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Tech Issues Disrupt Flights, Businesses Around the World; Trump Details His Vision for U.S. in Nomination Acceptance Speech; Biden Aide Says, There's a Growing Sense That it's Game Over. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 19, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This just in, the speech is over, barely, the reverberations this morning from Donald Trump's acceptance speech that had its moments, a lot of them, and then more. After a promise of unity, one analyst noted he could not keep up the act.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And is it game over? For new reporting on the growing sense behind the scenes, as Biden fights growing calls for him to step aside from the 2024 presidential campaign.

BERMAN: But, first, we have important breaking news. Mass chaos after a global tech outage grounds flights and hit businesses in the U.S. and really all around the world. This thing is everywhere.

I'm John Berman with Sarah Sidner in New York, Kate Bolduan is in Milwaukee. This is CNN News Central.

All right, and the breaking news this morning, this is a live look at the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There might be some reporters and politico types in there. They're trying to get out of Milwaukee. But right now, Milwaukee is just like almost every other airport, I mean, on Earth right now, airports all around the world, businesses, so many different institutions being affected right now by this I.T. outage, this major, major glitch.

So, a short time ago, we got a sense of what is causing this. The CEO of CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Firm says that a content update to its software triggered outages within Windows. And, of course, Windows is the most widely used computer operating system in the world. CrowdStrike insists this is not a security incident or a cyberattack, it's just bad. It is packing a wallop. Airports, airlines, businesses, stock exchanges, you know, the metro in D.C., anyone trying to get on a computer in these places overnight, they were seeing that blue screen of death on their monitors. So many are still experiencing issues.

SIDNER: You see those incredible pictures and the airport, people stuck. But there is a small fix that's happening just minutes ago. United says it is resuming some flights. American Airlines says it did safely reestablish operations as well. But that's not helping a whole lot of passengers right now. A slew of other airlines, major ones, Delta, American, still under a ground stop, according to the FAA and flyers overseas, as you just heard John allude to experiencing much of the same madness.

Just look at the packed airports. That's Greece. That's Madrid. That's Berlin, Lisbon, travelers stuck in limbo. Take a listen to these folks stuck in Australia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were heading home to Adelaide and, yes, the last couple of hours just sort of hoping that, against hope, that the Jetstar gods would be kind and, yes, it turned out they are angry and they demand vengeance. So, we will be staying in Sydney for a bit longer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Being stuck at an airport's no fun, is it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's no fun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: We have team covers around the globe right now. CNN's Tom Foreman in Washington D.C., Isabel Rosales at the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International, and Anna Stewart and Heathrow Airport in the U.K.

Let's get to Tom Foreman first. Tom, what the heck is happening with these systems?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I was just laughing, that Australian kid. He is all of us at the airport when this happens. Yes, it's no fun. That's really what's happening. There's a lot of no fun going on. In simple terms, let's talk about what happened here. CrowdStrike, which is a cyber security firm, which works with Microsoft, sent an update out. That update went out. It did not agree somehow with the Microsoft system, and that's what made these systems all over the world give you that blue screen. And that's what shut everything down.

[07:05:00]

Microsoft and CrowdStrike now are saying they've made progress. CrowdStrike says it was a single content update, not a security incident or a cyberattack. They're saying it has been identified, isolated and a fix deployed, and Microsoft is echoing that.

So, they're saying the underlying problem of all of this is now basically the solution is racing around the world to fix all these systems. But, boy, has it affected a lot. Grocery stores and banks and metro systems in New York, Newark, LaGuardia, Kennedy, all those airports reporting some issues related to this.

Look, my clock is going off because, no, it's just an alarm because I would normally be waking up at this time. But the truth is, what's happening is so many people around the world are finding their days disrupted in this fashion. And it's not going to easily settle simply because even if this fix were everywhere right now, and they're trying to get it everywhere right now, these things have been baked into the system now, so 911 systems, hospitals, all sorts of things. If you're doing anything that might be touched by Microsoft today, you need to be checking to see if it's going to be happening the way you thought.

BERMAN: Look, I got a lot of questions. First among them, how is it that Tom Foreman gets to wake up at 7:05 most mornings? We're going to leave that aside for a moment. That's minor compared to what the tens of thousands of people are dealing with.

FOREMAN: I'll call you at midnight, my friend.

BERMAN: People are dealing with a lot at the airports right now. I want to get to Atlanta right now. Isabel Rosales is there. I think that looks ugly even by Atlanta standards behind you. What should people expect?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning to you. Listen, you expect to have busy long lines at the world's busiest airport, but I haven't seen anything quite like this. Every single carrier, JetBlue, Spirit, Delta, all of these, this is all that you see, just lines and lines, people wrapped around trying to get information, trying to check in, and hoping and praying that they're going to be able to make their flights.

