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Voter Turnout Lower Than 2020?; Kamala Harris Visits Semiconductor Plant in Michigan; Trump Rally Features Racist, Vulgar Remarks. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 28, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:37]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: With only eight days until Election Day, former President Donald Trump leaves voters with a lot to consider after a hometown rally features several speakers spewing racist or vulgar remarks.

Meantime, Vice President Kamala Harris seizes on those and saying the former president is -- quote -- "fixated on his grievances." Harris is now heading to Michigan, where she is set to speak next hour.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And dwindling hope for a deal in the Middle East, talks set to resume with Egypt proposing a two day cease-fire, but negotiators have one eye on the election here in the United States.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: We have officially entered the final full week of the 2024 election.

And, today, the Trump campaign finds itself in a bit of damage control after the former president's dark and inflammatory rally at Madison Square Garden last night. This event featured a parade of MAGA movement speakers and offered a menacing, crude, misogynistic and at times racist closing message to voters.

SANCHEZ: All this is a brand-new CNN pullout today finds that nearly 70 percent of registered voters think that Donald Trump wouldn't concede, would not concede the election if he loses to Kamala Harris.

We have team coverage of the rally fallout and today's campaign developments.

Eva McKend is with the Harris team in battleground, Michigan.

But let's start with Kristen Holmes, whose live force in Atlanta, where the former president is holding two campaign events in the swing state of Georgia today.

Kristen, what are you hearing from Trump's team and the blowback of that controversial event in New York? KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris and Brianna,

I just want to make one thing clear here. The most controversial, vulgar and sexist remarks all came before Donald Trump even took the stage.

I mean, at some points, my jaw was on the floor, as somebody who's been to so many of these events, hearing some of these remarks, particularly one comedian saying that Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage.

He went on to say several other vulgar, racist things, and he wasn't the only one in these pre-program remarks. And the number of Trump allies and advisers that I have spoken to who are angry today, given the fact that these are the remarks that are really overshadowing what happened at Madison Square Garden last night and the former president himself doing this event that he's long wanted to do, there's a lot of finger-pointing, them saying, who was supposed to vet these speeches?

Why were certain some of these speakers allowed up on the stage and allowed to give some of these remarks? And the campaign actually put out a rare statement distancing themselves, particularly from that comedian. This is what they said.

They said: "This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign."

Gives you some idea here of how many calls they were getting from lawmakers, Republicans. They were seeing the Democratic backlash, essentially saying, this needs to be condemned, these remarks are not OK, particularly about Puerto Ricans, who make up a huge part of the voting bloc in many of these swing states.

Now, they are hoping to turn the page today in Georgia. We're going to hear that same rhetoric. It was very clear last night as Donald Trump was delivering his closing message he is going to continue hammering home this point about immigration. He believed that this rhetoric around immigration helped him win in 2016 and he believes it will help propel him to the White House in 2024.

The big question, of course, is whether or not he's going to actually address some of the comments that were in that preshow last night before he took the stage. I would say that it seems unlikely, given what I have heard from these various advisers, that he's actually going to say anything about it.

They're going to let this statement speak for itself. But, of course, it's Donald Trump. We will see what he does when he actually takes the stage.

KEILAR: All right, Kristen, thank you so much for that. Let's go now to Eva McKend, who is in Michigan, where Vice President Harris is holding three campaign events today.

Eva, what is the Harris campaign have planned for the day? And what is she saying about this rally of Trump's at Madison Square Garden yesterday? EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna,

today, for the vice president, it's all about manufacturing jobs.

She's going to be in Saginaw at a semiconductor facility meeting with workers on the assembly line. She will then later go to Macomb County to a labor union training facility. And it gives her an opportunity to talk about the wins, as she sees them, of the Biden/Harris administration on this issue.

[13:05:03]

She will argue that the CHIPS Act, for instance, fortified some of these manufacturing union jobs. She will also have a space to talk about her policy platform as it relates to this issue, shoring up apprenticeship programs, giving a tax credit to American manufacturers.

And it comes at a time when Democrats in some corners very much want this to be the message, not former President Trump, but for her instead to be out here making an affirmative case for why she wants to be president.

But, still, she's going to be asked about the former president and his theatrics. Take a listen to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think, last night, Donald Trump's event in Madison Square Garden really highlighted a point that I have been making throughout this campaign.

He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country. This is not new about him, by the way. What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same, and maybe more vivid than usual.

Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division. And that's why people are exhausted with him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: And, Brianna, she will end the day here in Ann Arbor for a big rally, When We Vote We Win concert series. Maggie Rogers will perform.

And then we will see the vice president on stage with her running mate, Governor Walz, a rare opportunity to see them campaigning on stage together -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Eva McKend, thank you so much.

Let's talk about this with our political experts. Laura Barron-Lopez is the White House correspondent for "PBS News Hour." Erin Perrine a Republican strategist for Axiom Strategies, and Jamal Simmons served as communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris and is the co-host of the "Trailblaze" podcast.

Erin, to you first.

What did you think about this rally? Well, I think that we can all say it was offensive at many points in time. Does it work for him? It certainly doesn't broaden his appeal, I would expect.

ERIN PERRINE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I wouldn't think that anybody is going to be swayed to consider voting more for Donald Trump after that rally.

But, at this point, it's about two things. It's about headlines and it's about coverage. It's all this is about at this point. This is get-out-the-vote effort. So we are talking breathlessly about Donald Trump in New York City. And where else is he going to be going this week? He's going to be going to Virginia. You're going to see him in New Mexico as well.

Why? They're going on this offensive strategy to try to close out in this really bold, brash way on this campaign. They're going into states that they're going to try and say are more competitive, like Virginia, right?

You remember back when Glenn Youngkin won, right, what did he do? He went into Alexandria, Virginia the weekend before the election to try and show, look, we're going to win this. This is strong. I think Alexandria still went 70-30. But you're showing up into these places to be able to say, look.

So, when it comes to the closing message, it should be on the economy, should be on securing the country, should be on geopolitical catastrophe and contrasting that to Kamala. This took away from that, and that's a huge misstep by this campaign.

SANCHEZ: Laura, specifically on the comments from that comedian about Puerto Rico, there is the potential for some blowback and very real potential for Latino voters, specifically Puerto Ricans, to reconsider voting for Donald Trump, especially because you had a number of prominent Latinos, Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, et cetera, posting clips defending the Harris campaign or reciting with the Harris campaign.

And the Bad Bunny one is significant, because he's not somebody that has delved into politics before.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

SANCHEZ: How do you read the back-and-forth?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes, and I thought it was striking that the Bad Bunny endorsement came out right as that comedian made those comments about Puerto Rico.

I have noticed that some Puerto Ricans are also posting on social media beautiful photos of their country, of their island. And, no, I think, especially in a place like Pennsylvania that has a significant Puerto Rican population, that is a swing state, I have covered Latino voters there before, and this could be something that further pushes them towards Harris.

A lot of Latinos that I have talked to, whether it's in Pennsylvania, Nevada, or Arizona, do tend to either bring up one of two things, either the economy or abortion. Now, are these comments going to impact them if they're more focused on the economy? It's a little difficult to say.

That being said, a number of them do pay attention to Trump's anti- immigrant rhetoric, to him attacking legal immigrants like Haitians. And this will reinforce their views that he is not necessarily someone who maybe has their best interest at heart.

I also wonder how it plays with mixed-status families, people who are American citizen children to parents that might be undocumented. There's all these things that Trump's rhetoric last night and those and his allies around him, their rhetoric could very well influence their vote.

KEILAR: Yes.

And, Jamal, it has the effect broadly of what -- listening to Trump or listening to the folks that his campaign invited, people who, if you look at the history of their comments, it's pretty clear what they may be saying at an event like this.

[13:10:10]

It gives the idea that Latinos aren't Americans, just broadly. And there are many Hispanic Americans out there that are up for grabs in this election potentially still. And I just wonder what you think about this approach.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: All these Republicans who are making excuse for Donald Trump right now can kick rocks, right?

Like, they know better. He's not doing this by accident. I have planned more presidential level events in my life than I care to admit. And I got to tell you, you know a lot about what people are going to say. You talk to them about what they're going to do.

One of the reasons you do that is because you want to deconflict the remarks between what the candidate is going to say and what some of the other people who are going to speak are going to say. And Donald Trump is betting on racism.

The problem right now is that he might be betting too hard. He's hitting the nail a little too hard on the head, because, in America, betting on racism has tended to work for the most part, but only if you wink at it, right? You think about welfare queens with Reagan, or you think about the -- George H.W. Bush going after the Willie Horton ad.

