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Today: Architect Of Fake Elector Plot Pleads Not Guilty; 187,000 Jobs Added In August; Unemployment Now 3.8 Percent; Pro- DeSantis Super PAC Asks Megadonors For $50M; Foreign Minister: Ukraine Is "Not Failing" At Counteroffensive. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 01, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:01:10]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Georgia on his mind and on your TVs. The judge in Fulton County says the former President Donald Trump's election subversion trial will be televised and today his co- defendants revealing more about their legal strategies moving forward. We're on it.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: And your move fed a new jobs report shows the demand for workers' rights now remains robust, so are rate hikes over? We're tracking how the markets are reacting and what it means for the broader economy.

Plus, shutdown showdown, Congress is on the clock to pass a bill funding critical programs from disaster relief to Ukraine military aid and now some Republicans say they'll only support it if certain controversial demands are met.

We'll be following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Any moment, a judge in Georgia could issue a key ruling on Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff. Meadows is trying to get his racketeering case moved from state to federal court, from Georgia to federal court. And if Meadows' case stays in state court, it will be televised.

The presiding judge in Fulton County saying all of Trump's and his 18 co-defendants' hearings and trials will be live streamed and they can be televised.

And in another major development in the Georgia case, today one of those co-defendants entered a not guilty plea, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the architect of the Trump campaign's fake elector plot. He's just told the judge today that he wants a solo trial.

Joining us now, we have CNN's Sara Murray.

So Sara, this new filing by Chesebro on wanting a solo trial, he says he doesn't want to be tried alongside former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, which is something that I think many legal experts would say is a good idea, tell us about this.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, he and Sidney Powell are the two who have asked the judge for a speedy trial. Ken Chesebro's trial is set for October of this year and he's now making clear in this motion he does not want to go to trial alongside Sidney Powell. His attorney basically says, look, Ken Chesebro has been accused of being the architect of this fake elector plot, something Chesebro denies. Sidney Powell is being accused of a variety of things, mainly involving voting machines and this election breach in Coffee County.

And they're saying this is like oil and water. These two schemes don't go together. They shouldn't go to trial alongside each other. That Chesebro didn't have any direct communication with Sidney Powell, and essentially he should be allowed to go forward on this alone. And Chesebro, of course, has entered a not-guilty plea as has Sidney Powell.

We now have 10 of the 19 defendants in this case who have filed not- guilty pleas, waived their arraignments. Just today, we got Ken Chesebro, Harrison Floyd, Scott Hall, Mike Roman and Bob Cheeley all entering their not-guilty pleas.

So there's a bit of housekeeping that has to happen, I think, before we hear from the judge in Fulton County about how this is going to all move forward.

KEILAR: How significant is it that all of the Fulton County proceedings will be live-streamed or televised?

MURRAY: Well, I think it'll be very interesting, depending on who actually goes to trial in state court. That's the question, right? Is this going to be a trial that involves people like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows or are we going to see some of these folks split off into federal court, where we're not going to have cameras.

Again, you could envision if this really does become a sprawling trial, where you're seeing this huge number of these co-defendants all in there together with someone like the former president, that could be very entertaining to watch.

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KEILAR: Yes, it could be entertaining and informative.

Sara Murray, thank you so much for that report. Alex?

MARQUARDT: A stronger-than-expected jobs report is out today. Despite that, the labor market does continue to cool, giving economists hope that the Fed will once again hold off on interest rate hikes. It shows that the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs last month. Here's President Joe Biden this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: More than 700,000 people joined the labor force last month, which means the highest share of working-age Americans are in the workforce now than at any time in the past 20 years. People are coming off the sidelines, getting back to their workplaces.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: But the unemployment rate actually increased by 0.3 percent last month.

CNN Business and Politics Correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich joins me now.

So Vanessa, what more do these numbers reveal?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: This report is a strong report. It is in line with what we've seen pre- pandemic, and it signals a continued cooling of the labor market. 187,000 jobs added in August, and June and July's numbers were actually revised down by over a hundred thousand jobs, so a softening in those months even greater than what we saw.

