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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump Joins G.A. Gov. Kemp For First Appearance Since 2020 Feud; New Harris Ad Highlights Her GOP Endorsements; How Elections Could Be Impacted By AI; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-M), Is Interviewed About AI Impact To Election, Deepfakes; Senior U.S. Official Says No Assurances From Israel That Striking Iran's Nuclear Facilities Is Off The Table; Election Officials: Similar Tactics From 2020 In Play For 2024; Malcolm Gladwell Revisits Tipping Point Theory 25 Years Later. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired October 04, 2024 - 17:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:00:22]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. This hour, many of the tactics that Trump is accused of using to try to overturn the last election in 2020, they're still in play for 2024, these tactics. We're taking a deep dive into how some Republicans are already setting the stage to challenge the November results.

Plus, could your vote in the upcoming election be influenced by something completely fake? We are seeing artificial intelligence or AI show up in campaign ads, on social media, even robocalls to voters trying to convince you a candidate said something or did something that never happened. Tonight, we're digging into the technology and the warning signs.

And leading this hour, tomorrow marks one month until Election Day. And today, former President Donald Trump is in Georgia, a state he won in 2016 and barely lost in 2020, while Vice President Kamala Harris is in Michigan, a state that Trump won in 2016 but Biden flipped in 2020. Let's go to CNN's Eva McKend in Flint, Michigan.

Eva, this will be the second event today for Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan. How worried is the Harris campaign about what's going on the ground there?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, I can tell you that they are concerned about Michigan as they are the other battleground states. What's key to the strategy here, though, they met with Arab-American voters here today. And now tonight, this rally is going to be worker focused, labor focused, the vice president going to attack the former president and J.D. Vance for refusing to commit to support federal funding for a GM plan in Lansing. Now, that is a very specific critique, but a critique that she hopes will resonate in this crowd. That's because the Inflation Reduction Act included a five $500 million grant for electric vehicles.

And we know that the former president, J.D. Vance, has been very critical of those policies. But she will argue tonight it is those policies that protected hundreds of jobs in this state. So, they hope that economic message resonates here. We know that Michigan is just going to be one on the margins and that the organizing strength in this room among unions, among labor is going to be vital. Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Eva McKend in Flint, Michigan, thanks so much.

Donald Trump is in the critical battleground state of Georgia where just moments ago he received a briefing on the damage caused by Hurricane Helene. Trump narrowly lost the peach date to President Biden in 2020 by 11,779 votes. Polls continue to show Trump and Vice President Harris locked in a very tight contest. And to highlight just how important it is for Trump to flip Georgia red in just 32 days, it is one of the few swing states Republicans have outspent Democrats on campaign ads by nearly half a million dollars.

Today's event is also the first time that Trump and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who's a Republican, have appeared together in public since Trump started attacking the popular Republican governor following the last election Trump's beef, of course, that Georgia's governor stood with his state's election officials and the voters of Georgia and refused to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Here's a reminder of what Trump said about Kemp just a few months ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not a fan of your governor. Atlanta is like a killing field and your governor ought to get off his ass and do something about it. He's a very disloyal person, isn't he? Very disloyal. He's the most disloyal guy I think I've ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: And you'll do a lot better with a better governor. He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy and he's a very average governor. Little Brian. Little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let's bring in our political panel. So today, Trump was asked about his relationship with the governor, Matt, and here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's great. No, no, no, it's great. No, we work together. We've always worked together very well. Very, really well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, I think, I know it's changed. But why don't you tell us?

MATT GORMAN, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER, TIM SCOTT PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Yes. We've seen Kumbaya. We got an election in 35 days. That's what's really changed. I mean, look, I think JD Vance was instrumental in trying to bridge this gap that alarmed a lot of Republicans.

TAPPER: Lindsey Graham helped a lot, too, by the way, too.

GORMAN: He too. There's a couple people. But it alarmed a lot of Republicans last month when he went off script like that, or beyond script, whatever I call it, at that rally. And they knew they needed to get everybody on the same page.

Look, I'm a Jets fan. I spent the last week moaning and groaning about our team, the head coach. Sunday at 9:30 in London, you put the jersey on because you got to go win. Same thing here.

