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Tonight: Biden & Trump Square Off In Historic CNN Debate; Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D) Illinois Discusses About The Expected Debate Performance Of President Biden. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 27, 2024 - 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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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It's the final countdown. I'm Boris Sanchez with Brianna Keilar at the site of tonight's historic CNN presidential debate in Atlanta.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And any minute, President Biden is expected to arrive here in Georgia where in fewer than six hours, he will square off with former President Trump. Both campaigns have been pushing out their talking points and also the Supreme Court just gave them a big one, releasing a ruling on abortion this morning. It's an issue the White House wants front and center and we are learning they're planning to do just that tonight.

SANCHEZ: Let's get the latest from CNN Senior White House Correspondent MJ Lee. She's here at the CNN debate site. MJ, what are you hearing?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are a couple of things that we expect President Biden to try to really drive away at tonight on that debate stage. One is, of course, that former President Donald Trump supports extremist policies. We've been talking about that a lot.

The other one is this idea that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. That should come as no surprise to anyone that has paid any attention to President Biden and his campaign recently. The idea that Trump is an existential threat to the country and its democratic institutions is one of the reasons, one of the core reasons that President Biden says that he ran back in '20 and it has been so central to his re-election message as well.

And sources have said that the president is expected to point back to the January 6th insurrection as having been this seismic and watershed moment for the country and that Donald Trump is really the embodiment of that threat to the country. Now, it was interesting earlier today, the campaign released a short video on social media that strings together words from different people that have worked previously for Donald Trump, basically describing him as being unfit for the presidency. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We worked with him. We knew him. This man is unfit to be president. A second term would be more dangerous than a first.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, they're fully prepared to take advantage of him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: The message, obviously, there is basically don't take it from me, take it from the people who have worked for Donald Trump, who saw all of these things firsthand. I thought the reference from John Bolton, of course, he was former President Trump's National Security Advisor. The references to Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un was really interesting because we have reported that there's a good chance that President Biden could reference the recent comments from Donald Trump that he would be a dictator on day one.

It's just a good reminder that the Biden campaign would very much like to focus as much as they can on domestic issues, but on foreign policy too. They see a real opportunity to draw one of the sharpest and starkest contrasts between the president and the former president tonight.

KEILAR: Yes, what is America's place in the world? These are two men with very different ideas of that. MJ Lee, thank you for that.

Let's go now to CNN's Kristen Holmes, who is live from the CNN spin room.

All right. Kristen, former President Trump is expected to arrive here in Atlanta in a couple hours. What's he doing in the lead up to the debate?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of what he's doing right now, Brianna, is attacking Joe Biden on social media. He's been spending time at his Mar-a-Lago resort where he's been for the last several days. He's surrounded by some of his top advisers, Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, his campaign managers.

And he's watching a lot of the pre-debate coverage. One of the things that we have been told by senior advisers is that they are closely monitoring what is coming out of Camp David. They have been watching that reporting on what Biden tends to focus on or is being instructed to focus on, what he wants his messaging to be, so that they are prepared to counterattack.

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You heard MJ there talking about both democracy and abortion. This is something that Donald Trump has focused on with his team, how to respond to questions on democracy, on January 6th, on his role in January 6th and also what he has said about pardoning those who were involved in the insurrection on January 6th. On abortion, they have gone over answers with him extensively on what he should say, how he should turn back to the fact that this is now in the hands of the states, how to answer rebuttals to that.

But when it comes down to what they want him to focus on, it is neither of those issues. It is instead the economy and inflation in particular, immigration as well as crime. They want him to continue to hone in on that messaging.

Now, when it comes to those personal attacks, we've already started seeing from the former president, allies have encouraged him to stay away from the kind of nasty personal information, the attacks on Biden and his family. However, when you talk to those closest to Donald Trump, they acknowledge that it's unlikely or it's up in the air as to whether or not he can actually stay away from that.

