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Moulton Aide Resigns Over Comments On Transgender Athletes; MAGA Stalwarts Embrace Rick Scott As Senate GOP Leader; More Than 2,500 Counties Shifted More Republican In 2024; GOP Election Fraud Warnings Disappear After Trump's Win. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 11, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: -- feel like there are not as many people who are going to vote on these issues, by the way, than the issue about the economy, for example. There's a lot of frustration about this.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: OK, everybody stand by.

Coming up, who is the heir to Mitch McConnell's throne? MAGA Nation has an idea. Establishment Republicans in the Senate may have another.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: This week, a battle that will shape the future of the grand old party on Capitol Hill.

[12:35:03]

The MAGA wings of the GOP embraced Rick Scott to replace Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell of course is stepping down as Senate -- excuse me, Senate Republican leader which will be Senate Majority Leader. Scott's up against two establishment powerhouses and McConnell allies, John Cornyn and John Thune.

The feuding factions will face off on Wednesday when Republican senators and senators-elect vote via secret ballot from McConnell's successor. Rick Scott says, the choice is clear.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN. RICK SCOTT (R), FLORIDA: Here's what I bring to the table. I clearly believe in the Trump agenda, number one. I'm very optimistic that I'm going to win because I'm representing Trump's agenda. I believe I'm going to win because I represent exactly what the Trump team wants and what Trump wants and what the American public wants.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: CNN's Lauren Fox joins me now. Boy, is he clear in what messaging (ph) is? LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, Dana, this all along and waiting to see whether or not Trump got involved in this race because that was really going to be the wild card. And now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, all eyes are on whether or not Rick Scott's argument that he's the closest one to Donald Trump is going to carry weight.

And so far, you have a lot of Republican conservatives who are in the Senate arguing that they are going to be backing Scott. That's someone like Marco Rubio, Bill Haggerty, Tommy Tuberville. Those Republicans, however, are just a fraction of what you will see voting in that election on Wednesday. And this is a secret ballot.

So even though you're out there arguing that you're going to vote for someone doesn't mean you go in the room and you actually vote for that person. And that's why, if you talk to Cornyn or Thune's team, sometimes they'll argue that behind the scenes, it's really hard to know how a member is going to vote until you actually see those ballots counting.

I mean, if people remember back when Lamar Alexander ran for whip against Trent Lott, he argued he's going to have to write 27 thank you notes for the 24 votes that he got, because people say they're going to vote for you to your face. They don't necessarily go in the room and do that. So a huge question mark on Wednesday.

BASH: And you mentioned some of the senators who are the people who matter the most because they're the ones with the secret ballot vote. I just want to put up on the screen, just in the last 48 hours, the people who are in Trump's orbit, who are sort of walking around Mar-a- Lago right now, now publicly saying that they want Rick Scott to be leader.

FOX: Yes, and there's also a number of people who have not said who they are actually going to be voting for tomorrow. When lawmakers come back to Washington, they're going to come back into the Senate. You can expect that every single Republican who's walking through those halls is going to be asked this question.

And they're going to be really cautious because it's not just people who are close to Trump in the Senate, it's people like Elon Musk, who everyone is looking at right now is having this immense amount of influence down in Mar-a-Lago.

Nobody wants to make the incoming president upset, especially because each of these senators has their own agendas, have their own action items that they want the president to be paying attention to.

BASH: And not for nothing, when you're Senate Majority Leader, you kind of have to have, or you should have experience in actually running the U.S. Senate. And both of them have been in leadership positions, both Johns, Cornyn, and Thune. Rick Scott, on the campaign side, not so much here.

FOX: Exactly.

BASH: Thank you for your reporting.

FOX: Thank you.

BASH: Appreciate it.

And coming up, yes, many thought Donald Trump would win, but few thought it would be as decisive as it turned out to be. So how did he do it? We're going to go inside the Trump campaign with the Trump campaign's political director in his first interview after the break.

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[12:43:12]

BASH: It's been six days since Donald Trump's decisive electoral victory. He won all seven swing states, picked up support in even deep blue states, and became the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote. How did he do it?

I'm joined now by one of the strategists who helped make it happen. James Blair, the Trump campaign's political director. This is his first interview since the election. Thank you so much for being here.

I want to begin by showing our viewers something that I know you're very familiar with. The map of the U.S. and the red shows more than 2,500 counties where there is an increased share of the GOP vote. If you were to sum up in like 30 seconds, how you won this election, what would you say?

JAMES BLAIR, TRUMP-VANCE CAMPAIGN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I would say we just took advantage of the opportunities President Trump provided by driving a message that was persuasive to Americans of all demographics. We were a very precise campaign. We looked for the opportunities that our candidate presented.

And I think we did a really good job strategically and tactically of driving home the points that he wanted to make and taking advantage of just the unique strengths and opportunities that he presented. I'm sure we'll get into it more, but we capitalized on national trends and brought it home.

BASH: Well, go ahead. Speak to that. Speak to the national trends.

BLAIR: Sure. I mean, we've seen over the last four years, there's really been a shift in Republican voter registration, first of all. So in all of the states that register voters by party, all but one of them saw a shift towards Republicans over the last four years.

And in that whole time, President Trump has been the standard bearer for our party. These people have joined the Republican Party as a result of President Trump. He's expanding the party and they joined it with the express intention of voting for him. And then we saw that not just nationally, but in all the battleground states as well.

