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Ballots Destroyed After Drop-Off Boxes Set On Fire; Trump Campaigns In Battleground Pennsylvania; Harris To Make Final Pitch To Voters At Site Of Trump's Jan. 6 Rally; Just Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 29, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:43]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The expected crowd keeps growing. More than 50,000 people now expected to pour onto the Washington Mall for one of Vice President Harris's final addresses as a presidential candidate. The former prosecutor will be making her closing argument just hours from now.

And an absolute love fest. Former President Trump tries to rewrite history after his controversial Madison Square Garden rally. But his plans tonight reveal a campaign that may be in damage control.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, new details about the car police are looking for after yesterday's ballot box fires in Oregon and Washington. Hundreds of votes, hundreds of ballots destroyed. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

KEILAR: The clock is ticking down to Election Day. The days are ticking down. Seven days, one week.

SANCHEZ: Half a fortnight.

KEILAR: Half a fortnight. Today, Vice President Harris preparing to lay out her closing argument as former President Trump is heading to battleground Pennsylvania with just seven small days to go. This hour, Trump participating in a roundtable just outside Philly. And then later, he goes to Allentown, which is an area notably with a significant Puerto Rican population.

And this is just days after his allies spewed racist and vulgar remarks at his Madison Square Garden rally, a rally that Trump said today was a, quote, "love fest."

SANCHEZ: Meantime, Harris is going to speak this evening at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., notably, the same spot where Donald Trump told his supporters on January 6th to fight like hell ahead of the violent attack on the Capitol. All this as brand new CNN polling shows, an exceedingly tight race with the key states of Arizona and Nevada too close to call well within the margin of error.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Priscilla Alvarez in the Harris campaign. So Priscilla, talk to us more about the message we should hear from the Vice President tonight on the Ellipse.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is going to be an attempt by the Vice President to reach those undecided voters, that segment of the electorate, in what could be opportunity for her to do so.

Now, I have been told by sources this is not a January 6th speech. In other words, she is not going to make this an entire rebuttal of the former President and what he did on January 6th. And what she said is the risk democracy. Rather, it is going to be painting a broader vision. But the location is significant and intentional.

The reason they chose this venue, according to sources, is because they wanted there to be gravity to the speech and recall the Oval Office. The office she's seeking is only 500 yards behind her. So they are also painting a visual here. The Vice President on the campaign trail has been saying that she's going to focus on her to-do list, while the former President she's cast as someone who is consumed by revenge and focused on what she says is his enemies list. So that is the visual she's trying to paint there with Oval Office behind her. She described this a bit herself in an interview with the Breakfast Club earlier today. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would ask people to imagine the Oval Office. And people have seen it on TV. You know what it looks like? It's either going to be Donald Trump sitting behind that desk writing out his enemies list of who he's going to seek revenge and retribution on, or it's going to be me working on behalf of the American people, as I always have done, working on my to-do list.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, the Vice President is also going to be laying out her proposals on a variety of issues. One source describing it to me as crystallizing the arguments that she's been making from the beginning, be it on reproductive freedom, on the economy, on immigration. Again, this is one of the last opportunities where she will have a major audience, both there on the National Mall and on television, where she can make her argument to voters. They're trying to still reach those disaffected Republicans, those voters who are just fatigued by the former President or as some advisers have said, have Trump Ninja (ph).

So certainly, they are -- they see this as a big moment for the Vice President and one where she can outline her entire vision for the country.

KEILAR: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much for that preview.

Former President Trump is headed to Pennsylvania as he defends his controversial rally in New York.

[14:05:03] We have CNN's Kristen Holmes who's live in Allentown. Kristen, we should note that this is an area with a large Puerto Rican community. Is he planning to apologize for the racist joke, a remark that was made by a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris and Brianna, if any indication is from the remarks we saw just a few hours ago, the answer is no. Donald Trump is obviously not one too often apologize, despite the fact that so many Puerto Rican leaders are calling on him to do so. He did address before his remarks in West Palm Beach the comments from the comedian who led off that Madison Square Garden rally, saying that Puerto Rico was literally an island of floating garbage. And this is what he told ABC. He said, I don't know him. Someone put him up there. I don't know who he is.

