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Polls on Possible VP Picks; Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is Interviewed about Presidential Politics; Inside Story of John Roberts and Trump's Immunity Win; Covid Infections Spiking. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 30, 2024 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:34:08]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: In the nine days since Kamala Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, she has essentially tied Donald Trump in many polls really across the board. Some suggests that whoever she picks up as her running mate could help give her the edge.

The pool of VP candidates is starting to thin out now as of this morning, and I guess it should because they're kind of out of time. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer saying she's not part of the vetting process. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper withdrawing himself from the candidate pool just last night.

That is where CNN's Harry Enten comes in.

Talk to me about these VP candidates, and some of the top candidates if you will, how they do electorally in their states?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, so, you know, nationally, a lot of these guys aren't particularly well-known, so I think it's important to look at their home states, that people who know them best -

BOLDUAN: Right.

ENTEN: To get an understanding, OK -

BOLDUAN: Right.

ENTEN: Of how popular these guys can potentially be.

[08:35:00]

So, this is how much they outperform Biden's 2020 margin in there last election. All these guys ran in 2022.

And the one name that just stands up on this list is Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania. Look at this, he outperformed Biden by 14 points. My goodness, gracious. Look how large that it. Sometimes I think an answer is just staring you straight in the face. And in this particular case, Josh Shapiro is looking at you right in the face. Look, Mark Kelly's not too bad either, right? He outperformed Biden by

five points. And keep in mind, he was running in a federal race, which isn't quite apples and apples, right, with a gubernatorial, statewide race. But still, five points, not bad, outran all the other Democrats in Arizona.

Tim Walz, who seems to have been picking up some sort of momentum on social media. But look at this, he only outperformed Biden by 0.6 points. Very much on a different planet than let's say a Josh Shapiro, who's the clear runaway winner on this particular metric.

BOLDUAN: Isn't there proof that a VP candidate can help them carry a state?

ENTEN: Right. So, we look at all of this, right, and we kind of - OK, what does this exactly mean? There is one proven effect for a VP, right? And it is, in fact, this home-state effect.

Look, it's not necessarily particularly large. It's 0.5 to two points on average added to their running mate's margin compared to the baseline. But you know how close elections -

BOLDUAN: I was going to say, that's how much the (INAUDIBLE). Yes.

ENTEN: This is the whole - whole ballgame. I mean Pennsylvania last time was decided by 1.2 points. You look at Arizona, it was decided by 0.3 points. If you're able to add 0.5 to two points, that could all of a sudden help you capture a state like Arizona or Pennsylvania, especially when you've got guys like Shapiro, who outran Biden by 14 points, or Mark Kelly, who outran Biden by five points. They could definitely be the types of candidates who could help put one of those two states over the top.

BOLDUAN: Well, which of the top candidate's home states is most likely - maybe most important for Harris or Trump to win?

ENTEN: Yes, there you go. So, let's say you're choosing between a Mark Kelly and you're choosing between him and a Josh Shapiro, which of these two states is the one that you actually want to provide that boost to? So, this will give you an idea, all right. The chance that this state puts either Harris or Trump over the top in the Electoral College. Once again, look at Pennsylvania as the clear runaway winner here. A 30 percent chance, a 30 percent chance that that is the state that puts you over the top in the Electoral College.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

ENTEN: Arizona, it's just a 4 percent. Minnesota's less than a 3 percent. Why is Pennsylvania so important? Well, it has so many electoral votes. It has 19 electoral votes, right? So, if you're able to put that in your back pocket, all of a sudden your electoral map for Kamala Harris becomes that much easier and it makes Donald Trump's map a lot more harder.

BOLDUAN: Not -

ENTEN: Or a lot harder, I should say.

BOLDUAN: Not - a lot more harder is also a way to say it.

ENTEN: (INAUDIBLE).

BOLDUAN: Not leading us to any conclusion, though, of where she'll end up, but -

ENTEN: No.

BOLDUAN: Interesting nonetheless.

ENTEN: Interesting nonetheless. I don't know which way she'll go. But the math points in a very clear direction in my mind.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see you, Harry. Thanks.

ENTEN: Nice to see you.

BOLDUAN: John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, with us now, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, and the chair of the Judiciary Committee.

Senator, have you received your vetting materials for the vice presidential pick?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I'm taking a pass on that. I enjoy being a senator from Illinois.

BERMAN: Do you care to lobby for your Senate colleague Mark Kelly in this process this morning?

