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Harris Campaign Plotting Path to Electoral Victory; Delta Flight Cancelations Finally Slowing Down After Chaos; Evictions in Some Major Cities Now Worse Than Before COVID. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 24, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The battle is on over the battleground states. Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign lays out their planned path to victory, brand new details this morning on how Harris plans to beat Donald Trump.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We also have new details on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress today. Who will and will not be there.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Day six of the Delta debacle, the airline still struggling to get back on its feet days after other airlines are pretty much back to normal, sparking a federal investigation now. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is our guest.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman and Sarah Sidner. This is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: Breaking overnight, a new campaign memo revealing how the Harris campaign is planning their path to victory. The vice president's team believes having Harris at the top of the ticket has caused a dramatic shift and created an expanded universe of swing voters, voters the campaign is confident they can win over. Central to their plan to win is an optimistic push to go beyond the so called blue wall of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Today, the vice president heads to Indianapolis before traveling to Houston, Texas.

Meanwhile, President Biden is preparing to address the nation tonight in a highly anticipated speech. He is expected to reveal why he has made the decision to drop out of the presidential race.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the White House. Arlette, tell us a little bit more about the Harris campaign and how it sort of believes that they've got this proper path to victory.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, the Harris campaign is arguing that this 2024 race is now more fluid than ever, as Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to lead the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump in November.

Now, the now Harris campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, released a new memo this morning outlining their views of the race, arguing that they believe Harris can expand on the support from 2020, specifically appealing to black, Latino and young voters. And they also see an opening for her with undecided voters at this point in race.

Now, as for the electoral map, Jen O'Malley Dillon argued that they will be playing offense in all of the battle ground states, in both that critical blue wall as well as the Sun Belt. It's a bit of a shift from just two weeks ago when the campaign had argued that, for President Biden, the clearest path to victory was through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and simply said that the Sun Belt states are we're not completely out of reach. So, they really view this realignment in the electoral map and the type of voters that Harris can appeal to. And now that she's expected to lead the Democratic ticket.

Now, Vice President Harris made her first stop in a battleground state as the presidential contender yesterday in Wisconsin, where she really offered the first glimpse of how she plans to make her arguments against Trump, really leaning in to more past experience as a prosecutor. She also spoke about the need to expand economic opportunity for middle class Americans and really leaned into the issue of abortion rights, something that she has championed for much of the past six months in this campaign.

Take a listen to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, as you could hear, the crowd there was quite enthusiastic, and the campaign is also pointing to some grassroots enthusiasm that they're seeing. As of this morning, they say that she has raised $126 million as of Sunday.

[07:05:05]

Now, to put that in comparison, Biden raised $127 million in the month of June alone, so really highlighting the fundraising momentum that she has at this moment.

Now, back here at the White House, President Biden is preparing to deliver perhaps one of the most important and historic speeches of his long political career. The president will be speaking in primetime at 8:00 P.M. from the Oval Office, really outlining his decision to step aside in this race. We're told that the president has been working on this speech with one of his top advisers, Mike Donilon, basically since the announcement that he was dropping out of the race went public, and he's really excited to explain in more detail why he decided to make this move, but also try to lay out the path ahead.

Of course, President Biden himself is heading into a lame duck presidency now, but he has insisted that he's not going away. He wants to get more done in domestic and foreign policy. And, of course, he has pledged to remain out there supporting Harris to get her elected in November.

SIDNER: It is historic. It is interesting. We haven't seen a speech like this since 1968 with Lyndon B. Johnson stepping away from the campaign. Arlette Saenz, thank you so much there, live for us at the White House. John?

BERMAN: So, for the first time since Vice President Harris became his apparent opponent, we will see Donald Trump on the campaign trail today. In a rare call with reporters, we got a preview of what he might say.

CNN's Alayna Treene with us this morning with the latest. Good morning, Alayna.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Good morning, John. So Donald Trump will step back onto the campaign trail today in an entirely new political landscape in what has really shaped up to be an unprecedented election year. Now, this North Carolina rally is his first since Biden ended his campaign over the weekend, and also the first since Kamala Harris really seems destined to be the one to face off with Donald Trump in November.

Now, I've spoken with Donald Trump's senior advisers, and they've been very closely watching what Arlette just laid out, which is the surge in Democratic donations and Democratic enthusiasm in recent days. And we know that his team has been reworking kind of their campaign playbook, which originally, of course, was designed to go after an unpopular 81-year-old. And now they're reimagining what that could look like if Kamala Harris ends up being the Democratic nominee.

Now, Donald Trump has been workshopping new lines of attack on Harris, some of which I'm told we should expect today during that North Carolina rally speech, but he also previewed some of those during a call with reporters yesterday. This is the first type of call he has held this cycle. Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Kamala Harris was appointed border czar, as you know, in March of 2021. And since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country.

And as weak on crime prosecutor and sanctuary jurisdiction of San Francisco, Kamala refused to seek the death penalty against anybody.

