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Final Sprint to Election Day; Cubs Fans Celebrate World Series Win. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 3, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:01]

MAUREEN O'DONNELL, "CHICAGO SUN-TIMES": It was sort of a perverse tradition.

And now that it's reversed, I think all the memories and sentimentality and nostalgia is just bubbling up. And people are going to cemeteries here. They're decorating their father's, their mother's, their grandma's, their grandpa's graves with the W. of pennant.

Harry Caray's grave, I stopped by there a couple weeks ago. Harry Caray's gave had a baseball, an angel and a can of old-style beer marked "This is the year."

People are going to funeral homes and wakes and bringing -- ordering Cubs floral arrangements. There's a lot chatter about all the cremated remains at Wrigley, too. Over the years, a lot of people told their family dad, just wait until next year, they I think surreptitiously scattered cremated remains at Wrigley.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: It's a special day for Cubs fans who are here and who are not. I appreciate you just even covering that angle. Maureen O'Donnell, congratulations to you and your great city of Chicago. I appreciate it.

Let's continue on.

We continue on, top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN.

Five days to go, and the campaign trail is teeming with developments. A couple of highlights for you right now. I can tell you that Senator Ted Cruz, who once called Donald Trump a sniveling coward, is making his first appearance on the stump for Trump today.

On the flip side, you have Bernie Sanders appearing with Hillary Clinton this evening in the key state of North Carolina. President Obama has not just one, but two events in Florida today, including one this hour in Jacksonville. We will keep you posted on that. We will take that.

The big event thus far, though, we just saw it, the first solo appearance of Melania Trump on the campaign trail. Let me just play a snippet of her from earlier speaking in a suburb. It's called Berwyn. This is just outside of Philadelphia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELANIA TRUMP, WIFE OF DONALD TRUMP: Love for this country is something we immediately shared when I met Donald. He loves this country and he knows how to get things done, not just talk. He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn't he?

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Take note where the presidential candidates themselves will soon be, North Carolina. Trump will be in the West in the city of Concord shortly, Clinton in the east in Winterville.

Let's turn first to Phil Mattingly here in Raleigh, where Hillary Clinton will be tonight with Senator Sanders and Pharrell, as one does.

Phil Mattingly, why the focus on North Carolina?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, it's actually pretty simple. Donald Trump has no possibility to win the White House without winning the state of North Carolina.

If you look at their map, if you look all of the possibilities Donald Trump has to get to the White House, every last one of them includes having to win this state. That's why you have seen President Obama down here. That's you will see Bernie Sanders on stage with Hillary Clinton tonight.

Michelle Obama was here as well. Every top Clinton campaign surrogate is here, has been here, will continue to come here. And that's why Hillary Clinton will be here as well.

Now, Brooke, let's look at the state of North Carolina and try and get a sense of where things actually are. In 2008, President Obama won this state. 2012, Mitt Romney did. Now, the Clinton campaign looks around at the state right now and they like where they're situated. They like their numbers.

Consistently, they have been polling between one and two points ahead of Donald Trump in the state. But as you dig through the early vote right now, Brooke, there are some areas of concern. Most prominently the African-American vote is down from 2012. Republicans are pointing to that. Republicans are looking to their early vote turnout and saying, look, we're doing very well in North Carolina.

But, Brooke, in talking with Clinton advisers, they make really two kind of crucial points. First, President Obama is not on the ballot. That's obviously a major driver of African-American votes, but second there have been a lot of changes in the state in terms of access to ballot places and access to polling places that they believe has helped kind of push that early vote down. They feel confident about where they are and they feel very good about

what they have planned ahead. You want to talk about what they're doing tonight. Bernie Sanders will be here, also the musical artist Pharrell, he of "Happy" fame or the Neptunes if you want to go back a little further, driving out black vote, driving out millennial vote.

They feel very good about where they are. And the reality is simple. If they win North Carolina, this race is over, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Phil Mattingly, you set it up perfectly.

I want to begin there with North Carolina and these other critical battleground states.

Let me bring in my panel. CNN politics executive editor Mark Preston is with us from the CNN decision desk.

We will start there with Mark before we go to my other voices.

You have some new early voting numbers, Mark. What do you have?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR: Well, Brooke, the last time you and I talked, it was about 24.4 million people had voted early. Look where we are now.