Those are winks at racism. Governor Wallace, he didn't win in 1968, right? So I wonder if what Trump is doing is going to move some of these suburban women, who maybe they live in racially exclusive lifestyles. Maybe they don't particularly like certain people from certain places, but they certainly don't want to think of themselves as being racist.

They certainly don't want to think of themselves as not liking that kid who played on the team with their kid in the soccer league. So I think that this is something that Trump is going to have to -- Trump is probably overplaying his hand here in a way that's playing right into the Harris campaign strategy.

SANCHEZ: Erin, I'm curious about something Jamal said because I think you and I actually met on the Trump 2020 campaign on the road. Do you know ahead of time what people are going to say? Did nobody vet this comedian and see some things that he's perhaps said in the past that might lead them to think, we don't want him right before Donald Trump comes on?

PERRINE: Other than the Republican National Convention, I can't think of a Trump rally that I worked as a Trump staffer where we were vetting speeches by those who were on the stage.

Now, that's not to say I have every insight into everything that happens behind the scenes, but I worked a number of rallies. I have actually headed up press advance for a little bit in the early days of the '20s cycle, because we were still a small team. So that's where we met was at the press pen back in the day.

What they do is -- what should be done is, you vet the person. You do essentially a background check is what you should be doing. I don't think the campaign is, right? You're going to look through people's backgrounds. You're going to look through their history.

Heck, when I joined the Trump campaign in 2020, I had to send them what my social medias were, so that they could look and see what I had been saying, if I'd been saying things that weren't lining up with where the campaign was.

All of that to say, I don't think this happened in this instance. I don't think people were doing any vetting. I think that they didn't look at the remarks. I don't think there was any deconflicting. They had hours and hours and hours of speakers.

I don't think the campaign did that at all whatsoever, but they normally wouldn't do that. That's not their normal operating procedure. And think about it. Think about all the events they put on, not only the big rallies, but also the ones J.D. Vance does, which are a little bit smaller in scale, and the campaign bus tours and events on the road.

To be able to deconflict all of those speeches and read everybody's remarks is not something they would be able to. In this instance, they should have been more careful, because the same way you select a vice presidential nominee to do no harm, your campaign events should do no harm as well.

KEILAR: Well, on the background checks, just what people have said, I mean, I background-checked like four people pretty quickly. I feel like if -- just before the show, if you divide and conquer, it's actually -- it's not too hard, right? Sid Rosenberg, he's someone who, it turns out, got fired for saying

that Serena and Venus Williams were too masculine, that they were disgusting, and that they would have a better shot at posing for "National Geographic" magazine than "Playboy" magazine. Like, that seems pretty basic.

But I wonder, is it the design, Laura?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I mean, I think that there was no intention by the Trump campaign to background-check these people.

I mean, the vast majority of these people are saying things that Trump or his other allies have said for the vast majority of this campaign. It's not the first time that someone at a Trump rally has called Kamala Harris the antichrist or called her the devil. That has happened repeatedly at Trump rallies.

It's not the first time that Donald Trump has called other American citizens the enemy within or said that the press are the enemy within. So this is all part of the larger theme of Donald Trump's campaign, which is one that is solely about an anti-immigrant message and about retribution for what he considers a stolen 2020 election.

SANCHEZ: Jamal, to you.

This rally comes as the marquee super PAC backing Vice President Harris' run put out this report warning that digging too deep into presenting Donald Trump as a fascist, as an authoritarian isn't as effective as her representing her own economic vision for the country, her own stance on a number of key issues.

[13:15:10]

I wonder what you make of that, because it seems like, for her, this is very easy to point to the extreme rhetoric and to say, do you really want that? But it doesn't seem lined up with exactly where voters might want her to be.

SIMMONS: Absolutely.

Just to go back to the earlier statement for a second, you don't always know exactly what everybody's going to say. But when you're picking people to be on stage with your presidential candidate, you kind of know what they're going to say. You ask them, you're going to hit this point or you're going to hit that one?

So that's point number one. And then point number two is, they had hours after some of these things happened to kind of rebut it. They didn't rebut it until the outcry broke out online. So, again, they can kick rocks. They know what kind of campaign they're running and they know what they're trying to do.

As for the Harris campaign. They're going very hard at Donald Trump because what we learned in 2018, we learned it in 2020, we learned it in 2022, when Donald Trump and MAGA extremism are on the ballot, Americans tend to say, no, thank you. They have said it in every election they possibly could.

