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CUOMO PRIME TIME

Breaking Down Dueling Biden, Trump Town Halls; White House Was Warned Giuliani Target of Russian Op to Feed Misinformation to Trump. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired October 16, 2020 - 00:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: The best part of the night is here. Time, now, for "PRIME TIME WITH C. CUOMO."

[00:00:56]

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Look at you, biting my line.

LEMON: Role reversal.

How's it going?

CUOMO: I'll tell you what. I liked the variety and the depth that you provided in your hours. It's good to see Harris. Good to get her take on things. Very interesting to kind of glean what a campaign wants out there, through its messengers, and she's a very good messenger.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: That was a good conversation.

LEMON: Well, can I say something?

CUOMO: And Arnold was an even better conversation.

LEMON: Oh, my gosh.

CUOMO: Because you never hear from him.

LEMON: And he let -- he didn't give me a chance to talk, which I loved because he said some really good stuff.

But, first, let me talk about, if you will, if you'll allow me, because this is your hour.

CUOMO: Go ahead.

LEMON: To talk about Senator Kamala Harris and the conversation that we had about this so-called court-packing thing, right? Which is really an expansion of the court. Court packing sounds like unmasking.

CUOMO: No, court packing is what McConnell has done by forcing through all these federal judges when he wouldn't let Obama get his.

LEMON: This is total role reversal.

CUOMO: No, I've never disagreed. I just don't agree with how they handled the question.

LEMON: OK. So, since he was asked about it and said, the former vice president, said that he's going to have a position on it before election day, then I think it is fair game now to ask him about it. I know people don't like that.

But before, it was just something that mostly Republicans were talking about. He had not -- Yes. Don't disagree with me. OK. You can disagree with me.

CUOMO: Of course I can.

LEMON: I'm going to come next door, because you know we're in the same -- studio next door.

CUOMO: Oh, please, don't. Stop.

LEMON: So I think it's -- listen, he said he's going to have a position. I'm wondering what he's going to say. One of my guests said he -- she believes that he was buying time on that. So we'll see on that one.

CUOMO: All I'm saying is it's always been a fair question. There's a significant aspect of his party that wants it. There are a lot of people, as Van Jones, very eloquently, put tonight, on this -- on this show and others, that there's a real consideration for people in the Democratic Party that they've been getting a raw deal by the system. That the Electoral College works against them. That you have disproportionate representation in Congress --

LEMON: That's fair.

CUOMO: -- because, you know, everybody gets two senators, even if you have, like, a tenth of the population. And that the court is another example of that.

LEMON: But why should a minority in the country get to decide everything? Why should that?

CUOMO: That's the argument. Well, the counter argument is that's the system. Change the system, then. Don't just complain about it.

LEMON: It's not fair.

CUOMO: But the court-packing thing, and whether you'd expand the Supreme Court matters for two reasons. One, there's just an absolute basis for its relevancy in terms of how jurisprudence will be carried out in this country.

But second, you say you're better than Trump and that you're not going to bob and weave and slip and duck and lie and all that. And frankly, saying, I'll have a position before the election means that you're not ready to be straight with people now. He knows what he wants to say.

LEMON: It has been done six times in this country.

CUOMO: Yes. Yes, long ago.

LEMON: Changing -- changing the court, because there's no established rule or law on how many --

CUOMO: Right.

LEMON: -- judges. They believe it's got to be 15.

CUOMO: In Article 3 of the Constitution, it is left to Congress. They used to expand SCOTUS to echo the expansion of circuit courts. They, then, stopped that. So you could make an argument that you could have 12 or 15 or whatever you want. You could make an argument that you have to have two to make up for the two that they stole from you. You could make an argument that you're not going to make any.

You could have a good argument that I'm not going to tell you, Don Lemon, because I'm going to hold it over McConnell's head. And if he tries to do to me, if I win, what he did to Obama, this is what he's got waiting for him. I am not going to handle it the same way it was before. I'm going to hold it over his head. So I'm not going to give you an answer. It's a maybe.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: Because it depends on whether or not he wants to play straight. All of those are more acceptable than what they're doing right now. That's why I bring it up. That's my job.

LEMON: And quickly, for Arnold Schwarzenegger, who just -- he gets it. He's -- he's trying to do something when it comes to racial equity in this country. Racial justice in this country. He sees the problem.

He said this is not a Democrat or a Republican issue. That lawmakers should be dealing with this. Citizens should be dealing with this. And he's actually putting his money where his mouth is. We need people like him in Washington. We need leaders like him.

[00:05:04]

CUOMO: You know, I -- I agree with the concept. It is interesting, what critics of Arnold Schwarzenegger say of his time as governor. That the talk was not as good as the walk.

