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CNN This Morning
Trump Promises "Largest Deportation Program" On Day One; GOP Prepares Court Strategy To Cast Doubt On Election Results; Dodgers Push Yankees To Brink With Game Three Victory. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired October 29, 2024 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:31:20]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, 5:30 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Philadelphia, the epicenter of this presidential campaign, let's be real. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
In the last week of campaigning the -- well, there's some tension between Donald Trump and the critical Latino voter bloc. The Trump campaign has been doing historically well in winning over Latinos. CNN's Harry Enten reporting that Trump "...seems to be on his way to doing better with this group than any GOP presidential nominee since George W. Bush in 2004."
But that data does come before Sunday's controversial Madison Square Garden marathon rally where Trump and his loyalists leaned into anti- immigrant rhetoric.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The day I take the oath of office the migrant invasion of our country ends and the restoration of our country begins. November 5, 2024, 9 days from now, will be liberation day in America.
We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail. We're going to kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.
I'm hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills and American citizen or law enforcement officer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And now, of course, the now infamous remark from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe which referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage." The Trump campaign distanced itself from that joke but Trump's own comments during the rally, namely his calls for mass deportations on day one, do raise questions about how he would do that.
In a "60 MINUTES" interview that aired over the weekend Tom Homan, the man in charge of ICE in Trump's first term and a possible member of his second administration if Trump is elected, offered some insight into how such a plan could be rolled out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CECILIA VEGA, CBS CORRESPONDENT: We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year.
TOM HOMAN, TRUMP ICE DIRECTOR: I don't know if that's accurate or not.
VEGA: Is that what American taxpayers should expect?
HOMAN: What price do you put on national security? Is it worth it?
VEGA: Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?
HOMAN: Of course there is. Families can be deported together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, joining us now is CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein. Ron, good morning to you. Thanks so much --
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC (via Webex by Cisco): Hey, Kasie.
HUNT: -- for being here.
When we talk about this plan -- and, you know, I know -- I know one thing that certainly as I've talked to sources and people in the community, they don't want immigration to be the only issue that politicians are talking to them about.
BROWNSTEIN: No.
HUNT: That said, there are some pretty significant ramifications to what Trump is proposing to do here as well as, of course, we're hearing the inflammatory language at the rally.
What do you make of how this may impact this group of voters, especially in the key battleground states?
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. I mean, the tension here has been substantial through the whole campaign. Trump is not only kind of anticipating but counting on, as Harry said, running better among Latino voters than any candidate since at least George W. Bush -- particularly Latino men -- at the same time that he is proposing a mass deportation program that could have enormous ramifications in that community. At least one in four Latinos live in a mixed status family where some person -- some people in the family are undocumented and others are legal residents or legal citizens.
[05:35:05] And what Tom Homan said on Sunday was a massive escalation of what they are talking about. He was asked how they would avoid family separation during mass deportation. Don't forget when about 5,000 kids were separated from their parents at the border in Trump's first term there was a massive backlash in both parties.
While there are four million U.S. citizen born Hispanic kids with at least one undocumented parent, and by some estimates at least a million more U.S. citizen kids of other nationalities with undocumented parents.
And Tom Homan, when asked how he was going to avoid family separation on really an industrial scale, he said the answer is we're going to deport the kids with their parents. So he is now talking about potentially deporting hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of U.S. citizen children, which would obviously face all sorts of legal challenges but gives you an idea of how deeply this policy could reach into immigrant communities, particularly the Latino community at a time when Trump is betting on that he will improve with those voters to help him in places like Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
HUNT: So what do you think is going on, Ron? I mean, why do think there is this appeal? I mean, you mentioned Bush in 2004. I mean, he ran on an --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- incredibly different --
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
HUNT: -- platform. He was trying to get comprehensive immigration reform done that would have included extending citizenship to many people. Obviously, we know how that --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- policy endeavor ended.
But why is it that this -- that there are so many people --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- especially men in this community who are interested in Trump considering what he's proposing?
BROWNSTEIN: Well, there are three or four reasons, right? I mean, the biggest one obviously is that these orders are affected by the same national dynamics that everyone else is.
And you have many Hispanic families live paycheck to paycheck and they have been hurt by inflation. And they are legitimately disappointed in the economic outcomes of the Biden administration despite all the successes Biden has had in the job market, in the stock market, in investment. Inflation overshadows that for many of them. Second, there is a cultural appeal for Trump's kind of strongman persona -- you know, his kind of swagger. His -- you know, he seems like I think to many of these voters as someone who says what he thinks regardless of the consequences.
Third, and I think this may be the most important factor, in polling we see that most -- many Latino voters do not think he is talking about them. They think he is talking solely about new arrivals despite all the indications from allies of Trump, like Stephen Miller, that their goal here is a broad deportation of people who have been in the country illegally. Many voters who might be affected by this or who have relatives who might be affected by this tend to see it as something talking about only people who have gotten here very recently.
