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Harris Slams Trump For Not Releasing His Medical Records; Harris Unveils Opportunity Agenda Targeting Black Men; Biden Announces $600 Million Plus in Projects to Shore up Florida Power Grid; Just Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 14, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:02]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Trump's fierce anti-immigrant message not scaring away Latino voters. A new poll showing the former President maintains his gains with the key group. Both candidates today are in Pennsylvania. We'll take you live to the campaign trail.

Plus, an insurance nightmare. Florida homeowners facing sky-high costs after back to back storms. How can folks there afford to rebuild? We're going to talk to the State's Chief Financial Officer.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And the Sahara Desert, one of the driest places on earth, is flooded. We are following these stories and many more, all coming in to CNN News Central.

Okay, set your clocks. It's just 22 days until Election Day. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania today as a new national poll shows the candidates in a dead heat.

Trump is now calling on Harris to take a cognitive test. But as her campaign points out, the Vice President has released a new detailed letter from her doctor saying she is in, quote, "excellent health." She calls on Trump to release his medical records.

SANCHEZ: And it's been nearly a year since Trump put out a letter from his doctor saying his, quote, "overall health is excellent." Let's go live to Erie, Pennsylvania, with CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, who's covering the Harris campaign. Priscilla, Harris is ramping up claims that the Trump team isn't being transparent about his fitness. Tell us more.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Boris, this is a new line of attack that the Vice President launched yesterday and over the course of interviews as well, essentially arguing that by him not participating in some interviews and not releasing his medical records, that he may not be fit for office. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: His staff won't let him do a 60 minutes interview. Every president for the last half century has done one. Anyone who's running for president. Everyone has done it except Donald Trump. He will not debate me again. I put out my medical records. He won't put out his medical records. And you have to ask, why is his staff doing that? And it may be because they think he's just not ready, and unfit, and unstable, and should not have that level of transparency for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, while the Vice President is hammering her republican rival, she's also focused on locking in her coalition, doubling down on black voter outreach and trying to fill the void when it comes to questions about her own proposals, especially on the economy. So today, she is going to unveil here in Erie some of those proposals. That includes, for example, forgivable loans to entrepreneurs of up to $20,000, promoting apprenticeships and legalizing recreational marijuana, among other measures.

Taken together, it's a sweeping proposal and an attempt by the Vice President and her team to appeal to black voters because wall polls show that she has the majority of black voters behind her. There has been an erosion of support when compared to other election cycles.

And the fear among advisers is that some of these voters decide to sit out the election or vote for Donald Trump. So that is the work that they are trying to make up for over the course of the week. Tomorrow, for example, she'll be in Detroit, where she'll be participating in a radio town hall with Charlamagne tha God who has millions of listeners, many of whom are black. And later in the week, she'll also be returning to Michigan.

So the campaign clearly with his travel blitz across the blue wall, trying to lock in this coalition from what may be the surest path to 270 for this campaign come November.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Priscilla Alvarez, thank you very much. Let's bring in CNN National Political Reporter Daniel Strauss. He's covering the Trump campaign. So Daniel, what does former President Trump plan to do during his time in Pennsylvania?

DANIEL STRAUSS, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Similar to Harris in its own way, Trump plans to focus on the economy and specifically his bread and butter issues. He plans to talk about tariffs. He plans to talk about taxation. Now, let's be clear about Trump. You never quite know what he's going to say on stage, but it is telling in the final few weeks of this campaign that both Harris and Trump see the economy as the message they need to hone into in Pennsylvania.

Remember, this is also a state that both camps see as the deciding state in this election. Because it's so close, whichever way Pennsylvania goes, they expect that way is how the presidential election will go. And both campaigns, the Harris and Trump campaign, expect that the economy is the winning issue to telegraph in these final weeks.

SANCHEZ: Daniel Strauss, thank you so much for the update.

