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Some MAGA Voters To Try to Undermine Election if Trump Loses; All Eyes on Pennsylvania; Trump Suggests Liz Cheney Should be Shot; Trump: RFK Jr. to Work on Health and Women's Health. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired November 01, 2024 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[10:33:16]
JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Some MAGA activists are already vowing to undermine the results of the election if Former President Donald Trump loses before any votes have officially been counted. Members of the Stop the Steal movement are outlining their step-by-step guide to stop a potential victory for Vice President Kamala Harris.
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan spoke to these MAGA activists about how they view the election.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like how much theft can they get away with in order to prevent Trump from winning?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Do you think he's going to win?
ENRIQUE, TRUMP SUPPORTER: If we have a fair election, yes.
O'SULLIVAN: There's no way he can lose fairly?
ENRIQUE: Fairly, there's no way he can lose.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): MAGA World is preparing its followers for a stolen election.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're just going to announce Harris is the winner. We're going to go, we win, again. And not try to stop us, again. And what's different this time is we're going to be able to stop them.
MARK BUMBS, PASTOR: Is there anybody here in North Carolina ready to take this nation back by any means necessary? Say yes, yes, yes.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): They're laying out step-by-step plans to overturn a potential Harris victory. These are not random Trump supporters, these are influential figures in the MAGA movement.
IVAN RAIKLIN, MAGA ACTIVIST: It's all going to depend on what they end up doing. I have a plan and strategy for every single component of it, and then January 6th is going to be pretty fun.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Many of them, like Ivan Raiklin and Michael Flynn, have huge audiences online, and are involved in election denying groups that have spent millions of dollars furthering election conspiracy theories.
MICHAEL FLYNN, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: And we should know, by Tuesday night, by about 9:00 or 10:00 at night, that one party won.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Election officials across the country have explained that we likely won't know the full results on election night. To conspiracy theorists, however, that is a sign of fraud.
[10:35:00]
FLYNN: In this case, I strongly believe that Donald Trump, if this thing is a fair election, he'll win all 50 states.
RAIKLIN: Now, if it's legit, we don't have to worry, right? Well, who thinks it's going to be legit? You think they're just going to give it to you? No. This is going to be a fight.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Raiklin has encouraged people to pressure their state representatives not to certify election results if they suspect fraud.
RAIKLIN: We try to play fair, they steal it. Our state legislatures are our final stop to guarantee a checkmate. Be prepared on January 1st to apply the maximum motivation to your state reps, state senators.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): In North Carolina, he and another right-wing activist are going as far to say there should be no election because of the destruction after Hurricane Helene. They say the Republican controlled state legislature should decide which presidential candidates gets their Electoral College votes.
NOEL FRITSCH, NATIONAL FILE BLOG: We don't have to do this popular vote in the state stuff or this federal election. We don't have to do it.
RAIKLIN: You got 120 House reps. How many of those are Republican? The majority. How about a significant majority? So, then how is the House body going to likely vote with your motivation for the Republican nominee? What about the Senate? Majority?
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): The idea is fringe and it is extreme, but a Republican congressman endorsed the idea at an event with Raiklin.
REP. ANDY HARRIS (R-MD), CHAIRMAN, FREEDOM CAUCUS: It was, hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties, you know what that vote probably would've been -- which of which would be if I were in the legislation enough to go, yes, we have to convene the legislation. We can --
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Before eventually walking it back. The idea that the only way Harris can win is if the election is stolen is being pushed across hundreds of MAGA media outlets and from the former president himself.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Because they cheat, that's the only way we're going to lose because they cheat.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): And it's convincing his base.
O'SULLIVAN: What if the results show that Harris won? Do you think Trump will accept that?
JUDY, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I don't think anybody will accept that because we know it's going to be a lie. But if that's what it is, it's what it is. We'll go from there. We'll see what happens.
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
JUDY: So, I just don't think that Trump's going to lose.
O'SULLIVAN: You think he won last time?
