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Tonight: Trump versus Biden; Trump Bilks the IRS; Fauci: U.S. Could See Further Deaths; U.K.'s Channel 4 Reports on Trump's 2016 Tactics. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired September 29, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump is lashing out over a damning "New York Times" report about the dire state of his

finances. His aides are claiming it's a last minute hit job before the first debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST (voice-over): The stage is set. The battle lines already drawn. Donald Trump and Joe Biden ready to go head for head for the

first time.

Plus Russia's propagandist in change speaks to CNN on why he believes President Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin is superficial.

Then --

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We are not out of this yet. I hope not but we very well might start seeing

increases in deaths.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON (voice-over): One million lives have now been lost globally to the coronavirus pandemic. We give you the big picture behind that big

number.

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ANDERSON: It is 10:00 am in Cleveland, Ohio, 5:00 pm in Moscow, 6:00 pm in Abu Dhabi. I'm Becky Anderson. Welcome to CONNECT THE WORLD.

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ANDERSON: Some breaking news just in to CNN. The emir of Kuwait has died at the age of 91. Kuwait acknowledged that the emir had suffered what it

called an unspecified medical setback last year. The crown prince gave a sum of his father's duties in July and we'll get you more on this as we get

it.

Well, turning to the U.S., we are just hours away from what may be the most watched political event in television history, the first debate between

Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

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ANDERSON (voice-over): These are live pictures of where it is all going to go down, the debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio, a critically important state,

of course. Joe Biden has wiped his calendar clear for the last several days, giving himself plenty of time to hit the books and practice his jabs.

And the American president has not. He's taken the opposite approach, almost entirely shunning debate practice. CNN learning he's spent less than

two hours getting ready for it all.

A big thing to remember here, Joe Biden appeared in 11 debates during Democratic primaries. Donald Trump hasn't appeared on a debate stage since

he faced off with Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Well, who is watching the debates?

Well, me for one.

But what about the voters, will it sway them?

In the last election, more than 1 in 4 voters claimed they did not make up their minds until the final month of the race. That is basically the window

of time that we are now in, of course.

This time around, it certainly appears that Mr. Trump needs to get inside people's heads and change their thinking if he wants to stand a chance of

winning this thing.

A brand-new "New York Times" poll from Pennsylvania finds Biden leading by 9 points there. Now that matters because the Keystone State is widely seen

as one of the most important swing states. Almost three-quarters of the voters who took part in the poll say they plan to tune in tonight.

Well, let's get on the ground at the debate site with my colleague, Jessica Dean.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Becky, we're now just hours from the first presidential debate of this general election. President Donald Trump

and former Vice President Joe Biden will take the stage right behind me.

You noticed I'm wearing my mask inside the debate hall. A lot of COVID-19- related changes and rules in place to make sure everyone will be safe inside this debate hall.

For example, typically we'd have about 900 people in here tonight. Instead we're expecting about 60 to 70. So big difference there.

Everyone will have been COVID tested before they get inside tonight. There will be no handshake. That's the very typical beginning of the debate. You

see the two candidates shake hands. There will be no handshake tonight, again, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now as it comes for the two people who will be standing on the stage behind me tonight and the preparations that they have made getting ready for this

debate, for President Trump, we know that he has really eschewed your typical robust debate preparation, instead seeing his press conferences as

preparation.

[10:05:00]

DEAN: He told the Briefing Room once pressed that Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani have been helping him and have stood in in the role of Joe Biden.

And he's telegraphed through his comments and also his tweets that he will be -- that there could be personal attacks on Joe Biden tonight. So that's

certainly something to look out for.

Also some mixed messages from President Trump and his campaign. The president has been lowering the bar for Vice President Joe Biden. His

campaign has been trying to bring it back up.

Of course opposing campaigns want the other candidate to have to work harder to look like they achieved a victory.

As for the former vice president, we know that Biden started his preparation several weeks ago, beginning with a small briefing book, small

meetings with policy aides, talking about specific policies. That developed into full blown debate preparation over the weekend, where he did take part

in mock debates with someone playing the role of Donald Trump.

