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Erin Burnett Outfront
Harris Calls For Ban On Price Gouging, Trump: Idea "Disastrous"; Matthew Perry's Family Reacts To Arrest In His Death; CNN Returns To Migrant Hotspots, Finds Encounters Are Down; What You See When You Stumble On North Korean State TV. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired August 16, 2024 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:36]
SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:
The battle over the economy heats up. Vice President Kamala Harris outlining her economic vision, a plan that she says will bring down the cost of food, housing and raising children. Do her proposals add up?
Plus, the head-to-head debate. Harris and Trump now both gearing up to debate and we're learning new details about their preparations, including the onetime Democrat who's helping Donald Trump.
And disturbing details tonight about just how ketamine -- how much ketamine Matthew Perry was being given before he overdosed as his family speaks out.
Let's go OUTFRONT.
(MUSIC)
SIDNER: Good evening. I'm Sara Sidner, in for Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight: breaking news, Harris and Trump face off over the economy. Today, the vice president outlining her economic agenda. Kamala Harris traveling to the battleground states you have North Carolina for her first major policy speech, one in which she laid out her plans to bring down the costs for everyday American families.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Later in college, I worked at McDonald's to earn spending money, while some of the people I worked with were raising families on that paycheck. They worked second or even third jobs to pay rent and buy food, that only gets harder when the cost of living goes up.
I will work to pass the first ever federal ban on price gouging on food.
My administration will provide first time homebuyers with $25,000 to help the down payment on a new home.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: More than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: The economy is the number one issue for voters and Harris is trying to wrestle back those who believe a Trump administration would be better for the economy by pitching her plan while going after Trump's.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: He wants to impose what is in effect a national sales tax.
(BOOING)
HARRIS: On every day products -- a Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over the counter medication.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Harris's speech coming just two days after Trump gave what his campaign touted as a major economic address, both choosing North Carolina to tout their ideas. Harris stuck to the economy, Trump veered way off message.
So today, his campaign turning to TikTok to get the president, the former president's message out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the cost of food. This is the cost of your basics.
Every single thing is up. Eggs up 48 percent. Cookies up 27 percent. Look at what's going on. Butter up 31 percent.
And this is just the beginning. It's a disaster.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Kayla Tausche is OUTFRONT in Washington for us tonight.
Kayla, you're learning more about how Harris landed on the policy that she outlined today.
KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I am Sara. I've spoken with sources and advisers to Harris throughout the day and they say that in discussions leading up to today's rollout, that she made very clear the need to he voters where they are, to empathize with them on their frustrations otherwise, in her words, voters wouldn't be open to broader messages and broader plans that the campaign plan to put forth, and in this advisors words. He said that she needed to go where the evidence is, and that was why she started with the cost of living, persistently, the number one frustration among voters in recent years.
Now, this I'm told is the first in a series of policy rollout that Vice President Harris is planning. Future rollouts will concern policies for innovation and growth in this country, as well as how she plans to pay for it all, because these are some expensive policies. I'm told that right now is starting point.
She supports President Biden's budget blueprint from back in March that proposed raising taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 as well as on corporations and certain corporate activities. Those plans were estimated to raise about $2.1 trillion by the Tax Foundation. By comparison, Harris's plans as she rolled out today for estimated to cost $1.7 trillion. That's according to the center for responsible federal budget.
But Sara, big money backers are sold on her plans.
[19:05:03]
I talked to several major donors today. They described her as pragmatic and reasonable in her approach. And one donor in particular, Robert Wolf, a longtime Democratic big money backer, said that she was striking the right balance in his words between being pro-business and leveraging those relationships and going after bad actors -- Sara.
SIDNER: Certainly. Donors helpful, but the voters, the most important for her message.
Kayla Tausche, thank you so much.
Kristen Holmes is OUTFRONT for us in Washington.
Kristen, I know you've been talking to your sources in the Trump campaign. What has been the reaction to Harris's economic plan that she laid out?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we've seen a number of different responses. At one point, they said it was communistic that she was trying to create this Soviet-like plan. We start heard from Donald Trump himself, who added liberties unsurprisingly that were untrue about the plan, saying that she wanted to use taxpayer money and why -- and raise taxes in order to pay for housing for illegal immigrants.
But the one message that I do want to point out because I think you're going to see this time and time again and its what we've really heard from Donald Trump's campaign for the last several days, is that if she was -- if she wanted to lower inflation if it was that she had this detailed economic plan, why hasn't she put it into effect?
