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Scott Michael Greene Sought After 2 Cops Killed; 6 Days To Go: Clinton, Trump Make Final Pitch; Trump, Clinton Delivering Closing Arguments; Black Turnout Dips in Early Voting States. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 2, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:16]

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We do begin with breaking news out of Iowa, a manhunt under way right now to find this man, Scott Michael Greene, after two officers were ambushed and gunned down. Police say both officers were sitting in their patrol cars at the time and found just miles apart from one another, Greene was last seen driving a blue 2011 Ford F-150 truck with the Iowa tag 780 YFR, officials issuing a warning last hour.

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SGT. PAUL PARIZEK, DES MOINES POLICE: There's a possibility that he's armed. And it will be dangerous. We don't want anybody to approach him. If they see him, if they do, just call 911.

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COSTELLO: CNN's Jean Casarez is following the latest developments for us this morning. What do you got, Jean?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, officers are saying that they are going door to door. They do believe finding eyewitnesses will be difficult at this point. But this is nine hours ago, almost, that this happened. And so he could be anywhere. And they say they need to find him. They are calling him a suspect. That he has vital information. They need to talk to him about. But of course, who is saying if he is even in Iowa at this point because interstates are so close.

Now, we want to tell everybody exactly what happened. A little after 1:00 this morning, in Urbandale, a very small community outside of Des Moines Police Department, 50 officers. But they hear that shots have been fired. So officers rush to the scene and they find one of their own sitting in their patrol car and he had been shot and he was deceased. They then get an all-points bulletin for officers in the area to be on the lookout for someone who shot one of their officers. They then come upon a Des Moines officer who is believed to have known what had happened that was trying to get in the area to help in this manhunt at this point. He had been shot in his patrol car at an intersection. He was still alive. He was rushed to the hospital and he was pronounced dead. Now, family members are still being notified of the officers. We don't know their names but there have been two press conferences. Listen to what the Des Moines police department is saying right now.

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PARIZEK: These officers were ambushed. On the surface right now, just like I said, we are just a few hours into this. It doesn't look like there was any interaction between these officers and whoever the coward is that shot them while they sat in their cars. That's the best we got, that we can explain the scene right now. Both of them were in their cars.

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CASAREZ: They are still processing the crime scene. They do say that they do know the weapon that was used. They are not releasing that information but there is a manhunt right now because they believe all officers are at risk, clear and present danger. And they are pairing up their officers. But once again, you showed the license plate, this person could be anywhere. Nine hours is a long time. And when you have a pickup truck he had, you could go many places.

COSTELLO: It's a nationwide manhunt. Hope someone sees him. Jean Casarez, thank you so much.

All right, let's talk a little politics now. Six days until the election and every minute matters. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, full throttle on the trail, the Clinton camp unleashing major surrogates in every direction. Next hour, Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden hold event. In the meantime, Trump hits Florida today and Pence makes the play out west. And take a look at this. CNN's new Poll of Polls, shows Clinton with a five point advantage over Donald Trump. We are covering all the angles with our team of political reporters for you. But let's begin in Orlando with CNN's Phil Mattingly. Good morning.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Carol. Over the course of the last 48 hours we have seen a very noticeable shift from Hillary Clinton and her campaign. They are still very angry at the letter FBI Director James Comey sent to Capitol Hill. They don't believe that his rationale is solid at all. But there is recognition, with just six days left, they need to shift their focus and shift their message. That means that focus is going to Donald Trump and as you noted, Carol, going out west today to Arizona. Arizona, a Republican stronghold kind of state, state that Democrats rarely play in. But the Clinton campaign is willing to. Why? They are looking at early vote data that shows a major uptick in Latino votes. That is the reason they believe it's a battleground state. That's the reason they believe it's actually a toss-up. That's the reason they are going to continue to press for the Latino vote with this ad. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 27 million strong, all ready to vote for freedom, equality and reason, traits that seem to have gone out of season. A vote to make a difference, to fight indifference, to silence the ignorance, because when you are 27 million strong no one can tell you that you don't belong.

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MATTINGLY: Now, Carol, when you look at early vote data across the country, there are definitely positives and negatives for both parties but one clear positive across all the early voting states has been that Latino vote. It's been ticking up across the country. And Clinton campaign, going to continue to focus on that. They acknowledge Arizona is a toss-up at best. But Hillary Clinton willing to go on

[10:05:16] the ground there but as I noted, shifting the focus, again, trying to make this a referendum not on the FBI, not on her e- mail server but on Donald Trump. She even lashed out a little bit yesterday here in Florida at one of his supporters who was protesting her rally. Take a look.