The unemployment rate, as you mentioned, though, ticking up from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent, and that is because of what you heard President Biden talk about there. You have more people coming off the sidelines. Labor force participation rate is up and that means that more people are in the labor market looking for jobs.

Now the industries that saw the biggest gains in terms of jobs added are construction, health care, leisure and hospitality. Those all saw tens of thousands of jobs added. And then some of the sectors that we saw job losses are the sectors that we've heard about in the news recently.

So you have trucking, a loss of 37,000 jobs, that's because one company here in the U.S., Yellow trucking, went under, laid off 30,000 people. You see that reflected in those numbers. And then if you've been following the actors' and the writers' strikes over the past couple weeks, you see those numbers reflected in motion picture and sound production. That's the ripple effect, 17,000 jobs lost there.

The Fed has a duty ahead of them to figure out whether or not this report is good enough to pause interest rates, Alex. We'll find out at the end of September when they have their meeting and see if they're going to take that pause or continue to raise rates to get inflation under control. Alex?

MARQUARDT: Yes, those numbers still being assessed.

Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you very much. Brianna?

KEILAR: When it comes to the federal government's internal economy, things are unsettled and a critical deadline is looming just ahead. The White House is pushing Congress to pass a short-term spending bill to avoid a shutdown while the key players hash out a long list of disagreements. The current funding for the government is set to expire at the end of this month.

CNN's Kayla Tausche is live for us at the White House. We have CNN's Melanie Zanona on Capitol Hill for us.

Kayla, what more is the White House saying about this?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, President Biden has called the possibility of a shutdown a serious, serious problem and said that he hopes that there's more maturity on Capitol Hill than to allow a shutdown to happen. But just this week, the White House threw its weight behind a short-term funding deal that congressional leaders have been saying for weeks is the best option to keep the government open through the fall and to avert a shutdown.

A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget telling CNN, it is clear that a short-term continuing resolution, a so-called CR, will be needed next month. The Biden administration is still pushing to secure more than $40 billion in supplemental funding. That includes an increased ask for $16 billion in disaster aid and $24 billion in Ukraine defense spending.

The White House this week also seeking assurances that certain programs for nutritional assistance for low-income households would not be interrupted by a shutdown or the potential for a shutdown.

But you may remember that just three months ago, President Biden and leaders in Congress struck a deal to set limits on government spending and to put together a framework that was supposed to provide a runway for negotiators to reach an agreement for full-year spending on a comprehensive basis.

So I asked the White House, what's happened in the last three months and what has the White House been doing to try to push for that deal. Here's what Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told me.

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KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: And we have had multiple conversations, multiple calls with congressional members on the Hill. But this does not take away their job and their duty to keep their word. We're - all we're doing is asking them to keep their word, right? We came to an agreement in a bipartisan way. They should keep their word. And they can avoid Congress - they, being Congress, can avoid a government shutdown.

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[15:10:06]

TAUSCHE: The Press Secretary said that the budget director, Shalanda Young, in the Office of Legislative Affairs which has had some turnover this summer, had been leading those conversations, which we expect will pick up in earnest when Congress returns in the coming weeks. Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes. Starting next week here, we are looking. Kayla, thank you so much.

All right. So, Mel, what are the sticking points for Republicans as we get back to work after August recess?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, conservatives are ratcheting up their demands in the funding fight, making for a very potentially messy September here. They're saying that they're not going to support a clean, continuing resolution. They said the Freedom Caucus took an official position and they want a short-term spending bill to include a House GOP border security package.

Meanwhile, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a conservative, but also a close Kevin McCarthy ally, who said she wants the House to vote on an impeachment inquiry and all COVID vaccine mandates and also defund parts of the DOJ before she would be willing to vote for a short-term spending patch.

And then there are a number of conservatives who say they don't want disaster aid to be linked to Ukraine aid. That is something that the White House has requested and that there's been early discussions about attaching that to a spending bill all that remains to be seen.

But we should point out here, Brianna, that Kevin McCarthy doesn't actually need the support of hardline conservatives to get something like that over the finish line because, presumably, it would have Democratic support. But the challenge for McCarthy is that he also doesn't want to enrage those very conservatives who could force a vote to oust him as speaker at any given moment.

