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Trump Says of Liz Cheney: 'Let's Put Her with a Rifle Standing There with Nine Barrels Shooting at Her'; Democrats in Competitive Senate Races Embrace Trump in Last-Minute Campaign Ads. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired November 01, 2024 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, November 1. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
[05:59:36]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK? Let's see how she feels about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Violent rhetoric. Donald Trump going after political foe Liz Cheney with some of his darkest language yet.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We trust women. We trust women to make their own decisions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Winning over women. How both campaigns are trying to appeal to this key group, which makes up more than half the vote.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: "The normal gay guy vote"? J.D. Vance follows his running mate onto the Internet's biggest podcast.
And this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a lifelong Republican.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'm voting for Jon Tester.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Holding the Senate. The new tactic vulnerable Democratic senators are using to hang onto their seats in tough states.
All right, 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Detroit, Michigan. Both campaigns heading to the Wolverine State today. Of course, a critical battleground ahead of Tuesday's election.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Four days out from election day, and former President Donald Trump is escalating his violent rhetoric, suggesting one of his most prominent critics, the former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, should be fired upon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, "Oh, gee. Well, let's send -- let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: "Let's see how she feels when the guns are trained on her face." Let's sit with that for a moment.
Of course, violent rhetoric, it's not new for Trump. But this stark imagery represents an escalation at a tense moment when the country is on edge, heading into Tuesday, with 7 in 10 Americans saying they feel anxious or frustrated about the election, according to a new A.P. poll.
And it comes after Trump has raised the specter of using the U.S. military on Americans he calls the enemy within.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they're being inundated.
But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard
or, if really necessary, by the military.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Throughout the last nearly ten years, with Trump on the national stage, the public rhetoric has gotten darker and more violent with time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP (via phone:) The man that was -- was -- I don't know. You say roughed up. He was so obnoxious and so loud. He was screaming. Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was during Trump's first campaign.
During his administration, he asked his national security team if he could shoot protesters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK ESPER, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: He was speaking to General Mark Milley when he asked that question of, you know, can't you just shoot him? Just shoot him in the legs or something? And I was, you know, shocked by it, to hear this from the president of the United States, saying that we shoot our fellow Americans in the streets of the nation's capital.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was Donald Trump's former defense secretary, Mark Esper.
After Trump left office, he suggested the former chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley, should possibly be executed. Milley's phone call with the Chinese to reassure them in the wake of the January 6th riot was, quote, "an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been death," Trump wrote on his social Truth Social platform.
Then came his 2024 campaign, after actual violence erupted at the Capitol, trying to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 win.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.
TRUMP: Well, you see, the spirit from the hostages. And that's what they are, is hostages. They've been treated terribly. Unbelievable patriots. And they were unbelievable patriots and are.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: He called people put in jail for what they did that day, quote, "unbelievable patriots." And as the campaign has gone on, he has made these promises.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.
And 2024 is the final battle. That's going to be the big one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: This is the final battle, he says. He's talking about the election happening four days from now.
In her closing argument of this campaign, his opponent, Kamala Harris, had this warning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:05:06]
HUNT: That's where we are four days from election day in 2024.
Joining us now to discuss: Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor; Jonah Goldberg, CNN political commentator, co- founder and editor in chief of "The Dispatch"; Meghan Hays, former director of message planning for the Biden White House; and Brad Todd, Republican strategist and partner at the public strategy firm On Message.
Welcome to all of you.
Jonah Goldberg, I'd like to start with you, as we sort of take in the comments that he had about Liz Cheney last night, suggesting that she be fired upon; see how she likes it. What does this mean at this point in the election cycle?
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, I mean, I feel like we're triggering Brad, who works for a company called On Message, that he is not exactly on message here.
Look, I don't think you even need to call it fired upon. He's saying quite explicitly and unambiguously that Liz Cheney should be shot, should be executed by firing squad. That is appalling. It is a small facet of -- of the reasons why he's unfit for office. And the Republican Party has made a disastrous mistake, renominating him. All that said, since we're here for the punditry, I don't know what this gets him. Right? If -- if his problem is freaking out suburban women who don't like the chaos, don't like the violent rhetoric and all that kind of stuff, that's just not a great closing argument: Let's execute a political opponent who happens to be a woman, because I don't like her.
And like, does that pull more low-propensity voters in his coalition to the polls? I honestly don't think so. But maybe they have some data that says otherwise.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I just -- if Access Hollywood did not have an impact in rendering this individual unfit to be elected president of the United States, and then forget everything that happened.
HUNT: Just -- yes, go on.
