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Soon: Trump Takes Questions At Economic Club Of Chicago; Trump Heading To Georgia Tonight As Early Voting Begins; Trump Turns Town Hall Into Impromptu Dance Party; 230+ Doctors & Providers Urge Trump To Release Medical Records; Harris: Trump Is "Unhinged" And Out For "Unchecked Power"; Georgians Begin Voting Amid Changed Voting Laws; Top Issues For GA Dem & GOP Focus On Taxes, Crimes. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 15, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:10]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, roll the tape. Kamala Harris has a new tactic for highlighting the stakes of this deadlocked race, not just using Donald Trump's own words against him, but playing the clips.

Plus, get out and vote Georgia. Early in person voting begins today in that crucial Sunbelt state that was decided by -- we all remember just over 11,000 votes in 2020. And introducing D.C.' newest and cutest residents after a very long trip aboard the Panda Express. This cuddly pair have officially arrived here in Washington, ending our city's year long, Panda drought.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Three weeks from today, America picks its new president. Today, we are seeing both candidates take tough questions from tough audiences. Kamala Harris is in must win Michigan for a town hall discussion with Charlamagne Tha God this afternoon. It's part of her aggressive push to appeal to black men.

And later this hour, Donald Trump will address the number one issue in this campaign. Trump rarely takes questions from journalists outside the right-wing media universe. But today he is sitting down with the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. And after that, he is going to head to Georgia.

That's where we find CNN's Kristen Holmes. Kristen, as we just said, early voting is beginning, and that is no doubt why Donald Trump is heading where you are.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Dana. And we know that he has plans to visit multiple states as this early voting process begins. One thing to note, as we talk about early voting, Donald Trump has time and time again, essentially said that he was against any form of early voting, but you can expect him to embrace it here today.

Remember the RNC Republicans as a whole, they have been pushing Trump behind the scenes to talk about early voting, because they believe this is something that can just help him. But what we expect today, he's going to be sitting down, as you said, with the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg. Expect a lot of questions about those economic policies that he has tried to roll out.

One thing to keep in mind, when he talks about these various tariffs, he is rarely questioned on it. There's usually not a follow up question. As you said, a lot of his conservative media. Sometimes it's in a press conference, he doesn't respond, if he doesn't like a follow up question.

This will be an opportunity for those economists who say that tariffs are actually bad for the economy, that would actually cause more inflation for them to get to the bottom of what he is actually proposing to do about that. So, we'll see if that happens, then he'll be on the ground here for this rally. Again, something to keep an eye on is that talk about early voting.

Now you mentioned, the economy in general being the number one issue. I would say, because of the fact that we saw a flyer that came out about this event here in Atlanta later today that he'd be talking about the economy. But as we've seen for the last several days, he's turned most economic discussions into a conversation about migrants, using incredibly dark and fear-based rhetoric.

So, we'll keep our eyes and ears open to see if he continues that. I am told by his advisers that he believes that this is the issue that helped propel him to the White House in 2016 immigration, particularly that fear-based rhetoric, and he believes it will help him this November. His advisers, they are really pushing that economic messaging. They really want him to continue to double down on that.

As these news stories come out. As we see that people are still having some concerns about the economy, that's how they think they win in November. Donald Trump has a little bit of a different idea there. Something he's actually said publicly. He thinks that more people care about immigration than the economy. We'll see how he handles that tonight.

BASH: OK. Kristen, thank you so much for that. Appreciate it. Donald Trump's Town Hall last night turned into -- well, it turned into this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Put on Pavarotti singing, Ave Maria. Nice and loud. Turn it up louder. We want a little action here.

Let's not do any more questions. We could do another question or two, if you'd like, but probably -- you want to do one. You want to go. Let's go. Let's go. You know it's -- but it's so beautifully. How about this? We'll play YMCA and we'll go home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:05:00] BASH: What you just saw was 43 seconds that went on for 38 minutes. Kamala Harris's response, hope he's OK. Here with me is a fabulous group of reporters, CNN's David Chalian, POLITICO's Meridith McGraw, and the Host of the Don Lemon Show and the author of the new book, I Once Was Lost: My Search for God in America, our friend Don Lemon. Nice to see you back.

