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Harris Campaign Expects Trump Will Declare Victory Before Votes Counted; Harris Campaign Officials Project Confidence That Undecided Voters Are Breaking In Their Favor; Trump Speaks To Reporters Ahead Of Campaign Stop In Michigan; Trump Might Evade Multiple Trials If He Wins The Election; Tensions Running High Over The Country's Political Future. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 01, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:01:04]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: T-minus four days and more than 66 million Americans have already cast their ballots as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump hit the battleground states with their closing arguments. We will be live from the trail.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, more violent imagery in his rhetoric. Trump attacking one of his top Republican critics, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, saying she should feel what it's like to be in combat and have nine rifles surrounding her. What both candidates are saying now about those comments.

We'll be following these major development stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Good afternoon. I'm Brianna Keilar alongside Boris Sanchez here in Washington.

And we begin this hour with some new exclusive reporting on how the Harris campaign believes that former President Trump will repeat a move that he made in the 2020 Election. The campaign tells CNN that it, quote, "fully expects Trump will declare victory next Tuesday before the votes are counted." And this comes as the Harris campaign is also projecting confidence in its ability to win over undecided voters with just four days to go, saying that internal data shows undecideds are breaking in their favor.

SANCHEZ: Meantime, the Trump campaign is attempting to clarify violent comments the former president recently made about former Republican congresswoman and Harris supporter Liz Cheney. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrel shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Kristen Holmes is covering the Trump campaign for us. But let's begin with CNN's MJ Lee in Wisconsin, where Vice President Harris just landed a short time ago and is holding three campaign stops across the state today.

MJ, the Vice President just now, moments ago, responding to these comments from Trump, what did she say?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the Vice President responded to these comments from the former president for the first time about Liz Cheney when she got off the plane here in Wisconsin. There was a podium set up on the tarmac and clearly she was reading off of prepared remarks, really signaling that she wanted to be careful and precise in how exactly she responded to these comments from the former president that he wished to see guns trained on Liz Cheney's face. This is what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He has increased his violent rhetoric - Donald Trump has - about political opponents and in great detail - in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former Representative Liz Cheney. This must be disqualifying. Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Cheney, of course, is one of the most prominent Republicans to have endorsed the Vice President. The Vice President went on to say that she sees the former congresswoman as being tough, incredibly courageous. And she also said that Cheney is a patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party.

She also did note that the two have not yet connected since the former president made those comments. There is, of course, this question of whether this kind of rhetoric coming from the former president will make any kind of difference with voters who are still undecided. The official line from the Harris campaign right now is a resounding yes.

[15:05:03]

They do believe that this kind of sort of hate filled rhetoric, this is the campaign's language, coming from the former president can have the effect of turning off voters from Donald Trump in critical battleground states in these final days leading up to Election Day. And speaking of, of course, we are in the Milwaukee area where the Vice President will eventually come to later this evening for a big get out the vote rally.

The last time she campaigned here was actually Wednesday night. So the fact that she is coming back just two days later, just one more reminder that this is one of the most critical states that the campaign is focused on as they are trying to carve their path through the blue wall states.

KEILAR: All right, MJ.

Now to Kristen Holmes in Milwaukee ahead of former President Trump's rally tonight. Kristen, what's the Trump team saying about his comments about Cheney?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna and Boris, they have taken issue, obviously, with the coverage and the contextualization about those remarks. They say that this is something that many people have said in the past, essentially saying that Donald Trump was calling her a chicken hawk, that she would want to go to war but never be in war herself. But really, the most notable thing is not what the campaign is saying, but the fact that the former president has now responded on Truth Social. This is what he just posted recently. He said, "All I'm saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a war hawk and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn't have 'the guts' to fight herself. It's easy for her to talk sitting far from the death scenes taking place, but put a gun in her hand and let her go fight and she'll say, 'No, thanks.' Her father decimated the Middle East and other places and got rich by doing so. He caused plenty of death and probably never even gave it a thought. That's not what we want running our Country."

To be clear, Donald Trump rarely clarifies his own remarks. His campaign spends a lot of time trying to clean up Donald Trump's remarks. Donald Trump himself just goes about saying what he wants to say. It is very telling that he himself put out a statement clarifying his own remarks here. That means that they believe that there could be some sort of damage done by these remarks or there's a fear hanging over them that these kind of violent rhetoric could cause problems for former President Trump ahead of people actually casting their ballots on November 5th. I think that is the most telling part of all of this.

