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Biden Returns To White House After Testing Negative For COVID; Harris Holds First Presidential Campaign Rally; CNN Poll: Nearly 4 In 10 Worried About Making Ends Meet; Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) Discusses About Votes On Vice President Harris. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 23, 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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[15:01:12]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Vice President Kamala Harris has officially kicked off her presidential campaign in the battleground state of Wisconsin. Just moments ago, Harris holding her first campaign rally since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after President Biden dropped out of the race. And she reiterated a line of attack that is likely to become a familiar refrain in her campaign.

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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, as Leah told you, before I was elected vice president, before I was elected United States Senator, I was elected Attorney General of the state of California and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then. And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Vice President's Rally comes as President Biden has just returned to the White House. This video taken just a short time ago. The first images we've seen of the President since he went into isolation with COVID a week ago.

Now, tomorrow, the President will address the nation to talk about his decision to drop his reelection bid and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris. CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Kristen Holmes are back with us now.

DEAN: Jeff, we just saw Kamala Harris in her first official campaign rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee. You and I both covered 2020. I remember her on the campaign trail then. This is a very different candidate.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: It is. I mean, four years has made her a better candidate. Her argument is obviously different. She struggled at a primary race four years ago to kind of define herself. All that is out the window. She knows the assignment here. This campaign is being joined in progress. But she's been largely doing these campaign events. But we haven't been watching as much because we never watch a vice presidential candidates as much as presidential candidates. An entirely new moment for her.

But I think her sharpness, her crispness at really framing that argument about we know Donald Trump's type. Who is she going after there? Milwaukee is a great example of it. Trying to energize the Democratic base in the city of Milwaukee and Madison. Some Democrats who really have been without energy.

This is the largest rally that the Democratic campaign has had for either Biden or Harris. It's 3,000 people. As Kristen well knows, a 3,000-person Trump rally would be the smallest ever.

So the reality here is we're about to see I think some more equalness between both sides. Democrats have not been that enthused. They clearly will be more enthused now. However, the race to define her is beginning anew with both sides. This is still an uphill battle for Democrats and she said that. She said there are 105 days and we have a lot of work to do. She's right about that.

KEILAR: Yes. Can they define her in a way that doesn't turn off some prospective voters as well? I'm curious. Tim Alberta of The Atlantic, he wrote "American Carnage," he said that, quote, "Most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second guessing of JD Vance, a selection they acknowledged that was born of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter." What are you hearing, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a mixed bag on that. And when you talk to people in the campaign, they're all in on JD Vance.

[15:05:01]

I mean, he made his choice. There were a lot of people close to Donald Trump who are really pushing for JD Vance to be in this position. There's been second guessing among allies since the beginning around JD Vance. He's young. He's half of Donald Trump's age. He doesn't have a lot of experience on the national stage, particularly donors.

Donors have all have been questioning why they chose JD Vance, because JD Vance is not a fan of corporations, which he has made clear. So I think this kind of waffling and going back and forth is going to happen, not just with a vice presidential pick, but on a number of different issues.

Because, yes, Donald Trump's team was incredibly confident going into November. They not only thought that they were going to pull off winning all of these battleground states, they actually thought they were gaining momentum in states like Minnesota and Virginia, states that hadn't gone Republican in years. Now all of that is up in the air. Part of the question, and this is in this race to define who Kamala Harris is, is this level of enthusiasm and what that means for turnout in the fall. The one thing to pay attention to, Donald Trump's team is going to do everything in their power to link Kamala Harris to all of Biden's policies in which Donald Trump has just pulled ahead of him on when it comes to immigration, crime, the economy and inflation in particular. They are going to say those were not just Biden's policies. Those were Kamala Harris's policies.

But the one thing they're not accounting for and the one thing they're not talking about, but definitely watching very closely, is this enthusiasm gap. They know that there was not a lot of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden. And part of why they saw themselves gaining ground was because Democrats were talking about sitting out the race.

What does Kamala Harris in that role mean for Democrats? Will those same Democrats who are saying they were not going to vote in 2024 still not vote? Or does this change what they were looking at for potential turnout in November? They just were in uncharted territory and nobody, including us, but the Trump team as well, have any idea what this actually looks like. They just know what they're going to do moving forward.