TAPPER: So former President Trump was also asked if he agrees with remarks from President Biden, who said today in the White House briefing room that the election will be fair. But he's not sure if it will be peaceful. We talked about this last panel about. That's understandable, given what happened on January 6 in the last election. Listen to what Trump had to say.

[17:05:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I don't know anything about what he said. I only can hope that it's going to be free and fair. And I think in this state it will be. And I hope in every state it will be. And I think we're going to do very well.

But right now we're focused on this. We're not focused on the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: I think it's interesting that in his comment, even just now, he equates free and fair to doing well. That all was said in the same sentence. And I think that's the concern that Biden raised in his comments. That's the concern that a lot of people, Democrats, even many Republicans, have said they don't trust that if Trump loses in close states like Georgia that he will allow the results of the election to stand. And, you know, they are concerned about another January 6 or something else similar.

ASHLEY ALLISON, FORMER NATIONAL COALITIONS DIRECTOR FOR BIDEN-HARRIS 2020: I mean, look, I think the irony is that Donald Trump is saying that in Georgia when this is -- this was ground zero, really, of where he tried to steal the election and have a conspiracy with Republicans. The good thing in 2020 is you had Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, and Brian Kemp stopping it, saying, no. He's only being nice to Brian Kemp because he's hoping that Brian Kemp won't have the moral courage to stand up for democracy and let the voters to decide. If on January 6 this comes down to the exact same scenario, he goes back to being little Brian again, like Donald Trump said, he goes back to being called name. So you could put the jersey on. But Trump's jersey is only -- it only says Donald Trump. It doesn't say the Jets, it doesn't say America, it doesn't say democracy, it says Trump, and that's it.

TAPPER: Do you want to weigh in on that?

GORMAN: Well, you're also assuming that Donald Trump is going to lose the state, which is not necessarily the case. I mean, I think you look at -- they're going to do a little triage mode right now, the Harris campaign. They're going back to a state where I think they thought they were a little stronger than they were in terms of Michigan, as you talked about in the last segment. And we've gone from where Harris is really going to be focused on Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia running up there. They're having to kind of shore up that blue wall.

So right now, they're back on their heels a little bit.

MITCHELL: I mean, I agree the election is going to be close.

ALLISON: Yes.

MITCHELL: There are battleground states, that is for sure. The question is, do you only allow -- do you only agree with the election results when your team wins?

TAPPER: Yes.

MITCHELL: And that's where we're talking about not just winners and losers, but America's democracy.

TAPPER: Yes. And it's worth reminding people that the election was very, very close in North Carolina in 2020 and that state had a Democratic governor, but Trump won. And so all of a sudden, there were no claims of fraud. The Harris campaign is out today with a new campaign touting her endorsements from a number of people that might be unexpected. National security officials, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ CHENEY, FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: This year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Former generals, secretaries of defense, secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, CIA directors, and National Security Council leaders under Democratic and Republican presidents, Republican members of Congress and even former Trump administration officials agree there's only one candidate fit to lead our nation, and that's Kamala Harris.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: For a swing voter in a battleground state, could that be effective?

GORMAN: Maybe. But the Biden team just stepped all over that message proverbially when it came literally coming out two minutes after Kamala Harris took the stage. But also, this is a divide between the Biden campaign and the Harris campaign. Talking about democracy was central to the Biden campaign, it hasn't been for the Harris campaign. So you're stepping all over this message and the economic message by talking about January 6, which Harris doesn't want it to.

ALLISON: Yes, it is effective, and that's why they're running it, because we know there is this segment of voters who are undecided that that could be effective. That's also the why in addition to that ad, she's in Flint today because it is a yes and for her to win that state and across the country.

TAPPER: It's kind of a permission structure ad --

MITCHELL: Yes.

TAPPER: -- I thought giving people who are unsure, maybe Republican women, a permission to vote for her.

MITCHELL: Yes. But I think there's also some risks because there are some Democrats who are concerned, like Liz Cheney, that's who we're holding up as someone who's supporting our candidate. So I think there's risk in states like Michigan with the base, but she's speaking to the middle with these ads.