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HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I Love this country. I think we already are great. Now, I think we can be greater. And you know I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump. It is time for us to say no. We are not going backwards. We're going forward into a brighter future.

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MATTINGLY: Carol, that's about as fired up and off-script as you see Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail and it really resonated with the audience, fired them up. Now, one of the most interesting elements here as we head into this home stretch, the money. Where is it all going? Who's spending it? I have bad news, Carol, for family in Ohio and all those battleground states. They are still going to be inundated with ads to the tune of $44 million. That's more than 25 million from Clinton and supporting outside groups, more than 18 million from Trump and supporting outside groups.

And one interesting side note about those buys. Where the Clinton campaign is spending money on TV right now, in blue states, they announced yesterday, like Colorado, like Virginia, like New Mexico. Trump campaign says that means they've got problems. Clinton campaign says we are just flushed with cash and want to protect where we already hold solid ground. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Phil Mattingly, reporting live from Orlando this morning. As for Donald Trump, his campaign is denouncing a show of support from the KKK's official newspaper as in the Ku Klux Klan. The issue seen here are as Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again." It says the way to greatness is to become a, "White Christian Republic." Let's bring in CNN's Sara Murray more. She's in Washington. Good morning.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol. Well, the Trump campaign was very quick to offer a rebuke of this, endorsement from the newspaper. I want to read to you the statement they put out, saying.

"This publication is repulsive and their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign."

And this sort of matches what we saw from them yesterday when they immediately condemned the robocalls from a white supremacist on behalf of Donald Trump but not from the Trump campaign that were designed to slander third party candidate Evan McMullin. But the reason this has been an issue for Donald Trump as we have seen him over the course of the last year and a half, struggle for a while to separate himself from David Duke. It took him a couple attempts to condemn David Duke. And we also have seen him retweet white supremacists chasing millions of Twitter followers.

Now, a while back, the campaign realized this was a problem. People thought Donald Trump was racist. They thought the GOP nominee was racist. So, they made a concerted effort for him to make appeals to black voters, to go campaign in some inner cities. And talk about how he wants to run to be president for everyone. Now, obviously as were looking at these early vote totals we still are seeing a depressed African-American turnout and we certainly haven't seen Donald Trump make very much in terms of inroads with this community. They may not be excited for Hillary Clinton but we not seeing them turn out in droves for Donald Trump either. But one thing is clear. The Trump campaign does appear to have sort of learned a lesson about distancing themselves quickly when they get this kind of support.

COSTELLO: All right, Sara Murray, reporting live from Washington. Thank you. So let's talk about all that and more. Jackie Kucinich is with me. She's the Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast." Asma Khalid is a political reporter for "NPR." She joins me as well. Welcome to both of you.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST AND WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF "THE DAILY BEAST": Thank you.

ASMA KHALID, POLITICAL REPORTER "NPR": Thank you.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. So, Jackie, I know that national polls are tightening but Clinton still leads in large numbers among women, African-Americans, young people and Hispanics. So, help us understand why this race appears to be so close.

KUCINICH: I mean, we knew this would be tight until the end. I mean, while we saw the polls sort of air out, a week or two ago, because of this, because of a lot of different reasons, you do see that this is narrowing. Now, black voters in particular, they are having trouble getting them out in places like North Carolina, Florida and so that's one of the reasons you see President Obama going to North Carolina today to really rally people up and make sure they get to the polls. -- So it's going to be a game of the margins. It has been a game of the margins.

It's also why you see Clinton start talking about Trump's attitude toward women. Her new ad that she's running in some of those blue states right now is about what Trump says about women. So, to remind women of, you know the things that Donald Trump has said. And so, you know, maybe they consider who haven't voted yet consider voting for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump.

COSTELLO: OK. I just got an interesting campaign advisory from the Trump campaign. -

KUCINICH: Right.

COSTELLO: And I'll ask this of you, Asma, because we know that Hillary Clinton has

[10:10:16] surrogates everywhere, right? And Donald Trump, we rarely hear about a large number of surrogates appearing in any kind of battleground states for him. But I just got this right now and it lists surrogates that will be out over the next couple of days. Including Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Tiffany Trump, Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be in Iowa, Newt Gingrich is going to go to Colorado, General Keith Kellogg is going to be in Virginia, Melania Trump, of course is going to give her big speech Thursday, in Pennsylvania, in the suburbs there. Will that help?