Now, Arnold, sometimes, would agree with that, in a certain context, of saying, I had no idea how hard it was to get simple things done in this system. I didn't know. So, it was easier to say it than to do it, not because I didn't want to do it. Because it's really hard. You get in there, and you get all these people say, You'll never get a damn thing if you don't give me this thing, and this is not something I want to give them.

That's the reality of governance. That's why Pop used to say, You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose. It's boring; it's hard; it's painstaking. It's not florid and beautiful.

So that said, I like his ideas, but if achieving systemic equality were that easy, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we've been talking this talk in this country for at least, at least 50 years.

All right. Now, they're doing to me what they do to you.

LEMON: Yes, now you've got to -- Say good night, Don.

CUOMO: Even though, I will bet you anything you want, this be the highest portion of this hour, even though we have great stuff to come. I'm going to move on.

LEMON: I love you, C. Cuomo.

CUOMO: I love you, Don Lemon. I will talk to you soon.

LEMON: I'll see you. Bye.

CUOMO: All right. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to this late-night, live edition of PRIME TIME. I know you love when Don and I mix it up and mix ideas. Don't tell us. We know that. Tell people you want more of it, if that's what you want.

Here's what there's more of, for sure. More than 17 million of us have already voted in this wild election. They've already made their choices.

You know, this is very important. Why? It just highlights two things. One, the hypocrisy of what's going on with the Supreme Court. Because if McConnell and the Republicans were going to respect precedent, which is you don't mess with the people's choice close to an election. You're in an election, and they're doing it. One. OK.

Two, this is why securing our electoral process matters so much. The litigation around the country that is arguably ensuring voter suppression. What we see in Georgia. What was supposed to be corrected, but you have ten-hour lines.

Can we really expect people to do that? They're doing it. God bless them. They're doing it. But why should we make it so hard to vote? Why are Republicans litigating to do that? Trying to make it so that, no, no, no, if it comes any time after election day, no matter when you postmarked it, can't be counted. Why?

It raises a big question, especially when you see how many people are doing it. Why do they want to do something, at the same time that it's exploding in its value? Think about that.

Now, the rest of you. You got a little bit more to chew on, tonight, if you haven't voted. Now, a lot of you may vote because of what you heard tonight in these dueling town halls.

I didn't like it. Of course, doesn't make any sense. This country is already on different channels, right? Literally, people can't see or hear what their alleged political opposite sees and thinks and hears. Tonight, it was literal. Not figurative and political. It was literal. You'd have to make a choice, to go back and forth. Nobody was going to really do that. We'll see it in the ratings, sure enough.

But the president looked like he had a boon here, right? That he was going to cancel out Biden's thing. He was on NBC. They had more outlets to play it on. But he may have made a big miscalculation. Why?

Because, in a debate with Biden, I think that it would have been a straighter comparison than Trump versus Trump's own B.S., because his town hall was, for certain, more revealing. It was pumped with question after question that are hard for him to answer.

But, remember, you know, even something like, Who do you owe $421 million to? Couldn't answer it. Do you condemn white supremacy? He said, Yes, and I condemn Antifa. Why must he insist on equating those things?

Roe v. Wade. Didn't really give an answer. That was very interesting to me.

To me, the most interesting part of the night for you is, What do you make of somebody who wants to be our commander in chief who's going to question whether or not our Navy SEALs and our military lied to us about taking out Osama bin Laden? To me, it's unforgiveable. I don't know how anybody in the military or who respects the military can get past it. I don't get how you get your mind around the idea that he thought it was OK to leverage their dignity for his own.

Ron Brownstein, Karen Finney, Scott Jennings. Now, let's come together. Thank you very much, each and all. Let's listen to how President Trump answered a question about when his last negative test was, before he got COVID. And compare that to what Biden said about testing before the next debate. Here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, ANCHOR, NBC'S "TODAY": Did you test the day of the debate?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know. I don't remember. I test all the time.

GUTHRIE; You say you don't know if you got a test on the day of the debate?

TRUMP: I had no problem. Again, the doctors do it. I don't ask them. I test all the time. And they --

[00:10:03]

GUTHRIE: Did you take a test, though, on the day of the debate?

TRUMP: You ask the doctor, they'll give you a perfect answer.

GUTHRIE: Yes. TRUMP: But they take a test, and I leave. And I go about my business.

GUTHRIE: So, did you take a test on the day of the debate, I guess, is the bottom line?

TRUMP: I probably did, and I took a test the day before and the day before. And I was always in great shape.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Will you demand that President Trump take a test that day, and that it be negative before you debate?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Yes. By the way, before I came up here, I took another test. I've been taking them every day. The deep test. You know, the one they go? And because I wanted to be able to -- if I had not passed that test, I didn't want to come here and, you know, expose anybody.

