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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump Advisers, Allies Split On Strategy Behind Musk Interview; Walz Speaks With Union Workers and Trump's Spat With UAW; FBI Investigating Apparent Hacking Of Trump Campaign; Biden, Obama And The Clintons To Speak At DNC; Fast Spreading Wildfires Rage Near Athens. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired August 13, 2024 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Rolling out pumpkin spice pancakes and coffee starting September 1st, all part of a plan to get consumers excited and willing to shell out some cash.
[16:00:05]
JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: And here's the thing the data shows Americans spent half a billion dollars on pumpkin spice products every year.
SANCHEZ: They love their pumpkin spice, but this is offensive. Summer isn't over.
DEAN: You know, it's too much. That's the thing about August --
SANCHEZ: It's not over.
DEAN: People want to rush it, you have to savor on this.
SANCHEZ: You have to savor summer because you know what comes after a fall, winter. Nobody likes that.
DEAN: Winter is coming.
SANCHEZ: No.
DEAN: Winter is coming.
SANCHEZ: Thanks so much for being with us today. Great to see you as always, Jessica.
DEAN: Thank you.
SANCHEZ: THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER starts in just like five seconds.
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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN HOST: Did Donald Trump do more harm than good with that interview on X last night?
THE LEAD starts right now.
Donald Trump hit with federal labor charges from one of the largest unions in the country. Will a 15-second comment also cost Trump votes?
Plus, forced entry. A break in at Trump campaign offices in Virginia. The investigation launched as authorities also trace an alleged hack of campaign documents leaked. And a longtime Trump operative, Roger Stone, right in the middle of it all.
Also this hour, President Biden's first major speech since dropping out of the 2024 race as we start learning how Democrats plan to set a brand new tone with their convention set to start next week.
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MATTINGLY: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Phil Mattingly, in for Jake Tapper.
And we start today with our 2024 lead and a split in Trump world and somewhat spilling into public view today as allies and advisers debate whether the former president is helping or hurting his campaign by doing events such as last night's interview with Elon Musk.
Now, today, some of Trump's team and even the former president himself are touting massive viewership numbers with Musk claiming his event with Trump last night reached 1 billion people.
But other Trump allies are questioning the decision and new backlash caused by one specific part of the interview could fuel them to push Trump even harder to avoid interviews like this ahead of November's election.
Let's get straight to CNN's Kristen Holmes and Eva McKend.
Kristen, it's an interview that had tens of millions of listeners, viewers. I think more than 1 billion impressions according to X. That's real publicity. That is real reach.
Why exactly are some Trump allies skeptical about the decision to do it?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Phil, two hours with Elon Musk and Donald Trump is bound to leave you with some questions about what exactly they are talking about and bound to see Donald Trump off message, which is exactly what you saw last night.
Sure. They did get that enormous amount of views, but if you're talking to allies who are close to Donald Trump, who want to see him win in November, they want to see him win by focusing on the issues. That's the only way they believe he can.
Now, the other problem with a two-hour meandering kind of conversation, not really interview is that it leaves room for people to make mistakes, which is what we are potentially seeing today after these remarks from Donald Trump.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you say, you want to quit?
ELON MUSK, OWNER, X: Yeah.
TRUMP: They go on strike, I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's OK, you're all gone. You're all gone. So, every one of you is gone.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HOLMES: Essentially talking there about firing workers who are threatening to strike.
Now, the United Auto Workers has hit back. They have fired federal labor charges against both Musk and Donald Trump. It is illegal to fire anybody who is threatening to unionize or threatening to quit or to strike, excuse me. But you can see why there might be some issues with that, particularly as Donald Trump has tried to reach out to the rank and file union members.
Now, he would argue and his team would argue that they instead are trying to reach those voters through the economy. And here's what his team had to say about those federal labor charges. They issued a statement saying this nevertheless lawsuit is a shameless political stunt intended to erode President Trump's overwhelming support among American workers.
They go on to say: Democratic special interests bosses may lie and stoke fear to try and stop President Trump from creating the broadest coalition of any candidate in history. But rank-and-file workers and their families know the truth.
It is important to note that UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris and that the head of UAW, Shawn Fain, Donald Trump have a very toxic relationship, is a light way to put it, as Donald Trump has continued to lash out at him after he endorsed Biden.