DON LEMON, HOST, THE DON LEMON SHOW: Good to see you. Thank you for having me.

BASH: David Chalian, I'm going to start with you, because there's a lot of --

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Just like my dance moves.

BASH: Actually, you do have a very good dance move.

LEMON: His knowledge of Sinatra (Ph), and was it Ave Maria?

BASH: And YMCA.

LEMON: And YMCA.

BASH: Yeah. But in addition to that, David Chalian, your political brain on what we saw there, because there are a lot of ways to look at it, and it really depends on who you ask. Let's just start with team Trump. You know, they argue, well. He can have fun. Well, he -- there is joy there. And then team Harris, he's completely lost it. And I'll get to the second part in a minute. But, you know, he was supposed to be taking questions. He then went off into whatever that was.

CHALIAN: After there were a couple of medical incidents in the crowd and very --

BASH: People fainted.

CHALIAN: -- keeping the hot environment. And yeah, people fainted, exactly. And so, he sort of pivoted the event. I mean, obviously, let's be clear. That's a normal behavior for a candidate, right? Like, we've not seen that. And I think you can find people that have covered Donald Trump, like have gone to more than hundred Donald Trump rallies. They've never seen that.

So, we should just separate that out that, you know, here we are, three weeks out from an election. And he's doing something that he's never done before, and that is clearly different than what presidential candidates normally do.

That doesn't -- I don't want to then add on a sentence of, therefore this is like going to destroy his chances of winning the presidency. That's clearly not the case here. It does make you just scratch your head about like, what's going on with Donald Trump. That he is feeling himself differently in public or canceling interviews, or he is --

BASH: Which he did today.

CHALIAN: Yeah, exactly. So, he is not --

LEMON: OK.

CHALIAN: No, no. We don't know that. But he is -- he is not sort of following some programmatic script here, right? He seems to be having some, you know, different sensibility about what it is he wants to do. It reminds me when he was talking about how he does the weave when he's so incoherent. And he comes up with a name to sort of label. What that is when he's totally incoherent. And I just think that again, I don't know. We have no idea if he's OK or not, because he doesn't release medical --

LEMON: I don't -- yeah, right. I don't think he's OK. I don't think that. What happened that --

BASH: Well, Don, and on that note, this is definitely the pursuit of the Harris campaign. This morning, they sent out a doctor's note from 230 plus doctors and health providers, saying the American people deserve to have confidence in their elected officials, mental and physical capacity to do the jobs they have elected them to do. Trump ought to be above and beyond -- to be going above and beyond, to provide transparency on his physical health and mental acuity, given his advancing age. They're throwing everything at.

LEMON: Yeah. Well, I mean, those are the standards that he had for who Joe Biden. Those are the standards that he had for Barack Obama when he wanted him to release his birth records. So, the rules just don't apply to him. Is he OK? You know, Kamala Harris is asking, the vice president's asking, I hope he's OK. He's not OK. That behavior is not OK. Let's just be honest about it. It's odd. It's weird.

If you look at his rallies, you'll see, when he went to Coachella, he just sort of stands there and, you know, wants people to sort of keep -- like, bask in the glow of the applause when he -- when he goes to just regular rallies. He waits for, you know, brown. Being an American, he stands there the entire time.

And just like, you know, letting people sort of praise him as if he's a monarch. This behavior is not OK. And I think leading up to the election, it's going to get worse, the hyperbole, the sort of unusual behavior, it's going to get worse as he gets more desperate until election day comes.

BASH: And at the very beginning of her very short campaign. Kamala Harris tried to sort of, it's not that she didn't see this, or their campaign didn't see this kind of thing, but they really focused on who is -- who she is. What her record is. And tried to say, OK, yeah, I'm not going to focus on what he's doing.

Let me just stay focused on defining myself. That has changed. They have added a whole new layer of their campaign in the last few days. And part of that is Harris actually playing clips of some of what you were talking about in her events. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's talking about that he considers anyone who doesn't support him or who will not bend to his will, an enemy of our country. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged.

