very personal.

I want you all to listen to the entirety of what Donald Trump said about Liz Cheney while sitting with Tucker Carlson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine-barrel shooting at her. OK, let's see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face. You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, she will. Let's send it -- lets send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:00]

BASH: So, Trump's campaign put out a statement saying that people who are outraged about that are taking it out of context. Well, you just heard for yourself, the entire context of what he said. He is talking about her as a warmonger using very, very violent imagery of her facing guns and an assassination.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah. A lot of times Donald Trump walks up to the line, and then it's sort of up to this big debate on what he actually sent -- what he actually said, what he meant, the intention. Their argument from the Trump campaign is very clear. And that is, this is in the context of someone who likes talking about wars but is not willing to fight in one.

I agree with you. It's hot language. I also don't think any of us at this table ever going to be able to finally tell what the intent was and what the real effect on this is. But again, very, very strong language.

PONNURU: But could I add, though. A few months ago, Trump did amplify a statement on his Truth Social website, saying that Cheney should be tried before a military tribunal for treason, which of course, carries a possible sentence of death. That I think was more unequivocal and worse, but this has more violent imagery.

BASH: Interesting. Worse because why?

PONNURU: Worse because, in this case, there is this chance that he's making the old, actually leftwing arguments about chicken hawks not being willing to serve by sending other kids to the military.

BASH: Now, the way Liz Cheney reacted to this is quite telling. I'll read her tweet. She said. This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.

Now, that is the Liz Cheney we have heard from since January 6. If we can just put that back up on the screen real quick, because I want to highlight one other thing, you see it's highlighted for you. Hashtag, women will not be silenced. She is bringing together the two arguments that we have heard her make side by side with Kamala Harris on the campaign trail.

Donald Trump is not fit to be president, which is why I as a conservative and with Kamala Harris, and women don't forget that this is not something that we should -- we should stand for. You can do what you want to do despite what maybe your friends and neighbors and your husband are telling you to do if you're in the reddit of areas, right?

WALTER: Well, I mean, again, this has not been a subtle campaign on either side. I'm trying to speak to the gender divide, whether it's Donald Trump talking to Joe Rogan or whether it is -- this tweet here from Liz Cheney and the sort of leaning in on women. You know, the thing that we're seeing, at least in the national polls, is that the gender gap right now looks a lot like -- it looked like in 2016.

Now that was the reason that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a narrow margin. And why -- again, if the polls -- the polls are right now showing Harris with a very narrow margin. The question going forward is what that gender gap looks like in the individual states?

And so, right now, you know, it doesn't look from the national polling like we're seeing this surge where she's going to get more women than any other candidate has gotten, at least nationally. Where she is doing worse than, say Biden, but similarly to where Clinton was is among men.

BASH: So, you're talking about the gender gap in the poll and which we've talked about a lot. Let's just quickly look at the gender gap again when it comes to early voting. Again, this is early voting. It all could look very different, once we get the full vote on election day. But there definitely is a gender gap that's probably the least prominent in Nevada.

So, think about that, and then think about the other dynamic. One of the many dynamics we've been talking about, which is Gen Z and how they're going to vote. And something that the Washington Post did a story on, which is how young women who are voting age now are just finding out about the Access Hollywood tape and posting about it on TikTok.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: And so, what you see there is, you know, a young woman combing her hair, but also the -- but also the type on it is effectively. This is who my dad is voting for.

NICHOLS: It's surprising me that there are a lot of things about young people because they have young people in this house. That surprised me about young people. The fact that they haven't heard about that Access Hollywood tape, I don't know. Like, you know, maybe this is this -- maybe there's a chance to talk about civics.

[12:15:00]

You know, I -- what's the most interesting dynamic with young people to me is the gender divide is even more. Is more sort of acute there. It's like just super spread out among young people. And then at access, we have this story looking at Gallup poll data where men aren't being honest with their girlfriends' partners. And that age group, specifically with young people, and the numbers were much higher, just not being honest about who they're voting for, for obvious reasons.

BASH: And if they're going to vote for Trump that will --

NICHOLS: Yeah. They're a little Trumpier than they're letting on to their girlfriends. The most interesting thing that among the boomers, it was still 6 percent of men still lying to their wives about who they're voting for. So, you know, I don't if it respects for that.

PONNURU: And while we have ads saying that women can't tell their husbands that they're voting for Harris. So, it's not just a gender divide, but now there's like kind of a gender iron curtain coming down in some of these elections.

BASH: That's fascinating. All right. Don't go anywhere because speaking of social media, you should be watching out for social media, especially in the next four days. We're going to break down the lies that you may see or hear coming at you through your phone. Stay with us.

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[12:20:00]

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BASH: Be aware of misinformation. It is all over social media and the home stretch of this campaign. Today, Georgia officials are pushing back on a new viral video claiming to show voter fraud. The reality is it is fake. CNN's Sara Murray has been tracking these lies and many others for months. Sara, what are you learning about this video, which we -- we're not going to show our viewers.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. But there is this video that's going around purportedly out of Georgia. It's not actually out of Georgia, but it is whipping around. It may be showing up on political accounts that you follow in Georgia who are putting it out as if it's a real video. It's not.

And I'm going to let Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, explain in his statement what it shows. So, he said in a statement earlier today, and this was last night. Our office became aware of a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs, claiming to have voted multiple times. This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort. Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms.