MATTINGLY: That might be a little bit of an understatement.
HOLMES: Yes.
MATTINGLY: Eva, obviously, we assume the Harris campaign was going to be quick to criticize besides the event, they certainly did, calling Trump and Musk, quote, self obsessed rich guys. Now, it seems like they would be looking to capitalize on those comments about unions.
EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: They certainly are, Phil. It is curious as to why the former president made this choice to flirt with this idea of immediately firing striking workers, but he has always viewed himself as aligned with union workers and at odds with union leadership, although these comments appear to be chastising the workers themselves.
[16:05:06]
But Democrats are eager to frame the contest in these terms. On the campaign trail, Harris and Walz routinely characterize themselves as fighting for the American worker. Walz himself, a long union guy, from his career as a teacher, that campaign elevating the comments, eager to do so, saying that Trump praises billionaire Elon Musk for firing workers who are striking for better pay and working conditions.
And we're hearing Walz talk about this before a union today. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, they see the world very differently than we do. The only thing those you guys knows about working people is how to work to take advantage of them. He spent a decade stiffing service workers and his from dishwashers, waiters, and carpenters on his own properties to enrich himself.
As president, he cut overtime benefits for millions of workers and he opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKEND: And Phil, this comes as the Harris campaign is slated to roll -- slated to roll out their economic policy vision that they say will focus on tackling inflation and bringing down costs -- Phil.
MATTINGLY: All right. Eva McKend, Kristen Holmes, never a dull moment in the campaign trail -- thank you, guys, so much.
I want to bring in the panel.
Shermichael, UAW reacted swiftly. Kristen was talking about it. To those Trump comments saying, quote, illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected, concerted activity such as strikes, saying that's what Musk and Trump were doing there. I don't know what they filed will have a major effect. AFL-CIO very quickly coming out in support of that. You see Tim Walz speaking as well. The battle for the rank and file which the Trump campaign was talking about, that is real and tangible and more so than any Republican has ever competed in that space.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, even the president has said that a lot of his members were going to vote for the former president. We've seen movement --
MATTINGLY: Right.
SINGLETON: -- since 2016 and sort of realignment.
MATTINGLY: So how this is not an unforced error?
SINGLETON: Well, look, I mean, I think for many of those voters who are members who look at Donald Trump as be a more representative of talking directly to their plight as working class white voters will probably stick with him anyway, I think the whole idea of like the make America great again, movement for a lot of people is to go back to a moment in time where they felt financially secure. They can work 40 hours, 60 hours a week, you can afford a home. You
can afford to put your kids through college or through a trade program if you so chose.
That's no longer the choice for a lot of middle-class or average working class people. So despite what occurred the other day, I think a lot of those individuals will have that in mind and will still probably vote for him in November anyway.
MATTINGLY: Ashley, this has been kind of the paradox of this administration. President Biden says he's the most pro-labor president in history, his resume backs that up in terms of what they've actually done.
This is also a moment where labor has more power than they've had in decades, and we've seen it with strikes, with union negotiations. And yet rank-and-file is a problem for Democrats.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah, this is an opportunity for the Harris campaign to go to the conventions, like AFSCME where Tim Walz is, but also to go to the union halls where rank and file members spend their time having conversations, go to the line where people are working and putting it many times their lives in danger for factory jobs, whether it'd be in chicken plants and during COVID, we saw people being put at risk, or whether it'd be on the automotive line.
Here's the thing in the opportunity that the Harris campaign is that I hear Shermichael, people are suffering. But the reality is, is that the Donald Trump presidency is what gets you a Janus decision in the Supreme Court that makes unions not as strong as they could possibly be. That is a conservative principle.
The Donald Trump vision is that you don't get to strike, you don't get to have collective bargaining to dismantle. And if the Harris campaign can connect the dots of like, we want you to have a better quality of life, but we also want to protect the way you get the quality the life, and that is having good union jobs.
This guy does not want that. He just wants corporate greed. There's opportunity, but they have to get into the places where those rank- and-file members are.
SINGLETON: Phil, let me, look, it's really a good point that Ashley is making, and I've long been of the position, Ashley, that as we see this realignment of voters sort of moving towards the Republican Party, these working class voters, the party is going to have to at some point start to change a lot of its previous policy positions to sort of meet this new voting bloc that's going to obviously carry the party into power in the future.
