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Feds Seize 15,000 Rainbow Fentanyl Pills Hidden Inside Lego Box; The Long History of October Surprise in U.S. Elections. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired October 06, 2022 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:33:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANK TARENTINO, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, DEA'S NEW YORK DIVISION: Just deliberate. This is calculated. This is treacherous deception to market rainbow fentanyl like candy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Federal authorities in New York seized around 15,000 rainbow colored fentanyl pills hidden in a Lego box in an alleged drug trafficking scheme. The DEA says that it's the largest seizure of fentanyl in New York City's history.

Joining us now is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller.

John, good to see you. This is really disturbing to even see people try to get away with this. But what do you make of this? Is this something that we're going to see more of perhaps not only just in New York but in the country at large?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Totally. I mean, this 15,000 pill seizure by, you know, Frank Tarentino's people in the DEA task force, which is NYPD and state police working together as a team, is the biggest seizure in New York City. But there have been bigger seizures in other parts of the country because this is a flood,. And they're colored for a reason.

You know, they want it to look like a party drug. They want it to look like candy. They want to do the marketing on social media where they're selling it on multiple social media platforms using code words. So they really invented the game. It's not the street corner dealer who is, you know, selling out of a doorway. This is being done on social media platforms with clever marketing.

And you've got two giant Mexican cartels, a new generation Jalisco Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel who have just put coke and heroin and everything on the side because the profit margins here are spectacular.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, talk more about that because this has changed this process downstream, you're saying on the streets, but also back upstream as well where the cartels they believe this is better for them. Why?

MILLER: No cocoa fields, no worries about weather, agriculture, growers, farming, processing. Your precursor chemicals from China shipped to Mexico.

[07:35:02]

The factories, which might be, you know, a tent, you know, out on the side of some street or could be a super factory are taking those precursor chemicals turning them into powder, crushing them into pills and then shipping them every way into the United States. Those retailers are taking that, marketing it on social media. It's going through the mail, FedEx, UPS, being delivered or delivered to your door like a pizza.

They are making not hundreds of millions but billions of dollars. And the same Chinese organized crime organizations that are working on the precursors on one end are laundering that money for these groups in the United States on the back end through multiple accounts, multiple countries, and multiple techniques.

It's an amazing crime business. And remember, people are dying from this every day. 400 cases between May and September. The equivalent of 36 million lethal doses in the 10 million pills they seized. And remember, violence is still a factor. Most of the deaths are from overdose but they also picked up, you know, 350 guns, rifles, pistols, hand grenades.

GOLODRYGA: This is a sick and unfortunately, as you say, more profitable business model for these cartels.

MILLER: Exponentially.

GOLODRYGA: We'll continue to keep following this story. Thank you so much, John. We appreciate it.

Well, Herschel Walker dealing with his own version of the dreaded October surprise. We'll take you through past surprises that have haunted political candidates in the month of October.

BERMAN: President Biden and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis putting aside their differences to focus on the victims of Hurricane Ian. How could that cooperation affect them politically? This is such a low bar for two people to get along to treat hurricane victims.

GOLODRYGA: And yet here we are.

BERMAN: Why it should even be a political consideration?

GOLODRYGA: And yet here we are.

BERMAN: That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:41:15] GOLODRYGA: Well, it may or may not be a game changer but the 11th hour scandal surrounding Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is just the latest in a long history of the October surprise before a November election.

CNN's Eva McKend has been looking at this for us and joins us from Washington.

So what does history tell us, Eva?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Georgia's Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker continues to be mired in scandal. The "Daily Beast" now reporting the same woman who said Walker paid for her abortion in 2009 is also the mother of one of his children.

This shakeup in the competitive Senate contest between Walker and incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock fits into a long history of October surprises in tight political races.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCKEND (voice-over): It's October. Leaves begin to change color. The weather starts to chill. But in the world of politics, it's when campaigns start to heat up. And it's when unexpected news or events often occur during the election cycle, commonly known as an October surprise. A game-changing event that can possibly damage one candidate's chances and boost the others. October surprises have been around for decades and it is part of U.S. politics even before the term was used politically.

