Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Dark Rhetoric at Trump's NYC Rally; Harris Makes Appeal to Latino Voters; Rally Speaker Insults Puerto Rico; Fact Checking Trump's Claims; Ian Sams is Interviewed about the Harris Campaign. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired October 28, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: By talking about respecting election workers, respecting the process.

Chris Harvey, we respect what you do. Thank you so much for your work. Appreciate it.

CHRIS HARVEY, CO-FOUNDER, COMMITTEE FOR SAFE AND SECURE ELECTIONS: My pleasure. Thank you.

BERMAN: We've got a brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starting right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: A week and a day. That's all there is before Election Day. Donald Trump's closing argument filled with dark rhetoric at his hometown rally in New York, where several speakers spewed racist or vulgar remarks. The campaign now trying to play cleanup.

Today, Kamala Harris focuses on all those important swing states and black and Latino voters. Her latest moves to secure their support.

And Iran is vowing to respond to Israel's latest deadly strike on their country as stalled Gaza hostage and ceasefire talks are set to resume today finally.

I'm Sara Sidner, with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: MAGA Square Garden. That is what Donald Trump made of Madison Square Garden in New York City this weekend. The former president turning the world's most famous arena into a stage where he and his supporters promoted dark and racist commentary to a huge crowd. Now, Donald Trump's campaign and other Republicans are trying to clean up after comments like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HINCHCLIFFE, COMEDIAN: There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yes. I think it's called Puerto Rico. SID ROSENBERG, RADIO HOST: She is some sick (EXPLETIVE DELETED) that

Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a (EXPLETIVE DELETED). The whole (EXPLETIVE DELETED) party, a bunch of degenerates.

TUCKER CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: Kamala Harris, she's just - she got 85 million votes because she's just so impressive. As the first Samoan, Malaysian, low IQ, former California prosecutor.

DAVID ROM, REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN: She is the devil, whoever screamed that out. She is the anti-Christ.

GRANT CARDONE, BUSINESS OWNER: Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.

We need to slaughter this other people.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're a big, powerful party and they're losing it.

We are going to fire Kamala, and we are going to save America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: All of this as there's new CNN polling out this morning, in part finding that 69 percent of registered voters think that Donald Trump will not concede the election if he loses the election to Kamala Harris.

Let's bring in CNN's Steve Contorno for more on where things are headed today.

What's the latest from the Trump campaign this morning, Steve?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Kate, the Trump campaign is distancing itself from those remarks about Puerto Rico. Let me read you a statement from the campaign. They said, quote, "this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." Meanwhile, other Republicans are coming out to criticize those remarks. We heard from Representing Salazar, who represents south Florida. She said that she was disgusted by that and said they were racist. Rick Scott, the Florida senator who represents the largest diaspora in the U.S. of Puerto Rican, he said it was, quote, "not funny and not true." And then Representative Anthony D'Esposito, who's Puerto Rican himself, and he's in the middle of a tough re-election fight, he said, quote, "the only thing that's garbage was a bad comedy set. Stay on message."

And I should say, the message from Trump that he delivered continued that very dark and divisive rhetoric that we have seen from him. And that is clearly his closing message going into the final weeks of this race.

Take a listen to what he had to say when it was his turn at the microphone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They're smart and they're vicious. And we have to defeat them. And when I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy. It becomes a sound - oh, how can he say. No, they've done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within.

And - but this is who we're fighting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Trump's campaign also aired an advertisement during the Philadelphia Eagles game yesterday, hoping to sway voters in that key battleground state where the ad said, our country has gone to hell. So, clearly, even as the campaign is distancing itself from some of the rhetoric of the speakers that it had yesterday at its rally, they continue to push a message that is very divisive and very much dark and leading many, you know, really leading us toward election day with - with a closing message that is, you know, very similar to what we saw from him in 2016 and 2020.

BOLDUAN: Steve Contorno, thank you.

John.

BERMAN: All right, so the attacks from this Trump rally on Puerto Rican voters came at exactly the same time that Vice President Harris was in Pennsylvania courting Puerto Rican voters. It was all happening at the same time.

[09:05:02]

Today, the vice president heads to Michigan.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is with us this morning with what we saw and what we will see.

