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Trump & Clinton Trade Barbs in North Carolina; Melania Trump Launches Anti-Bullying Crusade; More Than 30 Million Early Votes Cast in 38 States. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired November 04, 2016 - 05:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The polls have been amazing.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's fair to say things are going to change.

MELANIA TRUMP, WIFE OF DONALD TRUMP: Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), VERMONT: We are not going back to a bigoted society.

DONALD TRUMP: I have a winning temperament. Hillary is an unstable person.

CLINTON: Are we going to build a stronger, fairer, better America or are we going to fear each other?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You are uniquely qualified to make sure this uniquely unqualified person does not become president.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. We're delirious.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The best part of the show is before it starts.

CAMEROTA: Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Friday, November 4th. It's 5:00 in the East.

Up first, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battling it out in North Carolina. That's the state that could decide the presidency. So, both candidates now waging a battleground blitz as the race continues to tighten. CUOMO: So, who is where and what are they saying? What is their best

reason to make them president of the United States? Just one, two, three, four days left until the election. We have it all covered for you.

Let's begin with CNN's Sunlen Serfaty live in Charlotte, all important, North Carolina -- Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Good morning to you, Chris. The battle is so intense here in North Carolina that the candidates are practically running into each other. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's campaign planes were parked at the same time at the same airport last night in Raleigh.

And today, Donald Trump is onward to north, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, three states so critical to his path forward.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP: We know Hillary can't be trusted. We've learned that.

SERFATY (voice-over): Donald Trump hitting Hillary Clinton over the FBI's new probe of a long-time aide's e-mails.

[05:00:03] DONALD TRUMP: And you take a look at her email situation, can we trust her with our security? She is disqualified.

SERFATY: While presenting a defense focus speech in North Carolina, decorated military veterans joining Trump on stage. Donald Trump pointing at them to illustrate why he thinks Clinton should not be president.

DONALD TRUMP: To think of her being their boss? I don't think so. And you know, they're incredible patriots. But I know what they're thinking. It's not -- it's not for them, believe me.

SERFATY: And praising their courage while also applauding himself.

DONALD TRUMP: They're so much more brave than me. I wouldn't have done what they did. I'm brave in other ways. I'm brave -- I'm financially brave. Big deal, right?

SERFATY: And complimenting his wife, Melania.

DONALD TRUMP: She got up and gave an incredible speech.

SERFATY: In her first solo campaign events since plagiarizing parts of her speech at the Republican convention.

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: You work hard for what you want in life.

MELANIA TRUMP: That you work hard for what you want in life.

SERFATY: Melania Trump vowing to take on cyber bullying.

MELANIA TRUMP: Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough especially to children and teenagers. It is never okay when a 12- year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the Internet.

SERFATY: Critics quick to pounce on the irony of Melania's focus on bullying, given her husband's Twitter tirade ad name-calling.

DONALD TRUMP: She's a slob.

I call her goofy.

She's a basket case.

SERFATY: Despite the criticism, Melania hoping to help her husband win over female voters.

MELANIA TRUMP: We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other to respect each other.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SERFATY: And going into the last weekend here on the campaign trail, I want to show you a snapshot of where Donald Trump is headed. As you can see, this is an all-out list of all important battleground states. He's potentially holding as many as five campaign rallies a day this weekend. And including a closing rally Monday night in Manchester, New Hampshire. Every single moment, Alisyn, is very important in these final days.

CAMEROTA: It sure feels like it. Sunlen, thanks so much.

So, Hillary Clinton is looking to turn North Carolina blue again, focusing on the youth and minority vote and the turnout there with the help of some big name supporters.

CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny joins us with more.

Hi, Jeff.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, guys. I mean, North Carolina is the central part of the campaign, as Sunlen just said. But Hillary Clinton had hoped to spend the final days in this campaign in states like that. North Carolina, of course, it voted Democratic in 2008, and Republican four years later.

But this morning, she also finds herself defending Democratic territory, as she still works to regain the confidence and command of the race she had only one week ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY (voice-over): Four days before Election Day, Hillary Clinton is bringing the star power. Pharrell Williams and Bernie Sanders joining Clinton in North Carolina.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS, SINGER/SONGWRITER: I'm here because I believe she's going to fight for us.