JUDY: Oh, definitely.
O'SULLIVAN: What happens if he loses?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If he loses --
GINA, TRUMP SUPPORTER: We're all going down January 6th.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): And, Jim, look, I think if we would have done that piece a few years ago, four years ago, we would have said, look, it's a lot of rhetoric here. It's some guys doing a lot of tough talk. But we know the history now. We know that, you know, a lot of these same people who were talking about this sort of thing four years ago and it resulted in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
So, look, without sounding too -- without being too scaremongering here, look, January 6, 2021 came as a huge surprise to most of the country, most of the world. Not to say that that exact same thing is going to happen again, but you can clearly see that these guys are lining up for a fight.
ACOSTA: That's right. And Trump is stoking things just today with his comments about Liz Cheney last night that obviously gets absorbed by those MAGA activists and presents all kinds of potential security problems, actual security problems for Liz Cheney. Donie O'Sullivan, very important report. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
O'SULLIVAN: Thank you.
ACOSTA: Coming up, it's the state that held the key to Biden's 2020 victory for President Biden. Next, I'll speak to former governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, on the role the state is playing this time around. That's coming up.
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[10:43:10]
ACOSTA: The battleground of Pennsylvania is set to be a deciding factor in the 2024 election. The latest polling there shows a tie between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump. And joining me now is a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett. Governor, welcome back to the program. Enjoyed our last conversation.
I have to ask you first to get your reaction to Trump's comments on Liz Cheney. I'm sure you've seen them this morning. If not, we can play them for you, but he has suggested that she should be shot and I'm just wondering what your thoughts were on that.
FMR. GOV. TOM CORBETT (R-PA) AND PENNSYLVANIA ADVISORY COUNCIL CHAIRMAN, KEEP OUR REPUBLIC: Totally shocked. I've told people before, we usually have an October surprise or sometimes an October fumble. Well, this is in my mind, a fumble of magnitude beyond comprehension that he would even think of something saying something like that, even think it in the first place, but to say that in public.
ACOSTA: And so, you think this could cost him the election?
CORBETT: Well, I think it goes much more beyond the election right now. One thing that they say it's amazing here in Pennsylvania. It's 50/50 or thereabouts across the country, depending on the state you're looking at. This race is much closer than many people anticipated. I speak of this as, right now, in my role was the chair of the Pennsylvania delegation of Keep our Republic, trying to stay as neutral as you can.
But when you hear things like this, if I was running for office and I would have said something like that, I just couldn't have done it, could not have done.
ACOSTA: Yes. And I know from our last conversation, you have tried to stay neutral in this race and I totally respect that. But when Donald Trump is out there saying that she should -- that Liz Cheney should be shot with guns trained on her face with nine barrels going after her and so on, I guess -- and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but how do you stay neutral at a time like this when those kinds of things are being said? If you don't mind me saying that.
[10:45:00]
CORBETT: Well, I look at it this way. The people who have heard that, who have seen that, they have -- and they're voting, they have to make a decision as to how that's going to go. I told everybody my vote is a secret vote. I will vote on Election Day. But when you see actions like that, you certainly have to question the ability of somebody to continue to function in the role as president.
ACOSTA: You think this may speak to his mental capacities? Is that -- if I may follow up?
CORBETT: Oh, well -- OK. So, I'm not going to -- I look at it this way, if I'm a voter out there and they take me out of it, would that affect my election or my vote? Yes. Does it affect the family members of mine? Absolutely. This is a -- you know, we -- this is a government of laws. This is a government of -- the rule of law is how we function. And this is clearly not a lawful action.
If you see, he's thinking about it this way, you know, people are going to make a connection to that. And in this day and age, as you know, with your CNN and everybody else and communications, you say something one minute, it's across the country, in everybody's cell phone in the next five minutes. It doesn't help you when you're trying to run for president.