Priscilla.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, to your point just then, I received multiple messages from people close or in the Harris campaign who are quite pleased with that split-screen yesterday with the vice president courting Puerto Rican voters in Philadelphia and then what was - what followed was Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican super star, who is believed to carry quite a unique influence with Puerto Ricans and Latinos, also lending his support behind the vice president's plans for the island. So certainly the campaigns seeing yesterday as a win in that regard.

But what also occurred yesterday was the vice president trying to lock in her coalition. It wasn't just Latino voters that she was talking to in Philadelphia. It was also black voters as she attended a church service, as well as a barbershop, and trying to reach voters as strategist say where they are.

And the reason she did it there is because Pennsylvania is so crucial to the Harris campaign strategy as they look to lock in those 270 electoral college votes. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, those blue wall states we talk to, that is what they see as the most favorable path. So, the vice president spending almost all day yesterday in Pennsylvania blitzing around and talking to these voters.

Now, part of the strategy to by this campaign is also using multiple platforms to relay their message to voters. And one of them was the podcast from former NFL players Shannon Sharp, where the vice president tried to draw a sharp contrast between her campaign and that of the former president's.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You - you think he's having you over for dinner? You think that when he's going - when he's with his buddies, his billionaire buddies, he's thinking about what we need to do to deal with addressing, for example, my work around what I'm doing to address disparities in black mens' health, around colon cancer, around what we need to do around screenings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, today, the vice president is headed to Michigan, where she was going to be talking about manufacturing jobs and union workers. She'll be going to two of the most closely watched counties in that state. So certainly continuing to shore up support. She was actually just there on Saturday with former First Lady Michelle Obama.

So, taken together, John, this is the vice president's campaign essentially focusing on locking in their coalition and their core constituencies, while also trying to appeal to those voters that buoyed President Joe Biden in 2020.

BERMAN: A sharp contrast. I see what you did there, Priscilla Alvarez. Thank you so much. Great to see you.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, with us now, senior political commentator Scott Jennings and Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.

Thank you both for being here.

Nice hat, Chuck. Love it.

All right, we're going to begin at the beginning. The racist jokes did not stop at calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Here's some of what the comedian who was at the Trump rally, not at a comedy show, said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HINCHCLIFFE, COMEDIAN: In Texas, stuff is really, really crazy. We're right there by a wide-open border. Where are my proud Latinos at tonight? You guys see what I mean, it's wide open. There's so many of them.

And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Scott, why would the campaign invite this guy, who is known for racist jokes in the past, to speak?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I don't know. It was a stupid idea and really dumb. I mean, there's no other - no other way to characterize it. I was glad to see that even before Trump made the stage last night, the campaign had a statement out distancing themselves from this. It was a really, really, really, really, really dumb idea. And it distracts from, you know, what Trump's overall closing message has been, which if you look at what he's saying, and you look at his paid ads, which they released on Sunday, it's really mostly about the economy and about immigration and about how we can have a more optimistic future in America.

So, it's a situation where the campaign obviously had a plan to turn the message towards the two issues that work and to a sunnier future. And this comedian, that I've never heard of until yesterday, showed up and caused him trouble. So, really dumb.

SIDNER: But, Scott and Chuck, it wasn't just this comedian. You had many other things said there where the businessman, Grant Cardona, likened Harris to a prostitute, saying she has pimp handlers. And another speaker called her the devil. Another speaker called her the anti-Christ. Trump also said the other side is smart and vicious. They are indeed the enemy from within.

Chuck, is this message going to shift anyone's idea about who they are going to vote for in your mind?

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Look, I've been doing this a long time. And normally everybody says everything's all baked in.

[09:10:02]

You know what you get. Oh, Chuck, you Democrats can't take a joke. I think last night could have cost him this election. And let me tell you why. I've been doing this for 35 years. I'm not paid to be pretty on TV. I'm paid to win elections. And what that meant last night was Puerto Rican are a very prideful people. There are 600,000 of them in Pennsylvania. Will this mean that all of them run to Kamala Harris? No.