The campaign itself, while they have said they want Donald Trump to focus on the messaging, did put out this ad today. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket, and regularly gets lost makes it four more years in the White House?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: The ad then went on to talk about how Kamala Harris would be the president of the United States then. These are attacks that we have heard from Donald Trump time and time again in various rallies and are likely or possible to come from him tonight. But again, as I've continued to say, when I talk to those donors, when I talk to those allies, when I talk to the people who are still talking to him regularly over the last several days, they say they are encouraging him to not attack Biden, to not interrupt him constantly, and to stay on message.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes, live from the spin room. President - former President Trump is expected to arrive in Atlanta in a few hours, but you're looking at images of President Biden's arrival at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta. This is fresh off several days of intense prep at Camp David. President Biden now on the ground in Metro Atlanta.

We want to discuss debate prep and more with Illinois governor, J. B. Pritzker. He's a member of the Biden Campaign National Advisory Board.

Governor, it's great to be with you, and as we look at these live images of Air Force One, let's talk about expectations, because there's a new poll from The New York Times and it found more than half of voters polled expect President Biden is going to perform poorly tonight. Why do you think expectations are so low for the president's performance?

GOV. J. B. PRITZKER (D-IL): Well, look, let's be clear. Donald Trump's been out there actively attacking for days and days, weeks, in fact, and I think people expect him to come in on the attack. I think that he also, you know, frankly, is, you know, in contrast to President Biden, Donald Trump has been, you know, showing himself out as if he is going to win the debate.

So, you know, President Biden isn't a braggart. He's somebody who's, you know, who's genuinely humble and who cares about people, and you can feel his empathy when you talk to him, when you listen to him. And I think that people just think a debate is sort of an attack session, and so they don't expect the guy, the nice guy, the good guy, to win a debate.

SANCHEZ: Governor, when it comes to those attacks that you alluded to on the president's age and fitness, how crucial do you think it is for President Biden to have a Ronald Reagan-type moment tonight where in a single memorable instance he's able to sort of dispel those concerns?

PRITZKER: I don't think that you're going to see that on either side where people's concerns will be dispelled by one line. I do think that over the course of the debate, what you're going to see is a real contrast between these two candidates. Again, on the one hand, let's talk about character. That's one of the major issues of this campaign. And you're going to be able to see, I think, the difference between a guy who wakes up every day thinking about how he can make people's lives better. He's spent years and years making people's lives better, and that's President Biden.

On the other hand, Donald Trump, who wakes up thinking about how he's going to make bail. This is a guy who's been convicted 34 times of felonies. He's an adjudicated rapist. He's a congenital liar and I think that's a real contrast we're going to see. Another one, of course, is going to be their positions on individual freedoms, like a woman's right to choose.

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Abortion is going to be a big issue in this campaign. Donald Trump, of course, wants to ban abortion for women, and it's Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that are attempting to preserve women's rights. So those are two major issues.

And finally, affordability. I think you're going to hear a lot about that today. The important thing to note is that Donald Trump is proposing major tariffs that will cause huge price increases and inflation on average Americans, and he wants to give away trillions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans, which will end up costing middle- class Americans dearly.

SANCHEZ: Governor, the way that you just spoke about former President Trump and specifically calling him a convict, how much do you think it'll benefit President Biden to use some of those lines and to describe Trump in that way tonight in a very direct and even aggressive manner?

PRITZKER: Well, maybe Joe Biden's a nicer guy than I am, and you might hear those things. I know that at least once I've heard Joe Biden refer to Donald Trump as a convicted felon, which he is. But I think that Joe Biden is going to try to get out his positions on the issues and how he's going to make people's lives better over the next four years as he has over the last. SANCHEZ: And of the issues that you mentioned, I do want to talk about immigration, because as we await the president deplaning off of Air Force One that just arrived in metro Atlanta, there's no doubt that President Biden will have to defend his record. He's likely to point to that bipartisan border bill that stalled in Congress or the recent executive orders.

I'm wondering how you think the president should respond to claims from Trump that those actions came too late in the fourth year of his administration after we saw record numbers of illegal crossings.

PRITZKER: Look, what we need is comprehensive immigration reform, and that was proposed during both of their terms. Donald Trump rejected that outright. It was Joe Biden that came into office and on day one wanted to have that happen. If we had comprehensive immigration reform, we wouldn't have the problems that we're seeing now.

Now, I think Joe Biden has dealt with this finally in exactly the right way. He proposed a bipartisan solution. And by the way, Republicans came to the table to work with Joe Biden, as has happened so many times during his term. And it was the Republicans listening to Donald Trump telling them, walk away, we can make this an issue in this campaign. We don't care about the negative impact on the American people. Let's just have an issue for 2024 and so the Republicans walked away.