The reason they are doing this is they want to make her the incumbent the way that President Joe Biden was. They want to link her to Joe Biden's administration. And she is the vice president of the United States. Obviously, it is his administration, but she is clearly a large part of that. But what they want is to centrally get the same boost that they were
getting for running against President Joe Biden and his unpopular policies with Kamala Harris. And whether or not voters make that link, that still remains to be seen. And one of the problems that were seeing is Donald Trump tries to hammer home this message, which I've spoken to outside operatives, both Democratic and Republican who say, could be successful trying to again, make her the incumbent. He continues to go completely off message saying all kinds of outlandish things that Republicans think could really hurt his chances in November.
Again, they are trying to keep them focused on immigration, the economy, and crime and whether or not he can do that. We'll have to wait and see.
SIDNER: But certainly trying to do that on TikTok with some short snippets.
Kristen Holmes. Thank you so much.
All right. Aisha Mills, Harris released her economic plan to the country. What we didn't hear was just how she might pay for that. What was your reaction to the plan that she spelled out?
AISHA MILLS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: So my first reaction was that he went directly to the people to talk to us about the issues that we're facing with our pocketbooks, and to give us her prescription for solutions to address those. I was literally standing in my kitchen at the time cooking lunch as I was listening to her and as she just checked off a variety of issues, they really resonated for me.
I have three kids that I have the privilege of helping to co-parent. They're about to go back to school. She talked about the expensive cost of being able to back-to-school shop. And then also manage the childcare expenses that come along with navigating school and working families and everything else that you have to deal with, with children.
She also talked about making sure that peoples credit isn't affected by medical expenses, which really resonated for me too, because I've had major medical procedures that ultimately I had to use credit for. And if you don't pay those, right, you get a -- you get a medical debt and then that hits your credit report. That completely takes you off course.
The other thing that really resonated for me as someone who has been, been essentially outbid, I guess is one way of saying it, but also unable to come up with exorbitant down payments for homes that she talked about what she was going to do to bridge that gap, too, for first-time homebuyers.
So even as someone who sees everything through a political lens, my first take was, oh, my goodness, is she talking to me? I got to look around, is she talking to my family? And I think that that was the brilliance of this play. You're asking about who's going to pay for it. Guess who cares? Nobody right now, right? We are in the process of really trying to figure out who shares our values, and is going to move forward a policy agenda too, literally help Americans that are struggling.
Now of course, we are going to hire someone by electing them at the top of to be the president to manage that, to manage that budget. But I don't know one voter who says, oh, my god, I'm not voting because that's going to affect me -- the other because I don't know I got to pay for it, but I -- but I know its going to affect me.
The last thing ill say about this that I found really riveting -- again, I'm speaking to a personal lens and not from a politicized operative lens.
The fact that he reminded us that Trump is going to tax everything that we touch and feel, okay, that really Trump is going to tax us as consumers, he's going to tax us. And every single economist earlier this week said that the Trump administration as proposed, is going to be horrible for inflation and going to set us backwards -- the thing that came up for was, well, are my taxes going to be raised in order to benefit from this policy?
[19:10:13]
That's something that remains to be seen. But at the end of the day, this isn't about some inside baseball high brow, Washington, D.C. think tank sense of deficits and numbers. It's about people really feeling like Kamala Harris is speaking to us on the issues does that matter? The bread and butter things we talk about around our kitchen tables, and that's the thing that I think most people felt today.
SIDNER: Scott, I'm sure you have a different take. You're looking at this from a very different lens, looking at the points in, you know, which the Republicans can attack Harris. What did you say?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first thing I saw was a searing indictment of the conditions in the country. She was very effective at laying out just how hard hit the American people have been by the policies of the Biden-Harris agenda.
I mean, inflation is the number one issue, food prices, housing costs, the housing shortage, all of that is absolutely the true. And she and Joe Biden are in charge and she has directly cast votes that have led to these conditions.
So I don't know how she plans to separate herself from Joe Biden on this because everything she talked about today, she has a direct hand in.
The other thing that I picked up on today was this whole notion that price gouging or gauging as she called it is what people are feeling. That is a total canard. This is not true. This is made up because they're trying to deflect attention from the actual inflation that has caused everything in your life to get more expensive. So they need the American people to believe something other than the
truth, there is no price gouging. Grocery stores, these things, they operate on very slim profit margins. There is no gouging, there is just inflation.