MATTINGLY: Which is fascinating because the first Trump administration did not look at what the agents that's actually doing. They largely aligned with traditional Republican -- Republican orthodoxy, where Trump's comments last night probably wouldn't have gotten him in trouble at all with traditional Republican orthodoxy and unions.
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I mean, the broader context of this is that we've been witnessing for a long time with an accelerating pace, the dismantling of the FDR coalition where the white working class was part of the Democratic coalition, strong labor unions, often in collusion with government were the dominant source of funding and organization for the Democratic Party.
[16:10:10]
As our politics has moved more towards cultural stuff rather than economic interests, more towards Elizabeth Warren and less of towards Bernie Sanders, to use shorthand, you see how the rank-and-file of moved away.
At the same time, I think this was obviously an unforced error.
ALLISON: Yeah.
GOLDBERG: I mean, Shermichael might be right that it won't make that much difference in the long run. I think the lawsuit is frivolous, unconstitutional nonsense, but as a signaling thing, to be being chumming with Elon Musk, who's the only major car manufacturer in the country that is not unionized, and has very anti-union feelings, some of which I sympathize with, it's just not a great signaling from Donald Trump.
And so, I think the Democrats are smart to seize on this. And I was a silly thing to do the Twitter interview or X interview in the first place.
MATTINGLY: Which, by the way, is part of the origin story of why Musk and the Biden administration hate one another on some level was because of the union issue.
I ask you, Shawn Fain, who led the UAW negotiations, got them a lot of things and really held out a lot longer than I think even some in the Biden administration wanted him to, there has been that split between where leadership was and where rank and file was.
Has he brought it closer together?
ALLISON: I think he's going to have to continue to bring it closer together.
Look, I was a part of a teachers union when I was in school. I come from Youngstown, Ohio, like it's a union labor area. People are allowed to have differences of opinions just -- just what you're in a union doesn't make you a Democrat or Republican.
But what Shawn Fain is doing and what I think the Harris campaign is doing is making it clear like you can still be a Republican and know that this guy is not actually for your support. And so, pushing the Democrats to continue to be pro labor is important.
I will just say though, when Republicans who support Donald Trump our actually read his policy positions that are in labor unions, they're disgusted by them. They can't believe that this might be the guy.
And so that's why I'm saying like getting in the streets, organizing door knocking could really pull some of those voters away in those labor town.
MATTINGLY: Especially Michigan --
ALLISON: Michigan, Pennsylvania.
MATTINGLY: Yeah, they matter a lot.
All right, guys --
ALLISON: Nevada.
MATTINGLY: Nevada matters a little bit.
All right. Stick around. We got a lot more to get to. Up ahead, the single state should say commonwealth, that could decide the 2024 race and how Donald Trump just use a hot-button issue there to call out the vice president today.
Plus, what authorities are saying about a break-in at Trump campaign offices in Virginia and in alleged hack into its campaign email system.
And the breaking news this hour, a look at President Biden in New Orleans ahead of his first speech since dropping out of the 2024 race. More from Louisiana, ahead.
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[16:16:38]
PMATTINGLY: In our law and justice lead, two serious breaches of the Trump campaign are now under investigation.
Police are searching for a suspect after a break-in at a Trump campaign office in Virginia, just as we learn new details about how hackers were allegedly able to infiltrate and leak of Trump campaign documents.
CNN Evan Perez joins me.
Evan, I want to start with the hack. You're learning the hackers actually targeted a longtime Trump allies personal account as part of this scheme.
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. This was a campaign that was targeting both the Biden-Harris campaign and the Trump campaign. And in this case, they got to Roger Stone. Roger Stone email was breached the hackers were able to essentially impersonate that, that account, Phil, and were able to then refine their phishing campaign to be able to get to people inside the Trump campaign.
Now, we've seen in recent days that a number of reporters have said that they received some documents that appear to come from the campaign. We're told that those campaign documents obviously came from someone who was associated, senior person inside the Trump campaign.
And so, the question now, for the investigators is, what else did the hackers managed to get? The suspicion right now is on a group associated with the Iranian government. They've been after this kind of campaign for a number of years and they've been trying to get into these organizations, political organizations for some time.
It appears in the case of the Trump campaign, they were successful.
MATTINGLY: And when it comes to the campaign office break-in, do we know if anything was actually taken?