But he really prefers to have his aides pepper him with rapid fire questions. That's how he's really liked to prepare for this. We also know

that he and his campaign are preparing for personal attacks from the president.

But their goal they told us is to continue to bring it back to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump's failed response to that pandemic and the

ensuing economic crisis that's happening here in the United States.

The campaign believes that the more Joe Biden can talk about that issue and those issues the more -- the better it will be for him.

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ANDERSON: Well, tonight, there is sure to be a lot of talk about how much money President Trump has, where it comes from and the pitiful amount of

taxes he's paid. That's in the wake of reporting from "The New York Times," that revealed he paid little to no federal income taxes over the past 15

years.

Well, overnight, "The Times" is releasing more details about how his hit reality show, "The Apprentice," helped keep his entire empire afloat in the

life imitating art. They say it was his pretending to be a successful mogul that helped him move closer to becoming one.

It's not all in the black, as the self-increased king of debt may owe hundreds of millions of dollars to people overseas. Have a listen to the

Democratic vice presidential nominee on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Who does he owe the money to?

Tell us, who do you owe the money to?

And do you owe debt to any foreign nation?

Do you owe -- you know, do you owe debt, do you owe money?

Let's just be clear about what debt means. You owe somebody money.

Do you owe anybody money who is impacted by any decision you make as president of the United States?

We need to know that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: "The art of the steal," that is how Stephen Collinson describes the tax revelations in his fantastic "Meanwhile in America" newsletter. A

play on the name of Mr. Trump's infamous book, of course, "The Art of the Deal." Stephen is very witty as ever.

But the fact is he has done nothing illegal, correct, sir?

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don't know yet, Becky. The question here is whether Donald Trump took advantage of the many

deductions that are available to billionaires and avoided tax or whether he was untruthful about the deductions that he was entitled to and the income

of what appeared to be his multiple loss-making companies.

If that is the case, he could be in trouble down the road for tax fraud. So these tax returns, while not proving that he did anything wrong, they do

raise questions.

And then there is, of course, the question of whether morally Donald Trump is effectively stealing from the American people by avoiding the taxes that

everybody else in the country have to pay. That's a question that's going to come up in the debate tonight.

ANDERSON: Yes. "Fake news" is what the Donald Trump campaign calls all of this. This is a term coined by the Donald Trump campaign. It's amazing to

think we didn't talk about fake news four years ago until this incumbent president was around. There you go. It's all fake news, isn't it, as far as

his campaign is concerned.

You're right to suggest that Joe Biden will likely drill into Trump's finances tonight.

What chance Joe Biden can swing these swing voters, do you think, though?

COLLINSON: I think that's the big question. If you look at a state like Wisconsin, for example, which Trump won narrowly by about 20,000 votes in

2016 and where Biden is already doing well, you know, it doesn't take to shift too many voters for it to be significant.

And if voters who perhaps -- and there are many of them -- who decided that Donald Trump was a good idea as president.

[10:10:00]

COLLINSON: Because they believed he was a business man who would shake things up in Washington, if they change their mind, that is a significant

potential advantage for the former vice president.

So that I think is what we should be looking for, undecided voters. You mentioned Pennsylvania earlier, there is a poll that shows that Joe Biden

is about 5 percent ahead. And that would suggest already Trump has lost some strength among college, non-white voters who he helped pave the way to

the White House in 2016.

So while clearly Donald Trump's loyal supporters will probably shrug this off, as they have everything else, I think there's potential for it to be

important in some of the closer races.

ANDERSON: Well, the key takeaways, key debate takeaways will be what is the substance of your "Meanwhile in America" newsletter tomorrow. We look

forward to that.

We are though just hours away, of course, from that first of what will be three presidential debates. Stephen, thank you.

Viewers, you can set your clocks by it. CNN's special coverage begins at 3:00 am Abu Dhabi time Wednesday, midnight London, 7 pm Tuesday on the East

Coast of the U.S.

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ANDERSON: At least 1 million people, that's a 1 followed by six zeros, have been reported killed by the worst biological threat to humankind in

generations, the coronavirus pandemic.

Have a look at this. Each dot turning black, a life extinguished. This is the pandemic, a global, rampaging killing machine. A million people dead in

nine months.