So to go out and say, I'm going to get the federal government involved in setting prices are capping prices or interrupting the flow of the free market economy -- let me tell you something. If you like, bread lines, product shortages, black markets, hoarding, if you want to recreate the happy economic conditions of "The Walking Dead", Kamala Harris has a plan for you.
The bottom line is, the Republicans are going to be all over this. It's not smart and its a plan from a ticket that has no private sector experience and no -- and no interest whatsoever and taking responsibility for everything they have done to plunge the working class of the United States of America and do an economic crisis.
SIDNER: Scott, I did not have "The Walking Dead" on my bingo card.
(CROSSTALK)
SIDNER: Go ahead, Aisha.
MILLS: Can I add one thing about that? That's -- one of the other data points I looked at earlier this week as folks were talking about inflation and economists were really just evaluating agendas, right? And how would inflation be affected by either of these administrations.
What is true and is factual is that if you look back, let's say over the last 25 years or so, every single Republican administration has had a horrible economy. They've sunk the economy in some way, whether it's been inflation going up, whether it's been costs, whether its been unemployment, every single Democratic administration, whether it was Clinton or Obama, and now, we're seeing with Biden-Harris, you've seen there be a reckoning and a right-sizing of the metrics that affect peoples lives.
This is not me making -- this is not a political ploy game. This is just data and facts. Everyone knows that trickle-down economics never worked. Everyone knows that the Republican shtick about being better for the economy has never actually worked for real people.
So the fact that when we go shopping at the grocery store, as regular humans with kids who are trying to feed them, we know that the prices have changed, but the fact that, you know, they deny that is the problem in a fallacy and the disconnect from actual voters.
SIDNER: Prices are up about 20 percent --
JENNINGS: Can I just -- can I just respond -- can I just respond to that?
SIDNER: Yeah, I'm going to let you respond. Prices are up about 20 percent, but this week inflation was at its lowest point, since 2021. So, Scott, when you, when you hear what Aisha is saying, you know,
what is your response?
JENNINGS: Well, it's just -- it's just simply not true that the economy is good right now, and it's not good from a price perspective, and it's just not good in the minds of everyday people.
Look at the polls, the economy -- the economic anxiety is the overriding problem in the election. It's why, among other things that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's administration has a mid-30s approval rating. It's food prices, it's housing costs.
So to say that somehow the economy is only bad under Republicans and Joe Biden has fixed though, if that were true, if that were true of Joe Biden were the savior of this economy, he would not have been run out of town by his own party. And another candidate put in last- minute.
If anything, about what was just said was true, Joe Biden would still be running for president. Under Donald Trump, people felt better about their own lives.
(CROSSTALK)
MILLS: That's actually not what I said and don't twist my words, Scott. That's not what I said. That's not what I said.
JENNINGS: Yeah, it is.
MILLS: I didn't say that everything is great right now. What I said is that it's better than Trump.
JENNINGS: You did.
MILLS: And those are facts and that's data.
JENNINGS: Well --
MILLS: Yeah.
[19:15:00]
So the Biden administration came in and cleaned up their --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Then why isn't Biden running? Then why isn't Biden running?
MILLS: -- and it is better by every metric.
JENNINGS: Then why isn't Biden running? Then why isn't Biden running? If he is so good, why isn't he running?
MILLS: Because Kamala Harris is running on the same record. Kamala Harris is running on the same record.
JENNINGS: Oh.
MILLS: Dude, catch up with us, right?
JENNINGS: Oh. Friend -- I love it.
MILLS: You want to keep having arguments about things that are over, right? But catch up with us where we are today and that candidate that we have, absolutely has had a hand and cleaning up the last guy's mess and the economy is on an upward trajectory. And we are going to continue that over the next four years.
JENNINGS: You gave me --
SIDNER: All right. I'm going to let the grudge match end there.
JENNINGS: You gave me everything I needed. You gave me everything I needed. Kamala Harris is running on everything that Joe Biden did.
MILLS: You need a lot --
(CROSSTALK)
SIDNER: It's a Friday. You all go and have a drink.
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
MILLS: Cheers, thank you.
SIDNER: Cheers.
OUTFRONT next, new details tonight about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's debate preparations, including why a onetime Democrat who actually debated Harris is now helping Donald Trump.