[14:05:01]

Joining us now to discuss is the Duchess of Hialeah, Florida, Sabrina Rodriguez, a National Political Reporter for the Washington Post, and Mike Madrid, , co-founder of the Lincoln Project and the author of the Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy. Thank you both for being with us.

Mike, first to you, I want to dig into the numbers in this new New York Times/Siena college poll showing Harris leading Trump 56% to 30% among Latino voters. She is underperforming the last three Democratic presidential nominees. She's still winning among Latino voters, but that is significant because this could be a race that is won in the margins. Does she have enough time to turn this around?

MIKE MADRID, AUTHOR, "THE LATINO CENTURY": Well, first, let me say what an honor it is to be on with the duchess. So thanks for that. Let me also say that, yeah, I think you characterized it perfectly. There is some weakness here. And it is fixable. There is time, but it is -- they're running short on time. I'm glad that to see you're closing on kind of these economic issues, Kamala Harris has made a lot of the right adjustments to get back into a more competitive position for Democrats over the past hundred days or so than where they were prior. She has done a good job.

The question is, does she have enough time in that short window to overcome a lot of what the Democrats had been doing for the past 12 or 15 years where they had been consistently leaking Latino voters? And we obviously won't know until Election Day. But what I will say is a lot of this was unnecessary. A lot of this is self-inflicted wounds. The Democrats had time and plenty of evidence to make this correction earlier. I think she's doing everything right. We're just going to have to see if she can break through on it.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting. Sabrina, what do you think? I mean, 22 days is not that long. So what can she do to alter that?

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, first, it's an honor to be with the most famous person in Hialeah. I have to acknowledge it.

SANCHEZ: Get out of here. Get out of here. That's false.

RODRIGUEZ: But I think the Harris campaign, I mean, they're acknowledging -- there's been a long time misconception with Latino voters that they only care about immigration or that that is the top issue for them. We're seeing the Harris campaign really talk to Latino voters like everyone else. They understand that for Latino voters, the biggest issues are inflation, the economy, the cost of living, housing, and for some, it's reproductive rights, for some, it's climate change. I mean, they recognize that there is diversity within Latino voters in the same way that we see it amongst everyone else.

And even on the specific issue of immigration, they recognize that there's nuances to it. I think one of the most interesting things we saw from the New York Times/Siena Poll this week and focused on Latino voters was that a majority actually are not offended by what Donald Trump is saying about immigration. They don't take it personally. They don't think when he giving, you know, he's saying his anti-immigrant rhetoric that it is referring to them.

So in conversations with the Latino voters across the country, I mean, you just hear them saying many are sympathetic towards immigrants. Many are saying they want pathways to citizenship, but they're also concerned about the border. They also see an issue in the past few years.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, Alisyn, I'm not sure if, you know, Hialeah and I -- Sabrina and I are from the same place. Hialeah, Florida.

CAMEROTA: I just gathered.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

CAMEROTA: I just gathered there's a backstory.

SANCHEZ: And something that she said about that poll stood out to me because it's something that I've heard repeatedly from talking to folks back home, Sabrina. And it's the idea, and we have those numbers, I think. It's the idea that even folks that were born in another country, more than half of them, Latino voters, do not believe that Donald Trump is talking to them when he says things like migrants are taking over the country. We're going to have migrant camps all over the place if Kamala Harris wins. So I wonder what is he saying to them that then appeals to those voters that are trending toward republicans?

RODRIGUEZ: Well, he's playing on a nuance here within the Latino community. I mean, we hear it when he's on the campaign trail saying that these immigrants are taking black and Hispanic jobs. He's saying, you know, he's creating this caste system, this class system amongst Latino voters and saying, there are others. The people that are coming now are others. You're a hardworking American, you pay your taxes or you -- he's trying to create these misconceptions. And a lot of it is based off of falsehoods and fear mongering that we see. But it has been effective within a group.

And I think as an important thing to point out, though, is Harris is still winning a majority of Latino voters. I think that as soon as we start talking about inroads that Trump's making, then it becomes a debate over how much. And he doesn't need to win a majority of Latino voters to really make a dent in some of these key battleground states. And it's not just the states that we typically hear about Latino voters. And it's not just Arizona and Nevada or Florida. That's places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, too, that have such a growing population.