But I'll tell you what, last night there was a group of Latinos that got together and said, enough is enough. And this morning, as Puerto Ricans are waking up in Pennsylvania, this video was on their cell phone because Democratic operatives, including me, Nuestro PAC and a bunch of other folks said, enough with it being baked in. Let's remind people about how they really feel about our community. And when you have that many Puerto Rican, not only in Pennsylvania, but in for marginal congressional districts in New York, I think this could really hurt him.

SIDNER: We just had Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican herself, here's what she said to Kate a few minutes ago about what she heard on that stage last night in the Trump rally.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): These campaign events are put together, they are vetted. That language was vetted by the Trump campaign. That - that person was approved by the Trump campaign because he is speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Those are her comments. Scott, yours?

JENNINGS: Yes, well, my comments are, a, she doesn't know what she's talking about. In fact, I actually had some communication with the Trump campaign manager this morning and he used the word freelance. So, they had this comedian come up there and he freelanced. They didn't vet this. They didn't approve this. They didn't tell him to go out there and do this. So, that's just simply not correct. And, you know, as I said, I think the Trump campaign was smart to put out a -

SIDNER: They didn't vet a speaker. Wait, they didn't - they didn't vet any of the people who were -

JENNINGS: Well, I - I was - I was told - I was told they didn't - they didn't - he went up there and freelanced these remarks. Meaning, no, they didn't go up there and say, here's your pre-approved remarks. So, she's saying that the Trump campaign somehow sent him up there with his script. And that's not - that is simply not accurate, in my opinion, based on what I've heard today.

And the Trump campaign has already denounced what he did. So - which I - which I think was the correct thing to do.

SIDNER: Yes, they denounced the vote - the joke, not the other things that were said at the campaign.

Chuck, I am curious, because you mentioned the number of Puerto Ricans that exist in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Bad Bunny, he's got 45 million social media followers. J.Lo, Ricky Martin, all Puerto Rican. Do you think the support from - from these folks will - will have any impact or is it just the negativity that people are hearing that you think will have the impact?

ROCHA: Again, I don't want to be over dramatic because normally on TV I'll tell you that endorsements don't matter. And normally they do not. But again, Puerto Rican folks, y'all are in New York right now. Y'all are all smiling because you know because you've been to a Puerto Rican parade. You want to meet some prideful people, talk to some Puerto Ricans. And then if you dare, say something even a little bit negative about Bad Bunny and they will come out of the top rafters after you because Bad Bunny is a god to Puerto Rican, and even to Mexican rednecks like me. They love him, and they should. He's even had billboards up in Puerto Rico taking on his own government. That's why I think this is different, and I don't think it moves everybody. So, calm down Scott, I ain't saying the whole thing is over. I'm just saying that it can have some impact. And when it shows up in social media feeds this morning to folks who aren't normally politically active, I think that matters.

SIDNER: Yes, we've seen the numbers of Latinos drifting towards Donald Trump more than they did in 2016. We will have to see what happens in 2024 because we only have to wait days to start seeing what's going on.

Scott Jennings, Chuck Rocha, thank you both so much. Appreciate you both.

ROCHA: Thank God.

SIDNER: All right, Kate.

BOLDUAN: This morning, Fresh worries among Democrats that the Harris campaign is making one big mistake in the final stretch. We have that for you.

And Iran vowing to retaliate this morning after Israel launched its retaliatory strikes inside Tehran.

And a heist involving a whole lot of cheddar. Twenty-four tons of cheese stolen from a famous dairy company.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:29]

BOLDUAN: So, Donald Trump had a lot to say at his Madison Square Garden rally yesterday. He repeated - as part of it, he repeated some previously debunked false claims about immigration, among others.

CNN's Daniel Dale has a fact check for us this morning.

And, Daniel, one place that - one place that we know that you are focusing on this morning is what the former president said about Harris and her role in managing the migrant crisis. Let's play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Almost four years, she never called, not once, the Border Patrol. And she was the border czar. She was in charge of the border. Think of it, for years she'd never called. Now she's trying to say, well, you know, I was really not the border - whether she was the border czar or not, she was put in charge of the border by sleepy Joe.

BOLDUAN: Daniel, what are the facts here?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: We've heard this a lot from Trump. You hear it in a lot of Trump adds. It is not true that Vice President Harris was ever the border czar or that she was ever in charge of the border.