New data that has just came in, in the last hour or so, it's about 31 million people have cast ballots in 38 states. But I want to look at four different states right now, two in the Midwest, two out West.

[15:05:10]

Let's look at Iowa first right now. Almost 499,000, 500,000 people have cast their votes in Iowa. But let's just dig a little bit deeper in there. We look at 2016 and right now Democrats have a 41,000-vote edge. But if you go back to 2012, they had a 60,000-ballot edge in returned ballots, so not necessarily good news for Democrats in the state of Iowa.

We know public polling shows Donald Trump is leading in that state. Lees stay in the Midwest and go straight out to Ohio; 1.2, 1.3 million people right now have cast early ballots now in the state of Ohio. Let's go a little deeper. 2016 right now, and if you look, 65,800 ballot-advantage right now for the Republicans, if you look right there. If you go back to 2008, though, Brooke, the GOP only had a 6,000-ballot return advantage. That's a sizable difference, again, not good news for Democrats specifically as we're heading into these final five days of the election.

But let's head out West to Arizona. We saw Hillary Clinton there last night. Tim Kaine is there today. About 1.3 million people in Arizona have cast ballots. Dig a little bit deeper right now and look at the historical data right now. Republicans have a 71,000-ballot advantage, so to speak, in returns right now, but if you go to 2012, their advantage was 87,000.

So a state that Democrats are contesting, polling shows that it's, even if not very, very tight. Good news for Democrats.

And let's end up in the state of Nevada. Right there, about 512,000, a little more, people have returned their ballots so far five days before Election Day. We dig into it a little bit here and Democrats right now have a 29,000-ballot advantage over Republicans. Go back to 2012, they had a 38,000-ballot advantage, but, as we're tracking this, this is tracking along the same numbers, good news for Democrats.

And I have to say this is not predictive of what will happen in the election. It does give us an idea, though, Brooke, of how the GOP operations are working, the get-out-the-vote operations for both political parties. And it's also worth noting the voters that both political parties are trying to get out now, Brooke, these are low- propensity voters, one that they don't think will necessarily show up on Election Day. They want their vote banked right now -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, thank you for those numbers, Mark Preston.

Let me bring in my panel now.

Gloria Borger is with us, CNN chief political analyst, Manu Raju, senior CNN political reporter, Kirsten Powers, CNN political analyst and columnist for "USA Today," and David Gergen, CNN senior political analyst and adviser to four presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

So, to my native North Carolinian, I just want to begin with you. And I want to go back to North Carolina.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure.

BALDWIN: CNN has crunched some numbers. A win for Trump in the state of North Carolina is plausible. Do you think it's all going to come down to that, North Carolina?

GERGEN: I think it's going to North Carolina being one of the two or three states that are critical. I'm not sure.

BALDWIN: One of the two or three?

GERGEN: Yes.

He basically -- Trump needs really four states, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He's got a very decent shot of winning Ohio. Mark was just talking about the early votes there. They look like they're helpful to Trump.

He's in a really competitive situation in Florida. He has got to win North Carolina, but Pennsylvania is a much, much tougher go for him. If he doesn't win Pennsylvania, he has got to take all sorts of other states in the West and in the Upper Midwest. So he has got -- he started out about three or four weeks ago as a long shot, a really long shot. He's a short long shot now.

BALDWIN: A short long shot.

BERGEN: Yes.

BALDWIN: And I'm keying in on it because we know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both there today.

And so, Gloria, let me just ask you my next question. Phil brought it up, but honing in on the fact that tonight former rivals now together on the same stage Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. I don't think we have seen them together on the same stage since he ultimately endorsed her in New Hampshire some months ago.

Who exactly do you think -- and add Pharrell to the mix there as well. Who are they trying to reach out to?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they're trying to reach out to younger voters. I think they're trying to reach out to minority voters.

I think you're talking about the state of North Carolina. And David was talking about that. You know, 25 percent of the voters in that state are African-American. And nobody expects in the state of North Carolina for the numbers to reach what they were with Barack Obama nationally or in the state of North Carolina.

But if there's, say, like a 10 percent reduction nationally in African-American turnout, that could well flip that state. So, what I think they're trying to do is get these younger progressive voters engaged in all of these battleground states, particularly in a state like North Carolina, which is so diverse, because you have the rural conservatism, you have evangelicals, and then you have multicultural progressives all in one state.

