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Harris Delivers Last Major Speech of Presidential Campaign; Trump Courts the Latino Vote; Police Searching for Arsonist Behind Ballot Box Fires; Gaza Officials: IDF Strike Kills 93, Including 25 Children. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired October 30, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. I pledge to be a president for all Americans.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do. I've done more for Puerto Rico than any president by far, nobody close.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My community deserves respect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's part of the same old playbook of insulting hard-working Latinos.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's all we got. It ain't like we got ten candidates to pick. We got one and two. You want the emotional female or do you want the emotional male?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster and Christina Macfarlane.
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, warm welcome to our viewers joining us from the U.S. and around the world. I'm Max Foster.
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christina Macfarlane. It's Wednesday, October 30th, 8 a.m. here in London, 4 a.m. in Washington, D.C., where Kamala Harris has delivered the last major speech of her presidential run.
FOSTER: Yes, there are only six days left until Election Day and more than 50 million Americans have voted already. But the Harris and Trump campaigns are trying to win over those voters in crucial swing states who haven't yet. On Tuesday, the vice president spoke at a strategic and symbolic setting along the National Mall.
MACFARLANE: It was the same spot where Donald Trump rallied his supporters on January the 6th, 2021, before a deadly riot and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Harris drew a sharp contrast between herself and Donald Trump and warned Americans about what will happen if he wins.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.
Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say that is not who we are. That is not who we are.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office. On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to do list.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Well CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has been covering the Harris speech and has this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Vice President Kamala Harris spent her closing arguments here at the Ellipse introducing herself again to voters. Heading into the remarks, senior advisors to the Vice President said they wanted to target undecided voters. Those voters who may still be on the fence, like disaffected Republicans or those who are just fatigued by former President Donald Trump.
And over the course of her remarks, the Vice President laid out her policies and proposals on a number of issues, including on immigration, on health care, on reproductive rights. As she did so, she compared each of those to the priorities of former President Donald Trump. Essentially casting him as consumed by revenge or in the case of the military as someone disrespectful to the military service.
Now, the vice president did, of course, spend some time talking about January 6th. That speech back in January 6th of 2021 by former President Donald Trump leading to supporters storming the U.S. Capitol. Now she talked about, again, the former president being focused on what she called, quote, the enemies list versus her to do list for Americans.
And what was telling about the remarks was how much time she was spending introducing and reintroducing herself. At one point saying that many of those that were watching may not know her well yet.
[04:05:00] A recognition of her truncated campaign, but also her explaining that she has not spent all of her political career in Washington, calling back to her time also in California.
And to that end, the vice president saying that she would welcome other opinions and include those who disagree with her at what she called a seat at the table.
So again, the vice president and her team seeing these remarks as the kick start to the homestretch of the election as she again tries to peel off those Republican voters and former President Donald Trump, but also convince those that the campaign believes still needs some convincing.
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Some of CNN's commentators weighed in earlier on the Harris speech and gave it pretty high marks.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAMAL SIMMONS, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR VP KAMALA HARRIS: It was a great setting. The White House was behind her. She looks good.
The people who are there look like a cross-section of America. I think this is what she's been arguing. And now what we're seeing is Trump and Harris are living out the contrast the Harris campaign wants to highlight.
Trump is kind of cruel. It's coarse. He's got people kind of all standing there jostling against each other and against other Americans.
She's talking about bringing Americans together and looking forward. So if we're going to have a change election, this is going to be about change. The Harris campaign wants this to be about the change from Trump to the future.
SARAH MATTHEWS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY UNDER TRUMP: She reminded people of why they don't like Donald Trump. And then I think she expertly laid out a to-do list of what she's going to be doing for the American people and drew that contrast between Donald Trump is focused on his personal grievances. He has an enemy list. I have a to-do list. And so it definitely, I think, accomplished what the campaign needed. That backdrop, I thought, was really striking.
But she didn't make it all just about democracy, even though for a voter like me that was enough to push me over the edge to want to vote for her and to vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life. But I think that for those voters who might be on the fence, she made the argument, I think, a twofold argument of, hey, look, Donald Trump is unfit, let's turn the page, and here's what I'm going to do for the American people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, Donald Trump continued his series of attacks against his rival on Tuesday, falsely accusing her of destroying the nation's economy and allowing gangs of migrant criminals to freely cross the border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She's running on a campaign of demoralization and really a campaign of destruction. But really, perhaps more than anything else, it's a campaign of hate. It's a campaign of absolute hate.
