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Trump Campaign Facing Fallout From Inflammatory Madison Square Garden Rally. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:45]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: All right, at any moment, former President Donald Trump will speak at his Mar-a-Lago resort as his campaign is grappling with the fallout from an inflammatory rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris will head to the site of Trump's infamous January 6 speech here in Washington, D.C. What we are learning about her closing message just one week out from Election Day.

Good morning. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM, busy morning. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

And CNN's Alayna Treene joins us now from Mar-a-Lago.

I mean, Alayna, this was supposed to start about an hour ago. We're now being told, I guess, by the pool or something that might be around 11:10. So we're still watching and waiting here. I mean, what do we expect from Trump in these remarks?

I can't imagine he's going to apologize for what took place at Madison Square Garden. He had a chance to do that in the hours that went by before his speech Sunday night. He had all day yesterday to do it. Do we think he's going to do it now? I hate to put you in that position of guessing, but what do you expect?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: I mean, look, Donald Trump is always unpredictable. We have no idea what he will do.

You know, your guess is as good as mine. I think that is the big question, whether or not he's going to use this setting to condemn or at a minimum address those really racist and sexist comments made by other speakers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

But I will say this. I have covered Donald Trump for several years. That is not his M.O. He is not someone, it's not really in his nature to apologize, not even for things that he said, but this is something that other people had said.

So we will see what happens. Again, I'm not going to guess, because you never know with Donald Trump, but I think that's what we're all waiting to see. I think the big question of whether or not he will address it is whether or not he takes question.

So this was dubbed, this event, as press remarks, not necessarily a press conference. I know that's -- I'm getting in the weeds here with the lingo, but all to say, a lot of times, a lot of the journalists, Donald Trump's team will tell reporters that they will be able to ask questions, they think he will take questions, and then he does not.

So that's another question as well, whether or not Donald Trump even takes questions from the press today.

But, Jim, I do want to talk a little bit about where he's going after this event, because I think it's very notable in the context of what we're discussing, which is he's going to Pennsylvania for a pair of two events. One is going to be a rally in Allentown.

Now, Allentown, as we have discussed, has a huge Puerto Rican population. I mean, Pennsylvania overall has a massive Puerto Rican population. More than half-a-million Puerto Ricans reside in Pennsylvania, obviously, a very critical battleground state that a lot of people believe could be the deciding state in this election.

And I think the reason that these comments are so important in the context of the campaign, of course, we have talked about how inflammatory, derogatory, demeaning those remarks were on Sunday, but I think when you turn it into what does that mean for the election, there are questions because a lot of what Donald Trump is trying to do in this next seven days is to make a difference on the margins.

His campaign, Jim, recognizes how close this election is supposed to be. They think it's going to be one on the margins. And that's why you have seen Donald Trump spend so much time targeting key demographics, which includes the Hispanic population in this country, many of which -- and many Puerto Ricans in this country.

ACOSTA: Yes.

TREENE: And so they need to do some work here to make sure that they have not alienated those voters. Unclear if it'll come from Donald Trump's mouth specifically. We already heard the campaign disavow of what that comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, had said about Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage.

Whether or not Donald Trump's that is yet -- will do that is yet to be seen.

ACOSTA: Yes.

And, Alayna, I mean, he has been trying to contain some of the damage to some extent by he said last night he's the opposite of Hitler. Melania Trump was on FOX this morning saying that her husband is not Adolf Hitler. I mean, this is -- I mean, it's extraordinary to hear, I mean, this kind of discourse and one week before Election Day.

TREENE: I mean, I think there's no question, Jim, that this is the opposite of what his campaign wants him to be talking about.

[11:05:04]

I mean, there's two things I would keep in mind, though. One is that we have heard repeatedly from people, from his -- Trump's campaign, from allies, from people who want him to win next week that his campaign and Donald Trump himself needs to be focusing on the key issues.

What is the final impression that voters will have? Well, they want that impression to be, who do you think will do a better job on the economy? Polls show that Donald Trump does better with the economy. When it comes to the border, specific policies, those are the things that they want him to be talking about, inflation.

However, Donald Trump has really leaned in to dark rhetoric himself over these past several weeks. A lot of the comments that we're talking about were not made by him, but he made some of his own inflammatory comments on Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

And I think it's kind of -- we have been covering this a bit, but there's kind of two different things happening behind the scenes when it comes to Trump world.

There's the people who want them to be more disciplined, and then there's Donald Trump and others who he is very close to who believe that the dark rhetoric he has been using, particularly the falsehoods about undocumented migrants coming across the border to commit crimes, being let out from the sane asylums and prisons, things we know are just overly exaggerated or just not true, they believe that that is the type of fearmongering that worked in 2016 and could work again this month.