TAPPER: Thanks to one and all. Appreciate it. Have a fantastic weekend to all of you.

Up next, how AI, artificial intelligence, is being used to try to influence your vote in the upcoming elections. Not just being used by bad actors overseas, but by people here, Americans, in the United States. Plus, why attempts to regulate these fake images and videos are coming up short right now. Stay with us.

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[17:13:55]

TAPPER (AI-generated): Welcome back to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We are in an unprecedented era where technology has vastly outpaced the ability of the public to recognize deepfakes, and even more so, lapped lawmakers, many of whom, frankly, seem unable to manage their e-mail. Take, for example, what you're watching right now. I'm actually not Jake.

I'm a deepfake Jake, a deep Jake, if you will, created by comedian Danny Polishchuk, who has only been using AI for two weeks. The fact that I seem so real suggests that real mischief and serious damage could be done with this technology were it to be so utilized in the U.S. as it has been for bad purposes abroad.

OK, real life Jake here now. AI, generated images, audio and video such as that have slowly been creeping into American political campaigns. In Indiana, Senator Mike Braun, a Republican running for governor, was running this T.V. ad against his Democratic opponent, Jennifer McCormick, featuring this image of her standing at a rally against gas stoves. The image looks perfectly real, but it is fake. It's been digitally altered. McCormick called for it to be taken down, saying it, quote, "Violates the principles of transparency and integrity voters deserve in campaign advertising by changing the text on the signs in voters hands," unquote.

[17:15:08]

The Braun campaign originally said that their ads were compliant with the new Indiana law that prohibits the use of digitally altered media in campaign messages unless there's a disclosure. They have since replaced that image altogether. But seriously, welcome to the wild west of TV ads, where technology allows falsehoods to be depicted as fact, blazing unethical trails around the world. FBI director Christopher Wray has warned about foreign actors using this technology against America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: This election cycle, the U.S. will face more adversaries moving at a faster pace and enabled by new technology. Advances in generative AI, for instance, are lowering the barrier to entry, making it easier for both more and less sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: But forget foreign adversaries for a second, because Americans are already doing it to Americans. A year ago, the Republican National Committee ran this ad depicting San Francisco getting shut down and other dystopian, completely fake images of this future where Biden is re-elected. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan showed this to voters and they could not tell it was fake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: So all the images in that ad were actually created using AI, artificial intelligence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: And since then, the technology has only gotten better. Voters in New Hampshire earlier this year got a robocall in January from someone working for Democratic challenger Congressman Dean Phillips. The AI generated voice sounded like President Biden telling New Hampshire voters don't vote in the primary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (AI-generated fake robocall): We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, Phillips distanced himself from the consultant who made that call and condemned it. Ron DeSantis' campaign, the Florida governor running against Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary, used fake images of Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci. And DeSantis never back down PAC used an AI-generated Trump voice to read one of his actual tweets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (AI-generated): I opened up the governor position for Kim Reynolds in which she fell behind. I endorsed her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: But now supporters of Trump are in on it, spreading fake images of Trump among black voters. A Trump campaign manager also shared this video last year with fake audio from a very real NBC reporter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (Fake audio): Nobody cares about these (bleep) rhino debates, especially when you know that Donald Trump is going to kick some ass tonight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: A broad AI deepfakes have hit Bangladesh, where a fake image of a lawmaker in the conservative Muslim majority country showed her in a bathing suit, not actually her. Video in Moldova, of the pro- western president supporting a pro-Kremlin party and so much more. The federal government here in the United States has no law against this. Some states are trying to keep up. Indiana has that law requiring disclosure for ads that use AI images.

But even the Braun campaign ad that complied with the law has a disclosure that's frankly tough to read. And frankly, it's a pretty weak effort. The fake image is much stronger, much more memorable. That RNC ad from last year also had a disclaimer, but some people still couldn't even see it. They couldn't tell the difference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I'm blind.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can't see that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can't see that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can't see that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think I would have known that was made with AI if you hadn't said anything. (END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Trump himself even circulated fake AI images of Taylor Swift supporters proclaiming their support for Trump. His sharing of those fake images was, in fact, cited by Taylor Swift when she announced her decision to endorse Kamala Harris. But beyond that, beyond Swift endorsing Harris, there's really been little accountability for anyone campaigning whose lies now include fake images that look all too real.