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MACFARLANE: Well, Trump spoke in praise of his recent rally at Madison Square Garden in which speakers made insulting remarks towards Harris, Hillary Clinton and the island of Puerto Rico.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I don't think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden. The love, the love, the love in that room.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Well, at an evening rally in Battleground, Pennsylvania, Trump boasted of what he's done for the Latino population.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do. Nobody. You know, it's interesting because I've done more for Puerto Rico than any president by far. Nobody close. I've provided historic funding and the hospital ship when we had, they were hit with a couple of really bad ones right in a row. I will deliver the best future for Puerto Ricans and for Hispanic Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Well, meantime in Nevada, both Trump and Vice President Harris are making last-minute campaign stops in the coming days to try to secure the Latino vote. Rolling Stone reports singer Jennifer Lopez will speak at a Harris rally on Thursday to help with those efforts.
FOSTER: A new CNN poll shows Harris currently has a slight lead over Trump amongst likely Latino voters in Nevada and Arizona. CNN's John King finds out what Latino voters in Nevada are saying.
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JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dawn in Battleground, Nevada. The Vegas morning rush. One week to Election Day. ANTONIO MUNOZ, NEVADA RESIDENT: So it's very, very tense. You know, it's nerve-wracking because you just don't know what's going to happen.
KING (voice-over): Antonio Munoz owns the 9-1-1 taco bar. He's a veteran and a retired Las Vegas police officer. Undecided and unhappy with his choices when we first visited 11 months ago, meeting Kamala Harris when we returned six weeks ago.
Now definitely Harris. Trump's weekend rally in New York removed any doubt.
MUNOZ: That was very, very upsetting, you know. They spoke about Mexicans and having kids like nothing. It's like, where do you come up with this stuff? Why would you say something like that in an atmosphere like that? And that's very troubling.
KING (voice-over): Munoz is betting on a narrow Harris win here, but says the Latino community is more evenly split than in past campaigns because of housing and grocery costs.
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MUNOZ: Inflation, it's affected a lot of people here in our community and they don't see their dollar going the way it used to go, you know.
I think they really think Trump's going to make it better, which, you know, one person can't come in and just inflation's going down. It's a process.
KING (voice-over): Early voting here runs through Friday, and more than 7 in 10 Nevada voters live here in Clark County. That's Las Vegas and its fast-growing suburbs. One big difference this cycle is the Republican embrace of early voting.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton on hand in Vegas for a Veterans for Trump event to kick off the final week. One in five Nevada voters is Latino, and a big election-year focus at Fiesta 98.1 is urging listeners to flex their political muscle. Rafael Cerros Jr. is one of the owners. Six weeks ago, he told us he was undecided and that Trump was running strong among Latinos here.
KING: Anything different from the last time we were here?
RAFAEL CERROS JR., NEVADA RESIDENT: A lot. A lot.
KING (voice-over): Cerros is now voting Harris, and he says the racist insults at the weekend Trump event exploded on social media, triggering listener calls, texts, emails.
CERROS: That alone flipped a lot of people that were going to go for Trump now saying, hey, maybe I'm not too sure, and maybe I'm going with Harris. You know, the rhetoric, whether directly from, you know, the candidate or not, it's kind of scary, especially, you know, for Latinos here in Vegas, specifically, you know, my Mexican people.
KING: He says, oh, he doesn't know who allowed those speakers to speak at his rally.
CERROS: Oh, that's BS.
KING: That's BS.
CERROS: That's BS.
KING: Just two voters there, so we need to be careful not to draw sweeping conclusions. But we've been in touch with Antonio and with Rafael for months, and we know how plugged in they are, how active they are in the Latino community here. If they are right, and that weekend event in New York has even a modest impact on Trump's support here, well, a modest impact can make a big difference in a battleground that is so close.
John King, CNN, Las Vegas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: President Joe Biden is trying to clarify comments he made about Trump supporters that have Republicans outraged, criticizing the dark language at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, in particular, a comedian's tasteless joke about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage. Mr. Biden said this --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well, let me tell you something. I don't know a Puerto Rican that I know, or Puerto Rico where I'm in my home state of Delaware. They're good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American. It's totally contrary to everything we've done, everything we've been.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Well, Republicans swiftly denounced Mr. Biden's comments, likening them to Hillary Clinton's 2016 description of Trump supporters as deplorables. A short time later, President Biden posted on X that he was referring to the hateful rhetoric used around Puerto Rico at the rally when he used the word garbage, writing, Trump's demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation.
FOSTER: The Trump campaign has seized on the remark, though, quickly turning it to their advantage, saying there's no way to spin it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don't just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him.
MACFARLANE: Well, with just six days left before the election, Trump is already suggesting the contest is rigged. He made the accusation after Pennsylvania election and law enforcement officials announced they were investigating some 2,500 voter registration forms for suspected fraud. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you have a mail-in ballot, get that damn ballot in, please, immediately, because -- because they've already started cheating in Lancaster. They've cheated. We caught them with 2,600 votes.