ZELENY: Despite the optimistic tone of her rally, Clinton sending an urgent warning to Democrats that she could lose.

CLINTON: America will have a new president. It will either be or my opponent. Are we going to build a stronger or fairer, better America or are we going to fear each other?

ZELENY: It's not how she hoped to spend the waning days of her campaign. Her closing argument now a stark message about the prospect of a Trump presidency.

CLINTON: It's hard for me to imagine that we would have a president who has demeaned women, mocked the disabled, insulted African- Americans and Latinos.

ZELENY: Democrats concede frustration they are still trying to disqualify Trump. His rebound has taken them back to the drawing board. From Sanders --

SANDERS: We are not going back to a bigoted society.

ZELENY: To President Obama in Florida.

OBAMA: You don't see him hanging out with working people, unless they're cleaning his room.

ZELENY: A week after the FBI bombshell, Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin remains off the campaign trail. But she did appear at a Washington fund-raiser with "Vogue" editor Anna Wintour. The campaign raising money for a last-minute advertising blitz.

Clinton still maintaining a national lead yet her advisers say the race is too close for comfort in too many swing states.

Heading into the final stretch, Clinton is showing signs of confidence, drawing a parallel to the history-making World Series championship Chicago Cubs.

CLINTON: Now, the last time the Cubs won, women couldn't vote. I think women are making up for that in this election.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY: So today, Clinton is not focusing on expanding the map.

[05:05:02] She is hitting Pennsylvania and Michigan. Both states have gone Democratic in the last six presidential races.

This morning, we're also getting a look at where she's setting her sights for the final push. In addition to Pittsburgh and Detroit, today, heading to Cleveland tonight, she is going to Florida and Philadelphia tomorrow. New Hampshire and back to Ohio and then the final event in Philadelphia again with President Obama on Monday night -- Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Jeff.

CUOMO: All right, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Let's talk about the big battleground blitz in the final days of this campaign. We have Matt Viser, national political reporter at "The Boston Globe", Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and political anchor for Time Warner Cable News, and Rebecca Berg, CNN political analyst, national political reporter at RealClearPolitics.

Let's talk North Carolina. It's a place where there is a lot of division. I think this is Tar Heel blue. Alisyn says it's Fairy Winkle (ph). You see people cannot agree when it comes to North Carolina.

So, here's what we know. In the poll of polls, let's put up the number right now. And again, the poll of polls is the CNN averaging of the last several major polls. It gives you a better look, right, because every set of numbers is just a snapshot. You see the numbers, 46 percent to 42 percent and 5 percent for Johnson.

So, Matt, the history not good for Democrats. Yes, Obama won it in 2008. I want to talk specifically about why, because they've only won it, what, two or three team times in the last several decades going back to the '60s. What was different in 2008?

MATT VISER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE BOSTON GLOBE: I think the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. Black voters coming outs in droves in places like Charlotte and Raleigh and the triangle area.

CUOMO: Can the African-American vote change the outcome in North Carolina?

VISER: Absolutely. That's why you're seeing Obama going there again and again, trying to reenergize and re-tap that enthusiasm that he had in 2008. He lost a little bit in 2012. I mean, it is an open question over how much he can drive voter turnout for somebody else for Hillary Clinton.

CAMEROTA: And so, mathematically, Errol, why are all eyes on North Carolina? There are a lot of states that are battleground states. Why are we all paying so much attention to North Carolina?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's big one and it's a true swing state. Unlike the other battleground states that we're talking about, you have state that with went one way in 2008 and the other way in 2012. It was the closest state in which Obama lost in 2012.

And so, I think there is a little bit of payback that he and his team want to sort of get. So, there are a lot of different reasons that this is going to be important. This will stop Donald Trump as far as the Hillary Clinton team is concerned. If they can put this out of reach, that sort of wins the race for them.

CAMEROTA: So, when we're watching election night on Tuesday night, when we see which way North Carolina goes, we know something about the race?

LOUIS: Well, we know as we start to sweep west that the map gets much, much harder for anybody who doesn't have that state.