Well, this global tragedy, of course, began in January, when a 61-year-old man reportedly died in Wuhan in China. By February the 1st -- sorry, by

February, the first death outside of China was recorded.

By June, there had been half a million deaths and now, 13 weeks later, a million dead. One in five of them Americans. CNN's chief medical

correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now live.

This milestone of more than -- it's more than a big number, isn't it?

Just explain the gravity behind this, if you will.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, I think when this all started, Becky, as you mentioned, back in January, it wasn't

clear exactly how significant a toll this was going to take. We knew there was a lethal virus originating in China.

And was it going to more like SARS? Remember, 8,000 people infected and 800 people died.

Is it more like that or something much worse?

And it's obviously much worse. When you show that timeline, as you point out, 6.5 months it was before we had 500,000 people die; three months and

just a little bit before an additional 500,000 people have died.

So this pandemic is awful and the pace is increasing. What you're looking at on the screen there is the United States. And what you see there is

we're a -- we're having the peaks and valleys a little bit. But the valleys are never going down to zero or to baseline. So now we're going into the

very, very tricky time of year, colder weather with a very high level of virus.

It's going to get worse. We know that for sure. We still don't know how much worse, Becky.

ANDERSON: Well, Dr. Fauci with this warning, Sanjay.

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FAUCI: There are states that are starting to show uptick in cases and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states. And I hope not but we

very well might start seeing increases in deaths.

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ANDERSON: Is it clear why at this stage?

GUPTA: Yes, I think so. You know, I mean, the -- first of all, there's a lag time, right, between the time someone is exposed to the time they can

get tested. If they need to be hospitalized, it's a few weeks after that. Sadly, if they die, it's a few weeks after that.

It's tough still, I think, for humans to get their minds around this. They think, I have been in a situation where I may become infected, I'll know

right away. It could be six weeks before you know. So there's that lag time.

But the idea that the virus itself is contagious, that hasn't changed. And in many places around the world, we have not been able to contain the

virus.

[10:15:00]

GUPTA: Meaning that, you know, if you had one in a million people becoming infected every day, up to one in 100,000, you could say, OK, it's

contained. I can get my arms around this. If there's a new case, I'll quickly identify the case, I'll isolate that person, find out everyone they

have been in contact with and we can keep tabs on this.

We're at least 10-fold to 100-fold higher for example than that in the United States. There are places around the world -- I think we can show the

map of what happened in China and Asia -- and see how much better they're doing now compared to other parts of the world.

But you see that the pandemic has shifted and it tells you two things. This is controllable but most places in the world have not controlled it.

ANDERSON: One of the former top aides to Mike Pence confirmed that White House officials pressured the CDC to play down the risks to children in

reopening schools. I want to our viewers just to have a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OLIVIA TROYE, FORMER PENCE AIDE: This was effort -- at times where I would get blindsided, where there would be junior staffers being tasked to find

different data for charts that would show that the virus wasn't as bad for certain populations, ages or demographics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Over the summer, of course, Trump frequently pushed the need to reopen the schools. I know you have done an awful lot of legwork and you

have done at the point at which the schools were deciding whether or not to reopen. Many in the U.S. are now returning to virtual learning after

outbreaks.

How concerning is that new information that we have just heard?

GUPTA: It's very concerning, Becky. I mean, you know -- first of all, I will say this is a novel virus. Nobody knew everything from the very

beginning and I think that's clear.

But over time, there are prevailing, you know, wisdoms that come out of this. You know, masks do make a difference. Herd immunity, letting the

virus run free, is a bad idea. Many people will die. Hospitals will become overwhelmed. It will be very destructive to mankind.

Yet despite that, there's these strange sort of things that develop, like Olivia was just talking about, where they say, well, find me some evidence

that it's OK to let the virus go more freely, for example. Find me some evidence that masks don't really work. It's kind of like doctor shopping,

Becky.

You know, patients do this sometimes. They go to 10 doctors; the doctors all tell them the same thing, you don't need this medication, this

treatment is not warranted. Telling them what they don't want to hear but it's the truth.