We've seen some of the screens displaying the information with that blue screen of death, as you guys called it, with this outage. We've seen lines of people in wheelchairs up against the wall, just trying to get more information, figure out what is going on, and just these huge, huge lines, the manpower here. Clearly, these carriers were not expecting this to happen. We're seeing one or two people trying to manage these crowds, trying to get them moved out of here.

I have a passenger right over here, Jennifer. Jennifer, tell me when you knew something had gone wrong.

JENNIFER SMALL, NEW JERSEY RESIDENT FLYING FRONTIER: I really wasn't getting much information yesterday. My flight was changed about three different times and I really didn't have any answers.

ROSALES: Yes. And you found out by Googling that there was an outage and we've seen people actually manually being checked in by licenses. What have you seen?

SMALL: Everybody really calm here, to be very honest with you. Everybody's trying the best they can. But it's just been -- I didn't get really any answers until this morning and I've been here since 6:30 yesterday evening.

ROSALES: Jennifer, we're out of time here. Thank you so much, but, clearly, a lot of confusion, people trying to get answers and a lot of headaches ahead. Guys?

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, Isabel. I'm itching just watching that. That is so upsetting. Anna, you are in the U.K. You're in London. That airport tends to be chaotic, just in general, like the Atlanta airport. What's the situation there?

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: It really doesn't matter where you woke up this morning in the world. It feels like this single point of failure is going to impact so many people all across the world and in different sectors. Of course, today is one of the busiest days of travel, particularly here in the U.K. and in Europe where schools are broken up, people are heading on their holidays, and there is serious disruption.

At Heathrow, just select systems are currently impacted, but this airport was telling passengers, obviously, contact your airline before you start heading to the airport. Just make sure that your flight hasn't been canceled or delayed. Bigger impacts actually at Gatwick, at Stansted, other airports just outside of London, also Edinburgh, and right across Europe, Sara. I mean, Amsterdam's Schiphol, which is one of the other world's busiest airports, is perhaps feeling the most impact today. KLM, the airline, is saying that the outages are making flight handling impossible.

So, just imagine for all those poor people trying to get on holiday, surely going to be huge delays, trying to reroute all of those flights. And then right beyond the airlines and the travel, and I think this is where most people will feel this sort of disruption. But there are also issues for healthcare services. Here in the U.K. G.P.s are struggling to be able to book appointments or send prescriptions. There are issues with London Stock Exchange website, there are telecoms issues. This is going to be really broad disruption through the day.

BERMAN: All right. Anna Stewart in London, Isabel Rosales in Atlanta, Tom Foreman of Washington, our thanks to all of you.

Let's throw it out to Kate Bolduan in Milwaukee. And all I can say, Kate, is I hope you like it in Milwaukee.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I was literally going to be like where I'm now going to live.

[07:10:00]

So, Alayna and I literally were just like, you want to take a ferry? We might just go like, we'll figure it out. We're going to figure it out.

Regardless, so we're among -- we're feeling everyone's pain there, but here in Milwaukee, guys, it's a wrap in Wisconsin. This morning, the action in this convention hall, as it's been -- as you've seen, it's been mayhem and chaos, it's now just all cleanup crews who've been now working throughout the night to try to pick up after last night's RNC finale.

Donald Trump officially accepting the party's nomination and giving a historically long acceptance speech and doing that during his hour- and-a-half long speech-plus, Donald Trump did call for unity, a message shift that he and his campaign had been teasing to all week in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. But that unifying message, where it began there, it quickly then morphed into something of a greatest hits of a typical Donald Trump campaign speech. There were grievances, there was division, there was finger-pointing. There's a lot of red meat there for everyone who was here in the hall, decidedly not unifying in those portions.

Here's how the speech started.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And then here is where it went.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The election result, we're never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. We're never going to let it happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: In all, by CNN's count, Donald Trump made at least 22 false claims in that speech about the election, about immigration, about the justice system. So, which message, which side of Donald Trump that we saw last night will linger longer with voters. That's a big question today.

Alayna Treen here with more watching it all on now officially zero sleep, as everyone is, but still kicking. What are you hearing from Donald Trump's campaign and those around him about what happened, his speech last night, how it was received, and what they think it does for them now today?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, I think -- yes, as you had mentioned, they had really been very much overaggressive, I'd say, touting what that start of the speech would be, that it was going to be, you know, a unifying speech, would be a very different speech than the ones that we are used to hearing from Donald Trump, which I'd say was true until, you know, about halfway in, not even when he started riffing and rambling, and we saw the Donald Trump that we all know and well and go on and attack Democrats.

