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Backlash Grows Over Inflammatory Trump Madison Square Garden Rally; Trump Speaks From Mar-a-Lago. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired October 29, 2024 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: Talking about Hitler and Nazis and so on. She did not call him Hitler, correct, Daniel?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: She did not, unless I'm missing something dramatic.

ACOSTA: Yes.

DALE: She did not call him Hitler she agreed when asked if it was appropriate to call him a fascist. She said, yes, it is. She has not called him Hitler.

And I will note that at recent events, he has broadened this. He has said that not only has she called him a fascist, but she's calling half the country, his entire support base, fascist Nazis. She has very pointedly not done that. She has reached out to average people of all political persuasions, while specifically criticizing Trump, not labeling his entire movement or otherwise labeling average Americans.

ACOSTA: All right, Daniel Dale, we appreciate those fact-checks very much.

We're not just going to air all of these false claims nonstop without any kind of fact-checking, so it's important that you were able to do that for us on the fly, Daniel. Thank you so much.

We will take a quick break, but we're going to continue to monitor this. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:35:29]

ACOSTA: All right, let's go back to Donald Trump's remarks. We will continue to fact-check and reality-check those remarks as they come in. Let's listen.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... people are coming out of Africa, and they're coming from all over the world. They're dumping them at our border, pushing them across the line, and say, don't ever come back.

If you come back, we're going to kill you. And we're stuck with them. But we're not going to be stuck with them for long.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: So, Kamala violated her oath. She desecrated our laws, and she got innocent girls like Jocelyn tortured and killed. Anyone who knowingly sets loose these monsters into our country has absolutely no right to be running for office, let alone the office of president.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: No right.

So, here today is another great person, an American mom, Tammy Nobles. Two years ago, Tammy's 20-year-old daughter, Kayla Hamilton, who had an autism diagnosis, was found raped, tied up and strangled to death with a telephone cord in her home. Kayla's murderer was an illegal alien, MS-13 gang member, among the most vicious gangs anywhere in the world.

I took them out by the thousands thanks to ICE. We're going to protect ICE. Kamala wanted to defund ICE. We didn't have ICE, we'd never get anybody out. They're tough and they're smart and they love our country. But an MS-13 gang member who was apprehended by Border Patrol, but under the policy of our border czar, Kamala, he was released into the United States to kill.

Tammy, please come up and say a few words, please. Thank you. Please.

(APPLAUSE)

ACOSTA: All right, I want to bring in Daniel Dale, Lulu Garcia- Navarro and Alayna Treene.

Alayna, I will go to you first.

And I know you have to be careful because you're talking during a live event. But it does not sound like Donald Trump has apologized for what took place at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. And he really hasn't touched on it that much.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: He hasn't.

And I don't think it's that surprising, as we had discussed earlier, Jim. I think, if he is going to address this or apologize, it will come if he ends up taking questions from reporters. And I apologize. I'm speaking very quietly since this is continuing on behind me.

But, no, he did not address it. He did not condemn or apologize or even acknowledge some of those really inflammatory and derogatory remarks made by other speakers on Sunday. So far, we have really heard Donald Trump kind of go through what has been a typical stump speech for him from all the rallies I have been going to, particularly over the last several weeks. The lines that he's been saying are the lines that we have been hearing repeatedly, that, yes, the economy is important, inflation is important, but we really need to talk about the border. He did address actually some of the comments about -- that we have been talking about a lot lately where Harris was asked if he is a fascist, and he said that everyone's calling him Hitler and it's unfair and that that's not the type of language that should be being used right now.

So he talked about that a little bit before moving on to some other things.

ACOSTA: Sorry to cut you off. We're going to go back to the former president. We're going to listen in, keep fact-checking.

TRUMP: And she knows this is going on. She never called anybody, including the 13 soldiers that were so needlessly killed in Afghanistan with that horrible -- that horrible moment in time where our country was -- just lost all respect from the whole world when they saw that.