I'm less concerned about me but then the people, the guys at the cameras. The people working in the, you know, the Secret Service guys you drive up with. All those people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Hey, Scott, let me start with you. Good to have you here tonight. The president knows when he took a test. And his medical staff will give us a perfect answer, which is, I can't tell you because of his privacy. But they've already eviscerated any privacy privilege by telling us selective information about tests they want information in the public about.

What about that answer are you OK with?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I'm not. I mean, it's dumb. I mean, he had 60 minutes, and he ate up some amount of time being evasive on a question that he could simply answer in five seconds and just move forward and get to the other issues that he actually wants to talk about or needs to talk about to try to win this election.

So, it's not -- it's not a good answer. It's not a smart political answer. And it could be cleared up very easily by just telling -- telling what the truth is.

CUOMO: Karen Finney, if the president says, Look, I'm getting tested. I'm fine. I'm not going to go with anything that Biden is telling me to do. I'll rather not debate than follow what some Biden rule is. I'm not following his rules. Should Biden debate next week, no matter what?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely. Why not? You mean debate Trump?

CUOMO: Yes.

FINNEY: Or use the time to speak to the American people? Look, I think if we -- if -- if Joe Biden can't be certain that Donald

Trump is COVID-free, and he refuses to take a test, then, I think, probably, he shouldn't. Because, as Joe Biden pointed out tonight, it's not just about Biden and Trump. It is about all the people who would be exposed to COVID, potentially. And that is what responsible leadership is about.

And so, I think it would set a -- an important precedent, and I think it would set an important statement of leadership that, I'm not going to do this and endanger the lives of other people.

CUOMO: I think the rule should be the same as the last time. They both get there. They get there on time. They have to be tested. If not, they have to show medical proof that they have a negative on that day, and you move forward.

Ron, in terms of who made the most of the opportunity, tonight, plus/minus, what did you see?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I thought the entire exercise was an enormous missed opportunity for the president. I mean, he's the one who's trailing. He's the one who has to shake up the dynamic of the race.

And he chose, in a kind of fit of petulance, to toss out a debate that would have been -- gotten a lot more attention from the public and the press, for two town halls that are really not going to have much consequence.

And I think the main consequence was, in the first half hour -- you know, the president kind of calmed down as it went on -- but he was extremely belligerent and confrontational. Particularly, the moderator, you know, Savannah Guthrie, saying, "So cute" under his breath at one point.

Chris, there were two separate national polls out today from two of our best pollsters, Marist and NBC/"Wall Street Journal," and each of them had Joe Biden winning 60 percent of women.

And as soon as the debate was over, you saw the statement that his campaign put out, you know, disparaging and demeaning the female moderator, who challenged him.

And so, I mean, I thought he didn't -- you know, I thought he made his points to his constituents in the second half. But I thought the dominant image was the belligerence.

And the larger point was this was largely an irrelevancy from the point of view of the campaign, where the debate -- where a town hall debate at least offered him the possibility of reshaping the narrative.

CUOMO: Let's do a perception flip. I'm going to ask Finney about the biggest problem for the Republican and the opposite for you.

What do you think is a bigger problem for the president, Karen, the fact that he played around with Roe v. Wade? Or that he actually didn't run away, as fast as his legs could carry him, from the proposition that he was questioning whether or not our bravest military heroes took out Osama bin Laden?

FINNEY: Taking out Osama bin Laden. We all know he's pro-life. We know -- we know what that agenda is. He can try to be cute by half as much as he wants. We are dealing with this right now with this court nomination. He's made it very clear.

But when you insult SEAL Team 6, who risked their lives to take down Osama bin Laden, who perpetrated one of the, you know, most horrendous acts of terrorism, if not the most horrendous act of terrorism on our country, that is un-American. That is simply un-American.

[00:15:05]

And to traffic in those kinds of conspiracy theories just reminds the American people how absurd this president has become. And that -- and when you're asking yourself do you -- can you take four more years of this nonsense? I think that is -- that is part of, in addition to insulting the members of the military, I can tell you, from the focus group work that I have been doing with voters across the country.

The thing I hear over and over, they're exhausted. They're just exhausted. Just dealing with COVID and trying to keep your life together is so much work. And then, to have a president who is trafficking in these crazy conspiracy theories and undermining the very --

CUOMO: OK.

FINNEY: -- your ability to get health -- to know how to keep yourself healthy. I think it says to people, We just can't do it.

CUOMO: But then, Scott, you've got Joe Biden saying, Look, I'm not him. I'll be better to you. I'm straight. I'll give you how it is. OK, good. Do you want to expand the Supreme Court. Hebbedy-hibbidy- hebbedy-hoo. Hibbedy-hebbedy.

Now tonight, he is, Hey, listen. I don't know. Here's the deal. You know? But, don't the people deserve to know? Yes, they do. And before this election, I will have a position. How bad is that for him?