CUOMO: So, Rebecca, when we look at North Carolina, if Obama lost it in 2012, that doesn't suggest that he's going to be able to motivate the African-Americans the way he did in 2008 for her in 2016. So, she is also focusing there on the millennial vote.

What is your read on what that vote means in that particular state?

REBECCA BERG, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's important. I mean, clearly, you have a number of universities in the state. University of North Carolina, Duke, et cetera. Those are going to be key areas for Hillary Clinton. And that's why yesterday, she stopped by one of the university campuses with Pharrell Williams, the singer. And so, she is trying to get the students out early to vote.

But I would also argue that the college educated white vote is going to be so important in North Carolina because this was a share of the electorate that really supported Romney in 2012, not Barack Obama, and traditionally has supported Republicans. But what we have seen this time is college educated white voters are trending toward Hillary Clinton, especially women. And so, if she can take a bigger share of the college-educated white vote in North Carolina, that could help her make up for lower African-American turnout for example.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Melania Trump. She gave her first solo speech on the campaign trail yesterday. Got a lot of attention with the speech outside of Philadelphia. And her message is what was so captivating to people, because, I'll just paraphrase it, she says, our culture has gotten too mean and too rough. We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.

That's a great message, but people felt it was ironic who she is married to and the state of the race. What's been some of the fallout from this?

VISER: I think she's absolutely right. I mean, our culture in the Twitter conversation is sort of so often in the gutter. This whole campaign has been that way it seems. It is ironic given her position that she could maybe deliver that speech in Donald Trump tower to her husband, you know? I mean, Donald Trump so often has been the one who instigated lot of the negativity, especially on Twitter and sort of pushing back and making fun of Ted Cruz's wife's looks and things like that. So, I mean, I think she has a point. She's just an odd messenger for that point.

CUOMO: Let's give Melania her due. She didn't -- this is not some unique message that she's given. This was put on her by the campaign.

[05:10:00] So, let's talk about --

CAMEROTA: But even, why --

CUOMO: That's my question. What are they trying to do here, Errol? Are they trying to make people and see what happens?

Obviously, he can't say this because people would laugh him out of any room. Not followers, but the media and anybody, you know, who's opened eyed on him would laugh him out of the room. We were trying to pick tweets to show the message is counter to his behavior, and we have to censor the tweets. There's so many that are so vicious.

CAMEROTA: We do have a lot of material though. Let me read some of the ones I think Melania would say crossed the line if it were coming from some place else.

So, here's about Megyn Kelly. "I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo because that would be politically correct. Instead, I will only call her a lightweight reporter." So, that was bimbo stuff.

Here's Arianna Huffington. "Arianna Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her husband left her for a man. He made a good decision."

Here is one of my favorites, "NEW DAY on CNN treats me very badly. Alisyn Camerota is a disaster."

CUOMO: It's true, though.

CAMEROTA: "Not going to watch anymore."

CUOMO: It's true. We fought over that tweet because truth is a defense to defamation.

CAMEROTA: I mean, so he does go after people personally.

LOUIS: I read Melania Trump's speech, both the setting and the substance of it as her and the campaign try to make perhaps what could be a last ditch effort to try and make some in-road was some of the educated white women in the suburbs of Philadelphia. This is where the speech was. So, you know, Bucks County, Chester County, Montgomery County, Delaware County, these are the areas where Trump is under performing the way Republicans have traditionally performed there. This is her, I thought, trying to make some in-roads there.

And we should give Hillary Clinton her due. She is not just trying to assemble or reassemble the Obama coalition, she's trying to create her own. And a big part of that is getting the educated middle class women that Melania Trump was trying to sort of contest yesterday.

CUOMO: But it seems like, Rebecca, this would have worked worse with that group, you know? I mean, if you are going at people who are aggressively thinking about what positions are going to be in the election, why would you say something that you know they can't believe about you or your candidate?

BERG: Exactly. I think this was part of optics and getting Melania out there, showing that she supports her husband, you now, physically on a U.S. stage in spite of all these allegations.

CUOMO: She has been missing for a while. BERG: She has been missing. It is something she said was her choice.