[15:10:11]

So, everybody's trying to pick off their piece of the pie there.

BALDWIN: Donald Trump, he is fighting, it is close. I want to play an ad that they just rolled out today where, of course, he refers to her as crooked Hillary and he brings in a face and a voice that we have only been talking about again recently. Roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NARRATOR: Hillary Clinton is under FBI investigation again after her e-mails were found on pervert Anthony Weiner's laptop. Think about that. America's most sensitive secrets unlawfully sent, received, and exposed by Hillary Clinton, her staff, and Anthony Weiner? Hillary cannot lead a nation while crippled by a criminal investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Kirsten, this is a part of the closing argument that Donald Trump has been making. You elect her, you get years of drama, years of investigations. You think it's a solid argument?

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Well, that ad is actually kind of jarring I think in a presidential election, pervert and this kind of language. I guess only with Donald Trump.

BALDWIN: It could work.

POWERS: But the problem for her is obviously that anything related to her honesty, and which has been rejuvenated, this issue has been rejuvenated, with the FBI director coming out and making this announcement before the election.

And I think that all of the issues that could come up for her, this is the one that harms her. And I also think Trump has hit on something that a lot of people feel, we don't want to go back to the '90s, we don't want to relive the constant investigations.

Now, to be fair, the Republicans are partly responsible for that, because they do sort of over-investigate the Clintons, but the Clintons invite it on themselves as well sometimes.

But it's effective in that way, except for the fact that I feel like it goes a little too far. It could possibly turn people off. It's just a little too in your face.

BALDWIN: We are talking about different folks who are out today on behalf of each of these candidates.

And, Manu, you cover Capitol Hill, so let me talk to you about Senator Ted Cruz, former rival of Donald Trump. He's called him in the past a pathological liar and serial philanderer. We just saw him do a quick gaggle with Governor Pence saying, hey, see that plane right there, that big name on the side, Trump? I'm getting in that plane, I voted for Donald Trump.

What is this about for Ted Cruz?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's under a lot of pressure, Brooke, remember, after that Republican Convention speech where he refused to endorse Donald Trump. He got a lot of backlash from Trump supporters.

And I think the worst thing that could happen to a lot of these Republicans who are looking for future, either another run for the White House or what have you, they're worried about this race is tight, that they could get blamed for not doing enough to help the top of the ticket.

So, Ted Cruz calculated several weeks ago it was time to endorse Donald Trump. Then he was asked about Donald Trump, a lot of the past criticisms of him. And he didn't necessarily walk back those past criticisms. So he's in a really unusual spot here.

So the other factor is that Ted Cruz may himself face a primary challenge in 2018 for his Senate reelection race. And that's also being powered by in part by those Trump voters who are frustrated that Ted Cruz has not done enough.

So there are a lot of political pressures for Cruz himself and he can say at the end of the day he's helping his party. One other thing I would point out, Ted Cruz also campaigning earlier this week for Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri in a very difficult reelection race. Roy Blunt, a member of the Republican Party leadership, the same leadership Ted Cruz has bashed repeatedly as part of the Washington cartel, so strange bedfellows in the last few days of the campaign on the Republican side for sure.

BALDWIN: David, I saw you nodding listening to Manu. I want to hear from you. I want to hear more from all of you, actually.

Let me just hit pause on the conversation. I want to ask all of you to please stick around.

And also a quick reminder to you. Don't forget, Tuesday, it's all been leading up to this, election night in America. We have every race. We will have every result. Of course, stay with CNN until the last vote is cast.

Coming up next, though, we will talk more about Melania Trump's big moment, her first speech on the campaign trail that we just witnessed there in the more affluent suburbs of Philadelphia. Hear what she just said about women and what she said about how our culture has gotten too mean and too rough.

Plus, as we wait for President Obama to speak live in Florida, he is going off on Republicans. He is getting mighty candid about his last eight years with them.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN's special live coverage. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:43]

BALDWIN: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

In case you have been under a rock, the election is five days away, five days away, and for the Clinton campaign, the headache, just it's not going away here. Donald Trump wasted no time at a rally this afternoon bringing up the Clinton Foundation woes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The investigation is described as a high priority. It's far-reaching and has been going on for more than one year.