JENNINGS: Yes. He -- he -- well, he should have an answer. It -- it's a horribly unpopular thing. I think most Americans don't want to do it. I think a lot of people in his base do want to do it. He's caught between a veritable Scilla and Charybdis here on this one.

He did promise he was going to come out with a position before election day. I'll be stunned if it is a clear position, because he's obviously trying to please, or at least not anger two different kinds of folks.

But I -- I think the Republicans have correctly attacked him on this, because he's always, Here's the deal, man. And I'm going to tell you the truth. And on this one, it's been a lot of evasiveness, for no reason.

If he was really confident in the kind of a national lead that Ron Brownstein just correctly said that he has, how hard would it be just to say, Look, guys, I know it's what you want, but I'm not going to do it. I'm running as a unity candidate, and this would be a moment of disunity if I bought into this.

CUOMO: I had the Finneys of the world beat me over the head for asking the question as a distraction. He made it a distraction. Harris made it a distraction. Not me. They should have just answered the question.

Please, stay with me. Thank you very much, especially at this hour. Your perspective is appreciated and wanted, so more to come with our power team.

But first, a little bit of breaking news on reported warnings by the United States intelligence agencies to the president about his own personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani's, interactions with Russians. We have one of the reporters who broke this story, and here's why it's going to be especially interesting. They were telling him to worry about, with Rudy, exactly what the president is worried about with Obama and the past administration. You cannot make it up, and yet it is true. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:21:23]

CUOMO: All right. We're going to get back to assessing the town halls and their impact in a moment. But there is a big story unfolding. "The Washington Post" is reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House, last year, that Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.

Greg Miller is among the reporters at "The Washington Post" who broke this story. Thank you for being with us, especially at this hour. Take us through the high points.

GREG MILLER, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": So, we know that, and we've reported this evening, that U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House, in the December timeframe last year, that Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, was in frequent contact with individuals with direct ties to Russian intelligence.

And that White House officials were worried enough about this that the national security adviser privately spoke with the president in the Oval Office, to try to caution him against believing anything that Rudy told him after returning from Ukraine. And the president basically dismissed these warnings, and said, He's my lawyer. That's Rudy.

CUOMO: Now, this is where it gets bizarre. Not only did, I guess, the president dismiss that, but he embraced it, because Rudy Giuliani was on this show, again, not long ago. And I told him what U.S. intelligence agencies said about what's the guy's name? Alexei [SIC], the guy that he's in the picture?

MILLER: Derkach.

CUOMO: Derkach.

MILLER: Derkach, yes.

CUOMO: I said -- that, you know, they say this guy's a Russian intel guy and that he was working you. And Rudy says, Yes, they can say that. He isn't. And he admits and then is parroting things that the intelligence agencies say the Russians wanted to disseminate about Biden.

And that's exactly what Rudy is pushing after meeting with this guy, who he says is a good guy. What better confirmation do you need of a concern than that?

MILLER: And to go, take it one step farther, Chris, I think it's also just remarkable that we're talking about a president who, for the first three years of his first term in office, was facing allegations and investigations of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.

He's warned, in December, that his own lawyer appears to be a conduit of Russian disinformation. And instead of running as far away from that as he can, he runs toward it, right? He is -- he is inviting it, encouraging it, and continues -- continues to point to information that Giuliani surfaces of dubious origin.

CUOMO: Greg Miller, thank you, very much, for this story that, in any other decade, would literally be all we were talking about, 24/7. And, here, it may be a shrug for about half the country and a "I thought so" for the other half.

But the reporting matters, all the same. Maybe, more than ever. So thank you for doing it, and thank you for doing it here.

All right. Let's get back to the town halls. Fact checking. You got to do it. Not easy, especially when you have to flip channels. But that's the job, tonight. And Daniel Dale and his team, they are the ones to help us sort it out.

Hey, my brother. Thank you for being back with me, again. I already know from your reporting, tonight, that, once again, Trump won the untruthfulness game. What stands out to you in his winning effort of telling the truth less?

DANIEL DALE, CNN FACT CHECKER: Yes. So, this was just hugely lopsided, Chris, as usual. No comparison.

Trump made more false claims in an hour-long town hall than Biden made in an hour and a half town hall. I'll get to some of those.

[00:25:06]

But what stood out to me most was that the president didn't only make his own false claims, as always. He also gave airtime, Chris, to two truly bonkers conspiracy theories.

He said QAnon is, Oh, it's about fighting pedophilia. In fact, it's about making absolutely ridiculous, absurd, outlandish, dangerous accusations of pedophilia, baselessly.

And he said it's just up to people to decide whether this crazy conspiracy he retweeted about Obama killing SEAL Team 6, and SEAL Team 6 killing a bin Laden body double. He said it's just opinion. People can make up their own mind. It's not opinion. It's a lie. It's an offensive lie.