Now, I first heard of the comedian who made the AI of me at the top of the segment when he made some deepfakes of me that I wasn't particularly a fan of, but it sure looked and it sure sounded like me. So to help illustrate the potential problem here, I asked him to make that AI that we showed you at the top of this.

I want to bring in Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who is very concerned about the ability of people using AI to fool voters. And she and others have introduced the, quote, "Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act" to try to address those concerns.

[17:20:13]

So, senator, what can be done? What does your legislation prescribe to stop voters from being fooled by what look like actual images of politicians doing things that they never did?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): So, Jake, digitally altered and AI ads have the potential to completely upend our elections. You got a flavor of it in New Hampshire when you had the fake voice of pretend Joe Biden telling people not to vote. That was criminally investigated because it involved voting. And now you're starting to see little by little ads in states and other races, which I predicted, which is using AI in a deceptive fashion or using digital alteration. And that means it's not really the person you think or they're at an event with signs and it's not really the signs that were held up at the event to mislead voters into thinking they're bad.

It's that simple. So what our bill would do, and I have two bills. One would require labeling, and 18 states have now done that, which is important, including red states like Utah and Mississippi and Indiana. And then there's also the bill to ban deepfakes. And that is a bill I have with, Jake, Josh Hawley --

TAPPER: Right.

KLOBUCHAR: -- as well as Susan Collins and a number of other people that says if it's a serious deepfake, and I think some of these ads and videos that actually show people in fake surroundings that are not satire, they actually would qualify as being banned. And that would make it simpler because then you aren't going to be -- that you're going to stop that kind of behavior. A number of platforms, including OpenAI, have actually endorsed and support our bill because it gives them something to point to and say we're not putting this stuff up.

TAPPER: Yes. So, you know, it's -- I mean, the clock's ticking, right? I mean, more than -- KLOBUCHAR: Yes.

TAPPER: -- you know, just about a month until the election why not -- I mean, is there a holdup in the Senate? Is there --

KLOBUCHAR: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

TAPPER: -- appetite in the House for it? I mean, what's the holdup in the Senate?

KLOBUCHAR: I know you're going to be really surprised by this, but it's Mitch McConnell. The bill -- actually, the two bills, the one with Senator Murkowski, the other one was Senator Hawley, made it through the Rules Committee and are now waiting on the floor. I asked for what we call unanimous consent that was objected to by the Republicans. So, the Democrats are fine with this. I have a few Republicans, and there is a companion bill in the House that's bipartisan.

And we just can't sit there. We have a number of states that have no laws in place at all. There's no laws on a federal basis that govern the presidential campaigns, the Senate or the congressional campaigns. Other countries are like, wait a minute, we're not allowing these fake things that lie to voters. So you have no idea who's on that ad, but not us.

Right now, we're sitting there allowing these things to go forward. And at the very least, there should be labels throughout the ad or video so people know that they're digitally altered.

TAPPER: Well, what is the -- obviously, Josh Hawley, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski accepted and anyone else who's on board with your bill accepted, what is the republican opposition to this bill? Is it a First Amendment issue? What's their problem? I mean, I can't imagine that, you know, Senator McConnell would think it's cool for deepfake ads to depict him doing things that he never did.

KLOBUCHAR: You got that right. It is. They're making a claim on First Amendment political speech. And -- but these ads are frauds. They show people doing things they're not doing.

And if we don't have some rules in place, pretty soon they're going to dominate the Internet. We have been really reasonable about this in that we've said, we talked to Democratic lawyers, Republican lawyers. We made sure they followed existing law and the constitution so that you allow parity all kinds of things. But in this case, I think -- why do I think they're really stopping it? Because I think they're going to mess around the last month of the election.

And you're already starting to see it happen with completely fake videos and ads.