Now, according to ABC, they pushed back on that, saying, well, did you hear the comments? What did you think of them? He said he never heard them, again, despite the fact that they've been playing on every network incessantly. And we know that he watches television. And he did not take the chance to decry those comments or condone them in any way. Essentially, all he said was that he believed he was going to win the White House.

Now, when I talked to a number of his aides and allies, I specifically asked about this event and while they wouldn't say whether or not Donald Trump was going to say anything, they did have the statistics on hand of the Latino population in this area, including the number of Puerto Rican voters in this area. And we have since learned that the shadow senator from Puerto Rico is going to be speaking at tonight's event.

So regardless of what Donald Trump is doing, clearly, the campaign is seeking to have some cleanup here. Now, the really remarkable thing about what we heard while he was talking in West Palm Beach, that he actually addressed the Madison Square Garden rally without addressing those controversial remarks. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden. The love in that room, it was breathtaking. Politicians that have been doing this for a long time, 30 and 40 years, said there's never been an event so beautiful. It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest. And it was my honor to be involved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: So a couple things to note here. One, it was a very adoring crowd at Madison Square Garden. And he did fill the arena. But the interesting part about this is that he took the opportunity to talk about Madison Square Garden, something that has been under an enormous amount of scrutiny because of that pre-program. And of course, I just want to mention, it's not just the comments that the comedian made. There was a series of racist, sexist, and vile comments made in that pre-program. But instead of addressing any of that, he addressed the entire thing as a love fest. But of course, we'll have our eyes on tonight. He's doing another event in another part of Pennsylvania right now as we speak. We'll see if he addresses it there. But this would really be the opportunity for the former President to have some kind of remarks, particularly, as you said, Brianna, this is an area that has a heavy Latino voter, a very heavy Puerto Rican presence. So we'll see what he does when he gets on the stage tonight.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes live for us in Pennsylvania. Thank you so much. By just about any measure, this is an extremely tight race. Some new CNN polls show two of those critical swing states, Nevada and Arizona, within the margin of error. But an outstanding question, are these polls actually telling us the whole story about this election?

KEILAR: Yeah, we've been burned, Harry, before. And so a lot of people are skeptical. You are going to break this down for us. We've seen some Republican voters underestimated in the last two presidential elections. Could that happen a third time?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Could it happen a third time? You know, I'll note that I have my magic wall back with me. But just in case, I brought my backup yellow board here. But I don't need it today, so we're going to toss it aside and we're going to talk about what the polls may or may not be underestimating.

Look, if the polls are off like they were in 2020, Donald Trump's going to win this election easily, right, 312 electoral votes, 226 for Harris, because he's going to win up here in these Great Lake battleground states, right. He's going to win down here in the Southeast. And he's going to win in those western battleground states as well.

But here is why -- one of the reasons why I'm skeptical of it. Because the polls underestimated Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, right? They underestimated the Republicans across the board. So I went back through history. Has a party outrun the polls three presidential cycles in a row? The answer is at least dating back since 1972, they never have, they never have in the battleground, presidential polls. So even though they've outrun them twice in a row, the Republicans have the idea that they do it a third time, there's no analogy to it in history.

SANCHEZ: But Harry, if these polls are off, does it necessarily mean that the polling miss benefits Trump every time?

ENTEN: No, it's not necessarily the case.

[14:10:01]

So, you know, one of the things that I think is so important to note is if you go back to 2020, right, the polling averages underestimated Trump. But there was this slew of Republican leaning polls that actually suggested he was going to do considerably better than the polling average suggested. In fact, eight points on average, these Republican leaning polls. Now, you look this time around, there really isn't that gap. There

isn't really these right leaning polls that are suggesting. In fact, the best poll for Trump in the Great Lake battleground states only suggest that he'll do three points better than the average. And this is so important because those right leaning polls back in 2020 actually overestimated Trump. So if the best polls for Trump right now are only suggesting he's going to do three points better than the average, this idea that there's going to be this great underestimation of Trump, I just don't see in the data like you might have seen it back in 2020.

