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U.S. Jobs Continue Cooling; Trump's Next Hearing; Trump's Comments on Indictment; Ukraine Drone Targets Russian Ship; Putin May Consider Presidential Election. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 04, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:28]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Unemployment nears a record low. New jobs numbers just out, though they do show the labor market cooling a bit.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump has another court date on the calendar after pleading not guilty for the third time in four months. Is he going to use this trial to relitigate the 2020 election again?

And a Russian naval ship towed away, the results of what appears to be a strike from an unmanned sea drone overnight.

Sara is off. I'm Kate Bolduan, with John Berman. And this is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, these are the numbers hot off the presses, 187,000, 187k, thousand, jobs added in July. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5 percent. So, those are the numbers. What do they mean?

Standing with me here, oh so naturally, Richard Quest.

You can answer the question, what does that mean? How big of a deal is that?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: It's important because if you are talking about a soft landing, according to one economist this morning, that is what a soft landing looks like. Why? It is lower than expected, under 200,000. The revisions of the last two months, they are also lower, which suggests that employment growth is slowing.

BERMAN: Question for the professor, you're saying that's a good thing. This number came in below expectations, 187,000 instead of 200,000. The number of jobs out of the last two months revised downward, yet you were speaking as if people might be relieved by that.

QUEST: They should be relieved by it. Look, it's not a good scenario - I mean, the point is the Fed is pumping medicine into the economy to slow it down. That is evidence that it's slowing down.

Now, what you don't want is that to become a snowball going down and create an avalanche. You don't want to see an employment rising. You don't want to see job loss creation collapse.

What you want to see, which is what you are seeing in these numbers, is a gradual decline in the number of jobs being created, which proves -- look, I know it's perverse that we're actually saying fewer jobs creation is good news, but that is the goal of the Fed at the moment. They are aiming to slow the economy down to prevent a recession.

BERMAN: And if they can do that without creating a whole bunch of pain, that is what you're saying is a good thing. And that number right there, I know you don't -- that you don't like the jobs creation -- you know, you like the jobs added number more than this, but a 3.5 unemployment rate, 3.5 percent, that's low. That shows that a lot of people are working.

QUEST: I mean, I suspect, God help me, that one would prefer to see a slight uptick in unemployment because that would really show the economy is slowing down.

What you don't want to see is a dramatic increase because that would show that there's a recession.

This, will it recession, will it recession, won't it recession, will it recession, the jury is slowly coming to the view that it will be more of a soft landing. But it's not unanimous yet. There are still those, like Fitch earlier this week, that do see a recession in Q4.

BERMAN: And though this does show some resilience. With whatever the Fed is doing --

QUEST: Oh, absolutely.

BERMAN: Jobs are still being added.

QUEST: Absolutely. This is the difficulty of the Fed. That there is a - a natural robustness and resilience in the U.S. economy.

Let's take a look at these numbers. I find it quite interesting, actually. You see the way - well, I find them interesting. You see the way you go from 472, 248, 217, 217, 187. This is exactly what you want to see. This is exactly the idea of slowing down the economy, but not turning it into an avalanche of collapse.

BERMAN: And that's all positive. Those are all positive numbers, and it keeps on growing.

Richard Quest, great to see.

QUEST: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thank you very much.

BOLDUAN: A question for the professor from over on the hilltops.

QUEST: Yes. Yes, ma'am.

BOLDUAN: Thank you. Why does this - when - when is this - why is inflation still feel so

high when people - when we're going to the grocery store then? We're seeing this. It needs to - we need to -- this needs to start moving into the realm of inflation is getting back down to earth.

[09:05:03]

QUEST: Ah, a very good question. Do not mistake falling prices for a falling rate of inflation. Prices are still going up, they're just not going up as fast or as far. But you've already now -- look, you start from here, your prices rise to here, all that's happening is that they're not going up any -- as fast, but you've still lost - you've still gained, you know, or are paying a lot more. You'll start to see an easing of prices. You won't see them coming down.

BOLDUAN: OK. Whatever he says. That's what I always say when it comes to Richard Quest.

Thank you, gentlemen.

BERMAN: Thanks, Richard.

BOLDUAN: Let's go to the other headline that we're focusing on this morning. Right now attorneys for former President Donald Trump are preparing for the next steps to fight the federal criminal charges that he now faces in trying to overturn the 2020 election. A judge has scheduled the next hearing for August 28th. At that point a trial date is expected to be set.

This next court appearance is just five days after the first Republican presidential primary debate. That wild timing, the wild timing of all of this underscores the historic nature of this case.

