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CrowdStrike Software Update Issue Causing Flight Delays and Other Problems Worldwide; Donald Trump Accepts Republican Party's Nomination for President of United States in Speech at Republican National Convention; Reporting Indicates President Biden May Step Down as Democratic Party's Presidential Candidate. Trump: "I am Running to be President for all of America". Trump goes off script, attacks Biden and Dems in RNC Speech, Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 19, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Delta Airlines now pausing its global flight schedule because of the tech outage wreaking havoc on airlines, businesses, hospitals, and emergency systems around the world. We have live coverage of the chaos it has caused.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So Donald Trump's acceptance speech caps an historic week. Why some Democrats, though, see this as a sign he is beatable by somewhat, at least.

And new voices calling for President Biden to drop out of the race this morning, including a new Democratic senator. One Biden an aide, apparently saying it feels like it's game over.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner. We are in New York. Kate Bolduan is in Milwaukee, and this is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

SIDNER: We of course, begin with the breaking news. There's a very good chance that your life is going to be touched by this at some point. A massive global tech outage impacting businesses and governments around the world and stranding millions of passengers at airports. That one is Boston Logan International, just stuffed with people with nowhere to go because the flights aren't going out.

But minutes ago, Delta announced it has paused its global flight scheduled because of the issues. Giving you a live look there again at frustrated passengers. This is happening all over the world. The White House now looking into this global issue. Microsoft says the underlying cause of the outage has been fixed. But the backlog, I mean, you can see it with your own eyes.

BERMAN: So CNN's Tom Foreman is in Washington, Isabel Rosales at the worlds busiest airport, which is Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a mess on a good day. Anna Stewart is at Heathrow Airport in London. Let's get to Tom Foreman first. Tom what's going on here? TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What's going on is that it seems like

this fix is there, but it has to spread to all these systems. And exactly what you were pointing out, this has affected so many different places out there. The airports are easy to look at. Harder to see are the banks, the hospitals that are now announcing that they're delaying surgeries or saying if you have an appointment today, don't come in, or come in, but be prepared to wait. Various, all sorts of services like 911 services in various places have been affected. And in some cases, they haven't been directly affected, but something near it has been affected.

Now, the CEO of CrowdStrike which is the company that had this update that apparently triggered some if not all of this with Microsoft appeared on NBC a short while ago, and he said, yes, the fix is in at this point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE KURTZ, CEO, CROWDSTRIKE: So we know what the issue is. We're resolving and have resolved the issue now. It's recovering systems that are out there. We identified this very quickly and remediated the issue, and as systems come back online as they're rebooted, they're coming up and they're working, and now we are working with each and every customer to make sure that we can bring them back online. But that was the extent of an issue. The issue in terms of a bug that was related to our update.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: So the problem now is the backlog in all of this. Look, if you run a grocery store and somebody shows up too by a roasted chicken and they can't because of this, they're not going to sit in the aisle and say, I'm not leaving without my chicken. That's not true of airlines and hospitals and train lines. A lot of them now have a baked-in problem that could take hours, maybe the whole weekend.

SIDNER: I took note to the roasted chicken and the baked-in problems. I hear you, Tom Foreman. You're a tricky man, and I love it. All right, but this is a problem that people are not going to be getting out of quickly. Isabel, you are at I think Atlanta-Hartsfield. My goodness, what a mess. I see it behind you. What should people expect if they decide, I'm going to take a chance to go to the airport and try to get my flight?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot of headaches, Sara, they're going to be waiting in line for a long time. This is serious. It's having serious real-life implications for these travelers. A lot of them just waiting in these massive lines like this, barely moving in inch forward. And look over here, every carrier just crowded. The kiosks, they're not going to help them. They're unavailable. That's part of the outage.

So what's happening here, what we've seen is that airline staff right here at the front are having to manually check people in. They have called them out by states. Kentucky, Alaska, come on over, manually checking their details one by one by one. Clearly the airline workers here, they are overwhelmed, and so are the passengers understandably frustrated, because -- so sorry, right on through -- because Hartsfield Jackson is difficult enough on a regular day. This is the world's busiest airport. Now they're having to deal with this.

Also, some travelers are going places and they're time sensitive. Let me introduce you to Ty Kelly. Ty, what is the purpose of your travel?

[08:05:00]

DR. TY KELLY, GEORGIA RESIDENT FLYING FRONTIER: So tomorrow I have a funeral in the afternoon, and then on Sunday, I have my sister's 50th birthday party.

