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New Day

Trump Debases First Debate into Chaos, Biden Hits Back; Biden Weathers Trump Meltdown at First Debate. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 30, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

We know it's been a long night and it is hard to describe last night's debate without using an expletive. President Trump interrupted over and over, he trampled, he bulldozed, he made a spectacle of the debate. One headline described it as tweeting out loud for 90 minutes.

The moderator, Chris Wallace, did what a lot of parents do during a temper tantrum. He tried negotiating, but it did not work. Joe Biden, for the most part, did not take the president's bait. He hit back at President Trump and instead, sometimes he just turned right to the camera and spoke to the American people directly.

Biden also called out President Trump's response to the pandemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Between 750 and 1,000 a day are dying. When he was presented with that number, he said, it is what it is. Well, it is what it is because you are who you are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: You know, Alisyn was talking about expletives.

And, overnight, our friend, Dana Bash, did use an expletive. She called the debate an S-show, and that's surely true. But it's important to assign responsibility here. This was not some chaos created by all in a vacuum. This was driven by the president. He did this.

And if it was an S-show, it was the president who took the dump. It was the president and the president alone who would not tell his supporters to be peaceful after Election Day. It was the president and the president alone who provided a new rallying cry for a group that the Anti-Defamation League calls hardcore white supremacists.

Asked to condemn violence from white supremacist groups, the president wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. Instead, he told the Proud Boys to, quote, stand back and stand by. Stand by for what, exactly? All right, joining us now, CNN Political Analyst, Maggie Haberman, she is a White House Correspondent for The New York Times, and CNN Political Commentator, Errol Louis., he is a political anchor at Spectrum News and host of the podcast, You Decide.

Maggie, I want to start with you on what happened last night and an explanation for why it happened. On what planet did the president think that doing that would help him?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, John, I think it's the planet where he didn't think that doing this would help him. I think he just did what he felt he wanted to do or needed to do. The president is losing and knows he's losing and he is scared of losing. So what you saw him do last night was what we have seen him do in any number of situations where he is anxious about it, which is he's tried to control it, he's tried to dominate it.

What ended up happening was, his advisers told him he needed to be offense, he needed to not let Joe Biden get a hook or get a solid foot. This was not that. This was just yelling and talking over Joe Biden and interrupting him and being much more wedded to the caricature that President Trump has portrayed of Joe Biden than the actual man.

It was a striking moment where Biden literally said he doesn't support defunding the police, and the second line where the president said he supports defunding the police. He had just answered it. He said the man himself standing there didn't matter.

Look, the Trump folks know this did not go well and they know that they have to figure out something for the next debate. Part of the fantasy that had been floated by some people around Trump is that Biden won't show up for the next debate. That's not true. And so a different Trump is going to have to show up in the next one.

CAMEROTA: Errol, to that point, I mean, the president is not only losing, he appears to be losing it. His demeanor was so different than it was four years ago when he could let other candidates answer a question. He was red-faced, he was angry, he was even different than we see him in some of the White House press briefings. What was that?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, some of it is what happens when you're an incumbent president and you surround yourself with people who are telling you what you want to hear 24 hours a day. There are other incumbent presidents whose first debate at least was pretty rocky. That even happened to President Obama.

But the other part of it is, this is somebody who if he -- if it looks like in his chess game his opponent is moving toward checkmate, he will overturn the board. I think that was one of the big takeaway messages last night. He'll interrupt a debate, he'll discredit an election, he'll say or do whatever he has to do to avoid losing.

And this is something that President Trump has said pretty much from the beginning. He's proud of it that he'll do anything to win, even if it means violating norms, telling falsehoods, outraging everybody in the process.

[07:05:08]

I think he managed to do a lot of that last night. That is his strategy. i don't know if it's a very effective one, but, of course, we're going to find out in just a few weeks.

BERMAN: In fact, Errol, I think you think more than that. You talk about upsetting the chess board here. You don't think it was effective, Errol, with groups that the president will need if he wants to win re-election.