DEAN: And I'm struck too by the fact that Kamala Harris has been positioned by the Biden administration as their chief attack dog on the issue of abortion. And Donald Trump and Republicans, that is an issue that they've all struggled with ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned. And yet through the convention, we didn't really hear a ton of talk about it. It was almost as if they were going to get through it without having to get back into that issue. And now it's going to be back at the forefront of this.

HOLMES: Yes. And we were talking about vice presidential choices probably feeling pretty good they didn't choose Doug Burgum because that would have definitely moved right into the forefront. That was actually part of the argument against the North Dakota governor was that he had been too strict on abortion in his homestay coming up with like a near abortion ban, which would have brought that back into the limelight.

JD Vance, obviously, has called for a national abortion ban, but has not really talked about it since he has assumed this role. Donald Trump, one thing's clear, they don't want to be talking about abortion. Things they want to talk about are, as I said, immigration, crime and inflation, and that's where you're going to hear them hammering.

ZELENY: The Vice President Harris will be talking about abortion.

DEAN: Of course.

ZELENY: They do want to talk about it. And in a state like Wisconsin, it still resonates because those old laws are still in the books. So this is why this campaign now is a completely - it's an open book in many respects. We are about to see a lot of changes and who knows how many will come out. But abortion, no doubt, this will be the defining test. We saw the midterm election. But in this case, this is one of their central issues.

The question is the voters and what does the makeup of the electorate look like? Has that changed because of this? So we're going to have to be patient and look for some signs, are other swing states now in play? Are they not? This has really changed everything.

DEAN: Yes. All right. Jeff Zeleny and Kristen Holmes, our thanks to both of you for being here.

ZELENY: Sure.

DEAN: And let's talk now with someone who actually wrote a book on Vice President Kamala Harris, veteran California politics writer and Harris biographer, Dan Morain is joining us now. He is the author of "Kamala's Way: An American Life."

Thank you so much for being here.

We just spoke in the last hour with ...

DAN MORAIN, AUTHOR: Happy to be here.

DEAN: It's good to have you - with Marianna Pecora, who heads a Gen Z nonprofit organization. And she described Kamala Harris as an ally of our generation. We are seeing Harris really taking off and energizing these younger voters through a lot of memes and other things, but also just watching her in her first speech there. I'm curious if this is the Kamala Harris, you know, and what, if any, changes you're seeing?

MORAIN: Well, you know, I saw her as a as a candidate for California attorney general and for U.S. Senate. And yes, this is Kamala Harris, who I who I saw in campaign stops along the way. You know, she's a high energy person. She can be very engaging. She can give a good speech. She's good in a smaller room. Yes, she - this is this is a Kamala Harris I know.

And truthfully, I'm three thousand miles away from the White House, the beltway.

[15:10:04]

Not the Kamala Harris I've been reading about for the last four years.

KEILAR: Are you, you know, having written about her and followed her for so long, are you surprised to find her in this moment?

MORAIN: Well, am I surprised? Well, of course, I mean, who would have thought this? Who would have - but you know what? When she ran for attorney general the first time in 2010, I'll tell you, Republicans, wise Republicans could see her coming and they tried very hard to stop her then. She was a star who was rising and they figured if they could defeat her that first time in 2010, that there would be one less star they'd have to worry about.

I wrote about this back at the time and wrote about it in the book. This - she can energize a crowd. She can be a very good candidate and Republicans saw that in 2010. I saw it in 2010 and 2014. She would come to the editorial board when I worked at the Sacramento Bee's editorial page editor. I could see it there. You know, she's - she can be an impressive person.

DEAN: And yet when she ran for president in 2020, she wasn't able to even make it to the Iowa caucuses. She dropped out before that. It was just not a successful campaign in several regards. But now we are seeing - Jeff Zeleny, our colleague, was just explaining kind of her evolution. Do you think she's been able to identify her own weaknesses and better prepare herself for this moment that she now finds herself in?

MORAIN: You know, I found Kamala Harris to be a very quick study. Yes, I'm sure she knows when she doesn't connect and she can self-correct, I believe. Yes, that's part of being a good politician, a good professional. You make a mistake. You try not to make that same mistake again. Some of us do over and over again. But I'm not - but I think - yes, I think, you know, just what I'm seeing from afar, this is the Kamala Harris that I saw in California and that Californians saw they elected three times statewide.

