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Democratic Congressional Leaders Set To Endorse Harris Soon; GOP Slams Harris As Potential Democratic Presidential Nominee; JD Vance Holds First Solo Rally As Trump Camp Goes After Harris. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired July 22, 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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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We begin with the breaking news, Vice President Kamala Harris working swiftly to lock up her party's nomination following a whirlwind 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek reelection. Democrats are now rallying around the new potential nominee. Just this afternoon, Harris secured endorsements from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic delegation from Pennsylvania, which is the latest of seven state delegations to pledge their support.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Harris is expected to meet with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries soon. CNN has correspondence covering all of these latest developments for you.

We'll start first on Capitol Hill with our chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju.

Manu, what more are you hearing about this potential meeting with the Vice President that we're told is coming very soon and an expected endorsement from both of them?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are expected to endorse Kamala Harris in the coming days. It's uncertain about whether it's going to be today. In fact, that meeting does not sound like it will happen today. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, is probably not back in Washington. In fact, typically on a day when they're not in session, like they're not in the Senate, he's back in New York.

Tomorrow the Senate returns to session. We also know that Kamala Harris is visiting campaign headquarters in Delaware, and that's going to be part of the reason why they're still trying to figure out a schedule going forward. But make no mistake about it. The Democratic Party is very much falling in line behind Kamala Harris. Both are potential rivals along the campaign trail and Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, even some vulnerable Democrats who are not certain about what she would bring to the top of the ticket and whether they should align themselves with her.

Some of them very much saying that they do support her and also importantly, getting an endorsement from Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House who had been part of that group of Democrats who have been privately raising concerns about the viability of Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. But now that he has stepped aside, Kamala Harris is the likely standard bearer. It's very clear where the Democratic Party is. They want to reframe the debate to start to focus on Donald Trump after weeks of turmoil inside the party as they grappled with how to deal with Biden at the top of the ticket.

KEILAR: How are, yes, Republicans responding to this? I mean, are they surprised? Would you say they're concerned? What is - what are the vibes you're getting there?

RAJU: Yes, a little bit of both. Some of them say that, look, it's going to make no difference who the nominee is, especially someone who comes from the Biden administration, the number two under Joe Biden, because they had been attacking inflation, the border, Kamala Harris being someone who had been tasked with trying to figure out the root causes of the migration problem in her work and trying to deal with what's going on in Mexico and Central American countries.

But given the problems at the border, they're trying to tie that to hers. You can hear from a number of Republicans who I spoke with about this earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): I don't think it matters who the Democrats run, can't change the facts. Facts are in three and a half years, we went from a secure border to no border and she's the border czar.

RAJU: What's her biggest liability?

REP. KELLY ARMSTRONG (R-ND) I think the border. I mean, I think it was their biggest liability to begin with. And she was tasked with fixing it. And that has not gone well.

RAJU: Will she be tougher to beat?

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): She will not be tougher to beat. No, not at all. We're excited about Kamala being at the top of the ticket.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But even so, Republicans will acknowledge that this is a much different race with Kamala Harris there, given that the concerns about age and about really the ability to do the job over the next four years that had been so profound and so pervasive among the American public simply is not the same with someone like Kamala Harris there, someone who could potentially energize the Democratic base the way that Joe Biden was simply unable to.

So Democrats - Republicans still figuring out their exact strategy on what to go after her on. But they're indicating there immigration will be front and center as they try to shift their focus to the new Democratic candidate and the potential nominee Kamala Harris, guys.

DEAN: All right, Manu Raju on the Hill. Thank you so much for that latest reporting. We want to go down to CNN's Priscilla Alvarez who's in Wilmington, Delaware.

And Priscilla, the Vice President is traveling there later today. What are you learning about her travels and her campaign plans?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Jessica, this is a campaign that has undergone a seismic shift over the last 24 hours alone. And now the Vice President is on her way to the buildings behind me, the campaign headquarters where she is going to say hello to staff. That is the way that this has been described, an opportunity for her to meet face-to-face after what has been just a pivotal moment in this campaign.

Now, I will tell you in speaking with sources, the mood in headquarters is mixed. There is some relief, there is also sadness. And there's also a lot of excitement.

[15:05:02]

Of course, some of the initial anxieties and questions among staffers was whether there was going to be a change in location, whether headquarters was going to move elsewhere.

Up until this point, there's no indication that that will be the case. They were also wondering if they were still going to have jobs and leadership has also reassured them that they still have jobs on this campaign. And of course, it was notable that in the moments after the President announced that he was no longer seeking reelection, he also put his support behind the Vice President and said that she had his full endorsement and tried to reunite Democrats behind her.