DURBIN: Well, we have a lot of good people in the race, and it sounds like a politician's answer, but it's true. I mean I listened to the analysis before this. The - arguments can be made for JB Pritzker of Illinois, a very successful governor who has shown some real leadership and loyalty to the ticket. I mean you can go through a long list of possibilities. But the bottom line is, the decision has to be made and soon. Just a few days remain before the ballot names have to be submitted to the states.

BERMAN: Senator, the Trump campaign and its associates have started running ads against Vice President Harris. And "The New York Times" this morning has noted how she has shifted some of her positions since she was first running for president in 2019 in 2020. I'm just going to read you a paragraph from "The Times" article. She changed her position on fracking in Pennsylvania. She released that just Friday. And "The Times" says, "in addition to change her position on fracking, campaign officials say she now backed the Biden administration's budget requests for increased funding for border enforcement, no longer supported a single-payer health insurance program, and now echoed Mr. Biden's call for banning assault weapons, but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government, "which she apparently backed before. How do you think voters feel, Senator, about a candidate who does shift positions?

DURBIN: Well, the issue may be so central to the campaign that it makes a significant difference. But I think the bottom line is, the voters judge these candidates in their entirety. They have an image of Donald Trump. They have an image of Kamala Harris. And that propels them to make a decision on how to vote.

Take a look at what's happened since Joe Biden stepped out of the race and Kamala Harris stepped in. There's been a dramatic shift of young people, for example, and their opinion of whether this race is important.

[08:40:00]

So, it's in - the entirety of the career of these individual candidates, as well as all of the positions they take. It's seldom that one position is going to decide a vote.

BERMAN: Because the Republicans and the Trump campaign are now trying to label the vice president as a liberal. What will it take to keep that from sticking?

DURBIN: Well, they're going to beat her with that as long as they can possibly do it, try to make an impression, but I think they're going to find that a former

process, state attorney general in California, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee with me, has a lot more to her background that just simple labeling.

BERMAN: One thing that may have backfired on Republicans is - are comments from Senator J.D. Vance. He made them in 2021. K-file, CNN, has reported that he actually made them over a period of time repeatedly about people who don't have children, suggesting that people who don't have children, a word he used, or - can be sociopaths. And then he used the phrase childless cat ladies at one point to describe then senator and Vice President Kamala Harris.

I want to play you what president - former President Trump said about this last night. Listen.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All he said is he - he does like - I mean, for him, he likes family. I think a lot of people like family. And sometimes it doesn't work out. And you know why it doesn't? You don't meet the right person. Or you don't meet any person. But you're just as good, in many cases a lot better than a person that's in a family situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, Trump is saying, maybe being single makes you better than being in a family situation. But why do you think these comments have been so resonant? DURBIN: Because an effective candidate for president should not be

saying negative things about people who are childless. Some of them made - have made the decision to be childless, and some have tried very valiantly to raise a family and they've just been physically unable to do so. Both childless and families deserve representation from the very best candidates for president. J.D. Vance's comments are troubling at the - at a minimum.

BERMAN: Senator, you're going to hold hearings today on the Secret Service and their response, or lack of response, to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, including, I believe, testimony from the now acting Secret Service director. How has your faith in the ability of the Secret Service changed over the last few weeks given that attempt?

DURBIN: Listen, we hear lots of theories about international assassins and terrorists and their threat to highly elected officials in the United States and - and elaborate schemes and technology. This was a 20-year-old community college student who defied the best expertise of the United States and the Secrets Service and law enforcement in Pennsylvania and locally, and came within an inch of killing a former president of the United States. You could say to yourself, what in the hell happened here? We're supposed to be better than that. We have thousands of peoples who are - people who are in government and responsible for keeping these elected officials safe. That's why we're having this hearing this morning.

BERMAN: What do you hope to find out?

DURBIN: How we failed. And we did fail. And whether we can avoid that in the future. And I take it personally. We're 20 days away from a Democratic convention in my home - not my home town, but the town I represent, Chicago. And I'm proud to represent it. We want to make sure we do everything to keep every person safe who visits our city.

BERMAN: Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate your time.

DURBIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, CNN has exclusive new reporting about what really happened behind the scenes at the Supreme Court before the six out of three justices delivered Donald Trump his big immunity win. And, perhaps most notable, is something we did not see from Chief Justice John Roberts.

CNN's Joan Biskupic is joining us now to explain.

Joan, this is your excellent reporting. Let's just state that as fact now.

What did you learn happened behind the scenes to get the - to what is a hugely consequential decision, not just of course for Donald Trump, but for all the presidents in the future? JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That's right, Sara. And you're correct to even point out what we've all known of John Roberts to this point. You know, we know that he is a chief justice who has really tried to get compromise between the right and left, especially on these important questions of presidential powers. And he also has been insistent about how once a judge dons the black robe, he leaves his or her political affiliation behind.