[12:10:00]

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Mark Milley said, no one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump and he is a fascist to his core. Let that sink in, and don't be a damn bit afraid of saying it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MERIDITH MCGRAW, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Well, seeing Harris play videos at a campaign event, that's something that we really have only seen from Donald Trump do. So, just stylistically, I thought that was unusual and different last night. But it is something that I have heard from some Democrats, that they feel like Harris has needed to go more on the offensive with Trump and target some of his comments.

And we saw, you know, after Trump talked about these enemies from within. The Harris campaign jumped on that. They have a new ad that they clipped from those comments. You know, they're pushing out former Trump administration officials, Republican elected officials to talk about Donald Trump, and whether or not he's really fit for office and to be a leader. So, you know, for them to go on the offensive, that is something that we haven't seen. I think her do as much lately.

BASH: And what I was told in talking to some Harris campaign officials this morning is that obviously, what part of is the calendar. I mean, this is -- this is crud (Ph) chime. That's closing argument. You got to -- you got to do everything.

But also that they believe their data show that if this argument about him being unstable is made, it could help with some of the very small sliver that exists of sort of undecided, persuadable voters, particularly suburban women, who might be open to voting for Donald Trump for lots of other reasons, especially including the economy. But perhaps warning them that you don't want this guy in the White House could help.

LEMON: Yeah. Again, I don't -- you ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, I think this is going to -- this behavior is going to increase because -- let's just be honest, he has to -- in his mind, he has to win. Because if he doesn't win, then he has to face the justice of the long arm of the law, right?

And so, he's going to do everything within its his power at these rallies to make something work, right? To get the attention off of the Harris, Walz's campaign. And I just say -- look, I don't -- as you said, medically, I don't know what's going on. I think he should release his records. But just judging from watching his behavior over the last couple of months, this is not OK. And again, it's going to get worse. CHALIAN: And to your point, Dana, what the Harris campaign is doing. I mean, this is why they wanted so desperately another debate because -- and by the way, this was a theory of the case when it was the Biden campaign, going back to the beginning of this year. Remember, we heard for months and months, there are a lot of disengaged voters. They are infrequent voters. They are not necessarily the most paying attention this election.

We need a contrast with Trump on a daily basis to get them to pay attention, to understand the difference in this campaign. They so from early on, they said people didn't even realize that Donald Trump may actually be president again one day.

Obviously, that failed for the Biden campaign with his debate performance in June and all that flowed from that. But it's why the Harris team is so eager? And David Plouffe previewed this in a couple of his interviews, the senior adviser from Obama days who's now devising all the strategy to get to 270 electoral votes for Harris.

They see this as a critical component. It is not, as you said, you have to do everything now, there's no doubt about that. Yes, they have to piece together, pieces of the Democratic coalition. But they believe they have to close the sale on this notion of a choice between Harris and Trump, and they want that to be front and center every day.

And one of the things that -- if you listen to Harris aides, one of the things they doing is try to seize on his news, so enemy from within was his new sound bite. Have her seize on that. I wouldn't be surprised if her interview with Charlamagne Tha God today, she references this weird dancing at the rally. They're going to try to swim in the daily news waters to draw that --

LEMON: They're baiting him the way she baited him during the debate. And they believe that the more you see of Donald Trump, the more the public sees, the less they'll like him, right?

BASH: Yeah. That's the theory of the case that you were talking about, for sure. OK, don't go anywhere. Coming up, polls are open in the Peach State and holds a whole lot of power in this deadlocked race. Plus, we are monitoring, and will fact check as Donald Trump takes questions on the economy. That is scheduled for later this hour. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Today, early voting is beginning in the critical state of Georgia, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a virtual tie in the latest Wall Street Journal poll. It's the first presidential election since the Republican legislature passed a controversial new set of voting laws.

Nick Valencia is outside a polling site in Atlanta. Nick, looks like there are a lot of people behind you lined up.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Dana. First day of early voting, and yet we are still getting rulings from the superior court here that are going to have a direct impact on the 2024 election. Earlier this morning, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney issuing one of two rulings related to certification that we've been related -- that we've been waiting on.