And as I said, he also said a lot of flat wrong stuff. And a lot of it was stuff we've heard before. He argued there's widespread voter fraud with vote by mail. There isn't. He portrayed himself as a steadfast defender of people with pre-existing conditions.

Chris, he's in court, as you know, right now trying to kill those protections in Obamacare with no replacement plan. He suggested it's another up and down kind of thing. That he's a defender of DACA.

He said, I'm working hard on DACA. This is the program he's tried to terminate. He said Obama and Biden didn't even try to get criminal justice reform. They did. They backed a bipartisan bill that was killed by Republican McConnell in 2016.

He said, again, We're rounding the turn on the pandemic. That's a vague phrase, hard to fact check. But cases and hospitalizations are surging. He boasted, as usual, about adding a record 11.4 million jobs in the past five months.

He always declines to mention that that follows a loss of 22.2 million jobs over the previous two months. We're not even close to back, and he said they, referring to the CDC, found that 85 percent of people who wear masks get the virus. That's just not at all what the CDC has said. They weren't even looking for that in the -- in the --

CUOMO: The 85 percent number was about something else, right?

DALE: It was about -- it was about something else. It was not about the percentage of mask wearers who get the virus.

Now, I have to add, we did also have false or misleading claims from Joe Biden, though fewer. He said that, when the first round of enhanced unemployment benefits finished, he said Trump didn't do anything.

Well, you can say Trump didn't do enough, but he did do something. He took executive action. He used $44 billion in federal disaster aid to give 300 bucks a week to the jobless.

Biden also suggested or said that the number of troops in Afghanistan is now up from when he left office. It's now down, well below the final Obama-era level.

He said that Trump has, quote, "eliminated funding for community policing." No, that's not what happened. Trump did make budget proposals to cut that federal funding, never to eliminate it. But they cut it. And even those cuts weren't enacted by Congress.

And as I told you earlier tonight, he suggested or didn't quite explicitly say that George Stephanopoulos, the host, was wrong for saying that the Biden website says the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for environmental action. His website does say that, so that was misleading, at best, Chris.

CUOMO: Good. Got to keep it straight, Daniel. Thank you very much.

Now, those are some of the facts. Now, let's talk about the politics and the political reality, especially, when we're seeing early voting numbers that are off the charts. Seventeen million of you have voted, already.

Let's bring back Ron Brownstein, Karen Finney, and Scott Jennings. Told you I'd have you back.

So, Professor Brownstein, with the voting going on the way it is --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

CUOMO: -- how does that change the calculus of how to spend the next two-plus weeks on these campaigns?

BROWNSTEIN: That's really a great question, Chris.

CUOMO: Thank you.

BROWNSTEIN: Because we don't have election day anymore, you know, we have election month. And we are seeing extraordinary turnout.

Now, you can't jump to the assumption that high turnout automatically benefits Democrats, because the president has shown the capacity to expand the electorate, himself, and to bring in a lot of blue-collar and non-urban whites who don't usually vote.

But so far, the pattern is clear that we are seeing the turnout concentrated in the big metro, urban centers that have been moving away from the president and the Republican Party since he emerged as kind of the face of the party.

To me, the one I'm watching the most closely is Harris County, Texas, which is Houston.

2012, Obama won Harris County by a thousand votes, and that was a big deal, you know, because it was a big urban center in Texas. In 2018, Beto O'Rourke won the same county by 201,000 votes. It's kind of a microcosm of the way the president is exiling the GOP from the big dynamic, economically-vibrant metros that are driving the economy.

They've had four, roughly 400,000 votes this week. It was 1.3 million, in 2016. Could be, they're saying, 1.7 or so. It is possible that Biden will win that county by twice as much as Hillary Clinton did. And it is emblematic to me of the challenge the president is creating for himself. Because he lost, as we talked about before, 87 of the hundred largest

counties in America by a combined 15 million votes. I think the turnout is going to be higher. His deficit is going to be bigger. He's going to need an even bigger turnout. And as a final point, he is back -- interested in what Scott thinks about this. He has back loaded his vote to where he is dependent on huge numbers of people coming out on election day. And by then, how many cases a day are he we going to be looking at? Are we going to be back in the 70, 75,000 range? I mean, he's putting all of his eggs in an election-day basket at a time when the virus is surging again?

[00:30:09]

CUOMO: So, Scott, this just occurred to me as a question. Given that the president has been telling people not to vail [SIC] by mail-in and he's basically scaring them away from doing that, even his own base, except in places like Florida and North Carolina. But he just started giving that message, and the stay away message, he's been giving for weeks.

He's really betting that they're all going to come out on election day. And the pandemic could have a much bigger caseload there, because you're going to have the flu and other things and complicating factors and more kids in school, and there's lag time with cases.

Isn't he kind of betting on that one day, where everybody's going to come out? It may be the worst time and, yes, that is what Brownstein just told me to ask you.

