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Trump Shocks with Racist Online Video Demonizing Immigrants; More Victims Laid to Rest Today as Suspect Back in Court; Trump: 'I Do Try' to Tell the Truth. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 1, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This president is stirring up a cauldron of hate.

[05:59:09] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They've got a lot of rough people in those caravans. They are not angels.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His dog whistle of all dog whistles if immigration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Using troops on the border is something that's been done before.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This idea that we care about the pre-existing conditions is simply untrue.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Democrats have tried to tell people that Republicans are going to take preexisting conditions. It is flat-out false.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Republican leadership has failed our country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers who are in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday. It's November.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Is it really?

BERMAN: You don't approve?

CAMEROTA: Is it really November? How did that happen.

BERMAN: November's approval rating, very low. Under water this morning.

Six o'clock here in New York, a dramatic escalation from the president overnight from just trafficking fear to now, critics say, peddling racism. With Republicans increasingly facing the possibility they will lose

control of the House, the president of the United States promoted a video suggesting that Democrats want to flood the nation with Central American cop killers. They don't.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake observed to Jake Tapper, this is just a new low in campaigning. It's sickening.

But the intent is clear, the admitted intent, in fact. The White House, wants to change the focus from the bombs sent to Trump critics, from the murder of Jews at a synagogue, from healthcare.

A source close to the White House told our Jim Acosta, it's clearly working. We're talking about it and not health care.

The president also admitted something else overnight, something pretty blaring. He told ABC's Jonathan Karl, "When I can, I tell the truth." "When I can." "When I can," he says. Perhaps the White House will provide a schedule.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the president says he wants to send 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico. He continued also his constitutionally challenged claim that he alone could end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

The president's words do appear to be having an impact in some red- state Senate races, putting Democrats there on the defensive. can change the Constitution, and there's also evidence that national Republicans are becoming uncomfortable.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has taken issue with some of the president's claims, and the president's extensive campaign schedule this week does not include two key swing states: Nevada and Arizona. Why not go there? Well, CNN has learned the president has been asked to steer clear.

So we have a lot to cover. Let's begin with CNN's Abby Phillip. She is live at the White House.

Good morning, Abby.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, this is a closing argument that is designed to shock, and it is one that might be one of the most controversial in recent political history. President Trump releasing an ad demonizing illegal immigrants at the same time Democrats are trying to change the subject back to health care, an issue that polls say most voters care about.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP (voice-over): President Trump embracing demagoguery, tweeting the most racially charged political video in decades, demonizing immigrants and accusing Democrats of plotting to overrun the country with criminals.

GRAPHIC: Democrats let him stay.

PHILLIP: It's reminiscent of the notorious Willie Horton ad financed by supporters of President George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, which played directly into white fear and African-American stereotypes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend.

PHILLIP: A source close to the White House describing the video and President Trump's hardline focus on immigration as an effort to change the argument from family unification to invasion, arguing that the inflammatory rhetoric is working to change the narrative away from health care.

TOM PEREZ, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: They have to distract. They have to fearmonger. And his dog whistle of all dog whistles is immigration.

PHILLIP: It comes as President Trump makes a number of false claims about the group of asylum-seeking Central American migrants making their way through Mexico.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're going to -- a lot of rough people in those caravans. They are not angels.

You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than is reported, actually. I mean, I'm pretty good at estimating crowd size. It's a lot of young people, a lot of young men, and they always -- and they have been doing this. They are pushing the women right up into the front.

PHILLIP: The Mexican government estimates that the caravan from Honduras has dropped from 7,000 to about 4,500 people. Those that remain are still about 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border.

President Trump admitted last week that he does not have evidence to support the claim that Middle Easterners are part of the caravan.

TRUMP: There's no proof of anything. No proof of anything. But they could very well be.

PHILLIP: Wednesday night, again acknowledging he plays fast and loose with the facts.

TRUMP: I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth.

