Oprah Stumps for Abrams; Trump Draws Heat for Video; Think Lead for Democrats
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington. Thanks very much for joining us. Up first, five days and counting until the midterm elections and the candidates are bringing out some of the big guns. The vice president, Mike Pence, and Oprah Winfrey, they're holding -- they've been holding dueling campaign events. In Georgia, Oprah is campaigning on behalf of Democrat Stacey Abrams in the race for governor. The vice president is stumping for Abrams' opponent, Republican candidate Brian Kemp. Polls suggest the candidates are deadlocked in a very tight race. Our correspondent Kaylee Hartung is joining us. She's at the Abrams event in Marietta, Georgia. Kaylee is joining us on the phone right now. Kaylee, Stacey Abrams campaigning to become the first black female governor in the history of the United States. How much of a factor is that in Oprah's decision? We just heard her live here on CNN speaking on her behalf.</s>KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Yes, well, Wolf, when Oprah took the stage, she told Georgia voters, you're on the precipice of an historic election. And that is a word that so many people throughout this state have used to describe the situation that Georgia voters find themselves in, two candidates on polar opposite ends of the spectrum, both trying to appeal to their respective bases. Oprah took the stage and said she is a registered independent voter, an independent woman who has earned the right to be what she wants, when she wants. She said nobody asked her to come here. Nobody paid her to come here. She said she took it upon herself when she saw Stacey Abrams, the message she was sharing from Georgia, and from the way she was responding to so much that she encountered on the campaign trail. Oprah said she was impressed by this woman and her message and she wanted to come here to ensure Georgia voters understood she stood beside Stacey Abrams. Oprah so rare make an appearance on the campaign trail. We saw her in 2008 support Barack Obama. She endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 but never went on the trail. Listen to more from Oprah in front of this crowd in Cobb County.</s>OPRAH WINFREY: This is what I came here to tell you. I am an independent woman. And I have earned the right to do exactly what I want to do. I have earned the right to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I've earned the right to think for myself and to vote for myself. And that's why I am a registered independent because I don't want any party and I don't want any kind of partisan influence telling me what decisions I get to make for myself.</s>BLITZER: All right, so there you have Oprah campaigning for Stacey Abrams, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia. The vice president, Mike Pence, says he's not intimidated by Oprah's star power. Here's what he told a crowd of Kemp supporters just moments ago.</s>MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'd like to remind Stacey and Oprah and Will Ferrell, I'm kind of a big deal, too. And I got a message. I got a message for all of Stacey Abrams' liberal Hollywood friends. This ain't Hollywood. This is Georgia.</s>BLITZER: Meantime, critics are calling it perhaps the most racist campaign video in decades. And they're accusing President Trump of fear mongering only days before the midterm election. The president posted the video on his Twitter page that goes out to about 55 million followers and shows a Mexican man convicted of killing two California deputies while in the country illegally. And he threatens to kill more police. The video accuses Democrats of plotting to allow him and other dangerous criminals into the United States.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't</s>BLITZER: All right, let's bring in our legal analyst Laura Coates, CNN political analyst Ryan Lizza, and our chief political correspondent Dana Bash. Dana, tell us a little bit more about this video. It's not a campaign ad.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not.</s>BLITZER: They're not paying it. But it's obviously getting a lot of exposure.</s>BASH: That's right, not a campaign ad. Not a video done by the campaign in particular. And, no money behind it, which kind of tells you everything you need to know about the understanding that the president has of the power of his Twitter feed. It is a message that is unmistakable. It is a message that is -- it's not even -- there aren't even racist under tones. There are racist overtones. I mean that's just the way it is. And it really is sort of the pinnacle of this strategy that has been incredibly transparent, that the president and several of the Republicans actually on the ballot have been going after, which is to try to gin up the base by scaring people, in some cases, frankly in most cases, unnecessarily so. There -- it's the ultimate scare tactic. So we're going to wait to see, you know, if any of the actual Republicans on the ballot come out and denounce this. Unless I've missed it, I haven't heard any of them do that, which is very noteworthy. I've called a couple and the comment was no comment.</s>BLITZER: No comment on this really, you know, awful video.</s>BASH: Correct.</s>BLITZER: Laura, what went through your mind when you watched it?</s>LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Two words, Willie Horton. That came to mind from the 1988 Democratic versus Dukakis versus George H.W. Bush. We had a political action campaign who was geared towards trying to have race baiting fear mongering talking about the weekend furlough program in Massachusetts that actually Governor Dukakis was a fan of and how the person was able to get out on the weekend and committed an assault and a rape of a white woman. It was used to stoke fears. It resonated with the birth of a nation, frankly, and the KKK propaganda. Now you have a different tactic, not one about black Americans and about the -- about a black male, now you have the idea, using that same level of race-based fear mongering being used towards people who are undocumented persons in this country. The person who was featured in the particular advertisement, we'll say, was somebody who was convicted of having killed two California deputies and was the antithesis of the president's law and order society and using this notion of who is coming here and who else Democrats let in. So I looked back and had to check my calendar for a second to figure out what year I was in. And it's very clear that, as Dana talks about, it's not about just the covert methods, it's about these overt uses of trying to show that the Democrats are not law-abiding or law and order and that the president's party and the Republicans are instead. And you see this from time to time going on and on and it was very disturbing to see.</s>BLITZER: You know, it's -- you look at the rest of the video, and I don't even want to play it and give free advertising to those out there --</s>RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.