JENNINGS: Yes. I mean, it -- the -- it's absolutely true. Republicans -- and this bears out in all the polling, public and private, that I've seen from all the states. You've got 70 to 80 percent of Biden voters want to vote early or by mail. And 70 or 80 percent of Trump -- Republican voters want to vote on election day.

And so by putting all of your people out there on one day, you do, you know, increase the possibility that they -- they don't make it. What if it snows? What if there's bad weather? What if something happens? And so, that's absolutely true.

I will just say this is not a phenomenon that's unique to Trump. For as long as I've been in Republican politics, Republicans culturally strongly feel they want to vote on election day. I've been thrown off porches, knocking on doors during the early period trying to get folks to vote early, because they think election day is sacred.

So it's not unique to Trump but he has, certainly, I think, exacerbated it by talking down the voting by mail options that do exist.

CUOMO: Well, we've had them since the Civil War, so they should start coming around, at some point.

Karen, I want to play some sound from the town hall tonight with the president, where he made a gaffe that, in olden times, might have been fatal. I'm thinking it's a shrug, though, but you may disagree. Let's listen.

FINNEY: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm very under-levered, fortunately. But I'm very under- levered. I have a very, very small percentage of debt compared -- in fact, some of it, I did as favors to institutions that wanted to loan me money.

Four hundred million compared to the assets that I have, all of these great properties all over the world. And frankly, the Bank of America building in San Francisco. I don't love what's happening to San Francisco.

GUTHRIE: Did I hear you right? It sounds like you're saying $400 million isn't that much.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: One of the biggest office buildings.

GUTHRIE: But are you -- are you confirming that, yes, you do owe some $400 million?

TRUMP: What I'm saying is that it's a tiny percentage of my net worth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Now, he admitted something that he said wasn't true.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

CUOMO: His basis for why it doesn't matter is never going to resonate with anybody. You get way too in the weeds. I guarantee you, his net worth is not what he will suggest it is. It's not close. I spent over a year on it with Tim O'Brien and a whole other team 15 years ago. But he admitted something he said wasn't true. Will it matter?

FINNEY: No. And here's why. Right? It is such a complicated story. What we learned in that exchange and what matters is that he was lying. And that was the tap dance that we've seen him do, over and over and over again.

And really, the thing that this comes down to, if you -- if you at all spend any time switching between channels, is it comes down to character. It comes down to what kind of a person do you want running this country?

And, you know, that, what you just saw with Donald Trump, is what we have seen for, you know, snake oil salesman that we have seen for the last four years. It was more of the same. It was more of the -- the lies and the obfuscation and the -- you know, trying to just use words without really saying anything.

And I think, again, I go back to people are exhausted of that. And I think they look at that, and they say, I mean, we know he's a liar. We know he lies about his finances. You know, we know he's a crook. We know he doesn't like to play by the same rules as the rest of us. So that's not, frankly, new information.

CUOMO: Let me carry Scott's water here for a second. To you, Ron, before I run out of time. So I'll do it in one step, instead of two.

Yes, they're tired of it. You know what they're tired of? Seeing him run down. You'll never see Biden flags the way you'll see Trump flags. You'll never see intensity and interest, in his voters, the way you see with Trump's.

What they're tired of is seeing a president who's against what they're against, getting beat down by the left and by a media that favors it, on a regular basis. And that's why their resolve, when it comes to Trump, is rock-solid.

BROWNSTEIN: It is.

CUOMO: How big a factor is that in measuring the intensity factor, going into election day?

BROWNSTEIN: He has never tried to govern as the president of all of America. He's been the president of red America and, in many ways, he's viewed himself as a wartime president against blue America. He demonizes cities, rather than trying to court them. You know, he does much the same with other Democratic constituencies.

So, yes, what you get out of that is enormous intensity. But it's enormous intensity, among something between 42 and 44 percent of the electorate.

[00:35:04]

Now, can he generate enough turnout from them to overcome the deficits that he's facing? You know, roughly, 60 percent, for example, of college-educated whites voted against him, the highest number of Republican nominee has ever faced.

It's awful tough when everybody is voting, right, Chris? I mean, it's tough to have your turnout surge be decisive when turnout is going up for every group. I mean, African-American turnout is going to be higher. College white turnout is going to be the highest it's ever been.

And again, if you look what's happening in these big metros that he is driving away from the party, he is leaving himself in a real -- it is possible that in Texas, for example, he may come out of metro Texas -- not California, not New Jersey, metro Texas -- down a million votes. Might still be able to overcome it by turning out enough rural votes, but he is creating a long-term trajectory where the party is being exiled from the places that are driving population and economic growth. And it's hard to see how that is a sustainable, long-term strategy.

CUOMO: Two things. One, this could be historic, in that you could have the most votes we've seen since, let's say, 1908 in terms of the percentage of eligible voters. Somewhere in the mid to high 60 percent. And have Trump win by the slimmest margin through the electoral process of the Electoral College that we have ever seen.