So this is the kind of person that Donald Trump is. This is the kind of policy that he would pursue. Anything that's good for him, whether it's bad for the American public or not, that's what Donald Trump is going to pursue.

SANCHEZ: Again, we're monitoring live images from Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta. President Biden expected to walk out of Air Force One at any moment.

Governor, we talked about your thoughts on President Biden going after Donald Trump for questions of character. How should President Biden respond if Donald Trump goes after him for some of the issues that his son Hunter has had and some of the allegations also that we've heard from House Republicans now for years over alleged criminal behavior in his business dealings?

PRITZKER: Look, when Donald Trump is spewing lies in a debate, it's very hard to counter the lies and get your own message out. I've had that experience myself in my reelection where your opponent is lying while you're trying to get your message out. I can say that Joe Biden should stick to policy. I think that's what the American people wants to - want to hear rather than try to reply to the lies that are being put forward.

It's disconcerting, frankly, I think, as a voter to see somebody who wants to be president who's just consistently not telling the truth. A congenital liar is someone - and a narcissist, by the way, is someone who just can't bring themselves to talk about other people and what's best for them and rather just wants to be on the attack. So I think Joe Biden should try to ignore all of that and focus on the fact that he has made life better for so many Americans. We've passed numerous bipartisan bills that have resulted in the rebuilding of roads and bridges and airports and broadband all over the United States that were bringing factories, manufacturing, back to the United States. That didn't happen under Donald Trump.

People are getting good-paying jobs in those businesses because Joe Biden is the one who worked across the aisle to get those things done.

SANCHEZ: Gov. J. B. Pritzker, thank you so much for the perspective as we watch President Biden get off of Air Force One and get into that fancy Cadillac he's got, the Beast.

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He's set to head over to CNN Studios in a few hours and soon after that, former President Donald Trump will arrive. And at 9 PM tonight, we will have history on our hands. A former president going head-to- head with a sitting president in a live debate. We're just hours from what could be a watershed moment in the race for president and American history. Stay with CNN.

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SANCHEZ: We've got breaking news just into CNN. President Biden has arrived in Georgia just ahead of tonight's historic CNN debate. The President appeared as though he was going to walk into the Beast and drive away, but he decided to stop and talk to a crowd of folks.

KEILAR: Yes, that's right, people who are welcoming him. He is saying hello there in Marietta, Georgia, not far from Atlanta where we are. He's at Dobbins Air Reserve Base and we are expecting former President Trump in the area here in a few hours as well.

SANCHEZ: We are going to keep an eye on this image and see whether President Biden approaches the cameras, which are just a few feet away, if he has any remarks before this historic evening in which he is set to make history by taking on a former president.

We have our panel back with us now to discuss.

And Brad, I'm wondering from your perspective what it is that either of these candidates needs to do tonight to mark their moment in the campaign and to shift the direction of this thing. As we were talking about before, it's sort of, you know, the stalemate within the margin of error for a while. What do they need to do to differentiate themselves?

BRAD TODD, GOP STRATEGIST: I think the key for this race is looking forward. Both these candidates have a lot to defend in the past, but the trick for them is to get out of that paradigm and talk about what's next. Voters, especially confused voters, or voters who are conflicted voters, I guess is the better term for it, almost always vote on what's in the windshield, not what's in the rearview mirror. I think that's the challenge, and the candidate that does the best job of that tonight is probably going to win the debate.

KEILAR: Is that what you think, Jamal?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I think being focused on the future is incredibly important. I'm just looking at images of the President, Stacey Abrams, the mayor of Atlanta, who's the tall guy standing there, there's Keisha Lance Bottoms. She was Jason Carter, who was President Carter's grandson who ran for governor here in the state of Georgia. So it's kind of the Atlanta, Georgia all-stars.

KEILAR: Yes.

SIMMONS: Michael Thurmond is former labor commissioner in the state. Atlanta, Georgia all-stars here greeting the President as he arrives.

So I think that's going to get the president in a good mood as he's headed into this debate. He knows that he's got support. Obviously, former President Trump is trying to make the argument. He's appealing to African Americans. Just with these images, we're seeing President Biden sort of showing the world, showing America, that he still does have support of many of at least the institutional and elected leaders.