And so I think it's just a little bit of a parallel you're seeing kind of seep into the forefront here that we're all discussing because some of those comments that were made not by him, but others are getting so much backlash with such little time before Election Day -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right, Alayna Treene, we're going to be watching for all of that in just a few moments.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is covering the Harris campaign for us.

Priscilla, what more can you tell us about what we expect to hear from Vice President Harris tonight? She's going to be down on the Ellipse outside the White House. That is no accident that they chose that backdrop.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's a notable location because her advisers want to convey the gravity of this election.

Now, I will note, though, Jim, that, in speaking to sources, they may clear that this isn't a January 6 speech. In other words, they're not trying to respond directly to January 6 of 2021. Rather, they want to paint a broader vision for the country.

That is what the vice president is intending to do in her remarks, but they also want to provide that visual.

With the Oval Office just 500 yards behind her, they want to convey the message of it's either the vice president or it's going to be the former president by using one of the lines that the vice president has used multiple times over the last several days, that it is either going to be the former president, as she said, consumed by revenge and what she calls his -- quote -- "enemies list" or the vice president and her -- quote -- "to-do list for Americans."

And on that end, the vice president expected to walk through her policies and proposals on some of the key issues that have been top of mind for voters, be it the economy, what she calls the opportunity economy, health care, reproductive rights, immigration, among others.

Again, this is going to be more extensive remarks by the vice president trying to do two things at once., paint the stark contrast with former President Donald Trump, not only what she says is the risk that he poses to the country, but also to the way that the U.S. is perceived abroad, while then pivoting too to that forward-looking optimism that her campaign has tried to project from the very beginning.

Now, again, this is -- the vice president has been working on this speech with -- alongside her aides for some time now. This will all culminate in those remarks at the Ellipse this evening. And it is going to be one of the last opportunities, one of the last big opportunities that her team has to relay this message to especially undecided voters.

That's what senior advisers to the vice president say, that this is going to be an attempt for them to try to capture votes that up until this point remained up in the air. It could be, for example, disaffected Republicans, as they have been trying to do in those moderated conversations alongside Republican Liz Cheney, just as much as it could be those voters who are still unclear on the vice president and her policies because they say they just don't know her well enough.

So this is certainly especially targeted to the voters who remain on defense, and they're hoping that they can relay that message to them through these remarks tonight at the Ellipse -- Jim.

ACOSTA: And, Priscilla, we heard from Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, on the Madison Square Garden comments that were made. What did he say?

ALVAREZ: Well, in some ways, this was an extension to what the vice president has said about the former president and the people he has surrounded himself with when it comes to some of these derogatory comments and assailing Puerto Rico.

She said yesterday this was no discovery. Her vice presidential nominee, Governor Tim Walz, saying that this was a scream, not a dog whistle. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I didn't watch it personally. AOC showed me that in real time. I didn't know who this guy was, this comedian or whatever, but saying that we don't have a sense of humor, using vulnerable people as a punchline for your jokes is really weak.

[11:10:04]

It is -- that is not humor. And I have to say this. The guy's delivery was terrible. It was just mean-spirited. It -- that didn't -- that wasn't a joke. That was a dog whistle -- well, not even a dog whistle. It was a scream.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, the Harris campaign is also seizing on those comments by releasing a new ad with what the comedian said and what the vice president has outlined as her plans.

And that is all key, of course, Jim, because, in battleground Pennsylvania, there's a sizable portion of Puerto Rican voters.

ACOSTA: Yes, I mean, Tim Walz there making a response there to J.D. Vance yesterday saying that folks just need to loosen up and not take things so seriously in regards to what took place Sunday night.

All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thank you very much.

All right, we're watching and waiting for former President Donald Trump to speak. It was expected to start at 10:00 a.m. It's now an hour and 10 minutes late. We will see how late it goes. We will bring that to you live when it happens.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:15:41]

ACOSTA: All right, we are watching and waiting for former President Donald Trump to speak.

Let's bring in my panel to get started here.

We have got Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Shermichael Singleton is back with us. Karen Finney is also joining us, as well as presidential historian Tim Naftali.

Lulu, let me go to you first.

I want to listen to some man on the street sound as we call it in the business, MOS, person on the street sound, responding to what we heard at that rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday night.

Danny Freeman, our correspondent, got these comments from Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. Let's listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of Puerto Ricans, they're mad and disappointed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel disrespected, because he doesn't know what we go through. We have been through a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's messed up, because that's my island. I don't want people talking like that. This is not right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Lulu, that comment from that last gentleman there, "That's my island," I mean, this cuts to the core. This goes right to people's heart, heartstrings, when you talk about their heritage like that.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It does. And I think that's why this is having such a huge impact.