I agreed to a debate with Joe Biden. But I want to debate her, and she'll be no different because they have the same policies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, John, you'll hear it, like I said, similar attacks on the trail from Donald Trump today. But, look, his team is really racing to try and define Kamala Harris. Even though she is the vice president, his team, I'm told, believes that there is going to be a period where she's doing some more name branding and more of the country's getting to know her. So, that's where a lot of his attention is going to be focused.

I'm also told that they really are generally going to use the same lines of attack against Harris, as they would have with Biden. They want to focus on crime, immigration, the border. But, of course, some people close to Trump also privately acknowledge that the race is entirely different. And this is very much, you know, unclear what it's going to look like with a new opponent. John?

BERMAN: Well, one thing is clear. What he said about Harris and immigration was not true. She was never appointed border czar. She was put in charge of diplomatic efforts with the so-called Northern Triangle, three Central American countries, which has seen a large number of immigrants coming to the United States. But the border czar comment is one we're hearing from Trump and his allies, no doubt.

Alayna Treene, thank you very much for that. Kate?

BOLDUAN: So, six days after that global I.T. outage brought air travel to a standstill, Delta Airlines still trying to work it out. Passengers still stranded, even as other airlines have been able to get back to business as usual. Delta now under federal investigation and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is our guest, next.

Plus, newly released body cam video is showing officers and Secret Service gathered on the roof minutes after killing the man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. The FBI headed to Capitol Hill today to testify about that investigation and those security failures.

And too close for comfort. Whale watching is awesome until the whale breaches and lands on your boat.

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BOLDUAN: The Delta meltdown day six. Delta Airlines cancelled more than 500 flights Tuesday, this all having to do with that global I.T. mess that brought U.S. airlines across the board to a screeching halt and stranded thousands and thousands of passengers in airports for days.

But while most companies have been able to get back online and back to normal since Friday when this began, Delta has not. An airline analyst estimates that the service meltdown has cost the most profitable American airline $163 million just through Monday of this week.

[07:15:03]

The Department of Transportation has now launched a new an investigation into what is happening here with Delta, and it says that more than half a million passengers have been impacted. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins us right now. Secretary, thank you so much for jumping on. Let's see what today brings, maybe some signs that things aren't off to as bad a start for today for Delta as yesterday. But the fact of the matter is the other airlines have already bounced back. What is the answer you have been given for why Delta has not?

PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Well, that's exactly why we're doing this investigation. You know, more than once now, we've seen something happen where there's some kind of shock to the system, like a major storm, or in this case, the CrowdStrike outage on Friday. And every airline is impacted. Most of them get on their feet, but one of them doesn't. We want to have a better understanding of why.

Delta has said that their systems were more vulnerable. They were more reliant on things that were related to this CrowdStrike software. But airlines need to have resilient operations. They need to be set up so that if something is out of whack or something goes down, they can absorb that and can recover.

There's really two things we're focusing on in our investigation of Delta. One is that question of what's going on that makes them somehow less able to recover than the other airlines. And the other is the customer care piece of things when you have a big disruption. Again, whether they're talking about a storm, widespread tech mechanical issue, you got to surge your customer service capacity. Because what's even worse than getting stuck being in an airport wondering if you're going to have to sleep on the floor is not being able to get a hold of anybody on the phone or even on these chat systems or in person. You know, one of the most upsetting sets of images and stories that I've been hearing is about passengers in a line of about a hundred people or more waiting to speak to one customer service agent at an airport there to help them.

So, those are the main areas we're looking at, the system's resiliency, how did this happen, and then the customer service, and why aren't there more people ready to help these customers navigate those disruptions, get them the hotel, the voucher, the rebooking, whatever they need.

BOLDUAN: You need to get answers to those questions to decide next steps, of course, but other than a scolding, and I don't mean that flippantly, but other than a scolding, what is the actual accountability that could come from this investigation?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, we had a record enforcement action against Southwest, totaling $140 million in response to the meltdown that took place with their airline, which has some things in common with this. You had a big winter storm. Most of the other airlines got back on their feet within a couple of days. Southwest went very differently.

And the idea of having that high level of enforcement action is about 30 times what our department's ever done in the past is that we wanted to send a signal to the industry that there is a new, higher standard of expectation and accountability. And, by the way, importantly, while $35 million of that was a cash fine, the majority of that enforcement action, that penalty took the shape of money going back to customers and back to passengers.

One thing that we have done a lot of work on, especially since we arrived, is making sure passengers get their money back. And I want any Delta passenger caught up in this to know, if your flight is canceled and you don't take the rebooking, you are entitled to a cash refund. Delta needs to provide that. And if they don't, let us know. Our website, flightrights.gov, has not just good information for you, but also a way to file a complaint and let us know if you're having a problem.

BOLDUAN: Yesterday, the chair of Delta's Pilots Union wrote a letter to other Delta pilots. In it, he said this. I share your frustration in seeing passengers stranded while we, as crew members, experience the same unacceptable obstacles that we face during every aircraft regular operation, the acronym for it, the inability to contact the company in any capacity and the feeling that we've been abandoned in the system.