Plus, new reporting on Trump's finances, which include hundreds of millions and debt. But he's also making a ton of money. We'll tell you where that money is coming from.
And a remarkable look at the propaganda that North Koreans are being subjected to 24/7.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very kind of 1980s, too. It's very MTV, their videos.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIDNER: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have never stood face to face in the same room. The debate expected to change that. It might be the first time that happens and it is promising to be a battle royale because we are learning new details about the preparations for their big showdown. Several sources confirming to CNN that the Harris campaign has asked
longtime Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines to help Harris get ready. "The New York Times" reporting he was seen attending a mock debate prep session this week, dressed as Donald Trump. It's something he also did to help Clinton prepare in 2016, a role he's talked about playing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILIPPE REINES, LONGTIME HILLARY CLINTON AIDE: I went to my tailor and I said, I need to actually look like Donald Trump. He gave me a suit too baggy, the sleeves are too long. I bought three and a quarter inch lifts in my shoes because, you know, he's like 6'6", 6'7". I didn't wear a wig because it was not "SNL".
This was mind process. I wanted to -- it was method acting. It was I wanted to be him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All righty then.
OUTFRONT now, two men who know all about preparing for big debates, David Axelrod and Stuart Stevens. They were on opposite sides in 2012 when the Obama and Romney campaigns.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here tonight.
David, what does Harris turning to Philippe Reines tell you about how she is approaching this huge debate?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, if it's method acting, I hope there's a madness to his method because that would make the thing more authentic.
Look, the idea of the -- of debate prep is to anticipate everything that might happen to game out how you're going to handle it, and to come in there with a strategy for what you want to communicate, a narrative, a story that you want to tell through this debate, that you hope will prevail.
And so, prep is all about anticipating circumstances and giving the candidate a sense of what they are going to face on that stage oftentimes and this was true in before the binder, but in our debate prep, I don't know how Stuart handled his. But we did create a kind of mock stage that looked exactly like the one that they were going to debate on and so on.
So you want to create those circumstances and you want the candidate to hear the kind of the attacks and the kind of thrust that they may hear on that debate stage so that you can work off of them and work through your answers.
SIDNER: Stuart, just jumping off of that. I mean, what do you think the top goals should be for Kamala Harris in these sessions? She's going to have to be quick with comebacks, which is something that I'm sure is practice in -- on those mock debates.
STUART STEVENS, FORMER ROMNEY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN CHIEF STRATEGIST: Look, if I was in debate prep with Vice President Harris, I would tell her to prosecute Donald Trump. That's your strong suit. He's a criminal. He's a prosecutor. Those are the facts.
This has never happened before in American history that a guy who was an actual criminal is standing up as a major -- as the nominee of a major party. So I wouldn't worry about any of this stuff without being likable, about being relatable. I would just prosecute Donald Trump and I think he won't be able to deal with it.
He doesn't like women. He particularly doesn't like power for Black women, and I think that's the way to put him on the defensive from the very first.
SIDNER: David, we have heard previews of how Trump may attack Harris to say Harris as a current VP is to blame for any of the bad policies of the last 3.5 years. It isn't attack that was used against then President Obama as you well, remember in a debate, he even admits that he lost. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): My view, the president should have grabbed it. If you wanted to make some adjustments to it, take it, go to Congress, fight for it.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: That's what we've done, made some adjustments to it, and we're putting it forward before Congress right now, a $4 trillion plan.
ROMNEY: But you've been -- but you've been president for four years. You've been president for four years. You said you cut the deficit in half. It's now four years later, we still have trillion-dollar deficits.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right, so how should Harris answer a line of attack like that from Donald Trump?
AXELROD: Well, first of all, let me give Stuart plaudits because they did when that first debate. And partly they won that first debate because presidents always tend to want to be more defensive, one to explain, and partly because Romney wisely sort of changed his tenor and tone from the guy we saw in the primaries and we honestly didn't prep adequately for the Romney who appeared on on the stage, who is I think very comfortable with what he was saying and was much more like the guy that I've come to know, a more center right, moderate Republican.
[19:25:03]
But here, back to your question. Listen it is, they're doing what they, I think strategically, it's probably the right thing to try and make her the incumbent. I heard Kristen say that at the top, that's absolutely right. They want to make her Joe Biden in this race and make -- and make her bear the burden of some of the things that people associated with Biden in policy that they don't like or in the results that they don't like.