TAPPER: Let me --

KLOBUCHAR: And its now we are going to be at the mercy of the platforms about whether they're going to put labels on or take them down and at the mercy of T.V. stations and some state laws, thankfully that are in place in 18 states.

TAPPER: Well, let me ask you also, so Senator Braun, obviously, notoriously one of the first to do this election cycle in Indiana in his gubernatorial race. There is a version because Indiana has a law requiring AI that there be some sort of description, some sort of labeling of it. But the labeling is so small. And I don't know about you, but when I am watching T.V. and I'm watching a commercial, I don't really take the time to put on my glasses and read the fine print. I mean, the labeling should be, like pretty big and blatant, in my view --

[17:25:17]

KLOBUCHAR: Yes.

TAPPER: -- for it to be effective at all.

KLOBUCHAR: Right. And remember, all of these laws, most of them have just been passed recently, and clearly, some of them are going to have to be improved. If you can't even see the labeling and then you see these signs that are total lie, they're fake. She was never at such a rally with those signs. She was at her own rally with her own signs.

And I just don't know how were going to be able to allow voters to decide to vote for the candidate they love or the -- not like a certain candidate if they don't have accurate information. I think this is totally unnecessary and outrageous to engage in this kind of fraudulent behavior. I know they had to take the ad back, and then they had to agree to put the labeling on as required by Indiana law. But to me, this kind of digital alteration, which is not satire, it's not a joke thing, right, that should be a deepfake, that should be taken down. It just shouldn't be allowed at all.

And the only way to outlaw it is to pass a law that says that these kinds of deepfakes that are not satire and have certain exemptions to them get taken down. We're not talking about altering hair color here or very minor things. We're talking about ads that materially deceive, materially lie about something a candidate did with digital means to make it look real.

TAPPER: Yes. And just watching from a journalistic perspective, what it looks like is happening starting last year, when the RNC had a T.V. ad portraying the dystopian future of the Joe Biden reelection campaign with all these images of San Francisco burning and everything like that. It looks like campaign managers, campaign officials, et cetera, are like the dinosaurs in Jurassic park, where they're just kind of poking and seeing what they can get away with before they, you know, ultimately eat you.

Anyway. Senator Amy Klobuchar --

KLOBUCHAR: Well, that's a very lovely way to end the interview. But I'd like to say this also applies to really, anyone. We have this No Fakes bill with Senator Coons and Senator Blackburn, Senator Tillis and myself that actually goes even beyond political candidates and allows the banning and taking down of things that are using peoples images in a way that deceive the public.

And I just don't know unless we do that you're never going to know if someone's real or not. And that cannot be where we want to be as a country.

TAPPER: Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, good to see you as always. Thank you.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

TAPPER: President Biden making a surprise appearance, weighing in on the rising tensions in the Middle East and fears of an all-out war. CNN is live on the ground in Israel, next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome, Mr. President.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:32:24]

TAPPER: A CNN exclusive in our World Lead. A U.S. official tells CNN that Israel has not given any assurances to the Biden administration that Iran's nuclear facilities are off the table when Netanyahu and his war cabinet are considering options for retaliation to the Iranian ballistic missile strikes against Israel earlier this week. CNN's Kylie Atwood is at the State Department breaking that story for us and Jim Sciutto, of course, in Tel Aviv. Kylie, tell us more about this new reporting by you and CNN's Jennifer Hansler.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN U.S. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, this top State Department official said to us no guarantees when we asked if it would be something that Israel has told the United States that they have taken off the table going after Iran's nuclear program as part of their retaliation for Iran's missile strikes against Israel earlier this week.

We know that Israel has not decided definitively what that retaliation is going to look like. President Biden said so much earlier today. But we also know that the Israelis are very keenly aware of the fact that the Biden administration does not want them to make the retaliation include going after Iran's nuclear facilities. President Biden said he wouldn't support it. U.S. and Israeli officials have been in constant contact over the last few days on this topic.

And when it comes to the timing of the Israeli retaliation, this senior State Department official said it's very hard to tell if Israel might use October 7th, of course, the first anniversary of that horrific attack on Israel by Hamas along the border with Gaza to actually go ahead with its retaliation against Iran.