So they have got to, one, make the case that Donald Trump is extreme and what he wants to do takes us in an anti-American election -- anti- American direction. And then, number two, here's how Kamala Harris wants to make your life better. The two things work hand in hand. They're not either/or. And I think that Future Forward, maybe that memo leans a little too hard on don't talk about Donald Trump.

But, really, it is talk about Donald Trump and what he wants to do and then pivot to what Kamala Harris wants to do that's going to make people's lives better to buy houses and build businesses and take care of their kids.

KEILAR: She's going to have a chance to offer her own closing message here, and she's going to be doing it on the Ellipse near the White House, the site of Donald Trump's remarks on January 6 before the riot at the Capitol.

How much is riding on this, Laura?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I think Kamala Harris' campaign, based on people that I talked to, as well as just when you're out there talking to voters, it's very clear that she views her pathway to the White House through two avenues, which is those disenchanted Republican independent voters, those Liz Cheney-type voters.

She thinks that those are people she can drive up numbers with, as well as max out her support amongst women, and that's women across the board, across all ages. That's -- those are the two big voting blocs for her, I think, across race and ethnicity.

And this speech that she's going to make, which is going to highlight the stark contrast and frame Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, reminding people what happened on January 6, reminding them again that people that worked for him are now calling him fascist and saying he is an existential threat, that that can help her with those Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley voters.

And those may be the only undecided voters that are left out there.

SANCHEZ: Do you think that would be an effective message to deliver as a closing line from the Ellipse?

PERRINE: I don't think it is.

And I think there's a few reasons for it. One, I think it's all kind of baked into the pie. And for better or worse, the American people know what they're going to get with Donald Trump. The argument about fascism, the American people remember what it was like under Donald Trump. And even that language may be a little bit too far, because they're like, you know what, he wasn't a fascist and a dictator when he was president of the United States.

I remember what it felt like. Remember that my checkbook felt like there was more money in my pocketbook and I could get more at the grocery store. That's what the American people -- if you want to make a convincing closing argument to persuadable female Republican voters, you know what you need to say? I am going to be able to make the economy better and the country safer.

Stop playing into Donald Trump. They already understand.

KEILAR: He's definitely got people playing into him after this rally.

SANCHEZ: No question about that.

Erin, Laura, Jamal, thank you all for the conversation. Appreciate you.

Still ahead this afternoon, new numbers hinting that voter turnout might be lower than expected in this election. Who could that help? Who could that hurt?

Plus, remember terms like blue mirage and blue shift -- rather, red mirage and blue shift? Ahead, what the drama from the 2020 election could teach us about what we should expect just eight days from now.

KEILAR: And Iran vows to retaliate after Israel's strikes on Saturday.

We're going to take you live to the region coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[13:23:35]

KEILAR: It's about a week to go until Election Day. It's just flying by, right?

SANCHEZ: Yes. Yes.

KEILAR: Yes.

More than 40 million people have already cast ballots in person or by mail. So what does this tell us about what voter turnout could look like this election?

SANCHEZ: CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten joins us live.

Harry, great to see you, as always.

I'm concerned because you're not in front of the Magic Wall.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: I got one right here.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: So what trends are you seeing now, Harry? How does it compare to years past? What do you think?

ENTEN: Yes, I mean, look, I will use my magic yellow board here and then we're going to throw it up on screen so you guys can see. Look, I think there's so many folks who are expecting record turnout

this year, right? We saw a record turnout four years ago. I'm not quite sure it's going to happen, because there are a couple of polling metrics that I have been looking at comparing 2024 to what we saw in 2020.

And what we see is the percentage of registered voters who say there's certain a vote in this election is actually down seven points from the same point back in 2020. The percentage of registered voters who say they're extremely motivated to turn out and come out and vote, that's also down eight points from where we were in 2020.

And that actually matches what we saw in the 2022 midterms, right, where turnout was down from the record numbers in 2018. It's also what we saw back in August in the Washington top two primary, which oftentimes presages and is oftentimes predictive of what will happen in November. Turnout there was down from what we saw in 2020.

So the bottom line is, yes, I think a lot of folks are very excited to turn out, but I really would not be surprised if fewer folks actually ultimately end up turning out compared to four years ago.

[13:25:11]

KEILAR: And to what should we credit that, them maybe not turning out?

ENTEN: Yes.