LOUIS: As I was watching and I was just shaking my head last night. The bullying and the bombast and the personal affectation, I'm thinking to myself, I know a lot of suburban women. I grew up in the suburbs. There are a lot of suburban women who really, really, really hate that kind of an approach. And he needs them very badly. And he didn't say one word last night that was intended to appeal to them.

He's going to need some modicum of turnout from people of color, from voters of color. And that whole nonsense with the Proud Boys and refusing to openly denounce white supremacy, everybody heard exactly what that meant, and so another vital source of voters gone from him.

Young people don't like any of this stuff. They want to hear somebody who's going to speak to them. They've got health care needs as well. He passed on that as well. So I was just mystified as to who he thought, among the groups that we know that he needs, at least some help from, how is he going to reach out from them? Last night was not an indication that he cares or has a strategy to reach out to them at all.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, he was so back on his heels when Chris Wallace asked him to denounce this hardcore white supremacist group. He really struggled with that and ended up not doing it. And ended up, I think, hinting at or teasing upcoming violence.

I mean, I don't know how else we're supposed to interpret stand by. When he tells a violent white supremacist group, stand by, what other interpretation can there be?

HABERMAN: Right. What we're getting, Alisyn, is what we often get after the president says something, which is some of his advisers saying, no, no, you misheard, no, no, he said something else, no, no, that's not what he meant. That's exactly what he said. And if that isn't what he meant, then he ought to clarify it. But I think you and I both know that is very unlikely, because that is never what he does.

He, as Errol said, refused, when he was pushed to denounce white supremacy, He just wouldn't do it. It was one of the more breathtaking moments in an already pretty stunning debate. And to Errol's point, I just don't see how the president helped himself with anyone he needed to do well with.

Was it a knockout debate for Joe Biden? Absolutely not. But it didn't have to be, and Biden did not have any bad stumbles that will stand out most likely in voters' minds. We're going to know a lot more in the coming days on how this played out. But other than just the takeaway of people yelling at each other, the president was the one who was the aggressor in these confrontations.

BERMAN: If there's one thing, Maggie, that you've beaten out of me, it's the assumption that there's always a strategy behind things.

CAMEROTA: Finally.

HABERMAN: Election Day is in four and a half weeks.

BERMAN: So, again, I'm not saying there is a strategy behind what the president did, but if there is a possible effect of it, it is in some of what I think are the lazy headlines you're seeing today, which, oh, a mud wrestling match or delved into chaos here. And the effect of that, and, Errol, I'll let you answer this, to be to turn off voters.

If a goal was to turn off all voter to this and depress turnout, I see that happening, and Tom Friedman of The New York Times wrote an op-ed overnight that I think sums it up pretty well. He says, when extremists go all the way and moderates just go away, and by that, he means not vote, the system can break and it will break.

You know, Tom Friedman, who used to cover Lebanon and Israel and other places where he saw regimes topple, he says he's seen this happen and that's his concern now.

But what about that idea, that there is a risk here that people will all just be turned off by this?

LOUIS: Well, yes, absolutely. Look, there's a dire warning that you're describing that we should all take very, very seriously. But, look, in the course of a normal hard-fought campaign, when you see candidates go negative, relentlessly negative, personally negative, nasty, bitter, divisive, that's kind of a low-key way of doing voter suppression.

Because what we know, and there's a fair amount of political science literature about this, is that it makes people disgusted and it makes people decide, I don't want anything to do with any of these people and they stay home or they don't vote or they pass on that particular office when they're in the voting booth.

So, yes, there's something to be said for that. And that, you know, that, in fact, might be a quote/unquote strategy. A lot of this stuff is done instinctively by President Trump. He sort of moves from the gut what he senses might work for him. And if what he thinks is that disruption and low-key voter suppression will work for him, then, yes, I think that's what we're going to see more of.

[07:10:04]

CAMEROTA: Paul Begala called it must-flee T.V., which is the opposite of New Day, obviously.