Going back 50 years to 1972, President Richard Nixon's National Security adviser Henry Kissinger has late news about the unpopular Vietnam War.

HENRY KISSINGER, FORMER NIXON NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We believe that peace is at hand.

MCKEND: He was wrong and the war wouldn't come to a close for two and a half more years. In 1980, in what was the October surprise that never happened, 52 U.S. hostages held in Iran were not released before the election, despite President Jimmy Carter's efforts. Instead, they were set free as soon as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

In '92, Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush seeking reelection was days away from the vote when a top Reagan team member Casper Weinberger was indicted over the Iran contra affair. Bill Clinton took the White House.

In 2000, in what was already a tight presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and then Texas Governor George W. Bush, news emerged that Bush was arrested 24 years earlier for drunk driving. Bush lost the popular vote, although he ultimately won the presidency following a controversial Supreme Court decision.

Eight years later with the stock market taking a nose dive and recession rearing its ugly head, GOP presidential nominee John McCain insisted.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The fundamentals of our economy are strong.

MCKEND: Voters disagreed with this assessment and what was once a tight race became a Democratic blowout with Barack Obama winning.

In 2012 in what was more of a September surprise than an October surprise, audio tape of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney surfaced, characterizing almost half the voters as dependent on government handouts.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There are 47 people of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.

MCKEND: President Obama went on to win re-election.

In 2016, in what seemed like every event constituted as an October surprise, "The Washington Post" published a 2005 video of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump boasting about being able to grab women by their genitals.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. I just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whatever you want.

TRUMP: Grab them by the (EXPLETIVE DELETED). You can do anything.

MCKEND: Trump's Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton also faced scrutiny when the FBI reopened an investigation into her staff's use of a private e-mail server.

[07:45:05]

TRUMP: We can be sure that what is in those e-mails is absolutely devastating.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They will reach the same conclusion they did when they looked at my e-mails for the last year. There is no case here.

MCKEND: And during the 2020 presidential election where it was a true October surprise, Trump, along with the first lady, tested positive for coronavirus days after the first presidential debate with Joe Biden.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My wife Jill and I pray that they'll make a quick and full recovery.

MCKEND: And while Trump tried to make his own October surprise in the closing days of his campaign, it all but fizzled from a pre-election vaccine to a massive new stimulus package.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCKEND: As we've noted CNN has not yet been able to independently verify the accusations in the "Daily Beast" reports underway in this current October surprise. The former NFL star who continues to call this allegations lies will be back out on the campaign trail holding a rally in just a few hours.

GOLODRYGA: Eva, thank you.

A lot to discuss here.

BERMAN: Yes. So joining us now, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Alice Stewart, CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp and CNN senior political analyst John Avlon.

Let me frame this as a question here. The question really is, are we post history when it comes to October surprises? Does anything matter anymore? Does something like this matter or has really Donald Trump changed -- after "Access Hollywood," is anything possible?

SE CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I think yesterday for CNN declared the October surprise dead. First of all, anyone following the Herschel Walker campaign should not be surprised by these revelations. We've learned a lot about Herschel Walker, none of it very good. Secondly, I don't think there are a lot of conservative Republican Georgia voters who think any differently of him now.

In fact, I'm hearing, at least according to his campaign director his fundraising surged in the light of these accusations and allegations. And I'm not hearing anyone in the party, Republican leaders denouncing it. They're standing by him. So we might be, you know, alarmed by it, I think rightly so. But I don't think this will shake loose a lot of voters. He might not win but I don't think it's going to be because Republican voters in Georgia decide well, this is too far.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: All right. Look. So I mean, part of this obviously is the bar for Herschel Walker couldn't be any lower but still I think the "Daily Beast" reporting is surprising to the extent that on the same day he's saying I don't have a clue who this woman is, they say actually it's a woman you had a previously undisclosed child out of wedlock with. So that, you know, that doesn't track.