Now we caught them cold. 2,600, and every vote was written by the same person. Ha-ha-ha, I wonder how that happened. It must be a con. It must be a coincidence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Courts in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina have rejected lawsuits filed by Republicans that sought to challenge how overseas ballots are processed. Republicans wanted an extra level of verification on those ballots in Pennsylvania, but a federal judge ruled changing the policy was just days until the election would upend the procedure and put undue stress on volunteers and staff.
MACFARLANE: A slightly different situation in North Carolina, where Republicans wanted extra checks on ballots from people who have never lived in the state but are still allowed to vote because of family ties there.
FOSTER: Investigators in the U.S. Northwest are searching for the suspect, and prosecutors are setting three fires at ballot drop boxes.
MACFARLANE: Hundreds of ballots were destroyed in one of the fires in Washington state.
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You can see police recovered devices from all three sites and have identified a suspect vehicle leaving one of the scenes. These are what are remaining of the ballots.
Laura Aguirre has more.
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LAURA AGUIRRE, CNN PRODUCER (voice-over): There's been at least three fires so far, one in Portland, Oregon, and two in Vancouver, Washington.
The fire in Vancouver destroyed hundreds of ballots, say state election officials, while a fire suppression system on the Portland drop boxes minimized damage there. Investigators found incendiary devices that they say connect the fires in both states, and they're looking for this suspect vehicle, an early 2000s dark-colored Volvo sedan with an unknown tag number and missing front plate.
City and election officials in both Portland and Vancouver say they're bumping up police patrols and enhancing security around their ballot boxes going forward. Some states, like Nevada, are touting new technology to better protect the process.
CISCO AGUILAR, NEVADA SECRETARY OF STATE: Every mail ballot has an individual tracker barcode on it.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): Poll worker safety, also a high priority.
AGUILAR: We passed the election protector bill, which made it a felony to harass or intimidate election workers.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): Arizona has invested millions of dollars into securing its tabulation centers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have added new fencing, badging. We've taken other measures to make sure that everyone is safe and they can focus on their important jobs.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): A job already underway, with millions of people voting early in most states.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So get in your vote now, and then just have a seat on election night and watch the returns come in.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): I'm Laura Aguirre reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Now, a large fire breaking out at a site for one of Europe's largest defense contractors.
MACFARLANE: It happened this morning at BAE Systems Submarines in north-west England, which builds and assembles the U.K.'s nuclear subs.
FOSTER: Police say there's no nuclear risk, but they are advising people who live nearby to stay inside and their doors and windows closed. Two people were taken to hospital for suspected smoke inhalation. No word yet on what caused that fire, though.
Extreme rain warnings are in effect for parts of Spain. Torrential rains have sparked severe flooding in the south and the east, where some areas saw up to 12 inches of rain just a few hours on Tuesday.
MACFARLANE: Well, Valencia's regional leader says some bodies have been found by rescue teams searching the area. Forecasters expect the rain warnings to continue today for parts of eastern and southern Spain. Here's how one resident described the disaster.
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ANTONIO CARMONA, LOCAL RESIDENT (through translator): What happened here is that when we looked by here, we saw everything going down. It took cars, took down half of the house of one of our neighbors, and we had to come in. Look how we have our torn clothes because we were saving dogs. Dogs were around and near the river one hour ago. We were able to save the dogs. They are over there now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: Now, Kong-Rey has quickly strengthened to a super typhoon in the Philippine Sea. It's now as powerful as a category 4 Atlantic hurricane.
FOSTER: It could impact almost the entire island of Taiwan when it makes landfall early on Thursday. Our Meteorologist Chad Myers has the latest forecast for you.
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CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, now a super typhoon. Greater than 240 kilometers per hour is the threshold to get you there. This thing went from 120 to 230 kilometers per hour in just 24 hours.
What an impressive rapid intensification headed right to Taiwan. On the east side of Taiwan, there will be places that will pick up more than 500 millimeters of rainfall, half a meter, and that's the entire area that's white. That's the computerized forecast of how much precip is going to come down.
Now, there's going to be obviously flooding damage, but this is a wind event. Everything has a certain factor. Is it a wind? Is it a surge? Is it a flood? We know the one that moved through the Philippines didn't have much wind, but it certainly had flooding just last week.
So this is what we're seeing here as the wind and the surge will probably be equal to or not even greater than the flooding potential here. An awful lot of wind damage here. Many spots here, all the way even into China, are going to see tropical cyclone winds somewhere maybe even over 100 kilometers per hour and then on up toward Kyushu.
Now, Taiwan is no stranger to these big things. Since, like, 1950, there have been 30 Taiwan landfalls of what's an equivalent of a Category 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricane. So, yes, major damage can happen there in Taiwan, and it does. But this year we've already had two, and really another, but Krathon and also Gaemi has already taken its toll there in damage across the eastern parts of Taiwan.