ACOSTA: And, Governor, Trump is already so in doubt about the election, especially in Pennsylvania. He's been making allegations of fraud and so on, even though we don't have any evidence of that at this point. Obviously, there are things that popping up that are being investigated at this point. What is your response to what he has been saying about that?
CORBETT: Well, Jim, as you know, and you use the right word evidence, I continue to ask for evidence from four years ago. Show us the evidence. You can say anything you want, but we don't have to believe it. And people will continue to look at their cell phones and say this happened or that happened. We still haven't seen any evidence of that.
And what's troubling is with his statements like that, he is impugning the integrity of every poll worker that volunteers or gets paid a stipend, a very small stipend, to work a long day at the poll counting elections. So, I have a problem with that.
ACOSTA: All right. Former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, thanks so much. We appreciate it. We'll be right back.
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[10:52:12]
ACOSTA: Former President Donald Trump has promised that if elected, he will let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., quote, "go wild on health." This apparently also includes women's health issues.
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TRUMP: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. we have, and he's going to work on health and women's health and all of the different reasons, because we're not really a wealthy or a healthy country.
He really wants to -- with the pesticides and the -- you know, all the different things. I said he could do it. He could do anything he wants. If he wants to look at the vaccines. He wants everything. I think it's great.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ACOSTA: CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner is here. Dr. Reiner, I don't know where to start there, so I'll just let you speak. But what would happen to public health of this country if RFK Jr. is somehow in charge?
DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Oh, it would be -- we'd be wild. I can't imagine a worse person to put in charge of the public health in the United States. Mr. Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist. He's just a wacky conspiracy theorist who's not just unproven ideas, but disproven ideas are wrapped in sort of a faux layer of respectability provided by his last name.
You know, he has said that vaccines cause autism. They don't. He said that no vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective. They have. He has said that giving children vaccines is criminal malpractice, and that is crazy. He has said that the coronavirus was bioengineered to spare Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, which is a very interesting mix of, you know, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. And I could go on.
ACOSTA: No. And what's remarkable about this is Trump's embrace of RFK Jr. and this vaccine nuttiness when the coronavirus vaccine was developed during the Trump administration by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
DR. REINER: Right. And what's really ironic for me, which is that the one unimpeachable, pun intended, aspect of the former president's administration was the spectacular production -- you know, design, testing and production of the covid vaccines, which saved probably millions of lives.
And, you know, what he should be doing, every single day on the stump, is telling people that he was such an amazing president that he was able to do what no one else has ever done, which has produced these lifesaving vaccines in less than a year. Except when he tried to do that, he got booed.
ACOSTA: Yes.
[10:55:01]
DR. REINER: He got booed. So, he learned that he can't go on about his one fabulous achievement. But Robert F. Kennedy is somebody that appeals to him.
ACOSTA: And, Dr. Reiner, you and I both know, because we talked about this on team times during the Trump presidency, even while that vaccine was being developed. Trump was undermining his own public health professionals by saying that the coronavirus was going to go away, that people should not socially distance and so on. And so, in many ways, he does sort of fit in with RFK Jr. and the vaccine skeptics and nuts and that sort of thing.
DR. REINER: Well, you know, the original sin of our pandemic response is that the virus unfortunately came to the United States in an election year. In an election year where that candidate was willing to do anything to get re-elected, and he mistakenly thought that playing down the significance of the virus would be his easiest -- the easier path to re-election.
But what he needed to do is make himself the virus president, you know, make that his war and defeat that enemy, but he chose not to do that. He chose instead to lie. And that was -- and that created all kinds of uncertainty in the effectiveness of masks and distancing and ultimately, vaccines.
ACOSTA: You name it. That's right. Yes. And I talked to Trump advisers at that time, after he lost the 2020 election, who said it was his handling of the coronavirus pandemic that sunk his presidency by and large. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Always good to talk to you.
Coming up, escalating his violent rhetoric just four days from the election. How Liz Cheney is responding to Donald Trump saying she should be shot. That is coming up.
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