And finally, Democrats have not -- have chosen not to really contest this. You know, whether it's Vice President Harris herself of advocacy groups, they have been reluctant to push back too hard on this mass deportation idea for fear of trying to -- of Trump portraying them as weak on the really separate issue of security at the border.
So Trump has really had the best of both worlds politically. He's been able to energize his culturally conservative base -- all the people we saw cheering to those racist and xenophobic remarks at the Garden. And at the same time counting on improving among the communities that will be the targets of this policy primarily on other issues, especially the economy.
HUNT: Yeah.
Ron, let me show you just a brief clip of what James Carville had to say about the Puerto Rican --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- joke, in particular, and we'll talk about it -- watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: You know how many Puerto Rican voters there are in Pennsylvania, 273,000. This is going to cost a -- this is going to cost him votes. And a substantial Puerto Rican also in Michigan. This is a community that is not going to take well to this, I promise you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: What do you think, Ron? Is he right?
BROWNSTEIN: At the margins, certainly. I mean, I -- it's hard to imagine this will not have an effect. I think Trump is today in Allentown and there will be leaders condemning these remarks. Pennsylvania, Kasie, really feels like the Battle of the Bulge to me in this election and has been all year, even when Biden was there. It is going to be extremely close. We know that Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin usually vote
together but past performance is no guarantee of future results. And Pennsylvania does look a little harder for Democrats this year than the other two. Of course, if Harris sweeps all three and she wins, or whatever happens in the Sun Belt.
[05:40:00]
And this is something that at the margin could be a problem for Trump, which is why you have seen them try to distance themselves from these remarks in a way that they rarely never complain, never explain kind of attitude in the past. But I do think -- it is hard to imagine, particularly given the wave of Puerto Rican celebrities who have amplified this through their social media, that this will not have at least some impact in the state that is most likely to decide the presidency.
HUNT: Yeah.
All right, Ron Brownstein for us this morning. Sir, always so grateful to have you. Thank you so much for being here.
BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.
HUNT: All right.
BROWNSTEIN: One more week.
HUNT: One more week. One more week and then who knows after that, but here we go.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
HUNT: Ron, thank you.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING the 2024 election, as Ron just said, just seven days away. How Trump and his allies may be setting the stage to cast doubt on the election again.
Plus, the Dodgers putting the Yankees on the verge of elimination in the World Series. We'll have that coming up in the Bleacher Report.
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[05:45:30]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.
So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: The night of the 2020 election Donald Trump made it clear he'd be contesting the results in court. This time around it may not be any different. In the four years since his election loss the same Trump allies who helped the former president discredit -- try to discredit the 2020 results have mobilized, preparing an aggressive court strategy aimed at contesting mail-in ballot rules, election certification procedures, and voter rolls. Already, the GOP has been involved in 130 election-related cases.
Among their hardest workers, a grassroots network of Republican activists and lawyers who meet weekly to lay the groundwork for Trump's sprawling legal fight. They are captured here in audio recordings that were obtained by The New York Times.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RON ARMSTRONG, MICHIGAN ACTIVIST, SEPTEMBER 2023: I believe that we're making bigger strides than the left is certainly acknowledging. I know we're making more strides than our own side understands.
NED JONES, ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK OFFICIAL, AUGUST 2024: We need turnout that's too big to rig.
JIM WOMACK, LEADER OF ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK'S NORTH CAROLINA AFFILIATE, AUGUST 2024: When all else fails, if an election -- if an -- you know, an official that lost a close election knows that there were some illegitimate votes that were cast or questionable votes that were cast, they could use this information that we have potentially to challenge the election.
CLETA MITCHELL, CONSERVATIVE LAWYER, MAY 2024: Just remember that what we are collectively trying to do is save our country from the radical left. That's what we're doing. I think God put this on my heart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, joining us now is Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg. Ben, wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for being here.
You also have an op-ed out in The New York Times this morning. They had alerted this massive investigation that they reported out yesterday night -- yesterday evening. You, in your opinion piece, are trying to basically reassure people.
You write this. "Don't expect to know the winner of a close presidential contest on election night -- and understand that this is because of policy choices made by each state. Delays themselves are not evidence of a conspiracy. They should not breed mistrust. If either candidate jumps the gun and declares victory before the votes are counted, dismiss it a political posturing and know that each state's rules will decide the outcome."
Explain more about why you think you need to write this right now, and what you are expecting. BEN GINSBERG, REPUBLICAN ELECTION LAWYER (via Skype): Well, there are certainly recounts in the history of the country and delayed results, but what we saw in 2020 was really sort of what turned out to be systematic falsehoods about the election.
So it is important for people to have an expectation of when the results will actually be produced by the individual state and why that happens. It is not a conspiracy. And you want to guard against the sort of false narrative of claiming victory before all the ballots are counted.
And Kasie, the truth is that period of time between when the polls close and when the results are called by the news media is really -- well, in 2020, was a perilous time. It was kind of the petri dish of election conspiracies. So this time -- the second time through -- we should know what to expect so we're not shocked by that delay in being able to call the winner.