It was reported that an avalanche of information is coming in. The FBI agents say their investigation is likely to yield an indictment.

Reports also show the political leadership at the Department of Justice is trying to protect Hillary Clinton and is interfering with the FBI's criminal investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, I have got my panel back.

And let me just tell you that this is the reporting. You just heard Donald Trump.

Evan Perez and our justice correspondent crew in Washington essentially in talking to their sources within Justice saying that there is no talk of indictment. So, that's number one.

[15:20:02]

Number two, though, there is a bit of push/pull between FBI and DOJ. That's an issue as they have been looking into some of these Clinton Foundation woes. So, that's just -- that's the facts. That's what we have from our CNN reporting.

I have Gloria, Kirsten, and David back with me and also Manu.

David Gergen, let me just begin with you. This is part of the right -- on CNN.com, somebody had written it like this in reference to the FBI and DOJ and the election. "Another casualty of 2016 has been the mystique of the FBI, the fact that it appears that not everyone is on the same page."

GERGEN: The leaks have been horrendous coming out of the...

BALDWIN: Leaky.

GERGEN: Very leaky. And there ought to some way to put a stop to it. It ought to be a firing offense if you're caught leaking, because these leaks are conflicting, they're confusing, they're depressing, and they're unfair to Mrs. Clinton, among other things.

But there have also been some leaks against Mr. Trump. So both sides have reason to be angry about this. But where is the leadership of the Justice Department and FBI to crack down on this? You really have to put people under pressure and say, you leak, you're gone.

BALDWIN: And it's not just Donald Trump who has been saying the I- word, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.

GERGEN: Yes. And there's just no basis for that. There's no basis.

BALDWIN: There isn't. And that's what -- we have been doing the checking. And there isn't that we have seen.

So, Manu, my question to you is, with the cacophony from Republicans on impeachment, of all people, you know, you have Darrell Issa, who is essentially saying to all these calls of lock her up, to put in the way I would say it, slow your roll, from Darrell Issa, of all people.

RAJU: Yes. It's been an interesting development about Darrell Issa over the last several days that he's taken a more conciliatory tone towards the administration.

Especially, he led the charge on a number of these oversight hearings trying to go after the White House. But why, Brooke? Because Darrell Issa is in a very tough reelection race in his California district. He may not win come Tuesday. And he wants to present himself as a guy who could work across party line lines.

And so he said that -- he talked about the prospects of impeachment, he said it's not going to happen, he is going to be the adult in the room and he's going to push back against that, that notion. That comes just a day after other Republican congressmen suggested it is a possibility of going the impeachment route, most notably Mike McCaul, the Homeland Security Chairman, someone who is respected on national security issues within Republican circles, saying that possibly she could be impeached.

And McCaul had his own political considerations. We were talking about Cruz. He could challenge Cruz in the Senate primary in 2018. So, a lot of these members are dealing with their own personal politics as they come with -- deal with this impeachment issue, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Let's cut past the politics.

Evan Perez, set us all straight. Set the public straight. You have been doing the reporting on all of this. What's the deal? FBI, DOJ, impeachment, Clinton Foundation, set it to me straight.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, I think one of the first things is you heard from Donald Trump there he says that there's an indictment in the offing in this Clinton investigation, this Clinton Foundation investigation.

And I got tell you that from the reporting that we have been doing for about a year now on this issue, we're not anywhere near close to that. We're still, frankly, at the starting gates of this investigation. The FBI agents who have been doing it, it first started with four different field offices of the FBI in Los Angeles, Little Rock, Washington, and New York wanting to dig into some allegations that first came out in this book by a conservative writer Peter Schweizer, "Clinton Cash."

And this book basically alleged that the Clinton Foundation was taking donations from foreign donors and was exchanging them for favors while she was at the State Department. The FBI has been looking into this now for well over a year. And we're told that they haven't gotten very much farther than what the allegations were in the book, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Evan, thank you.

Let me move on and talk about Melania Trump. We took her speech live. She spoke for about 10 minutes to a very enthusiastic crowd in the Philadelphia suburbs. And she talked about growing up in Slovenia and her immigration story, coming to America, becoming a citizen.