So, guys -- Maggie, Errol, thank you both very much. All right, President Trump tried to steamroll, but Joe Biden did hold his ground. So what any of this means for the last five weeks of this race, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: one of the notable things about the reaction to the debate last night has been that people who normally defend the president aren't, are pointing out the flaws in this performance last night. Rick Santorum, who will defend the president for almost anything, said right here, he says, I think the president hurt himself. Scott Jennings, who was with us earlier, pointed out that he thinks this hurt the president with women voters, suburban voters that the president desperately needs. And Chris Christie, former Republican governor of New Jersey, who is one of the guys who helped the president prepare for this debate to an extent, thinks the president blew it.

[07:15:03]

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): I think on the Trump side, it was too hot. You know, listen, you come in and decide you want to be aggressive and I think that was the right thing to be aggressive, but that was too hot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It was too hot.

Joining us now, CNN Political Commentator Terry McAuliffe, he is the former governor of Virginia and former chair of the DNC, who has endorsed Biden, and David Urban, he's a member of President Trump's re-election advisory committee, and Ana Navarro who is a Republican that now supports Joe Biden.

I'm going to spin the wheel, Ana, and start with you. What did you see and what does it mean?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I saw a complete display of dysfunction. I saw a stage where there was one adult and that was Joe Biden. I saw complete disrespect of the American people. The viewers who tuned in to try to watch a civil debate, to see who had a plan to move this forward, Donald Trump was insane last night. He was off his meds. He was unhinged. It was ridiculous. It was pathetic.

I was reading a tweet where somebody tweeted out what undecided voters -- listen to this, undecided voters told Frank Luntz in a focus group, words, undecided voter, a Frank Luntz focus group had for Trump, arrogant, crack-head, and un-American.

So I would say if undecided Americans are referring to you as a crack- head, and I apologize to crack-heads, you have a problem. CAMEROTA: David, I know before the debate, your advice to the president was run on his record, skip the ad hominem attacks. Don't go with ad hominem. I'm not sure he was listening to that advise.

DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Alisyn, clearly, he didn't adhere to my advice. Look, I think that -- I listened to John's recitation of everbody -- the postmortem on the Republican side, and I agree. Look, the president, this was not his best night by a long shot, right? I think the president did accomplish one thing, in that he got Joe Biden to act like Donald Trump a little bit, right, in terms of shut up and name-calling and kind of getting down in the mud as well, that didn't serve anybody well.

I think, look, the president should have -- people would have done much better off and much happier to see kind of State of the Union Donald Trump than rally mode Donald Trump. And that didn't happen last night.

BERMAN: Terry?

TERRY MCAULIFFE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It was the most shocking, un-presidential behavior by a president, 90 minutes, it was just shocking. I just home people around the globe were not watching because they would not what to make of America.

I think you saw Joe Biden was strong, clear. What I loved is when Joe looked at the camera, specifically was talking about COVID, and he was talking about voting and said, this election is about you.

And Trump went into the debate. He's down in the polls. Who does he have to pick up? A majority of Americans dislike him going into the debate and he only increased that majority last night, but he's got to get suburban women. I think in Virginia County, Loudoun County and Prince William, he's got to get those women, independents. And last night, he did nothing but turn them off.

Several horrible, horrible moments, clearly, the worst for me is when he would not condemn white supremacists and he embraced the Proud Boys.

And I've got to tell you, I talked to Trump there in Charlottesville. I had to bury several of my friends that day who were killed because of the violence that was brought to Charlottesville incited by President Trump.

So, I can tell you, this is raw for me. And the idea that the president of the United States could not stand up last night to condemn white supremacists and encouraged these Proud Boys at a time that our nation needs to heal, it was a horrible night, not only for America, it was a brutal night for Donald Trump and proved why Joe Biden needs to be our next president.

CAMEROTA: And Ana, that white supremacist group --

NAVARRO: Let me tell you something. I have a number of girlfriends who were not political, who are not political, who never write me or text me about politics, texting me last night in the middle of the night, talking about how embarrassing it was, how pathetic it was, how if their child behaved that way, they would put them in timeout and find some way of disciplining them.

And I also want to say, I don't do this often, congratulations to David Urban for speaking some truth this morning, because Donald Trump needs to hear it from his supporters, because this country deserves better. We have two more debates to go and we deserve a real debate where the president of the United States, for at least 90 minutes, goes on there and behaves like a functioning adult.