You search hard enough, you will find people who tell you what you want to hear and that's a problem. And that's what's happened in the United States

and maybe in other parts of the world as well.

But in the United States, this idea of the doctor shopping that's been done by the White House has led to this sort of strange situation, where 99

percent of the infectious disease community, some of the best infectious disease doctors are saying one thing and then you have one person who's

telling the president what he wants to hear. And that's dictating policy and that's a bad idea.

ANDERSON: Always a pleasure, Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the house, thank you.

WHO's spokesperson Margaret Harris says so many people have lost so many people and haven't had a chance to say goodbye. So many who died, died

alone, it's a terribly difficult and lonely death. We will be speaking to her in the next hour.

Well, a million lives lost to this pandemic. It is not a number. It is people. It is sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters,

grandparents and the lives of those around them changed forever.

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[10:20:00]

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ANDERSON: Anticipation building for what is the first of three American presidential debates. It will be Donald Trump against Joe Biden and that

kicks off just hours from now because, of course, we are just 35 days out from the November election.

This hour, CNN can bring you some stunning findings about the last presidential election four years ago from our colleagues at Channel 4 news

in the U.K. now.

You will remember that CNN previously reported that the Trump campaign allegedly used trillions of data points on typical American voters to

pinpoint people already unlikely to vote for Donald Trump back then, including African Americans.

The campaign then took that data, the Channel 4 report alleges, to target Black voters by a large margin with, quote, "negative ads designed to crush

Hillary Clinton's turnout."

Here's a clip of their findings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Donald Trump has been long been accused of ignoring the voices of millions of Black Americans. Now we can reveal how

he has actively tried to silence them.

We have obtained a database used by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, a vast collection of files on almost 200 million U.S. citizens.

It shows what they knew and what they did, the secret tactics that helped turn Donald Trump into the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Well, CNN hasn't seen this data obtained by Channel 4 news and cannot verify the findings. We asked the Trump campaign about the report

and they responded, calling "it fake news."

They then went onto tout what they see as the president's list of achievements in helping the Black community while in office. They did not

respond to specific questions about the database or efforts to deter some people from voting.

Well, let's bring in the journalist who carried out this research, Channel 4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy joining me now from the American capital.

What are the key takeaways away from your investigation, Krishnan?

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY, CHANNEL 4, U.K.: This is an enormous cache of data, Becky, and it will take a long time to unravel. But what we revealed last

night was the evidence that confirms, as you say, long-held suspicions that people were being microtargeted for specific campaigns.

And that 3.5 million Black Americans -- and they were disproportionally represented in this particular group of voters -- were targeted for

deterrence, to deter them from taking part in the election.

We took that data, looked at the addresses and the names and then knocked on the doors and find the people themselves and say to them, did you

realize you were being targeted to not vote in the last election?

What happened?

You didn't vote and then talk to them about why. And talk to them about whether they had seen a lot of those ads that particularly targeted Hillary

Clinton with regard to Black Americans, the ads that replayed her old comments about young men being super predators, all those kinds of

messages.

ANDERSON: This report focused on how the Trump campaign tried to deter the Black vote in the state of Wisconsin. It has been reported that Hillary

Clinton ran a pretty poor campaign in that state in 2016.

[10:25:00]

ANDERSON: So from the research and the investigative work that you've done, is it clear how significant the impact of the deterrence campaign

specifically was on voters?

GURU-MURTHY: That's impossible to measure. You know, why people precisely do something is impossible to say. Obviously, there are all sorts of

reasons why people didn't turn out for Hillary Clinton. And some of it may be to do with what they thought of her, what they thought of Barack Obama

by comparison.

But when you talk to them about the ads, it is really interesting, you say, do you remember this ad that attacked Hillary Clinton?

You know, the ads that showed young Black actresses walking out of supposed pro Hillary commercials because they couldn't lie that well or the stuff

about super predators.

You say, do you remember this?

And they go, oh, yes, I remember that.

You say, well, do you think that could have influenced you?

And they say like a lot of us say when we look at soap commercials, well, you know, I'm sure they influenced somebody but they didn't influence me.

And then you say, well, can you be sure?

If advertising didn't work, do you think people would spend so much money on it?