Now, the problem for the Donald Trump campaign and for Donald Trump himself is that despite what he meant or wants to clarify with these remarks, Donald Trump has had a history of using some violent rhetoric or calling Democrats the enemy within, for example, not really building goodwill when it comes to these kind of comments.

So whether or not it actually impacts him at the ballot box remains to be seen. But it is clear that they're taking these comments much more seriously than some of the other loose comments that we've heard from the former president or violent rhetoric we've heard from the former president at times before, because he himself is now taking to this to try and clarify what he was saying.

SANCHEZ: MJ, back to you. What more is the Harris campaign saying about their belief that Trump might try to declare victory early on election night?

LEE: Yes, the Harris campaign is saying that they fully expect and are fully preparing for this possibility that the former president is going to declare victory early on Tuesday. This is what a senior campaign official told reporters. They said, "This should be no surprise because he lies all the time and he wants to sow doubt about a loss that he anticipates is coming."

I read this, Boris and Brianna, as the Harris campaign trying to really project calm and confidence about the possibility and the various ways in which Democrats are expecting Donald Trump, the candidate and Donald Trump's campaign and his allies to create chaos and confusion in a lot of different potential ways next week.

You know, we've seen the Harris campaign really go to great lengths to highlight all of the ways in which throughout the course of the campaign, they have been preparing for all different kinds of scenarios, setting up a legal team, making sure that they were looking at all of the ways in which there were various issues going back to the 2020 campaign, whether it is misinformation and disinformation, various lawsuits that could come their way in a lot of different states across the country, all different kinds of threats and rhetoric that could come from the candidate and his allies.

So I do think this is something they are trying to stress in these final days. They are basically telling anyone who will listen, we could see confusion, we could see chaos coming next week. But basically, they are trying to stress that the Harris campaign, which, of course, was formally the Biden campaign, has been preparing for this for a while now.

SANCHEZ: MJ and Kristen, thank you both from the campaign trail, appreciate it.

For more, let's discuss with our political experts, CNN Senior Political Analyst, Mark Preston, and political reporter for Notus, Jasmine Wright. Thank you both for being with us.

Jasmine, what are you hearing from your sources on the Harris campaign about the potential for Trump to declare victory early?

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Yes. Well, I think that this has been a theme for the Harris campaign for a while now.

[15:10:02]

Whispers among folks wanting to make sure that both reporters and the public are prepared for that option. Obviously, we saw it happen in 2020. It's actually very interesting. One person reminded me that this actually happened to the Vice President when she was running for district attorney in 2003. So this is something that the Vice President, her opponent declaring early, is used to.

Obviously, she was vice president or vice president-elect in 2020 when it was happening with Biden. And so this is something that they say that she's used to, that in these moments that she's calm and she's ready and she's kind of ready to do the work. But certainly this is the campaign wanting to foreshadow or wanting to at least warn people that this could be happening, trying to, as MJ said, tamp down on the chaos, trying to make sure that people feel prepared going into this election when we know that it is a tie, when we know that it is 50-50, even though the Harris campaign officials have been more optimistic in the last 24 to 48 hours. They recognize this is a tie. It comes down to turnout and that any option is really on the table when it comes to Tuesday and whenever we learn the results.

So I think this is a way to try to get people in the mode to understand that this is something that could be happening if they do hear it happen.

KEILAR: Could it hit differently, Mark, than it did in 2020?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, I do. I think so and I think that's why we have to be so careful about it. And even if Donald Trump goes out there and declares that he has won, he's not in the position to be the declarer, right? It will be who collectively the news media, the nonpartisan observers believe is going to win. And frankly, it's not until everything gets certified, as we all know what has happened when that has happened.

But Jasmine's right. Really, it's incumbent upon us in the news media right now to be very careful and very calm as well, to try to set expectations to what we think they're going to be. Not what we know what they're going to be, but what we think they're going to be. And the idea that we will have a winner on election night is probably not going to happen. At the same point, like the country should not be on fire just because one candidate doesn't like the results.