It's not just the fact that these are American citizen voters in swing states. It also really just cuts to this idea of how we speak about people, what that language means and how it affects them. The whole big idea behind this rally that Donald Trump had in New York in Madison Square Garden was this sort of closing argument that was supposed to be this festival that was going to showcase him and his strength in what is a very blue city in a blue state.

And, instead, what you have is a huge scandal that has united the Puerto Rican community from Bad Bunny all the way to the archbishop, the Catholic archbishop on the island of Puerto Rico itself, who have all condemned these very crass statements.

ACOSTA: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, I think, at the end of the day, it has done a lot of damage to the Trump campaign.

ACOSTA: Yes, and I do -- I want to go to you next Karen Finney and get your response to all this.

And I should note just to our viewers, if Trump comes in and starts speaking, I may have to cut somebody off. I apologize in advance for that.

But, Karen, I mean, one of the campaigns I covered that this is really reminding me of is 2012. The Mitt Romney campaign, Mitt Romney, Governor Romney at that time, had some gaffes towards the end of that campaign that really -- if you talk to his campaign staffers back in those days, they said those gaffes really hurt him late in that campaign.

Might we be seeing a similar situation here?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely Jim. Look, this is a real crack in the armor that Donald Trump has built up

since 2015, when he made the comments that he could be on Fifth Avenue and murder someone and get away with it. What this is also showing is the cumulative impact of both his time in office and people recognizing that this time around he is talking about revenge and retribution and not about them and their lives.

ACOSTA: Yes.

FINNEY: And, in this instance -- I see we can see the president walking, so briefly...

ACOSTA: Yes.

FINNEY: ... I think the other thing is people realize the disdain that he is willing to let people show for who they are and attack their pride is -- reminds people, he's not for you. He's not going to care about you, because he didn't care enough to say, hey, these comments aren't appropriate.

ACOSTA: And, Shermichael, J.D. Vance weighed in on this yesterday. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I haven't seen the joke that you mentioned. 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)

VANCE: I'm just -- I'm so over it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Shermichael, would you have advised him to respond like that?

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, the campaign had already released a statement as it pertains to this specific remarks from the comedian. So it would have been perfectly fine for the senator to mimic that remark, look, we disavow it, and move on with his statements.

[11:20:09]

I mean, look, Jim, again, I have talked a lot about the vulnerabilities, as I see it as a strategist, from a campaign's perspective if you're on Trump's side. If you're shifting to the vice president's side, you do have an opportunity here.

I have talked about it yesterday, talked about it a whole lot today. The question becomes, with this opportunity, how much of it if you're the vice president do you focus on some of the remarks while also pivoting to potential solutions some of the issues that voters are concerned about?

Because I don't necessarily think those fundamentals change. And there's a delicate balancing act that you have to do when you're trying to get back into a moment like this from your opponent. I think that the campaign on the Harris side's going to have to figure that out as they navigate this over the next 24, 48 hours.

ACOSTA: Tim Naftali?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Look, the Trump campaign is running a populist campaign.

The question that the rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden raised was, who are the people? They're behind you. They're behind the people. Who are the people? Are they just the people that look like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, or are they all Americans?

So, The reason why you have to do more than clean up the rhetoric is, you have got to remind people that your populism is for all Americans. And this is the challenge now that they're trying to run a campaign that will rest on the votes of people of color, which they didn't try to do it in 2016.

They now need to recognize that we the people for their populist movement must include people of color. And J.D. Vance forgot that. And he is the architect of this campaign.

ACOSTA: All right, Tim, I hate to -- yes, I hate to do it.

We're going to go to Trump now. Let's listen up.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... problems, the likes of which we never thought possible.

Bloodshed, squalor to our cities is common. And they have unleashed a war and chaos all over the world. You take a look, everything's blowing up or getting ready to blow up, no respect for our country anymore, no respect for our leadership.

No person that has caused so much destruction and death at home and abroad should ever be allowed to be the president of the United States. You can't have that. You can't have that.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: So I'm running on a plan to save America. We're going to save America. We have no choice. It's the greatest there is. We love it. And we're going to save it. We have no choice.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: And it's going to be saving it from the incredible destruction that's been caused by crooked Joe Biden and Kamala. And she's responsible, because he wasn't responsible. And she never said that.

He didn't know too much about what was happening. Maybe that was exposed during the debate. And yet still the way they took that away from him was not right. It wasn't right. It shouldn't have happened that way. They walked in. They said, we're taking it away. They took -- they stole the presidency of the United States.

You can call it a coup. You can call it whatever. But they stole it. They went in like taking candy from a baby, and can't have that. And she's running on a campaign of demoralization and really a campaign of destruction, but really, perhaps more than anything else, it's a campaign of hate. It's a campaign of absolute hate.

