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After DOJ Warning, No New $1M Giveaway Winner From Musk; Millions Spent On Ads In Battleground States; Earth's Largest Lake Is Shrinking Fast; 911 Calls From Trump Rally Shooting Released. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired October 24, 2024 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:34:02]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Perhaps, notably, Elon Musk's super PAC has yet to announce a Wednesday winner for its daily $1 million giveaway. It is, of course, Thursday.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes.
KEILAR: Since Saturday, the pro-Trump group, America PAC, has been naming a winner every day until yesterday, when CNN broke the news that the Justice Department sent Musk a warning that it could be breaking the law.
SANCHEZ: And CNN reporter, Marshall Cohen, has been following this story for us.
Marshall, have they said why there was no winner announced for Wednesday?
MARSHALL COHEN, CNN REPORTER: They have offered no public explanation. The speculation is swirling.
Look, it could be that they've decided to retool this sweepstakes to make it comport with the law. But also maybe they just forgot to do it or they're going to announce two today.
You know, we have been keeping a close eye on their Twitter account or X. That's where they've been making the announcements, but Wednesday came and went with no winner.
And of course, yesterday was when we all learned that the Justice Department took that notable step of sending a letter to Elon Musk's super PAC warning them that this could be illegal.
[14:35:09]
Remember, it is against federal law to pay people to register or to give cash prizes are incentives to register to vote. You just can't do it. It's punishable by up to five years in prison.
Not that we're anywhere near that, but it is a crime. And the Justice Department took action to tell them, basically, they should stop.
SANCHEZ: Is this DOJ letter a slap on the wrist or is it a serious threat?
COHEN: It's always serious when federal law enforcement reaches out to you and tells you we may have a problem here.
SANCHEZ: Yes.
COHEN: And look, they didn't have a winner yesterday and that's certainly raising some eyebrows.
It was the next logical step. After Musk announced this on Saturday, it looks like the Justice Department took action pretty quickly within just a couple of days to at least intervene.
SANCHEZ: Is it also possible they just forgot? Who knows?
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: -- not believe that.
SANCHEZ: Marshall Cohen, thank you so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.
So if you live in a swing state, you've probably seen an avalanche of political ads over these last few weeks. And so far this month, voters in seven key swing states have been seeing tens of millions of dollars-worth of ads from both candidates and also outside groups.
One Philadelphia TV station says it's actually run out of ad space altogether. A pro-Harris super PAC has spent the most, more than $22 million on a spot hitting Donald Trump's tax policy.
Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know about 20 of you are rich as hell.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: We are going to give you tax cuts.
REBECA F. I am not rich as hell. I work hard. I scraped to get by. Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires, but Kamala Harris has plans to help us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Joining us now to talk about how these ads could affect the race is Jacob Neihsisel. He is a political science associate professor at the University at Buffalo, and an expert on political communication and campaigns.
Jacob, first, let's talk about the ad that we just played there. Do you think that is the right message to pour $22 million into? And why or why not?
JACOB NEIHSISEL, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO: I think the more important part of that is that the message that that group thinks is the one to pour $22 million into.
As outside observers, that's really all we have to go off of in terms of what it makes for an effective or an efficacious why should of ad, is their internal polls are suggesting that that's the way to go.
Their focus groups are probably pointing that direction and that's -- that's where they're focusing their efforts. As outside observers, that's what we have.
SANCHEZ: I have a pro-Trump ad to play for you. This one came in third for the most money spent this month. It criticizes Harris's record on law enforcement.
Let's go out and play it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: As San Francisco D.A., liberal Kamala Harris let killers go free. And as California attorney general, Kamala continued to put criminals first. Ater a little girl was raped and buried alive, laws we're passed to keep sex offenders away from children.
Kamala ignored Jessica's Law and the allowed convicted sex offender live here and parks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Obviously, Trump is running with a message that crime is rampant in the United States, that it's out of control, and that Harris doesn't really have the wherewithal to stop that, or perhaps nefariously, that she's somehow promoting it through immigration policy.
I'm wondering, Jacob, when it comes to deciphering what to put in an ad like this, what's the conversation like from a strategy perspective? Is there like information that comes from focus groups? How does it all gets sorted out to make an ad that turns into this?
NEIHSISEL: No, it's internal polling. It's focus groups. But, you know, if we think of a consistent pattern, it's often issues that the party is known to be trusted on.
And so you typically see Republicans running on law and order. You sometimes see Democrats, like in the previous ad, running on Republicans are out of touch. We're the party that represents the majority. You know, maybe the middle class, which has been a key feature of a lot of Harris' ads. And so I think that there are certain things that they can tap into
where they know that the voters, historically speaking, trust them on at issue and they run toward those issues.
KEILAR: Are you seeing -- tell us about how much these really work. Because when you go into these places or, let's say, you know, if we traveled to different swing states, we'll get a taste of what people are dealing with there. And it's unreal.
They must start getting tired of it. Do they get immune to them any point?
NEIHSISEL: That's a really, really good question. That's something political scientists have been working on for a while.
[14:40:01]
We do think that ads work. We think the campaign ads work or else they wouldn't be airing them.
That they work, though, means that it's probably more at the margins, right? They're not winning elections on their own. They're certainly not winning elections outside of the other activities that are going on within the -- within the campaigns themselves.
But we do think that they can persuade at the margins. Now whether there's a marginal return, right, that additional ad that somebody in Pennsylvania is seeing for the 11th or 12th or 15th time, they're probably getting into something like a definition return type of event.
KEILAR: Yes, but on the margins -- and this is going to be decided on the margins as we -- as we know.
Professor Neihsisel, thank you so much for taking us through that.
NEIHSISEL: My pleasure. Thank you.