PHILLIP: Nevertheless, the president pledging to send up to 15,000 active-duty troops to the border, about three times the amount currently fighting terrorists in Iraq.

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA), HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Sending ten to 15,000 troops, which means we're going to spend between $100 and $150 million so that he can have his -- I guess his surprise, his October surprise. PHILLIP: The president also doubling down on his false claim that he

can end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, citing President Obama's executive order on DREAMers that his administration has said is legal.

TRUMP: Certainly, if he can do DACA, we can do this by executive order.

PHILLIP: Mr. Trump attacking the speaker of the House for challenging his claim.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE (via phone): You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

PHILLIP: Meanwhile, Democrats attempting to keep the focus on healthcare.

JOE BIDEN (D), FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You have the president of the United States saying, "We guarantee" -- or whatever his phrase was -- "everybody covered with pre-existing conditions is covered." Simply not true.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[06:05:03] PHILLIP: President Trump today is heading to Missouri for another campaign rally, but this is coming as sources are telling CNN that there are two places that he's been asked not to come. That's Arizona and Nevada, where there are some pretty heated Senate races going on right now and states with very high Hispanic populations. Those campaigns believe President Trump could hurt them more than help them.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the Democrats are bringing in some of their biggest high-profile surrogates: Oprah Winfrey, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Obama is heading to Florida tomorrow -- Alisyn and John.

CAMEROTA: Abby, thank you very much.

Joining us now, we have our political analysts, John Avlon; former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart; and "Inside Election" editor and publisher, Nathan Gonzales. Great to have all of you.

Joe, just when you think it can't get any worse, a video like this comes out with the president's endorsement. You know, Senator Jeff Flake called it sickening. I don't know what more to say about this.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I mean, I think it answers the Andrew Gillum question that he raised last week, when he said, "I don't know if the president is a racist, but the racists think he is." We now know the president's a racist. It's -- you know, by -- by retweeting this, he is promoting the worst instincts of our culture.

The fact of the matter is, regrettably, a sizeable portion of our population agrees. So I think what you're seeing is -- and Republicans will, you know, get all ginned up saying that we're dominating the national conversation. The national conversation has some impact but is not a huge impact on these congressional races. Those, by and large, have been about the economy and about health care.

And for every person that Donald Trump gins up with this stuff, there's at least one person who's saying "if maybe I wasn't going to the polls, I'm going now."

So it does -- I think your -- the setup was right. It has an impact in some of the Senate races positive for Republicans, I regret. But in the House races and in other Senate races, it's going to have a very positive impact for Democrats.

BERMAN: So Nathan, just one semantic point here. This is a video. It's not an ad. There's no money behind this. This was posted on the president's Twitter account and, because it's just a video, the only goal was to provoke. The only goal was to basically get on television, having people fight about this. And you can predict the way this fight will go over the next day.

People will say this is racist. And then there will be hours devoted to it. Other places today saying, "Oh, my God, look at the media saying it's racist. Aren't they wrong on this?"

The president wants this to be the discussion. You look at the numbers in these races right now, and there is some evidence it's helping with his base in some of these red states. But it is so interesting what Jeff Zeleny reports, that the president was blocked: don't come to Arizona, don't come to Nevada. This isn't going to help Republicans there.

NATHAN GONZALES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Exactly. I appreciate making the distinction between an ad and a web video, but when you have 55 million Twitter followers, you have a pretty good distribution network, as well.

You know, Joe's exactly right. The difference in the maps. And there are no accidents when it comes to the web video and what they're trying to talk about.

There are also no accidents when it comes to the president's schedule. And that's why you're seeing him go to the most Republican Senate states and steer clear of Nevada and Arizona, which one of them he won -- he lost Nevada, won Arizona narrowly. But Republicans in both of those states, I think, are slightly behind going into the -- going into the final days.

But when we take a step back, I think Republicans have struggled this entire cycle to adjust to life without President Obama. Because for eight years, they've been able to rally around being against President Obama, the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. And they don't have that anymore, and they're trying to figure out, think how do we get base Republicans to the polls, and I think they found that immigration and borders and security. That's the issue they want to go to here in these final days.