What Biden actually put her in charge of was a diplomatic effort related to addressing the so-called root causes of migration from three particular Central American countries, sorry, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Now, that is a, you could say, border- related assignment. It is not being in charge of the border.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been the official in charge of the border. Now, it is true some media outlets, when Biden gave Harris this assignment in early 2021, incorrectly described her as being - having been assigned the job of border czar. But CNN and others have consistently reported she rejected that title.

[09:20:03]

She made clear, and her office made clear, that the assignment was more limited and that that's been the case for almost four years now.

BOLDUAN: I also want to play what Donald Trump said at the rally about inflation.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Didn't you know, we had the best economy. We had no inflation.

Kamala Harris has shattered our middle class. She cast the deciding votes that launched the worst inflation in the history of our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: How people feel about inflation and affordability is a huge part of this election and how people are voting. What are the facts on this?

DALE: This is a classic Trump case where he could just tell the truth and it would be good for him politically. But instead, he offers these wild exaggerations. So, it is not true that there was no inflation during the Trump presidency. In fact, cumulative total price increases were just shy of 8 percent, 7.8 percent over Trump's four years. And that includes an abnormally low inflation period when the economy was abnormally slow during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

It's also not true that we've had the worst inflation the U.S. has ever had under President Biden and Vice President Harris. Trump could correctly say there was about a 40 year high in June 2022 when the rate increase to 9.1 percent. But first of all, it's since come way down. It's now 2.4 percent.

Second of all, 9.1 is not even close to the all-time record. We had 23.7 percent in 1920. Even if you don't want to go that far back, it reached almost 15 percent in the early 1980s. And so, we do not have now and have not had under Biden-Harris record all-time U.S. inflation.

BOLDUAN: Daniel Dale, thanks for checking the facts.

John.

BERMAN: All right, so, this morning "The New York Times" is reporting new concerns among Democrats that the Harris campaign is making a mistake in the final days of the election. They write that Future Forward, "the leading super PAC supporting Vice President Harris, is raising concerns that focusing too narrowly on Donald Trump's character in warning that he is a fascist, is a mistake in the closing stretch of the campaign." They go on to say, quote, "focusing on Trump's disturbing, ludicrous, and outlandish behavior can be an effective lead-in to talk about substantive policy, but not effective at moving vote choice on its own."

With us now, Ian Sams, the senior national spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign.

Ian, nice to see you.

This is from Future Forward. They want you to win. But they have concerns. What do you say about that?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: With us now, Ian Sams, the Senior National Spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign.

Ian, nice to see you. This is from Future Forward. They want you to win, but they have concerns. What do you say about that?

IAN SAMS, SENIOR NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, HARRIS-WALZ CAMPAIGN: Well, thanks for having me. And I think the Vice President spoke to this weekend. You know, the American people are capable of processing numerous things at once.

And there are a lot of people who have a lot of different concerns about the country and the future. You think about, you know, there are a lot of former Republicans and conservatives out there who are joining our campaign and coming out to support Vice President Harris because they're alarmed by the fact that former President Trump's own top aides, the people who know him best, have warned that he would pose a great risk to the country if he returns to power. I think it's important to keep emphasizing that.

But at the same time, what does that say about Donald Trump? What does that say about him? It says about him that he's so focused on himself, his own pursuit of unchecked power, that he doesn't have time to think about you or your issues, you or your problems, how to bring your costs down.

Today, for example, the Vice President's going to be in Michigan. You know what she's going to be doing in Michigan? She's going to Saginaw, where she's going to be at a facility that's benefiting from the CHIPS Act that she helped pass and benefiting from the Inflation Reduction Act that she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into that facility to create over 1,000 jobs in high-tech manufacturing. She's going to be talking about that's part of her vision for the future, is to continue having investments like that happen.

And on Joe Rogan on Friday, Donald Trump trashed the CHIPS bill, the same investments that are creating those 1,300 jobs in Saginaw, Michigan. This is the same group of people, Vance and Trump, who are saying that they may repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is, again, making these millions of dollars of investments in Michigan, in Wisconsin, for the kinds of manufacturing jobs that people need to have a good life for themselves.