And it makes people think. So precisely why turnout fell in a state like Wisconsin, we'll never know.

But what's important about this investigation is it's revealed the motivations behind what the Trump campaign were trying to do. They were

trying to deter people from voting because they knew they couldn't win them over.

ANDERSON: This tactic of targeting demographics through digital data is, of course, not new. Facebook was a dominant political force in the 2012

election. Obama's team built a vast digital database.

Did you look into how Hillary Clinton collected and used voter data as well in 2016?

GURU-MURTHY: That's a whole other story, the extent to which other campaigns and all campaigns use Big Data. As far as we know, the Hillary

Clinton campaign did not accept the offer of Facebook embeds in their campaign to help them use that particular platform to its maximum

effectiveness.

The Trump campaign did. That may well have given them a competitive edge on the two campaigns. So you know, the use of big data, you know, is used by

everybody and used by commercial companies and politicians and campaigns.

But it's what they were trying to do with that data that we think is important and that we think people should know about, because it will help

inform their -- you know, their decision come November.

You know, people should know why they are seeing those ads in their streams. We also think it sheds light on how you can lose the popular vote

and yet win the Electoral College. If a campaign can target a particular micro sector of people in a particular state, that can be enough to swing

it.

And if you take Wisconsin, which was a surprise that Donald Trump had won it, even though Hillary Clinton didn't go there famously and it was, you

know, it was regarded as a big mistake, what may well have happened is they were able to target the right voters in the precise way just to push them

over the edge.

And that helps explain why they won that state. If it's very close again, we'll be able to say, well, to what extent has microtargeting particular

audiences been at play here?

ANDERSON: And that brings me to my last question very briefly. You referenced the use of the category "deterrence" a lot in this reporting,

understandable. I just want to have our viewers have a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Just be grossly generalistic (sic), you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I

call the basket of deplorables, the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Which sort of begs the question, is this not an issue systemic to American politics more than perhaps a Trump issue?

GURU-MURTHY: It may well be. And, you know, our aim is not to say this is a Trump issue. Our aim is to help American voters understand how the

campaigns are operating and just to shed light on the way modern-day elections take place.

You know, several rights groups are saying, when it comes to deterrence, that that is really modern-day voter suppression, it's a continuation of

the practices that denied Black people their votes for decades. These judgments are ones for the American people.

[10:30:00]

GURU-MURTHY: At the end of the day and we're not any -- we're not on any particular side or campaign, we're trying to show people as much as we can

about what actually happened so they can make informed choices in a democracy.

ANDERSON: Good stuff. Amazing reporting. Thank you.

Let me just read you Facebook's response to this.

"Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook. What happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn't happen today. We have 35,000 people working to

ensure the integrity of our platform, created a political ads library and have protected more than 200 elections worldwide.

"And we also have rules prohibiting voter suppression and are running the largest voter information campaign in American history."

That, a response in Facebook to Channel 4 news' reporting. We'll have a lot more after this quick break. CNN's Van Jones will talk with us about that

and the election and the debate upcoming. Stay with us.

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ANDERSON: We are now just 34 days and counting from the presidential election in the United States. And in just a few hours, the two candidates

take to the stage in this year's first presidential debate, with racial injustice being one of six preselected topics.

We have been covering the new report by Channel 4 news in the U.K. and it says that the Trump campaign used data on voters in the 2016 election to

pinpoint who was unlikely to vote for Trump and deter them from voting at all. And those targets were disproportionately African Americans. The Trump

campaign calling it "fake news."

Well, I want to bring in CNN political commentator Van Jones from Washington, D.C., who has been covering political divisions across America

for years now.

Van, good to have you on the show.

What is your reaction to this Channel 4 reporting?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you know, disgusting if true. And one of the -- one of the reasons that we don't talk about that African

Americans do not vote for Republicans in large numbers, people may not know, African American women voted, I think, 96 percent against Donald

Trump and for Hillary Clinton. African American men somewhere between 88 percent and 90 percent against the Republicans and for Hillary Clinton last

time.

[10:35:00]

JONES: Those are overwhelming numbers.

That's almost unanimity.

You say why is that?