ROSALES: So you have places to be.

KELLY: Absolutely.

ROSALES: How would you describe what you've encountered today here at the airport?

KELLY: I would say it's really chaotic. It's frustrating, and I've never experienced anything like this before at this airport.

ROSALES: Yes. When I first saw you, you were sitting down honestly anxious about all this.

KELLY: Right. I had an -- I was having anxiety, like an anxiety attack, so I had to sit down. My legs were shaking, so it was just really, it's bad.

ROSALES: And you actually got to the front over here to be checked out by Frontier. How was that process? You've got a ticket, right?

KELLY: It was pretty fast, but it's inconvenient. So tomorrow I'm leaving an 8:20. I am going to Cincinnati, and from Cincinnati to Philly, and I won't arrive into Philadelphia until 2:30, and the funeral will be ongoing when I get there.

ROSALES: So clearly making it in time. What a nightmare scenario. Ty, wishing you the best of luck, and thank you for speaking to us. Thank you so much.

Also letting you guys know with the major carriers, including Delta Airlines, this is the hub for Delta, they are pausing all flights as, quote, we work through a vendor tech issue. So a lot to be worked out here, a huge headache for passengers, guys.

BERMAN: All right, Isabel, thank you so much.

Let's go to London. Anna Stewart, let's get a quick read on London and what's happening in Europe.

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: Well, you're seeing the same picture played out across the world at this stage. And I think many airports and airlines are really begging customers at this stage to check with the airline before they head to an airport to try and avoid some of the scenes that you are seeing in places like Atlanta. At this stage, and actually this data was about an hour and a half ago, at least 1,400 flights have been canceled at this stage, and of course, many hundreds more have been delayed. And it's unclear how long it's going to take with that backlog, of course, to work itself out as well.

So at this stage, so many customers impacted, putting into context in terms of big global I.T. outages, we've seen in the past, we had the Delta one in 2017, we had a B.A. one in 2016. This blows that out of the water. This is disruption right across the board, all across the world. And it's not just airlines. I mean, today we're going to see it. I think people will feel it the most at airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, and all across Europe. But of course, this is also impacting banks, telecommunications. U.K. News Network with Sky News was actually off the air early this morning. So really far-reaching consequences.

BERMAN: Right. Anna Stewart, thanks to you, Isabel Rosales, Tom Foreman, we thank all of you. Obviously, we will keep everyone updated on every twist and turn here.

In the meantime, let's get back to Kate in Milwaukee.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And in the meantime, I mean, that is such a huge story. Whenever any updates are coming in, when everything is getting back on online, that breaking news we will bring to you.

It was the speech that kept going, like record breaking going, even. Donald Trump formerly accepting his party's nomination for president with a historically long speech last night. Trump promised to call for national unity in that speech, which he did, until he did not, quickly transitioning away from unity and toward a more classic Donald Trump campaign speech when he was onstage.

With the Republican National Convention now wrapped, the focus now does shift to President Biden and the mounting pressure for him to step aside. According to multiple sources familiar with the dynamics inside the White House and the campaign, there is now widespread acceptance that Biden remaining in the 2024 race is wholly untenable. Now, while President Biden remains in COVID isolation, we are told that he is in a contemplative state about his political future.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Mark Preston are here with me now. I think there are a lot of people in a contemplative state about the state of things right now. Jeff, what would you describe, I don't know if you want to call it the feeling, the sense, the gut check, or the momentum, where it is -- where is it right now? There's so many new reports, new incremental and important developments of how, where things are, where the winds are blowing. What do you -- what are you sensing right now this morning?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think taken all together as we head into the weekend today, two things. One time is running out, because Democrats are beginning the process to start of voting for their own nominee, which is happening virtually which we can explain in a minute. But two, the walls are closing in. President Biden has many, many admirers. He has many people who respect him. They've been trying to give him space. The people we talked to are saying, look, you're out of time to make this decision.

So it is still his decision, there is no doubt, but we know from a variety of people, it is hard to find a supportive Democrat who wants him to stay in the race, officially anyway. There are certainly voters rank and file who wonder why replace him. But from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to former President Barack Obama to many others in the party, it is a sense that they believe he can't win.

[08:10:00]

That is underlying all of this, and that the Democrats worry that he will take down their chances of reclaiming the House and holding control the Senate, which were a longshot in the first place. But now a variety of senators, the majority of senators are very worried about that.

