Trump Claims Election is Rigged
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thanks for sharing some time with us today. A packed day on the campaign trail, we're 22 days out, including Mike Pence and Bill Clinton events just this hour. We'll keep an eye on those, dip in if we feel the need to. Plus, some brand new CNN poll numbers releasing right now from three presidential battleground states. Let's get to them. First in the battleground state of Ohio, let me move that one up, pull you in here, battleground state of Ohio, good news for Donald Trump. A lot of bad news lately in polls, but Donald Trump up 48 percent to 44 percent. The third party candidates at four and two respectively. A narrow lead for Donald Trump in battleground Ohio, a state he needs to win. Let's move now to North Carolina, one of the most competitive states in American politics. What do our new numbers show there, CNN/ORC poll shows Hillary Clinton with the narrowest of lead, a one-point lead. So, statistically, a dead heat in North Carolina. Perhaps a little bit of Clinton momentum. Gary Johnson gets 4 percent. Jill Stein is not on the ballot in North Carolina. Now let's go west to Nevada. This one's a bit of a surprise. A state the Democrats have won pretty convincingly the last two times out. But, let's take a peek here and look at these numbers, 46-44. Again, a very narrow Clinton lead. The statisticians would say that's a dead heat, 46-44. Gary Johnson gets seven. None of the above, you can do that in Nevada, gets 2 percent. We'll see if that goes a little high on Election Day. Now, if you look at those numbers right there and you're a Trump supporter, well, after a tough couple of weeks, reason to see the glass is half full, right? They believe the Republican candidate can re-seize the momentum in Wednesday's third and final presidential debate. But if you look at the other map, if you look at this, the electoral map, Clinton's state-by-state advantage, it's still pretty overwhelming heading into the stretch. Again, narrow leads for her in Nevada and North Carolina. Trump up a little bit now. Perhaps in Ohio. But the hard truth for Trump is, she can afford to lose all three of those states and still win the election, which is why Trump now adds the polls to his growing list of complaints and conspiracy theories.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: False stories, all made up, lies, lies. No witnesses. No nothing. All big lies. It's a rigged system. And they take these lies and they put them on front pages. This is a rigged system, folks.</s>KING: With us to share their reporting and their insights as we begin the week, Julie Pace of the Associated Press, Ed O'Keefe of "The Washington Post," Karen Tumulty, also with "The Washington Post," they've emptied the building out for us, and Mary Katharine Ham of "The Federalist." Let's start with these polls because they're three of the most competitive states in the country. They're very close right now. If you've looked at the past couple of weeks you would think, well, why isn't it a blowout then? Everything thought, even Republicans would tell you, the race is over. We have a big debate Wednesday night. As I said, Hillary Clinton can afford to lose North Carolina, afford to lose Ohio, afford to lose Nevada. Thy don't want to, they don't think they will, but they can afford to lose all those three. But just that they're tight enough, does that tell you, for all of this talk that it's over, that Trump has a chance, if, capital "i," capital "f," bold face, underline, if he can turn in a compelling debate performance?</s>JULIE PACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Yes, I think is the short answer, but he needs to do more than have a compelling debate performance. Right now he has a solid group of supporters that have stuck with him and will continue to stick with him basically no matter what happens over the next three weeks, but he needs to have some more consistent outreach, particularly to women, to independents, to moderate Republicans. He needs to move them over into his camp. I think what's helping keep this close is that Hillary Clinton remains unpopular, even as she has pulled ahead in some of these polls. If you look at her favorability ratings, you haven't seen huge changes there. She's not out on the campaign trail a lot, not doing a lot pro- actively to try to change impressions of her and she's getting this slow drip, drip from WikiLeaks that seems to reinforce a lot of the questions that a lot of Americans have about her.</s>KING: If this is the best, last chance for Trump, this week ahead that includes this big debate, the last time you'll have whether it's 60, 70, 80 million people watching, who knows what the ratings will be, but the first one got 80-something, is this the right argument for Donald Trump to be saying that this is a rigged system right now before the vote? Now, remember, we didn't hear this when he was winning the Republican primaries. We did hear this a couple of times when he was in a bad stretch in the Republican primaries. But Donald Trump tweeting out this morning, at a time his campaign team is saying he means the media, he means you guys in the media are trying to rig the system. Well, that's not what Donald Trump says. "Of course there's large-scale voter fraud happening on and before Election Day. What do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive."</s>KAREN TUMULTY, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, he doesn't seem to have any evidence of that. And secretaries of state across the country, a number of them Republicans, including in Ohio, are saying, no, it's - it's - there is no evidence of large-scale voter fraud, but Donald Trump has never really sort of felt the need to back up these kinds of claims. The real problem for him right now is, these kind of tweets sound like he's already conceding defeat.