That's one of the reasons that Putin went in. He would have never gone in ever. He wouldn't have gone in. If I were president, he would have never gone in. I ended his pipeline in Europe, no problem. And what happened? Biden comes in. He approves it right away, but he kills the Keystone pipeline. Putin never would have come in.

And he didn't, by the way, for four years. There was never a threat that he was going to do that, but he saw weakness. And I think a lot of it was seen in that horrible, that horrible period of time.

She is also aiding and abetting the cartels, allowing vast quantities of deadly drugs to pour unchecked into our country. And remember this. They now have an app. You call the app and you bring whatever you want. You bring them over. They will tell you exactly.

[11:40:09]

Can you believe it? They have an app. And they have airplanes, big, beautiful Boeing airplanes flying back and forth over our border. They were saying, where are those planes coming from? Where are they going? They were loaded up with migrants. They're dropping them out in the Midwest. They're dropping them all over the place.

And I will tell you, if you look at Aurora in Colorado or in Springfield in Ohio, in Ohio, they dropped 32,000 illegal aliens. They tried to give them legal terminology, but it's not, illegal aliens, 32,000 into a 50,000-person town, beautiful town, no problems.

And now they don't know what to do. And they want to be nice and the mayor wants to be nice. His big thing is to get interpreters, because they don't speak English. It's very hard to get interpreters. And he's trying to get interpreters.

But, in the meantime, they're taking up the hospitals. So when people from Springfield would routinely be able to check with the doctor, go to a hospital, they're unable to get in. They're packed. The whole town has changed. And this is happening all over our country.

Aurora probably is an even worse situation, because you have the meanest, worst gang from Venezuela in the world probably, maybe as bad or worse than MS-13. And they have literally taken over the town. They have taken over large sections of the town. They have gone into the real estate business. They have taken over an apartment complex.

They took over a number of complexes where the people are paying them rent. They have become the landlord. Isn't that nice? And they're rough, tough people, and they have the latest weapons. They have military-quality weapons. And everyone's saying, where did they get them?

We got to get them out of here. We're going to get them out fast. We're going to get them out fast.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: So, today, I'm announcing that for the first time under my administration, we're seizing the assets of the criminal gangs and drug cartels.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: And we will use those assets to create a compensation fund to provide restitution for the victims of migrant crime, and the government will help in the restoration.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: The government will help in the restitution, but something has to be done. And we're going to get it done. Kamala has also caused untold misery through her destruction of our economy. Our economy is not -- this is just -- it's like a fake economy.

Some of the best -- some of the best people on Wall Street are saying the economy is only good because they think -- I don't want to say this because other people have said it. It's not me saying it, but they think Trump is going to get elected. That's the only reason our economy is...

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: That's the only reason the stock market is up.

Scott is here, I think, someplace. And he's one of the most respected people on Wall Street. He's been -- he's actually made a very big point of it, that the stock market is only doing well because of the fact that they think Trump is going to win the election. So we will see.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: But Kamala cast the deciding votes that caused the worst inflation in our lifetime, maybe the worst inflation we have ever had, because I don't think they're -- I mean, I know for a fact they're not adding all of the numbers.

If they did, I think it's the worst inflation probably in our -- the lifetime of the country. And it's costing typical American families over $30,000. Nearly half of Americans now say they're broke. Think of that. Half of Americans are saying they're broke, they have no money. Two-thirds say they're living from paycheck to paycheck.

And that's a record. Never -- we have never had that to that extent. We have never, ever had that. Millions of Americans are lying awake at night worried about how they will pay their bills because Kamala wrecked their family finances. And she's done that. She's done nothing good.

They have done nothing good. And I speak of Kamala, but it's partially Joe. But Joe's out of it. Joe's sort of out of it. He's been out of it for a long time. Now she wants to raise taxes for the typical family by $3,000 a year. She's got no empathy for the hardworking Americans whose dreams she's killed and said recently that there is not one thing that she would do differently from Biden.

That's only because she choked. I'm sure she could have come up with a couple of things if she really thought about it, because there's been so much destruction caused by the Biden administration.