Trump was just in court to plead not guilty yesterday. Today he's back on the campaign trail. He's taking his post-arraignment message to Republican voters in Alabama.

CNN's Evan Perez has more on this.

Back at it, Evan. Talk to me, what are the next steps for Donald Trump? What -- walk us through what's next.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, the judge who's overseeing this case, who's going to be overseeing this case, Judge Tanya Chutkan, has already set forth a very aggressive schedule. She has scheduled this hearing on August 28th. And has already told the two sides that she wants them to provide briefs in seven days laying out their plans for a trial.

And so, at that trial - at that hearing on August 28th she is going to set a trial date. And, of course, you know, we know that it may not be final, but she, obviously, is planning to move this case along.

This is absolutely a completely different picture from the one we saw in the southern district of Florida, which, let's just say, has been a lot friendlier to the former president and his effort to try to keep these cases from going to trial before the 2024 election. In that case, you know, the judges there allowed Walt Nauta, one of the former president's co-defendants, to stretch out arraignment over a month. A month it took for him to be arraigned.

So, this -- these judges are not feeling that. They are seeing -- they are definitely trying to make sure that this case goes to trial before the 2024 election.

And, of course, the former president's legal team already began pushing back in court yesterday. They pointed out the voluminous amount of discovery that they have yet to get, that this is a complicated case, that there is weighty matters, obviously, of constitutional importance that are going to be dealt with in this case. So, they may yet get their wish. We'll see.

But you can tell already that they are planning to make this about the 2020 election. They're going to really relitigate some of this. You heard this from some of his legal team.

Listen to Alina Habba talking about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALINA HABBA, TRUMP ATTORNEY: The fact that I am standing here for the third time in five months is not a coincidence. This is the Biden political law fare that we have seen time and time again. It is a deflection from everything that they have done.

This is election interference at its finest against the leading candidate right now for president. For either party. President Trump is under siege in a way that we have never seen before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And, of course, the legal siege is really of his own making. You can see that in the court documents. And so we'll see how quickly we can get to this trial.

Kate. John.

BOLDUAN: Evan, thank you.

All right, next step.

BERMAN: Next step is Donald Trump goes to Alabama tonight.

BOLDUAN: Oh, right, that's step two.

BERMAN: He's going to hold a political rally tonight. One question is, what kind of mood will he be in? Sources tell CNN that Trump was irked and, quote, this is a quote, "pissed off" after his arraignment, in part because the judge referred to him simply as Mr. Trump.

CNN's Alayna Treene is near Trump's golf course, which, of course, is in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Alayna, what are you hearing?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, good morning, John.

Yes, Donald Trump is very frustrated. He's been concerned all week, ever since knowing that this indictment was coming. And then, of course, learning of the charges being filed on Tuesday.

He's grown increasingly angry with each indictment that has come down the pike already. And he's really frustrated that he's having to deal with this.

I'm also told he's worried and angered that a lot of the money that both his campaign, but also mainly his outside political PAC, Save America, has been raising is being forced to be diverted to his legal team.

[09:10:13]

And that's something that he even talked about on Truth Social this morning. I have it right here. He says, "crazy, my political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits including DA, AG and others, which require massive amounts of my time and money to adjudicate. Resources that would have gone into ads and rallies will now have to be spent fighting these radical left thugs in numerous courts throughout the country." He also said later in that post that he wants the Supreme Court to get involved in this.

So, this kind of gives you some insight into what he's thinking about the morning that he's waking up following his arraignment yesterday, John.

And the other thing as well is, he was very angry as well leaving that court appearance. He was definitely pissed off. And he was also kind of raging on the plane, I was told, as he was watching the news coverage of this come in. And so even though publicly he still wants to sound defiant, you'll hear him try to use that kind of rhetoric tonight. Privately, he is very angry about this, John.

BERMAN: Turns out three indictments can get you down.

Alayna Treene, in New Jersey, thank you very much for that.

BOLDUAN: Joining us now for more on this, CNN political commentator and political anchor for Spectrum News, Errol Louis. He's also the host of the "You Decide" podcast. And former assistant special Watergate prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney, Nick Ackerman.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

So, we've got now a court date. We've got now a schedule of some sort. And we also now have Donald Trump and his legal team as we heard from what Evan Perez was playing a little bit of, hear that they are going to make this not about - not just about 2024, this is about election interference, they say, for '24, but also the reporting is that they're going to make it about the election in the past as well. Errol, what is that going to mean?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, what it means is that they are going to try and relitigate every piece of it. In fact, I think those are the exact words that one of Trump's attorneys used. What that in turn means is that they're going to have to try and prove something that did not happen and they're going to try and convince as much of their base as possible that that's what the next election is supposed to be about.