You know, it's not easy to run in California statewide and to win and she did it three times. You know, it's not something to be dismissed.

KEILAR: It's a big place, says this Californian right here. All right. Dan, I got to be honest. You're not setting expectations for her very low. And you know that so much of politics is an expectations game. I wonder, you know, are there certain things that you see, I don't know, of weaknesses or things that she will need to work on. I mean, what are you seeing as far as that area that she needs to kind of shore up?

MORAIN: Sure. Well, you know, I wrote about this when I was a columnist, I wrote this when I was a news reporter and I wrote about this when I wrote the biography of Harris. She, you know, she can be very difficult, she can be tough on her staff, she can - she doesn't take stance on certain issues where - when those of us in your line of work and mine might wish that she take a stand.

So this is a, you know, this is a very different stage than running for district attorney in San Francisco or attorney general in California. You know, she is a fighter. She's a good campaigner. She can stumble. And I have no doubt that there will be stumbles in the next 105 days. This is a huge stage and the bright lights are going to be especially bright.

You know, I know her in California and I know what I saw here. And, you know, I wrote some very critical pieces about her when she was attorney general and when she was in the U.S. Senate. At the same time as somebody who's covered politics for a lot of years out here in California. There aren't a lot of politicians who I've seen who are at her level.

KEILAR: Dan, it's so great to get your perspective as someone who has watched her for years, and it's great to see this through your eyes. Thank you so much. I'm sure the book has some newfound popularity as well. We appreciate you being with us. MORAIN: Right. Thank you so much.

[15:15:00]

KEILAR: And still ahead, we're learning new details about the attempted assassination of former President Trump as the director of the Secret Service resigns from her post.

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[15:19:30]

DEAN: New CNN polling showing a whopping 39 percent of U.S. adults say they worry they won't be able to pay the bills every month. And the last time things looked like this, the Great Recession. The number's even higher among black and Latino Americans. CNN's Matt Egan has been looking into this trend, joins me now.

Matt, we see unemployment low and inflation cooling, and yet so many people are still really struggling.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, that's right, Jessica. Listen, this is all about the cost of living.

[15:20:00]

Whether it's groceries or car insurance or daycare, life is just a lot more expensive than it was a few years ago.

Now, it's true the rate of inflation is down, but prices aren't down. They're still going up just at a slower pace.

And so that is why we're seeing that 39 percent of U.S. adults say that they worry most or all of the time that their family's income is not going to meet their expenses. Thirty-nine percent, that is up from late 2021 and that's roughly in line with what we saw in mid-2008, during the early stages of the Great Recession.

Now, of course, this is not everyone. Some Americans are feeling pretty good right now. They're going out to dinner. They're going on vacation.

What's notable about this is they found that 46 percent of black Americans say they worry about making ends meet. And just over half, 52 percent of Latinos, say the same. Now, this really is the number one financial headache for Americans right now. Roughly two-thirds of adults say that the number one problem facing their families from an economic perspective is the cost of living.

And look, that is down a bit from two years ago but well above what we saw in the summer of 2021. And listen, I talked to a woman in Ohio who works for the CDC, and she said it's just outrageous what she's paying at the grocery store, but that's not it, right? She said it's astronomical what it costs to get insurance right now or what it costs to buy clothes. And listen, I know there's a lot of focus on the palace intrigue at the White House and Mar-a-Lago or the latest swing state polls, but really the cost of living, this is what it is that is keeping many Americans up at night, and it's what they want the next president to address.

DEAN: All right. Matt Egan for us, thanks so much for that reporting. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. And joining us now is Congressman Dan Kildee. He is a Democrat from the key battleground state of Michigan. He has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

All right. I just want to be frank with you. I've talked to some of your House lawmaker colleagues, Democrats, and before Biden had stepped aside, in one breath they were saying he needs to step aside, and in the other they were saying we have concerns that Harris is not the person to get the votes that are needed. What do you say to them because those concerns don't evaporate?

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): Well, I love my colleagues, but the people we should be listening to are the people on the ground. And what we have seen in the last 48 hours is an incredible surge of energy around Kamala Harris as our nominee for president of the United States. I listen to what they have to say, 10s of thousands of new volunteers walking into the headquarters. Hundreds of thousands of first-time donors saying they want to chip in and be a part of this.