In this official's estimation, they don't think that they would use October 7th just because of the, how solemn that day actually is, but they didn't count out that possibility, saying that they think it would probably come before or after, but they really don't know when Israel is going to do this and what exactly it's going to look like. And just one more note from this top State Department official. They said, quote, this is on the edge when it comes to the prospect of a bigger war. The specific thing that the U.S. is trying to, been avoiding for the last year or so now still battling it out to try and make sure that's the case. But really unclear about where Israel goes next. Jake?

TAPPER: Jim -- Jim, what are you hearing from your sources in Israel?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Listen, Jake. I -- I haven't spoken to a single Israeli official, current or former, who has ever taken an attack on nuclear facilities off the table. And it's interesting, when I speak to U.S. officials back in Washington, including military officials, they're very aware that striking Iran's nuclear facilities is one option that Israeli officials are considering.

[17:35:05]

And while they convey that the U.S. is trying it -- its darnedest to -- to keep Israel from doing that they have no sense that -- that that pressure has -- has worked at this point, that it -- that it still is on the table. You know, it's interesting, Jake, you know, thinking been for some time that Israel could not decisively or even convincingly attack Iran's nuclear facilities on its own without U.S. military support.

But I -- I hear from us officials and I hear from Israeli officials that they believe Israel can do this on its own. So conceivably there's a scenario where the U.S. says don't go and Israel does it anyway.

TAPPER: And Jim, as Kylie mentioned during a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room just a few hours ago, President Biden told reporters Israel is not going to make a decision immediately on how to retaliate for the missile attacks.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TAPPER: He also cautioned Israelis against striking Iran's oil fields. How do Biden's comments compare to --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TAPPER: -- what you're hearing in Israel?

SCIUTTO: Well, it's interesting, it did seem like Biden was cleaning up comments yesterday, which certainly had an effect on the oil markets, seeming to say that the U.S. was open to that option. He's now trying to make clear that -- that no, the U.S. does not support that. But I'll tell you again, on the menu of options, Israeli officials are at least considering, oil facilities are certainly on that list.

TAPPER: All right, Jim Sciutto, Kylie Atwood, thanks to both you. Appreciate it. From filing lawsuits to spreading lies about unregistered voters, efforts are already underway to potentially challenge the results of the upcoming election. We're going to take a deep dive on that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:40:47]

TAPPER: In our law and Justice Lead, good news and bad news for Donald Trump when it comes to prosecuting people involved in the 2020 election, something the former president says he wants. It turns out, Mr. President, good news, some people are being prosecuted. Unfortunately for you, one of them is your ally, Tina Peters.

In a Colorado court yesterday, a judge sentenced the former county clerk to nine years in prison. She tampered with voting machines under her control. She was trying to prove that they'd been used to rig the election against Donald Trump, which of course, they had not been. The judge berated her for being a charlatan.

This is just one legal issue in play before the 2024 election. And keeping track of all the others can seem like quite the herculean task. Special Counsel Jack Smith's brief this week laid out some of the steps Trump allegedly took to overturn the 2020 election. Courts across the country are flooded now with pre-election voting lawsuits. That's up from 2020.

Joining me now, CNN's Sara Murray and Zach Cohen. Sara, many election officials and voting rights activists say tactics that Jack Smith's outlines in his brief against Donald Trump are similar to what they're seeing now. Tell us more.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, if you look through this filing, it feels very familiar to what we're living at this point. I mean, we're seeing these claims that there are all these non-citizens who vote in elections, which again, experts say is very rare in federal elections. We're seeing some of the same people who pra -- pushed lies about the 2020 election spreading these lies now about 2024.

We're seeing this avalanche of lawsuits and they're challenging things like the voter rolls, saying that states are not monitoring their voter rolls, that there are dead people on the voter rolls. There are people who have moved on the voter rolls. What we saw in 2020 was a lot of these lawsuits came after the election.

This time, we're seeing them on the front end and, you know, the whole certification process is very mundane process of certifying the results of an election. That was a big deal in 2020 when there was one county in Michigan that was throwing certification into question. We have seen this pop up now in dozens of counties across the country in the period since 2020. And we're sort of bracing for another round of that potentially in November.