KHALID: You know, it's really hard to say, Carol. I mean, a lot of those names you mentioned have the last name Trump so they are certainly family members of Donald Trump's, who will be out making the case for him. Look, I think, at this point in the game, it seems like a lot of voters have already made up their minds. And I say that partly because when you look at early voting numbers, we are looking at record early voting participation. I think this morning over 28 million Americans had already cast a ballot either by mail or early in-person voting in the presidential election. And certainly, I mean, that doesn't mean that all people have voted, I mean, we are still talking about 2/3 of voters who will probably wait until Election Day. But at this point it seems like folks are just trying to shore up the base of supporters they have, be they Democrat or Republican, rather than fundamentally change minds.

COSTELLO: But Donald Trump is banking on that because he said -- I think he said it last night that if you cast an early vote, there's still time to change it. Here's what Donald Trump said about that.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a message for any Democratic voter who have already cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton and who are having a bad case of buyer's remorse. You can change your vote to Donald Trump who will make America great again, OK?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Jackie, you can legally do that in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania but you heard what Asma said. -- Will people really change their votes at this late date?

KUCINICH: Yes, that's something that can happen in I think seven states, and it is extremely rare. I don't know that people are going to be running in droves to change their votes at this point. I think she's absolutely right that there are -- I mean, I know people who have gone to vote, who said, oh my gosh, I'm glad that's over. They just want to be done with it at this point.

So, -- it will be interesting to see if that does happen but it certainly doesn't seem that the movement is that way right now, especially with the e-mail scandal that broke last week, that's sort of something that's baked in. And while we haven't seen a lot of polls since that happened, the ones we have seen show that that is not an issue that's really changing people's minds about Hillary Clinton. But you know we'll see what comes up tomorrow. - You'll never know.

COSTELLO: You'll never know. So Asma, you know, a lot of people say, you know, they don't like either candidate, they don't know if they are going to vote. But you mentioned early voting and the record numbers of people turning out. So do you really think that people will not go to the polls on Election Day?

KHALID: You know, I think part of the earl voting, and Jackie just mentioned this, is that people are so fed up. They just want to be done with the process. And I was speaking with the early voting elections guru, Michael McDonald, yesterday. He's based out of the University of Florida. And he told me a lot of what we are seeing with early voting, are people who have already made up their minds who just want to get the process done with. And I can't tell you the amount of times I have heard that from folks this election cycle. You know, we have people who are so fed up with the process. So fed up with how long this has gone on and they just want to be done with it all, at this point.

COSTELLO: I can so relate to that. Jackie Kucinich, Asma Khalid, thanks to both of you. Coming up in the "Newsroom," the strong ground game, last minute ads, top tier surrogates, what will it take to get Clinton or Trump across the finish line? Two former campaign managers tell all.

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[10:18:16] COSTELLO: Two campaigns, two very different strategies for the final sprint to Election Day.

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TRUMP: You can change your vote to Donald Trump who will make America great again, OK? She is not going to make America great. She will never make America great. The Clintons are the sordid past.

CLINTON: My opponent can say whatever he wants about me. I don't really care. If you know anybody who's thinking about voting for Trump, well, first of all, stage an intervention.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: Every day counts, every attack matters and don't mind two next guests know that. So how would they handle these last days of the campaign? With me now is Jeff Weaver, he's the former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders. And Fred Malek, he was the campaign manager for George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle in '92. Welcome to both of you. --

JEFF WEAVER, FORMER CAMPAIGN MANAGER BERNIE SANDERS 2016: Thanks Carol.

COSTELLO: I'm so excited to talk to you about this because I just got your super-secret e-mail of advice to these candidates. And it's fascinating. So, Jeff, I will start with you. So if you take yourself out and you just look at Donald Trump as maybe your candidate, if you can do that, what advice would you give him in these last days?

WEAVER: Well, I would say when you're at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, lying in bed in your underwear. Do not go on Twitter. That was my first piece of advice. And I would make sure that I stuck to the scripts that my people wrote, stick to the teleprompter, and that's the best thing he can do. Try not to offend any more large segments of the American population. Those are my three pieces of advice. No Twitter, -- read the teleprompter and don't offend large groups of people.

COSTELLO: OK. So Fred, what advice would you have for Donald Trump?

FRED MALEK, FORMER CAMPAIGN MANAGER GEORGE H.W. BUSH AND DAN QUAYLE 1992: Well, I can't disagree with anything that Jeff said. I mean, I think he's on the mark. But here's what I think. Number one, he needs to calm down. He needs to be presidential. He needs to stay off of "WikiLeaks." He needs to stay off of the FBI stuff, because the media will take care of that. Two, he's got to focus on

[10:20:16] what's important in the country, improving the lives of the middle class, improving respect around the world, improving our stance on immigration. He's got a bad rap on immigration. He should talk about he's for legal immigration and he's for humane way to deal with those who are here illegally but he needs - we need to work on it.