[12:20:00]

This one stemming from a lawsuit from Julie Adam. She's a conservative on the Fulton County Board of Elections who made news this past spring by refusing to certify the presidential primary results. But Judge McBurney sending a very clear message in his ruling that certification is mandatory under Georgia law.

And this is what he said in part of that ruling. If election superintendents were as plaintiff urges free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury and judge, and so because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud, refused to certify election results. Georgia voters would be silenced. Our constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.

I mentioned that other ruling that we're standing by for, that one stemming from a lawsuit from the Democrats over what they call the certification rule. And that one Democrats fear will give, potentially a rogue county election official the chance to deny certification, which could cascade into bigger problems for the 2024 election.

Behind me, though you see that energy and enthusiasm among the voters just a short time ago, Gabe Sterling with the Secretary of State's office, tweeting that there have been 122,049 voters who have checked into early vote. We are well on our way to smash that record set in 2020, of 136,000 voters. And earlier, I caught up with one voter who this is their second time voting in a presidential election, and she talked to me about the process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CORINE CANADA, GEOGIA VOTER: Last time I voted. I voted in the city, and the lines were out the door. They only had, like, maybe like, three people working. And so, people honestly, just started leaving because it was like that, yeah, like this is too long. I can't stay here away. I have to go back to work. But here, no, it was easy. Like, I just stood in line. The line was moving. They had like, six ballots in there, multiple people working. I had no issue this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: There were concerns among Democrats that Trump operatives were working hard to create confusion around this election. But so far, that has not impacted the enthusiasm that we're seeing today on the first day of early voting. Dana?

BASH: So nice to hear that people are voting, that voting is easy. I mean, this is -- this is definitely a good sign for democracy. Thank you so much for that, Nick. Appreciate it. Let's come back to the table here. And I want to ask you about not just this idea of early voting and what it means for just enthusiasm, if we can learn anything about that. But also, just going back to this new law, new since the last presidential election. It was passed in 2021 in Georgia.

And I just want to go through a couple of other points. It removes Georgia's secretary of state as chair of the state elections board. Put a pin in that. Allows the state board to suspend and replace local election officials, fewer drop boxes, shorter absentee voting period, extra early voting days, allows unlimited challenges of voters on the rolls.

So, these new laws passed by the Republican legislature, signed into law by the Republican governor. There is a lot of concern among Democrats that this could on the -- just on the frontend, make it harder for people to vote. So far, it doesn't look like that's happening. But on the backend, the question is about certification.

And we all remember Brad Raffensperger, he, you know, got a lot of push back, shall we say, from Donald Trump and his allies for certifying the election. The vote -- the law is different now. And they can take, and they will, and they have taken some of the final say away from Brad Raffensperger and given it to handpicked Republicans.

MCGRAW: Well, I mean, think about just how -- of a different place we are now with talking about the certification of the election, that's something that, you know, in the past wasn't a huge part of the election. And here we are in 2024. And after 2020 and everything that happened, there are serious concerns about whether or not voters could be disenfranchised.

But from Republicans conservatives, you know, they're having to address a lot of voter concerns about election integrity, after everything that happened in 2020 and some of the falsehoods too, that were spread around that election.

You know, I listened to Secretary of State Raffensperger. He was interviewed by the Washington Post yesterday. And he was talking about how, you know, if they're hand counting ballots really late into the night, there is this chance that misinformation, conspiracy theories, could crop up.

And so, I think as we're barreling towards November 5, we're going to see litigation around these election laws. The judge in Georgia is going to be ruling on some of these rules this week. But in a state that we know is going to be incredibly close, that this election could really turn on. I think it's going to be pretty litigious too.

[12:25:00]

LEMON: But isn't that the -- what they want is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, and not to mention that --

(CROSSTALK) LEMON: But I mean, you know, you said, Thank God, it doesn't look like their efforts have, you know, come to fruition, but it's only the first day.