CAMEROTA: I mean, look, you know, obviously, this also smacks of the Willie Horton rancid well, that you know, Roger Ailes casts a long shadow, OK? Still, I mean, Roger Ailes has died, but he was the mastermind behind Willie Horton and his acolytes are in the White House; and here we go again.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And it's -- it's Halloween and Day of the Dead of the ghost of Roger Ailes, haunts out politics still. Positive polarization being that play that he infused the Republican Party with and his own network with.

But look, it's worth remembering, to that extent, that Lee Atwater apologized for the Willie Horton ad as he was dying.

The legacy of these sorts of ads and political plays are not good. They bring shame to the candidate and the people who worked on them. And I should say this ad, Jim Acosta is reporting that this ad by Jamestown Associates where Jason Miller used to work, from usually worked with centrist Republicans, now apparently all in with the Trump administration.

But this ad, and it's really a web video. That is important to clarify. No money behind it. Designed to inflame the base. But it is a -- it is a new low. And sometimes you get tired of saying that. But this is an invasion ad, doubling, tripling down on that word which has been so much in the news that the synagogue shooter used.

This is an ad all about fear and divisiveness, and it will -- it will not look good in the eyes of history.

BERMAN: Yes, you know, it's a video designed to have people fight about it on TV. Period. Full stop.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, and also to scare people.

BERMAN: When people are fighting about it on TV, when people are fighting about it on TV. If he wanted to scare people without the fighting on TV part, they'd put money behind it and they put it on ads during football games, which they have not done.

LOCKHART: And for all the people talking about it's just a tweet. This is a president who announced talks with the North Koreans on Twitter.

BERMAN: Yes.

LOCKHART: This is -- this is in many ways --

CAMEROTA: This is his favorite medium.

LOCKHART: This in many ways has much more power than a traditional ad, because it's going out immediately to 55 million people, which he wouldn't be able to do with an ad.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Self-selected people who have logged onto the president's Twitter -- I mean, who have -- who follow the president so they want to know what he says.

LOCKHART: And a few million Russian bots. But who's counting?

BERMAN: And it is part and parcel of the whole argument, Nathan, now, which the president is sending troops to the border. The president is discussing birthright citizenship every day, even though 9 out of 10 constitutional lawyers, maybe even 99 out of 100, will tell you that he cannot do you away with it with the sign of a pen, that it does take a constitutional amendment or congressional action and constitutional action, at a minimum, and it is putting other Republicans in a bind and he's getting pushback there.

House Speaker Paul Ryan not accidentally said the president can't do this with an executive order. Carlos Curbelo, who is in a tight race, for Congress, in Florid had to come out with a statement this tweet, "Birthright citizenship is protected by the Constitution, so no, Donald Trump, you can't end it by executive order."

Go ahead.

GONZALES: I think the president's criticism of Speaker Ryan is a precursor to what we see a week from now, that when Democrats are going to win seats in the House, I think they're still most likely to win a majority in the House. And the president is going to look for somebody to blame.

And I think that he'll go to blaming Speaker Ryan and Republicans for not being with him on these various positions as the reason why, it doesn't matter that that won't be the reason why it will probably be, it's because of the president's unpopularity in suburban districts and other races and seats around the country that Republicans are going to suffer. But I think he's going to look for someone to blame, and I think that this issue is something that the president will go to.

But in the short term he's looking for someone to deploy, and the fact that the Pentagon said we don't do political stunts, but they are apparently being used by this president. I mean, moving 5,000 to 15,000 troops to the border. A couple problems with this, as has been pointed out. This is more troops than are currently fighting ISIS in Iraq. This is more troops than we currently have in Afghanistan.

CAMEROTA: It's also three troops for every one migrant coming. That also feels like overkill. I mean, now it's around 5,000, if they ever even make it a thousand miles to the border. And so do you need that level of resources?