Look, in defense of Georgia voters or Georgia Republican voters, you know, in 2020 they proved that swing voters, you know, were still alive. They split the ticket between, you know, between folks and that's one of the reasons Joe Biden won is Republicans particularly in the suburbs in Georgia said, you know what, I can't deal with Donald Trump again, I'm going Biden. The problem is I think a lot of Republican operatives have been saying out loud, and commentators, you know what, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter to be a hypocrite on abortion. All we want is the seat. Character doesn't matter, competence doesn't matter, truth telling doesn't matter. And that is I think a really dangerous thing. That's about not being post-history, but potentially post-truth when it comes to this stuff.

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But what we're seeing is that character and ethics are really not a qualifying factor for elected officials anymore. People are looking past a lot of that, and it's unfortunate but it's actual reality. And here's what we're going to see. October surprises are just as common as we saw the leaves changing and deaths and taxes. People expect that.

But in my conversations with people in my home state of Georgia they're not concerned with what Herschel Walker did in 2009. They're looking at what he is promising to do as a U.S. senator.

AVLON: He's not promising to do anything, Alice. Let's be honest about this. What we're saying is character doesn't count, you know, in the Senate. What we're saying is competence doesn't count because --

CUPP: Honesty.

AVLON: Right. I mean, you know, and that's what's really dangerous because if you go down that slippery slope and you say that character doesn't count, competence doesn't count, telling the truth doesn't count, what you're really saying is party above country, power above everything. And that's antithetical to the idea of the Senate and to the ideals that our democracy actually depends upon which is some people, enough people saying person over the party.

(CROSSTALK)

CUPP: Go ahead, Alice. Go ahead.

STEWART: What people are focusing on are the policies. They look at what Herschel --

CUPP: What policies, though?

AVLON: There's no policy here.

STEWART: His policies with regard to fighting crime, with --

AVLON: What policy does he have? He's against it?

STEWART: He certainly wants --

AVLON: Is Raphael Warnock for it? I mean, you have a reverend here. You have a person of faith. You've got an actual reverend and someone who lies about getting an abortion while being anti-abortion on the surface. Isn't that -- to the extent that faith impacts political decisions, I'm not clear why some Georgia voters who are people of faith wouldn't say, given the overturning of Roe, you know what the actual reverend --

(CROSSTALK)

[07:50:01]

CUPP: But they voted for Donald Trump, too. I mean, they've already compartmentalized character, morality, honesty and truth telling, integrity. And I worry that if we cede that, what are we voting for? Because it's not conservatism. I don't see conservatism in a lot of this. I don't see policies, principles, ideas. I see not virtue signaling but vice signaling. I see people like Herschel Walker, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Boebert and Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz vice signaling to their base. And all we're voting for now is who do they hate and are they the same people I hate?

STEWART: What Georgia voters are looking at is the front page of the "Atlanta Journal Constitution" and all of the TV stations in Atlanta, and there is story of crime after crime after crime, that's a huge issue. And they're looking at --

(CROSSTALK)

CUPP: I get that, I get that.

STEWART: And they're looking at crime is a big issue, the economy is a big issue and inflation is an issue, and Herschel Walker is talking about those issues. And they look at Raphael --

AVLON: Herschel Walker isn't talking about anything.

STEWART: They look at Raphael Warnock as someone who is part of the problem and they want to see a solution.

AVLON: OK. I give --

STEWART: And he is --

(CROSSTALK)

AVLON: Hold on --

CUPP: That would have made sense if Herschel Walker hadn't won the nomination. There were other people to choose from and we already knew a lot about Herschel Walker's character and competence before he was the one Republicans chose. It's not Herschel versus Warnock, it's Herschel versus any other Republican.

AVLON: And look, just, you know, Democracy does depend on enough people saying, look, I'm going to vote for the person, not the party. I'm an independent. I voted for Democrats or Republicans in my life. You know, the idea is that something should be disqualifying, truth telling, hypocrisy, competence, the ability to string together a coherent sentence, whatever it may be. But the excuse that oh, well, it doesn't matter because I'm voting for the policies is just not credible in the case of Herschel Walker.

BERMAN: Alice, go ahead.