[11:45:03]

One of the things that people don't talk about, and the news never talks about, they don't talk about, as an example, Afghanistan,but this is something that's incredible, because when you think of the numbers, 325,000 children are missing, dead, sex slaves or slaves; 325,000 children who came in through the open border are now missing. Many of them are dead. And nobody talks about it.

I said, this must be a mistake. This can't be possible. When I read it first, when I read it, I said, this can't be. You're talking about -- take your largest stadium and fill it up many times. That's what the kind of numbers are.

Here today is Michael Koppy, a small business owner who runs a dry cleaner and is struggling to get by because of what Kamala has done to his business if destroyed small businesses in this country.

Michael, please.

(APPLAUSE)

MICHAEL KOPPY, BUSINESS OWNER: I just want to say thank you.

ACOSTA: All right, we're going to jump out and do a quick fact-check and reality check on what Trump is saying at this event.

I want to go to Lulu Garcia-Navarro first. Daniel Dale is also with us.

Lulu, we should point out -- and I have been listening to these remarks -- he has not apologized for what took place at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, which continues to be an open sore for his campaign. It has damaged his campaign among Latinos.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: He has not apologized. It looks like he is not going to. They're trying to shift the conversation. This is the closing argument, by the way, that he very much wanted to make, the argument that the borders are open, which, of course, is not true, the argument that the Harris and Biden administration caused massive destruction to the economy.

But you heard there that he actually said the economy is quite good. He took credit for it. But he did say that the economy is actually in a good place right now. So I'm not sure which it is. It's bad or it's good.

ACOSTA: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But, at any rate, the fact is that the economy is doing quite well, even though, of course, inflation has hurt many families across this country.

ACOSTA: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I think this is the thing that he was trying to do. He was trying to sort of keep on message. He is keeping on message here.

ACOSTA: Yes.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But you can't erase what was said previous to this. That is the context within which all of this sits, and the attacks on migrants, again, as you heard there, very persistent.

That is the central message that he believes is going to win in this election, that immigration in this country is bad for this economy, bad for this country, and he wants to shut it down.

ACOSTA: And, Daniel, we heard a claim from Trump a few moments ago about missing migrant children in this country. Can you fact-check that for us?

DALE: Yes, he is grossly distorting federal statistics. It is not about missing children.

It is about minors who are migrants who either did not show up for court hearings or did not receive notice to appear for court hearings. Now, there is a risk that people who have fallen out of contact may be vulnerable to things like trafficking. But there's no evidence that many of those people have actually been trafficked.

At recent rallies, Trump has said that many are dead, their parents will never see them again. It is highly likely, experts say, that these people are alive and well, going to school, working. They're just out of contact with the authorities for various reasons.

And, Jim, I will add that he also repeated some other big lies about immigration, saying that migrant gangs in Aurora, Colorado, have literally taken over the town or large portions of it. The Republican mayor of that city, Mike Coffman, has issued a statement in September saying they have not taken over the city. The problems that the gang experienced at a select few properties do not apply to the city as a whole or large portions of it.

He also said that the Biden/Harris administration dropped 32,000 illegal aliens in Springfield, Ohio. That is wrong in multiple ways. First of all, the 32,000 number vastly exceeds local estimates, which are about 10,000 to 12,000.

Second of all, very importantly, the Haitian community there, by and large, overwhelmingly actually, has lawful status in the country.

ACOSTA: Right.

DALE: Republican Governor Mike DeWine said these are -- they are there legally.

And, third of all, nobody dropped them there. The legal lawful immigrants who went there went there of their own volition because there's a Haitian community, there's affordable housing, there are job opportunities. They were not sent there by any federal resettlement program.

ACOSTA: Yes, and Trump lied about them and said they were eating dogs and cats, which, of course, false as well.

Let's go back to Trump.

TRUMP: It was just devastating, devastating. And the response was the worst since Katrina, but, really, a lot of people think it was much worse than Katrina.

