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NEW DAY SATURDAY

U.S. Sets Global Record For COVID Cases Reported In A Single Day; Candidates Zero In On Rust Belt States That Clinched 2016 Election; Fourteen U.S. States, One U.S. Territory Reported Record COVID-19 Hospitalizations Friday; Last Day Of Early Voting In Florida, 7.8-Million-Plus Ballots Already Cast; Today: Last Day Of Early Voting In Battleground North Carolina; Democrats Uneasy About GOP Turnout In Key Florida County; Coronavirus Pandemic: Adjusting To Our New Reality. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired October 31, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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


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[08:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: This has been the worst week ever for coronavirus cases in the United States.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: By the way, you know without it, we're still rounding the corner.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The President of United States is accusing medical profession of making up COVID deaths so they make more money.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Doctors go in putting their lives on the line to take care of patients every day. That's not how doctors get paid.

BIDEN: This president has done everything to try to discourage us. He will not be able to stop us at all.

TRUMP: We are going to win four more great years in the White House.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So we're tracking one of the biggest stories this election, the explosion in early voting numbers. Nearly 87 million have already voted across the nation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you haven't sent their ballot in yet, walk it to the election officer or drop box. But do it in person.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You really don't really have an excuse at this point for being able to vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY WEEKEND with Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: A beautiful New York their on this Saturday morning in October. We hope that you are feeling fall there as you feel the sunshine as well, because we need some - we need some good news.

Take a look at what we have to tell you this morning. The United States has set a record for the highest number of cases ever recorded - not just in the U.S., but out of every country in the world. And here's the number, 99,321 Americans were infected in the last 24 hours.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: And that's coming from across the country, coast to coast, several states are hitting record highs. And the President is claiming that America is rounding the turn, is still holding these potential super spreader rallies - four of them today.

PAUL: Now, listen to this number, 86.8 million, that's a number of you who have already voted, and we're still three days from Election Day. So both candidates are focusing on the Rust Belt today. These are key battleground states, obviously, that really are the reason President Trump won back in 2016.

BLACKWELL: President Trump's four rallies are in Pennsylvania. Today, Joe Biden will be in Michigan,

PAUL: President Trump won both of those states in 2016. Right now CNN's Poll of Polls has the former vice president leading in both. And as the campaign's make their final push forward, as we said, more than 86.8 million of you have already voted. And just to put that in perspective, that's nearly two-thirds of the total ballots cast in the last presidential election.

BLACKWELL: Of course, we're covering the campaigns in every angle. M.J. Lee is following the Biden campaign. Sarah Westwood is at the White House. Ryan Young is in Wisconsin. Omar Jimenez is in Michigan. And we've got our correspondents fanned out across the country. Let's start with Omar in Detroit. And the former vice president will have a big cheerleader, the former President Barack Obama with him today.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Victor. This is part of a final push by both of these candidates to try and get people to their side. Now, when you look at the people that have already voted, this has been an incredibly enthusiastic early voting period here in Michigan, especially we've already seen 2.6 million people cast their vote.

And put that in perspective, that's more than half of the entire turnout going back to 2016, and more than half of the entire 2008 turnout, which was the most voted election here in Michigan's history.

Now, when you talk about what we are going to see this weekend. We're in a period here in Michigan now where people can come and drop off their absentee ballots at places and townships and cities that are required to be open eight hours this weekend. Or they could come as we're expected to see once this location opens in about an hour or so, you can come in, request a ballot, fill it out, and then turn it right back in, again, all to be counted, or at least processed in part before Election Day.

It's a new process this year. For jurisdictions over 25,000 people, a day prior to Election Day, they are able to start processing some of these ballots so that by the time the counting starts here in Michigan at 7:00 a.m. election day when polls open, they're able to at least have a little bit out of the way.

In fact, the Detroit city clerk here saying they expect to have at least 100,000 absentee ballots already counted by the time we get to the end of Election Day itself, because of course, there's been a major concern about how long it's going to take to actually count these votes and how long it's going to take to see who actually wins this state, because we saw how close it was in the 2016 election with President Trump taking these 16 electoral votes by less than a percentage point.