HUNT: So Ben, I mean, what do you expect in terms of how long this may take? I mean, let's assume the polls are right and it's absolutely neck-and-neck in these battleground states, which means they take possibly the longest, right, because it'll be hard for news organizations to look at what we do know and say OK, we can safely say Pennsylvania is going to go this way, so we can call it a little earlier.
What -- how long do you think Americans are going to be waiting, and how long do you think this period is going to be? And if these races are all as close as they look to be, which states are the ones that we're going to be waiting for?
[05:50:05]
GINSBERG: Well, all of this depends, of course, on the tightness of the race in the individual states and in the Electoral College overall -- but historically and sort of practically, the way the states compile their ballots.
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin don't allow the preprocessing of their absentee ballots. So if there are a lot of mail-in absentee ballots in those states it's going to take a while. Pennsylvania even more so because of the way their counties sort of tabulate the votes and really the large number of votes that come into Philadelphia.
In Wisconsin there are many jurisdictions. And on top of that, 39 of them, including Milwaukee, have central counts, which takes longer than if they were to count in the individual precincts.
Arizona will take a while because of the state law that allows people to actually walk their mail absentee ballots into the polling place up to 7:00 on Election Day. Historically, that is a large number of people who take that option. Plus, in Maricopa County -- 60 percent of the state -- they have so many races and initiatives on the ballot that it's going to go to two pieces of paper for the first time, which means there will be twice as many pieces of paper to tabulate. HUNT: All right. Well, Ben, I'm going to have you on speed dial on election night -- I know that. And thank you for helping all of our viewers understand a little bit more about this at this early hour just exactly one week before Election Day. I really appreciate it.
GINSBERG: Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: All right, time now for sports. The Dodgers now just one win away from sweeping the Yankees in the World Series.
Andy Scholes has this morning's Bleacher Report. Andy, good morning.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Good morning, Kasie. I know, what a letdown, right? We were all so pumped for this series hoping we were going to get an epic showdown, but it's been nothing but Dodger domination since Freddie Freeman hit that walk-off home run in game one.
And Freeman was at it again last night. In the first inning he's going to crush this ball off Clarke Schmidt for a two-run home run in the first. It just completely let the air out of Yankee Stadium. Freeman has now homered in every game in this World Series with five in a row dating back to when he was on the Braves. That ties the World Series record. You can go ahead and give Freeman the World Series MVP right now.
Walker Buehler -- he threw five shutout innings. Aaron Judge 0-3 striking out there.
The Yankees getting nothing until two outs in the ninth and it wasn't enough. The Dodgers take game three 4-2 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the Series.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FREDDIE FREEMAN, FIRST BASEMAN, L.A. DODGERS: I got -- when it's all said and done, I can look at that. But the most important thing is what you said -- 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.
AARON BOONE, MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: We're trying to get a game tomorrow, OK? That's where our focus lies. So hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world, but right now it's about trying to get a lead, trying to grab a game and force another one, and then -- and then on from there. But we've got to grab one first.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: Yeah, and game four is tonight.
Now, no team has ever come back from down 0-3 in the World Series. The only team to do it at all was the '04 Red Sox against the Yankees in the ALCS.
And getting the series back to L.A. for a game six also highly unlikely. No team has been down 0-3 in the World Series and been able to even force a game six.
All right. Now, we had the sports equinox last night. The NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, and NHL all in action at the same time.
The Steelers were hosting the Giants on "MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL" and Calvin Austin had a big night. He takes this punt 73 yards for the touchdown. That made it 16-9 Steelers. Austin also caught a touchdown pass.
Now, the Giants did have a chance to tie this game late, but T.J. Watt stripped sacked on Daniel Jones. What a play. That sealed it. The Steelers won that one 26-18.
And finally, Michigan backup quarterback Jack Tuttle announcing yesterday he's retiring from football. Tuttle, who was a -- in his seventh year senior -- he played in two games this season but was still struggling to recover from off-season surgery on his throwing arm.
He also recently suffered the fifth concussion of his career, and he said, "That brought forth the painful truth that I need to start prioritizing my health."
And Kasie, you know, this is the second time we've kind of seen this in the last week. NC State quarterback Grayson McCall also announcing he was retiring after a concussion. Both of those guys say they hope to get into coaching now that their playing days are over.
HUNT: Yeah, tough realities for them but, you know, it does make sense.
Andy, thanks very much.
SCHOLES: You got it.
HUNT: See you soon, I hope.
All right, straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING Jeff Bezos defending his decision blocking The Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle. Why he says the move was critical to credibility.
Plus, Donald Trump playing defense in the wake of his controversial Madison Square Garden rally.
[05:55:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other. It fans the fuel of hate and division.
TRUMP: She and her group of very bad people are truly a threat to democracy. (END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: It's Tuesday, October 29. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Quite a declaration. Donald Trump on defense as Democrats compare his Madison Square Garden rally to a 1939 pro-Nazi gathering.
Plus this --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: If he were elected, on day one he's going to be sitting in the Oval Office working on his enemies list.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: A symbolic speech. Kamala Harris speaks in the same spot where Donald Trump urged his supporters to fight on January 6.
And this.