Both of those could happen at the same time. It's all going to be in terms of how galvanized one base is, versus the rest of America.

And, admit it, Scott, I did a good job laying out that argument about the intensity, didn't I? Come on. Give it to me.

JENNINGS: Yes, for the first time, I endorse everything you said.

CUOMO: I'll take it. I'll take it. I'm going to end the segment. Scott, Karen, Ron.

FINNEY: You know --

CUOMO: I've got to go, Karen. I'll give you back time, next time. Thanks, all of you.

BROWNSTEIN: Good night, all.

CUOMO: Especially, for this time tonight. Appreciate you. Thank you.

Trump now says, Yes, I do want a peaceful transfer of power. There's a comma that comes after it, really quick. And that's why we've got to think, can you take him at his word about this? Because this matters. Let's pick it up, on the other side, with somebody who knows him very well; understands the people around him even better. What did we see, tonight, in terms of what they think wins for this president? Anthony Scaramucci. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:41:34]

CUOMO: First, it was white supremacy. That was disgusting.

Now, the question is about the president circulating a conspiracy theory that denigrates our SEAL Team members who took out Osama bin Laden, making them out to be liars and cowards.

And when asked about it, the president said, Look, it's an opinion somebody has. I put it out there. People can decide for themselves.

Whether our SEAL Team is telling the truth? Whether or not they really took out Osama bin Laden? Really?

Let's get some perspective from Anthony Scaramucci.

Anthony, you know, you know me well, and I am surprised by very little when it comes to the president. This surprises me. That he didn't say, Whoa, whoa, whoa. I love the SEAL Team. I love the military. I know what they did with Osama bin Laden. I never meant -- I didn't read the tweet. You know, I retweeted it, but I just saw something about Obama. And he, instead, says, No, I want it out there. I want people to

decide for themselves. It's a matter of opinion, whether or not the SEAL Team is telling the truth about what they did with Osama bin Laden. Two and a half weeks from an election? Make sense of it.

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, it makes total sense, because he is extremely focused on his base. They're digging down into the base, to try to get as many uneducated, white voters, frankly, registered to go out and vote for him.

These people are, by and large, feel disaffected by the system, Chris. And so, the president understands that. So, they play well, these conspiracy theories.

It's like, OK, you're outside the system. The system is maligned. Let me retweet to you and signal to you how maligned it is. Come out and vote for me. I'm here to be the avatar of your anger. I'm here to be the outsider that you want in Washington.

And so, yes. No, he doubles and triples down on that stuff, and he never apologizes for anything. You bring up white supremacy. He'll double down. A conspiracy related to SEAL Team six, and I saw your interview last night with Rob O'Neill. He'll double down, because his only strategy, right now, is to expand the profile of his base and the population of his base to go out and vote for him on November the 3rd.

CUOMO: But, how do you do that by disrespecting the people that his base loves? And the moment in American history that came the closest to justice, after 9/11, we'll probably ever get?

SCARAMUCCI: OK. So, then, you don't really understand those voters. OK. So, not you, personally. I'm just saying generically, because he does.

I did 71 campaign stops with him in 2016. And those voters view him as an outsider. They view themselves as angry at the system and disaffected.

CUOMO: Sure.

SCARAMUCCI: And so they're ignoring -- they're ignoring the -- anything that the president says, that doesn't fit their narrative, they'll ignore.

So, he's not really picking on, in their minds, the military. He's picking on the vice president and President Obama, who many still think is a, you know, born in Kenya. All of that sort of nonsense. That's what the president's going for.

He -- he saw it work for him last time. He knows he has to thread the needle on the electoral map this time. And the only way he can do it, Chris -- he's lost moderates. He's lost suburban women. He's lost seniors. But if he goes for this part of the electorate -- and this is the way he preys on them. It's actually sick, Chris.

[00:45:13] And -- and I'm surprised that his campaign, I'm surprised that people around him haven't thrown the towel in and said, OK, enough is enough. I can't take this. But that's the president's strategy, right now.

CUOMO: You know, that's why, you know, the places where so many of his voters come from are going to have the hardest time getting care and getting through COVID. And we're seeing that as it hits their communities.

It seems like the play, for him, should be to say, Listen, I'm coming at this COVID thing. I'm going to do more on it now. You know, that seems like the obvious play, and I'm waiting for it; and he just doesn't do it.

I thought he was going to do it with the medicines, you know, after that. You know, I'm throwing all this money at Regeneron, and we're going to get these antibodies for you in the heartland. And he just doesn't do it.

How does -- how do they think he cares about them? When, on the biggest issue, the pandemic, he's not doing what he needs to do for them?

