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Harris Says She Cannot Take The Black Male Vote For Granted; Trump Sways And Bops To Music For 39 Minutes In Bizarre Town Hall Episode; Former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis And CNN's Sara Sidner Get Real About Breast Cancer. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired October 15, 2024 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

JUSTIN CARTER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE SHADE ROOM: -- had for, you know, if they choose not to vote for the vice president for president, really, the message was, let's think about this. Let's think about, you know, supporting, you know, a black woman for president, and not necessarily targeting, you know, their demographic.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: What did you make of her answer when you asked her about this issue that has stirred up controversy?

CARTER: Yes, you know, it's interesting. You know her focus -- she said over and over again, her focus is to make sure that she wins. And she said, you know, above all, you know, she understood, you know, the President, the former President Barack Obama's message. She understood it. She got it.

However, her focus, she said, right now, is to make sure that, you know, she really earns the vote for black men. So, I will say that she really didn't touch on President Obama's message 100 percent but she did say that her focus right now is pushing past that and working on making sure she meets with black entrepreneurs black families, to make sure that she does earn their vote, regardless of what the President said.

SIDNER: Justin Carter, thank you so much for doing the interview, for sharing that with us, and thank you for coming on early this morning with us here in CNN News Center. Appreciate your time. John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, our reporter was inside the room at the Trump town hall that turned into a 39-minute bizarre dance performance. So what exactly happened? And an update on our rolling panda coverage flying in from China, the two pandas are now passing over West Virginia Mountain, Mama, take me home.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:36:05]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So it was an unusual night in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. After interruptions by two medical emergencies at a town hall, the former president cut off questions and started calling up songs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Let's make it into it music. Who the hell wants to hear questions? Let me hear that music, please.

GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): Everyone, let's thank President Trump.

TRUMP: Nice and loud.

NOEM: God bless you.

TRUMP: Play YMCA, go ahead. Let's go nice and loud.

NOEM: Here we go. Everybody.

(END VIDEO CIP)

BOLDUAN: One reporter who was in the room I saw put it this way that I was at Trump's golden escalator launch, and have probably been to 100 rallies, give or take, have never seen anything like tonight. CNN's Kristen Holmes was also in the room at that town hall. She's joining us now. Kristen, what happened?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, it was certainly weird. I think any implication that he was having some sort of medical episode is a complete stretch. I've seen that on the left, but someone doesn't have to have a medical episode in order for something to be incredibly bizarre.

There are group of us that cover all of these events that were looking at each other while this was happening and asking what exactly was going on, and at some point, quite frankly, when is this going to end? Because it seemed to keep going. You know, one point we thought that perhaps there was a security issue that Secret Service had told him you had to stay inside. But I was told by sources in the Secret Service and the campaign that it had nothing to do with that, that he was quote, unquote, vibing, as you mentioned.

It started with two medical episodes that caused the town hall, and afterwards, during the second medical episode, he called for Pavarotti to be played, which was an interesting choice, and then said at the end of it, he would have a couple of songs that he would play, and big boob could just listen.

He ended up following through on that and playing, as you said, the YMCA, he was playing James Brown, and the whole time by playing, I mean, they were playing it on the speakers, and he was kind of standing there swaying. Even some of his aides that we were asking what's going on, they seem to not really know.

And this went on for quite some time. This was 30 minutes of the crowd standing there while he kind of swayed back and forth. You saw Christy Noem dart back and forth at certain times. I'm not sure she really knew what to do in that situation. She, of course, was moderating that town hall. But all in all, it was certainly one of the more bizarre experiences that I have had on the campaign trail this cycle.

BOLDUAN: And there's still three weeks to go, so just stand by to stand by for the next. It's good to see you, Kristen. Thank you so much. John.

BERMAN: All right with us now. Republican Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, the author of the new book "Hard Truth: Think and Lead like a Green Beret. Congressman, thanks so much for being with us. I think you're talking to us from Palm Beach today. Your district is actually up the coast some, how are people doing there after the hurricanes?