BASH: So, it's only the first day. There's a lot -- it's the certification, I think.

LEMON: This board has been infiltrated by MAGA supporters, which Donald Trump points out at his rally, saying, oh, you know, this person is going to do this, and they're going to take care of this in Georgia. So, I think the point is right to cast out on that and to make it harder. Obviously, these are voter suppression efforts. You know, it may not be seen that way, but they're trying to get fewer people, most of them Democrats to vote in Georgia.

CHALIAN: And I think in terms of the litigation, what we're seeing between now and November 5, this whole pre-election litigation period is all laying the groundwork for the post-election litigation arguments. Remember, some of the Trump lawyers were instructed by judges in 2020. They didn't lay the predicate enough of this to then have the ability to make those arguments after the fact.

So, I think we're seeing a big increase in this litigation period now, in advance. Pay attention to it because you're going to hear all the arguments. And by the way, if these polls are right, and this election in seven battleground states is as close as it is right now in the pre-election polling, we will see an exponential increase in the litigation, which is already off the charts. Because it will just come down to each one of these states, if they are actually this close, they will all end up in court.

LEMON: Oh my gosh, you're giving me, Angela.

BASH: I want to just kind of give everybody a sense, since they are actually voting for the first time in Georgia today, about the money that these campaigns and their allies are spending on ads. So, let me just show you the total ad spending. I mean, 164 million and change Democrats and Republicans, Democrats are spending a little bit more than Republicans, but they're both spending a lot of money on ads in Georgia.

And let's look at some of the issues, the Democratic presidential advertisers, taxation, character, healthcare and then Medicare, Republicans, crime, taxation, LGBTQ rights, which I'm going to talk to you about in the next segment, and inflation. So that's kind of table setting for where things are.

I want you to then listen to Bill Clinton, because he went to Georgia yesterday. And what he is trying to do in Georgia is what other Democrats and Republicans are trying to do in other swing states, which is go outside the -- their sort of comfort zones and try to get as many new voters as they can, even in the case of Democrats, more rural areas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BILL CLINTON, 42ND U.S. PRESIDENT: We did it because, not just because we did well in Atlanta, but because where there was an opportunity, anywhere outside Atlanta, we punched above our weight. So that's what this election coming down to. If you want it bad enough, you can win it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean, it's just so fascinating to me that it's -- again, it's not just the money spent, it's not just the things that they're saying. It's where they're going and who their messengers are.

MCGRAW: Totally, there's always been so much focus on the metro area around Atlanta and to see Bill Clinton, the Harris campaign outside in some of those rural areas. You know, the Trump campaign has had bus tours. Trump has visited more rural parts of the state.

But look, if you think about the numbers here, Donald Trump won Georgia in 2016 by five points. He lost it by point two points in 2020. And Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton, since 1992.

And you know, for Harris to win, she is really going to have to not only win again Biden's coalition in the state, which is college educated voters, but also black voters and voters outside of the Atlanta area. And so that is something that Bill Clinton, with him being deployed as a surrogate, that's been a big focus.

BASH: And real quick. I want to actually show our viewers how big the black vote is in Georgia. The white vote 51.6 percent, black almost 30 percent, which is among the biggest in the swing states -- important of that vote.

LEMON: And that will make the difference. And I think, the thing that shows, I don't know if you guys -- you guys are old enough to remember --

BASH: Everything.

LEMON: Nothing going to make the jogging and --

BASH: He went to McDonald's.

LEMON: That's what I was going to say.

BASH: Yeah.

LEMON: So, he went to McDonald's, and there's a cashier, right? And I think with her manager, and she's like, and he's ordering. And cash goes, wait, you -- oh my gosh. So, I say that to say that black people love Bill Clinton. And I believe there's not a better retail politician, not even Barack Obama, that is as good as Bill Clinton. He's amazing. And if anybody other than Barack Obama can draw black folks in, I think it's Bill Clinton. Do you disagree with that?

CHALIAN: There's no doubt that Bill Clinton has an extraordinarily close political relationship with African American voters. It's been proven time and again. I don't disagree with that.

[12:30:00]