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Seven Days Until U.S. Election; Harris Urges Voters to Cast Ballots Early in Michigan; Backlash Over Anti-Puerto Rico Remarks at Trump Rally; U.N. Agency for Palestinians Banned from Israel. Aired 4- 4:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, LEGENDARY SINGER: I'm Bruce Springsteen, and I'm here today to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and to oppose Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I'm so over it.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Now he wants unchecked power. And this time, there will be no one there to stop him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more win, that's all I care about right now. I don't care how it happens, I just want to get one more win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM. With Max Foster and Christina Macfarlane.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from the U.S. and around the world. I'm Max Foster.

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christina Macfarlane. It's Tuesday, October 29, 8 a.m. here in London and 4 a.m. in Washington, D.C., where Kamala Harris will give a major speech on the National Mall, very close to where outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump spoke on January the 6th, 2021, one of the most fateful days in U.S. history. Trump telling his followers to march to the Capitol and fight for their country ahead of the deadly riots and insurrection.

FOSTER: The Republican presidential nominee is expected to hold a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the hours ahead. He'll later hold a rally in the blue-collar community of Allentown in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. MACFARLANE: Well, Trump made a final push in the swing state of Georgia on Monday, while Harris reached out to voters in the battleground of Michigan. And her campaign got some star power from the boss, Bruce Springsteen, in Philadelphia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, LEGENDARY SINGER: I want a president who reveres the Constitution, who does not threaten but wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACFARLANE: Well, CNN's Kristen Holmes will have more on Donald Trump's stops in Georgia. But first, let's go to Eva McKend, who's following the Harris campaign in Michigan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EVA MCKEND, CNN U.S. NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Vice President Harris leaning on Michigan voters to vote early. She also pledged to pursue policies, if elected, that would bring down the cost of living. And a notable moment came when young people protesting over Gaza interrupted her.

She said, unlike the former president, she doesn't believe in the enemy from within, and that they deserve to have their voices heard, and that everyone here is fighting for democracy. Democracy, a really key component. Take a listen.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And let's be clear, we are all here because we are fighting for a democracy and for the right of people to be heard and seen. We're not about the enemy within. We know we are all in this together. That's what we are fighting for.

We can all see that Donald Trump is even more unstable and more unhinged. And now he wants unchecked power. And this time, and this time, there will be no one there to stop him.

MCKEND: Vice President Harris spending much of her time in Michigan focused on the economy, visiting a semiconductor manufacturing plant and a labor union training facility, as she argued that her policies would be best for these union workers. Playing up the Biden-Harris administration's work in the chips and science hack, and said that if elected, she would do all that she could to fortify union jobs.

Eva McKend, CNN, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Georgia encouraged voters to get out and cast their ballot. Early voting has begun. He polled the crowd to see how many people had actually cast their ballot.

It's part of a series of rallies Donald Trump has been doing in early voting states, trying to drive enthusiasm to get people to the polls. His speech in Georgia relied heavily on immigration. While he did not address any of the backlash from his Madison Square Garden rally and the pre-programming, particularly comments about Puerto Rico made by a comedian, he did address Kamala Harris, calling him a fascist. Here's what he said.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Kamala is now doing something much worse than what she was talking about.

[04:05:00]

The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn't voting for her is a Nazi. We're Nazis.

You know, years ago, my father -- I had a great father. He's a tough guy. He used to always say, never use the word Nazi. Never use that word. And he'd say, never use the word Hitler. Don't use that word.

I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi.

HOLMES: Now, I have been told that those comments from that comedian who opened up the rally at Madison Square Garden, particularly the comments in which he's called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage, have continued to cause problems for the Trump campaign. In addition to putting out that statement, I was told that senior advisors were fielding calls from various lawmakers and aides saying that those comments needed to be condemned. I've also heard a number of finger-pointing between allies and aides saying that those speeches should have been vetted ahead of time.