SANCHEZ: Yes. And we're anticipating there may be legal cases and stuff might wind up in front of the Supreme Court. So it'll be a while before we know.

Mark, I want to get your reaction to the back and forth over the comments made by Donald Trump regarding Liz Cheney.

PRESTON: Look, it's Donald Trump at his finest, right? He says something that's inflammatory. It plays well with the base and the folks that he's speaking to. He gets called on it. He walks back off of it. He says it's upon us that we've misinterpreted yet again what he meant.

I mean, the reality is he doesn't like Liz Cheney. I will say this, I mean, I'm going to show my age, as I always do during these segments. It is interesting to see the Republicans now hold up the fortunate sun flag that back during the 1970s was the Democratic calling sign, right?

You wouldn't expect the Republicans being the one anti-war, don't send our folks off to war. It's this whole flip over right now. It's interesting for us that are old.

KEILAR: And look, this is dangerous language.

WRIGHT: True.

KEILAR: We know that as he's talking about this, there are certainly other ways he could have communicated this thought where he's not talking about guns being pointed in the face of Liz Cheney. That said, I - there have been - and Boris, you brought this up earlier, there have just been these myriad of comments like, let's list them off as you did. There's the Liz Cheney thing. You've got Donald Trump saying, I'm going to protect women, whether they like it or not. Then, Mark Cuban who supports Harris' talk, he misspeaks about - not misspeaks - he said something about women that gets him in trouble. You have the comedian saying the thing about Puerto Rico in garbage. Then, you have Biden talking about Trump supporters in garbage.

I mean, does it just become this kind of giant thing that no one is swayed by or do you think it actually might sway voters? I mean, what's kind of like the human impact, do you think?

WRIGHT: Well, I think that there's two options, right? The campaign certainly believes that these comments are swaying voters. They certainly believe that in their focus groups, that it is opening the minds. I think what's really interesting is that for months, even when Biden was on the ticket, the campaign really tried to make people pay attention to Donald Trump's words, take him seriously, and it just really wasn't working.

They feared that Americans were viewing his four years in office with kind of these rose-colored glasses. And now in the last week, they feel that it has shifted, in part because of that Madison Square Garden rally. And so they're seeing really ...

SANCHEZ: Jasmine, so sorry to interrupt. Let's go to former President Trump at a stop in Dearborn, Michigan. Let's listen.

TRUMP: But she's a war-hawk. She wants to go kill people unnecessarily. And if she had to do it herself and she had to face the consequences of battle, she wouldn't be doing it. So it's easy for her to talk, but she wouldn't be doing it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sir ...

TRUMP: She's actually a disgrace.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) ...

TRUMP: Well, she is campaigning. I mean, she's campaigning for herself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Trump ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said last time, President Trump, you said last time (INAUDIBLE) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do whatever he wants (INAUDIBLE) ...

TRUMP: Well, he's going to have a big role in healthcare actually. In fact, we just left. In fact, I think he might be here.

[15:15:03]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's right here. TRUMP: Where is he?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will he run HHS?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) on vaccines, Mr. President?

TRUMP: We'll be talking about a lot of things, but he's going to have a big role in healthcare, a big role in healthcare. He knows it better than anybody. He's got some views that I happen to agree with very strongly and I have for a long time, I think, for ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On what?

TRUMP: ... years, you and I (INAUDIBLE) we'll be seeing it as a (INAUDIBLE) ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about the (INAUDIBLE) vaccine and maybe a decision on the NHS?

TRUMP: All of these things will be talked about in (INAUDIBLE) ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This meeting is for the community of Dearborn, so please let us welcome Mr. Donald J. Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dearborn is (INAUDIBLE) ...

SANCHEZ: It was difficult to listen to the very initial start of the former president's comments there, but I did hear that he was asked specifically about RFK Jr. and the reporting this week, RFK Jr. apparently telling folks that Trump had promised him a significant role leading HHS and other government agencies. The Trump campaign then walked that back specifically on CNN and when Trump was asked about it, somehow RFK Jr. manifested from behind him and he said he's going to have a big role in healthcare. He was asked specifically about RFK's positions on vaccines and he said that - Trump said that we are going to look at all of these things.

KEILAR: Really interesting. He did manifest from ...

SANCHEZ: He just kind of appeared, yes.

KEILAR: Just, ooh, there he is.