[08:05:00]

PAUL: Very good point. Omar Jimenez, we appreciate it. Thank you. I want to go to Ryan Young now who is in Wisconsin. And Ryan, what do you think the Biden campaign has learned from 2016? It was Wisconsin as a state that Hillary Clinton didn't pay as much attention to has been the criticism since then.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, obviously, that's been a big question throughout the state, leading up to this election. And I can tell you, yesterday when we got on the ground, and you started turning the television on, you saw all the commercials, both for Trump and for Biden, obviously, a lot of attention being paid to the state. One of these you have to talk about though the impact of the coronavirus. And, obviously, with the numbers sort of surging in this area, people are concerned about it.

Now, this polling center right here is something that will open up in the next three hours. And one of the things you'll notice is the fact that they've taken all the care to put the social distancing markings on the bottom.

You talk about that idea of what they've learnt since 2016. Well, Biden was here yesterday, and so was Trump. This is obviously a battleground state. And you keep hearing the push to the vote being out there. People were concerned about getting people to the polls. Already 1.7 million people have voted. That's more than 56 percent of the folks who voted in 2016. So we feel that push so far in terms of this state.

And when you talk to leaders throughout this city, they're hoping to get more young people out to the polls. That was a big conversation. Actually talking to some leaders yesterday who were telling me they're hoping to see in the next two days, a sort of surge. Now, throughout the rest of this state, some of the early voting has already stopped. Here in Milwaukee County, of course, you can still vote till Sunday. So they're hoping there's that final push all the way through as people start to vote more. Now, in some of the Republican leading counties, they've seen a strong surge of people getting out to vote early. It'd be also interesting to see if people can turn those absentee ballots. There's still a lot out there. They're hoping people won't put those into the mail. They'll actually take those to the voting centers. Christi.

PAUL: All righty, Ryan Young, good to see you this morning. Thank you, sir.

YOUNG: Good to see you.

PAUL: So CNN's Sarah Westwood is at the White House. The President, we know, as we said, heading to Pennsylvania, what's the expectation from him today?

SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Christi, today we're expected to see President Trump make his final pitch to Pennsylvania voters. He's got four events across the state today. And the amount of time that the campaign has him stumping in Pennsylvania tells you how valuable they see the state.

It's got 20 electoral votes. One of those states it's a must win really for both sides. So the next president of the United States is likely going to have to carry Pennsylvania next week. We see Trump trying to drive turnout up in some of the more rural areas of the state, the western part of Pennsylvania, for example, because they need to overcome a major Biden advantage in the cities like Philadelphia where Biden is polling way ahead. He's also polling ahead overall in the state.

If you talk to Trump campaign advisors, if you talk to Republican strategist, they say there's still cause for optimism for Trump in Pennsylvania. They're pointing to their, what they describe as their superior ground game in Pennsylvania.

They've been conducting more in-person voter contacts, more get out the vote efforts than the Biden campaign has. They started that process way earlier. And they also point to an uptick in GOP voter registration over 2016 levels. That's why they say they're still in the hunt for Pennsylvania, even though as I just mentioned, Biden is leading.

Now, Trump is expected to continue this breakneck pace of campaigning. He has 14 rallies overall, scheduled between now and Election Day, five of them will be in Pennsylvania. So this is the state that he's visiting the most before voters head to the polls for the final time.

But ultimately, this is the pandemic election, and Biden has really worked to turn this whole race into a referendum on Trump's handling of the virus. And Trump is making his closing argument about really this gamble that voters are more concerned about returning to normal life than they are about the virus. So these are the closing arguments that we are hearing from both candidates during these final three days the election, Victor and Christi.

BLACKWELL: And Sarah, the president is selling this new conspiracy to try to explain away the numbers of deaths caused by this virus.

WESTWOOD: Yes, Victor, we heard really just a stunning attack on health care workers from the president yesterday in Minnesota. He's baselessly claiming that doctors are inflating the numbers of COVID deaths in order to get more funding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID, you know that right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say is, I'm but you know sorry everybody dies of COVID.

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WESTWOOD: Now, these comments have obviously drawn a lot of scrutiny, particularly from the medical community and I want you to listen to one doctor's response.