A lot of anger in the fact that they believe that those comments, that pre-programming before Donald Trump actually took the stage, overshadowed the message that Donald Trump was trying to deliver from Madison Square Garden just a week and a half before voters take to the polls on November 5th.

Kristen Holmes, CNN, Atlanta, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: It wasn't just the joke about Puerto Rico that was offensive. The comedian responsible for that garbage remark also made many other vulgar statements.

MACFARLANE: And a warning here, his language is offensive, but it's important to point out that what kind of hateful digs earned applause and laughter at this rally? So take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HINCHCLIFFE, AMERICAN COMEDIAN: In Texas, stuff is really, really crazy. We're right there by a wide-open border. Where are my proud Latinos at tonight? (CHEERING)

You guys see what I mean? It's wide open. There's so many of them.

I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms. And by open arms, I mean like this. And these Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that. They do. They do.

There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside just like they did to our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACFARLANE: Neither Trump nor his running mate disavowed any of what was said there. Vice Presidential hopeful J.D. Vance suggested Americans are being too sensitive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANCE: I haven't seen the joke. You know, maybe it's a stupid racist joke, as you said. Maybe it's not. I haven't seen it. I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke. But I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America.

(CHEERING)

I'm just, I'm so over it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: CNN's Danny Freeman now has reaction to the racist rally remarks from the crucial state of Pennsylvania, which has a sizable Latino population.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Vice President Harris' campaign wasted little time Monday morning.

EDDIE MORAN, READING PENNSYLVANIA MAYOR: They did us a favor. They woke up. They woke up. They woke us up. They woke us up.

FREEMAN (voice-over): Assembling a host of Puerto Rican surrogates in Philadelphia.

QUETCY LOZADA, PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: I hope that people are as angry, and they turn that anger into votes.

FREEMAN (voice-over): Pennsylvania has more than 480,000 residents of Puerto Rican descent, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That's the most out of any of the battleground states. And the Philadelphia metro area is among the top regions with Puerto Ricans outside of New York and Florida.

Philadelphia City Council member and Harris supporter Quetcy Lozada knew she had to speak up after last night.

LOZADA: I think that what folks don't realize is that when Puerto Ricans get angry, we turn into action mode very quickly.

FREEMAN (voice-over): Around Philly's largely Puerto Rican Fair Hill neighborhood, voters we spoke with had heard the comments.

(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

FREEMAN: He doesn't know what he's talking about. Puerto Rico is a beautiful island.

FREEMAN (voice-over): 32-year-old Christian Hernandez is voting for the first time this year for Vice President Harris. The Trump rally remarks only solidified his vote.

FREEMAN: You think Puerto Ricans heard those words from last night?

CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: Yes, for sure. A lot of Puerto Ricans, they're mad and disappointed.

FREEMAN (voice-over): Marcos Pagan didn't like the comments at all.

FREEMAN: When you hear stuff like Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage, what goes through your mind?

MARCOS PAGAN, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: To be honest, I feel disrespected because he doesn't know what we go through. You know, we've been through a lot.

FREEMAN (voice-over): But Marcos still is not sure who he's voting for.

FREEMAN: When you hear comments like that, does that change your perspective about who you might vote for?

PAGAN: No.

FREEMAN: That's not enough?

PAGAN: I'd rather see it than believe it, you know. Everybody should find the words.

FREEMAN: Fernando Santiago already cast his vote for former President Donald Trump, but now he and his whole family are mad about last night's remarks.

FREEMAN: What did you think about him calling Puerto Rico a floating island of trash?

[04:10:00]

FERNANDO SANTIAGO, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: That's my stuff because that's my island, you know. I don't want people talking like that, you know. That's not right.

JOSE VEGA, PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRAT: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

FREEMAN: You think he's not going to go far because of this lack of respect towards Puerto Ricans?

SANTIAGO: Exactly. Exactamente.

FREEMAN: Now we did reach out to the Trump campaign here in Pennsylvania for comment for this story. They just pointed us to the statement they released back on Sunday evening saying this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.