KEILAR: The world's largest lake is shrinking, and some scientists are concerned that it may never recover.
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[14:45:14]
KEILAR: The planets largest lake is under threat. Its shrinking fast and some experts fear that it may never recover.
SANCHEZ: We're talking about the Caspian Sea, bounded by countries, including Iran at the south, and Russia at the north. This is a vital resource for these countries. And it also plays an important role in regulating the region's arid climate.
CNN chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, joins us now.
Bill, what is driving this and how serious is the problem? BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, it's people.
It's people both in those countries damming the Volga River, which feeds most of the water into the Caspian Sea that runs through Russia -- Russia has put up dozens of dams there. There's a lot of overuse.
But the underlying culprit that really seems to be out of control is global warming, climate change, that is making inland seas much harder to maintain a consistent water cycle.
The Caspian has gone up and down over the eons as everyone has warmed and cooled. But right now, it's happening faster than ever before.
The 4,000-mile coastline has receded, the lake levels have dropped by about five feet, and you look at the trends, it's getting worse and worse.
And this is going to create sort of resource stress in a place that depends on this water, for drinking, farming and every other use you can imagine there in five different countries.
But it casts a light on sharing resources in the age of climate change and they're becoming more scarce.
KEILAR: And the Caspian Sea, obviously, many countries border it. But also Azerbaijan does. And it's hosting the next climate summit as it also have this deeply concerning report that was just released, Bill.
WEIR: That's right, Brianna. Baku will host the next big climate summit next month right there near the Caspian as well. And the U.N. climate change report, every year they say, here's where the goals were, here's how much progress was made.
And this last year, straight maps, no progress, zero. In fact, world humanity burned a record 57 gigatons of planet-cooking fossil fuel pollution.
Right now, it looks like not only will humanity exceed the 1.5 of the Paris Accords, unless something changes, but will double it by the end of the century will pass three degrees Celsius. That's also five degrees Fahrenheit.
That makes coral reefs obsolete. It makes a lot of global south unlivable. That's horrible numbers to think about. They're basically saying you've got to do more.
The only country out of over 160 nations that pledged to raise their ambitions and come back with better carbon-cutting strategies was Madagascar, a little island nation in African far from the richest in the world.
But it just goes to show that even as solar and wind energy is coming up in record numbers, the demand for electricity for like A.I. computing, cryptocurrencies, is devouring it just as fast as the new ones come online.
Another sobering report -- Boris? SANCHEZ: Bill Weir, thank you so much for bringing it to us. Appreciate it.
Next, you'll hear 911 calls from Trump's Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. The desperate pleas for help made seconds after the assassination attempt against him have just been released.
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[14:51:49]
SANCHEZ: For the first time, we're hearing the 911 calls from the scene of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
And they are chilling. You can hear sheer panic in the caller's voices.
Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)
911 CALLER: We are at the Trump assembly and there's a guy shooting.
911 OPERATOR: The police are aware of it. They are taking care of the situation.
911 CALLER: No -- no one is injured. But I'm scared.
911 CALLER: They just tried to kill President Trump.
(END AUDIO FEED)
KEILAR: One woman trying to locate her husband who had been shot and taken by paramedics.
(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)
911 CALLER: I have a female on the line. Her husband was shot at a Trump rally. And my name is (REDACTED.74, was shot at the Trump rally.
911 OPERATOR: OK.
911 CALLER: Paramedics service him. I called Butler hospital. He's not there. They told me to call 911.
(END AUDIO FEED)
KEILAR: And joining us now is CNN chief law enforcement analyst, John Miller.
Amazing calm from that woman, I will say, as she was trying to find her husband.
John, what did you notice in these calls? JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT & INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well,
I've listened to all 13 calls. And what you get there is not much new information about what happened.
But what really punches through is what it was like in the stands, right? We've seen the video from behind the building where the gunman crawled up, where people are pointing him out and saying he has a rifle and alerting the police.
But we've never gotten this sense from audio as to the level of fear, panic and sheer anxiety that was going on in the stands. Because what they couldn't see that others had is they didn't know where the shots came from. They didn't know what had just happened. They knew people were wounded.
But if you listen to those 911 operators, because they're getting a lot of calls, and it's Butler County, there aren't a lot of 911 call takers.
They're trying to triage the call by saying, are you with somebody who was hurt? Where is that person? And if not, they're just telling the callers, we're aware of the situation, police are taking care of it, and then trying very quickly to move to that next call.
SANCHEZ: John, yesterday, we saw something interesting in Georgia, where Donald Trump was having an appearance. And at one point, he appeared to walk outside to greet the overflow crowd, apparently without those bulletproof glass panels we're used to seeing.
[14:55:09]
Given the amount of concern about his safety, that -- that raises some security concerns, doesn't it?
MILLER: Well, it does. And it also introduces us to one of the realities of being the protective agency around what they refer to as a principal or a protectee?
Which is you can provide that envelope of protection. You can provide those layers. But you can't -- you can't tell them what they can't do. And sometimes a protectee, in this case, a presidential candidate, a former president, will say, I'm just going to do this.
Now, if you look at the pictures from that, you can see he steps out from behind the glass, he moves slowly down the stairs, he moves to that -- to that that fence line where the people are.
But the Secret Service are already ahead of him, already at that crowd when he gets there. And this is one of those -- one of those spontaneous things that, because it wasn't planned and because it was unpredictable, leaves a potential assailant at a disadvantage. But still it's an opening.
And I know it makes the protectors very uncomfortable. But he's a candidate running for president and you can't tell them what not to do. KEILAR: Yes. It does make their job very tough, though, to your point.
John Miller, thank you so much.
Still ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, CNN finds evidence that FOX altered one of its interviews with former President Trump. We'll show you what was edited out.
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