BOLDUAN: And Mark, David Axelrod, Axe last night said after Trump's speech wrap, his kind of gut take on what he saw was this was -- that speech he heard was the first good news, the first good thing that happened for Democrats in weeks in light of everything that's swirling around Biden. Do you think what happened here last night in the convention hall and what's happened this week changes the conversation inside the Biden campaign and among Democrats about Joe Biden?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Jeff and I were talking about this last night. He had made this point that the debate, the CNN debate, that really began all this and blew it open, happened three weeks ago. We then have come into a convention where there has been dominated about Donald Trump. He almost is assassinated.

Joe Biden has had plenty of time to try to figure this out. His aides have had plenty of time to try to figure this out. They are now in a situation where Democrats kept quiet until this convention was over to give him that space, and now that space is now gone.

That is why we started seeing these stories pop up, the Barack Obama, the Nancy Pelosi, all of these things have started coming up within 24 hours of the end of that convention.

BOLDUAN: Do you really, is that -- how many times have we talked about the dam is about to break, and that was some of the reporting. But is there a sense that people were really holding off because they did not want this to come out during the Republican convention?

PRESTON: I mean, it's my sense talking to variety of people that they've been trying to give him the space to make a decision. And its more than just am I going to stay in or not? It's what comes after that.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

ZELENY: So that I think is where this is heading today. Many conversations, not necessarily the president is related to these, but democratic elders, wisemen and women in the party, if you will, are thinking about plan b. It's not just I'm stepping aside. Then are you remaining in the presidency? The answer to that we're told is yes, most likely, obviously, and then who comes next, the process that this opens up. So it's more complicated than just one decision.

Joe Biden has dropped out of presidential races before in 1988 and 2008, entirely different story here, obviously, because he's president. But again, still, as he is -- he's isolating from COVID, he's isolated from his party.

BOLDUAN: How much does money play into this? Is it, is it -- they have, they've raised a ton of money, they've got a ton of money. But if it is drying up, is that kind of -- could that be the last straw?

PRESTON: You can't have, you can't have Nancy Pelosi and former president Barack Obama basically telling the party leaders that he can't win, and that all the money that they have raised up to this point is for naught. It can no longer be a vanity project. The party has got to be bigger than one person, OK.

Now, we saw last night in here that the party is one person right now on the Republican side. But the Democrats right now, if they want to have some sustainability moving forward, then they've got to realize that it is not about one person. Nancy Pelosi clearly understands that.

BOLDUAN: That's a really apt comparison. Its great to see you guys. It's great to see you. Thank you for being here. John, back to you.

BERMAN: All right, we do have important breaking news just in from Russia, a verdict in what some would call a sham trial of falsely accused "Wall Street Journal" journalists Evan Gershkovich. He has been found guilty by a Russian court and sentenced to 16 years. The 32-year-old was arrested when he was on a reporting trip in Russia last year. This trial has been going on behind closed doors since June 26th. He's charged, again, "The Wall Street Journal" says falsely. He was charged with espionage. Gershkovich and "The Journal" have always strongly denied these charges. Just moments ago, found guilty and sentenced to 16 years. We'll have much more on this as it comes in.

SIDNER: All right.

BERMAN: Convicted for reporting basically, is what it is right now.

SIDNER: That is exactly what happened in that case.

BERMAN: Our heart goes out to Evan Gershkovich and his family, and hopefully there will be a resolution on this soon and getting him tome.

SIDNER: They've been fighting a really long time to try to get him home, and this is a real disappointment and sadness for them and the rest of the country and "The Wall Street Journal".

All right, he said he ripped up his humdinger of a speech to instead focus on unity after the assassination attempt. Well, Donald Trump flipping the script again, went back on the attack, going back to his dark rhetoric. We will talk about that in a bit.

And we're following our breaking news, trying to keep you updated as these massive tech outages affecting airline and businesses all around the world. We will give you an update on that as well ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:19:26]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, as the 2024 race moves on from Milwaukee, but what about last night?

Donald Trump took the stage to officially accept his party's nomination. Remarks that were also his first speech since the assassination attempt and his first detailed accounting of what he experienced on that rally stage.

Trump hit that theme of unity that he and the campaign had promised was coming, a change and a shift that he wanted to make after the near-death experience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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)

[08:20:09]

BOLDUAN: Donald Trump also proved he is still classic Trump, tone shifting away from that unity message during his speech and toward a more -- his more divisive rhetoric in that very same speech.

