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Source: High-Level Hezbollah CMDR Survives Israeli Strike In Beirut; Source: Harris And Running Mate To Visit Battleground States Next Week; Project 2025 Director Steps Down Amid Backlash From Trump; Soon: Kamala Harris Arrives In Georgia For Campaign Rally. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired July 30, 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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[15:00:06]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're following breaking news out of the Middle East and new details on that Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon. A senior Lebanese government official is telling CNN that the high- level Hezbollah commander the IDF was targeting survived the attack. We have these live pictures now from Beirut.

Israel had blamed that commander for a recent rocket attack on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children. Lebanese state media is reporting the attack was conducted by a drone that fired three missiles. The IDF has yet to provide any details about exactly how that strike was conducted.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We are covering all of the latest developments, so let's start now with CNN Senior International Correspondent, Ben Wedeman. He is in Beirut live for us.

Ben, this was, nonetheless, a significant escalation, but this news coming that they did not kill their intended target.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I was on the phone with a senior Lebanese government official who told me that Fuad Shukr, the alleged target of this attack, survived, that he was not killed in this Israeli strike that happened about two-hour - just over two hours ago, just before 8 PM local time in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood, which is an area where it's known that many of Hezbollah's leaders live and operate.

Now, in the aftermath, we've seen that the building that was struck, about five stories of that residential building part were destroyed. We understand from the Lebanese National News Agency, the official news agency, that at least one woman was killed and several other people were injured.

Now, this attack is not a complete surprise in the sense that since Saturday and that deadly missile strike on the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights that left 12 children dead, that there would be an Israeli response. But the fact that it was a strike inside Beirut, which is considered by Hezbollah a red line that the Israelis are not supposed to cross, certainly raises tensions.

We've heard in the past the secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that if Beirut is struck, Hezbollah will strike similar targets inside Israel. We haven't heard yet from officials in Hezbollah about their reaction and their next move. They don't normally telegraph that, but certainly some sort of response is inevitable. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. Ben Wedeman, thank you so much. Let's also discuss this now with CNN chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner and CNN Military Analyst, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

First to you, Alex.

The significance of the fact that they didn't get their man.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The prompting questions of whether they'll try again. Fuad Shukr, you know, is not only wanted by the Israelis, but by the United States as well. He's got a $5 million bounty on his head. He's a designated terrorist. He had a central role, the U.S. says, in the deaths of 241 Marines at the Marine barracks bombing in 1983.

So this is a very high-level commander. The IDF came out quickly saying that this was who they were going after, and now we're learning that he was not killed. So will the Israelis try again?

These past few days have really been a new moment in this conflict, prompting those fears yet again of a wider war. The strike by Hezbollah on Saturday against Majdal Shams, which killed 12 children, was extraordinarily tragic.

It was, I'm told, a mistake by Hezbollah, an errant rocket that landed there in the occupied Golan Heights. At the same time, Israel sees it as an attack on their territory, and they were going to respond.

This was a response. Was it the response? Will it go broader than this, particularly because it appeals - appears that they didn't get their target? That we don't know.

But what we've been hearing in the lead-up to this from American and Western officials is that the Israeli response would be relatively restrained, that neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants this broader conflict. But now you have this strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut and against a senior commander. So there are still a lot of questions about where this is going to go.

SANCHEZ: And to that point, Beth, I wonder, how do you expect Hezbollah may retaliate, especially given the news that who the IDF was targeting made it out alive?

[15:05:00] BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I'm not sure. I think it makes some difference that they didn't get him in terms of forcing the hands of Nasrallah to, you know, go full out. I think we have to think about where this was. You know, this is the center of kind of Hezbollah control in Beirut. Some press reports say it's across the street from Hezbollah's leadership council building.

And, you know, it's not just about Nasrallah, I think every member of Hezbollah is going to be saying, you know, this is like gloves off, right? Israel hasn't done a strike against Hezbollah in Beirut. And U.S. officials were saying beforehand, if you hit a Hezbollah site in Beirut, not talking about who died, just hit that - a site that is controlled by Hezbollah, that's significant in Beirut, all things could break loose.

And so I think that we should expect at least, you know, major missile strikes in the north. But it could be more. We just don't know yet. But I think that, you know, we have to have our seatbelts fastened here. This is why they call it an escalatory cycle, is because, you know, things kind of can get out of control.