Here's the problem. I mean, we don't talk about the policies of the Pence administration. That Donald Trump was not assigning his policies to Mike Pence when Mike Pence was running against him in the primary campaign and I think its a hard sell to tell people she was actually making all of these decisions by the way, at the same time that you're telling people that she's dumb, she has know what she's doing and so on.
But that -- that is what they have to do. The question I have is can Donald Trump stick to a strategy he seems completely undone right now. Yesterday, he was going out to do a part of what they want to do in this debate around the economy. And when it went, when it got to questions, he just went off like a roman candle complain about these loss, about these trials and about these indictments and about the injustice of it all.
I would be really worried about that if I were -- if I were his team, I disagree with Stuart, by the way. I don't think she needs to prosecute him as her prime task because I think a lot of the case against Trump is clear to people.
What they want to know is that there is an acceptable alternative. They don't know Kamala Harris. They don't know most vice presidents very well. They don't know Kamala Harris.
This is an opportunity for her to talk to the American people. And yes, there'll be some back-and-forth with Trump.
But there is a real imperative here which is to really connect with the American people around where she wants to take the country in the future because she wants to be the turn the page candidates. And this is her chance to show it.
SIDNER: Stuart, we saw what happened at NABJ when Donald Trump was pressed on very tough questions. Do you -- worried -- should Republicans be worried about her pressing buttons and getting him to go off like a roman candle as we just heard described here?
STEVENS: Yeah, of course, they ought to be worried. They ought to be panicked. You know, as Hillary Clinton said, it, guy who can be baited by a tweet shouldn't be president. He was president. He was a disaster.
So, look, Donald Trump -- they just filed a cease and desist letter, the campaign did, against an ad the Lincoln Project was running in Mar-a-Largo. I mean, that's the level that their on.
He's the most predictable guy you can imagine. He's a person you can bait. He chases every dog that chases every car.
And I think that the guy is just doesn't have any idea of why he wants to be president, except he wants to be president and I don't think he's going to do very well in this debate.
SIDNER: All right. We will have to wait and see. That is coming up very quickly. David Axelrod, Stuart Stevens, thank you for hanging out with us on a Friday.
OUTFRONT next. They may share the same humble roots, but that's where it ends. When it comes the finances of J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, a special report coming up next.
And former President Trump has been repeatedly talking about a crisis at the border but how bad is it now? Well, we went to the border to find out and you might be surprised at what it was uncovered by a reporter who is OUTFRONT tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:32:38]
SIDNER: Tonight, we have new reporting for you on Donald Trump's finances. The former president has the debt with more than $100 million of liabilities from his court cases alone. But his wealth still remains staggering, a lot of it coming from overseas.
This is all according to a new presidential financial disclosure that's just been released and I want to go to Dan Alexander, senior editor at "Forbes". You have gone through this new financial disclosure. You've looked at thousands of pages of Trump's tax returns and some other documents.
First of all, Trump has this really big a global business reach. The sheer number of trademark deals alone. I think you have said is massive and the disclosures.
Are they showing that he has done better since his presidency?
DAN ALEXANDER, SENIOR EDITOR, FORBES: Well, yeah. Because when he was president, you know, he agreed that he wasn't going to do any new foreign deals. And now that he's out of the White House he is free to do that. So remember when he went into the office, he said that he was going to keep up the old deal.
So this is in places like the Philippines or in India and his sons are traveling all over the world collecting money through those deals. But he wasn't expanding as he had been before he became president. Now that the shackles are off, even though he's still a candidate, he's expanding into places like Oman, and he's doing more business in places like Dubai where he'd had a small licensing deal before. All those are adding millions of dollars to his bottom line.
SIDNER: You're looking at those numbers. Oman and Dubai alone, $2.5 million, $4.3 million. What about his losses overseas? What are those look like?
ALEXANDER: If you split his overseas business into two different categories -- first, the licensing and then the wholly owned businesses. So these are places where he actually owns the property has put up money is at risk in the wholly owned businesses, he's having much less success. So, this is particularly evident in Europe where he has three golf resorts. One in Ireland, and two in Scotland.
Those properties, although he's put over $100 million into them, have really struggled to be profitable for years, and especially they got crushed in 2020 because of COVID. When he had to shut down the properties, he's still got some government grants from Ireland and from the U.K. But that wasn't enough.
And so, in places like Scotland, whereas he has two resorts, he lost $11 million in operating losses while he was president. Now those properties have recovered a little bit, but they're still not doing nearly as well as you would expect for places that had received so much investment.