AVLON: Of course not. But this is about optics. This is a political stunt.

And I think the other point is that 1,000-mile distance. There's a problem the president's got. We've had a whole debate about the 14th Amendment and the legality of the president saying he could end birthright citizenship with a pen, which he can't.

There's a thing called the Posse Comitatus Act, which means the president cannot deploy U.S. troops on American soil. The president seems to be not addressing that, but there may be -- which is why, by the way, National Guard troops are usually deployed.

The president may say, "This is an emergency, and that's how I am doing this." It raises two questions. One, can you have an active emergency that accounts for the deployment of U.S. troops when the migrants are 1,000 miles away. And if so, how come we didn't see anything resembling this level of troop deployment said, say, Hurricane Maria, a real emergency on American soil?

BERMAN: Can I pull up my chart?

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: Can I pull up my chart?

Also, if you look at the chart here of arrests of illegal border crossings, you know, he didn't deploy 15,000 troops here in 2000 when 1.6 million people were coming over the border.

We are near an historic low right now with the illegal border crossings. You talk about the ratio, three --

CAMEROTA: Three to one.

BERMAN: What are your classrooms, one student -- one teacher per 25 students?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: That's interesting.

CAMEROTA: I -- that's the deployment of resources.

LOCKHART: But it's not even -- if you look at what's actually happening with the caravan, those numbers are dwindling every day, you have people there. You have the Mexican government offering asylum to all of them.

So this threat isn't, you know, you could have a political argument of whether it was a threat or not. You cannot have a serious argument anymore that this is a threat, but he'll keep doing this.

BERMAN: What about Joe Donnelly, though, and Claire McCaskill? You guys, Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill and Bredesen in Tennessee, they're agreeing with the president a lot at this point.

LOCKHART: Their job at this point is to win. But if there's -- if there's any place that I would have liked to have been when Trump went out and made this comment was sitting in the Pentagon in Secretary Madison's office when he looked at the TV and said, 15,000? Yes.

[06:15:13] CAMEROTA: All right. Well, coming up, by the way, I will have one of our signature voter panels. And they talk about this and whether or not they think that this is a crisis and how much immigration and this alleged caravan is playing into their votes. So stick around.

BERMAN: I want to know what they say, but don't give it away.

CAMEROTA: Oh, I won't.

BERMAN: All right.

Three more victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre will be laid to rest today as the man police say carried out the massacre is back in court to be arraigned on an indictment with new charges. CNN's Jean Casarez live in Pittsburgh with the very latest -- Jean.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

So much happening once again in Pittsburgh. We are down here by the federal courthouse, and the defendant will actually have his arraignment today.

The U.S. attorney's office has really been moving quickly. Late yesterday, an indictment was returned with 44 counts.

Of course, you've got the original counts that have to do with the intentional obstruction by force of the exercise of religious belief resulting in death, resulting in serious bodily injury.

But the additional counts have to do with attempted murder, and the victims are listed all by initials. Remember, in that synagogue last Saturday, there were a lot of people that were listening to services, three different congregations. And there were people that were uninjured that survived but definitely may have had guns pointed in their face, thus charges of attempted murder. We'll learn more in several hours when this arraignment begins.

Now, while the arraignment is going on, the final preparations are being made for funerals today. A married couple, Sylvan and Bernice Simon, 86 and 84 years old, are going to be laid to rest together in their funeral. They have been married over 60 years. And their wedding announcement from 1956 in "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" shows that they were actually married at the Tree of Life ceremony. It describes the bride as holding a Bible with white orchids and white Chantilly lace.

The other funeral today is with a noted dentist from this community, Richard Gottfried. Gottfried was married to a dentist. Also, he was only 65 years old. He and his wife were very well-known in this community because of their dentistry. They had their own practice, but they also volunteered everywhere when there was a need for dentists. He will be laid to rest this afternoon -- John.