PEREZ: We don't. The Loudon County sheriff says that right -- you know, they have a picture of someone that they believe was behind or associated with this break in. You could see the picture right there.
And at this point, they don't know whether anybody anything was actually taken. They did do a sweep to see whether any kind of surveillance bog or something like that was left behind in that office. That office, by the way, Phil is also a regional district office for the local Republican Party. So, it's not clear what exactly was the target and what was the purpose of this break-in? Again, there's a lot of investigation on there. They say that they're putting out that picture has already generated a lot of tips from the public about who this person might be.
MATTINLY: All right. We'll have to wait and see. Evan Perez, working his sources as always, thanks so much.
I want to bring it now, CNN, chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller.
John, to start with the obvious question that may also not be smart question, but are these two things connected the break-in and the hack? Do we know?
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, first of all, there are no dumb question. There's only dumb answers and let me try not to give one.
Probably not, anything's possible. But when you look at the sophistication involved in the cyber attacks, where as Evan reported, you know, you're cloning Roger Stones' email, you're doing a man in the middle technique where you inserted domain in-between that and the people you're reaching out to as Stone, and that domain is stealing their credentials or attempting to at the same time, that is a level of sophistication that's up here.
When you're doing a burglary in a building full of security cameras, and as we saw from those photographs of the suspected burglar, you know, you're showing your full face with no attempt to make a disguise, an office burglary into a campaign office.
[16:20:05] What are the valuables there? You know, the typical office burglary as you're looking to steal laptops off the desks. The real valuables in a campaign office are inside those computers and that's what the hacking thing is.
He's probably just a routine burglar and with the shot of the face, which is very clear. If he's local, he'll probably be identified within these 24 hours.
MATTINGLY: To focus on the hack, you know, sources told CNN, the FBI also briefed the Biden-Harris campaign in June about Iranian hackers targeting their campaign. What's the goal here for Iran?
MILLER: So Iran has two goals. One, they don't like Donald Trump. President Trump, when he was in office, ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is their elite military and intelligence force. That's why you hear about Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump, or people from his former administration. So there's some animus there.
But there's a second part of that goal which puts Iran in the same league with Russia and China, which is they're trying to, A, either influence the election or just affect the election by stirring the pot, by causing chaos.
Phil, when you look at some of the ingenious things that they're doing in this kind of modern age of electronic propaganda warfare, Iranian hackers have set up, and this is according to the people at the Microsoft Corporations Intelligence Group, they've set up fake sites that are geared for conservative, fake news sites that are geared to liberals. They have populated those sites with articles they've stolen from legitimate media and then used A.I. to phrase them differently so that they don't appear to be plagiarized from where they came from.
And then they insert outrageous propaganda things in the middle of them, so that the reader who would be drawn to that site would say, well, all the rest of the news here looks real. So this thing must be true, too.
So that's kind of the level of trying to stir, discord, division, disagreement and controversy, not like we don't have enough in the natural course of things, but that is part of the goal.
MATTINGLY: The investigation is obviously ongoing. But unlike the Trump campaign, the U.S. government has not publicly, officially pointed the finger at Iran for the alleged hack.
Why is that? Well, because there's more to come.
MILLER: I mean, China is doing its influence campaigns and attacking Russia, which probably kind of invented this game, is going at it with both barrels. So I think what the FBI's position is and, you know, the FBI relationship in were coming into investigate something involving that campaign with the Trump people given what Trump has said about the FBI, what the campaign has said about the FBI has got to be a tad awkward just to start with. But I think before they attach a name to it as the perpetrator, they're going to want to go through the ones and zeros and pass the intelligence analysis and see what can we prove before we make a statement like that. It may not take long but they have a process.
MATTINGLY: All right. John Miller, as always, thank you, my friend.
MILLER: Thanks, Phil.
MATTINGLY: Well, we're standing by to hear from President Biden. He is in New Orleans and expected to give his first speech since ending his 2024 campaign. We'll be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:27:47]
MATTINGLY: We're back with the 2024 lead. And only 84 days until the November 5th election. We're running the numbers on this race.
And you take a look at the 2020 map. What were the states that matter more than anything else? Well, Joe Biden flipped the state of Georgia, flipped the state of Arizona. But more than anything else, what Joe Biden did is he flipped back the blue wall into Democratic hands -- the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Why does that matter? Well, let's flip back to 2016. You see all three of those states were read. Georgia, also in Trump's column, Arizona, as well.