She did not want to be on the campaign trail. She has been a reluctant surrogate from the beginning.

CUOMO: And threw her under the bus in the convention.

BERG: Right.

CUOMO: They gave her the Michelle Obama speech and lied about it and made it look like it was about her. We had no reason to believe.

BERG: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: But her message is accurate, that people do think things are toxic.

And in fact, there's this new poll that shows that 82 percent of all Americans, this is a CBS News poll are disgusted. That is strong language. That's strong language, disgusted by this campaign. 85 percent of Republicans say they feel divided about this campaign and where their party is and 73 percent, though, of Democrats say that they feel united. So, that's interesting.

What do you think that means, Matt, for Tuesday?

VISER: I mean, there's no signs of Tuesday being a conclusion to us uniting on Wednesday. I don't think these numbers will change or get that much better after the election. It is created the divisions and there's no sign of healing afterwards.

CAMEROTA: That is a shame. We are going to do our best to heal the country come Wednesday. Whatever happens.

CUOMO: We're going to try to be less of a disaster.

CAMEROTA: I'm going to try to be less of a disaster. My personal part.

Meanwhile, more than 30 million Americans have already voted. So, with Democrats leading Republicans by million ballots in the 24 states that are making the data available. So, what do these early numbers tell about the key battleground battles? That's next.

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[05:18:05] CAMEROTA: Four days to go until the election. You hear that, four days.

CUOMO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Things are getting real.

Thirty million ballots are already been cast in early voting in 38 states. So, who has the advantage in early voting?

Let's bring back our panel. We have Rebecca Berg, Matt Viser and Errol Louis.

So, Errol, let's just start looking here at the early voting states, 30 million votes cast and 38 states as we said, 15 million cast in battleground states. Here's where it gets interesting, 7.5 million by registered Democrats and 6.5 million by registered Republicans. Does that mean anything?

LOUIS: Not as much as we hoped. The reality is it is not suitable for predictive analysis, because you don't know where the sites are. They change from cycle to cycle. We don't know what the strategy is of the candidates, whether you have to sort of get your vote in first or are they going to come in later.

I think the best example is North Carolina where you had a great early voting advantage that Democrats had last time, but they lost the state.

CUOMO: Right.

LOUIS: Now, things are looking less robust for Democrats this time around. On the other hand, polling suggests they are okay shape in the state of North Carolina.

CUOMO: We talk about North Carolina and Florida in a second specifically. Let's look at the trending of what's going on here. We are about, what, 30 million. They were hoping for more. The record is 42 million. You still have several days left.

But in terms of who is showing up and who isn't, you have white, black, Hispanic voting. So, let's show the rates of how we're doing this time versus 2008.

CAMEROTA: Well, do you want to look at the states? OK, let's look at North Carolina for a second. So, here is by race, 2016. More whites so far.

CUOMO: Less blacks and more Hispanics. That number is not an impressive number. You have a rapidly increasing Hispanic population in North Carolina and areas of the south.

[05:20:02] So, Rebecca, when you look at the trendings, what does that suggest in terms of emphasis?

BERG: Well, North Carolina, certainly, it goes back to what we are talking about in the previous segment, which is that African-American turnout this cycle, so far at least, is diminished. And maybe we'll see something different on Election Day.

But for Democrats especially, that we expected Democrats to do better in early voting, and what they want to do is turn out low propensity voters. African-Americans for the most part fall into the category. They want to make sure they have already voted on Election Day. They can focus on other demographics.

But as we are seeing in North Carolina, that is not the case across the board. That should not necessarily panic Democrats, but I'm sure it's raising some alarm bells for them and kind of mapping out what they need.

CAMEROTA: One more thing in North Carolina before we move on to Florida that I think is interesting and this is the independent vote. So, here is what we look at with Democrats and Republicans and independents, you can see Democrats are down from 2012 so far in early voting. Republicans down from 2012. Independents up significantly, 24.5 percent. But no way to know how they're voting.

VISER: And if you are the Clinton campaign, that keeps you up at night. You know, you don't know which direction they're going.