What I pick up on here is that the obstacles we face during every irregular operation, if the pilots feel abandoned and feel like this is reoccurring, can the Department of Transportation do anything to ensure this doesn't happen again?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, that's again, part of the scope of our investigation, and it's a really good point. This isn't just frustrating for passengers. This is frustrating for employees. When you have those flight attendants, pilots, they, of course, did nothing to cause this problem. And I would urge those who are caught up in this to take note of that, that so many other people who work for Delta have been affected.

Part of this is specifically because it looks like the, the meltdown relates to Delta's crew scheduling system which has not been able to keep up. More broadly, you know, nobody should have to deal with this. And our authorities mainly relate to the care of passengers and customers.

[07:20:03]

But there's a real concern about the effect this sort of thing has on workers, too. And it's a reminder of the importance of every company investing in the kind of resilience to prevent their customers and their workers from facing these kinds of problems.

BOLDUAN: Real quick, just on a human level, it just doesn't make sense that in today's day and age, you can't control all the latent, reboot a system this many days later. Should people have any confidence that another I.T. outage will not cause this kind of damage again?

BUTTIGIEG: Look, bigger picture, this has clearly exposed a lot of vulnerabilities, not just in the airline sector, but in the entire global economy. The fact that a simple glitch like this ricocheted around the world is a real cause for concern. And, again, I think the real watchword here is resilience. How can we make sure our systems are positioned to quickly recover when something like this happens? But I want to note, most of the airline sector did quickly recover. Things were different at Delta, and that's exactly why we're investigating them.

BOLDUAN: Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thanks for coming in this morning. John?

BERMAN: All right. This morning, eviction rates in big cities around the U.S. hitting record highs. We've got new reporting on what is causing this surge.

And altered images, A.I. and deepfakes, misinformation surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris has skyrocketed since she entered the race.

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[07:25:00]

SIDNER: News this morning, a troubling mix of surging rent and expiring COVID-era protections is catapulting evictions to levels higher than they were before the pandemic. Renters living in cities, like Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix are all seeing the spike hitting a record number in January.

CNN's Matt Egan is here with us with more. This is a huge issue, not just for those being evicted, for property owners as well. This has been a big contention and now we're seeing these numbers. What's going on?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes. So, this is a growing problem, and it's a bit surprising given how low unemployment is right now, but we are seeing it in cities across America the eviction. Lab at Prince University tracks all this. And they find that eviction filings have climbed well above pre-COVID levels in Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Nashville, Minneapolis, Gainesville, Florida, most not all, but most of those cities are actually in the Sun Belt where we know millions of Americans have flocked to in recent years. They tracked 34 cities and they say more than half of them are above those pre-COVID levels and the vast majority of these evictions are for issues related to not paying their rent.

So, why is this happening? Well, there's a few things going on. First of all, during COVID, policymakers, they came to the rescue of renters. There were these eviction moratoriums. There was almost $50 billion in aid. All of that has dried up later. On top of that, the fact that life is just more expensive right now, right? Americans are paying more for daycare and car insurance and groceries, leaves less money to pay for rent.

Also, some of these cities and states, they've actually made it easier, cheaper, faster for landlords to give renters the boot when they're not paying. And then, perhaps most importantly, it's just affected -- rent has gone up right. Americans are paying on average 21 percent more than they did in March of 2020. But in some cities, some cities where evictions are up like Las Vegas like Columbus, Ohio, the cost of rent has gone up even more.

One economist that apartment list, he told me there's just been this erosion of affordability, especially at the low end. He said, affordable housing has just disappeared. Now, I spoke to a woman here in New York who works as an actress. She said she fell behind during COVID on rent because her roommate moved out and she didn't want to get a random room. You can't blame her, right? Eventually, though, she owed $15,000 and her landlord gave her just days to come up with that money. She said it was humiliating where she felt like a failure. And she did what a lot of people are doing in the situation. She turned to GoFundMe. She started a campaign, ended up raising more than enough money to avoid eviction.

But, listen, that's one of the positive stories here. There's a lot of people who don't have that kind of network to raise that much money that fast and they end up in a worse situation.

SIDNER: What's interesting here, Matt, is that you named certain places that are not known for having high rents, like Houston or Phoenix. Those are known in those areas for having a lower rent. So it's just interesting to see like how difficult this is for people and bad news for the economy, potentially.

EGAN: Yes. We've got to keep an eye on it.

SIDNER: Matt Egan, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thank you, Sara.

SIDNER: Kate?

BOLDUAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to Capitol Hill today. He's going to be addressing a joint session of Congress, and a divided Congress at that, over his leadership during Israel's war against Hamas. Why lawmakers say they are not attending his speech.

And we just learned who will be the female flag bearer for Team USA at the Olympics opening ceremony. We'll be right back.

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