CAMEROTA: Mike, isn't this just such an interesting revelation that people -- because Donald Trump does this rhetorical thing where he says criminals and rapists, people can say, well, obviously, he's not talking about me. But then, as you know, he's also not specific.

[14:10:02] He also then says he's going to deport millions of people. And sometimes, his campaign goes as far as to say that he's going to deport people who weren't born here. So it's just curious of how people identify themselves with who he's mentioning, Mike.

MADRID: That's exactly right. And that identity is really central to what is happening with what we call Latinidad or Latino identity. Look, in this poll, 43% of Latinos support building a wall, including, by the way, 9% of Latinos who are voting for Kamala Harris, who also, by the way, that 9% also support deportations of those that are here. So it's why you are seeing Kamala Harris take such a decidedly strong, I would argue, conservative. It's not a centrist position, it's a conservative position. It's the Lankford bill on immigration and on border security.

So this is all related to how this explosion of later generation Latinos, the change in -- from Latinos being largely a migrant or immigrant centered voting bloc 20 years ago to now, where 80% of new Latino registrants are U.S. born. This U.S. born Latino does not feel that Trump is talking to them when he's talking about building a wall or mass deportations. In fact, there's very strong growing sentiment that they are in support of these positions, as the Time Poll just pointed out.

But I also do want to bring up one other point, and that is, this is not new in our community. It's certainly growing as sentiment. But there's always been at least a third of our community regardless of degree of generation removed from the immigrant experience that has supported these stronger border security plans. And it's why I think Democrats are really struggling with the issue right now because that's never been the orthodoxy, at least not for the past 20 years, of where the party has believed Latino voters to be at.

SANCHEZ: So Sabrina, a moment ago, you mentioned Pennsylvania as a place where Latinos can sort of tilt the scales. I wonder where else on the map you look and think that might be a spot?

RODRIGUEZ: I mean, I think Pennsylvania is sort of one of the big surprises since we focus so much on it as this battleground state that Harris needs to win. But we see it in Wisconsin, there is a growing population there. And I do think, I mean, it's not to then sort of look away from these states. I mean, Arizona and Nevada, this is a huge part. It's roughly one in five voters in both of these states that are Latino. And those are places where, you know, Biden won by just a few thousand votes. So if a few thousand Latinos stay home, a few thousand Latinos decide to vote, you know, for Donald Trump that voted for Biden in 2020, or some of the younger Latinos coming up decide that they identify more with Donald Trump in this election, that is the game changer. That is the reality if her path to victory is through these battleground states. And each of these, a few thousand Latinos can ultimately determine the election and ultimately help Trump win if he courts enough.

CAMEROTA: One follow up for you, Sabrina. Talk about the gender divide in the Latino community. Is it stronger than in other? Or is it more distinct than in other communities? RODRIGUEZ: The gender gap is very real within Latino men in

particular,. And we're seeing it especially with younger Latino men. So we're seeing both a gender gap and an age distinction here where older Latinos are more supportive of Harris. You're saying that younger Latinos are more open-minded. And that should be ring alarm bells for the Democratic Party because Latinos are such a young population. And they're coming up without necessarily having some type of party loyalty there. You know, when you think about an 18-year-old voter, a first time voter, they didn't live through Obama administration. They don't remember that. To them, this era of politics is the norm. So they don't have that kind of affiliation with a certain party, a kind of loyalty. A lot of them identify as independent. So for them, I mean, this is what the election is going to come down to. And not just this one, but the future ones.

SANCHEZ: And it is anything but normal, this era, right? Sabrina, Mike, great to have you on (INAUDIBLE). Look at us, the city of progress. Thanks so much for being with us.

Still ahead this hour on CNN News Central, a nightmare for Florida homeowners as insurers warn of double-digit billion dollar losses in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The struggle to find home insurance could get even harder now.