</s>KING: But there were a lot of - there were a lot of people who think that. There are a lot of people</s>MARY KATHARINE HAM, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, I think the problem goes beyond his performance in a debate or even tweeting, because the problem for him has always been that the map is a little bit more friendly and has more built-in votes for Democrats and so he has to, at this point, run what would be a pretty perfect game from here on out for the next couple weeks.</s>KING: Right.</s>HAM: I'm not sure we've seen evidence he can do that. It remains close because undecided voters, if you look at focus groups, are different than they've been in the past. Undecided voters in the past are unengaged and then they sort of clue in right at the last minute and make a decision. Undecided voters this time are very engaged and disgusted with their choices.</s>KING: Right.</s>HAM: So it's unclear how those guys will behave in the next couple of weeks, but it doesn't surprise me a ton that it keeps tightening up for that reason.</s>KING: Right.</s>HAM: People want a change, but they're afraid of the change he's offering.</s>KING: But they want a change. And we also - and Democrats don't like this when you say it, but we live in a center right country. If you look at the national map, if you look at the Republican House minority, if you look at the fact that they have 54 Senate seats, if you look at the fact that they have 30 governors across the country.</s>HAM: Right.</s>KING: If you look at the legislative gains in the last eight or 10 years, mostly Republican. It's a center right country, but Democrats win the White House when voters in the middle, moderates, suburban women especially, reject the presidential - you mentioned the secretary of state of Ohio. I want to bring him up here because he's a Republican. Now Trump's going to say, I'm at war with the Republicans in Ohio. The governor won't endorse me. This guy's a friend of the governor. So Trump would say, same old establishment criticizing me. But listen to the secretary of state in Ohio here. A pretty big state in this country. They a lot of close elections in Ohio. The secretary of state says, rigged? No way.</s>JON HUSTED, OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I'll say a couple things. First of all, I can reassure Donald Trump, I am in charge of elections in Ohio and they're not going to be rigged. I'll make sure of that. Our institutions, like our election system, is one of the bedrocks of American democracy. We should not question it or the legitimacy of it. It works very well. In places like Ohio, we make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. We have a bipartisan system of elections.</s>KING: So there's a Republican secretary of state, and there are 50 of them, plus, you know, an official here in the District of Columbia and then the territories as well, they administer the elections. They saying, yes, sure, every now and then there's a couple of shenanigans at this polling place or that polling place, but there's no such thing. There's no such thing. And he has Rudy Giuliani, in addition to Donald Trump's tweets and Steve King, the congressman from Iowa on television saying, of course the Democrats cheat, of course they get dead people to vote. I mean I - no offense to these people here, but mayor - Mr. Mayor and congressman, I'll ask these four not to come in some day and I'll give you the whole hour. You bring me evidence - you bring me evidence that says this election was swayed by fraud and here's the proof, and you can have the hour. Bring me the proof. But - so why is Trump saying this?</s>ED O'KEEFE, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Because he's - again, I think it's - they understand that he's in a losing position. He's in a defensive crouch right now and this is all he really has. It's trying to depress voter turnout overall by making more people upset about this election, sick of it, tired of it and just wanting it to go away. They feel that if they can do that, perhaps these numbers come out in their favor. The other problem here, I look at these numbers in Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, that all suggests a turnout operation is necessary in those states. Republicans are lag in all three. If they can keep it close in Nevada, the state where I think we will be waiting up for most of all on election night, Democrats believe they can do it because they've done it before. They did it for Harry Reid in 2010. They did it in 2012. Ohio, again, if you can start turning out black voters in the last few days of early voting in Ohio, Democrats believe they can eek ahead. And North Carolina, again, there they believe, Democrats, that they have found enough white progressive, blacks and Hispanics to show up this time.</s>KING: Right.</s>O'KEEFE: Maybe the flooding affects it a little bit, but otherwise they can get ahead of it because Republicans don't have operations in these states.</s>KING: You make a key point. We're going to dig deeper into those numbers a little bit later in the show. But, Mitt Romney woke up on Election Day thinking he was going to win and he had every reason to think that. He was tied in the polls heading into the election. He had momentum. But, he was out hustled. Out hustled on Election Day and, more importantly, out hustled before Election Day with all the early voting operations. Mike Pence has been a little bit different. Donald Trump tweeted this morning -</s>KING: And we've seen this - we've seen this on other issues in the past. Syria, from the vice presidential debate. Then Donald Trump saying in the next debate, no, no, no, I disagree with Mike Pence. But Donald Trump saying, of course there's large-scale voter fraud happening. Essentially saying, you know, if she wins, she cheated. That's what he's trying to say in advance. Mike Pence, listen to him here, he says, no, I don't think so.