SCARAMUCCI: OK. So, again, that's all part of his strategy. You know, the pandemic is a hoax. I got people that are Trumpers, dyed-in-the- wool Trumpers, that tell me that the pandemic is over on November the 4th. And so, that's his narrative. You know, this is a hoax and don't let it bother you. And I got through it, and Barron didn't feel it. And, you know, everything is fine. And, by the way, I'm a tough guy. You're a tough guy or woman. Let's get through this together, without any masks.

All of this science denying and all -- all of that weirdness that makes us scratch our heads is, all, again, a part of his narrative.

So, one thing that's happening now, though, Chris, is he's coming off those steroids. You know, he's probably on oral steroid medication, and he's probably just completed that, if you look at the timeline since he was in the hospital. So, look for him to crash now and get even more erratic.

CUOMO: I don't think -- I don't think it's the drugs. And it's just so sad, because so many people have a right to feel disaffected and to want somebody to be a champion for them. And it's hard for them, has to be, to see how he's acting, and know that this is the best that they felt they could do.

Anthony Scaramucci, thank you very much. Appreciate you.

SCARAMUCCI: Hey.

CUOMO: Let's take a break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:51:10] CUOMO: Haven't seen anything like this in an election unlike anything we've ever seen, in a year that just can't seem to get any worse, and then it does. And Chris Cillizza is here to make sense of it all for us.

Chris, I'm not going to put that on you. All I want to know is where are we left after tonight?

CHRIS CILLIZZA, WRITER AND EDITOR AT LARGE, CNN POLITICS: I mean, look, to me Joe Biden did what he should do, which is to makes as little news as possible. I know there's some news about Supreme Court and court packing and he says he's going to say something after Amy Coney Barrett is voted either confirmed or not.

But to me the real focus here has to be on Donald Trump, not just because he's the president, Chris, but also because he's behind. I think it's really important that we focus on this.

This is not a 50-50 election. According to CNN poll of polls, Joe Biden is ahead by 11 points. So this is the average of polling, right? You always say one poll is a snapshot in time. True. Twelve points, excuse me, is a snapshot in time.

This is lot of polls together. That's not just a snapshot in time. This is where the race is. Donald Trump needs to make something different happen.

And I think what we saw tonight -- I'm happy to talk more about it. But I think what we saw tonight is he is incapable of doing so. He's got one gear. The car doesn't go any faster. It doesn't go any slower. It doesn't move any different ways. There's one gear.

It's a base-only policy, base-only strategy that will win him undying affection from the people who are for him and not convince one person who's not for him to be for him.

CUOMO: But isn't it a base that is compromised of the largest type of people in this country?

CILLIZZA: No, I don't think it is, Chris. I mean, it's a little bit up for debate, but I will remind you -- and I don't ever dispute this. Donald Trump won the 2016 election because he won the way in which we elect them, right? Electoral College. But he did lose by almost 3 million votes. He didn't get a majority.

So I don't think it is a majority of the country, and I think what he's done over the last four years, Chris, is he's actually narrowed his base. I think he's taken some Republicans who were hoping that they could be for him, and even though you're probably going to get three conservative Supreme Court justices, you're going to get 200- plus, almost 300 lower court judges. You're going to get a tax cut.

I still think he winds up losing a lot of suburbanites who are probably Republicans, particularly on fiscal issues, in places like California; Florida; Michigan; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You know, Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; Dallas, Texas. And that's where this election is won and lost.

CUOMO: I'm talking about the fact that you have more white, working- class people than you have anything else in this country. It depends where they are. And the only -- my only problem with the poll of polls is exactly your point. It's not about the popular vote. It's about the states.

CILLIZZA: No, it's not. But --

CUOMO: And it is close in more than enough states to make a difference.

CILLIZZA: I mean, I guess that depends on how you define close. So, look at this great graphic. I don't think Pennsylvania is -- I don't think it's 13, but I don't think that -- that Donald Trump's going to win there.

I think -- I don't see any reason to think he's going to win in Wisconsin. I don't see any reason to think he's going to win in Michigan. That's a big problem right there.

CUOMO: You skipped Florida.

CILLIZZA: Well, I'm getting to it.

CUOMO: Mm-hmm.

CILLIZZA: Florida. No president -- in Republican in 96 years --

CUOMO: Without it.

CILLIZZA: -- has won the presidency without winning Florida. He just can't lose that state. Now, again, I think --

CUOMO: It says 11 there.

CILLIZZA: -- it's probably pretty close.

CUOMO: Aren't you confident in the 11?

CILLIZZA: No, I don't think it's 11 points.

CUOMO: Uh-huh. And that's what I'm talking about, Cillizza.

CILLIZZA: But there's a difference between I don't think he's up -- Biden's up 11 and I don't think Biden's up 6. Because I do think Biden's probably up 6 in Florida. Florida, 6.

And if he's up that much, Chris, given the early vote.