Every single election cycle, everyone goes, this is the most important election of our lifetimes. Well, actually, "The New York Times" polled this very question. They essentially asked is this the most important election of your lifetime? And what we see is the majority of voters say yes, but that's actually a lower number, 65 percent, than what we saw at this same point in 2020, when it was 74 percent.

So you're consistently seeing these drops of high single digits on these different metrics. So, yes, a lot of politicians might be trying to sell the idea that this is the most important election of everyone's lifetime, but the voters are slightly less likely to believe it than they were four years ago.

SANCHEZ: Harry, when it comes to the potential for lower turnout than in the last cycle, which side would benefit most from that?

ENTEN: Ah, the million-dollar question, my dear friend, and the million dollar answer is, eh.

(LAUGHTER)

ENTEN: If you look at registered voters, which, of course, is the entire universe of voters, and you compare it to likely voters, when you drill down to it, it's the same margin nationally, well within the margin of error, Harris by a point among registered voters, Harris by a point among likely voters. What's interesting about that is, historically speaking, Republicans

tend to benefit from lower turnout, but some of the polling earlier on this cycle suggested that Donald Trump would in fact not benefit from lower turnout. Kamala Harris would benefit from lower turnout.

Right now, it looks like neither side necessarily will, but, of course, if we do have lower turnout, then each individual vote matters even more. So it's going to be interesting to see as we get closer and closer to Election Day as more people early-vote and then actually go out to the polls on Election Day which side can get out their voters more, because at the end of the day, this campaign, my dear friends, is too close to call.

And I didn't need a yellow board to tell you that.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we didn't need the Magic Wall for eh.

KEILAR: Eh.

ENTEN: Eh. Meh.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: Harry Enten, great to see you, Harry. Thanks so much.

ENTEN: Nice to see you.

SANCHEZ: So the closeness of this race, as you just heard from Harry, between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris suggests we might see a repeat of the election pattern known as the red mirage or the blue shift.

KEILAR: That is when Republicans lead early after polls closed on election night, only to have it erased.

Here to explain the phenomenon is CNN politics senior writer and author of CNN's "What Matters" newsletter Zachary Wolf.

OK, break this down for us, because we do need this reminder every few years.

ZACHARY WOLF, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER: Every few years.

And you can go back to 2016. It's the distant memory at this point, but Hillary Clinton conceded the election. She was behind in the popular vote. We all know she ultimately won the popular vote, if that's the thing that you can win.

Four years later -- and in 2016, that's mostly because of these states like California or Washington, where they count all these mail-in ballots very late. They kind of trickle in.Four years later, in 2020, we all went to bed, or those of us who did sleep that night went to bed. There were still eight states where we didn't know what the results were going to be.

Seven of them are still battlegrounds. So, I think -- and it took days even. Let's look at Georgia, one of those key states from 2016. It was two days. At 4.46 a.m., I think, in the morning on November 6 -- election Day was November 3 -- that was when Biden finally took the lead.

And we say take the lead. That's kind of the wrong way to look at it. He always had the lead. We just hadn't counted the votes. And a lot of this comes down to these mail-in votes. It's hard to take them out of envelopes to verify signatures, to do all this stuff.

Some of these states, like Georgia, have made changes. So that should make things go a lot quicker this year. But we're just going to have to see.

SANCHEZ: Yes, different states have different rules. And so, as the votes are counted, you see the percentages change and potentially fluctuate.

I wonder, though, taking all of that into account, when should we have an idea of when the race is going to be called?

WOLF: So, Georgia's secretary of state said that, by the time polls close, they should have a lot of these ballots processed. And he said, by 8:00 p.m. on election night, they should have up to 70 percent of their votes in Georgia.

So that's great. But if it's really close, it might not matter. It could take many days. There could be overseas ballots that they have to count, provisional ballots, all of these things. In a very tight election, everything you do might not help.

And then there are states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where efforts to reform the process have stalled essentially. So they're not counting these early -- these mail-in ballots. They're not processing them early. So things could go quickly there.

And in a really tight election, it could take a while. I mean, the record, we all remember, 2000, 36 days. Hopefully, it's not that this year.

KEILAR: Hopefully not, I dare say.

All right, Zach, thank you. Appreciate it.

Still ahead: Iran vows to respond to Israel's latest deadly strike on the country, as stalled Gaza hostage and cease-fire talks resume. We will have the latest from the region next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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