Remember back in 2018 when he admonished then President Trump himself and said, "we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges, or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."

And, you know, so we go into this, Sara, believing that we're going to have him working between the sides. But what I found out in my reporting this summer, Sara, is that when the justices met in private the day after the oral arguments, they're in private, the nine of them in this oak paneled conference room near the justice -- chief justice's chambers.

[08:45:13]

As they went around the table, it was a hard and fast 6-3 vote with six - the six Republican-appointed conservatives on one side, ruling for former President Donald Trump, and the three Democrat-appointed liberals, ruling for special counsel Jack Smith in his effort to try to bring the former president to a criminal prosecution. There was no effort by the chief justice in this case to reach out to the left at all. He tried to persuade his colleagues not to think about - not to consider Donald Trump, to look toward the future.

In fact, at one point he wrote in his final opinion, "unlike the political branches and the public at large, we cannot afford to fixate exclusively or even primarily on present exigencies."

And that meant in the end, Sara, that with sort of the liberals cut off, that he was negotiating only with the justices on his side, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

SIDNER: And what was her role? What was Amy Coney Barrett's role in all this?

BISKUPIC: Yes, it was - it was crucial. She was the lone member of the conservative side who tried to find some middle ground, which is a place that John Roberts once upon a time was at. She was the one who tried to find some middle ground.

She signed all of the chief's - she - all but one part of the chief's statement giving this broad immunity. For the most part she was with him. But then she wrote separately to sort of put a different spin on the framework, one that sort of emphasized how special counsel Jack Smith's case could go forward in the future, and she also broke off from the chief justice and her conservative brethren when she wrote that she did not agree with them that evidence of official acts couldn't even be used in a separate criminal trial that had nothing to do with the Jack Smith prosecution. For example, the Manhattan hush money trial. And already that part of the opinion is reverberating up in New York, Sara.

SIDNER: Of course.

I do want to ask you, you know, you talk about Roberts not kind of trying to get everyone to coalesce. What does this say about him like for the term. Has he been consistent with the same standing?

BISKUPIC: This was a very aggressive term for Chief Justice Roberts, Sara. He was with, you know - let's remind everyone where he was two years ago in the Dobbs abortion ruling. He was alone. He stood alone between the five conservatives to his right, who voted to totally reverse Roe v. Wade, and then the liberals on his left, who didn't want it to be dismantled in that way.

But this time he's not alone at all. He certainly has moved - moved over to his colleagues on the right and is fully in control. And the big question is exactly what you asked, is this his future? Is he going to throw his lot in completely with his colleagues on the right so he can control these decisions more? You know, they didn't need him in that Dobbs ruling. They had five for a majority. But I don't think he wants to get into a position again where they don't need him. And certainly in this really big case, probably a case that will define him for many years going forward, he was going to, you know, just really swing for the fences and give something to former President Donald Trump, even though he wanted to emphasize this was about the future of the presidency, irrespective of who is in the White House, Sara.

SIDNER: Getting all this great information, Joan, especially in your book, "Nine Black Robes," very well done.

Thank you for all that reporting. Really interesting.

BISKUPIC: Thank you.

SIDNER: Kate.

BOLDUAN: A dragonfly-pocalypse, people. People enjoying a day at the beach faced a swarm of millions of dragonflies that literally just appeared to be blowing in from the ocean. You can be scared now, and we'll talk about why.

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[08:53:38]

BERMAN: This morning, protesters on the streets in Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of a presidential race that has been marred by accusations of election fraud and disputed by the opposition. This morning, the Carter Center, one of the few independent institutions that was allowed to monitor the election, has canceled the publication of a preliminary report that was supposed to be released today. An Illinois sheriff is acknowledging publicly now that his department failed Sonya Massey. Massey was killed in her kitchen by a deputy. He was responding to her 911 call of a possible prowler. The sheriff is asking for forgiveness.

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SHERIFF JACK CAMPBELL, SANGAMON COUNTY, ILLINOIS: We failed Sonya. We failed Sonya's family and friends. We failed our community. And I stand here today before you with my arms wide open and I ask for your forgiveness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The deputy was fired after the shooting and faces three counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

The FDA is issuing a new warning about popular weight loss drugs. Not necessarily a new warning about the drug itself, but about the dosing of the medication. The FDA says it has received reports of doses errors as a result of people measuring in self-administering incorrect amounts of the drug. It is urging people to check with their doctors to make sure they are taking the correct dose.