WRIGHT: He said his name three times.

KEILAR: He popped right out.

I do want to ask you, Jasmine, just before we let you go, Trump has really leaned into this kind of bro culture and you even had JD Vance talking about like low T on the Joe Rogan podcast a little bit.

WRIGHT: Yes.

KEILAR: Is that really cutting through? It seems like it really is. WRIGHT: I mean, I think in one way it is, right? They're, they're making a risky bet. They're betting on these bros, these younger, maybe not so educated men who potentially haven't even voted once or maybe they've only voted every couple of times and really hoping that they come out and they come out and vote for him because they resonate with the type of masculinity that Trump is putting out into the zeitgeist, right? That he could use crude language, that he could be mean to people, that he could potentially be okay with some racist tropes that are in the world because they view that that idea is what is interesting to them.

And so he's really trying to put a lot of energy in that, really widening the gender gap that I think that we're seeing, hoping that these maybe sometimes voters come out, but I think it's risky for a couple reasons. One, because they love propensity. You can't necessarily trust on them to always vote every time. And then secondly, you don't really know where they are.

Who cares I think the Harris campaign would say if a bunch of bros in California voted because you're not going to offset in that major Democratic populous state. But of course, this is where the campaign - the Trump campaign is kind of putting their eggs going into the election.

PRESTON: And to punctuate that, if you go back to 2020, Tufts University has a study out that shows that younger women voted by 11 points higher advantage than younger men, younger women, 55 percent, younger men voted 44 percent back in 2020. So if Trump's going after the younger men, he's going after low propensity voters who may not even show up.

KEILAR: So it turns out teenage daughters are more dependable than teenage sons.

PRESTON: They really are.

KEILAR: This is interesting ...

SANCHEZ: (INAUDIBLE) ...

PRESTON: For somebody who has one of each, they are both not dependable.

KEILAR: Interesting.

SANCHEZ: (INAUDIBLE) ...

KEILAR: Equal opportunity, Mark Preston. All right, Jasmine - thank you, Jasmine Wright. Thank you to you both.

SANCHEZ: So Donald Trump has a clear path out of many of his legal troubles, simply winning the election as if that were actually simple. And we're going to discuss where his criminal cases stand and what happens if he winds up back in the White House.

KEILAR: Plus, what comes after Election Day as Trump talks about vengeance. We're going to look at the efforts to prevent potential political violence.

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[15:22:59]

KEILAR: Former President Trump is currently facing several lawsuits. He is scheduled to be sentenced on November 26th, about three weeks after Election Day, for his conviction for falsifying business records.

SANCHEZ: And if he loses the election, prosecutors will still be looking to hold him accountable. But what if Trump ultimately wins the White House? That could dramatically change things. And we have CNN's Tom Foreman here to explain. Actually, no, we're going to CNN's Kara Scannell to explain.

Kara, what would an election victory for Trump mean for his legal matters?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, it would have a significant impact on his legal matters. All those federal cases, the investigations by Jack Smith in charge of the Justice Department, Trump can make them go away. But the New York case is really the most urgent because, as you said, he's scheduled to be sentenced just three weeks from Election Day.

Now, lawyers I've talked to say that if Trump wins the White House, that could essentially be his get-out-of-jail-free card, because they say that it seems unlikely that he would ever get sentenced in the next four years, and maybe not at all. This will all kick off really one week after Election Day. That is when we're expecting the New York judge overseeing the hush money case to decide whether the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity will have an impact on the state case.

Now, if he denies Trump's motion to dismiss the complaint, then we'll really see a race to the courthouses. We'll see Trump's attorneys trying to get both the state judges and, if necessary, go all the way up to the Supreme Court to get them to put off the sentencing so they can challenge many of these other legal decisions, including immunity, as well as potentially challenging whether a state judge could sentence the president-elect of the United States. So we're expecting a lot of court activity.

But also, you know, if Trump loses the White House, all of these actions are still expected to be taken from his legal team. They're going to try to push off the sentencing and challenge the conviction. But it's not clear exactly how judges will view that, if they will push off Trump's sentencing while he is challenging these issues.

[15:25:01]

You know, either way, all of this is just unprecedented, you know, both the decisions on whether to push off his sentencing, but also what he would be sentenced to if that day does come. Of course, big question, what does the district attorney's office ask for? Do they ask for jail time?