So what does that mean going forward? Well, if you want to watch the two campaigns, they'll tell you a lot about what's happening right now.
And here's what I mean. Let's take a look at our race to 270. This would be the map if Kamala Harris won all of the states that Joe Biden won in 2020. This would be where things stand, holding onto the blue wall.
If you're the Trump campaign, Pennsylvania is absolutely critical. It's why you've seen the foreign president go there. It's why J.D. Vance will be there later in the week. It's why you'll see a lot of spending as well.
Why is it so critical? Well, say, Trump flips back Georgia, traditionally, Republican state and not the entire blue wall, just one of those, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, look at that, 270 electoral votes.
Now, if you're Harris and you're looking around right now and saying, well, I'm not sure if I can hold Georgia, the kind of Sun Belt states are very much in question, take a look at this, say Harris loses Georgia, loses North Carolina as Democrats have the last two cycles, loses Arizona and loses Nevada but wins Pennsylvania? Guess what? She's at 270 as well.
The blue wall is critical here and that's why new numbers that have been coming out over the course of the last couple of weeks have been so critical. We're going to take a look at one set here and that's; "The New York Times"/Sienna College poll.
Take a look back at May when Biden in Pennsylvania is 37-41; Michigan, 42-39; Wisconsin, 39-40.
Now look at Harris in August. Now, granted, still no clear leader. This is all within the margin of error, but the jump from Biden to Harris, nine points in Pennsylvania, six points in Michigan, ten points in Wisconsin.
That is what's giving Democrats real hope that not just the Sun Belt states they feel now are very much back in play unlike they were with Biden, but also that critical blue wall could be a critical component of a Harris coalition to 270.
[16:30:07]
Now, how do you know exactly what campaigns are seeing? Look, clearly, polling is fluid right now. It is a very different race and everybody's trying to get their head around it.
Well, look at where the campaigns are spending. Pennsylvania, $34.6 million for Democrats, $35.3 million for Republicans. Michigan, Wisconsin, huge sums of money going in.
Yes, the Sun Belt states, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada. That's big spending as well. Those are very, very swing states that are very much in play for both campaigns, right now. But if you really want to know what matters to Trump campaign dumping a ton of money into Georgia right now, but both campaigns focus heavily on the state of Pennsylvania.
And that's exactly what I want to talk about as I bring my panel back in.
Jonah, when you look at the map and you look at all the different pathways to 270 here, it seems like the commonwealth of Pennsylvania is absolutely critical for both campaigns.
GOLDBERG: Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you for upholding Jake Tapper's tradition of referring to it as a commonwealth, which drives me crazy because no one ever called it Penn Commonwealth University. It's Penn State University, but so be it.
Yeah, Pennsylvania is for all the reasons you got into it, it is basically -- it's the exhaust port on the Death Star, to use a "Star Wars" analogy like it is the keyed, whichever way you want to go.
It's also -- one of things that makes it more interesting than a lot of the other crucial states, is demographically, if you win Pennsylvania, odds are you're going to win some other states as well.
And I think it was James Carville who first said Pennsylvania is it's Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in-between. It's this weird mix of very rural and also very urban. A lot of Blacks in Philadelphia, and so like if you've come up with a message that takes Pennsylvania for you, you might also carry a bunch of other states as well on finding that secret sauce is the secret to the election.
MATTINGLY: And for the record, it's fear of Jake Tapper. It's the only reason that I always say commonwealth because he comes down hard.
GOLDBERG: He does.
MATTINGLY: He will let a lot of things slide, but not commonwealth.
To that point, what's interesting, you now, if we don't get a little bit further in the map of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia was not actually that dramatically different between Hillary Clinton and Biden. What was different was the collar counties. It was the suburbs. As you push out where Biden just rolled up massive, massive vote, and I'm interested with what you've seen so far.
Do you think the Harris campaign is putting together the type of message that will resonate there?
ALLISON: Yeah. Well, I come from an era of politics where as go Ohio, so goes the nation and my home state, and its not that anymore.
MATTINGLY: No, it's sad.
ALLISON: It is really sad.
MATTINGLY: That was my excuse to go back home to our home state.