BERMAN: Can I ask quickly, what do you think -- how wise do you think that is politically? Forget as a legal strategy, but with an election going on, if all he's talking about is 2020 -

LOUIS: Yes.

BERMAN: How does that help him or hurt him in 2024?

LOUIS: I mean it doesn't help him at all. I mean elections are always about the future. People don't care about what you think happened two or three years ago, what they care about is what's going to happen at their family tomorrow and their chances at improving the lives and the lives of their kids and their communities. And so to the extent that Donald Trump wants to make this all about relitigating an election that he lost, you know, good luck. That will help him with the base for sure. It will help him probably win the nomination. It will be catastrophically bad when the general election comes around.

BERMAN: So, Nick, Dr. Louis says it's bad politically. How about inside a courtroom as a legal strategy?

NICK AKERMAN, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: As a legal strategy it's a nonstarter. The proof that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election is just overwhelming. And the evidence here is not from some wild left-wing radicals, it's from people who were close to Donald Trump, worked in the White House, including, most importantly, his vice president, Pence, who is going to be a star witness in this case. His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is likely to be a witness in this case. His legal counsel, in-house counsel at the White House, are going to be chief witnesses at this case. All of the witnesses here are going to be Republicans who worked for Donald Trump or were connected with Donald Trump. So, this kind of strategy is going to get him zero points in the courtroom.

BOLDUAN: This is how "The Washington Post" put it, as John pointed out this morning and highlighted this bit from "The Washington Post," "Trump has said that he wanted to subpoena people about the 2020 election and argue that he won, as prosecutors allege that he knew he lost and that his claims were false, according to people close to the former president who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations."

If that's what they try in court, Nick, how - what is -- what can the judge -- what can the judge do about this? How much can she step in? How much can she control? How much - where -- what can the judge do about it? AKERMAN: Well, I think it depends on who the witness is and what

they're going to say. If they're going to get up there and just speculate without any firsthand knowledge, which I don't see how he can ever get a witness to testify that he actually won with firsthand knowledge, that will be inadmissible evidence. You just can't put somebody up on a witness stand to regurgitate all of these conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has been perpetrating out to the public. It just doesn't work in a court of law. You've got to have a witness with real knowledge.

[09:15:03}

BERMAN: So, when we're talking about the Trump legal strategy, one of his attorney, John Lauro, who's been on TV quite a bit, he was on Fox overnight and he had this to say about what Trump was asking of Mike Pence.

Let's play some of that sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN LAURO, TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: Ultimately, what President Trump said is, let's go with option d. Let's just halt, let's just pause the voting and allow the state legislatures to take one last look and make a determination as to the - as to whether or not the elections were handled fairly. That's constitutional law. That's not an issue of criminal activity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So did -- a lot of people look at this, Errol, and say, Trump's lawyer just said that Trump ordered the code red, right? I mean that - that - that's - that's Trump's lawyer saying, yes, he asked Mike Pence to pause the whole election. Well, the indictment says he asked Mike Pence to pause the election, and he couldn't do that.

LOUIS: Right, and that it constitutes obstruction and a conspiracy to obstruct a government process.

BERMAN: Yes.

LOUIS: And that's what the whole case is about. So, yes, he basically acknowledged that what is in the indictment, factually speaking, is true. He's suggesting that it's OK, or that he's got a constitutional argument that he's going to make that somehow it was within the scope of the president's powers. That is a very risky strategy. But, frankly, at least it lines up with the facts. It's not like this kind of speculative notion that they somehow won the election. At least now we're getting closer to the truth, which, of course, is what a trial is supposed to generate.

BOLDUAN: I mean I guess so. But, Nick, when you - when you listen to what Mike Pence also said on Fox just this week from the campaign trail, he said, let's be clear, it wasn't that they asked for a pause, the president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes. So -

AKERMAN: So, that's a crime. I mean there's no question about it. I mean Mike Pence is going to be a significant witness in this case, if not the star witness, because everything that was done with these fake electors, setting up alternate votes, was all done on the assumption that Donald Trump could get Mike Pence to either throw out the real electors that voted for Joe Biden or that Mike Pence would send this back to the states where then they would try and get the state legislators to throw out the votes for Joe Biden. Either way it's a crime.

BOLDUAN: August 28th. Stand by. Stand by.

Nick Ackerman, Errol Louis, thanks, guys.

BERMAN: All right, new video just into CNN that appears to show a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian war ship. Is Vladimir Putin trying to drag out the war in Ukraine hoping Donald Trump will win the election here? We have new CNN reporting.