[12:45:06] And we said this before the election, that this was really the canary in the coal mine for how things were going to play out, that all of the electorates shifted to the right. And that's a result of being dissatisfied with the current leadership and understanding that their life was better under President Trump. And they wanted to return to that. And we saw them endorse that overwhelmingly, obviously, last Tuesday.

BASH: So the trend in these states, you're saying, and we do see the numbers obviously bear this out, that there was an increase in Republican registration. You're saying it's because of Donald Trump. So my question is, how sticky is this for Republicans beyond Donald Trump? Are we seeing this as a purely Donald Trump phenomenon, or do you see a way for it to last when Donald Trump has gone from the stage?

BLAIR: I think it can definitely last. Certainly, you know, the Reagan revolution brought in a whole new class of Republicans that were very sticky. And I think you can see the same thing again. But obviously, it will be up to the Republican Party to support the agenda that President Trump campaigned on, which is a working class agenda. It's a middle class agenda.

It's really agenda for all Americans. And I think if they get out there and they pass the agenda, then voters will reward them with continued leadership in the Congress. So really, it will be up to the rest of the Republican Party to support the product that President Trump is offering to the American people from a policy perspective and ensuring that those gains are sticky.

But the takeaway from this election, which is really important, is that people are voting for policy. They want a government and leaders that are going to make tangible, positive outcomes in their lives. And they clearly believe that President Trump is the one between him and Kamala Harris to do that. So it'll be up to the rest of the party to support his agenda and get it passed in Congress.

BASH: So speaking of policy, your campaign flooded the airwaves in the battleground states and on national cable, even on networks and streaming during NFL games with ads specifically focused on a trans issue. I want you to listen to some of it, and we'll talk on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every transgender inmate would have access.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kamala's for they, them. President Trump is for you.

(END VIDEOCLIP) BASH: The transgender community in the U.S. is very, very small. It got really outsized attention. There are a lot of people who say that your campaign demonized the trans community as a way to present a wedge issue for perhaps men of color, suburban parents. Why do you think -- and I know you believe that those ads worked, why do you think they worked?

BLAIR: Well, first of all, we didn't demonize the transgender community. In fact, this really isn't even about transgender issues. This ad is really about misplaced priorities. At the end of the day, it is a small minority of the country that thinks taxpayer dollars should be spent on that sort of thing.

And when you have a majority of the country who is saying very clearly that they don't believe the government is working for them, they're worse off than they were four years ago. The country is in the wrong track. And then to see a presidential candidate who is saying she's going to move this agenda forward, and that's how taxpayer dollars should be spent, it just doesn't comport with them.

They don't think the government is working for them. People want the government to be doing what their priorities are. And frankly, spending taxpayer dollars to give transgender surgery to prisoners is just not a priority of the American people. And that's why the ad was effective. It's about misplaced priorities on behalf of a leader.

BASH: So it was using the top issues that are most important to voters, the economy and immigration and presenting it through an ad that was very memorable. Were you surprised that the Harris campaign didn't respond in kind?

BLAIR: Not particularly, because at the end of the day, it was her words right there very clearly. She was on camera owning that position. And, you know, the ad did something else too, which is really important. It positioned her as the ideologically far left liberal that she is and always was.

We saw when she first came into the race, there was this whole rush to try to erase the history of Kamala Harris, who was rated literally the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate in 2019. And by the way, that was taken off the Internet. We know that many outlets came out and said she was never the borders are.

And then, ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if she voted for Donald Trump because she had anonymous aides go out and leak that she was actually supporting his positions now, whether on the economy or the border or otherwise. So she really couldn't run from her words on that one when she was on many other issues.

BASH: I mean, there are a few things to fact check and this one I know you were kidding. I think it's pretty safe to say that she voted for herself. But I take your point, James.

[12:50:04]

Thank you for being here. I hope you come back. We're out of time, but there are a lot more questions that I'd love to ask you. Maybe we'll be doing that when you're in the Trump White House. We'll talk about that too.

Thanks for being here, James.

BLAIR: Thanks for having me.

BASH: Coming up, Trump and his allies pushed bogus claims of voter fraud for years. Why did those concerns disappear on election night? That's next.

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BASH: ?Republican alarm bells about voter fraud and cheating ahead of last week's election have suddenly gone silent. Remember, Donald Trump repeatedly warned Democrats were trying to steal the election, laying the groundwork to challenge the results in case he lost, accusing them of cheating, even as Americans were voting on Election Day.

[12:55:11]

Less than a week later, it's all but forgotten, even by the biggest backers of his efforts to overturn the 2020 results. I spoke with Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan yesterday on State of the Union.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: There were false claims about the election fraud when Donald Trump lost. This time Donald Trump won, and you think the election was free and fair. You see there's a little bit of a --

REP. JIM JORDAN (R), CHAIRMAN, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: No, I think the Democrats got to ask --

BASH: -- disconnect (ph) there?

JORDAN: -- why did we go from getting 81 million to getting 70 million? What happened to those 10 million people? Maybe they needed -- maybe it's not smart to run an election where you have no vision, no record to run --

BASH: Do you believe that the 2024 --

JORDAN: -- only you just kind of call the other side names in the (INAUDIBLE) welfare?

BASH: Do you believe that the 2024 election was free and fair?

JORDAN: I do. I do. And why was it different from 2020 when he lost? Is that the only difference?

JORDAN: No, there were concerns about 2020 with all the mail-in voting that happened.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Yes. And, of course, there was no evidence, we should say again, of widespread fraud. Went through 60 court cases, nothing was found.

Thank you so much for joining INSIDE POLITICS today. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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