STEWART: One last thing on that. There were other good candidates that ran in the primary that should have been the nominee. The agriculture director in Georgia should have been the nominee but he wasn't. And where we stand right now, we have a binary choice between a candidate that will support policies that Republicans in Georgia like and a candidate that will further the Biden policies. That's what -- we're at a binary choice right now.

Herschel Walker without a doubt is a flawed candidate. But right now he is the candidate that Georgians want.

BERMAN: Let me just pose another question here which gets to, again, how you may look at this in other races now and going forward, I think one of the questions is, is Donald Trump a unicorn? Is Donald Trump the guy who could get away with anything and still get elected and is he different than other people? Is Herschel Walker going to be the next Donald Trump? Does he have the same qualities that Donald Trump did, whatever they were, to squeak out of this?

GOLODRYGA: Because that used to be the narrative, what Donald Trump could get away with, no other candidate could. And we're seeing the polling still rather tight as the scandal continues to evolve.

STEWART: And I think what we saw with Donald Trump any time he was accused of anything or we saw this "Access Hollywood" tape, was his response? Deny, deflect and demean those that accuse him of these things. That's exactly what Herschel Walker is doing. This will be a perfect litmus test to see if anyone besides Donald Trump can get away with Trumpism. This will be a test.

CUPP: Republicans are helping, they're blaming Democrats for the smear when it was his ex, you know, baby mama who came out with the allegation. And folks in right-wing media are smearing this woman, who is by the way the mother of another one of his children because why? He hates the right people and we want to win the Senate back. It's so craven.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But are you guys a yes or no on the idea that Trump is unique? Are you guys a yes or a no that other people can manage the escape act?

AVLON: I think the water has changed because of the downstream effect to Donald Trump but particularly in the Republican Party. Let's be honest about this. It's not necessary -- this is why the statewide electorate is actually the better test because we've seen plenty of candidates who are Trump-lite and, you know, and win their primaries. That's the problem is, when you have one-party states, when you have safe districts, these folks go up and represents folks in Congress. And that itself sort of defines deviancy down if you will.

CUPP: Well, there are already plenty in Congress. I mean, there are already plenty who have won.

AVLON: Yes.

CUPP: Whether they can stay there or they wash out like a Madison Hawthorne when tides change in their states, who knows? But it's not like no one was able to replicate or get away with stuff that should be disqualifying to either get in or once they're in. I mean, some of the stuff Marjorie Taylor Greene has done and said is disgusting, reprehensible, disqualifying. And she has plenty of support. AVLON: This just to go back to the unified (INAUDIBLE) theory of what

screwed up our politics. It's not Donald Trump. It's hyper partisanship. It's safe districts. It's a lack of competitive general elections. And the reason that this matters, this is a competitive general election.

BERMAN: It is competitive.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Right.

AVLON: And normally these kind of things should be disqualifying for people of good faith and independent judgment. And we'll see if that happens. That's why this race matters.

STEWART: Right. And that's why I think moving forward -- we'll find out in November, Republicans need to make sure that they nominate candidates that are not just great for the primary but can also win a general election.

AVLON: That'd it be it.

CUPP: From your lips.

(CROSSTALK)

[07:55:05]

BERMAN: Mitch McConnell is on line two for you.

GOLODRYGA: Exactly. Waiting to talk to you.

BERMAN: Alice Stewart, SE Cupp, John Avlon, thank you all very much.

We do have a CNN exclusive. A former Texas state trooper who is being investigated over the Uvalde school massacre now hired to protect the very same children who survived the shooting. We're going to speak to the mother of one child who was killed ahead.

GOLODRYGA: Plus are gas prices about to go back up? And the Biden administration is livid over a dramatic move overseas. We'll speak with the White House straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: I'm John Berman with Bianna Golodryga. A major escalation on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea test-firing two ballistic missile overnight. This is the second missile launch this week.

Returning to Sanibel Island, homeowners now coming face to face with Hurricane Ian's devastation.

GOLODRYGA: A heartbreaking update this morning in the search of kidnapped family of four just days --

[08:00:00]