And finally, he's going to need to have a closing ad campaign with an injection of at least $100 million of his own money which emphasizes what he stands for, the changes he's going to bring about to help the middle class including creation of jobs and the replacement of Obamacare.

Let me add one more. I don't know if Jeff will agree with me or not but I think there's a segment of the voter out there, a demographic that we haven't heard about before, called the "hold your nose" demographic. It's if you can get enough people who don't want to vote for Hillary, who don't trust Hillary, to hold their nose and vote for you, you are going to win. And it's the same on the opposite side. A lot of people don't like either candidates and they are going to have to hold their nose and vote for the least, objectionable of the two. You want to be the least objectionable. COSTELLO: Yes. I think we all agree on there's a lot of those kinds of voters out there. So, let's focus on Hillary Clinton, Jeff. What does she need to do in these final days?

WEAVER: Well, I think they need to do what they have been doing. They need to focus on the battleground states. I think she has the votes to win out there in the world if you believe the polling and I think most of the polling backs this up. And they have to get the vote out. That's what they have to focus on. They have got to stick with battleground states. They've got to get the vote out.

And the other thing I would say, Carol, in addition to that is they need to make sure that this election does not turn into just a referendum on Trump. Hillary Clinton has a lot of bold plans for the country and if those are not talked about in the final days of this campaign, when she wins on November 8th, she won't have the political wind behind her to help push those things forward. So they've got to -- I know it's tempting to beat up on Trump but they have got to put out their positive message in this final week.

COSTELLO: So Fred, your advice to Hillary Clinton?

MALEK: Well, I agree with some of what Jeff said and not all of it. I do think turning out the vote is going to be the most crucial thing she can do. I would advise her to above and beyond all else, stop yelling. Speak to the American people in a calm and resolute manner but stop the yelling. It just doesn't work. In terms of substance versus attacking Trump, I think she's got to continue to go after Trump and try to make him a less acceptable alternative than she is. By the same token, of course, she's got to emphasize some of the positive things. But I think our policies, the Republican policies are better than Democrats, so I don't think those are winners for her.

COSTELLO: So, just a final question about the negativity because both candidates have gone very, very negative, Jeff. -- How does that affect voters? Does that make them more excited to vote? Does that make them really hate the other candidate more?

WEAVER: Well, what you have to worry about is, if you just excite people who are already excited about you, that don't really do much for you because they were going to vote for you anyway. If you are looking for what we call persuadable voters in this phase of the campaign, you want to give those people a reason to vote for you as well. I have to say I don't -- I do disagree with the comment about the shouting. I just saw the clip you played with Hillary Clinton very animated, very genuine and authentic on the stump. I think that actually works for her. I think while Donald Trump should stick to the script, I think sometimes Hillary Clinton sticks too much to the script and I think people should see more of the authentic animated Hillary Clinton. I think that would do a lot for her.

COSTELLO: And Fred, a final question to you about the negativity and whether you think that works.

MALEK: Well, look, the candidates themselves have brought out the negativity. Donald Trump did not invent the e-mail scandal. Hillary Clinton did not e-mail the women -- I mean, she did not originate the women problems. They did it themselves. So naturally there's going to be piling on and negativity. That goes with the territory when you have two such candidates. I think at this point in time, though, the best thing to do is rise above that, to talk about the positives, talk about what you're going to do. Talk in Trump's case, talk about the change he is going to bring about in America to help the middle class and help restore respect around the world. That's what he's got to do. But again, he's got to put $100 million of his own money. He said he would do it, time to put up or shut up.

WEAVER: I agree with that.

COSTELLO: -- Thanks to you both, really fascinating, Jeff Weaver, Fred Malek.

Still to come in the "Newsroom," more than 25 million ballots have already been cast but one group is falling short, black voters. We will dive into why, next.

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[10:29:22] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We do begin with breaking news this half hour out of Des Moines, Iowa, a man hunt under way right now to find this man, Scott Michael Greene. After two police officers were ambushed and killed while sitting in their patrol cars, early this morning. Greene is 46 years old, 5'11", brown hair, green eyes. Police say, he's believed to be armed and dangerous. They say do not approach him if you see him but do call 911 if you have any sort of information. Greene was last seen driving a blue 2011 Ford F-150 truck with the Iowa tag 780 YFR.

All right, let's talk a little politics now. More than 24 million Americans have already cast their ballot for president but a dip in African-American voters across the battleground states could prove worrisome for Hillary Clinton. That's why President Obama is on a tear right now. He will campaign for Clinton --