And, still, they haven't shown up. They're not in North Carolina. The people of North Carolina have suffered incredibly. And there's just nobody to help them. FEMA has been a total disaster. We had FEMA that was fantastic when we did this, because we had our hurricanes too. We had some bad ones, but we did a great job with it.

[11:50:18]

It's not there. And then you see that they originally blamed and then they tried to take it back, but it was a little late, but they said that the money was spent on bringing illegal migrants into our country. They spent close to a billion dollars. And these were funds. And these were funds that were spent.

And you have to say it. I mean, I was in North Carolina recently, and I looked at devastation that was just -- it was just unbelievable. There was nobody there from the federal government. The local people have done incredible things. Franklin Graham has done incredible things. He's been amazing, but there was nobody there.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: So we're pleased also to be joined by Christy Shamblin, a person I know and I have gotten to know over the last year or so, the mother-in-law of fallen Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee.

Nicole made the ultimate sacrifice during the disastrous withdrawal, not that we were withdrawing. I was going to withdraw, but we were withdrawing with dignity and strength and power. And we were going to keep Bagram, the big air base, because of the fact that it was so close to where China makes their nuclear weapons, one hour away.

We should have kept it. And we didn't do that. But the way they withdrew, they took the soldiers out first. No, you take the soldiers out last. I went 18 months without one soldier. I spoke to Abdul, the leader of the Taliban. We went 18 months without one soldier even being shot at, no soldier being killed for 18 months.

Then we left and you had this group of incompetent people take over. Guys like Milley should have been fired. They should have been fired. Anybody that was involved with that disaster should have been fired.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: She was one of 13 U.S. service members who lost their lives. Kamala said she was the last person in the room, that Kamala was the last person in the room. She was involved in everything. She takes credit for that. She was involved in everything.

That means she was involved in disaster after disaster, because nothing good has happened with this administration, except that our country has gone to almost a Third World status. With Biden, when -- when Biden made a decision, she said she was there. Oh, she was there.

But the Afghanistan decision was a disaster in so many different ways. And now you take a look at it, they're right back to what they were doing before, except much worse, much worse to women. They're worse to women right now than they were even before it started.

But Kamala never reached out to the family members of the warriors. And she said she was going to, but she never did. She never called anybody. And, Christy, I'd like you to come up and say a few words, please.

(APPLAUSE)

CHRISTY SHAMBLIN, MOTHER OF FALLEN U.S. SOLDIER: Hi. Good afternoon. Good morning.

My name is Christy Shamblin. And my daughter-in-law was Sergeant Nicole Leeann Gee. And she was killed in the botched Afghanistan exit at Abbey Gate. She was the cornerstone of a very large family.

And instead of planning family gatherings and holiday meals and Christmases and baby showers, our family and thousands of other families plan outings at funeral grave sites. And that is where we as a family celebrate my daughter-in-law, at Arlington National Cemetery, because she is in the ground.

Her story isn't unique to our family. She's just ours. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of wounded veterans who came home from that war who need our help and who are ignored by our current administration.

President Trump demonstrates peace through strength. I know what he told the Taliban when he was negotiating with them, because I have made it my business to know. And what he said to them when he was negotiating with the Taliban, he said, I will kill you if you harm one hair on one head of an American.

(CHEERING)

SHAMBLIN: President Trump shows up. He reaches out and he can fix our country and we can all heal together.

[11:55:05]

(CHEERING)

ACOSTA: All right, that is Donald Trump holding an event at Mar-a- Lago.

There was some expectation that he might respond to the Madison Square Garden, the highly controversial Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday night. He really did not do that, did not apologize for those remarks there.

He instead is holding this event in Mar-a-Lago where he's engaged in a lot of false claims, one of which we just heard a few moments ago, when he said that FEMA was not responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in places like North Carolina. That, of course, is not the case. That is false.

We're going to stay with this. We're going to continue to monitor it.

But, in the meantime, thank you very much for joining me. I'm Jim Acosta.

Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" picks up our coverage right after a short break.

Have a good day.