So it's a very tricky balancing act for Kevin McCarthy. He's been working in recent weeks behind the scenes to try to convince them to back off. But we'll see if that's enough to convince them to do so, Bri.

KEILAR: Yes, it feels like that is what he is always doing, certainly. Mel and Kayla, thank you so much.

ZANONA: Evergreen, hold on to that one. All right, thank you guys so much. Alex?

MARQUARDT: After news of new health concerns for Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley calls the Senate the "most privileged nursing home in the United States." So how do voters feel?

Plus, Russia reeling from new Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Moscow. The impact that this technology is having on the war.

And later, the truth is out there and the Pentagon wants at least some of it online. The one stop shop just launched by the U.S. government for information on UFOs.

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[15:16:40] KEILAR: An urgent appeal to donors on the first day of - the only the day of the first Republican presidential debate. The leaders of the Super PAC backing Ron DeSantis made a huge ask.

According to the leaked audio obtained by CNN, the Super PAC heads told donors who were gathered in Milwaukee that they needed money and they needed it fast. They said, "We just need your help getting $50 million more by the end of the year and $100 million more by the end of March. I'm not worried about the second 50. We need the first 50."

Joining us now, Stef Kight, a political reporter for Axios and Republican strategist and former RNC comms director, Doug Heye, with us.

Okay. Money, is that the solution here you think, Doug, to getting DeSantis back some momentum?

DOUG HEYE, FORMER RNC COMMS DIRECTOR: It's part of the solution. You can't get there without it. A better debate performance forum would have been one of those things that would have helped maybe fuel some of that money. But this is a big ask at a time that donors are asking themselves a lot of questions.

There's also another issue here, this is the second time that we've seen audio of internal conversations that the DeSantis campaign has had that we've all then seen. The last time they referred to Donald - one of his senior aides in the PAC referred to Trump as the runaway nominee.

If your nominee is running away with it, that means you don't have much of a chance. They need to lock that down. Make sure these things don't leak as they're making big asks.

KEILAR: Well, who's the mole, right?

HEYE: That's what we don't know.

KEILAR: All right. Okay, so does DeSantis stuff have a lack of money problem or does he also have a lack of something else problem?

STEPH KITE, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: I think those two problems are combined a little bit here. Obviously, he started off, but there's a lot of momentum and energy and hope around his campaign for a lot of people who are looking for a serious challenger to Donald Trump. But we've seen it's just been a rough summer for DeSantis over and over and over again. And money is a big part of it.

Of course, his campaign's own fundraising numbers were less than stellar when we saw those filings earlier this year, and now we're seeing his Super PAC, which started with plenty of money to get them through this early part of the campaign is also now having to go to donors and ask for a significant sum.

And it's very indicative of the campaign realizing and DeSantis supporters realizing that this is a critical moment and something has to change as we get closer and closer to the Iowa caucuses. KEILAR: I will say one of the things that I've learned covering politics and I'm sure that you've learned being in politics is I never want to think that I know what voters are going to want or how someone is a candidate can learn, how something can turn out. Do you think, Stef, that DeSantis could turn this around with some adjustments?

KIGHT: I mean, he could. I feel like you have to give him an opportunity to do so. The Super PAC seems to be trying to convince people that they have a plan to get there. But you look at the polling numbers, you look at those polling averages and he has continued to decline while we've started to see other candidates who just a few months ago no one was considering very seriously, are now starting to gain some momentum, whether it's Vivek Ramaswamy or Nikki Haley.

So it's hard to see DeSantis not only catching up to Trump, but now having other candidates that he's trying to fight against as well.

KEILAR: Let's talk about Ramaswamy. He is pushing this peace proposal for the Ukraine war that would cede Ukrainian territory to Russia with the assurance Ukraine would not join NATO if Russia cuts off ties with China.

[15:20:06]

You have critics who are saying, look, this is radically pro-Putin. Do you think it will resonate with voters, though?

HEYE: Not necessarily. And the concern here for Vivek and his campaign isn't whether it's radically pro-Putin or not. I'd agree that it probably is. It's that it's radically unserious. And so for Vivek who's pushed for so long to get any attention that he could, if you have a podcast that four people listen to, he would do it. He would go anywhere and everywhere, just like Mayor Pete did in his campaign, but I think there was more substance there.