TAPPER: And, Zach, why so many lawsuits right now, and how might all of this impact when we actually know who has won some of these key battlegrounds?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Jake, the proximity of the election is really the big question, why file these and file these lawsuits at a time when it's pretty much too close to the election to fix the actual issues that are in these court filings. I mean, just in Georgia the last few days, there was a lawsuit filed raising concerns about the vulnerabilities in voting systems.

And some of those vulnerabilities are legit. They've been acknowledged by federal officials. But the relief or the -- what the plaintiffs were asking for is they were asking for something that wouldn't have fixed those problems anyway. And that was just rejected by a judge acknowledging there are some vulnerabilities that exist, but also not issuing a ruling that would have addressed them.

Some people have said that it was an intent to put on the record the fact that raised doubt about the security of the voting machines ahead of the election so that they could set the stage for a potential challenge after the fact.

TAPPER: Do we know if Mr. Trump or anyone on his campaign team or anyone affiliated with his political apparatus is involved in any of these efforts?

MURRAY: Well, look, a lot of these lawsuits are lawsuits that are being filed by the Republican National Committee. There are other lawsuits that are being filed by local Republican Parties. This voting lawsuit that Zach was just talking about was filed by the DeKalb County Republicans. And so, yes, there is definitely a stake from the Republican Party and, you know, by extension, Donald Trump's campaign in these lawsuits.

And we've seen the RNC come out and basically say, look, election integrity is what we are devoting the majority of our staff time and resources to, because we want to have people who are out there who are poll watching. We want to have people, attorneys, who are out there essentially monitoring the way the election is run.

And, of course, part of that is what we see in the normal course of elections to raise legitimate issues that might rise. But part of that is also collecting information. If you want to put something in a lawsuit to try to challenge the results or certain batches of ballots, if you're not happy with what happens.

TAPPER: Election integrity, very important. The Republican National Committee has been on the record now for years supporting these lies about the election. So I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take them when they say that they still have that crazy Sidney Powell tweet.

COHEN: Christina Bobb, who's been charged for her own election lies in her own rules in 2020, runs the election integrity unit at the RNC right now.

MURRAY: Right.

TAPPER: Oxymoron if I ever heard one. Zach Cohen, Sara Murray, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

[17:45:02]

The author of one of the biggest books of the last 30 years is revisiting it now in this current climate that often feels incredibly divided, he's going to join us to talk about it, Malcolm Gladwell, next.

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TAPPER: A quarter century after writing his first book, author Malcolm Gladwell is giving his theory of tipping points a fresh look. For those who haven't read the original, a fantastic book. A tipping point is the moment with a trend or an idea crosses a threshold, and tips, and not unlike epidemics, spreads rapidly. These could be everything from crime waves to fashion trends to ideas. Malcolm Gladwell's new book, out now, "Revenge of the Tipping Point," returns to the subject, but this time through a slightly darker lens. And Malcolm Gladwell joins us now. Malcolm, thanks so much for joining. What -- what pulled you back to the tipping point?

[17:50:01]

MALCOLM GLADWELL, AUTHOR, "REVENGE OF THE TIPPING POINT": Well, it had been my first book. I wrote it 25 years ago, so I thought on its silver anniversary, I would take a look back at what I had done. And of course, so much has happened in the intervening 20 years. We've learned so much more about how epidemics work. We had an actual real live epidemic on our hands. And also, I've changed. I have different things. I'm interested in ways of interpreting things. So I just thought it -- it would be kind of cool to go back and -- and do a -- a part two.

TAPPER: One of the issues you tackle in the new book is America's opioid crisis. And you examine not just the role of Purdue pharmaceutical, but how a small fraction of America's doctors helped drive this epidemic that -- that killed millions of people. Explain.

GLADWELL: Yes, so this is an idea. In my original book, I talked about the law of the few, which was this notion that it's very common in epidemics for the majority of the work in spreading and sustaining an epidemic to be done by a very small group of people. And that was sort of -- it's true, COVID, only a small fraction of the population of people who were infected with COVID actually spread the disease to others.