SIDNER: It's also interesting to note that he has some side hustles here. Quite a few of them where he's made quite a bit of money, 300,000 for endorsing $60 bibles with singer Lee Greenwood. What else caught your attention in that particular disclosure?
ALEXANDER: The fascinating thing is that Donald Trump is rewriting the rules for how you can make money after a presidency. So, for a long time, ex-presidents have written books and everybody knows you can make money doing that.
Then the Clintons come along and they show, wait a second. You can make a ton of money giving speeches, too. Donald Trump is sort of showing the next evolution of that. So he's selling NFTs.
He's not writing books, but he's gathering up information, photos from his time in the White House, letters that people sent to him. And he's compiling those in the books and then selling note, and if you add up all of that money, some of which we saw in the disclosure last night and other which we've seen in previous disclosures. You're looking at north of $10 million. This is the sort of money that people used to think, hey, if you sell a really great book, maybe you make $10 million.
But Donald Trump didn't have to work that hard, right, 500 pages or anything? He just sort of compiled all of this stuff and made a ton of money in a place where he's made them most money is by creating his own social media company, which hasn't done very well. But nonetheless has its supporters so excited that they're buying up shares level where his stake is now worth $2.6 billion.
SIDNER: All right. Dan Alexander, thank you for walking us through all that.
Also, tonight --
ALEXANDER: Thank you.
SIDNER: -- the VP wealth gap, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz diverging wildly on issues and their finances. Walz is squarely middle-class. The former school teacher doesn't even own his own home. Compare that to J.D. Vance who touts his humble roots but now owns
multiple homes. The vast differences in wealth between the two vice presidential candidates don't end there.
Our Tom Foreman is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Both are Midwest born from working class families, love diet, mountain dew, and join the military.
GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: For 24 years, I proudly wore the uniform of this nation.
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I enlisted in the United States Marines.
FOREMAN: But along the way, the fortunes of Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance diverged wildly.
WALZ: Growing up, I spent the summers working on the family farm. My mom and dad taught us, show generosity toward your neighbors and work for a common good.
FOREMAN: Educated at Chadron State College in Nebraska and Minnesota state, Walz became a high school teacher and coach, taking up politics in his 40s as a congressman and then to turn from governor of Minnesota, Walz owns no stocks or bonds, sold his home after moving into the governors mansion in 2019, records show his savings are largely in retirement accounts and life insurance.
He has a small education fund and as "The New York Times" noted, he and his wife jointly reported $299,000 in income in 2003, more than they had declared in years.
Vance on the other hand --
VANCE: I know what it's like to choose between paying off the credit card debt or buying groceries. I know what it's like to watch families fall apart under financial stress.
FOREMAN: He went to Ohio State, then Yale Law, graduating to work as a litigator, write a best-selling memoir, which became a movie and to settle into venture capitalism before winning a U.S. Senate seat two years ago.
Vance owns his home, has stakes in two businesses up to a half million dollars worth of bitcoin, rental income, checking accounts worth over 1 million, sizable education savings for his children all together, he and his wife had between $411 million in assets, within most, one-and- a-half million in liabilities.
Walz says it all adds up to an opponent far removed from his humble beginnings.
WALZ: Come on! That's not what Middle America is. FOREMAN: While Vance finds a different bottom line, I will be a vice
president who never forgets where he came from.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN (on camera): I think I misspoke there about the Walz income. I said 2023 -- 2003, the 2023 is what we were talking about.
The point is maybe this shouldn't matter in any election. But in this one, it really could matter what the economy so front and center, and so many people worried about their own financial status -- Sara.
SIDNER: I think he got that right, Tom Foreman. Thank you so much for joining us.
OUTFRONT next, new court documents revealing just how much ketamine actor Matthew Perry was getting in those weeks leading up to his overdose death as his family members are breaking their silence tonight.
And hear how one man stumbled upon the wild propaganda that North Koreans watch on television day in and day out.
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[19:44:26]
SIDNER: Tonight, the family of Matthew Perry breaking its silence after five people were charged in connection to the actor's ketamine death last year, including Hollywood so-called ketamine queen, saying in part, quote: We look forward to justice taking its course, were hoping unscrupulous suppliers of dangerous drugs will get the message.
This is new court documents are also revealing tragic details about Perry's final days and hours.