And I said yesterday that she's a vessel. She is a vessel. It's a very big, powerful party with smart people, have to be smart. But it's vicious. They're vicious. And they're perhaps even trying to destroy our country, because who would want open borders, where millions of people can flow in from prisons and from gangs, gangs, the worst gang members anywhere in the world?

Who would want this for our country? Who would want all of these transgender operations all over the place, like, at will, even if you're in detention? I want a transgender. These are things she stood for.

Who wants to defund the police? She's wanted her whole career to defund the police. She only changed recently. She changed on 15 different items, fracking. She was against fracking at the highest level, wouldn't even think about it. Now all of a sudden, oh, I'd like fracking very much.

But they change after the election in about two minutes, and I think Pennsylvania understands that. After two assassination attempts in just over three months, her lies and her slanders are very shameful and really inexcusable.

[11:25:01]

And I can say that if I were president and somebody was being threatened, openly threatened, like they have threatened me, I would say, if you do that, even if this was an opponent, an opponent who I disliked, if you do that, we will obliterate your entire country, and it would all stop.

But they wouldn't make that statement.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: They won't make that statement.

And, essentially, that statement has been made by other presidents, even concerning their opponents, as you know.

Today, we're going to talk about the real character of Kamala, and a person who has no remorse for the anguish she's inflicted upon families all across America. On the contrary, I have to tell you, Kamala intends to conflict and keep this misery going, and she's going to keep it going as long as she can, because that's the only way she can get elected.

She's going out and only criticizing, talking about Hitler and Nazi, and -- because her record's horrible. Her borders are the worst in the history of the world. There's never been a border in the world like this. I always say, in Third World countries, banana republics, they'd fight them away with sticks and stones if they had to.

We let them come in, come on in, knowing in many cases they're murderers, they're drug lords, they're traitors in so many ways to our country, if they were involved in our country at all, even that. They're coming back in. People that left because they were traitors are coming back in. Everybody's coming back in.

And it's at a level that we have never seen before, criminals off the streets. And other countries, from where they're coming, are now setting records, good records for them, where crime is down 70 and 75 percent, because they're taking the criminals off the street. They're emptying their jails into our country.

And they're not finished yet. They're -- I'm amazed. I thought they would have done it by now, but they're -- if you take a look at Venezuela, their crime is way, way, way down. Then you go to Caracas, and you wouldn't recognize it. You can actually walk the streets without being shot or killed or mugged.

It's becoming a safe city, because they have taken all their criminals, most of them. The rest are coming. They're all coming. They have taken their drug dealers, and they have put them into the United States of America. Thank you very much, Kamala. Appreciate it.

But she continues and she will continue this misery. And her policies have caused such harm and such pain. And the three great people up here with me are going to just discuss that for a little while about what's happened to them, how their lives have been shattered.

I'd like to begin with the story of one mother whose life Kamala has utterly destroyed, destroyed this life. And we're talking about thousands, thousands of people in very similar situations. Every day, under Kamala, open-border policies, she -- and, if you remember, Joe Biden appointed her as the border czar.

ACOSTA: We're going to dip out of Donald Trump's remarks there. He is making a number of false claims. So we want to interrupt what he is saying for a few moments and go straight to Daniel Dale, our fact- checker.

Daniel, I mean, one of the things that Trump did just at the start of all of this falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him, we have debunked that so many times. That it's just an outright lie. But what are you picking up on?

I mean, obviously, you have a whole list there, I'm sure.

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes. Immigration has been the most frequent subject of his lying over the last month, if not longer. Just as you were dipping out there, he repeated the false claim that Biden named Harris the border czar. She was never named border czar. She was given a much more limited immigration assignment addressing the so-called root causes of migration in three Central American countries, never put in charge of border security.

He also repeated this fable, this tale that he tells at virtually every event saying that foreign countries are emptying their jails into our country. He has provided no corroboration for that whatsoever. He specifically said that Venezuela has taken their drug dealers...

ACOSTA: Right.

DALE: ... and put them into the United States. I have spoken to people in Venezuela and independent experts on Venezuela. They say they have seen no evidence this is happening.

Trump's campaign has provided no corroboration. And he's made this claim about Venezuela and other countries as well. No proof for -- about those countries either.

ACOSTA: And he has accused Kamala Harris, who he just -- he called Kamala. That is not how you pronounce the vice president's name, we should note. I mean, that has been noted on this program. We're going to note it again.

Talking about Hitler and Nazis and so on. She did not call him Hitler, correct, Daniel?

DALE: She did not, unless I'm missing something dramatic.

ACOSTA: Yes.