Well, because even you have conservative Black voters who are regular churchgoers and business owners, there's just a sense that the Republican

Party is an anti-Black party too often.

And this kind of -- you know, behavior on the part of the Trump campaign in 2016, if it's true, fits with a view that a lot of Black folks have, you

know, even if we're pro business, even if we're pro faith, we just have no place in that party because, in the genes of that party now, in the bones

of that party, is too much anti-Black bias.

ANDERSON: We reached out to the Trump campaign, as you know, about this reporting. They responded, calling it fake news and went on to tout what

they see as the president's long list of achievements in helping the Black community while in office. We have heard this before a number of times

before, Van. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: My message is that I love the Black community and I have done more for the Black community than any other president and I say with a possible

exception of Abraham Lincoln.

And I mean that with opportunity zones and with criminal justice reform with prison reform, with what we have done for historically Black

universities, colleges, schools.

What we have done -- nobody has done more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Can you just contrast these two realities as it were, you have been talking about and that what we hear from the U.S. president?

JONES: Well, listen, more than one thing can be true at the same time. It is true that President Trump has, you know, gave more money to Black

colleges. It is true he did criminal justice reform and I was a part of that bipartisan effort.

The opportunity zones have not paid off tremendously yet. But at least he was a part of that. That's true.

The reality is though that, you know, if somebody gives you two nice things and they give you a dead skunk and some other stuff, it's hard to make

sense of it. So I think that what's happening is that the Trump campaign is a little bit schizophrenic in that it is trying to scrape off some Black

voters and, frankly, there may be people in the campaign, in the administration who believe in a bunch of this stuff as well.

But they're also trying to cater to a whole other set of people who don't like Black folks, who don't like diversity and who are xenophobic. And so

you have this schizophrenic campaign right now where, on the one hand, they say stuff and do stuff that really offends people of color.

So much anti-immigrant stuff, a lot of the law and order stuff seems to be so racially coded, it's only law and order when it's a Black protest. But

when white vigilantes are out there killing people and doing stuff, you don't hear anything.

So that feels racially coded. At the same time they have done some things and liberals will be very, very dumb not to acknowledge the Trump

administration when it comes to criminal justice reform, antipoverty and Black colleges, has done things that are admirable. More than one thing can

be true.

But the reality is I think, for most Black voters, they still can't overcome so many of the things that have been done and said. And that's

where we are. But this new information that, you know, four years ago, there may have been a concerted effort to suppress the Black vote, I think,

comes at very bad time for the Trump campaign.

ANDERSON: That's fascinating.

If you were moderating tonight, what questions would you ask of these two candidates when it comes to racial injustice?

JONES: Well, listen, I think, you know, Joe Biden will have to answer for his record when it comes to the '94 crime bill and other things.

Listen, Joe's made a bunch of gaffes. Trump said a bunch of things that, you know, you can go back and relitigate. But the core to his problem, if

he has one, with the younger African American voters and their allies of every color, is that he played such a strong, proud and prominent role in

cementing in place mass incarceration in the country.

He's got to respond to those kinds of questions, I'm sure he'll have good responses.

On Donald Trump, of course, it's just a grab bag of issues going back to the '80s, things that he's done and said, from the birtherism against

Obama, to the Central Park Five -- well, now we call them the Exonerated Five but the young African American men falsely accused and unjustly

imprisoned for a crime they did not commit against a white jogger.

Trump has never apologized for that. Trump has a long track record of saying things and sometimes doing things on the question of race. By the

way, race doesn't mean just African Americans. We talk about race.

[10:40:00]

JONES: We talk about his -- you know, in our country, Muslims are seen as almost a racial group. He's been tough on them. Immigrants, often referring

to Mexicans. So he has a whole treasure trove there that he has to deal with.

ANDERSON: Well, we're only hours away and so we will find out just how they cope with the questions from the moderators tonight, the first of

three presidential debates, of course. Van Jones, it's a pleasure having you on, sir. Thank you.

Racial injustice just one of the challenges being brought into focus by a new short film that imagines 2020 as a turning point. Ahead on the show, we

will speak with actor and activist Emma Thompson about her involvement in that, live here on CNN.

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