REP. MIKE WALTZ (R-FL): Yes, thanks for asking John. And all of my proceeds for that book will go to veterans' charities. We're doing OK. The farmers and our rural areas were really hit hard and flooded. One of the things that we are, you know, really pressing the administration on is under the previous administration, the Department of Agriculture block granted monies down to the states and locals very quickly to help our farmers or fields or are flooded they can't feed their livestock for reasons that aren't clear to us.

Secretary Vilsack, Biden's Secretary the V.A. is holding on to it, and both Senator Scott and others have talked to President Biden directly. We need to help out our farmers. 30 percent of America's food supply flows through Florida's ports.

[09:40:00]

Agriculture is our number two industry. We need to get help out to the rural areas quickly.

BERMAN: Congressman, I do want to ask you about Donald Trump's comments about the quote enemy from within. He's not talking about immigrants here. He says he's talking about sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.

He went on to identify Adam Schiff as one of these people. The thing that's tougher to handle are these lunatics. He says that we have inside like Adam Schiff. Adam Shifty Schiff. You are a decorated veteran. How would you feel about deploying against Adam Schiff?

WALTZ: Well, I don't think that's what he said, John. I think you're connecting some dots there, but I mean what he's talking about, if you just roll the kind of the tape back to 2020, you had Portland, a courthouse under sustained assault, Federal officers repeatedly injured. You had riots across America, even in the run up after the election, the run up to the inauguration.

You had Antifa talking about descending on Washington, D.C. and businesses up their storefronts even go back to Lafayette Square. Over 50 police officers injured sent to the hospital because of the assault of the protesters.

So I think that's completely appropriate. The National Guard was rolled out then. President Trump asked for 10,000 guardsmen to be on standby. The mayor of D.C. whittled that down and only asked for 300. We cannot have, nor should we have riots in the streets, business owners threatened and Americans feeling unsafe.

Look, there is a long and clear record he leaked from the skiff. He lied --

BERMAN: But you're not suggesting deploying military against him. You don't -- do you want to deploy military against Adam Schiff?

WALTZ: No.

BERMAN: And do you think that discussions about -- do you think -- do you think --

WALTZ: When he's talking about broadly --

BERMAN: -- Congressman --

WALTZ: When you're talking about --

BERMAN: -- do you think deploying military about -- do you think deploying the military against political opponents is something that is responsible to discuss from political candidates?

WALTZ: I think it's responsible to discuss deploying the National Guard, which is clearly part of the military, John, to keep our streets safe, to keep rioters out of the street. Everyone is welcome to protest peacefully, but when it exceeds that into violence, as it did many times in 2020, then the National Guard was deployed and should be deployed, and that has happened in a bipartisan way across many administrations.

Separately, when you have senior members of the intelligence committee lying and leaking from compartmented hearings, when you have them lying to the public in an open hearing that is detrimental to our republic, to our democracy and public trust in our institutions. And that's what he was talking about, and that is not good for the country.

BERMAN: Well, again, he called Adam Schiff a lunatic. And specifically was talking about lunatics for the military --

WALTZ: People on this network calling Trump -- calling Trump Hitler and the next coming of another dictator, and two people have tried to kill him.

BERMAN: But Congressman --

WALTZ: We have the Iranians trying to kill him, a foreign adversary trying to assassinate him, and we're talking about him playing music in a rally. I mean --

BERMAN: I do understand -- I do understand you have talked about some of the rhetoric that's been at play here, and we could talk about Mark Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist, but you yourself sometimes use he did rhetoric. You've referred you did an interview with Newsmax where you're talking about socialist, seeming to refer to Vice President Harris as a socialist. So these phrases do get tossed around.

WALTZ: Socialism is a long standing political ideology that's very different than --

BERMAN: What's fascist?

WALTZ: -- saying someone is going to be the world's -- the world's most God. I mean, God, awful dictator and Hitler, and that clearly is radicalizing people to take action where they believe the ends justify the means to kill him. That is very different. And you have a whole party, including my colleagues in Congress that call themselves democratic socialists.