ALLISON: It is really sad and I will make a humble plea that like don't give up on Ohio for a couple of reasons to Jonah's point. So it's not that Ohio will be probably Electoral College votes for the vice president. But for Pennsylvania, if you can run up the score in some of those surrounding counties, Delaware County, Bucks County, which looks different than your 1992, even 2016 demographic, who makes up those -- that that -- the suburban mom is not just your white female soccer mom. It is a very diverse makeup now and those surrounding counties.
But if you can do well in those counties, you also probably can do well in some counties in Ohio that will be helpful to Sherrod Brown in the Senate race. So it's a tell on different levels in terms of not just Electoral College, but in the governor's race. Perhaps, maybe it has some trend down to North Carolina for the Cooper-Robinson raise.
It does some tells that can carry over into different components of the race. I think that you will see, there's no surprise that the Harris campaign is spending astronomical amount of money in Pennsylvania.
But what you can always tell as a tail for the opponent is now they're starting to match. I think Donald Trump before Harris was at the top of the ticket, thought he was a lot safer in PA than he does now. And so, his spending has surged in some states they were hoping they didn't have to spend it.
MATTINGLY: I mean, they dropped $4 million in North Carolina, which is fascinating.
ALLISON: Which is telling.
MATTINGLY: Because everybody kind of thought despite what Biden folks were saying --
ALLISON: Haven't won it since 2008.
MATTINGLY: Right. And all of a sudden, they had to drop 4 million. We'll see. That obviously playing defense is the responsible thing to do on some level.
Shermichael, you know, this is what's so interesting about the questions about what's -- what's the message from the Trump campaign right now, fracking is a message --
SINGLETON: Yeah.
MATTINGLY: -- that you hear the allies talking about. You know, Ashley makes a great point, what Biden did wasn't necessarily keep Trump's vote down in his strongholds. Trump ran up huge votes in the rural areas in the state, in the northern part of the state, in the middle of the Alabama, to quote Carville, while also quoting Jonah.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTINGLY: And that's how you -- you talk about the fracking issue, which is problematic for Hillary Clinton. It was an issue. It was a position that Kamala Harris had that she isn't since her campaign has said she no longer holds, that would seem to be a way that Trump campaign could run up vote in those areas.
SINGLETON: I mean, look, it's definitely going to be an issue. President Biden increased his margins with working class white voters in 2020 compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
[16:35:07]
A pro-Trump super PAC announced $100 million ad buy over three weeks to campaign, 73 million over three weeks, you're looking at 173 million bucks over 21 days. That's $8.2 million a day.
That's a substantial amount of money to define the vice president and also her running mate.
And also, I would keep in mind that "Times"/Siena poll had some interesting data, reflective of 2016 and 2020 that show that Donald Trump was underestimated by nine points in 2016, by five points in 2020, and his approval ratings are higher at this point than they have ever been in the past.
And so, if you were to, I guess, estimate if you will, what those figures suggest about this current data, it is that this race is dead, tied, or the former president is at least a point or two potentially ahead of the vice president. And so, I think from Republicans, you understand this is a close race.
You understand it's a tight race, but you're looking for every single issue you can find a draw that contrast to the folks in Alabama to get them to turn out for your candidate.
MATTINGLY: And to that point, Jonah, you know, this is the moment where or if you're Democrat, you're saying, last three weeks been great, don't do anything differently until you're forced to do something differently.
When are they forced to do something? Obviously, the convention is coming up, but if you will, the vice presidents team, when you're looking around saying on the issues of fracking around the issues of immigration we need you out talking about this in a kind of proactive, offensive way.
GOLDBERG: Yeah. Look there are a lot of people were outraged that Kamala Harris has not given an interview yet, particularly, journalists and particularly Republicans and she should, I think they hit the point of diminishing returns. The second it starts to seem like an issue to people, then they have to start thinking about how they're going to sort of get her out there and exposure more.
But it was, you know, whether you think was right or wrong, it was a smart strategy. This is the most impressive extended honeymoon in a while. And the idea that the persuadable voters are sitting around in these swing states thinking gosh, I just -- I haven't seen her sit down for "60 Minutes" yet. I don't know what -- they're not thinking in those terms. That's a very inside the Beltway, very plugged in sort of way of thinking about it.
They see her on TV. They see her give speeches and they think -- they don't think she's hiding. But at some point, it becomes an issue and it also the stakes of her first interview start going really, really high because if she -- if it does become a thing and she screws it up, it's much worse than if she had given ten interviews and had a couple of mistakes.