I will note, though, former President Trump is expected to be in the city of Allentown on Tuesday. Allentown has an enormous Latino population, specifically an enormous Puerto Rican population, so we'll see if the former president addresses this controversy then.

Danny Freeman, CNN, Philadelphia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: Now Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is defending his decision not to allow the paper to endorse a candidate in the U.S. presidential race.

FOSTER: A rare op-ed from Bezos was published hours after three members of the paper's editorial board resigned over the decision. He wrote, in part, presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. What they actually do is create a perception of bias and non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision and it's the right one.

MACFARLANE: Well Bezos' decision has outraged journalists across the country and scores of Post readers. CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter explains why the choice, especially so close to the election, is so important.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: He wrote this tonight because tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of subscribers have bailed on the Post in the past few days, even more might do it in the days to come, out of a fear that he's capitulating to Donald Trump, that he's giving in to Trump. Bezos is saying that's not the case. He's doing this as a principled decision, but he's doing it on the eve of an election, and that's really the issue at the heart of this.

He acknowledges maybe he had some poor timing, maybe he should have announced this earlier, but he's doing it because he wants to win back people's trust over time. In the short term, though, he's lost a lot of his audience's trust.

There's hard pressure, a quid pro quo, a deal with Trump, and then there's a form of soft pressure. And the real concern I'm hearing from Post reporters, from editors, from columnists, is that there's a form of soft pressure being applied here. The author of On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder, has talked for years about the idea of obeying in advance, that in democracies that are sliding toward autocracies, people try to obey in advance, that wealthy businessmen, that media leaders, that powerful people start to give in to the aspiring authoritarian whims in advance. And that's exactly the concern that exists here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Elsewhere, Israel has banned the U.N. agency that provides food, health care, and even jobs to Palestinians in Gaza. Ahead, why the US and many other countries say the aid group is irreplaceable.

MACFARLANE: And when we count, tens of millions of Americans have cast their ballots in early voting, including the man who had expected to be at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Details ahead.

FOSTER: And we'll bring you the big winners from football's most glamorous night. All that and more when we come back.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: The head of the United Nations says Israel's ban on its main agency that delivers aid to Palestinians could have devastating consequences. Despite strong international pressure, Israeli lawmakers have banned the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel.

MACFARLANE: The agency is not barred from operating in Israeli- occupied Palestinian territories, but because it won't be permitted to transit through Israel, experts say it will be harder for UNRWA to work in Gaza and the West Bank.

FOSTER: UNRWA supports nearly 6 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and other parts of the region. It provides food, education, medical services, even jobs. The U.S. State Department says UNRWA is critical for Palestinians in Gaza.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW MILLER, SPOKESPERSON, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: UNRWA plays a critical, important role in delivering humanitarian assistance to civilians that need it in Gaza. There's nobody that can replace them right now in the middle of the crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: CNN's Paula Hancocks joins us now. Paula let's talk about UNRWA. I think everyone's aware of how crucial it is. The international community is pretty united in condemning this decision, but what sway can they have?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a good question, Max, because as we understand it, there was some attempts at swaying certain Israeli lawmakers before this vote even went to the parliament. There was certainly a lot of public condemnation before it even happened, so it went ahead anyway.

We are hearing the condemnation now. You've got the United States, seven other foreign ministers of Western nations as well saying that it has to be pulled back because UNRWA is considered really the lifeline in Gaza in particular at the moment in the midst of this bloody war.

Now, what we're hearing from Israel, they have long been against UNRWA. They say that they believe that some of their employees are affiliated with Hamas in Gaza. They have even made allegations that a small number of them were involved in the October 7th attacks, which UNRWA itself denies but has fired some of its employees.

But they say that you must not make thousands of these employees suffer in their vital work because of allegations of just a small number.

[04:20:00]

So we are hearing widespread condemnation about this decision by Israel. And let's listen to what the U.N. agency itself says about the fact that it is irreplaceable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM ROSE, SENIOR DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR OF UNRWA AFFAIRS IN GAZA: We're the organization that knows the situation on the ground. We're bringing fuel in for the entire operation. We're coordinating everything through our buildings.

