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Former GOP Officials Ask DOJ to Probe Musk's $1 Million Giveaways; Elon Musk's Fans Visit Pro-Trump Rally to See Tech Billionaire; Giuliani Ordered to Give Up Valuables to Georgia Election Workers; Obama Campaigns for Dems in Blue Wall State. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired October 22, 2024 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:30:00]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Republicans are calling out Republicans when it comes to Elon Musk's million-dollar voter giveaway to help Donald Trump's campaign. These former GOP Justice Department attorneys and government officials wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging the DOJ to investigate this sweepstakes. They say that it may be breaking federal law that bans payments for voter registration.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Musk is giving a million dollars to a randomly selected registered voter who has signed his political organization's petition. The offer is only good in swing states. Musk, of course, the owner of X and Tesla, is a mega-donor and campaigner for Donald Trump.
[15:35:00]
Musk, of course, the owner of X and Tesla, is a mega-donor and campaigner for Donald. And the tech titan is drawing voters who are not the typical MAGA rally-goer.
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan went to a Musk pro-Trump event in Pennsylvania and filed this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elon Musk is the smartest man in the world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elon is a genius. This is a one-time opportunity to see him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a super Star Trek geek. When those rockets came down, I'm like, you've got to be kidding.
CHRISTINE, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: I respect his opinion. I understand the way he thinks. Just being an engineer myself, I can understand some of the quirky things that maybe other people take the wrong way.
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Elon Musk is holding this town hall happening here in Harrisburg, trying to get the vote out for former President Donald Trump. O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Musk is pouring tens of millions of dollars
into getting Trump elected, even offering cash prizes to registered voters in battleground states.
ELON MUSK: So every day between now and the election, we'll be awarding a million dollars, starting tonight.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): This, experts say, could be breaking election law.
O'SULLIVAN: I've been to a lot of Trump rallies, but this has the feel of, like, part Comic-Con, part Trump rally, right?
DAVE FOX, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: There's tons of young people, which I was, like, surprised that they could usually, you know, like, there's a lot of people like me at a Trump rally, you know, getting ready to drop over. These are Elon Musk's fans.
SHRAGA FEINBERG, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: He's so cool, man. Why not, right? I mean, he's just so inspirational. What an amazing guy.
What I think he offers is being able to use his platform to bring the truth to more people, people that may not otherwise even give a crap about politics.
DEVIN MOUSSO, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: With all the polarization that there is now, I feel like it's really tough to yank somebody out of their camp. Everybody sees what the algorithms show them. I think most of the people that are big Elon Musk fans are probably on the side of Trump and all that already.
FEINBERG: Yes, I voted for Biden, you know, in 2020.
O'SULLIVAN: You did?
FEINBERG: I did.
O'SULLIVAN: And what changed?
FEINBERG: You know, I know when Trump was in office, I saw more money on my paycheck.
MOUSSO: I was definitely a bit of a Trump hater, I guess.
O'SULLIVAN: So 2020, you weren't a Trump guy?
MOUSSO: No, no. No, I think I was more on the down the middle, didn't really care about it. I felt everything's just too crazy. I don't want to get involved. And this, I guess, is the most involved I'm getting. I haven't gone to any other rallies and I probably won't. But --
O'SULLIVAN: So you haven't been to any other political event?
MOUSSO: No, not at all.
O'SULLIVAN: And you either, right? FEINBERG: No, me neither.
MUSK: This might be the very last election that's a real election.
O'SULLIVAN: At some of these town halls, Musk has just been repeating election conspiracy theories.
MUSK: Statistically, there's some very strange things that happen.
DONALD BICKEL, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: I'm big into science. I do IT for a living. So I'm here to see Elon. That's literally why I'm here.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But not every Musk superfan is a Trump voter. Don Bickle is a Pennsylvania state government employee.
BICKEL: My appeal for Elon is a lot of the way he likes to break conventions. Working in government for as long, I like to sometimes smash the silos and just break everything down and build everything back up again.
I had voted for Trump in the past. I traditionally vote Republican. I don't think I'm going to vote Republican this time.
O'SULLIVAN: You don't think Musk is going to change your mind?