Plus, the fate of his career has been up in the air after his latest concussion. But the Miami Dolphins just gave a big update on the future of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.

CAMEROTA: And the Sahara Desert is flooding. We'll show you more images.

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CAMEROTA: Floridians are struggling to recover from multiple disasters back to back hurricanes with the last one, Milton, spawning dozens of tornadoes. The National Weather Service confirmed at least three were EF3 twisters. 23 people were killed by Milton, which made landfall last Wednesday, then tore across the width of Florida.

SANCHEZ: And survivors describe how they sought refuge from Hurricane Helene in a home now ripped apart by Hurricane Milton. Let's go live to CNN's Isabel Rosales who's been covering the aftermath. Isabel, people you spoke with, I imagine they're exhausted just trying to get their lives back together.

[14:20:01]

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, hurricane exhaustion, this one two punch of Helene and then Milton. So this recovery process is not easy and it's going to take time. And what's certainly not helping here is the flooding that is still ongoing. We saw Milton dump about 18 inches of rain over Hillsborough County. And as we speak, there are active river flood warnings. So imagine, you're in a situation where the sheriff's office, fire rescue, they could be needing to do more rescues, actively getting people out of tough situations, not to mention with all that water, you can't clear out the debris, you can't clean up, you can't move on. And we certainly saw that for ourselves at the Alafia River, which you're seeing right now, houses underwater. And we spoke to a husband and a wife packing up their lives and heading on an airboat back to safety, not knowing, you know, where they would sleep. This happened on Friday. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RALPH GENITO, VALRICO, FLORIDA RESIDENT: We have our health and my family. So I feel for everybody that's been through the same thing, really do. I do. I never expect it to happen to me. Nobody expects it to happen to them. So you just get through it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSALES: Yeah. That was Ralph Genito. And your heart just breaks for him and so many others who, you know, have lost their homes and don't know how they're going to rebuild and repair. Then, of course, in this process of talking recovery, you have fuel, such an important part of moving on from Milton. We know that fuel suppliers are working to get that infrastructure back here in Florida. Currently, according to GasBuddy, the tracking website, 20% of pumps in the Sunshine State are out of fuel. In hard hit Tampa, that number is 50% half of pumps are out of fuel. But that is significantly down from 87% on Sunday. So great progress has been made there.

We know that 70 million gallons of gas that is inbound for Tampa here in the next seven days, that's according to FEMA. And we've seen police escorting those gas tankers, making sure they get to the spots where they're needed. We've seen public fueling sites allowing people to come insure those lines lasting hours. But once they get there, they can get up to 10 gallons of fuel for free. And, of course, there's also power. We've seen such massive outages. In the state of Florida, 375,000 people are currently without power. But, Boris, Alisyn, here's the good news. Power company saying that most people, most customers should get power back by midnight week.

CAMEROTA: That is good news, Isabel. Thank you very much. And that's just the beginning of the economic impact. So joining us now is Jimmy Patronis, Florida's Chief Financial Officer and the State Fire Marshal. Mr. Mister Patronis, thank you very much. Can you quantify yet in dollars how much damage Milton and Helene have caused Florida?

JIMMY PATRONIS, FLORIDA CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER AND STATE FIRE MARSHAL: So thank you for having me. With the Milton dollars that I just know off the top of my head, we have broken 100,000 claims. We're just cresting over about $1 billion in losses. It will grow. It won't be to the size and scope of a Hurricane Ian. Hurricane Ian in 2022 was $21 billion, almost 800,000 claims. But it's still, it will be a significant storm for the books of Florida to recover from.

CAMEROTA: And so if we're getting into the billions of dollars, as you say, how do insurers pay out those claims? How can they afford it?

PATRONIS: So the insurance companies also have their own insurance. It's called reinsurance. So an insurance company will buy. They'll have their own capital on hand. And then they will buy insurance policies on top of that. In most cases, an insurance company in the state of Florida will have $1 billion, $1.5 billion, $2 billion in reinsurance on top of their insurance. If they exhaust their funds they have on hand, then they go into the reinsurance policy that ends up ultimately paying those claims.