ALLISON: Can I add something real quick?
MATTINGLY: Yeah, real quick.
ALLISON: I think that's a campaign strategy of doing some bracketing when she goes into these local communities -- doing local press, rather than focusing on the national press because the local press is where you're going to get the swing voters.
MATTINGLY: Well, and I should note for Michael Tyler and Brian Fallon, don't do "60 Minute", right here. I will do it anytime, call me, I'll be on the plane, We'll do the interview. It will be great, I promise.
All right. Thank you, guys very much. Really appreciate it, as always.
Coming up next, what the lineup for next weeks Democratic convention says about the party's support for Vice President Harris as its nominee.
Plus, President Biden, about to take the stage in New Orleans, his first big speech since the vice president took the helm in the 2024 race. We're going to bring you some of those comments when they begin.
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[16:42:12]
MATTINGLY: In our 2024 lead, on Monday, Democrats will kick off their convention in Chicago to formally select Vice President Kamala Harris as their nominee for president. And Democrats will hear from one current and two former U.S. presidents, President Biden, set to speak along with former secretary of state in 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, on Monday night. Former President Obama will speak on Tuesday. Former President Bill Clinton takes the stage on Wednesday.
I want to bring in CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod. I'm also told he's got some experience in politics as well as with Chicago.
David, I know --
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, sir.
MATTINGLY: -- I know you're anxiously awaiting the world descending on your hometown. Three weeks ago, President Biden was set to accept his party's nomination. Now, he will be speaking on the opening night. Its kind of a pass the torch moment that the vice president.
How important is that moment going to be for the party?
AXELROD: Well, I think emotionally for the people in the room, it's going to be very important. There's a lot of -- there's a lot of love and affection and appreciation for Joe Biden, and there's great appreciation for the difficult decision that he made. Yes, he expected to be speaking on the fourth night and he expected to be his convention, and its not going to be.
But in making the decision he made, he breathed new life into the Democratic campaign and new -- and, you know, people now believe they have good chance to defeat Donald Trump, which is always what the president said was his objective. But he's going to be well-received and he'll get a hero's welcome.
And then they'll, the page will turn to Kamala Harris as the new standard bearer of the party, pointing to the future. You know, I think this couldn't work out better. It has to be tough for the president, but I think the reception he gets will help solve that wound.
MATTINGLY: Yeah, it will be -- it will be a very, very fascinating moment to watch. There's no question about it.
You know, it's interesting. We were in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention. I hadn't felt or seen energy like that at a Republican convention. Maybe '04 was the analogue that I can think of, and probably not even that.
But there's a fascinating contrasting here and that notable Republicans were not there. That includes former President Bush, Trump's own vice president, Mike Pence, Dick Cheney was not there.
You compare that to the DNC. You've got former Presidents Obama and Clinton. You have Hillary Clinton there as well.
Does that matter in terms of viewers and voters?
AXELROD: Yeah, I don't know if it matters in terms of voters. It may because they are very popular figures, certainly President Obama is, President Clinton, and that will be meaningful to viewers. But the other larger piece is this party is unified in a really big way.
[16:45:05]
And, you know, we -- as we sat at the Republican convention, we were told this was going to be a unity convention. But unity, unity really meant surrender. It meant that Donald. Trump had completely taken over the party and those who disagreed with him were expelled. We saw that in the reception that Mitch McConnell that got that reception, the absence as you point out, of many leaders of that party.
This Democratic Party is a unified party right now, very determined, very knit together in one cause. And that has to help and that, feeling will be obvious, I think to people who watched the convention.
MATTINGLY: You're on the ground in Chicago most of the time through a prism mechanics perspective, swapping out a candidate -- how does that work for a convention? Like are they read? Is this -- like, is the perspective of people who run things, but --
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AXELROD: I can't entire -- I can't entirely answer because there's no template for this, Phil, but I can tell you having worked on a couple of conventions in a very intimate way, it is a huge project. This is like turning a battleship around and, you know, Stephanie Cutter, who is planning that convention, plan that 2020 convention in which had its own challenges, first time we had a virtual convention and it turned out to be in my view, one of the great conventions that we've seen.