BICKEL: I mean, a meteor could strike me. It's possible.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Don says Musk's debunked conspiracy theories are dangerous.
BICKEL: I think probably Elon's problem is he's so down the rabbit hole, what he is in X now, that it's really hard to know what's right and wrong.
MUSK: You know, there's always a sort of question of, like, say, the Dominion voting machines.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): At one town hall, Musk brought up Dominion voting machines, a frequent subject of conspiracy theories.
MUSK: In my view, we should only do paper ballots, hand counted. That's it.
BICKEL: Here's the funny thing. Even with Dominion, there's still a paper trail. So you can still hand recount that.
I've been working for the state for many years. And heck, my father before me, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, my father before me, he worked for the state for many years. So I grew up as a state kid, and I know how the state works in a lot of respects.
So, yes, it's kind of sad when, you know, people like me who are considered like the quote enemy within or the deep state, we're just doing our jobs.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Donny O'Sullivan, CNN, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Donie always has some of the most fascinating conversations. I love watching his reports. Thanks so much, Donie O'Sullivan, for that.
When we come back, President Joe Biden is hitting the road with Senator Bernie Sanders to tout his administration's efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs. We're going to take you live to Concord, New Hampshire, in just moments.
[15:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: Any moment now, President Biden will deliver remarks in New Hampshire where he's going to talk about his administration's efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
KEILAR: CNN's Arlette Saenz is with us now. So, Arlette, what can you tell us about the event?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, President Biden will be teaming up with Senator Bernie Sanders for an event here in New Hampshire as they are set to tout some of the initiatives the Biden administration has taken to lower the cost of prescription drugs. President Biden and Senator Sanders have worked together on this issue of prescription drugs and also pushing back on big pharma for quite some time.
And while they are here in New Hampshire, Biden will tout a new HHS report that found that 1.5 million Medicare enrollees saved nearly $1 billion on out-of-pocket drug costs in the first half of 2024. That is in part due to the fact that the annual cap on out-of-pocket drugs is currently at $3,500 for Medicare Part D enrollees.
[15:45:00]
That actually will lower to $2,000 next year. That is something that Biden has continuously promoted when he is out traveling on the road.
They are also expected to talk about other administration initiatives like capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month and also giving Medicare the ability to negotiate the price of drugs going forward.
Now these are kitchen table issues that the President believes can resonate with voters out in the country. Vice President Kamala Harris, ahead of this event, also touted these new savings they will be announcing, noting the fact that she was the tie-breaking vote on the piece of legislation that made some of these savings possible for so many Americans.
So for President Biden, he is trying to lend some help to Harris out on the road today by highlighting some of these key agenda items that they believe are popular with voters. KEILAR: And Arlette, do we know what the next week is going to look like for President Biden?
SAENZ: Well, a lot of the President's campaign plans for the next two weeks really remain a work in progress. Biden, after his speech here at this community college, will be stopping at a Democratic campaign office here in the state to push for both Harris and for Democrats on the New Hampshire ballot. It comes at a time when New Hampshire is leaning blue in the presidential contest, but there is a very competitive, perhaps the country's most competitive, governor's race is taking place here in the state.
President Biden is scheduled to travel to Arizona at the end of the week, and we'll see what more they might add in that final stretch into the election. Biden really has not had many traditional campaign events. Instead, he's been focusing on these official White House events to try to tout some of the agenda items that they have pushed through in the past four years, hoping that those are measures that will resonate with voters out in the country.
SANCHEZ: Arlette Saenz, thank you so much for that update.
Coming up, a judge just ordered former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to hand over assets to those two Georgia election workers who he defamed. Find out what they're going to be getting when we come back.
[15:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: A federal judge just ordered Rudy Giuliani to turn over all of his valuable possessions, including his Manhattan penthouse, to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Those are the two Georgia election workers who he defamed, falsely claiming that they pulled suitcases of illegal ballots from under a table after the 2020 election.
SANCHEZ: Freeman and Moss have been working to collect the nearly $150 million judgment a jury awarded them last year. Let's get right to CNN's Katlyn Polantz. Caitlin, what are you learning about all this?