Now the Vice President has been engaged in multiple phone calls just yesterday, 10 hours of phone calls to over a hundred Democratic officials. That message that she had for all of those in those phone calls will now be coming here to campaign headquarters as he tries to rally staff and what has been a remarkable change just within the last 24 hours.

KEILAR: And Priscilla, privately, what has Harris' message been to allies?

ALVAREZ: In talking with sources that have been on some of these phone calls with her, they say that her message is really that she's going to or wants to earn this nomination and that she is seeking their support. And up until this point, she is getting it privately and publicly. We're also seeing how donors are supporting this ticket as they pour in millions of dollars. That, of course, had been a recent challenge for this campaign, as there were so many questions circling the President's candidacy. But now that it is clear that she is the lead of this party's ticket, they are pouring in money as the allies, too, are getting behind her.

So these conversations, which will continue in the days to come, is the Vice President essentially saying that she intends to earn this nomination and that she hopes that she can have the support of the Democratic Party - a unified Democratic Party, going into the next few months.

DEAN: All right. Priscilla Alvarez for us there in Wilmington, Delaware. Thank you so much.

And here with us at the desk, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, who has some new reporting about potential Vice President picks for the Harris campaign. And Jeff, some names keep bubbling up.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: They do. And look, this is going to be a truncated process. We're used to previous campaigns where this is thought about for a long time. Thinking back to four years ago this summer, Jessica, as you will remember, covering the Biden campaign with us, it's sort of stretched on for months, was Senator Harris going to be his pick.

This is going to be much shorter. We'll probably know the answer to this in less than two weeks. So the people who are emerging are governors. Governors are seen as the most likely because, one, the Senate definitely is in play and they don't want to remove any seats, except you'll see on the screen there, Mark Kelly from Arizona. The lone senator, we are told, who is likely to be considered in this mix. He has a good relationship with Vice President Harris.

But look at some of the other governors there on the screen. Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, we talked so much about how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is just at the heart of this race. So, of course, he's at the heart of this conversation. But Roy Cooper from North Carolina, he's a term limited governor. He's heading out of office this year. He has a long relationship with Vice President Harris. She was down there just a couple weeks ago campaigning.

And I believe these are live pictures of her heading to Wilmington.

KEILAR: Live pictures, that's right.

ZELENY: Of course, this is a big moment for her as well, to meet her staff for the first time, who she's sort of inheriting. But we should point out, this has been the Biden-Harris campaign.

DEAN: Yes.

ZELENY: So she's long been in the mix of this.

KEILAR: When, you know, everyone has a different opinion on who is the best person --

ZELENY: Right.

KEILAR: ... to run with Kamala Harris. Some have said Mark Kelly is so easy. I think it might have been Van Jones last night. He was saying, you know, astronaut, former fighter pilot, I think he was, easy to define, easy to put up there. Then you have Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania. So maybe some built in votes in a very important state. That last one, how important would that be do you think in the calculus of who she should pick?

ZELENY: I think having a relationship with someone is always the most important, particularly when she is basically jumping into a moving car here. She did not go through the primary process getting her advisors around her. She'll need someone she can trust and I think has a relationship.

But North Carolina is also a swing state. So that's sort of a twofer. But again, this is her big - first big presidential level decision. She's never made one like this at this point, so we're - are being told that the lawyers now are beginning to look through all the backgrounds of these people.

The reason that we might hear some other names, perhaps a business person or retired military person, but the reality here with the truncated process, most Democrats we've been speaking with think it has to be someone who's run for office before to be even slightly vetted, but even having run for statewide office, totally different thing than being the Vice Presidential nominee.

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DEAN: What's so fascinating about this is, yes, the glare of the national, the white hot glare of the national spotlight is different than what any of those governors or even the senator.

ZELENY: Any other side, Republicans will go after him. But Andy Beshear this morning, the governor of Kentucky, he came right out of the gate. And a lot of these auditions are happening ...

DEAN: Right.

ZELENY: ... in real time. And they went on, on MSNBC. And he went right after JD Vance. He's like he's not from here. He doesn't know Eastern Kentucky, of course, trying to use that. So he doesn't have as big of a relationship governor Beshear with Vice President Harris.

So they're all trying to support her and to a person on that list. They've all endorsed her candidacy.

KEILAR: Yes. He was advertising his relationship, which would have been pitbull.

ZELENY: Right.

KEILAR: If she goes ahead and chooses him. He made that clear.

ZELENY: Yeah, that's right.

KEILAR: It's really interesting.

Jeff Zeleny thank you so much.

ZELENY: You bet. KEILAR: Great reporting all weekend.

Still ahead.

DEAN: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle facing tough questions at the Capitol today after admitting her agency failed to protect former President Trump. But will she give in to the now bipartisan calls to resign?