Let's go right to our John Miller, our chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst here with us tonight.
John, prosecutors say that from September to October 2023, Perry was given approximately 20 vials of ketamine.
[19:45:03]
It cost him whole ton of money, $55,000, which is a lot. If you look at the actual cost of ketamine, make of a problem is ketamine at this point? I mean, is there a craze this happening?
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So it's a really interesting question because, you know, you've got two things going on here. One, you've got Matthew Perry, who is a Hollywood superstar with unlimited resources in this department, who has a personal assistant who can find a middleman who can get to a drug dealer after, you know, finding a doctor who got to another doctor? But in the background online, you see ketamine clinics, you see
ketamine for depression and these are things that during COVID, when nobody could get to the doctor, they started telehealth and a lot of doctors working with people and depression. We're doing doses of a particular kind of ketamine not approved by the FDA for that. But these clinics were working. This is going out and it's being shipped, its going out through the mail is going out by FedEx and UPS. It's being delivered to people.
When you take this, whether it's the nasal or the other one, somebody is supposed to be with you for 90 minutes to make sure you don't have a battle reaction. When you're in an online relationship with your doctor, is that really happening? Is somebody sitting on the other end of a computer or do they say if it goes bad, email me.
So, you know, the FDA is looking at it from a regulation standpoint, the medical community is looking at it as scans, but its become big business and some doctors have gotten licenses in states across the country so that they can prescribe for patients in states they've never been.
SIDNER: Yeah, we've seen this play out before with other drugs. Not end well.
All right. Let's talk more a little bit about the court documents. They show that Perry's assistant, injected Perry, his assistant, with at least 21 shots of ketamine in the week leading up to his death.
And on the day he died, the assistant admits in this plea agreement that he injected Perry with ketamine at 8:30 a.m., and again at 12:30 p.m. And then 40 minutes later, Perry apparently asked his assistant to prepare a Jacuzzi and asked him to give him a -- shoot me up with a big one.
Perry was found dead about three hours after that. That assistant did plead guilty to -- I think a single charge, but prosecutors are also charging the doctors in this investigation.
Is this sort of the new normal for how the law enforcement and prosecutorial apparatus goes after someone when there is an overdose death?
MILLER: Well, you touched on it a second ago. This new normal of treating an overdose death almost as a homicide investigation tracking down. Where did the drug come from? Did the person arson know that the drug was dangerous when they sold it? Had other customers died?
All questions that come up in this case, by the way, because another, another customer of one of the drug dealer actually had died and she was aware of that. So -- allegedly. So all of that goes on-- in the -- in the Los Angeles United States attorneys office that brought this case, you know about it because we know about Mac Miller, he was hip hop star. That's another case. We know about Matthew Perry because he's a movie star.
We don't know about the other 58 cases that they brought. So it's a message to unscrupulous doctors. It's a message to drug dealers. If you know what you're selling, has a good chance of killing your customers. You may end up being arrested even though you weren't there when it happened.
SIDNER: All right. John Miller, you're the best. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
MILLER: Thanks, Sara.
SIDNER: Also tonight, the Trump campaign ratcheting its rhetoric on dangerous drugs coming across the southern border. But is the situation on the southern border right now as bad as the Trump campaign is making it out to be?
Our Rosa Flores went there to find out.
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ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I've spent so much time in El Paso during prior migrant surges that just by driving to certain spots, I can tell that migrant apprehensions things are low right now. Just take a look beyond the border fence.
In this hotspot south of the border wall, you see rows of razor wire and piles of fencing, a huge difference from when I was here more than a year ago. When hundreds of migrants in a makeshift camp are waiting to turn themselves into border patrol. During another migrant surges, migrant families with children slept at the airport and large groups of migrants rushed the International Bridge towards El Paso, some of them in tears about the cumbersome asylum process.
This is Segundo Barrio, or second ward, and one of the biggest indicators that migrant apprehensions are low, are the streets around this church. Take a look. You don't see large migrant camps on sidewalks and on the streets.
But during migrant surges, hundreds of migrant families called the street home.
[19:50:04]
Father Rafael Garcia, the priest, has seen the cycles of migration before.
FATHER RAFAEL GARCIA, PRIEST: It has become a big political issue.
FLORES: Garcia says migrants stopped showing up in large numbers in June, when President Joe Biden's executive order bar to asylum for those who cross illegally and ahead of the election, he doesn't expect the Democrats to let up.