WILLIAMS: But, but -- OK, then let's forget what happened for the next four years. If January 6th and the rhetoric there did not render this individual unfit for office, and people are still -- have open questions about Donald Trump, then I don't know what else is going to move the needle.
And to Jonah's point, this is -- there is no defending that rhetoric. You can -- we can try to "both sides" anything that anybody says.
But that's -- that was quite explicit what he said there. I just --
GOLDBERG: You would have a hard time selling a jury that that's what he said.
WILLIAMS: I would not have a hard time selling a jury that that's what he said. Although it was a statement made out of court. It might be hearsay, so I don't know.
BRAD TODD, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I'm going to say this in the backwards order because -- so I can get it all out.
I don't think at all -- first of all, I agree with Liz Cheney on foreign policy more than I agree with Donald Trump on some of these questions, or at least historically I have.
He was talking about their difference on foreign policy. Liz Cheney is a hawk. If you listen to the rest of the bite, he says she always wanted to go to war with people. I don't want to go to war with people.
He was saying if she was the one that had to go into infantry combat, maybe she would see it differently. That's a critique Democrats have made about Dick Cheney and other hawks.
HUNT: But staring at nine barrels. You think that that's --
TODD: Yes. He's talking about going -- going to war.
Now, let's go -- now, let's go to Donald Trump's problem.
He this is why he's in a close race. He's ahead in every target state this morning, enough to get 270 in "The New York Times" poll, which is not exactly a friendly poll to him. Saying things like this in this way, he'd be ahead by 6 or 7 if he didn't do that.
If he was talking about the economy this week, if he was talking about crime and the border and things that this administration has failed on.
I mean, yes, he does not choose his words very well. And no, Jonah, he is not on message, but he's -- he is about to win. He's about to win it, despite the way he talks. That tells you how unpopular this administration is.
MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING FOR THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE: I disagree. I don't think he's going to win, but I also think this is going to get people who are conservative Republicans to just stay home.
They might not go vote for the vice president, but they are going to stay home. This is such reprehensible language over and over and over again.
And I agree with you, Elliot. Nothing is moving the needle, but I do think these people are just going to stay home. I just don't think they're going to vote for him. I don't think these people want a president that acts like this.
TODD: So --
HAYS: This is not someone you want representing the United States in foreign countries.
TODD: So is the new Democratic strategy just to get people not to vote and stay home. Is that --
HAYS: No, I'm saying that this type of language makes people want to stay home and not go out and vote for him. I'm not saying it's a strategy by any means.
TODD: Let me be clear, everybody should vote.
HAYS: I don't think they're not going to vote for the down-ballot races. I don't think they're going to continue to vote for him.
WILLIAMS: I -- Brad, I love you. No --
HUNT: That's always the opening line.
TODD: Like, oh boy, here we go.
WILLIAMS: However, my love, no. Is that what you want? Like -- and I -- and this is the question that I would ask of anybody who's not even defending the former president. But to set aside the economy, the tax cuts, the -- the Supreme Court justices and so on. Is this what you want running the country and representing the United States on a global stage?
[06:10:11]
TODD: I think where the American people are right now is they don't want more of what we're doing.
WILLIAMS: Sure. And --
TODD: That's what they don't want. And that's -- that's the choice they have to make on Tuesday. Do they want more of what we're doing? Or do they want some -- something that's perhaps different than what we're doing?
And that's -- this is -- all the elections with an incumbent party are referendums on them.
WILLIAMS: Sure. And if what we're doing is inflation, that is that is several points higher than we want it, is the alternative that on the global stage? That kind of rhetoric, that kind of treatment of --
HUNT: So, look, it's not just rhetoric. OK? No, no, that's the thing. And this is where I trip, Jonah, because I had so many Republicans. I was covering Congress for the entirety of the Trump administration, right?
And I have always found that there are people that I greatly respect who are public servants on both sides of the aisle and many of the people that I respected the most on the Republican side would say, I mean, they'd say one thing in private, in public.
They would say, you know what? It's -- it's going to be OK. He just talks like this. Nothing is actually going to happen. And because these were people who had been respected public servants for a long time, I believed many of them, even as in private, they would say, I'm actually a little bit more concerned about this than I'm willing to let on publicly.
But then we hit January 6th, and there are -- literally were people tearing -- breaking the windows, you know, bear spraying the cops. Several of the cops died in the aftermath of the thing.
And it became very implausible in my mind. And -- and the president of the United States at that time, Donald Trump, who any president is supposed to be the president for all Americans, right? This mob is attacking the building, attacking democracy, attacking the people inside there. And he does nothing. He sends no one for hours. For hours.