We are the coordination structure and we are the lifeblood of the humanitarian operation here. And it simply isn't possible to hand that over. That's in the immediate humanitarian phase.

But as we look to the future, this is a question of education for over 300,000 boys and girls who previously would go to UNRWA schools. We run a network of primary health clinics in Gaza. No other organization provides health care and education. And no other organization is equipped to do it. It's as simple as that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANCOCKS: And that's something that has been echoed as well by other humanitarian aid groups that are currently working in Gaza, some of them U.N.-affiliated as well, saying that they simply do not have the infrastructure that UNRWA has to be able to try and help a very desperate situation for more than a year now.

It revokes a 1967 treaty that allows this U.N. agency to look after Palestinian refugees in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank, in East Jerusalem, and also in other countries in the region where Palestinian refugees have settled over the years. But Israel has long been opposed to this agency.

The decision has been condemned as well from the very top of the United Nations, saying that it just cannot be replaced, but certainly it cannot be replaced at this time in the midst of such dire need for humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip -- Max, Christina.

MACFARLANE: Paula, this decision comes at a time when Israel are actually under pressure from the United States to ramp up their aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip to meet that mid-November deadline. What implications does this have with the U.S., and is Israel going to be forced here to find an alternative aid operation?

HANCOCKS: Well, we've heard from the Secretary of State and the State Department in the U.S. that what they have said, that it is simply impossible for UNRWA to operate under these circumstances. The fact that it wouldn't be able to travel through Israel, it wouldn't have any kind of coordination with the occupying power in the West Bank and in the power in Gaza that is currently undergoing and undertaking this war against Hamas. And so the State Department says it would then fall to Israel to fill the vacuum and provide this humanitarian aid.

Now, there's no indication that Israel is either willing or able to do that at this point while it's carrying out this military war against Hamas. And it is the fact that many of the humanitarian aid groups within Gaza as well have publicly stated that they alone cannot provide the humanitarian aid, the food, the water, the shelter, the health care that Gazans so desperately need without this very key U.N. infrastructure.

So I think certainly there will be no decisions from the United States, as we know, for the next week at least before the U.S. election. It is unlikely there will be much more than the condemnation that we have seen. But certainly this could be in the back of minds in Israel as to that 30-day deadline that the Biden administration did give.

MACFARLANE: All right. Paula Hancocks there in Abu Dhabi. Thanks, Paula.

FOSTER: Nearly 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon on Monday night. That's according to the country's health ministry. They say it was one of the single deadliest attacks since Israel's war with Hezbollah ramped up last month.

MACFARLANE: Well, earlier on Monday, Israeli strikes destroyed buildings in the southern port city of Tyre. Officials there say seven people were killed. Israel's military says it bombed Hezbollah targets in Tyre and issued evacuation orders for several parts of the city.

FOSTER: Coming up, Palestinian officials are making desperate pleas for doctors to save lives in northern Gaza. That's just ahead.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACFARLANE: Hi, welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. Here are some of the top stories we're following today.

We're just one week away from Election Day in the U.S. Tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris will give a final major address of her campaign. The speech will be at the Ellipse in Washington. That's the same spot Donald Trump spoke at on January 6th, just before a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol.

Steve Bannon, one of Trump's loudest and strongest supporters, is expected to be released from prison any moment now. Bannon was convicted in 2022 after he ignored a subpoena issued by the House January 6th Committee. That led to him spending 120 days in a low- security federal correction institution in Danbury, Connecticut.

And a federal investigation is underway into fires set at ballot boxes in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. Hundreds of ballots were destroyed at the Vancouver location. Authorities believe the fires are connected, along with another fire earlier this month at a Vancouver ballot box.

FOSTER: A Russian attack has damaged an historic Soviet-era skyscraper in Ukraine.

[04:30:00]