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DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: The president is a liar. I mean, I'm sorry to say that. But I just can't take it anymore. Look, over a 1,000 health care workers in this country have died, trying to save the lives of their fellow Americans. And, every day they go to work, and they're the real super people, the Superman and Superwoman. They go to work every single day and put themselves at risk, to put out the fire that he has stoked, and that his actions have continued to endanger the lives of people in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:10:00]

WESTWOOD: The president's baseless comments on that front and his ongoing efforts to minimize the pandemic come, as we're seeing spikes across this country. Yesterday alone, 900 - more than 900 Americans died from the virus and we saw roughly 90,000 new cases of COVID. That's just yesterday. So this is really the backdrop for the president making those comments in the Midwest yesterday, which, by the way, is also seeing, in some cases record levels of COVID now, Victor and Christi.

BLACKWELL: Sarah Westwood for us there at the White House. Thank you. Let's go now to CNN's M.J. Lee on the trail with the Biden campaign. M.J., former Vice President Biden is heading the Michigan ahead by eight points in CNN's Poll of Polls. What's his closing message their going to be?

M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, Joe Biden has made abundantly clear that he believes this is the COVID-19 election. We saw him yesterday traveling to three different states, and everywhere he went he tailored his stump speech around COVID-19 and President Trump's handling of the virus.

We have heard him saying over and over again the past few months that he believes the president has mismanaged this virus. Has criticized him for not listening to scientists, and then laid out his own plan for how he would try to contain the virus if he won next week. And one of the things that we saw Joe Biden attacking the president for yesterday was this baseless attack against medical workers that Sarah just laid out, where he claimed that doctors were actually inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths so that they can make more money.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: The president of United States is accusing the medical profession of making up COVID deaths so they make more money. Doctors and nurses go to work every day to save lives. They do their jobs. Donald Trump should stop attacking them and do his job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Now, something else that we have seen the former vice president stress over and over again is that he is not taking anything for granted right now, even despite national polls and key battleground state polls showing him with a lead. We saw him make that case in Wisconsin last night.

Remember, this is a state that Hillary Clinton infamously did not visit once in 2016. Biden saying look, I have traveled here a lot, because I am not taking this for granted. And he believes the party didn't take the state seriously enough four years ago.

Where we are going to see the former vice president today, as you said he will be in Michigan. This is a state where Democrats are hoping to get the turnout up and the former vice president hoping that he is going to be getting some help in star power from former President Barack Obama, Singer and Songwriter Stevie Wonder.

And then heading into tomorrow and Monday he is going to be spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania. So you look at these states that he is visiting in this final stretch. These are all Midwestern states that made all the difference for President Trump back in 2016. Guys.

PAUL: All right, M.J. Lee, thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: Still to come, the U.S. has set a new world record for coronavirus cases reported in a single day. And there are some health experts that think it's a bad idea for you to go to a Halloween party, for your kids to trick or treat tonight.

PAUL: And if President Trump doesn't win Florida, the question is will we stay in the White House? 29 electoral votes are at stake there. We're live from the battleground state later this hour.

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[08:15:00]

PAUL: It is the highest number of cases ever recorded, not just in the U.S., but in the entire world. Here's the number I'm talking about, 99,321 new cases of coronavirus reported right here in the U.S. just yesterday,

BLACKWELL: Well, the Director of the CDC says, this silent epidemic is of asymptomatic infections is what's driving the spread and doctors, they really think that you should get your flu shot now. CNN Correspondent Jean Casarez is in New York following these developments.

I mean, this number I saw it kind of tick up throughout the day yesterday, and by 8:00 o'clock it was already the number one day of the pandemic. But to get close to 100,000 so soon in the fall, it's just startling.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is. And we're getting some new information, Victor, which is interesting, it's from John Hopkins University, and they're saying that. During the month of October - and this is the last day of October, that 31 states - so that's more than half of our states reported during the month of October, one day of the highest number of new cases they had ever had.

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CASAREZ (voice-over): Scary numbers across the country this Halloween weekend, as the U.S. surpassed 9 million coronavirus cases on Friday. 1 million of them added in just the last two weeks.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: At the moment today, we now have one percent being diagnosed of coronavirus every second. We have one American dying of coronavirus every two minutes.

CASAREZ (voice-over): Officials nationwide are pleading with people to opt for public safety instead of public celebrations.

GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): As we had in the Halloween weekend, a time when many would normally be out and about in a different sort of face masks, please stay home.