[07:20:05]

That is not too much to ask.

CAMEROTA: David, why did president Trump struggle so much last night when asked if he could condemn this, you know, hardcore white supremacist group?

URBAN: Well, I think he -- I mean, I'm just looking -- I was just looking at my notes here where Chris Wallace asked. He said, are you willing to condemn these folks, and he said, sure, I'm willing to do that.

CAMEROTA: Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, David. Let's play it, because he really struggled. No, I'm not going to read it, I'm going to play it. Watch this.

URBAN: Okay.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've in Portland?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Sure, I'm willing to do that.

WALLACE: Go ahead, sir.

TRUMP: But I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not the right wing.

WALLACE: So what are you saying --

TRUMP: I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace.

WALLACE: Then do it, sir. Say it. Do it. Say it.

TRUMP: You want to call them -- what do you want to call them? Give me a name. Who do you want me to condemn?

WALLACE: White supremacists and white --

(CROSSTALKS) TRUMP: Proud boys, stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody has got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem.

BIDEN: His own FBI director said the threat (INAUDIBLE) white supremacists. Antifa is an idea, not an organization.

TRUMP: You've got to be kidding me.

BIDEN: That's what his FBI director said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: David, I think your handwritten transcript left some stuff out. He kept saying, what do you want me to say?

URBAN: No, Alisyn, he said, I want peace. No, look --

CAMEROTA: David, hold on, hold on, hold on. What does, stand by, mean?

URBAN: I don't know. Listen, he could have and should have done it more forcefully, okay? He could have said it more clearly and said, look, of course I denounce the KKK and violent extremist groups.

CAMEROTA: So why didn't he say? Why did he have such a hard time with that?

URBAN: I don't have an answer for you as to why he didn't. I wish he would have done it more forcefully. He's done it in the past in terms of, just most recently, condemning the KKK and other groups in the Oval doing an E.O.

So, look, that's clearly a missed opportunity. There were lots of missed opportunities for the president last night. When asked about African-Americans, the president didn't talk about, you know, historic funding levels for HBCUs, he didn't talk about the first step back, he didn't talk about economic empowerment zones. All of these positive things his administration has done, he kind of left on the table.

And the president did something that he should have let Joe Biden -- the one that I think that Joe Biden is notoriously known for is being long winded. The president should have let just Joe Biden talk for ten minutes uninterrupted and we would have, I think, seen a different Joe Biden. Instead, he kept interrupting him, never letting him commit a gaffe. The president didn't give him time.

CAMEROTA: Ana?

NAVARRO: Well, listen, you also have a Joe Biden who prepared for this, who took this seriously and prepared for days and days. On the other hand, Donald Trump didn't. He hung out with his two buddies, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani. Well, have you ever seen Rudy Giuliani give his speech at the Republican National Convention, you understand why hanging out with Rudy Giuliani for a couple of days will wind you up to the state he was in yesterday. We saw a president who didn't take it seriously, and it showed yesterday.

And I go back to telling you, I think the reason it was so harmful for Trump is because it showed a complete disregard and disrespect for the American voter and the American people. What we saw was plus an hour and a half of spewing of misinformation. We saw a debate moderator who could not deal with the incoming and could not deal with the petulant, immature attention deficit child who was on that stage, behaving like a clucking hen, not behaving in any way presidential.

BERMAN: Guys, stand by, if you already if a minute. Hang on, David. We've got -- we're going to step to a different report for a second, which gets to something we've been talking about. We'll come back to you in a moment.

The Proud Boys that the president discussed last night, the Proud Boys whom the president said should stand by, they have been promoting the president's words overnight, rejoicing in the president's words. So let's find out more about who they are and what they stand for.

Our CNN Correspondent Elle Reeve has talked to some of its members. Elle, you've really done more work on the Proud Boys than I think almost any journalist in America. So tell us who they are.

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, it's a national group of local chapters. An ex-member told me he thinks of it as a bike gang without bikes. But unlike a lot of groups that arose during the Trump era, like the alt-right, they are not explicitly white supremacists.