So really here, this election could be the difference between the White House and the big house, guys?

SANCHEZ: Kara Scannell, an important distinction, thank you so much.

So we know November 5th is Election Day, but it's anyone's guess who is going to win and then what comes after that.

KEILAR: And at some point, we will have a winner. We know that much - at some point. And then the transition will begin, we expect. But that next president will lead a deeply divided nation, one in which millions may not even believe was won fair and square. Tom Foreman has been looking into this.

It is the focus of his new CNN digital piece in his "American Battleground" series.

And Tom, there is a lot of anxiety around this election. You can find a lot of reporting on that, in fact. How much of that is being fueled by Trump's talk of vengeance?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's certainly being fueled on his side, because remember, if you are a Trump supporter, the odds say you not only think he won four years ago, he did not, but you're hearing him already say now we're going to be cheated again. So, of course, tremendous anxiety there.

On the Democratic side, there's anxiety because they see what's happened with these voting precincts, areas out in the counties where there have been officials put in place. The fact that they may, in fact, finally produce the voter fraud that they've been unable to find, and they would do it in favor of Trump. So there's a lot of anxiety about all of this.

And yes, this question of what Trump wants. You hear him talk about Cheney. You've heard him talk about so many people that he refers to as enemies from within. Those who have covered him closest over the years have said one of the biggest motivators in Donald Trump's life is vengeance. When he thinks he's been done wrong, he wants to get even. And it doesn't matter if he wasn't done wrong in the first place.

So, yes, tremendous amount of anxiety. I've never seen anything like it in any election I've ever covered.

SANCHEZ: Not even joking, I have anxiety about it and that's part of the reason that I tossed you before we were ready to actually ...

FOREMAN: Sure.

SANCHEZ: ... go with you.

Getting serious, though, Donald Trump was actually asked about this matter that we're talking about right now. And we have that sound bite now. He's in Dearborn, Michigan. Let's listen to Trump talking about potentially declaring victory early.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your comment (INAUDIBLE) ...

TRUMP: All I can tell you is she's an inferior candidate. She shouldn't be running. She didn't get one vote. She is totally an inferior candidate. She shouldn't be running. They took it away from Biden and they treated Biden very unfairly. I have to tell you that. When you talk about democracy, they have treated him very unfairly, okay?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, the Vice President has criticized your elevation of Robert F. Kennedy. She just said that she thinks he's the last person in America to be involved in health care planning. How do you respond to that?

TRUMP: Well, that's because they've lost him. He was a Democrat all his life. It's the Kennedy family ...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: So I'm not sure that he directly addressed the question of declaring victory early there. He spoke about Kamala Harris making false claims that she somehow took the nomination from Joe Biden.

Tom, what do you make of the accusation lobbied against Trump and the potential for him to say that he's the president before he's actually declared president?

FOREMAN: Oh, I - I don't think it's potential. I think it's pretty good likelihood because that's his playbook. That's what he often does. And the result is going to be, again, the key problem here is when you take a bunch of people and convince them of something that is untrue and Donald Trump did not win last time, period. That's the way it is. They get very, very unhappy with this notion that the system is broken. It's not working. They can't move ahead. They can't get what they want.

Here's the way I kind of sum it up in my head here, Donald Trump feels that he won the last election. He knows he was humiliated. And humiliation is a very powerful force for his followers, too, since they want to come back. Honestly, the backwash of this election is going to depend not on the victors being victorious, no matter which side wins. It's going to be how the victors treat the people who lost, how much they recognize their fears, their concerns, their worries, and treat them seriously, because those things don't just go away by being beaten. People have to have a way to move forward.

So whichever side wins, if they want this country to be together and work together, they're going to have to pay attention to the other side and listen to the other side, even if they disagree with them. If they don't, I don't see how we don't wind up just going through another episode of this, which has everyone anxious and everyone worn out.

KEILAR: It's also how the loser behaves.

FOREMAN: Yes, yes, yes.

KEILAR: That's also going to be very important.

FOREMAN: Like I said it's how the losers behave, it's how the winners behave and that - you can't just throw over the checkerboard every time you're not happy and say, well, I never lost, because after all, we never finished the game.

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