[08:20:00]

CASAREZ (voice-over): The Midwest, were both President Trump and former Vice President Biden campaigned on Friday is seen a particularly grim spike. And while mask wearing and social distancing guidelines were visible at all of Biden's events, Trump poked fun at a Fox News personality for following protocols at his rally in Michigan.

TRUMP: I can't recognize you. Is that a mask? No way. Are you wearing a mask? I've never seen her in a mask. Look at you. Well, she's being very politically correct.

CASAREZ (voice-over): This, as the new seven-day case rate in that state is up 52 percent from last week. In Minnesota, 3,165 new cases were announced on Friday, the first time the state has ever crossed 3,000 new cases in one day. And Ohio reported nearly 4,000 new cases yesterday, marking its highest increase for the second day in a row.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): Virus is raging throughout the State of Ohio. There's no place to hide. CASAREZ (voice-over): That's not just true from Middle America.

REINER: It's very bad, and it's going to get worse until we do things differently. So what distinguishes our current outbreak from what happened initially in the spring with our so-called first wave is that the virus is all over the country now.

CASAREZ (voice-over): In the Northeast, New Jersey reported over 2,000 cases on Friday, marking the state's highest one day total since May. And out west in Utah, a statewide alert was sent to all residents on Friday, as the percentage of positive test hit a record 18.17 percent and a whopping 72.5 percent of the state's ICU beds are occupied.

In California, a Bay Area resident, someone under 65, has become the first person there to contract both coronavirus and the flu, yet another reminder of how important it is to be vigilant this time of year.

SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: People shouldn't let that guard down. Now we should try to remain vigilant, be careful these last two or three months as we get through what is going to be the most difficult season. So I would say, have the same prudence around Halloween and Thanksgiving this year. We've protected people for a long period of time. We've got two or three months to go here that we need to be careful.

GOV. JB PRITZKER (D-IL): In the end whatever fun you choose, please remember, this virus does not make exceptions for holidays, or because you want to take a break from it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: Now, 14 states are reporting record high hospitalizations, to just give you some examples, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming. And Christi, those are states that we really haven't seen in the headlines until virtually this point with these records.

PAUL: Yes, and it's a 55 percent rise in hospitalizations this month alone, just to put it in perspective too. Jean Casarez, always so good to see you, thank you.

CASAREZ: Thank you, Christi.

BLACKWELL: The candidates and the campaigns are exactly where you would expect they would be in the battleground states this weekend. The time is running out for the campaigns to get the voters to the polls live in two key states that wrap up early voting today. Next.

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[08:25:00]

PAUL: Three days until the election now and both campaigns are making their final push to turn out remaining voters.

BLACKWELL: More than 86.8 million people have already cast a ballot at the pre-election count. It's almost two-thirds of the more than 136 million people who voted during the 2016 election.

Let's check it out, on the battleground states early voting ends today there. Let's start with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux in Charlotte, North Carolina. Also Randi Kaye is in Broward County. Actually, Randy first.

This state - the entire states there, especially South Florida, big focus for the campaigns. The rain has stopped. Ain't that just like Florida? But - so final day there. Important place where you are. And there are some activists, some strategists who are little nervous.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. Four (ph) more days of early in-person voting here in the State of Florida. Already 7.8 million people have voted here in the state, already surpassing the 2016 early vote totals. But, of course, they want to have a safe and secure election here.

So here in Broward County they've already stopped a scheme to register dozens of dead people to vote, as Democrats here in Broward County. 50 voter registration applications were sent in. You can register to vote by mail here in the state. They were postmarked Columbia, South Carolina. The majority of them, as I said, we're for dead people, some more than a century old. But law enforcement and election officials did stop that and no votes were cast in their names.

But, of course, as you said, there is a big push here to get those votes here in the State of Florida. Team Biden is sending Kamala Harris here. She's going to be making three stops in South Florida today. Joe Biden will also be here. Donald Trump only won this state by 1.2 (ph) percent back in 2016. So they are trying to eat into some of that support.

The concern for Joe Biden is that he's underperforming among Black and Latino voters here in the state, which make up about 10 percent of the electorate. So that's a good chunk. They want to get that support. They're going to have some "Souls to the Polls" events here in South Florida this weekend to try and get African-American voters to the polls, to try and see an uptick, perhaps in some of that support for the Democratic candidate.