So, when I listen to something like this, it doesn't feel hypothetical to me. It doesn't feel like just language.
GOLDBERG: Yes. No, look, I agree with that. And this is one of the reasons why I think that the -- the best-case scenario that a lot of my pro-Trump friends on the right conjure, which is, Oh, we know what his presidency is going to be like. It's going to be a replay of the first one, is so wrong.
Because, as we've learned from the stuff from John Kelly and -- and Esper, some of which you played here, and a lot of other people, there was a whole pretorian guard of the kind of people you're talking about that you covered on the Hill, what I used to call closet normals, right?
Where they actually weren't Trumpy. They just had to say this stuff in the public -- or in front of cameras and microphones. But then behind the scenes, there's like, you know, you -- Paul Ryan would say this often. He's like, you wouldn't believe the things that we stopped him from doing.
HUNT: He called himself the ballast in the ship of state at the time.
GOLDBERG: And so now we have a whole -- Donald Trump has gotten older, crankier, more -- weirdly, more confident, and surrounded by a coterie of sycophants and enablers.
And you're not going to get the Barrs, never mind the Sessions or -- or the Kellys going into the White House. You're going to get the same -- the whole bunch of the remoras, you know, which are the creatures that stick to the side of the sharks, that live down in Mar-a-Lago.
HUNT: Learn something new every day.
GOLDBERG: That -- you know, the suckerfish that live in Mar-a-Lago, who go around saying, you know, sir, you are the greatest genius who's ever lived. And it's going to be a bunch of enablers. And I think that that is something that people just don't appreciate.
WILLIAMS: Using the example of Jeff Sessions, an unabashed conservative who did not make it, on account of straying from the former president.
I do ask the question, what will it take to be fired from the next administration? Like, given the kinds of -- assuming it is Donald Trump? You know, if those are the folks he's putting around him --
HUNT: Well, he's also said, if you read. There's a very interesting interview he did with David Rubenstein for Rubenstein's book about presidents.
And Rubenstein repeatedly asks him, what's the thing that you learned in the White House? And he repeatedly says, you have to hire people who are going to basically do what you want to do.
And there are echoes of Jeff Sessions. But --
TODD: We've now spent 13 minutes talking about people's hesitations with Donald Trump. He's currently a little more popular than Kamala Harris, if you look at fav/unfav ratios. We've not talked about anything about what people's hesitations are
about her. She has said she will not do anything different from Joe Biden. She's not renounced the left on any major policy. She has aides sometimes say hint maybe I won't be that bad.
But she herself won't say she was wrong when she took the leftmost position. Voters know both these people. They have hesitations about both --
WILLIAMS: You're identifying policy differences. No, no. I mean, I think you're identifying what, in a normal election, would have been Romney versus Obama. They disagree on these things. There's a stylistic or tonal difference.
Here, you're talking about fundamental existential questions.
TODD: Policy is an existential question, though.
HAYS: We're not talking about her, because she's not threatening to kill her -- someone who doesn't agree with her. You don't hear her out there, saying that she's going to take a firing squad at someone who doesn't agree with her. That is why we are not talking to her, because the language is reprehensible and abhorrent and not what our country stands for.
And we should not be electing someone that's -- just -- I just don't understand how we can be electing someone, or that he's so popular, that this is what we want to elect America, like for, to represent America. I just -- it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
[06:15:10]
TODD: Well, if she had moved far off the far-left positions and rebuked the left, she would be winning.
HAYS: I just disagree with you. And I just think that they're very different.
GOLDBERG: I agree with Brad about that.
HUNT: Jonah has spoken.
GOLDBERG: She's a terrible -- I think she's a terrible candidate. I don't agree with her policies, but I'm sort of within the P.J. O'Rourke position. She's unacceptable. But within normal parameters. And Donald Trump is unacceptable outside of normal parameters.
And therein lies all the difference. It is a terrible choice for a conservative like me. I'm glad I live in Washington, D.C., so I don't have to vote for any of them, and it doesn't matter.
But I think that the -- the -- where I agree with Elliot is there's an asymmetry between saying she's really bad on policy and he's really bad about talking about using the military against Americans. And --
HUNT: You did come in here, Brad, saying, I'm so thankful for the Constitution. It means that the voting is going to have to stop on the day after the first Monday of November.
TODD: Exactly, yes. The Constitution does guarantee this ends.
HUNT: So, at least there's that.
All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, why J.D. Vance thinks the Republican ticket can win what he calls, quote, normal -- "the normal gay guy vote."