KEILAR: All right. Well, let's get in the way back machine, but maybe the not so way back machine and go to 2022 and tell us what happened.

ENTEN: Yeah, okay. So you know, we talk about a midterm election in 2022, right? There's been elections since 2020. You go back to 2022, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, 2022 polls, an average across those states, the Democrats were actually underestimated. They were underestimated by four points. Maybe the pollsters were making adjustments that actually ended up overestimating Republicans. And you know that first map I showed you, if the polls are off like they were in 2020 and Donald Trump won all the swing states, if the polls are off this year like they were in 2022, the Democrats, Kamala Harris, will win in all those key swing states. We're talking across up here, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, down here in the Southeast, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada and Arizona in the Southwest, and she gets to 319 electoral votes.

So the bottom line is, a lot of folks are thinking that Donald Trump will be underestimated in the swing states. Maybe so, but I think there's a decent case to be made for Kamala Harris being underestimated as well based upon the data that we see in. Lee (ph), can you toss me that because I want to make sure I still have my yellow board with me here, guys, just in case my magic wall craps out. I will always have a manual backup for you guys always.

KEILAR: I really wanted them to chuck that at you. Like you chucked it, Harry, but --

ENTEN: Could have chucked it. But I can make the catch. You know, maybe the Yankees can put me in center field because gosh darn knows they need the help. They need the help.

SANCHEZ: Harry Enten, whose Mets are watching from home, thank you so much, buddy.

ENTEN: The Yankees won't be in a night.

KEILAR: Cut his mic. All right. So let's discuss more now with the co- chair of the Harris-Walls campaign, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Thank you so much for joining us in studio. You've been very busy campaigning, so we'll talk a little bit about that.

But in 2022, as Harry was just talking about, there was this ghost voter phenomena, right, where you saw a lot of voters who had eluded polling, maybe they had irregular or they had no voting history, and they turned out. A lot of them motivated by the overturning of Roe v. Wade for Democrats. Are Democrats relying or expecting ghost voters to show up and have an impact this cycle?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Look, this will be an incredibly close election. That's what I've seen on the ground. That's what I've heard as a co-chair. That's what I think the polling is showing us, is that there are lots and lots of people who are motivated by both of these candidates. I think if you look at the sharp contrast between Trump's message at Madison Square Garden and the optimistic, forward looking message you'll hear tonight from Vice President Harris, that frames the difference as clearly and sharply as we can. And the campaign is relying on a margin of effort. Too many of these polls are within the margin of error.

What we've got going for us as a campaign at this point is a lot of volunteers and a lot of organization on the ground. I was talking earlier today to folks who are in York, Pennsylvania, knocking on doors, talking to voters, connecting with people. We've got a small margin of voters who haven't made up their mind yet whether to vote or for whom to vote. And I think we're going to do a better job in the end of connecting with them.

Vice President Harris tonight is going to deliver again the concrete, positive, forward-looking proposals she's got for how to deal with the costs that concern average families, whether it's housing and childcare, healthcare and building a better future through opportunity.

In the meantime, former President Trump is commenting on or not commenting on, avoiding responsibility for an anger and hate filled rally at Madison Square Garden. The Archbishop of Puerto Rico has demanded a personal apology from former President Trump. He's going to be focusing on that today on the defensive in Allentown. And Vice President Harris is going to be delivering a positive forward-looking message.

KEILAR: The President -- President Biden is not going to be at this speech at the Ellipse of Harris's. They don't have plans to campaign. That's according to Axios before the election. Do you worry that that could hurt Harris in, for instance, places in Pennsylvania where actually, you know, some voters, let's remind people, they trust Biden more than they trust Harris in some of these places?