BERMAN: Jean, the more we learn, the more we mourn. Jean Casarez for us in Pittsburgh as we remember more of the victims of that massacre.

Coming up in our next hour, we're going to speak with the Tree of Life Synagogue rabbi, Jeff Myers about how his community is doing and ask him about the president's visit. If you want to help the victims of the massacre and their families, go to CNN.com/impact.

CAMEROTA: So just days after the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, police in Irvine, California, are hoping this surveillance video -- look at your screen -- right now, they're hoping this will help them find a vandal who defaced a synagogue with profane, anti-Semitic graffiti. The Orange County Human Relations Council says the number of hate crimes in that area jumped last year, continuing a trend that began in 2015.

BERMAN: I have a question for you.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: What do you do when you can? When I can, I'll get a bagel, I'll get some lox, we'll have some coffee. When I can, I'll kick back and I'll watch a soap opera or something. But when the president can, what does he do?

CAMEROTA: What?

BERMAN: He tells the truth. When he can. When he can he tells the truth. He actually said that out loud. When the president can, he tells the truth. This dramatic scheduling admission when we come back.

CAMEROTA: When will that be?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:22:46] BERMAN: We have a dramatic new addition to the "things said out loud" file. President Trump did an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl overnight, and in it he sort of asked about when it's convenient to tell the truth; and you need to listen to this now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I do try. And I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. I mean, sometimes it turns out to be where something happens it's different or there's a change, but I always like to be truthful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "I try." You know, "I do it when I can, when it's convenient." He's on a diet now that includes, you know, like some carbs and some truth.

CAMEROTA: Some truth.

BERMAN: And some --

CAMEROTA: But you know, it is filling.

BERMAN: I cannot believe that that was said out loud by the president.

CAMEROTA: But here's what I think is also remarkable, an example that he gives to Jonathan Karl of when he tells the truth and how good he is at doing something truth-based. Here is the next one about crowd size.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it's reported, actually. I mean, I'm pretty good at estimating crowd size, and I will tell you, they look a lot bigger than people would think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: No, you're not, Mr. President. We're sorry. It brings us no pleasure to say you're not good at estimating crowd size. You have been proven wrong.

And he says they -- they look a lot better or they feel a lot bigger than has been reported, because we actually have reporters embedded there to figure out the crowd size scientifically, not just when he sees it on his TV screen and thinks, "Oh, that's big."

We're back with Joe Lockhart, John Avlon and Abby Phillip.

BERMAN: John, "when I can"? Is -- I ask this -- is "when I can" enough for a president of the United States to tell the truth?

AVLON: No. The presidency is based on the idea that the president is truthful: Honest Abe, George Washington, these are the American standards we have that presidents try to live up to. That is not treating the truth as an occasional treat they give themselves or the American people, which is basically how the president is framing this.

And of course, you know, the priceless lack of self-awareness, which "I'm very good at estimating crowd size."

But the core issue here is he basically is admitting that the truth is optional. And against the backdrop of an administration policy of alternative facts. The truth is not truth. The president is saying, "Look, when I get around to it, I try to tell the truth. I really make a good-faith effort. My intents are pure." The actions may not be so much.

CAMEROTA: Joe.

LOCKHART: I think it's totally fair when people say the president is full of truth, I mean, just full of truth.

You know, it's a serious issue. It's -- you know, we have a president who, rather than rely on the billions of dollars we spend on intelligence, relies on FOX News anchors to make his decisions on national security.

Just think about that for a minute. And, you know, the one -- you know, sort of, I guess, redeeming thing is he has this sort of innocent quality of occasionally, by accident, telling the truth, and he did it last night. And you know, that's good.

BERMAN: That's the irony here.

LOCKHART: Yes.

BERMAN: Isn't that the extraordinary irony? Which is I actually think that was a truthful moment, and that was a moment of extraordinary self-awareness. It really was.