So when it comes to the economy, we're also laser-focused on talking about the stakes of the election for voters out there who care about the economy.

BERMAN: The speech tomorrow on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. D.C., not a swing state, not even a state, as I've been reminded constantly this morning. How much of the focus? Give me a split, like a percentage split. How much of the focus of the speech on Donald Trump, threat to democracy? How much of the speech on Vice President Harris and her proposals?

SAMS: Well, I think what folks are going to hear from the Vice President is a broad speech about her vision for the country. I do think you're hitting the nail on the head. She's going to be on the Ellipse, which I think, as everybody knows, is the most infamous site of Donald Trump's attempt to cling to power and seek the unchecked power that he wants in a second term, free from the sort of guardrails that you had from people like John Kelly or Mark Milley or Mark Esper or his national security advisors, all of whom have come out to say this is someone who should not return to power.

[09:25:02]

It's an emblem of what his focus is. His focus is on himself. His focus is on his own problems, not your problems. And I think that tomorrow the Vice President is going to speak about how she actually has a different view of America, that we can turn the page on that. Turn the page on the last decade of Donald Trump creating chaos, division, tearing us apart so that he can promote himself and his own political power and move to something forward, something where we have a president who's actually focused on the issues that matter to the American people.

He's going to sit in that Oval Office stewing over his enemies list, and she's going to sit in that Oval Office focused on checking off things on her to-do list to help the American people. That's going to be a fundamental choice in the election next week, and it's going to be the fundamental choice that she's going to be talking about tomorrow.

BERMAN: What else are we going to see from Bad Bunny over the next eight days?

SAMS: Well, I think that you capture something -- you know, the conversation about their rally yesterday. You know, Trump is the same old tired playbook, divide and demean. That's all he's capable of doing.

You know, these speakers who were his warm-up act at this kind of bizarre rally in New York last night, you know, they're offending people who want the leadership of this country to look out for them, and it actually is a stark reminder of Donald Trump.

It's, you know, four years ago when he was president, you know, the worst hurricane hit Puerto Rico, and he delayed getting them the aid that they needed, and he just went down there and threw paper towels at them. The Vice President did something very different. She was in the Senate. She went to Puerto Rico with a bipartisan group of senators to make sure they were getting the federal aid that they need. And so, again, it shows this difference between the way that these two people approach politics, approach governing, and approach the job.

And, you know, all they did yesterday was offend and demean these people. But again, it's part of Donald Trump's playbook. He wants -- he wants to do that because he doesn't have real solutions for people's lives. He just wants to divide us so that he can try to get power. And I think that the fundamental choice is are we going to keep going back to that, or are we going to move past all that and actually have a new way forward for the country?

BERMAN: Again, I just was asking about Bad Bunny. This was the first time we heard from Bad Bunny, hugely influential all around the world, but certainly within the Puerto Rican community. Will we hear from Bad Bunny again over the next eight days?

SAMS: Well, you know, I don't speak for Bad Bunny. We're obviously excited to have his support. He inspires a lot of people out there, a lot of people across the country who take inspiration from his music. Obviously, he has a huge following, 45 million Instagram followers. I looked yesterday where he shared the Vice President's plan for Puerto Rico. You know, those kind of voices coming out, talking about what's at stake in the election.

Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, other Puerto Rican Americans who are saying, you know, what we saw yesterday is just another example of trashing our community to promote himself. And so I think that the more voices come out, the bigger the tent.

You know, we have -- we have Bad Bunny and we have Liz Cheney. You know, there's a pretty big coalition that's supporting Vice President Harris in this election, and I think that over the next week you're going to see tens of thousands of people coming out excited about the election. You're going to see us try to harness that energy.

Just this week -- just this weekend, I should say, we knocked on 1.5 million doors in the battleground states. We are out there mobilizing to turn out the vote, to have this energy and enthusiasm you're seeing, you know, captured to win the election next Tuesday.

BERMAN: Bad Bunny and Liz Cheney, that would be an interesting duet. Top 20 on at least some chart.

Ian Sams, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, John.

The U.N. Security Council has called a meeting today as Iran vows to respond to Israeli strikes over the weekend.

And it's a big mystery. Who stole the cheese valued at nearly $400,000?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)