We saw Andy Young, former ambassador, former mayor Andy Young here, too. We know that he has still got some support here in at least the Atlanta community among African-Americans.

TODD: Jamal, yesterday, The New York Times poll says that president - former President Trump's getting 30 percent of the African American vote.

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Now, that's a historic high for a Republican. I don't know that it can possibly stay that high.

KEILAR: Yes.

TODD: But the fact that we're this deep in an election year with a Republican poll with 30 percent of the African American vote tells you why Joe Biden is in such a box.

SANCHEZ: It is surprising, Jamal, that the numbers have been that high for former President Donald Trump. And just recently, I believe it was ...

SIMMONS: You believe those numbers - I mean, you believe - do you believe those numbers, I'm sorry, Boris (INAUDIBLE) ...

SANCHEZ: No, no.

TODD: Poll after poll after poll shows him above 20. And again, I don't - I think in the end it will regress back toward a more historic number. But if former President Trump were to get 13 percent, 15 percent, you're still talking about a Republican landslide. It's - Democrats count on at least 90 percent of the African American vote and they're not on pace to get it right now.

SIMMONS: What we are seeing also is we're seeing the President - President Biden getting a much larger number among people over the age of 60. And we know that those folks are also more likely to be voters in the general population. So we may see some differences happen in terms of the coalitions that are made in this particular election.

But if Donald Trump gets 20 - over 20 percent of the African American vote, I think I'm going to go ahead and give you a big steak dinner.

SANCHEZ: Notably, if you dig into those numbers, Gloria, and it seem - you seemed apprehensive to trust them a moment ago ...

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

SANCHEZ: But if you dig into those numbers, there is a line where age, especially younger African American voters, are not as enthusiastic about President Biden. Some of that may have to do with what's happening overseas and some of the pro-Palestinian protests that we've seen on college campuses and a vision for the region that doesn't exactly coincide with President Biden's.

BORGER: Well, and neither are younger white voters. I mean, as enthusiastic for Joe Biden as they were in 2020, by the way, some of that probably has to do with Gaza and what's going on there. But I also think age is an issue, even though Donald Trump isn't that much younger than Joe Biden. Joe Biden presents as somebody who's older.

And I think that when - as Jamal pointed out, older voters like Joe Biden more and his numbers among older voters are increasing. Maybe they're insulted that people think older voters - older people can't handle the job. But those numbers are going up.

And also the notion, if you read comments from older voters, they're offended by the way Donald Trump behaves more. And I think that character issue is something that carries weight with people of a certain generation who are not used to presidents behaving the way Donald Trump behaves.

MOLLY BALL, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I think that's the key, is that they have a memory of a time when presidents didn't behave that way.

BORGER: Right.

BALL: Right? And having just spent time with some college students and talking to, trying to get a sense of the youth vote, it's a similar thing, right? Where you see these numbers where Trump is winning or almost winning the youth vote. In the first few polls, people go, well, that can't be right there's something wrong with this poll.

But after it shows up in 20, 30, a hundred polls, you have to say, okay, something is happening here. And even if those voters are inclined to vote for the liberal candidate and are maybe going to come home, it tells you that at least that they're not committed. They're not firmly committed and they're definitely not committed to turning out.

And I think what I learned spending time with these younger voters is college students today were in middle school when Trump was elected. And they were in high school during 2020, the protests, the COVID shutdowns. They have no memory of a politics that wasn't like this. And a lot of them remember the Trump presidency as a better time in their lives. And they do not remember these, quote unquote, "norms" that we love to talk about that Trump violating. They didn't experience those.

And so I think that is, the Biden campaign certainly feels like it's incumbent on them to try to paint a picture and remind people what it was like when Trump was president and before Trump was president because so many people don't remember that.

BORGER: There's no commitment, you know what I'm saying? The older voters generally have a history of commitment to either one party or the way candidates should behave. Younger voters, as you were just pointing out, have no frame of reference. And so the commitment tends to be less. And so what these candidates have to do tonight is to get some of these voters to commit.

KEILAR: I wonder if they have a frame of reference on the economy compared to their parents.