So, what does it all add up to today? Joining us right now, Republican Governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum.

It's good to see you, governor. Thank you so much for being here.

So, add it all up for me. If there's one message that you think comes out of the convention this week that you hope voters take from it, what is it?

GOV. DOUG BURGUM (R-ND): What -- I think the place we have to start is where President Trump started last night. And that's the recounting of his near-death experience.

I mean, think about it -- he's delivering a national speech, only five days away from when he was a millimeter, a quarter-of-an-inch or less away from not being with us.

BOLDUAN: Yes, it's --

BURGUM: And it's just too hard to think because there would not have been a convention. The nation would be in mourning. Both parties would be in chaos instead of just one party being in chaos. And I think it would have been a very scary time for America.

Because it would be like, who is leading us? And the two leading candidates -- we would have been put in a spot that we wouldn't have been in 250 years.

So, I think for many people last night, seeing him walk on stage, come out the way he was honoring Corey who died at the rally. I mean -- I think that alone was a unifying experience.

And then, I think the humanizing -- I mean, just sharing the story when he said, like he had reported earlier in an interview and said, "I shouldn't be here." And then the crowd started chanting, you know.

BOLDUAN: It's a side of Donald Trump -- a vulnerability, if you will that --

BURGUM: Right.

BOLDUAN: -- we've not seen in his past campaigns.

BURGUM: Right, but you saw what happened, which is, you know, the crowd is all saying, "Yes, you should. Yes, you should."

BOLDUAN: Yes, true.

BURGUM: Coming back at them. So, there's a -- that, I think before even if he gets into policy, you were saying, I mean, this kind of speech is going to be remembered for its relationship to an assassination attempt. The near proximity, him being here, showing up on Monday night within 48-hours of that happening.

And part of what this campaign has been about, just because the two players that personify the two administrations, that has been about strength versus weakness.

And last night, I mean, President Trump and the recounting of the stories and what he did in the aftermath of the rally, standing up, I think there is a yearning for people right now with the chaos abroad, the challenges at home --

BOLDUAN: The strength.

BURGUM: --strength versus weakness, I think is a big theme and I think that it was played perfectly. And then, unity -- party unity is unity within your own party they are --

BOLDUAN: That was clear.

BURGUM: -- truly I could say. There has not ever been a Republican Party, but part of this is the behind the scenes, the plot, former President Trump drove any, any sort of made -- going to say, made light of both parties having these 50 or 100-page long platforms that no American reads. And he's got it down to the 20 promises that any American can read.

And those are things that they're hard to disagree with, whether you're Independent, you're a Democrat or Republican. I mean, I think all of us would say, hey, let's -- inflation should be down, interest rate should be down, economic growth in real wages should be up.

Peace abroad, that's a good thing.

BOLDUAN: It's how you got there, that's where the two parties have --

BURGUM: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I want to read for you how AXIOS kind of described the speech, because there's the, who is the Donald Trump, what are the sides of Donald Trump that they are going to see in the campaign going forward is a question, I think today.

Which is, "The 'new' Donald Trump soothed and silenced the nation for 28 minutes last night. Then the old Trump returned and bellowed, barked, and bored America for 64 minutes more."

Does last night prove that Donald Trump is not changed? I use the word 'change' because that is how he has described what has happened to him. How the campaign is described when they said that they were tearing up the speech and they were going to be rewriting it.

He went from that and that he did fallback, not fallback, he went to classic Donald Trump, which -- do you fear when it comes to voters, they can read it as, he's only projecting unity in name only, not in practice.

Because we heard that crazy Nancys and we heard the words that he has used in the past that people describe as divisive.

BURGUM: Well, I think there is a change and I think we just to have to go back to people's experience. Not many of us, you know, know people, some people know people who've had near-death experiences and they've seen how that has changed him.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BURGUM: But go back to the night before, when I was sitting next to him and his granddaughter, Kai Trump comes on stage, his 16-year-old --

BOLDUAN: Oh, you're sitting next him when Kai was on stage?

BURGUM: Yes, and then -- and he's sitting there and it would be just in anything -- you've just picked any grandfather in America and then you're watching, your 16-year-old granddaughter that you know, that you love, that you've got a relationship with, that your golf with, you call and you check on her about grades that, that person is delivering this speech to the nation and just doing a fantastic job.

[08:25:09]

BOLDUAN: I would say that some of the programming choices were artful and very smart this week. Now --

BURGUM: But I would just say, you're doing that just as a grandfather, that would be amazing. But when you are doing it as someone who in the back of your mind is, I could have missed this because I might have been killed, if my head had been like a quarter turn in other direction.