GARCIA: Politically, it's not a good thing to do. It's humanitarian thing to do but it's not politically.
FLORES: The drop in migrant apprehensions is not just happening in El Paso. It's happening all along the U.S. southern border. I wanted to show you this spot because this is one of the illegal
crossing hotspots. We're actually in New Mexico and sometimes when you look beyond the border wall, you can see smugglers on the other side.
I talked to a source familiar with the government data who says that last month, about 57,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S. southern border. Compare that to 250,000 in December of 2023.
Does that mean that the migrant flow has stopped? Absolutely not.
Rafael Velazquez Garcia from the International Rescue Committee says another reason for the drop in migrant crossings is that more than 1 million migrants are stuck in Mexico as they wait to enter the U.S. in what he calls a carousel or Mexican authorities busing migrants to southern Mexico over and over again.
RAFAEL VELASQUEZ GARCIA, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: New more aggressive policies by the Mexican government.
CNN has reached out to Mexico's foreign ministry for comment and did not hear back.
FLORES: So, the days when hundreds of migrants were camped outside sacred heart church are a thing of the past. At least for now, take a look at the empty ally around me. But if covering the border has taught me anything, it's that the situation can change very quickly.
Rosa Flores, CNN, El Paso, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIDNER: Our thank you to Rosa and her team.
Next, from missiles to dinosaurs, how one man uncovered the wild content North Koreans are seeing on television every single day.
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SIDNER: Tonight, a rare glimpse inside North Korea's propaganda machine that's coming from an unusual source in North America, a man who unwittingly discovered North Korean TV and began posting it online.
Will Ripley is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Using his backyard satellite dish, Peter Fairlie was just scanning for sports channels --
PETER FAIRLIE, ENGINEER: Where we go? We have a signal.
RIPLEY: But the Canadian engineer from outside Toronto stumbled upon something he never expected.
FAIRLIE: And that's when I saw the color bars the test card, and Pyongyang written on it.
That triggered my curiosity, right, was this really coming from North Korea.
RIPLEY: Sure enough, it was a live satellite feed of North Korean state television, from daily dancercise to cooking programs to patriotic propaganda.
FAIRLIE: It's very kind of 1980s, too. It's very MTV their videos.
RIPLEY: Broadcasting mass games, military parades, and yes, missile launches to some 26 million people, to call Kim Jong Un secret state home.
FAIRLIE: The videos all of Kim are how great he is and everybody, you know, crying and loving him.
RIPLEY: Peter began recording.
Do you feel like these programs do have power to influence people's minds?
FAIRLIE: Absolutely. After watching one full day of the North Korean content for two nights in a row, I just had a lot of very bizarre dreams as if I was there.
RIPLEY: Hosting an edited version on his YouTube channel.
Did you think this was going to go viral?
FAIRLIE: No, absolutely not.
RIPLEY: Go viral, he did.
Peter's videos racking up almost 2 million views in less than two months.
FAIRLIE: People were basically giving comments that were all over the spectrum from they loved it to they were terrified by it.
RIPLEY: Viewers called the content surreal, almost like going back in time, some of the most popular clips, Kim Jong Un visiting hot springs, opening a dinosaur park.
FAIRLIE: Because of Kim, it's become kind of a cult following. Whenever Kim comes on, everybody goes crazy. It's like -- kind of -- that's the funny part. That's probably the corkiest part.
People kept saying give me more, give me more, I want to see more.
RIPLEY: Peter's pirated Pyongyang propaganda, a window into what the North Korean state wants its people to see and believe.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIDNER: Will, you've been to North Korea a mere 19 times. You've watched a lot of course of North Korean TV yourself, how much TV do people actually though, watch there in North Korea?
RIPLEY: Yeah, there's not a whole lot else to do when you're sitting kind of waiting in-between shoots in North Korea very familiar with some of that music. It's still stuck in my head all these years later.
The priority of Kim Jong Un's government is that there's a television in every single home which might surprise a lot of people. They think of North Korea as this poor place, but most homes, if not, if not every home in every public space has a television because of the power of having this propaganda on 24/7, keeping the Kim's in power is crucial, information is crucial.
So Peter says he watched this for one full day, dreamt about it two nights in a row, and he's in Canada. Imagine, Sara, if you lived in North Korea.
SIDNER: Will Ripley, thank you so much for that piece.
And thank you for joining us.
"AC360" starts right now.