One caveat with North Carolina is the polling sites are dramatically less than they were four years ago. Gilford County, where Greensboro is, for example, there were 15 or 20 sites in 2012 for early voting. Now there is one.

CAMEROTA: There was a lawsuit about this, wasn't there?

VISER: To open up more early voting. Much has not survive some of the challenge --

CUOMO: But it was a little more sinister than that. This isn't a systemic issue of resources. This is deliberate. That's what the lawsuit said, was that basically, you had Republican effort to find all the different ways to retard the African-American vote and put it into law.

You know, irony is Trump was talking about, this is a rigged system. He may be right in North Carolina. It seems to be rigged against the African-American vote.

How real is that, Errol?

LOUIS: Oh, it's very real. I mean, what you just described is something that the findings of a federal court. The judge looked at it and said it seems if you went out of your way to find every fashion and form in which you can sort of suppress this vote and implement those as your policies. And indeed, there was quite an interesting paper trail where the legislature said, hey, what are the places where black voters tend to sort of come out and what are the reasons.

And let's go step by step and try to change all of those.

CUOMO: We will talk to the campaign. Well, they may be right. May be politics. Really bad politic.

We're going to talk to his campaign. He says you've got to go out and watch. You know what I mean by watch.

Who responds to the call? These white supremacists say, we're going to organize and go out. Then the campaign, you don't see Donald come out and said, I wasn't talking about you. I don't want you near my polls. Very weird message.

CAMEROTA: But just to bottom this up, Errol, basically even thought there was this lawsuit and the federal judge said they agreed going after black voters with, quote, surgical precision, too late to change it, right?

LOUIS: Too late to change a lot of it. There was some of it related to whether or not they're going to have bump on early voting, whether they're going to have, you know, Souls to the Polls, whether it's going to extend through Sunday. So, it wasn't -- you know, it's kind of a mixed verdict, let's put it that way. What we don't know is whether or not these folks were going to come out anyway.

There are academic research that suggests when you do some of this stuff, the voter ID stuff in particular, it doesn't change the outcome. So, it's hard to say what would have happened if it hadn't gone on. Frankly, the fact that they had a four-year fight within the black Democratic circles around the issue really raised a lot of conscience of it.

I mean, we've been hearing about this stuff, this Moral Monday, they've been doing protests every week for several years now. So, you can't say one way or the other this will sort of -- and of course, we have and entirely different candidate. So, you can't compare what would have happened, what might have happened. All we can do is just urge to go out and vote.

VISER: We also don't know if those people will come out to vote on Election Day. We know they are not early voting. But that could change. That is what Obama is doing in trying to go there.

LOUIS: Let's look at Florida quickly and what we see different between 2008 and 2016. Let's look at Republican turnout. So, Republican turnout is almost exactly the same. Democrat down. Once again, independent up -- Rebecca.

BERG: Well, this is a good sign, I would say, for Republicans because as I said, Democrats tend to do better in early vote.

But to go back to the issue of what does this actually tell us, the partisan breakdown, I would argue that it tells us less than ever in this cycle, because you have two candidates who are unpopular, who have struggled to really coalesce around them, especially with Donald Trump and Republicans. We're only right now seeing Republicans come home to the Donald Trump candidacy in some of these states. New Hampshire is a great example. This is the reason polls are tightening there.

I spoke with the Republican source who has access to internal polling out there.

[05:25:04] He said that has been the entire shift in the polling up there. It has been Republicans coming back to Donald Trump.

Still, we have the question of, are they going to coalesce around him or are people voting for another party? And that's a distinct possibility.

CUOMO: Yes, you are right. It is one thing to say when you are caught at home or on the cell phone, oh, yes, I'm going to go for him. It is another one to get your butt out of the chair and change your day and go to the poll and vote. It is a bigger commitment than people may realize.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much.

Stay with CNN for special all day election coverage on Tuesday. We'll have every race and every result covered for you.

CUOMO: All right. Up next, a milestone in the battle for Mosul. Coalition forces crossing into the city for the first time in years. This is obviously getting rid of ISIS, but the situation is growing bloodier by the hour. Remember how many people are trapped in the city. We have a report from Mosul, next.

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