CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript Interview with John Fetterman
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
BOLDUAN: With me right now is the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.
Thank you so much for being here.
Poll watchers thrown out in Philadelphia, I can lay out how that is factually not true, but you are the lieutenant governor of the commonwealth. What do you say?
LT. GOV. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): It's an absolute lie. And they know that too.
But the whole chaos is the objective. You saw that at the debate last night. That is their centerpiece of a strategy is to foment chaos, to create the basis for challenging results that don't match their desired outcome.
And that's what we're seeing happening again and again, and it's accelerating. And we're 40 days out. Imagine three weeks, two weeks, a week out. They're going to file baseless lawsuits of which they know have no legal underpinning.
But, again, the objective is chaos.
BOLDUAN: Yes, and it -- just give the quick details on what Trump was referring to in Philadelphia, there are no campaign poll watchers that have you even yet been certified.
So, the woman who showed up...
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: Go ahead.
FETTERMAN: That happened a few days before the election. So, like, there's no legal basis, there's no legal recognition of that. So it's entirely baseless.
But they know that. They're smart enough to know that. Again, they wish to create chaos, because chaos is the objective.
BOLDUAN: The president -- Pennsylvania was top of mind for the president last night, it seems. He went after Pennsylvania more than once. Let me play something else.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Number two...
CHRIS WALLACE, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MODERATOR: OK.
TRUMP: ... they cheat. They cheat. Hey, they found ballots in a wastepaper basket three days ago, and they all had the name -- military ballots. They were military. They all had the name Trump on them.
WALLACE: Vice President Biden...
TRUMP: You think that's good?
WALLACE: Vice President Biden...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: This was addressed already last week, nine ballots discarded in error. The person was caught. It was caught. The system worked.
And, also, for comparison, everyone, nine ballots, nine ballots. There were more than 1.6 million ballots cast in 2016 in Pennsylvania. I just want to put that out there, so people understand what we're talking about here.
But, Lieutenant Governor, why do you think the -- the president's been talking about widespread voter fraud since 2016. Why do you think he is so focused on the commonwealth?
FETTERMAN: Because he's trying to inoculate himself for a result that his campaign doesn't want.
He's a smart man. He can read polls. He understands that there's a gap right now. And by creating and fomenting this type of chaos, using red herrings, isolated incidents like that, you try to create the basis for some kind of challenging of these election results.
And that's unprecedented. You look at the debate last night, remember, it wasn't that long ago the scandal during the debate was Al Gore exhaling too deeply at George Bush. That was the big scandal.
And last night took our American democracy in a direction that no one wants or ever could have foreseen. And that is their M.O. and will be between now on Election Day.
BOLDUAN: And look, we, as journalists, we will continue to fact-check all of these things, as the president very clearly shows no sign of letting up with these false attacks on the system in Pennsylvania. But do you get a sense that, despite the best efforts of Democrats and
Republican officials in charge of elections in Pennsylvania, that his fabrications are impacting voters?
FETTERMAN: I don't. Ultimately, I don't think they will be successful, because here's another fact, is that vote by mail-in Pennsylvania was a Republican bill.
And you can fact-check this. Far more Republicans in our state legislature voted for vote by mail-in Pennsylvania than Democrats. It was a deeply bipartisan bill. And there's not one single elected Democratic official that is accusing of -- red state commissioners of cheating.
Everybody knows that this is going to be a state election, and it's going to be a secure election. Anyone that's saying otherwise has a different agenda. And that agenda is to foment chaos to serve as the basis to challenge results that that campaign isn't going to necessarily like.
[15:25:07]
BOLDUAN: Lieutenant Governor, you're going to be meeting up with the vice president as he continues to travel through Pennsylvania later today.
You gave me kind of your assessment of what a mess the debate was last night. The debate commission says there are going to be -- they're looking at changing the rules to try to bring about some more order.
What do you think of that? What rules, what do you think should be changed?
FETTERMAN: Well, I mean, I don't think that debate changed the underlying dynamics at all of this race, quite frankly, at least in my state.
I have said this before. Donald Trump is very popular in Pennsylvania. We cannot afford to underestimate his popularity in our state. And I have emphasized that continuously.
But you can see right now from the debate and today with these kind of nuisance lawsuits that chaos is going to be the M.O. from here on out. And as long as we vote, you vote, follow the instruction, whether you vote in-person or by mail, it's going to be secure. And we're going to have a result that we know is going to reflect the democratic will of the voters of Pennsylvania, without a doubt, because we have bipartisan buy-in to our voting laws here in Pennsylvania.
And anyone that says otherwise is deliberately spreading misinformation to a different objective.
BOLDUAN: It's going to be a long 30-plus days to the election.
FETTERMAN: Yes.
BOLDUAN: Lieutenant Governor, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.
FETTERMAN: My pleasure. Thank you.
BOLDUAN: Coming up next for us, for the first time since the season started, NFL play will be disrupted by confirmed cases of COVID.
Details ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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