</s>MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will absolutely accept the results of the election. Look, the American people will speak in an election that will culminate on November the 8th, but the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. That's where this sense of a rigged election goes here. We'll accept the will of the American people, you bet.</s>KING: Now, he's, again, he's blaming the media, which is a - bring your specific complaints, but it's a conservative -</s>O'KEEFE: A classic Republican attack line in a close</s>TUMULTY: It's - it's classic. It's tried and true and never works.</s>O'KEEFE: You can say it.</s>KING: But it's - but it's - can we see - if Hillary Clinton wins, is she going to walk out at her rally that night and said, I just got a call from Governor Pence, as opposed to I just got a call from Donald Trump -</s>PACE: I think it -</s>KING: And Governor Pence says we accept the will of the American people but, sorry, Donald doesn't?</s>PACE: I think it's a real question. Until Donald Trump drops this idea that there is going to be voter fraud on November 8th, I think it's a real open question on whether he would accept the results. Obviously Mike Pence and other Republicans, I don't want to cast all Republicans under this rigged election umbrella because a lot of them are very concerned about just the perception that the results would be deemed illegitimate perhaps by millions of people. It's very dangerous to our democracy. But Trump seems to be kind of conflating two things here. You saw this both in the Democratic primary and you've seen it in this election that there are a lot of Americans that think that much of what we see coming out of government is rigged against them. That it's rigged for the wealthy. That the media is rigged for Democrats. And that's a real concern that I think we should be discussing. But taking it to this level and saying that the actual results of an election are rigged is something much different.</s>KING: Well, it -</s>HAM: And I - I don't think he's going to let go of the argument because it's - he did this during the primaries. It's a bit of an insurance policy for if he loses so that he can blame it on something. I think that's just part of his personality. As usual, the story's sort of in the middle. Like voter fraud is a real thing. People are prosecuted for it. It does not usually happen in large enough numbers to sway elections. I think some of the voters that he speaks to, and I don't think he's having this whole thought process, are mad that that voter fraud, when it happens, is largely ignored and I think that elections should be secure and they feel like they're beat up for thinking elections should be secure and have things like voter I.D. And so when he makes this argument, they react to it in a sort of visceral way. But I don't think that many of them used to buy the idea that swayed all these elections. We'll see if he convinces them otherwise.</s>TUMULTY: But I also think he's laying the predicate for the argument that's going to happen after the election if he loses within the Republican Party, where the party is going to be arguing whether the problem here was that they nominated a flawed candidate or that they didn't get behind the flawed candidate. And by saying that the results of the election are illegitimate, you are giving sort of a second wind to sort of Trumpian politics.</s>KING: Right. Well, and, remember, he spent years trying to delegitimize the current president.</s>TUMULTY: Right.</s>KING: By being a cheerleader for the birther movement. So the question is, is he - does he have plans already, if he thinks he's going to lose, to set up some shop, whether it's a media outlet or something else, after the election to say, she's not real. She's not legitimate. Don't let - don't support anything. Don't support compromise. We'll see how this one goes. Quickly on this point here, let's bring in Tim Kaine, who, talking about this, he's asked about this and he thinks Donald Trump is up to something?</s>SEN. TIM KAINE (D), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's blaming the media. He's blaming the GOP. He's saying that America can't run a fair election. He is swinging at every phantom of his own imagination because he knows he's losing.</s>KING: And?</s>O'KEEFE: That's the argument - that's the argument they'll make in the closing days here. And, you know, and the Democrats will, once again, have to push back against another series of unsubstantiated claims that he's making. You know, this is - this is - this is how he keeps his name in the news and this is how he continues to frustrate a lot of Democrats who think that they're putting this away, but, you know, perhaps we'll have three more weeks of this.</s>HAM: Well, and telling Donald Trump - telling Donald Trump he's acting a way because he's losing makes him act that way doubly.</s>O'KEEFE: Even more.</s>KING: Right. I would just close on this note. If this - if there is consistent, persistent widespread election fraud in America, then the Republicans stole the House of Representatives, the Republicans stole the Senate, the Republicans stole those governors' races? I think not. I think not. I think they won them. I think they won them fair and square. Ahead, the Wiki - hacked WikiLeaks hacked e-mails may well be a nefarious Russian plot, but is it also a Clinton campaign headache, as she prepares for the final debate.