Now, we have since heard from private sector cyber security experts who also believe that this has been created by Russian troll farms. We've seen officials in Georgia, trying to bat back at this on X, including to people in the state of Georgia who are continuing to share this information, even though officials in the state believe it is a Russian disinformation effort.

And look, this is what people need to be on the watch for. It's not just that this kind of content is being created by foreign adversaries. It's also that it's being amplified by, you know, politically oriented folks here in the U.S., Dana.

BASH: And as for team Trump, they seem to be zeroing in on Pennsylvania and pushing the fraud claims there the most. What are the facts?

MURRAY: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've seen Donald Trump specifically sort of hammering home the notion that there is this widespread fraud in Pennsylvania. And the reality is, there are a number of counties in Pennsylvania that are dealing with fraudulent voter registration applications, potentially fraudulent mail ballot applications.

But first, what I want to say is the system here is working the way that it should be working, which is that election officials are looking through these applications. They're seeing that things are incorrect. That signatures aren't matching up. Personal identifying information isn't matching up. They're working with local law enforcement to get to the bottom of this issue, and they're not letting these -- they're not letting people cast fraudulent ballots.

So, I want to run through some of the counties. In Monroe County, there is an issue with 30 irregular registrations. In York County, there are 700 plus questionable registration forms. In Lancaster, there's hundreds of fraudulent registration forms. Again, these are not fraudulent votes. These are registration forms that appear to be fraudulent that are now under investigation.

BASH: Thank you so much, Sara. Thank goodness we have you.

MURRAY: Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Appreciate it. Back at the table. This is tough. We do -- what we can to get the accurate information as we know it out. But when you are up against, what seems to be a very intentional move to undermine the election, not just by the Russian bots, as Brad Raffensperger would say, but by a campaign and the campaigns proxies.

PONNURU: That's right. We saw that with respect to the 2020 election, where it's sort of a game of Whac-A-Mole, right? You debunk one false claim about the 2020 election being stolen, and then there's another one over here, and you have to whack that down. And then there's another one over here. When there's a will to believe a falsehood, it's very hard to knock it down.

BASH: And Hans, what are you hearing from your sources in Trump world about how intentional this is as a strategy?

NICHOLS: Oh, look. The denial on their part is, you know, pretty uniform and manifest. I just think, taking a giant step back here. We're all a little punch drunk because we're late in the campaign. A lot of us haven't gotten a whole lot of sleep. But this is very serious, and this is just the first iteration.

If you think it's going to be bad in 2024 wait until AI comes, wait until the deep face get better. This is going to be a very challenging moment for entire democracy. And you're going to need all participants that are running for office to have some sort of acknowledgement that this is very serious. And I don't necessarily think we've had that from all the sides in this campaign, but you know, we still -- you know, we're not -- we're not quite over yet.

[12:25:00]

BASH: No, no, it's so serious. And which is why, of course, we all hear what you hear, which is that they're denying it. But when Donald Trump publicly says, what he says, already about Pennsylvania, which Sara just gave the full context and the facts about. That seems like, as David Chalian said on the show a couple days ago, planting the seeds right in front of our faces.

NICHOLS: And the same thing happened in 2020 for a message point, right? There was -- and Amy has done reporting on this as well, like this is, you know, listen to what Trump says and take him seriously.

WALTER: Yeah. And I think that's, you know, there's the -- I can't remember which poll this was, but, you know, the concerns of a majority of Americans that post-election is going to be violent, the potential for violence. So, we have something very serious, which is planting these seeds of misinformation and then undermining the vote, and whether it's accuracy. And then there's the, what happens next, which people are very, very good --

BASH: Speaking of misinformation, I do want to get in this comment from Donald Trump about RFK and the role that he would like RFK to have in any administration again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So, I want him to work on health. And I think there's nobody like -- I mean, I think he's right with so much of the things he's talking about. He really wants to with the pesticides and they, you know, all the different things. I said he could do it. He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants everything. I think it's great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It's the vaccine part that has people extremely worried.

PONNURU: One, keep in mind that Trump has repeatedly said during campaign rallies that he wants to cut off all federal funding for schools that mandate vaccines, which is all schools.

BASH: By the way, obviously, I'm just talking about COVID, right? Talking about needles and mob.

(CROSSTALK)

PONNURU: Well, his campaign -- oh no, he's just talking about COVID. But he himself in his rallies, never makes that.

BASH: RFK Jr. is not.

PONNURU: And RFK Jr. is not either. He believes a lot of crazy false debunks things about vaccines.

NICHOLS: Is he going to be HHS Secretary? That's a real test, right? He didn't go that far, right? That's -- you know, but so, is he just can have it and Trump could be humoring him here, right? He could be saying, I'm going to give RFK --

BASH: And appealing to his votes.

NICHOLS: Yeah. All kinds of -- like, all kinds of runway, when in fact, he has nothing planned --

PONNURU: Yeah. And he said he's going to take fluoride out of the water too. That's another RFK Jr. promise about a Trump administration.

BASH: I can't imagine a world in which he would get confirmed by the U.S. Senate, but there are lots of roles. One could have an administration out confirmation. OK. Thank you all. Coming up, the ad wars. The final closing political ads are hitting, where air waves and your phones across battleground states. Joining me next two campaign experts to break down what they mean.

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