COONS: So I've campaigned across eastern and northeastern Pennsylvania. I'll be in Altoona tomorrow. I was in Scranton a couple of weeks ago. Folks love Joe Biden. And they respect and recognize that Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris to be his running mate, served alongside her as Vice President, endorsed her when he chose to step back from being our nominee. And it's in --

KEILAR: And that's enough. They don't need to appear together?

COONS: They've appeared together plenty. He is still being President. Today, he's making an announcement in Baltimore about some of the positive follow on impacts of the legislation that they helped get passed through Congress and signed into law, the infrastructure bill. I do think it's important that folks hear from President Biden, but they know where he stands and they know that he fully embraces and supports Vice President Harris.

KEILAR: So especially in Michigan, the war in Gaza is a liability. This is a challenge that Harris is confronting. And Senator Sanders, Senator Bernie Sanders put out a message to voters who are upset by the administration's support of Israel's war in Gaza. Let's listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNIE SANDERS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM VERMONT: I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them. I promise you, after Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change U.S. policy toward Netanyahu.

Let me be clear. We will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing U.S. Policy with Kamala than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded right-wing extremist ally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Do you think that Harris will change U.S. Policy towards Netanyahu as Sanders is saying she will?

COONS: Well, look, Senator Sanders speaks for a lot of people who have concerns about Netanyahu's future path. In fact, our caucus leader, our majority leader, Chuck Schumer, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate months ago now calling on a change in-- calling on the Israeli people to make a change in direction in terms of their leadership.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have stood strongly by Israel, defending Israel when attacked by Iran, defending Israel against proxies in the region. But they have also raised repeated concerns about humanitarian issues in Gaza. And just a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense sent a letter to the Israeli government saying, you have to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza to not do so as a violation of law. I think that shows both the balance in the President, Vice President's position, and the very real possibility that there will be further movement in that direction.

I agree with what the Senator said, which is former President Trump will do nothing to constrain Prime Minister Netanyahu in terms of his chosen direction of imposing harsher and harsher consequences on the Palestinian people. We do need to remember that all of this is a result of Hamas and Hamas's actions both continuing to hold hostages beneath Gaza and conducting the war in a way that was designed to cause as many Palestinian casualties as possible.

KEILAR: Of course, this started with October 7th. But there are many voters who are taking issue with how Israel is perpetrating -- has perpetrated this war and the civilian deaths that we have seen, voters who take issue, big issue with what happened on October 7th. And they see American support, material support. Those are American weapons that have been dropped in Gaza. So I'll ask you again. Do you think that Harris will change U.S. Policy towards Netanyahu? And does that mean -- doesn't that mean changing policy towards Israel? Isn't this one and the same?

COONS: Well, it's clear that you will have a more balanced policy with Vice President Harris. She has repeatedly expressed concern about the humanitarian consequences of this war, the Palestinian civilian deaths and the costs of it, while standing strongly by Israel. You haven't heard a single expression from Donald Trump. So if you have a choice between former President Trump and Vice President Harris, I think you'll see a balanced approach towards the war in Gaza and keeping Israel safe. And you will not see that approach from Donald Trump.

KEILAR: I do want to ask you about the rally. You did bring it up. And I know you are going to continue campaigning and talking to people. And maybe you'll see how this has affected some folks. You're going to Pennsylvania. But there's also how Tim Walz characterized the rally. He compared, before it happened, the Madison Square rally to the 1939 one that the American Nazi Party held there. Would you have done that?

COONS: Well, look, I'm not going to disagree with Governor Walz, but I'm going to say that what is accurate to say about former President Trump is that he has authoritarian leanings.

[14:20:07]

And that's, don't believe me, believe his former Chief of Staff, his former National Security Adviser, his -- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have all been quoted as saying he is too great a risk to have back in the White House. Whether or not that rally should be compared to other historic rallies is less important than whether or not Donald Trump is too great a risk from a values perspective, a democracy perspective. And that's something that I've heard directly from his former Secretary of Defense --

KEILAR: But do you think Democrats are on firm ground --

COONS: -- and his former National Security Adviser.