I think those policies are bad for the country. It leads to what we're seeing in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, some would argue California is on a path towards socialist policies. I don't think that's a fair comparison at all, John.

BERMAN: You don't. I mean, you talk about Marxism, you talk about socialism. And do you think Kamala Harris is a Marxist or a socialist?

WALTZ: Yes. I think there is Marxism that is underpinning many of her policies that she shows, including price controls.

[09:45:00]

BERMAN: So you're talking about policy. Again, all I'm saying, congressman. All I'm saying congressman is then there Mark Milley -- when Mark Milley says no one has ever been as dangerous as country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he's a total fascist. He's saying that Donald Trump espouses fascist policies. It is a political ideology. Fascism is a political ideology.

WALTZ: Yes, no, I wasn't referring directly to Mark Milley, but since we're talking about him, look, let's talk about what's dangerous to the country having World War III nearly in both Europe and the Middle East, which has happened in the last four years, which happened on his watch, the disgraceful debacle from Afghanistan that's now led to a rise of both ISIS and Al Qaeda. That's pretty dangerous. What's going on in the South China Sea is pretty darn dangerous.

So I think the weakness we've seen from this White House for which he was the senior military adviser, is far more dangerous than American interests than having the Abraham Accords signed on the White House lawn, which is what we just had four years ago.

BERMAN: Congressman Mike Waltz from Florida, we do appreciate your time. Look forward to speaking with you again. Take care.

WALTZ: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Any moment, John Berman, stay around for this, because I know you're excited. Two giant pandas from China expected to touch down in our nation's capital. The three year old bears. They're not bears, right? I don't think they're not bears. Made a pit stop in Alaska early this morning on their special charter plane dubbed the Panda Express, which will deliver them to Washington's National Zoo. It's flying over Virginia right now.

Chinese officials say on their long journey, the black and white duo had access to water and snacks, corn, buns, bamboo shoots and carrots, as one does. The pandas are set to be -- the first set to be, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just going to stop there. Just the pandas are cute. They're going to be landing in Washington. None of it else. Nothing else matters.

BOLDUAN: Full stop. That's where this all ends. Pandas. Polls are open in Georgia as early in person voting kicks off today in that battleground state, and as Donald Trump continues pushing for big changes in how the country votes, including he says, using paper ballots only. The fact check on his solutions that's coming up.

And October is breast cancer awareness month. Coming up next, conversation between three friends, two of whom are battling cancer now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:51:23]

SIDNER: We know that one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer, but in the case of my colleague and friend, both of her closest friends, were diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and are battling it at the same time, I am one of those friends. The other is Ananda Lewis, content creator and former MTV VJ and host of Team Summit, we both took very different treatment paths and had starkly different results. Here's our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANANDA LEWIS, FORMER MTV VJ: I'm sorry, yours was your left, right?

SIDNER: Yes.

LEWIS: Mine was right.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK.

SIDNER: Little bit different.

(CROSSTALK)

ELAM: It's crazy that we're joking about it. So what about mammograms? I'll start with you, Ananda, were you good about getting your mammograms?

LEWIS: No, I wasn't.

ELAM (voice-over): This is Ananda Lewis, and she has breast cancer. She's a content creator who is known for her time hosting BET's Teen Summit in the 90s, being a VJ for MTV and hosting her own talk show in the early 2000s. She's one of my best friends, as is CNN anchor, Sara Sidner. She too has breast cancer stage three. Both of them found their lumps on their own. Sara's discovery was just months after a mammogram.

SIDNER: The American Cancer Society does not recommend self-exams anymore, but to me, if you can tell you know your body, you have to advocate for yourself so much, and I am terrible at advocating for myself. I will advocate for you. I will advocate.

ELAM: You're actually happy to do it for everybody else.

SIDNER: I will. I will fight someone, like I am a ride or die beat. So this has been a real lesson for me to self-advocate.

ELAM (voice-over) Sara had a double mastectomy. Ananda took a different approach. By the time she found a lump in her breast, her cancer had progressed to stage three, and doctors recommended a double mastectomy, but she went against the recommendation.