We know that Biden though is performing better than Hillary Clinton did and even better than Donald Trump is with seniors here in the state. Many of them, who I've spoken with, are not happy about his response to the pandemic and have a lot of concerns about health care and about health care, and about when they're going to be able to see their grandchildren again.

[08:30:00]

But, again, a lot of voters are certainly coming out today, showing commitment in the heavy rains this morning that we were experiencing earlier. And even now we're seeing a really steady stream at this location here in Plantation, Florida, a lot of voters coming out.

This is already shaping up to be another nail biter of an election. Seven out of the 10 last elections here in the state were within the recount range. And, of course, there's all the Independents who are no party affiliated voters, as they're called here in the state. And we have about 1.6 million who have already cast their votes in this state.

But also interesting is there's another 1.6 million ballots that have been sent out that haven't been returned. So the question is, are those voters just not going to vote? Are they going to mail-in those ballots, which may not even get there in time for Election Day? Or do they plan to vote in person? A lot of really important questions that both campaigns are paying attention to, back to you guys.

PAUL: All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Randi. Suzanne is in Charlotte, North Carolina, outside a polling place, we understand. So there are 15 electoral votes up for grabs in North Carolina. What are you hearing from people and seeing there this morning, Suzanne, and good morning.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning. Yes. There are a lot of people here who have already voted. There's a lot of enthusiasm and anticipation about voting.

And also, there's what makes this place unique is that you can actually register today to vote and vote on the same day. But this is the last opportunity to do that. And so that people who aren't even registered to vote can actually participate in the process, but they got to make it under that deadline. That deadline is 3:00 o'clock this afternoon.

So we are one of the places - the early voting places. This is the most popular one in this particular county, which also includes the City of Charlotte, about 1,000 people showed up yesterday. We're anticipating perhaps the same number. We've been talking to some of the polling workers this morning, who say that, people procrastinate. So they expect that you couldn't see that number, again, happen today.

It opened just about a little bit after 8:00 o'clock. We've seen a little bit of a trickle in of folks coming and going. But I have to tell you, the enthusiasm of voters in North Carolina is really historic and extraordinary.

If you just take the sheer numbers alone, you're talking about 7.3 million registered voters in the state, 4 million have already voted. That is 55 percent of all those registered in this state. And just to give you a perspective, that is 80 percent of all the people in the state that voted back in 2016.

I had a chance to catch up with some volunteers, the poll workers here, a family they - it's Halloween, of course, so they came decked out, but decked out in a very particular way to encourage people to vote. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've had so much division in the country, and it's time for us to get together. And we just felt like if more people got out and vote they would feel heard, they would feel respected. And we wanted to show them that in the polling places that we were just excited. We didn't care who was coming out to vote. Everybody just needed to come out and vote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the same. I just wanted to make people feel more confident of what was going on and feel more energy and we felt that these costumes would help better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And so, yes, they're in the spirit of Halloween in the costumes, but also there is a sense of urgency, there is sense of importance for people to vote today, before Election Day. And also that last minute surge of the candidates who are coming. We're going to see Vice President Pence here today in several locations. Also going to see Jill Biden and the Comedian Amy Schumer, who will be with her in Charlotte, and of course, tomorrow there'll be Trump. Christi, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Suzanne Malveaux for us in North Carolina. Randi Kay in Florida. Suzanne and Randi, thank you both.

PAUL: So polls are showing that the president is in a familiar place at the end of the day. He needs to come back. And unlike in 2016, this time, there is little evidence of that late Trump momentum. The coronavirus surge has really been his biggest political headwind here.

Friday was officially, as in yesterday, was officially the worst day of the pandemic, when you consider cases nearly. 100,000 cases reported just yesterday alone. It was the highest in the U.S. It was the highest in the world of any country, just to put that into perspective.

We have "New York Times" National Politics Reporter and CNN Political Analyst Alex Burns with us right now. Alex, it's not just that the President is touting that - saying that the pandemic has turned the curve, which I think a lot of people are wondering how can you say it when the numbers are what they are.

But on top of that, he needs, we know, women to vote for him. And I want to play a snippet of what he said at a rally here about women.