KEILAR: Are they on solid ground talking about people who attend Trump's rallies versus talking about Trump?

COONS: I think we are on our most solid ground saying, here's what Donald Trump did as president, here's what he has said. I mean, look, there's no question that Donald Trump has trafficked in racist language, and images, and tropes ever since he became a candidate. In his very first speech in 2016, he attacked Mexicans directly, suggesting that they were all rapists and murderers in overly broad and offensive language.

So to pretend that somehow former President Trump, while he was a candidate, while he was president and now isn't trafficking in both racist tropes and ideas and language, and has shown a sympathy for authoritarians, and had people very close to him, lifelong Republicans in his own cabinet, raise the alarm about his authoritarian tendencies. We're on the most solid ground when that's what we're pointing to because that's public record.

KEILAR: Senator Chris Coons, thank you so much. I hope you have your Red Bull packed because your schedule sounds nuts --

COONS: It's fun.

KEILAR: -- going into the --

COONS: It's a lot of fun.

KEILAR: -- election. Thank you so much.

And ahead this hour on CNN News Central, police releasing some new details about the suspect accused of setting fire to ballot boxes in two separate states, destroying hundreds of ballots.

SANCHEZ: And new sexual assault allegations against Sean Diddy Combs. This time, involving a 10-year-old boy. We've got details just moments away.

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[14:26:33]

SANCHEZ: Right now, federal investigators are looking at fires at three ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington State. The fires damaged or destroyed hundreds of ballots.

KEILAR: Yeah. And first responders were, as you see here, pulling those ballots out of these drop boxes as they were still burning. This one here, this is in Clark County, Washington, the Vancouver area, and this precinct is home to one of the most competitive congressional races in the country.

One official calls the incidents, quote, "an attack on democracy." CNN's Natasha Chen is with us now with some details on this. Natasha, what are you learning?

Natasha Chen: Yeah, I talked to that auditor in Clark County And he said in his 20-plus years in that office, he had never seen anything like this. He said it's reprehensible. His staff are now acting as observers in each of the 22 drop box locations to call 911 for any suspicious activity. He's saying that anybody who may have dropped off a ballot in that box that you're seeing right there over the weekend after Saturday at 11 a.m. should request a replacement ballot.

This is just very disheartening to people, including the manufacturer of ballot boxes that we talked to in the area. The company called LaserFab made the ballot box in Portland, not the one you're seeing there. But LaserFab makes a lot of the ballot boxes throughout the West Coast. And they talked to me about how they worked closely with local elections officials to make boxes as tamper-proof as possible.

So when this happened, he felt it was extremely disheartening. Here's what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY OLSON, VICE PRESIDENT OF LASERFAB: The real disheartening thing is seeing these people come under attack because, you know, they live their lives dedicated to making our elections process free and fair. And that troubles me more than, you know, yeah, a box can be replaced. You know, hopefully they can track down the people who put the ballots in, things like that. But, you know, it's the people side of the thing that distresses me more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHEN: The box that that company created in Portland, most of the ballots were actually protected. More than 400 were okay. And three of them were damaged. And that's because there were fire suppressants in that box that actually worked. There were also fire suppressants in the Washington state boxes as well, I'm told, but they didn't quite function or protect the ballots as they thought they would. So really tricky here. A lot of logistics that officials are having to figure out.

Meanwhile, law enforcement is working on finding who did this. They believe it's all connected. That's the vehicle you see there, a dark Volvo S60 of 2001 to 2004, they say. So there's a lot of work there, extra work as Election Day approaches, Boris and Brianna.

SANCHEZ: And Natasha, how can people check to see if their ballot was affected?

CHEN: Yeah. There may be people really wondering about that now, especially in Oregon and Washington states where we know that it's primarily vote by mail. Everyone is mailed a ballot at home. The vast majority of people mail them in or drop them off in ballot drop boxes. So they're telling people for Washington state, go to votewa.gov. For Oregon, oregonvotes.org/myvote, to track the status of your ballot.

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