And walking through one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Parents and lawmakers at Parkland today as ballistic experts prepare to reenact the shooter's movements.

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[09:22:13]

BOLDUAN: Ukraine says one of its - one of their sea drones has hit a Russian naval ship in the Black Sea. Now, CNN has obtained this video we're showing you right here. It appears to show the unmanned drone approaching the ship. It plays out over the course of about 30 seconds before the drone, armed with explosives, reportedly hits the ship. About 100 Russian service members were reportedly on board. However, Russia's take on all of this is essentially nothing to see here. They say the attack was repelled. But another video does appear to show a ship listing to the side and then being towed back to port.

CNN is unable, though, to conclusively verify the ship's identity.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has more from Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: As yet another sign of the vulnerability of parts of Russia's military establishment that must have considered themselves frankly impregnable. Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port, where images show a Ukrainian, it seems, over water drone approaching the Olenegorsk Gornyak boat where Ukraine says potentially 100 Russian personnel were at the time of an explosion caused by just short of half a metric ton of TNT. Just a massive force of a blast.

Now, clearly, a military target hit there. A sign by Ukraine that they can hit parts of Russia that were thought far out of their reach. This possibly hundreds of miles traveled by a Ukrainian drone. And also, too, indication that perhaps an oil storage facility at Feldicia (ph), kind of on the other side of that gulf, may have been hit as well. Ukrainian officials simply suggesting that that target was indeed inevitable at some point. But exactly what, I think, Vladimir Putin does not want to see right now, after a similar underwater drone attack on the Kerch Bridge recently, the key infrastructure connecting Russia's mainland to the Crimean peninsula that they annexed in 2014 after attacks on Moscow, the drone attacks on the Kremlin, exactly a sign of Russia's increasing vulnerability inside its motherland during this war dragging on.

The counteroffensive in the south raging, certainly, but these attacks showing that the war is going far from to plan for Russia.

Back to you.

BOLDUAN: Nick Paton Walsh, in Ukraine, thank you.

John.

BERMAN: So, new this morning, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie went to Ukraine. He met with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also visited Bucha with the mayor there. You can see pictures of that right there.

Christie has supported the U.S. defense of Ukraine. His trip comes on the heels of a new CNN report indicating that top U.S. and European officials are concerned about how Russian President Vladimir Putin is factoring in the 2024 U.S. presidential election into his war planning.

[09:25:12]

They believe Putin is counting on Donald Trump to win. And if not Donald Trump, another Republican. And he believes that would mean the U.S. would cut support for Ukraine.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is in Washington with the latest on this.

It's interesting that they are beginning to hear rumblings of Vladimir Putin being keenly interested in a U.S. election, Kylie, one might say again.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean we know President Putin watches U.S. elections incredibly closely. And U.S. officials are concerned that he's potentially watching them even more closely this go round. Potentially factoring the 2024 presidential elections into his approach to the Ukraine war, as you said, you know, banking on the possibility that if President Biden loses and a Republican takes over office, particularly President Trump, that U.S. support for Ukraine would be lessened. And, of course, that would benefit Putin.

Now, there isn't actually an intelligence assessment on President Putin's mindset here. But U.S. officials just believe that this is highly likely. European officials also believe it is highly likely. And one source for this story told our colleague Natasha Bertrand, "Putin knows Trump will help him and so do the Ukrainians and our European partners." So that's why everyone is thinking about this.

I was also told by another U.S. official that there's no doubt that Putin is trying to hold off through those 2024 elections. And, of course, there are questions about his capability to do that in terms of resources. But the concern here is that as he looks at this potential light at the end of the tunnel, that diminishes any possibility, any slight possibility of a near term resolution to this conflict before 15 months from now.

BERMAN: So, if the Ukrainians are looking at all of this also, Kylie, saying, hey, Putin is waiting for the possibility of a Trump win, how does that impact their thinking, particularly as they are involved in this counter offensive?

ATWOOD: Yes, well, it puts even more pressure on this counteroffensive right now. They know that Putin is watching. They believe Putin is watching the 2024 presidential election. They think that what they need to do in this counteroffensive is to win, or at least to do something to change the trajectory of the war before the end of this year so that Putin essentially can't last until through 2024. And you talk to U.S. officials, they are also saying that if Putin is eyeing the 2024 elections, it's even more important to continue long-term support for Ukraine.

John.

BERMAN: Kylie Atwood, very interesting reporting. Thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, someone who has become central in the case being built against Donald Trump, Mike Pence. Pence's former chief of staff joins us.

And a closer look at Trump's inter circle. What we know about the new team of legal and political advisers that he has as he heads into very unchartered territory, both legally and politically. We'll be back.

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