BORGER: Yes.

KEILAR: And I'm very curious, Molly, as you talk to younger voters about that, how they're experiencing the economy. And then, I mean, outside of colleges, they get a little older and they're trying to enter into the housing market, maybe, you know, several years later. That's very difficult right now - very difficult. Rents are higher, even though there are some very good economic trends that we're seeing. Just the way things are feeling, the cost of things feels very heavy, I think, to young people, especially as they're starting out in their initial, you know, salaries or whatever they're making per hour.

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Did they say anything about that? And I wonder how you think that might inform what we're going to hear from these candidates tonight.

BALL: Yes, you know, I think, you know, you're talking about Gaza and we've certainly seen an outpouring of activism on that issue, but that's a very narrow slice of the electorate. And to your point, young voters care about the things that everybody cares about. They care about the cost of living and they're hit particularly hard because they are trying to start their lives, you know? Something like housing, which I know the White House has tried to focus on, but can't really do anything about, particularly because when you're talking about trying to bring down inflation, the cure adds to the disease, right? Raising interest rates to bring inflation down makes housing that much more expensive.

BORGER: Trying to bring rents down, yes. BALL: Makes it that much harder for people to get that first mortgage. So a lot of young people are feeling stuck and have only ever seen these prices go up.

TODD: You're going to hear that tonight. President Trump's going to talk about the fact that four years ago, the entry point to buy a house, you had to make about $68,000 as a couple. Now it's $100,000. Rents up 21 percent since Joe Biden was president. Interest rates are twice what they were. That's what you're going to hear tonight.

I think you're going to see President Trump - former President Trump be pretty focused on that. That economic argument is his pathway to getting younger voters.

BALL: Now, on the flip side of that and I ...

SIMMONS: But again, what we're starting to see is we're starting to see that the trends are turning in the other direction. So now we're seeing wages are outpacing inflation. Again, how people feel about it is a different thing, but the numbers are starting to turn in a different direction.

To pick up on what Gloria was saying a second ago about information, older voters, one of the reasons I think they're attaching to President Biden is because they're getting their news from more traditional sources and they're getting like a breadth of news that's happening.

Younger voters are getting a lot of their news from social media. This is one of the things when I was at the White House, we saw this very clearly, which is one of the reasons you see the President and then the Vice President starting to spend more time with TikTok creators and Instagram creators because that's how people are getting their information.

So the kind of general news story might not be showing up in the news feed because of the algorithms, but the fees that are coming from some of these celebrities are showing up for young people. So this gets to the Obama - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the Biden point about this debate tonight. They've got to find a way to get people to focus on Donald Trump, not just in the snippets of things they may be getting online, but in a bigger, broader, more holistic way that reminds them of how bad Donald Trump might have been in the past.

BORGER: And you can't just say things are getting better when, although they are, when people don't feel it. That's just, it's just the truth of the matter. And so Joe Biden can say, yes, things are getting better if you look at the statistics, but people don't feel it. It doesn't matter.

TODD: The smartest thing Joe Biden could do tonight would be to say, look, we misjudged. I thought inflation was transitory. I thought we need to stimulate the economy. Maybe we didn't quite get it right. That's the way he gets out of the rut of being judged on the present and maybe gets to the future. I don't know if his pride will let him do it. SIMMONS: Well, maybe he did get it right because jobs have also grown. You've seen 16 million jobs that have happened. Imagine if you had high inflation and you had no jobs or imagine ...

TODD: Seventy percent of people disagree with him on that. He has to start where they are.

SIMMONS: Well, they - but people disagree with that. And again, how you feel about it is certainly an important measure. But I think if you're talking about governing an economy, what you want to see is what the economy that we have, I think there are European countries that would kill to have the American economy right now.

KEILAR: Yes. Well, that's a good point and yet a lot of people do not use Europe as a reference point when they're considering their economic situation, Jamal.

SIMMONS: Not (INAUDIBLE) I wouldn't use that point in a bit, yes.

KEILAR: I will tell you.

All right, you guys, thank you so much. It's been really nice having these conversations with you. Both camps have worked to control expectations for themselves and for one another. They've been trying really hard here in the days leading up to tonight's consequential debate. Who do voters think is going to come out on top? We'll have the numbers next.

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