</s>BLITZER: But if you look at the rest of it, you see hordes of invaders coming into --</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>BLITZER: Threatening to come into the United States, tearing down walls and fences and threatening the American people. It's really pretty awful.</s>LIZZA: IT's pretty awful. And, two things. One is, Trump himself is nationalizing this election around issues that he personally cares about. I don't think there was a lot of coordination with the Senate and House campaigns on this thing, right?</s>BASH: No.</s>LIZZA: This is -- this is Trump's issue. And he uses the issue in a way that even a lot of people in his own party wouldn't use it, although they don't often speak up if they disagree. I think the other thing that is just sort of amazing is, these two issues, crime and illegal immigration, are not actually issues that are at peak problems, right? The crime rate has been going -- in '88, crime was a pretty serious problem and Democrats really did have a vulnerability on that issue, as controversial as that ad was.</s>BASH: That's right.</s>LIZZA: We know that since then violent crime has been on a decades long decline. There was a little bit of dip up in some cities. And, two, illegal immigration is not a massive problem the way it has been in certain years. So Trump's ability essentially to manufacture an issue, to create a sense that people are coming to harm you and that people -- that non- white people are coming to harm you and playing up this, you know, this invading force that's, you know, in Central America, not even close to the U.S. border, his power to demagogue that issue is remarkable and it's not new. In his first speech he gave in 2000 -- in the summer of 2015, he called Mexican immigrants -- he broadly described Mexican immigrants as rapists. So he's going back -- right back to where he started.</s>BASH: And one of the -- this is one of the big challenges, I'm sure you'd agree, in figuring out how to report and cover on Donald Trump.</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>BASH: And the reason is because he is the president of the United States.</s>LIZZA: How much oxygen</s>BASH: He does have millions and millions of followers on Twitter, the medium that he used to send this video out. But how much oxygen, as you said, do you give? Because he is so transparent in what he cares about, this issue, the fact that he wants to demagogue on it, whether he believes it or not, you know, he wants it to be part of the conversation. And so this is him very transparently making this part of the conversation with a distraction. And so what we're doing is talking about it, but putting it in context. But even that, you know, takes away from the actual issues that a lot of people are talking about.</s>COATES: And if I may say, he's the art -- he's the master of conflating two topics. The video, I know we're not showing the full thing, talks on the one hand about an undocumented person who's been deported and returned to commit a crime in the United States of America, against an unidentified, geographic</s>BLITZER: You know, they announced the president is going to be giving a speech later this afternoon at the White House on immigration.</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>BLITZER: And our Sarah Westwood is reporting, he's expected to announce what would be a significant change in the asylum laws of the United States. It would -- it would seek to require migrants to request asylum at legal points of entry, prevent them from claiming asylum if they are caught crossing the border illegally. Under the current system, migrants can request asylum once they are on U.S. soil.</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>BLITZER: In fact, we checked with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and we asked the question, who is eligible to apply for asylum in the United States and the official answer -- this is from the U.S. government -- you may apply for asylum if you are at a point of entry or in the United States. You may apply for asylum regardless of your immigration status and within one year of your arrival in the United States. So this would be a significant change.</s>LIZZA: So, again, he's making things harder for the most vulnerable outside the country. And unlike most previous presidents -- recent presidents, he does not see America at -- or want America to be seen by the rest of the world as a place that is welcoming the most disadvantaged, right? And, you know, I was talking to a Democratic congressman about this, this week about how they were -- just like we in the media have to figure out how to respond and cover this stuff. Democrats are constantly -- there's so many outrages to them. They have to figure out how to do it. And he was saying with Trump raising these issues, what it forces Democrats to do is constantly talk about justice issues, right? The rights of the vulnerable. People seeking asylum, right? Those aren't people who are necessarily the voters they want to -- they want to get out, but they -- Democrats are constantly forced to talk about this other set of issue that a lot of voters they want to speak to are not really captivated by or interested in, right? It forces Trump to change the conversation and for Democrats to switch topics.</s>BLITZER: The president, Dana, clearly thinks this is five days before the election --</s>BASH: Yes.</s>BLITZER: A huge winning issue for him.</s>BASH: Right. And look, his political instincts, his raw, political instincts, have been right for years, since he got into this race and people thought it was a joke. His political instincts and the way that he markets them and himself as part of it have been right. But I also -- as we're on the precipice of this election, it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around. It was only six years ago that the Republican National Committee, following the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney did so poorly with Hispanic voters, six years ago that the RNC came out with this autopsy and said, we have to do a better job of talking to and talking about Hispanic voters.</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>BASH: That was only six years ago. It seems like 600 years ago.</s>LIZZA: Yes. And Trump has figured out, just as Republicans during the worst days of the red scare and communism, to demagogue that issue, just as some Republicans during the worst days of the threat from al Qaeda could demagogue that issue. Trump has seized on something new and using non-white immigrants as the issue to demagogue.</s>BLITZER: Ryan, thanks very much. Laura, Dana, guys, thank you. With just five days left until the midterms, President Trump ensures his party there's nothing to fear.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I think the blue wave is dead, frankly.</s>BLITZER: But new poll numbers just in say otherwise. A closer look at the very close Senate races in Tennessee and Florida. Plus, chilling new details behind the mysterious deaths of two sisters found on Manhattan's waterfront. Officials now say they were alive when they entered the water.