Plus, the new tactics that some vulnerable Democrats running for Senate are deploying to keep their seats.
And if this election cycle has made you anxious, you are not alone. Doctor Sanjay Gupta here to talk about how to navigate it all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anxiety, I think like a lot of people throughout the country. As the polls have tightened over these last few days, it's just hard to tell which way this is going to go right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:21:14]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a lifelong Republican.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a lifelong Republican.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'm voting for Jon Tester.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm voting for Jon Tester.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John got over 20 bills signed into law by President Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He stood up to Biden on the Keystone Pipeline and protected our Second Amendment rights.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Senator Jon Tester, attempting to fend off a competitive Republican challenger in the red state of Montana. Despite the fact that he is a Democrat, Tester is embracing, really, Donald Trump.
And he is not alone. As Democrats fight to maintain control of the Senate with an electoral map that very much favors Republicans, incumbents in red or swing states aren't hugging their own party's presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.
Just watch this ad from Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARYGRACE, OLD FORGE, PA, RESIDENT: I'm a Republican.
JOE, OLD FORGE, PA, RESIDENT: And I'm a Democrat.
MARYGRACE: Our marriage, pure bliss. But on politics, we just don't agree, except for Bob Casey. He's independent. Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Brad Todd, you do a lot of work on these Senate races. And this is really notable. These Senate candidates that are running in these states, are running, it seems, away from Harris and in some cases toward Trump.
TODD: They completely embrace them. I'm working on that race in Pennsylvania for Dave McCormick. And, you know, you can tell Bob Casey is in trouble, like Jon Tester, when they take someone who basically, their party has called Hitler and Donald Trump. And they're saying, Oh, but he's a healthy collaborator with us on legislation.
It's -- it's -- it just doesn't go together.
It also tells you where the race is in these swing states. I mean, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin has done it. Sherrod Brown in Ohio has done it. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania has done it. All these Democrat incumbent senators rushing to tell voters, honest to God, I can work with Donald Trump. What's that tell you about the presidential race?
HUNT: Yes, let's watch that that ad that Tammy Baldwin put up. She's, of course, in Wisconsin. And this Senate race tighter than, I think, a lot of people expected at this point. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WI): We can't let China steal Wisconsin jobs. So, I wrote a law to require American infrastructure projects use American iron and steel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tammy Baldwin got President Trump to sign a made in America bill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Jonah, it's -- the writing is in -- is in the ads, I guess.
GOLDBERG: Yes, someone showed me the other day some lawn signs in Arizona that say "Trump," "Gallego," which is kind of interesting. Gallego being the Democratic Senate.
HUNT: It's entirely possible that's how it goes in Arizona. GOLDBERG: Oh, for sure. I mean, the Gallego -- the Trump-Gallego voter
is a real constituency in Arizona, partly because Kari Lake is so terrible.
But partly because he's a Marine. And so, he's got some cross-cultural appeal. But look -- look, I think Brad's point is entirely right, is that you're -- you have -- there's been a sort of -- there's been a shift from the -- the shift of the FDR coalition has accelerated really dramatically recently.
And that means you're going to get a bunch of people who are sort of traditional Democrats who like Trump. And a lot of these traditional Democrats who have not had difficult races in the past are stuck trying to figure out how to navigate those waters.
TODD: Keep in mind, most of these senators do -- did not vote with Donald Trump. They voted 98 percent with Joe Biden. They don't vote with Republicans. They don't talk like Republicans, except when they're right next to the election. So, that is a little bit of a different switch, too.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, tension, anxiety. What a majority of Americans say they are feeling ahead of the election. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to talk through how to work it out, some of that nervous energy.
And just four days out, Trump takes the stage in Arizona while Kamala Harris rallied in Vegas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: We all know who Donald -- Donald Trump is. This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. this is someone who is increasingly unstable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:29:19]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back to CNN THIS MORNING. If it's Friday, it's Michael Smerconish.
Michael, good morning to you. I'm thrilled to have you, as always. And this is the last Friday before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which means it's the last time you and I are going to get to talk before election day.
And I'm anxious to know what you think here in the final days: where this race stands, where we're headed. Candidly, I feel like we may be in the calm before the storm, but you tell me if you disagree.
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, CNN'S "SMERCONISH": Thank you for having me. I've looked forward to these Monday -- Friday morning get togethers. I really have. The big question on my mind is Donald Trump underperforming again in
the polls. Because you know what happened in 2016. You know what happened in 2020. In three runs for the presidency, he's never been in this strong.