There's going to be more. Obviously, we could even still see this continue to increase in intensity, probably likely go down before landfall, but we're still going to have to watch this. This is going to be a very damaging and likely deadly storm.
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MACFARLANE: The Yankees live to fight another day in baseball's World Series, game four Tuesday night in New York.
[04:20:00]
The L.A. Dodgers jumped out to an early 2-0 lead off the red-hog bat of Freddie Freeman, who set a record with a home run in his sixth consecutive World Series game.
FOSTER: Up at the Yankees, Wood answer, Anthony Volpe with a grand slam in the third inning, sending the crowd into a frenzy and giving New York a 5-2 lead. And they never look back, winning 11-4, game five. On Wednesday night in New York, the Dodgers up three games to one in the series.
MACFARLANE: Getting interesting.
Now, China is on a mission to put a man on the moon. Details of China's latest space launch coming up later.
FOSTER: And days before the U.S. election, new warnings of information warfare and how some are trying to use misinformation to their advantage.
MACFARLANE: And Israeli forces are focusing military operations on northern Gaza this month. Straight ahead, international condemnation after a new Israeli airstrike kills dozens of people in Gaza, including children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MACFARLANE: Condemning an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in northern Gaza that killed dozens of Palestinians. Gaza's health ministry says at least 93 people, including 25 children, were killed at Beit Lahiya on Tuesday. A warning images from the scene are disturbing.
FOSTER: Palestinians have pulled bodies from the rubble of the collapsed building following Tuesday's strike. The Israeli military says it's, quote, trying to understand why so many people were in the area at the time of the strike as it had ordered civilians to evacuate several weeks ago.
MACFARLANE: Well CNN's Paula Hancocks is following developments for us from Abu Dhabi. And I mean, Paula, this was an appalling attack. The victims here, many of them women and children, as usual.
Are the IDF trying to claim here that this was an intelligence failing on their behalf? How do you read this?
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christina, what we're hearing from the Israeli military themselves is that they didn't realize that there were still so many people in the area. The statements from the IDF spokesperson said that they're, quote, trying to understand why so many people were in Beit Lahiya at the time. They say that they had given the order to residents to evacuate several weeks earlier.
In fact, just last week, we had one IDF representative saying that they'd believed that there was no population in that area. Now, they say that they were targeting a suspected terrorist and that they had no intention of collapsing the building. Now, we don't know what kind of bomb they used to kill this one terrorist, but clearly bringing down a multi-story residential building was a significant arsenal.
Now, it has been condemned across the board.
[04:25:00] We've heard the United Nations Human Rights Office saying that it's one of the deadliest attacks that we've seen in nearly three months. The director of the hospital nearby, Kamal Adwan, where all of the injured and dead were going to, said that the hospital simply cannot cope, that there were injured on the floor in the hospitals, that many of their medical staff have been arrested or detained by Israel or forcibly evacuated.
So they desperately need more medical staff, saying there's not a single ambulance in the area either, saying, quote, those who can reach Kamal Adwan Hospital receive first aid, but those who cannot die in the streets. This is our reality, an utterly catastrophic situation in every sense of the word.
Now, more than 93, as you say, have been killed at this point. That's confirmed, but the death toll could be higher, as we see from footage on the ground and those that we have spoken to, that there are still many underneath the rubble that they simply cannot get to because they are trying to get to people with their bare hands. There's no heavy equipment.
It has also been condemned by the Biden administration. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller speaking yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEW MILLER, SPOKESPERSON, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: We are deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life in this incident. This was a horrifying incident with a horrifying result. I can't speak to the total death toll, but there are reports of two dozen children killed in this incident.
No doubt a number of them are children who have been fleeing the effects of this war for more than a year now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANCOCKS: Miller also went on to say that this is another reminder of why this war needs to end. A representative of the United Nations says that it is a horrifying attack. And, of course, this is in an area in northern Gaza that we know that Israel has been operating in for several weeks now.
They have been trying to evacuate hundreds of thousands of residents out of the area. We know that there is very little humanitarian aid getting into the area. We have heard this from the health officials that are still in that area. So it really is a very desperate situation for the residents that are still there.
Now, the Israeli military says they are investigating what happened at this point. At very least, it does appear as though it was a very significant intelligence failure not to know that there was still a significant number of residents in that particular area -- Max, Christina.
FOSTER: OK, Paula in Abu Dhabi. Thank you. Still to come, a ten-story hotel collapses in Argentina. And crews are trying to find several people believed to be trapped beneath the rubble there.
MACFARLANE: And the race for the White House is entering the final stretch. But some Americans say they still aren't sure who they'll vote for. A look at what's holding them back ahead on CNN.
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