KEILAR: And new body cam footage just in showing the shocking moments, an Illinois Sheriff's deputies shot and killed a black woman in her own home. We'll have those stories and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Here just moments ago, Sen. JD Vance held his first solo campaign rally since former President Trump chose him as his running mate. The event in his home state of Ohio in his hometown coming just 24 hours after President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

DEAN: It is a change the Trump team has spent weeks preparing for and a source tells CNN they'll be going after Harris with new attack ads in key swing states. CNN Steve Contorno was at JD Vance's rally. Steve, what did we hear from him today?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Jessica, it was interesting. It was about halfway through his 45 minute speech before he even mentioned Vice President Harris at all. And when he did, he attacked around some very familiar territory on immigration, on energy, on crime. Those are areas that the Trump-Vance campaign has been attacking Joe Biden over for weeks and similarly trying now to tie her to his administration's policies.

He also said he was quote, kind of pissed off that Donald Trump will get to debate her instead of him. And he also suggested that the two have a different worldview and attacked her over how she would lead this country. Take a listen to what she said - he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JD VANCE (R, Vice Presidential Nominee): When I see her give a speech, and she talks about the history of this country, not with appreciation, but with condemnation. And look, of course, every country just like every family, certainly mine has its pockmarks, right? Not everything's perfect. It's never going to be.

But you - if you want to lead this country, you should feel grateful for it. You should feel a sense of gratitude. And I never hear that gratitude come through when I listen to Kamala Harris.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CONTORNO: Now we know that the Trump campaign and a line Super PAC will be spending a lot of time and money on the airwaves in coming weeks going after the former vice or the Vice President who is now going to be the Democratic nominee potentially, and including with ads that are going to run in a series of swing states in the coming weeks showing that this race is going to continue to be fought on new battlegrounds.

You know, over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of discussion about this race shifting to the Midwest and to the Rust Belt states, that so-called blue wall. But the ads are going to be run in Arizona and in Georgia, suggesting that this map could be expanding once again, as we have a new candidate in here who could bring some new energy, some new voters to the mix and certainly change the calculus for some of those swing voters.

DEAN: All right. Steve Contorno for us there in Ohio, thanks so much for that reporting.

And joining us now to discuss this new state of the race, Matt Bennett, Democratic strategist and former White House deputy assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs in the Clinton administration. Also with us, Jamal Simmons, former communications director for Vice President Harris and former deputy assistant to President Biden.

Matt, we can start first with you. We heard JD Vance today, accusing Kamala Harris of lying to voters about Biden's mental capacity. How do you think the Harris campaign can best combat that narrative and push back on it?

MATT BENNETT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I just don't think that's a thing that voters are going to be thinking about when they vote in November. I think it's complete nonsense. Everything that Vance said in the clip you played and what I've seen from his performance today was absolute malarkey, as Joe Biden would say.

And I think what's clear is that they do not know how to attack Vice President Harris. They have spent a year or more preparing to run against Joe Biden, and now they got to throw that playbook out. And apparently, somehow, they don't have a new one. So what you've heard from Vance are these very weak, kind of pathetic attacks about how she dealt with Biden, rather than her record or what she would do as president.

So I think she poses a brand new problem for the Trump campaign. The biggest problem, of course, is that she is 19 years younger than Donald Trump. And suddenly, he is the oldest nominee from a major party ever for president. He is the old man in this race, and they have no idea how to deal with that.

KEILAR: Yes, Jamal, I see you're smiling. You're very happy, I can tell.

[15:20:00] What do you think about sort of, I guess, the problem set now that Republicans have? But also, you know, that's not enough for a Harris ticket. She's really got to make a case for her candidacy. Let's remember, she does have, arguably, the uphill battle here. So how does she do that?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first of all, you know, we start off this election campaign with a couple of things working in Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris' favor. First of all, she's already in the White House. She's got National Security briefings. She's been spending a lot of time working on a lot of the issues people care about. So you see these qualifications for her that people might want to bring up whether or not she can do the job of being president. I think she's been a partner to the President for the last three years and so that is fine.

At the same time, you know, she can pick and choose the things about the administration that she wants to talk about and highlight and the things that she might not want to talk about and highlight. And when you talk about a question like immigration, you know, JD Vance used to ask his boss, why didn't Donald Trump want the House Republicans to pass an immigration bill that would have solved some of the problems that it is they complain about? They play politics with immigration instead of taking - instead of doing the right thing for the country.

And last I'll just say Kamala Harris is change. And so often in politics, it's change versus more of the same. And Donald Trump looks like the old news. Kamala Harris is the new news. And I think that enthusiasm is bubbling up through the Democratic Party and that that's what is generating $150 million in donations for the Future Forward PAC or $50 million for the now Harris campaign or a 44,000 person call last night with black women from all over the country, who then raised $1.5 million and started making phone calls to state delegations. The enthusiasm on the Democratic side is pretty intense.