So what we've seen is as he strived for attention, he's now getting it. And with attention comes scrutiny and that's where, on issues like Ukraine or especially even Israel, he's getting a lot of pushback from within the party, not because he's right or wrong, that's a separate issue, but because he doesn't look serious.

KEILAR: Yes. He's having a hard time withstanding that scrutiny very much to your point. This week we saw Republican senator, Mitch McConnell, freeze up in a news conference. This was actually the second time in five weeks that this has happened. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley had a blistering, quite frankly, reaction to this. Let's listen in.

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NIKKI HALEY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I will say is right now the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country. I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things and he deserves credit, but you have to know when to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: Ouch. What do you think about that, sort of harsh words aside, does she have a point on the age or no?

KIGHT: I mean, you look at polls again and Americans are concerned about what they're seeing when they're seeing these instances of aging politicians tripping up. It's not just McConnell, of course. It's also Dianne Feinstein who has also been missing in action in the Senate, hurting Democrats' ability to get judicial nominees through and we're also looking at the potential for 2024 presidential election to have the two oldest candidates in history facing off against each other.

And that continues to be a point that Americans are concerned about. When you look at polling around Biden, Democrats tend to point to the age issue as a reason why they want to see someone else other than Biden as the nominee.

So this is going to continue to be an issue, and there's going to continue to be these conversations around the idea of age limits. But at this point in time, there's very little that can be done in a situation like McConnell's.

KEILAR: Where's the line, Doug, between, okay someone is old, but are they still doing the job or do they need small accommodations is a condition they have maybe getting in the way of the job, because these are all important questions that might separate different politicians.

HEYE: I think the reality is it depends on who you are and what your role is. We saw in the past where you had senators like Strom Thurmond or Thad Cochran, for example, who fundamentally towards the last year or even two or three years of their career could not do the job. Quite often, their chief of staff was sort of the shadow senator.

So what we'll see with McConnell or we'll look to see is like when we had the first incident, he came back a day early to demonstrate, I'm here, I'm vigorous, I'm on the job. That's why we saw the statement that came out saying this is how it operated with dehydration and so forth. And we'll see him presumably do the same thing, be busy this weekend and also when the Senate comes back.

And what we forget is regardless of Nikki Haley's comments, she sort of hints at this is a club. And ultimately, this decision is going to be made by Senate Republicans, not by Chuck Schumer or any Senate Democrat or not by anybody outside of the Senate. It will be Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who make any decision if one's made.

KEILAR: Yes. Very interesting point.

Doug Heye, Stef Kight, thank you so much to both of you.

HEYE: Thank you.

KIGHT: Thank you.

KEILAR: Alex? MARQUARDT: Moscow feeling the impact of Ukraine's use of drones to strike inside Russia. Ahead, CNN has visited a training facility to see how the drone technology is transforming that battlefield, often at the hands of some unlikely pilots.

Plus, a typhoon hammers Hong Kong with wind and rain in what could be the region's strongest storm in years.

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[15:28:44]

KEILAR: Ukraine's foreign minister is making clear his country's much- touted counteroffensive is not failing.

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DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: If Ukraine was failing, I would probably be the first one to speak the truth. But we are not failing. We are moving forward. We liberated thousands of square kilometers of our land through minefields with no air coverage.

How does it feel when you come back from your mission and you take back your phone, you open it, and you start reading all the smart people saying how slow you are and that you are not doing well enough? You just lost two of your buddies. You were almost killed. You crawled one kilometer on your belly, demining the field. You sacrificed yourself. You took the damn Russian trench in a fierce fight. And then you read someone saying, oh, guys, you are too slow.

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KEILAR: Now one of the tools that Ukraine is using more and more in its modern warfare against Russia is drones, including recent attacks on cities inside Russia.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour takes us inside the training to become a drone operator.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (voice over): Any support is welcome in Ukraine, especially if it appears blessed by Jesus, say these drone students set up in an abandoned church working on their simulators and convinced their cause is just.

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