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Inside Politics

New Bio Reveals McConnell's Condemnation Of Modern GOP; Republicans On House Panel That Plays Key Role Counting Electoral Votes Hires Two Former Trump Campaign Lawyers; What College Students Think Of The 2024 Race. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired October 24, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has some harsh words for his party under Donald Trump. In an upcoming biography by the Associated Press', Michael Tackett, McConnell says the, quote, MAGA movement is completely wrong. I want to bring in CNN's chief congressional correspondent and host of Inside Politics Sunday, Manu Raju. These are really strong comments from McConnell.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And a lot of this was reserved in the aftermath of January 6th, 2021. Remember how Trump and McConnell, they really worked -- worked closely together through the duration of Donald Trump's time in office. If it weren't for McConnell, Donald Trump would not have been able to dramatically reshape the Supreme Court. Of course, McConnell kept that Supreme Court seat vacant under Barack Obama for more than a year.

Donald Trump got three Supreme Court seats. McConnell also helped usher through a major tax cut law. But in the aftermath of January 6th, McConnell has views completely changed. And he talked about the impeachment trial, the second impeachment trial. Donald Trump, of course, was acquitted. Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Donald Trump.

But he laid level some scathing criticism, not just on the Senate floor, but also to Michael Tackett of the Associated Press. He said, I'm not at all conflicted about whether what the President did is an impeachable offense. He said, I think it is. Urging an insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country.

[12:35:12]

Remember, he justified his decision to acquit at the time because he said it was a procedural argument. It was Donald Trump was out of office. The impeachment trial in the Senate happened after Donald Trump had left office. They said Republicans, like McConnell, said you can't do this to a former president. They thought Trump would be done with the Republican Party at that point. Of course that has not happened.

But he did blame Trump essentially for what happened on January 6th. McConnell also says I don't know whether he could make a conclusive argument that he's directly responsible for them storming the Capitol, but I think it's not in dispute that those folks would not have been here in the first place if he had not asked them to come and to disrupt the actual acceptance of the outcome of the election.

And Dana, Mitch McConnell was so blunt throughout this biography. I -- I've asked him many times over the last several years about Donald Trump, the aftermath of it, their falling out and the like. He rarely wants to engage in this topic but he did hear in this biography. He calls Trump at one point a sleazeball, a narcissist. He called him said not very smart, called him nasty and just about every quality you would not want somebody to have.

But he has endorsed Donald Trump of course and he was asked about -- his office was asked about why he said this or any comment about his comments. He said whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him but we are all on the same team now.

BASH: I mean wow it's certainly a lot and I -- I -- I totally hear you on the argument that he voted no to -- to -- he's voted to acquit Donald Trump in the impeachment trial but imagine if he didn't if he were impeached and convicted, he wouldn't have been able to run for president. So he and Mitch McConnell would have been able to change all of the things that he describes himself in that book.

RAJU: Yes no question.

BASH: Would have been different history. Manu thank you so much.

Coming up, some of the same people who tried to push Trump's election lie in 2020 will have key roles in counting electoral votes for this election. We have new reporting on what could happen on January 6th, 2025. Don't go anywhere.

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[12:41:49]

BASH: Now to some brand new CNN reporting. You may not know much about the House Administration Committee. It's one of the more obscure congressional committees. But its members will play a key role in counting the electoral votes on January 6th. And CNN has learned that Republicans on that panel have hired two former Trump campaign officials who were heavily involved in his fake elector scheme in 2020, quote, the overlap indicates that the same cast of characters involved in the Trump legal ploys are being stationed in key positions on Capitol Hill ahead of Congress', crucial, yet ceremonial role of certifying the 2024 election on January 6th, 2025.

CNN's Annie Grayer broke that news and she is with us now along with Jeff Zeleny. This is tremendous important and frightening reporting, Annie.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: It really just paints a picture about what we could be looking at if Republicans hold on to the House and are in charge of certification. Think of this committee as like the traffic cops on January 6th. They are the ones advising members, you know, about what they can and cannot do on the 6th. And the chairman of this committee is going to actually be up on the dais reading the votes coming in for each state.

So they play a very big role that day and I've learned through reporting that the committee has hired these two former Trump campaign officials. One is a former Trump campaign lawyer -- lawyer, Josh Finley, who according to e-mails that our colleague, Marshall Cohen, obtained shows that he was very involved in the planning of the fake elector schemes from emails that we have around 2020.

And he's going to be on as a contractor with the committee. He just started earlier this month. And he's supposed to be focusing on election poll workers specifically. Then you have Thomas Lane who is actually the chief counsel on the elections subcommittee. So this is the subcommittee that's investigating elections for this entire committee. And he was a Trump staffer in 2020 in Arizona who actually served as a backup fake elector according to documents that we've obtained and was also involved in a lot of the planning e-mails.

So it just raises this question of what happens when you have position -- people in these positions who have different interpretations of what certification means, how that could go on January 6th.

BASH: What do you think Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It certainly is giving a even more of a window now. If you think back four years ago no one really thought much. We've covered a lot of presidential transitions. Some really thought much about the actual ceremonial aspect of what happens on January 6th.

It's always been ceremonial, it's always been that. Now we know obviously it was not four years ago so you're great reporting is shining a light on what could happen, you know, in just a couple months' time. So a reminder that, yes, October is busy on the campaign trail, November potentially very busy in a legal context. And this goes all the way through --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- January. The presidential election is not over on Election Day.

BASH: It sure isn't. Terrific reporting. I encourage everybody to check it out on CNN.com. Thanks for being here.

[12:45:02]

And coming up, our friend Peter Hamby is going around to college campuses talking to young voters both campaigns are targeting.