[08:35:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You know what else? I'm also getting your husband's - they want to get back to work, right? They want to get back to work. We're getting your husband's back to work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: So he was talking about the husbands getting back to work. It's almost as though he forgets that women work. And this is coming off of some comments that he made that we're not so nice about Lesley Stahl, Governor Whitmer, Kristen Welker, just to name a few. How is this language serving him, Alex? And who behind the scenes, is anybody trying to write that verbal ship? ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Christi, I think it's serving him poorly, to say the least. That every poll that we have taken at the times and every poll that I'm aware of that either campaign in this race has taken, shows that the President just has a monumental deficit with female voters, including women who in the past have voted a fairly reliably for Republican candidates.

And, I think back to the Republican convention. There was that one night of the convention, where they showed one after another a number of women who worked for President Trump in the White House. People like Kellyanne Conway, Kayleigh McEnany, making the case that in the workplace this president doesn't see any distinction between men and women.

And it was sort of a, you know, a jarring message at the time, because there's so much in his behavior that suggests otherwise. And he is really bringing that to the fore in the final days of this campaign. And you would not know, from the way he is talking at the podium that women have borne so much of the economic hardship of the pandemic. And as you alluded to, you would not know from what he is saying at the podium, that really anybody has borne an enormous amount of hardship in the pandemic.

PAUL: So do we know anything about what's happening behind the scenes, his speechwriters, people, is there anybody trying to change the narrative for him? And maybe he's just not listening? Because I think it's hard for people to understand the kind of support he has behind the scenes.

BURNS: Well, Christi, the - my understanding from my reporting is that, yes, there are people who have consistently tried to nudge him more in the direction of talking about the economy generally, and signs that the economy may be recovering. Although, those signs are not quite as encouraging now as they might have been two or three months ago, because of the surge in the coronavirus pandemic.

But, a lot of Republicans that I talked to at this point, and they felt this way for a couple of weeks now, have sort of reached the acceptance stage of President Trump experience in this campaign, and just feeling like he's going to do what he's going to do, and that they just need to kind of run their own races and try to sort of grit their teeth and get through this and hope that he does not sort of sabotage himself even more dramatically than he already has before Election Day.

I don't want to sort of overstate the optimism on the Republican side that that's actually possible. But you know the people who would be in a position to call him up and stage a really aggressive intervention, for the most part, my understanding is they've reached the conclusion that actually, there's no chance that that would be successful and it's not worth the try.

PAUL: All righty, so let's get to Florida real quickly before I let you go. 29 electoral votes are on the line here. And this was the headline in POLITICO the last 24 hours the Florida - in Florida, it says, "We've got to stop the bleeding. Democrats sound the alarm specifically in Miami." We were just talking to Randi Kay about this. But talk to us about is this voter suppression concern, is this - the concern about what these no affiliate party voters might be doing? There's just no telling what to do. But what specifically is the problem in Miami?

BURNS: Well, I think there is concern about voter suppression and just lack of enthusiasm in general among constituencies, particularly black and Hispanic voters that Democrats have historically relied on. But that's also part of the state where the President has really made an aggressive effort over the last four years to peel away some supporters, particularly Hispanic supporters of President - of Secretary Clinton from four years ago, to make a little bit of headway in an area where Democrats really need to run up the score.

I do think, Christi, the no party affiliation voters that you mentioned, Joe Biden's hopes in Florida really do rest on them. It doesn't look like Democratic voters alone are going to drastically out vote Republicans in the state. But there is a sense on the Democratic side that there may be the potential for a different kind of path for Biden that runs largely through independent and moderate voters.

PAUL: All righty. Alex Burns, so good to have you with us this morning, thank you, sir.

BURNS: Thanks a lot.

PAUL: Of course. And be sure to watch "Election Night in America", it's our special coverage. It starts Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.

BLACKWELL: Well, the promises were made, but where they kept? We're going to take a look at the president's campaign promises from 2016 that he made to the American people. His contract with the voter, we'll see how many of them he actually came through on.

[08:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: At campaign rallies across the country, supporters of the President have held these signs, "Promises Made, Promises Kept," you see them. So this morning, we're looking at the promises that the President delivered on and the ones that he has not.

[08:45:00]

Just take you back to October 22, 2016, candidate Trump released his contract with the American voter, outlined 100-day action plan to, "restore honesty, accountability and bring change to Washington", 28 promises. Of those 28 nine had been fulfilled. And we're talking renegotiating NAFTA agreement, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, selecting a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Eight promises were not fulfilled: repealing and replacing Obamacare, ending illegal immigration and cleaning up corruption in Washington. Now, on that final part he said that he wanted to drain the swamp and bring in new ethics reforms.