[07:25:00]

They say they want to support western civilization, but they're not out there posting swastikas.

But that said, a group doesn't have to be neo-Nazi to be dangerous. So you see them coming to rallies to battle with Antifa wearing body armors, guns, paintball guns, and in recent months, you've seen them willing to use it

BERMAN: So, you went to a Proud Boy rally in Oregon. I think it was just last weekend, timely. What did you learn?

REEVE: I spoke to the chairman, Enrique Tarrio. He said that he is happy about the president's comments, but he doesn't see it as an endorsement. He says, stand back and stand by, means they should just keep doing what they're doing.

And so we went to a rally, you can check out what that looks like.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENRIQUE TARRIO, CHAIRMAN, PROUD BOYS: We're a drinking club with a patriot problem. As Proud Boys, I think, our main objective is to defend the west.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do I look scary with this? I would never use this to hit someone out of just a blatant attack. It would be only self- defense.

REEVE: We're at the Proud Boys rally in Delta Park.

The Proud Bays are a far-right group with ambiguous beliefs but a clear record of street fights.

TARRIO: We're not punching each other in the face.

REEVE: But part of the culture is to be lightly punched while naming five breakfast cereals.

TARRIO: Five breakfast cereals, yes.

REEVE: They planned this rally after far-right activist was killed here a few weeks ago. Many worry that their presence in Portland will result in clashes with anti-fascist protesters, who planned their own rally as a response.

Ahead of this, the governor declared a state of emergency.

There's at least 300 people, although they've hyped up to 3,000. And the ratio of journalist Proud Boys is very high.

Are you here to get in fights with Antifa?

TARRIO: Absolutely not.

REEVE: But you are sort of dressed in the aesthetics of political violence?

TARRIO: Aesthetics and actually what we are is two different things. We are all wearing gears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who needs a shield?

REEVE: It just seems like every time there is a Proud Boys event, it ends with some people getting beat up.

TARRIO: If our mere presence causes people to want to commit acts of violence, and we're not afraid to defend ourselves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know what you do, bro, calling people white supremacists and Nazi.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who?

REEVE: The Proud Boys all tell us they're just here to drink beer and barbecue, but there have already been a couple of incidents that have teetered on the edge of violence, including our own crew being threatened.

Did you film that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have something to say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had one Antifa come in here. Openly admitted he was. The cameras like captured, oh, wow, look, they're being so violent. They didn't touch him. He wasn't bleeding, he didn't get marked up, he didn't get punched, he didn't get spitted or nothing. And I told him later, you're lucky.

REEVE: Well, if you're not here for violence and it wouldn't be luck, it would be the plan, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wait, I mean, if -- yes.

REEVE: It wouldn't be a stroke of luck?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.

REEVE: You weren't expecting to be violent?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But that -- well, that's me, but I can't speak for everybody else.

REEVE: The sheriff's department estimated about a thousand people came to Delta Park throughout the day. Meanwhile, about a thousand counter-protesters gathered three miles away.

What do you think the Proud Boys represent?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fear, fear of losing power. They feel like they're just losing everything they fought, that they're the superior race.

We call them the proud little penis boys.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fascists have no place in this city.

REEVE: And why is it is important to like have a counter-rally to the Proud Boys? Like why not just ignore them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're out here to show that we're not afraid and we're not going to like back down in the face of tyranny, especially when our president is amping up this whole situation.

REEVE: At the nightly anti-police protests, people waited warily for the Proud Boys to show up, but they never came.

Instead, the only clashes that occurred were the same ones between police and protesters that have happened nearly every night since May.

In the end, it was just another night in Portland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Elle Reeve, I have to tell you how incredibly timely, what an important look at something that was thrust into the spotlight in front of tens of millions of people last night, so thank you. Thank you for the work you've done here and thank you for helping us all understand what clearly the president does, and clearly the president has chosen to, in some ways, embrace. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. REEVE: Thanks.

BERMAN: All right. What broke through in this event that we all looked at last night? What are the issues that might have broken through and what do voters take away from this, next.

[07:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)