DEAN: Jamal, I want to stick with you for a second, because sitting here 24 hours later, I'm pretty struck by the moves that Kamala Harris and the team around her, the endorsements they've been able to rack up, the money that has been raised, which you just outlined, which are just huge sums of money in 24 hours.

And listen, she's had to walk an incredibly fine line, and been in a very tricky situation for weeks now, as she's been very loyal to President Biden and couldn't put a foot wrong in terms of looking like she wanted him to get out or trying to go around him. And yet, when the time came, she moved quickly. And so there had to be some kind of thought to this, the fact that she moved very, very quickly.

Do, you know, what do you make of what she was able to do in the last 24 hours and how that all came together?

SIMMONS: Well, the first thing I'll say is, when you're vice president, you're kind of always thinking a little bit about what it might be like to run for president, right? So when you're making decisions, you go to a town, you meet with people, maybe you bring some people in who are Democratic Party officials, maybe you have a labor meeting with some folks when you're in town, who might have something to say about this later.

So she didn't just start from scratch. I mean, she's been meeting with a lot of Democrats from the country. Also, you raise money a lot when you're vice president. So this is going to fundraisers all over the country all the time for the last three years, and meeting with Democrats.

She's also been focused on policy issues in places in where she's meeting people. So I think, again, she didn't just start from scratch. Of course, I'm sure there were some people who were thinking about how to do this and more formally, maybe making some beginning phone calls and just checking in with people, make sure they have the same - the right set of numbers, you know, the email addresses all work, that kind of thing.

But there's no way that Vice President Harris could start to really formally campaign for this while President Biden was in it. Because any smell of disloyalty, I just think would have been bad for her. She's not that kind of person and it would have been bad politics.

KEILAR: Matt, let's play veepstakes, the best game since Wordle. Who do you think she should pick?

BENNETT: The good news for the Democratic Party and for the Vice President is that she's got a long list of very impressive people to choose from. But traditionally, it would probably be a governor of some kind. Obviously, Gov. Beshear and Cooper had been on that list. Gov. Shapiro. I think Gov. Polis, who is extraordinarily popular in Colorado, should be on the list. But she's got a very deep well to fish in here.

And it might not be a politician. I mean, she might end up with a business person or a military leader. We don't know. But what I do know is she's going to think very hard about this. They're going to vet these candidates very carefully. And I think the most important factor here is chemistry. You know, I worked on the 92 campaign, when Bill Clinton picked Al Gore, it was seen as an odd pick because he was his next door neighbor, and they kind of looked very similar in their demographics. But it worked incredibly well, because the chemistry was really there. I think she needs that and I think she'll get it.

[15:25:00]

DEAN: Jamal, who do you think she should pick?

SIMMONS: Well, first of all, I'm the one last night, Brianna, who said that ...

KEILAR: I'm so sorry.

SIMMONS: ... that Mark Kelly was the good candidate. Because he was a fighter pilot and astronaut, so we could stop talking there. But no, (INAUDIBLE) ...

KEILAR: Okay. No, that was great, though. You said that, Jamal. And I was like, huh, that is that's really interesting. What a smart, smart thing to say.

SIMMONS: I appreciate the compliment. But so, yes, so Mark Kelly is where you start. I think she's also got some great relationships where people talked about military leaders, Mark Milley, the general, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I don't know if he's interested in the job, but that's somebody I'll at least give him an interview and let's see if he's interested and if the chemistry works as Matt just said.

You know, the Democratic Party often thinks that governors are the solution, because we have this - we do have the romance of the governors from Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But the truth is, we haven't nominated a governor for president in 30 years, right, since 1992. The senators seem to be the ones who are able to make it through the gauntlet. And if she's thinking about the future, and somebody who she can work with, it might be that Mark Kelly, who also comes with the help of his wife, Gabby Giffords, who was also a victim of political violence, could be a couple that would look very good on the stage and be able to work together well with Doug Emhoff, and Vice President Harris, who then would be President Harris.

KEILAR: Well, no soonish, as we understand it, so ...

DEAN: We will. It's going to be a short process, I think.

KEILAR: ... it's really interesting, though, to sort of play the game and think about who it might be.

Jamal, Matt, thank you so much. And Jamal, thank you for correcting me on that. It's - credit where credit is due. Thanks, guys.

SIMMONS: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still ahead, President Biden saying that he's looking forward to finishing his term. That is despite calls from some Republicans that he should step down. We're going to discuss what the final months of a Biden presidency could look like, next.

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