And, you know, really, they wanted this to be a high level optimistic- looking speech following that, you know, discussion over what had happened and his very personal recounting of the shooting. I'm not exactly sure if that's what it was, but, look, I think overall, it was a tale of two speeches. We really did see, and I was kind of shocked in the beginning, we saw a much more vulnerable side of Donald Trump as he was walking through what had happened to him. I am told that he has been very personally, I mean, of course, affected by that shooting. He has been talking about divine intervention, that he wasn't supposed to be here, something he said himself last night

But then, when it started to go back to his vision for America, what he would do if he were put back in office. That's where we really did hear the Donald Trump come back. I kind of ate my words when I was calling him vulnerable, because then we went back to the Trump --

BOLDUAN: Some were noting that, like, prompter stopped. The teleprompter stopped because he was going off script and that's --

TREENE: That is classic Donald Trump. Whenever I'm at a Trump rally, it is like you never know what's going to happen in a speech, regardless of us getting the prepared remarks ahead of time. But I do want you to just take a listen to kind of the juxtaposition of what we had heard.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This election should be about the issues facing our country and how to make America successful, safe, free, and great again. In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens. In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So, as you can see, I mean, just two completely different speeches.

I will note, though, however, and I am curious how this is going to end up resonating, because this was very late, this speech. As you mentioned, it was more than 90 minutes. He didn't rap until after 11:00, close to midnight, on the East Coast even later, and so they did get those sound bites and that visual imagery that they wanted, particularly that WWE-style, you know, Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt, screaming for Trump, all of that they got.

[07:15:00]

I don't know how many Americans were staying up for the very end of the speech, and so I'm curious to see how it resonates with most of America.

BOLDUAN: And also, how that translates now when they go back on the trail.

TREENE: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: When they go back on the trail this weekend as, for the first time as a team. It's great to see you.

TREENE: You too.

BOLDUAN: It's great to be in person with you all. TREENE: You too.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see you, Alayna. Sara?

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate. It's a critical 72 hours for the Biden campaign now, and we have new reporting that Democratic donors are threatening to freeze their money completely.

We also have new details about the online activity of the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump.

And one of Oregon's most wanted fugitives captured after three decades on the run. All those stories and more coming up next.

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[07:20:00]

SIDNER: There's a growing sense that it's game over. That is a quote in how one Biden aide describes the mood behind the scenes as the president fights calls to drop his re-election bid. Two sources telling CNN that furious donors are now warning House and Senate campaign committees they will freeze donations unless and until party leaders take stronger steps to get Biden to step aside. And now Senator Jon Tester of Montana and California Congressman Jim Costa have joined the growing list of Democrats calling on the president to withdraw from the race.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins me now from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the president does remain in isolation because he tested positive for COVID.

Priscilla, one Democrat, I think, spoke to us and talked about how they feel that they're caught in this doom loop. What are you hearing this morning?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, that doom loop is essentially what we have been seeing unfold over the last several days, as even more Democratic lawmakers come out asking the president publicly to step aside, including yesterday, that of Jon Tester, a vulnerable Democrat who is up for re election.

So, all of this is coming together, playing out, unfolding, as the president is isolated here at his residence in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. And he is increasingly isolated. His inner circle has grown even tighter as he deliberates what his next steps are going to be. One source saying, quote, the walls are closing in.

But those loyal aides also remain dug in. So, the president, for example, has often cast doubt over any polling that suggests that he can't go up against former President Donald Trump. And many of his aides still maintain that he is in this race and that he is not going anywhere, often pointing to their own internal polling showing that he is the best candidate to go up against his Republican rival.

But the polls that we have also seen are ones that show him slipping and going -- and losing points when put up against Trump, and also donors who just remain furious that he is still in the race because they too are concerned about the trajectory of this race and whether he is the most viable candidate at this time. And so there are a lot of factors that are sort of playing out here in, in how the aides are thinking about this, but also how the president is thinking about this.

Now, a lot of folks have tried to speculate that he'll make a decision this weekend, but sources also tell CNN, this is ultimately up to him and anyone that says that they know what's going to happen, it really doesn't. What we do know is that last night, the campaign was very closely watching what former President Donald Trump had to say at the Republican convention, with the campaign chair saying that the former president sought to find problems with America, not provide solutions.

So, they are continuing their criticism and attacks against the former president, even as all of this unfolds within their own party.

SIDNER: It definitely went from unity to dark over that hour-and-a- half speech. Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much. I appreciate your reporting this morning. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And let's talk about that. This morning, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, they're getting ready to head out on the campaign trail as a team for the first time, headed to battleground Michigan tomorrow, one of the states that Vance name-checked multiple times in his nomination speech, making very clear what a priority the state is to their path to victory. What will their message be when they start -- when they hit the trail together?

Donald Trump last night, as we've talked about, at first, appeared the changed man that his campaign had hinted at following the assassination attempt, starting off with a message of unity. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: But then Donald Trump quickly proved that he still is the same Donald Trump that the country has known since he hit the campaign trail in 2015. He quickly turned to attacks aimed at Democrats, name calling Nancy Pelosi, talking about the, quote/unquote, illegal aliens invading the country, and also saying Democrats, quote, are destroying our country.