LEWIS: My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body. I felt like my body is intelligent. I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made. I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way. Looking back on it, I go, you know what, maybe I should have --

ELAM (voice-over): Ananda completely overhauled her diet, improved her sleep, pursued aggressive homeopathic therapies, along with traditional medicine and radiation. She improved for a long time. She says removing the toxins physical and emotional from her body has been beneficial.

But last year, she found out her cancer had metastasized into stage four, which means the cancer spread to other areas.

LEWIS: My lymph system really flared up, and so all through my abs men (ph), all those limps were very flared up my collarbone, and it was the first time I ever had a conversation with death, because I felt like, this is how it ends, you know. I was like, OK, so I don't get afraid of things. I was just like, fudge, man. I really thought I had this, you know, I was frustrated. I was a little angry at myself. I was and I said, Man, listen, I know you're coming for me at some point, but I don't want it to be now, and if you could just wait, I promise when you do come, I'm going to make it fun for you.

ELAM: What's interesting me is that you both are saying, is it to appreciate life more now that you're going through this, or is it joy?

SIDNER: Mine is joy. And I didn't realize how little joy I had in my life. Like I didn't realize that that was not a priority in my life.

LEWIS: My quality of life was very important to me. We've had that conversation before. Like I there's certain things I know I'm not going to be okay with, and I know myself I want to, want to be here, and so I had to do it a certain way for me.

SIDNER: The fact that you, like, I want to want to be here, I've had times when I didn't want to be here.

[09:55:03]

LEWIS: Me too.

SIDNER: Right. And so --

ELAM: You mean in life?

SIDNER: In life, yes. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to go through all this --

LEWIS: Because of this, during this.

SIDNER: Before this. And then this journey came along, and it's so weird that it was cancer, that was like, I want to be here. I insist on being here, and I insist on thriving, not just being alive, not just existing. I want to thrive in a way that I have never felt before.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Make me cry with my own words.

ELAM: I can't hear you.

SIDNER: There you go.

ELAM: I know, and I'm tearing up too. I hear you now. Yes.

SIDNER: This was your idea to sit down with us, and I wanted to jump across the table when we were talking to Ananda, and she said, but then it progressed to stage four, partly because of the path she took. Talk about just what that was like sitting between the two of us, yammering on.

ELAM: It's enlightening. It's helpful, because I think as someone who's so close to both of you, I see how you go through it. I see the highs, I see the lows. And I realized how little I understood about cancer and how little I understood about how to support you both, and I felt like it was a teachable moment. And you both are so strong and so capable of communicating what this is like, and that's why this conversation, I think, is so important.

If you were to ask Ananda, as I did, about stage four, she'll tell you she doesn't really believe in labels. She just has to do what she's she needs to do for her. She is feeling great. She's doing a lot better, as you can see in our conversation.

But when you look at the fact that breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society, and the fact that black women at any age have the highest death rate, this is something that we need to talk about and to get women out there and checking themselves.

Because we are seeing these rates go down, right, of these incidents of death rates since 1989 and part of that is because it's being detected earlier, and the people are getting checked and they're getting through it. But I have to say, it is emotional to be this close to people who are your ride or dies, the people who are there for you in all the best moments and all the worst moments in your life, and not knowing how to support them.

And I think hopefully this conversation will inspire other people to be there for their loved ones and also to just understand what is going on. You both were so incredibly open in this conversation, Sara.

SIDNER: Well, thank you for being my ride or die, because you know I'm yours. I fight for you, Stephanie Elam.

ELAM: I fight for you too.

SIDNER: I think this is going to be on YouTube and on cnn.com.

ELAM: It will be later today.

SIDNER: Yes. Yes. And thank you guys.

BERMAN: Well, we're glad you're here, and you bring us tons of joy.

SIDNER: Listen, you guys bring me joy all day. I laugh throughout the show, which is probably not what the bosses want, but that's what they're going to get.

BERMAN: That's for the pandas.

SIDNER: That's what the pandas want.

ELAM: We love you.

SIDNER: Love you guys. Thank you so much for being here with us. CNN Newsroom up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)