And Rhode Island under attack by a huge swarm of dragonflies. And Rhode Island is not that big. So, any size swarm is a series threat to that state.

[08:55:04]

You can see what happened on the beach there. One witness compared the sound of the wings to the noise of an airport. Also said it tasted like chicken. We have booked a survivor of this dragonfly onslaught. Someone who lived through this attack. And we will speak with them next hour.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: For just a second turn and look at that video. What I'm struck by is how calmly people - there's a man who's like not even - so non-plussed. He's like, I'm just going to sit here in my chair. I would have been less non-plussed.

BERMAN: Well, I will say -

BOLDUAN: I would have been plussed.

BERMAN: It is hard to get up from those low chairs. It does. I mean you're sunken in, right? And there's a lot of groaning. Maybe they just don't want to go through the embarrassment of that.

BOLDUAN: Those are big dragonflies too. I'm scared.

All right, we're going to clearly focus on this later in the show. So, standby to standby. Not only do you get dragonflies this summer, but you also get Covid.

Summer is here and so is Covid. From a cluster of cases at the - at the Olympics, to President Biden testing positive earlier this month, infections are clearly on the rise. What you need to know about the summer surge this time around. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here with that.

It's good to see you, Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

BOLDUAN: We'll start with Covid and then I would like your medical take on the dragonflies, but we'll get there.

GUPTA: Plussed. Plussed.

BOLDUAN: Plussed. Exactly.

What - what are you hearing and what are you seeing about this surge this summer?

GUPTA: Well, you know, we start to see these summer surges. I mean that's one of the things about Covid. I think that's sort of the headline here. You typically think of respiratory viruses mostly being in the fall and the winter, sort of getting a lull in the summertime. At least over the last few years now, it's sort of settled into this summer surge.

So, one of the ways they measure this is through waste water surveillance, sort of getting an idea how much virus or we simply seeing in the environment. And going back to 2022, you can see, there's obviously a big winter surge back in January sort of timeframe then. But then it came down. And now, over the last few years, you see these summer surges.

We'll still see, Kate, how this sort of settles out over time. And there might be reasons for these summer surges. We don't know what the pattern will be long term, but it could be that - that people, that this virus has just adapted to warmer and more humid sort of environments.

It could also be, as the weather is getting warmer, there are more people actually congregating inside, and that causes the spread of the virus. It could be a combination of those things.

But what we do know is, if you look at the map right now, what this translates to is about 36 states where you're seeing high or moderately high levels of infection, mostly in the south, but here in Georgia, but also where you are up in New York, and California as well. So warm, humid climates, or also very population dense climates, that seems to be the factor here.

We don't know still, Kate, what this will look like a few years from now, if this is going to be a continuous sort of summer and then winter sort of by phasic surge, but it's looking that way right now.

BOLDUAN: Has anything changed about what we should do if/when we get Covid these days?

GUPTA: Yes. And I think the best way to sort of frame that is that it's probably similar to how you probably thought about flu in the past. And it's not so much time-based in terms of the guidance in terms of what you should do, but symptom-based.

So, you remember you used to hear five days, ten days, things like that. What it really is, is when you're no longer having symptoms, and what that specifically means is if you had a fever, you're off those fever reducing medicines for at least 24 hours without a fever. Then you're pretty much clear, except after a Covid diagnosis you should wear a mask for the next five days because we know even after you're no longer symptomatic, what the data will show is you still have a possibility of spread. So, that's sort of it. Just focus on the symptoms more than anything else.

BOLDUAN: And President Biden, we know that his doctor said he was taking Paxlovid. Is Paxlovid now for everyone? I know, you know, when it first debuted kind of in the pandemic, there was some - you should use - you should take it if this, maybe not if that. What's you - what are you thinking?

GUPTA: Yes. This is still a little bit tough because I think if you look at the original trials of Paxlovid, it was primarily studied in people who were not vaccinated. So, it was a little bit harder to translate all that data into the vaccinated population as well.

I think for people who - who are high risk, this is still a good medicine in particular. I don't think it's now safe for everyone. It is authorized for adults. There's an emergency use authorization going for people as young as 12-years-old.

But if you have a risk factor, obesity, asthma, something else that increases your risk, then, yes.

And if you look at like what does that translate to, it does - does mean a meaningful reduction in hospitalization.

[08:59:58]

About 51 percent reduction in hospitalization for those who took Paxlovid, that sort of met those criteria versus those who didn't.

So, I wouldn't say for everyone, but if you're high risk because of age or something else.