CAMEROTA: And what about the state budget? Is that affected by these disasters?

PATRONIS: So it's kind of a twisted answer, but it's going to be shocking to tell you this. The state of Florida makes money off of hurricanes. When you think about we're a sales tax-only economy, basically, and (inaudible) stamps on real estate. But in the case of Hurricane Ian, because there was $21 billion in claims paid out, the state found $1.55 billion in non-typical revenue. It was a spike in revenue, not anticipated revenue. It's like finding a lottery ticket. And so the state of Florida, we -- what we have done over the last several years is we take that money and we pour it back into the hands of the taxpayers through programs to help harden their homes, to drive down their insurance rates. The My Safe Florida Home Program knocks insurance premiums down by 50% on average with those families that participate in it.

CAMEROTA: That is fascinating to understand that math. It's a strange incentive structure, frankly, because you'd think that people wouldn't want to rebuild.

[14:25:05]

We're in a place that is prone to hurricanes. But are you saying that there's financial reason for -- to make it work?

PATRONIS: So I'll say this. There's going to be those families that will cash out. Hurricane Michael hit my hometown. It was a Category 5 storm. A number of families, especially those that have aged out, that are empty nesters, they will take their insurance proceeds, they will sell their home as is, and they will move closer to their grandkids or their kids. It's very common. And this is where sometimes, a community after hurricane kind of loses some of its identity because of all the new people that come in that want to live in the Florida market, especially in the coastal areas where you have sometimes the biggest amount of devastation. That's where the dollars come in most aggressively because people want to live on the water. And what they'll do, as they'll build to the latest building codes where the homes are less susceptible to damage.

CAMEROTA: And so Mr. Patronis, what is Florida as a state doing or what can it do to not be a sitting duck?

PATRONIS: So again, with the My Safe Florida Home Program is a perfect example. We put dollars into the market for reinforcing the windows, reinforcing the doors, new roofs, hurricane clips. Those homes that are built with the newer building codes, the post 1995 building codes, those homes are very resilient. It's the homes built prior to 1995 that may not have the latest building codes in them that are so susceptible to windstorm damage.

Now, when it comes to flood, the only way you're going to fight flood is to build up. So those homes that are at grade, unfortunately, they'll have significant damage, but the state of Florida will not allow them to build back at grade. They'll have to build back up 10, maybe 12 feetup. And that's where you have a lot of instances where there's a garage underneath the house.

CAMEROTA: So are you saying that the people that we've seen on our air, that our reporters have interviewed, that they will be compensated? I mean, will they be made whole and get everything that they've lost?

PATRONIS: So it just depends on what type of coverage they've got. If you're living on a coastal area and you have a mortgage in the state of Florida, you'll be required to have flood insurance and windstorm insurance by your mortgage company. That's going to be the way that you're going to ensure you're made whole.

Now, if you have a home that is fully paid for and you decide, you know, I'm going to skip out this year on paying for insurance because I want to prioritize my other expenses and I want to take a chance, unfortunately, those will be left without an insurance remedy to help rebuild.

I tell people all the time, what's kind of traumatizing about hurricanes is some people buy homes, some people build homes. Rebuilding a home is something that doesn't typically happen. And it's overwhelming when you start to rebuild your life from a damaged house.

And it's unfortunate. But you know, this is why we do our insurance villages, this is why we wrap our communities up with professionals. We have face to face engagements with the insurance carriers to ensure that they're getting their money. We're getting in touch with contractors that are reputable and start to rebuild their lives.

CAMEROTA: Jimmy Patronis, thank you for explaining all of that. Really helpful.

PATRONIS: Take care. Thanks so much.

CAMEROTA: Next, how Donald Trump says he will use the U.S. military against, quote, "the enemy from within" if he is reelected.

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