KATELYN POLANTZ, SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Boris and Brianna, this is it. This is the end of the road for Rudy Giuliani trying to hold on to nearly everything he owns that is worth more than $1,000. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, these two Georgia election workers, they won $150 million after they took Rudy Giuliani to trial for defaming them after the 2020 election.
He has been trying to fight paying that debt for nearly a year, and now we have this order from the judge in the federal court in Manhattan saying it's time to turn it all over to these women to begin to make them whole.
His assets don't nearly lead him to give them $150 million, but what he does have, that they will be able to take control of either immediately or try to sell off to collect on, includes a $6 million New York co-op apartment, a penthouse on the Upper East Side. $2 million that Rudy Giuliani says is owed to him by the Trump campaign.
So Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss will be able to go to Donald Trump and say, you owe us now for the work Rudy Giuliani was doing as a lawyer after the 2020 election for Donald Trump, where he was defaming them, the irony there.
And then on top of that, a 1980 Mercedes-Benz sports car, once owned by Lauren Bacall, a signed Joe DiMaggio jersey, 26 watches including a Rolex and one given to Rudy Giuliani by the French president for his services on September 11, 2001, and then some checking accounts he has as well. All of that is now able to be claimed as their own by these two Georgia election workers as they try to recoup all of the debt from the former mayor of New York.
KEILAR: How long does Giuliani have Katelyn to turn over all his valuables?
POLANTZ: Well, he has seven days. That is what the judge says in the order today. There's a couple things here that aren't sorted out yet that the judge is still taking a closer look at.
Four World Series rings. Giuliani says he gave them to his son and so the judge is going to keep considering that. And then what to do about a condo that he also owns in Palm Beach, Florida, down near Mar-a- Lago, where Donald Trump is, where Giuliani spends a lot of time.
Giuliani's trying to say, that's still my property, I live there, but there's going to be a hearing next Monday and so it's the final seven days here for Giuliani with all of his luxury items.
SANCHEZ: I genuinely wonder if he has any regrets about spreading those falsehoods. Katelyn Polantz, thanks so much. Keep us posted on what comes next.
So you heard about those four World Series rings? Baseball fans, you may need to sell a few World Series rings to afford tickets to the Yankees and Dodgers World Series. If you're psyched for this, reach deep into your wallet. We're going to show you just how much these tickets go for next.
[15:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: We were going to tell you about World Series tickets. Instead, we're going to head straight to this rally the former President Barack Obama is speaking at. He's alongside Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz in Madison.
Let's listen to the former President.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is good to be back in Madison.
(CHEERING) OBAMA: To be here -- look, first of all, I want to apologize that I was a little late. I love you back, and I want to make sure that the reason we were a little delayed, I was in my hometown, Chicago.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: So we board the plane, we're ready to take off, and then the pilot comes in and says, sir, there's a pile of oil leaking out of the back of the plane.
Now, I do not know anything about planes, except for the fact that it should not leak oil. So, we had a nice road trip instead. And I am glad I made it.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: It's great to be back in Wisconsin. It's great to be back in the Midwest, where folks got good sense.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: It's great to be with the next Vice President of the United States, Tim Waltz.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: I love this guy. Love that dude. Love that man. The kind of person who should be in politics.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: He's a veteran. He's a teacher. He's a coach. He's a hunter. Been a great governor. Knows who he is, and knows what's important.
You can tell those flannel shirts he wears have gotten some wear. They come from his closet. Consultant didn't give it to him.
Tim's got skills. The other day, I found out he can take a vintage truck apart and put it back together again. You think Donald Trump can do that?
CROWD: No.
OBAMA: For that matter, do you think Donald Trump's ever changed a tire in his life?
CROWD: No.
OBAMA: That's the guy. He gets a flat tire, he says, Jeeves, change that tire, please. His chauffeur. Point is, Tim will be an outstanding Vice President, but he's only going to be an outstanding Vice President if you vote.
(CHEERING)
OBAMA: And that's why you're here today. I'm here to make sure that you hear from me. I am asking you to vote for your Congressman, Mark Pocan, for your Senator, Tammy Baldwin, and for the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris
(CHEERING)
END