[07:25:02]

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: And I say it often, if you took the ten worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the ten worst, added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done.

If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch hunts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now is Bryan Lanza, the former deputy communications director for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, and David Polyansky, Republican strategist and former chief of staff to Ted Cruz, and deputy campaign manager to the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign.

Hello, gentlemen. Good morning, or good evening, wherever we are still. Let's play a game just to stay awake. Bryan, finish this sentence with me.

DAVID POLYANSKY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I'm glad he goes first, right?

BOLDUAN: I don't know why I decided to be nice to you, it's just more fun to be mean to Bryan.

BRYAN LANZA, FORMER DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN: There you go.

BOLDUAN: Finish this sentence. If last night's speech did one thing to help your cause, it was what?

LANZA: You know, listen, it opened up the public, it opened up the audience to the personal side of Donald Trump. You saw the speech from, from his granddaughter. That was very touching. That was a very unique moment. We rarely see that. And then you also saw the stories of, you know, the professionals who've worked with him.

But there was a lot of emotion out of this, this convention, the Gold Star families. I mean, that was very emotional. So, you clearly saw that President Trump wanted to have an emotional touch. And so I looked at it and, you know, as I'm trying to soften some of the edges by exposing Trump or by highlighting Trump, that he's just different now.

And he's not really that different if you take the media's view, he's different. But if you take the view of his family, he's still the same person. He was just shot in the ear.

BOLDUAN: It's just, well, what he presents often when he is campaigning. So, finish this sentence then. If last night did one thing to hurt your cause, it was?

POLYANSKY: We spent 90 minutes on stage rather than having the media and the nation talk about Joe Biden and his failures to be able to stay in this race. At the, at the end of the day, most people in this arena up until the president took the stage, were really buzzing about what was happening in Delaware and down in Washington. And so that's the only thing.

The president did a great job last night, I thought. And you could hear a pin drop in this room. Can you imagine a week ago if we had said we'd all be standing in here and he would be, you know, talking about what happened to him on a stage just days before as a bullet whizzed through his ear and several others by him? It was amazing in here, and I can imagine it was pretty compelling television.

And so, it was a great night overall, but, you know, we're back to talking about Joe Biden this morning, as we should be.

BOLDUAN: Bryan, you have worked with many a politician on many a campaign. Could the length of the speech from Donald Trump last night, could that -- I mean, it was like, longer than the length of an average movie. Could that hurt him?

LANZA: Listen, I don't think it hurts him, but it certainly could have been shorter, right? He merged his campaign speech with his convention speech. And so, now we're talking about two different things. Whereas if he just sort of stayed with his campaigns or his convention speech, we'd be talking about this personal Donald Trump, we'd be talking about how the reset took place. He just merged the two.

But at the end of the day, does that ultimately matter? I don't think it's going to matter because we still have serious issues ahead of us. We still have inflation that hasn't been solved for nearly 40 months. We still have immigration that our border is broken. We still have two wars with a potential third war. Nothing has changed in those dynamics, and that is the foundation of why Donald Trump is winning, and that is the foundation of why we'll win in November.

This is a great moment for us. We felt unified, but we know the issues that are going to cause the victory for us.

BOLDUAN: When you talk about, yes, the main pillars of what this race is about and what it's for when it comes to the campaign, I mean, going from the unity back to the classic Trump, if you will, if the read from an independent voter, the read from a low turnout voter, right, the people that were trying -- everyone hears, yes, like, you had me at hello, obviously.

POLYANSKY: That's not necessarily true a week ago, but, yes.

BOLDUAN: Okay. Yes. But, yes.

LANZA: We're here now.

BOLDUAN: We are here now. We are here where we are. But if you're talking about expanding and winning, right, not even be able to stay in one speech without going back to the classic Trump, it can't -- do you think it could feel to them that it's unity in name only, not in practice?

POLYANSKY: Well, it depends what you mean by unity. At the end of the day -- BOLDUAN: I think that's actually the big question.

POLYANSKY: Right.

BOLDUAN: What is the definition of unifying that Donald Trump believes?

POLYANSKY: I mean, I think there were two. The first was political, and he unified the party in a way that I haven't seen, I can't recall in my political lifetime, to be honest, unbelievably and historic. Number two, unification in terms of reminding people, look, he doesn't need to be soft and kind every minute of the day, because, frankly, that's why he's ahead in national polls. That's why he's leading in every battleground. That's frankly why he's ahead even in states like Virginia now.

The Donald Trump we saw last night that some want to criticize is the Donald Trump that voters like.

[07:30:00]

And the reason why is because maybe they don't want to listen to him for a full 90 minutes, but they sure as heck know that when he gets off that stage and gets sworn in and goes into that.