Now, since President Trump took office, nine of his former advisors or associates, who either worked on the campaign or served in the White House have been criminally charged, arrested or indicted. There are also former members of the administration who were involved in political scandals. You'll remember Tom Price, and that private jet controversy. Scott Pruitt, the EPA ethics violations.

The rest of the campaign promises are somewhere in the complicated middle. For example, President Trump's vow to cancel every executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama. That hasn't happened fully. He hasn't replaced the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court blocked the administration's attempt to end DACA.

And remember those tax cuts for the middle class that he promised? That hasn't happened. In the President's tax plan, though, the biggest tax relief went to corporations and people making more than a $1 million a year. The President also said that he would reduce the number of tax brackets to three, but they're still seven and lots of complexities.

He also pledged to cancel billions in payments to the UN Climate Change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure. Now, he cut the payments to the program, but there's no evidence to suggest that the money was used for environmental projects. In fact, he's reduced funding for environmental initiatives.

Overall, the President's record is mixed at best. And as we look ahead to Tuesday, there's still no clear contract for what the President wants to do in a potential second turn.

PAUL: Up next here why Marianne Williamson says, you know what, a lot of us were social distancing before we actually had to do so. She's going to talk to us about what she's learned from COVID in the reset. That's next.

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[08:50:00]

PAUL: Heading into Election Day, a woman has made a lot of headlines in and out of politics is Marianne Williamson. Well, she and I talked this week about the reset, that's the term we're using to describe the way the coronavirus pandemic has changed us here.

She recently posted this warning about the dangers of our marketing mentality on Instagram. Here's what she wrote, "When our only bottom line is what we can get out of something, we develop a skewed relationship to things that matter." I asked her to expound on that. Here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, AUTHOR, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Human beings were not created to sell to each other. We were not created to market to each other. We were created to love one another. And I think that one of the things that COVID has reminded us all is that we are as human beings hardwired for community.

Isolation is not healthy. It is not what we were created for. Solitude, yes. But loneliness and isolation and separation, no. And I think one of the things that this experience has reminded us, we were social distancing, even before there was social distancing. We were social distancing on our tablets. People would go out to the movies with each other, they both just be looking at their phone.

So we're paying so many of the problems in our personal lives, and in our collective existence we now see have come about because we have separated not only ourselves from each other, but from a sense that other people's concerns are as important as ours. And when you make the bottom line in life that you're trying to get something, that turns all human beings into - all human relationships into transactions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And that's on our mind as we close in on November 3rd. I asked her how she's feeling about the election. She, of course, said that she "very much wants Joe Biden to win." Very transparent there. But she said there's something much deeper going on right now then what we're acknowledging.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMSON: There was a line in a book I read recently by Matt Taibbi where he said, Trump doesn't happen in a country where things are going well. We have some underlying issues that have to be addressed in order to interrupt the freefall of American democracy, and restore and revitalize and initiate a season of repair. Those issues will be with us after January 20th, no matter who is inaugurated.

And I think that COVID, I think that the crisis of this time has helped awaken a lot of Americans, not only to the need for that, but the fact - to the fact that our own personal growth and impeccability showing, up standing up a little taller, being a little wiser, a little more proactive and participatory in our democracy is what's going to be necessary no matter who occupies the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: There's a lot more that she said. I'll post that online later. But tell me how the coronavirus quarantine and measures have changed you? How has it changed your approach to life? You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And thank you very much.

[08:55:00]

And we also thank you for spending some time with us here this morning. Be safe this Halloween, but make good memories.

BLACKWELL: Yes, and you might not want an extra hour of 2020, but remember to set your clocks back. PAUL: Yes.

BLACKWELL: SMERCONISH is up next. We'll see you back--

PAUL: Just sleep through it, right?

BLACKWELL: We'll see you back here tomorrow at 6:00.

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MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: Voting ends in just three days in the most tumultuous election of our lives. I'm Michael Smerconish in Philadelphia. This year's polls indicate that president is about to be sent packing perhaps bigly. Remember, the national polling wasn't far off in 2016.