It was spectacularly true in the opioid crisis. What Purdue figures out is that they don't need to convince a majority of the doctors who prescribe painkillers to write prescriptions for OxyContin. They only need to persuade -- to persuade a couple thousand doctors in the entire country. And that there's a very small group who are very susceptible to marketing messages, easy to convince of the -- of the wonders of OxyContin, easily misled by sales staff. And if all they -- and all they did was focus on that very small group, and that was sufficient to start a national epidemic of painkillers. TAPPER: We are living through unprecedented times when it comes to politics. And yet you -- you void it. You steer clear of -- of politics in this book. I'm not objecting to that, but I just wonder why.

GLADWELL: Well, first of all, I'm Canadian. I -- I don't have a dog in this fight. I, you know, I don't need to weigh in on this. I feel there's enough. If you want books on politics, there are many, many choices out there, all written by people who know more than I do. No, but actually, and I feel strongly that I think we are over defined by our political ideology at the moment. And there are many more aspects of human experience that are worth taking a look at.

TAPPER: I love it, and believe me, I'm -- I'm -- I was happy to -- to not have to think about it. You struck a -- a hopeful note at the end of your first book, the "Tipping Point," you wrote, quote, the world might seem like an immovable, im -- implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push in the right place, it can be tipped, unquote. And that was meant as an optimistic way. I -- I -- I wonder if 25 years later you think that was overly optimistic.

GLADWELL: I think a little. I mean, I wrote that first book in the -- at the end of the 1990s, which in retrospect was this kind of magical period. I mean, crime was falling, social problems were disappearing, the -- the Iron Curtain fell. I mean, all these things that were happening it was -- I was in my mid-30s. I mean, I was at the most optimistic time of anyone's life. I think I'm a little more clear-eyed this time around. And a lot of this book is devoted to kind of alerting us to the ways in which epidemic rules and principles are used towards things that are not necessarily positive.

TAPPER: All right, well, the new book is fantastic, "Revenge of the Tipping Point." The author, Malcolm Gladwell, so good to have you. Thank you so much.

GLADWELL: Thanks so much, Jake.

[17:53:30]

TAPPER: It has been more than a week since Hurricane Helene made landfall, but we are still learning just how extensive the damage is. A brand new look at what's been left behind and what isn't. That's next.

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TAPPER: In our National Lead now, new before and after images showing Helene wiped parts of North Carolina clean off the map. CNN meteorologist Chad Myers joins us now. Chad, it's been more than a week since Helene made landfall in Florida, and we're still -- still learning just how extensive this damage is.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Correct. I -- I think 95 percent of America has no idea how bad this really is. And really, 99 percent of America has no idea why first responders can't even get places. Here's -- here's Chimney Rock. Here's the country fair. That right there, the red and white, that's the old carousel. There's the road. There's the river. Now you can't even find the parking lot.

There is no road. There's no way to get there. There is no there-there anymore. And these pictures are all striking, which was a house and a road. Now just the river has completely taken over. Here's the welcome center for Lake Lure and the new pickleball court, completely covered over in mud, mainly a complete loss there.

There's the old Rocky River crossing bridge. That's not even that old of a bridge. It's completely gone this over and over, Jake. These are the pictures we're seeing. What was just a calm stream called the Broad River, but still a calm river has taken over, wiped out bridges, wiped out homes and livelihoods and now -- now over 200 lives. This is what we've been seeing picture after picture.

Now that we're finally getting some aerials up there, getting an idea of bridges that don't exist. You can't get across that bridge, so people can't get out. People can't get in. Here's a little campground, beautiful little place along the river. Look how many places are gone. I just hope the people got out. We don't know that they got out. Here's a river bridge, should be completely fine. And it was, except right here across the mouth, right across the little entrance, it's now gone.

So this is a Lake Lure picture what was before. And now there are 17 acres of debris in the middle of that lake. Jake?

[18:00:04]

TAPPER: This is devastating. Chad Myers, thank you so much.

Vice President Kamala Harris is taking the stage now for a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan. Let's listen in.