And then she said, if she's elected first lady, she really wants to be an advocate for women and children and she said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

M. TRUMP: We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.

We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media. It will be one of the main focuses of my work if I am privileged enough to become your first lady.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Gloria, I think what she said is lovely, but has she met her husband?

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: Well, Melania has always said when she has spoken -- and I believe it was with Anderson -- that she'd like to stop the tweeting all the time.

[15:25:06]

And it's clear that, in fact, Donald Trump has stopped that lately. He's still tweeting, but it seems to be more about the issues of the campaign or Hillary Clinton. It's not attacking personally people he's run against or members of the press or whatever.

BALDWIN: Heidi Cruz.

BORGER: Heidi Cruz.

So it's clear that it's kind of a -- you know, she wants to be the counterbalance to Donald Trump. So for those of you who might believe that he is somebody who has abused Twitter and the Internet, well, here comes Melania Trump and she says, you know what? This is important to me as a mother. I don't believe in Internet bullying and I'm going to take that on.

And her appeal, of course, is to try to appeal to suburban moms who like that message. You know, the question is, you get both of them. And so people might say, well, talk to your husband first about that and then we will see. Or other people might say, maybe she is going to have an impact here and clearly it's an important issue. She can only help him.

BALDWIN: Someone has had an impact on Twitter. I know we have been reporting that Steve Bannon has been traveling with him and maybe monitoring his Twitter. It's much more on substance. In fact, even Donald Trump himself -- I love this sound bite -- was -- we will call this his inside voice coming out. Roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

D. TRUMP: We are going to win the White House. Going to win it. It's feeling like it already, isn't it? Just we have got to be nice and cool. Nice and cool. Stay on point, Donald, stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald, nice and easy, nice -- because I have been watching Hillary the last few days. She's totally unhinged. We don't want any of that. She has become unhinged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Stay on point, Donald, stay on point. It's funny. It's funny.

And, Kirsten, maybe it's a mantra. It's working for him.

POWERS: Yes, it's working for him now.

But I just want to go back to Melania talking about the fact -- she also said that, you know, our culture has become too mean, for example. And I think exhibit A, honestly, would be Donald Trump of that. It's not just the bullying.

And in terms of whether he's continuing to bully people, he was bullying NBC's Katy Tur, in my opinion, calling her out in front of thousands of people, who then reportedly -- some of those people were sort of harassing her.

He is a bully. And he is the number-one online bully probably in the history of the world. So there's some sort of lack of self-reflection here going on. I would put in the same category as Darrell Issa saying that he's going to somehow be an advocate for -- against impeachment, when, of course, he's been the Obama administration's sort of number one persecutor on the Hill.

So I think that people can say things, but we should actually look at what the actions have been. And she hasn't called out her husband and she didn't name him, obviously. So I find it very odd.

BORGER: Well, in listening to Donald Trump, you can see the thought bubble above his head and maybe the person talking to him is Kellyanne Conway in that thought bubble about keep it cool.

And maybe it's Melania, too, because I think they're close. And I think they come from the same place when they understand that they need to rein in Donald Trump. And that's what Melania was hinting at or saying, definitively, I think, and that is what Kellyanne Conway clearly wants to do, because they understand that right now he has to be kind of slow and steady.

He's got one single issue, he's got one single message, he has got to drive it home. And every time he goes off-message, whether it was, as Kirsten, points out, the Katy Tur call-out last night, which I agree with Kirsten was uncalled for and terrible, and can have consequences in a rally, they need to kind of set him straight. And either you believe Melania or you don't.

BALDWIN: Yes. He's called out our own Sara Murray.

Did you want to jump in on that?

GERGEN: I do.

BORGER: Exactly. (CROSSTALK)

GERGEN: It's gotten to the point where in the last two weeks of the campaign, we just ought to hit the mute button and stop listening to any of these people on either, both sides.

All of this is just froth. It hasn't changed any realities, any basic realities. People are saying things they don't really believe and everybody knows that, on both sides.

BALDWIN: Let's end with the Supreme Court. I want to end with something really substantive.

GERGEN: Yes.

BALDWIN: This is what President Obama had just said today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Some of the same folks who just a while back said, well, we can't have hearings and vote for the guy Obama nominated because we're so close to the election, we should let the next president make the nomination, right? That's what they said.

So, now they think Hillary might win, they say, well, we might block hers, too.