So, I think then there's a gratitude and a presence in the moment. And last night near the end of his speech, he said, you know, each day is precious.

BOLDUAN: He really understood.

BURGUM: And he referenced the grace of God, Divine Providence multiple times, and I think these are things that really hit home because there is no other explanation because it is literally a miracle that he turned his head at that moment in time.

BOLDUAN: It is, Governor --

BURGUM: When he talked about pointing at the slide on immigration, that was the only slide he had at the whole rally --

BOLDUAN: That was wild. But when he put that up last night, I was like, that is really intriguing.

BURGUM: But it wasn't like he had 20 slides. He brought one slide.

BOLDUAN: Oh, thank God, you don't want 20 slides, you do need a PowerPoint presentation at a rally.

BURGUM: No, but mean -- what I'm saying it's the one slide he has, and it was the one time when he would turn and look away.

BOLDUAN: Do you -- do you know how close you came to being VP?

BURGUM: I have a pretty good idea, yes.

BOLDUAN: Please tell us. How close is close?

BURGUM: Well, I think it was an honor to be under closed consideration. I know the decision wasn't made until Monday. And, I know there was a lot of back-and-forth between a lot of people, but I think that President Trump has made a great choice and JD Vance, you saw the reception here.

BOLDUAN: Yes

BURGUM: And of course, we do get back to politics quickly --

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BURGUM: -- to win this race. We've got to win Ohio, we've got to win Pennsylvania.

BOLDUAN: How are you going to be utilized? Where are you going to go?

BURGUM: We've got to --

BOLDUAN: How can you be used?

BURGUM: -- you now, Wisconsin, Michigan. BOLDUAN: What is Doug Burgum best? How are you best use? What states and how for this campaign? Where are you going next?

BURGUM: Well, where I'm going is North Dakota. I mean, I've may have got to 148 days left as Governor of North Dakota. We got a lot of stuff --

BOLDUAN: You can walk and chew gum at the same time.

BURGUM: Well, I have been doing that for the last year or so and we kept North Dakota moving forward and we participated heavily in trying to shape the national dialogue. But I think part of what you see is that, the three things that we've talked about when I launched for president a year ago, a year-and-a-month ago was the economy, energy, and National Security and how those three things are completely related.

And I think that what I'm excited about is that you see Republican candidates around the country, senators, congressman, President Trump last night clearly tying all those together.

At the end of his speech, this is another historic thing. He's the first presidential candidate that's ever uttered the words AI in a convention speech and he was talking about how we need -- how we need energy to power artificial intelligence.

BOLDUAN: Doug Burgum, the AI czar and ambassador in the next -- in the coming Trump administration.

BURGUM: Well AI is going to change every job, every industry, and every company but we are in an AI arms race with China and this cold war will be different than past cold wars because it's not just a military arms race.

It's an AI computer and China is building a power plant. They're opening up a couple of weeks. They have over 400 gigawatts under construction.

BOLDUAN: So here is my big take, Doug Burgum is going back to North Dakota, but Doug Burgum is going to be back on the campaign trail for Donald Trump very soon.

BURGUM: Well, we have to. Because if we're going the wrong direction --

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BURGUM: -- on the economy, energy, and National Security that matters to every American --

BOLDUAN: Governor --

BURGUM: -- doesn't matter what party you're in.

BOLDUAN: -- thank you.

BURGUM: -- we can lift it up for everybody.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much.

BURGUM: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All I can say is, wow to the question-and- answer of do you know how close you came to being the vice- presidential pick? The answer, I have a pretty good idea. And if he can press his ear muffs on, the look on his face when he said it. Wow.

He knows, I guess he came pretty close, Kate, that was awesome. Thank you very much.

BOLDUAN: I think he got -- yes, I got an eyebrow raised that tells me, yes.

BERMAN: Yes. pretty close. Hi, nice to see you, Governor, have fun back in North Dakota. We appreciate it.

BURGUM: Hey, thank you.

BERMAN: This cannot go on much longer. That is what one insider is saying. New reporting that some campaign officials now think President Biden has no choice but to abandon his reelection bid.

And in a new interview moments ago, the CEO of CrowdStrike the company behind the huge tech outages that are affecting thousands and thousands of people right now around the world. They say they've resolved the issue and are working with each and every customer to get back online.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:00]