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PETER HAMBY, HOST, SNAPCHAT'S "GOOD LUCK, AMERICA": First word that comes to mind when I say Donald Trump? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ew, disgusting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Controversial.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ignorant.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Funny.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: American.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dictatorship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Who's winning the Gen Z vote? Peter will be here next.

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BASH: Tomorrow, Donald Trump will sit down with the king of the manosphere, Joe Rogan. It's his latest appeal to his most important demographic young men. Vice President Harris meanwhile has dispatched key allies to college campuses this week to make the case for her and fellow Democrats. Our friend Peter Hamby is on his own campus tour talking to young men. Here's some of what he heard at Penn State yesterday.

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[12:50:14]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm voting for Donald Trump.

HAMBY: Tell me why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like our nation was a lot better under his presidency. And he speaks to himself more as an outsider --

HAMBY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- of course with a little brush. But I don't say I wouldn't have dinner with the guy, so I want to vote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The past four years haven't been great. Like Kamala is only Vice President, used to have power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do want Kamala to win. But Kamala upholds a very violent status quo that I cannot participate in.

HAMBY: Are you talking about Gaza in particular?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Especially with Gaza.

HAMBY: Got it. Who are you voting for? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kamala Harris. There's just some things you can't -- you can't play with. You know, the economy stretches, goes back and forth all the time. But abortion is gone, it's gone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Those interviews were for Peter's Snapchat -- Snapchat show, "Good Luck, America." Peter joins me now from Wayne State University in Detroit. It was a late night last night. Sorry about that, Peter.

This is so fascinating. I want to get a sense of what you are hearing, and then just to kind of put in context some of what we've been talking about in this show today and -- and before, which is, the Trump campaign is so heavily trying to get men, young men in particular, especially those who you talked to who were too young to vote last time, maybe didn't know a lot about what it was, remember what it was like to live in Donald Trump's America when he was -- when he was president.

And they are hitting social media posts, questioning the masculinity of Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, insinuating effectively that if you are a real man, you will not vote for Kamala Harris. Is that what you're hearing? Is it coming back at you?

HAMBY: It's coming back a little bit. But I think it's important to point out with Gen Z, with voters under 30, a lot of their concerns, men and women, are about the economy and inflation. And you guys talked about this earlier in the show, those sort of culture war manosphere issues, UFC, Zin, masculinity, Joe Rogan, those are adjacent to topics like inflation, to concerns about the state of the world, to general anxiety that has existed with young men, because you're exactly right, you know, they -- some of these folks that I've been talking to on this college tour we've been doing for "Good Luck, America" were only nine, 10, 11 years old when Donald Trump was in office.

They also went through COVID when they were coming of age. And so young men in particular, in polls and focus groups bear this out, just have a lot of anxiety about the state of the world. Donald Trump is using some of those cultural tactics to tap into that anxiety. But the issues I hear, Dana, are very removed from the conversations that are currently going on in Washington about --

BASH: Shocking.

HAMBY: -- John Kelly and fascism, you know, about Joe Rogan. Men in particular on these campuses, they don't really care that much from what I've been hearing about these cultural issues. They care about everyday concerns. Again, only about a third of Americans, Dana, have a college degree.

So this is a subsample of younger voters in general. But the young men that I have been talking to in particular, they don't hate Kamala Harris. They actually like her in certain ways. And even young Republicans I've talked to talk about her more warmly than I guarantee they would have about Hillary Clinton. They just say they think the world was better and safer under Donald Trump. The economy was healthier.

One other thing that keeps coming up, too, that you don't hear a lot about in the national media, Dana, is a lot of young men are worried about global conflict because they are of draft age. That comes up over and over and over again in conversations that I've been having over the last few weeks when I've been traveling through all these states on campuses.

BASH: That's really interesting. What other issues are kind of sprouting up when you ask the open-ended question, what's going to determine your vote? And as you answer that, are some of the people you're talking to, well, how much of the universe of the people you're talking to are still undecided?

HAMBY: That's another very interesting point that I was -- I was going to bring up. A lot of, I know this sounds crazy to people like you and me and people in Washington. I am actually encountering a decent amount of undecided young voters out there. And part of it is anxiety about the world. Part of it is the economy. You talk to young Democrats slash people who say they're voting for Kamala Harris, they will say in the same breath that the economy is terrible, that it's harder to get by. And these are people going to college.

So like -- like just think about the people who aren't on campuses and how they're dealing with their day-to-day financial pressures. But, yes, I've heard from a lot of people that they wish there were more choices. You know, some young men certainly said they liked RFK when he was in the race.

[12:54:59]

This is the other thing too about young men. A lot of them actually articulate, and you saw in that clip, they don't like Donald Trump on a personal level. So this whole national narrative that, you know, there this is rah-rah bro vote for Trump, partly true, but a lot of the young men I talked to don't like him that much on a personal level. They don't like the chaos, but they want to vote for him because they feel like the economy would be better.

They see him as a business guy. That might be a sort of facile viewpoint about Donald Trump, but it comes up over and over and over again, you know. And so you do find some undecided voters. The other issue that's very important, this is the hardest generation to reach ever in the history of American politics.

So when I poke people, have you heard about this Kamala policy? She wants to legalize marijuana. People don't even know that. They haven't heard that.

BASH: Wow.

HAMBY: So that shows the kind of pressure that Kamala Harris is under in this short span of a campaign to get her issues out there.

BASH: Yes.

HAMBY: Because a lot of these young people are undecided and haven't heard about the issues.

BASH: Thank you so much for sharing what you're finding on the college shore. Appreciate it. Good to see you, Peter.

HAMBY: Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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