She's very, very good at this, and she's -- you know, I worked closely with her. She is a brilliant and very disciplined person. I suspect that she has turned the wheel pretty effectively here, but it's hard. There's no doubt about it.
I mean, you're telling a different story. I suspect that the convention when it was going to be a Biden convention was going to focus much more heavily on Trump because there are lots -- you know, people knew everything about the president. They would certainly talk about his accomplishments and so on. But they really needed to persuade people that Trump was too big a risk. I think people are, there are many people who are persuaded that
there's a majority of people who don't want to vote for Donald Trump. But the task of this convention is to introduce them to Kamala Harris as someone they feel comfortable with turning to as an alternative. And so, I think you're going to see a great deal of it the attention focused on her story, her values on lifting up her accomplishments, and on the future and the things that she wants to do particularly around middle-class economics, which is much of what's driven her early media.
So it's going to be very different convention and hats off to Stephanie and that whole crew for the work they're doing to turn a battleship around?
MATTINGLY: Yeah. No, no pressure at all guys. Look, a battle to define the vice president that everyone has been talking about from both sides, four nights of uninterrupted primetime coverage. That is a pretty good platform.
David Axelrod, as always, my friend, a lot of people are going to be descending on you and your city very shortly. Thanks so much.
AXELROD: Yeah, looking forward to showing the city of. Wish you were going to be here, Phil, I wanted to drag around the city.
MATTINGLY: You know, I am hanging out with the former president, but, you know, I'm happy to take any Cubs games that you are willing to give me free tickets to play within the first two rows.
AXELROD: All right, deal, deal.
MATTINGLY: Thanks. Appreciate it, my fried.
AXELROD: I can make that happen. All right. See you.
MATTINGLY: Well, breaking news in the world lead, dangerous wildfires in Greece, right on the outskirts of historic Athens. The single factor experts blame for yet another year of this kind of destruction. CNN is on the ground, next.
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MATTINGLY: In the world lead, new evacuation orders near the Greek capital of Athens as fast spreading wildfires tear through several neighborhoods. At least one person has died. More than 700 firefighters are working to get the flames under control before another round of strong winds picks up tomorrow.
CNN's Eleni Giokos reports near Athens, where residents are returning to either scorched homes or nothing at all.
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ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As morning breaks in Greece, a moment of reckoning, residents return to their homes not knowing what they'd find.
Seventy-year-old Sake Monfils (ph) ran away, taking only his beloved dogs. Everything else is now gone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My house, it was utterly destroyed. Even the walls fell down.
GIOKOS: More than 700 firefighters, almost 200 vehicles and 35 water bombing aircraft have now managed to control the blaze.
But 100,000 acres of land were lost. The extent of the damage so great, it can be seen from space.
A scenario of destruction, just a few miles from Athens. Experts say the last few years of fires are drastically changing the city's climate, the loss of trees making winds and temperatures rise along with the risk of fire.
A tough challenge ahead local officials are well aware of.
MAYOR VASILIS XYPOLITAS, KIFISIA, GREECE: At some point, the fire was faster than the cars and trucks, and we are trying to catch the fire. We must find solutions in the way of evacuating and in being first at the time of the start of the fire.
GIOKOS: Miles of beautiful green virgin forests reduced to charred barren hills.
For residents like Sofia, the feeling of loss is beyond words.
SOFIA, LOCAL RESIDENT: I feel terribly -- I can't explain how I feel this morning. We had sat a green grasses here. Now, I don't know after how many years it's going to be again, and if it'd be like before.
It was great.
GIOKOS: Many like her now point the thing at the government, blaming the lack of prevention and care as part of the fuel feeding the fire that spared nothing in its path.
Eleni Giokos, CNN, Penteli, Greece.
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MATTINGLY: Eleni Giokos in Greece for us, thank you very much.
[16:55:00]
We're back with last leads coming up next.
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MATTINGLY: President Biden moments ago speaking in New Orleans about what he considers a legacy defining issue, his moonshot to cure cancer.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's fair to say one of the most devastating words anyone could hear and it's not hyperbole, it's cancer. You walk into a doc's office with your child and/or yourself, and you get a diagnosis of cancer. How many of you heard that when you walked in there? It's frightening. It's frightening.
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MATTINGLY: Biden is speaking at Tulane University to highlight $150 million for new research.
The news continues on CNN with Wolf Blitzer live from Tel Aviv in "THE SITUATION ROOM".