CAMEROTA: OK. I think it's a moment of self-delusion, where he's actually tricking himself. He's telling that to himself: "I try to do this, and I'm very good at crowd size. I don't know who the audience --"

BERMAN: The crowd size thing is absurd and ridiculous. He's clearly, demonstrably not good on crowd size.

But the idea that he sometimes tells the truth, he does it when he can, I think is dead-on right. Anthony Scaramucci was here last week, saying that the truth and lies are part of the president's communications strategy.

CAMEROTA: Good point.

BERMAN: He uses dishonesty there, Abby. And I just thought it was really interesting to hear the president layout, in absolutely, crystal-clear terms, how much of a priority the truth is. Not much.

PHILLIP: I do think, though, John, that there is a real difference between trying to tell the truth and using falsehoods as a weapon. I mean, I would argue that those things are not the same thing at all.

Using -- if you're using falsehoods as a weapon, that's because you know that you're not telling the truth, that you are intentionally not telling the truth in order to achieve certain goals.

And you pointed out Scaramucci said that when you talked to him last week. He gave another interview in which he -- he called Trump an intentional liar, saying that he used lies to try to manipulate the media, to try to get the public to pay attention to him.

That's -- that's a different thing, I think, than not necessarily knowing what the facts are or the facts changing underneath your feet in real time. Those are not the same things.

A couple weeks ago we were talking about what the number of jobs were that were going to be created by -- by the deal that the U.S. had with Saudi Arabia on arms sales. And the president had gone from saying it was 40,000 to saying it was over a million in the matter of a week.

So these are real things. These are choices that he's making, and I think he was being maybe half truthful in that interview with Jon Karl, where he was saying, "You know, I try, but -- but it's not because -- it's not because he's actually intending to tell the truth all the time. Sometimes he intends to exaggerate.

And people around the president, his advisors, his staff, they believe that his exaggerations are sometimes innocent, but I think virtually everybody acknowledges that he knows often when he is not telling the truth to the public. BERMAN: Can I just -- revise one quick thing?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: Abby just convinced me of something.

CAMEROTA: What?

BERMAN: What I guess I'm trying to say is that the president -- for the president, the truth is not the priority. On the contrary. You know, it's not something that he cares about working toward in any meaningful way. I think that's what's crystal clear. I think what Abby said there is dead-on right. Thank you, Abby, for articulating.

So the other thing I want to say here is, though we've all been laughing and chuckling, I think there's something deeply troubling about a president who's not committed to the truth.

CAMEROTA: Well, not only -- yes, of course. Go quickly, Joe.

LOCKHART: There is going to be a national and a worldwide crisis at some point. And the fact that you can't trust the president, the rest of the world, our allies and enemies can't trust and can't predict what he's going to say, can't -- what he's going to do, is going to come back to haunt this president.

CAMEROTA: Well, yes, that that it's not based in fact. I mean, you can't trust that it's based in fact.

AVLON: And leadership requires trust and leadership. But we've got an election a couple days away. And one of the president's closing arguments is not true, which is that the Democrats don't care about health care, and he's the one defending pre-existing conditions.

So there's rubber meets the road in real time. It's not just truth's like a box of chocolates here in the Oval Office.

CAMEROTA: OK. And speaking as Abby was about weaponizing words, very interesting new interview with the president about why he chooses to say, to continue to go after and say vile things about the free press. Listen to this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What scares the crap out of me is that when, if you're saying "enemy of the people, enemy of the people" --

TRUMP: I have to fight back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But just one second. God forbid that, like, somebody -- you've got fervent supporters and they love you. They listen to you. "Enemy of the people, enemy of the people."

TRUMP: They like me more because of that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They like you more, but what happens if all of a sudden, someone gets shot, someone shoots one of these reporters? I don't think you think we're the enemy of the people, do you?

TRUMP: I don't, I don't. But if you gave me false reports, I would say that's not a good thing for our country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But don't you worry at all? You are, like, the most powerful person in the world, and if you say that word, "enemy, enemy" -- literally tens of thousands of people go into a stadium to listen to you.