So while people may have had their own predictions about what the reaction to a Kamala Harris candidacy for president might be, those predictions don't match what we're actually seeing among the people who matter, especially young people.

And, you know, I love Joe Biden, and I consider him a friend. But I do think we have to acknowledge the reality that the enthusiasm for his candidacy wasn't aligned with the great track record that he had as president. What we're seeing now is enthusiasm around the Biden-Harris agenda, now led by Vice President Harris as our nominee, but a dramatic uptick in enthusiasm, especially among younger people who see this as the passing of the torch, the generational change that so many people were asking for.

KEILAR: So you're saying she's sort of defying expectations there. Are you hearing - when you're talking to your fellow Democrats, what - are they saying that? Are they saying they're surprised by what has transpired here?

KILDEE: I think some people are surprised. I can't say that I'm entirely surprised because I've known and watched Vice President Harris both when she was in the Senate. She and I actually worked together on drinking water legislation. I'm from Flint, Michigan. That means a lot to us.

So I wasn't overly surprised, but I'm pleasantly surprised with the level of enthusiasm that people have. And again, this especially goes to younger voters, people who we were going to have a hard time persuading to participate. Had they participated, they probably would have voted for Joe Biden if he had been on the ballot.

But the question was not where their allegiances lie, but where their enthusiasm level is. And what we're seeing there is just a dramatic increase. I know my Republican colleagues are trying to pretend that's not happening. They're petrified. It's still going to be a close race, but we have got a chance to win Michigan, and if we can win Michigan, we can win the White House.

KEILAR: Speak to that because obviously you know what it would take to win in Michigan. What does she need to do to win over Michiganders?

KILDEE: I think she has to be there. Like she has been in the past, come to Michigan. Come to Flint. Talk to them about the concerns that they have about their own future.

[15:25:01]

There's a whole generation of people, for example right now, who don't really believe they're ever going to be able to own a home. We have a set of policies that I know Vice President Harris supports that we can move toward that gives people a chance to do that.

What do we know about the Republican agenda? They want to control people. They want to control women and their reproductive rights. They want to continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. Just look at their Project 25 manifesto and you can see the two different and starkly distinct visions of America, and I think this is a - going to have to be the message that she brings to places like Michigan, like Wisconsin, like Pennsylvania.

KEILAR: She has been Vice President for this whole term, right? So you've had Democrats in the White House now for about four years, and when you do look at Michigan, I think it's important we remember that there were nearly 150,000 Democratic primary voters who did not vote for Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, obviously together in this administration. There were over 100,000 uncommitted, about 20,000 each for Marianne Williamson and 20,000 for Dean Phillips. Does she just, I mean, those concerns that folks had about Biden, do they not just carry over to Harris? How do you see it?

KILDEE: I don't think it's automatic that we get everybody back, but what she does is she gives us a chance to get them back. If she comes to Michigan and she addresses those issues about our future, again, younger voters are going to make the difference. I think we sometimes overlook younger voters, as we get - we know that generally speaking they don't participate at the same levels of people, say, my age ...

KEILAR: Israel policy with younger voters, is she different?

KILDEE: You know, I think ...

KEILAR: Will she have to differentiate herself?

KILDEE: I think she's a different person. I think she will have to speak with some clarity on the issue of Israel and Gaza. I've had my differences with President Biden's approach on this, and I've expressed those to him directly. I think that's one of the things people are listening for. I represent a significant Arab and Muslim population, and the few conversations that I've had in the last 48 hours, they seem to be open to a Kamala Harris candidacy. They're interested in what she might bring.

Look, she's a woman who understands what it's like to sometimes have to be forced into the shadows. Growing up as a young woman of color, she understands what these communities have dealt with, and I think she understands the path forward for this country has to include everybody. This is really going to be a new race, and I'm obviously pretty enthusiastic about it.

KEILAR: Just really quickly, you know this saying that, you know, that she's brat. Were you also - you know about this, this is sort of a meme, were you also today years old when you learned what this was?

KILDEE: Yes, I might have been this morning years old.

KEILAR: This morning years old. All right. Congressman, great to have you as always. Thank you so much.

KILDEE: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still ahead, the director of the Secret Service resigning one day after that heated hearing on Capitol Hill. At the same time, we are learning new details about the attempted assassination of former President Trump. We'll have more on that when we're back.

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