KEILAR: And Col. Leighton, as we learn that this strike did not kill the intended target, and certainly you've seen the video of what this looked like, we do know that it caused casualties, that at least one person, a woman, is dead, that there are multiple people injured, some of them seriously. How are you seeing this strike and are you surprised that it didn't get the target at all?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Brianna, I think it's interesting that the way in which the Israelis struck this war is to use drones and to use a fairly limited explosive missile to go after - three explosive missiles to go after the targets. Now, one thing that occurred to me when I was hearing all of the reports that we were getting in is the possibility that the Israelis may have timed the strike so that Fuad Shukr was actually not present when the target was hit.

If that's the case, then it's - the Israelis are basically sending a message that we can get you and we can pick a time of our choosing, because according to what we've heard, at least from some of the reports, is that Fuad Shukr actually left the building just before the strike occurred. So if that's the case, then that might mean that the Israelis were sending a warning shot and trying to avoid that escalatory ladder that Beth was talking about.

KEILAR: Or could it have meant, Cedric, that they didn't realize he just left as well?

LEIGHTON: That's also possible, absolutely. And one of the key things, Brianna, to think about when it comes to these kinds of drone strikes is that they are absolutely based on really precise intelligence. If they don't have the intelligence, if there's some fault in the intelligence or if there's an inaccuracy in the intelligence, then things can go wrong very, very quickly. And in this particular case, that could have happened. The other possibility was that they timed it in such a way that they were following him, they knew that he was leaving, and that they decided to strike the building because they also had the same information that the U.S. has, was that the Hezbollah attack on the Golan Heights was a mistake, a misfire basically by one of their rockets. So they wanted to respond because of the death toll, but they didn't want to respond in an escalatory fashion.

So all of these things are possible. We really don't know yet exactly how this is going to play out, but it's certainly something I think that we should consider.

SANCHEZ: And speaking to that strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, CNN obtained a new video showing the moment that the rocket struck, that football pitch where some young people, some children and teenagers have been practicing, ultimately 12 youngsters were killed. We do want to warn you, this footage is disturbing. Let's watch.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Foreign language) --

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KEILAR: Horrific.

SANCHEZ: Horrific. You hear air sirens and then you hear the sound of children screaming and fleeing. A young person there obviously falling, holding the camera and then picking it up and is apparently able to get away.

Alex, to you, this - according to U.S. officials that you've talked to, was an errant missile that hit the Golan Heights. But this back and forth in the northern border of Israel with Lebanon, it's been going on essentially since October 8th.

[15:10:01]

And there was talk from the White House today, Karine Jean-Pierre talking about a diplomatic solution, a path forward where we don't see an escalation. How much of that depends on what happens in Gaza?

MARQUARDT: A lot. Of course the fact that this was errant makes it no less tragic. But this was a community that would never have been expected to have been hit by a Hezbollah rocket. They're way up north in - up against the borders of Lebanon and Syria. We have 10s of thousands of Israelis who have fled south because of this fighting.

We often call it a tit-for-tat, but it really has been quite significant. But it has stayed below the level of an all-out war, which is why when we saw this strike happen on Saturday, there was a real worry that this was an escalation. The Israelis certainly treated it as escalatory.

Prime Minister Netanyahu went up there. We should note that the Druze Arabs who live up there do not consider themselves Israelis. But at the same time, this is just a - there was a horrible, horrible incident that befell that community.

U.S. officials do believe, many of them, that if they can get to a ceasefire in Gaza, then they can quieten (ph) that border. And it's not just about making it quiet. It's making it - establishing a situation in which those Israelis feel comfortable, they can go back home and Hezbollah would be pulled back from that border.

So I've been told in the past that progress on that diplomatic deal for Israel and Lebanon has made quite a bit of progress. Quite - they're close to success, but a lot of it does hinge on that war in Gaza and getting to a quiet there.

KEILAR: And Beth, it's a widely held view that Nasrallah doesn't want a big conflict with Israel, but there must be a line somewhere. What would change his mind to drive Hezbollah into a broader conflict with Israel?

SANNER: A lot of this has to depend, I think, on just what Hezbollah feels that they need to do in order to deter Israel from, you know, kind of the impunity of strikes against it, like the one that we saw today and, you know, that they retain power.

And so this is the - this is why it's impossible to say, because, you know, going back to war is absolutely unpopular in Lebanon. And people don't want war, and they will blame Hezbollah for that, a lot of them will. And so it's quite difficult. And I think we also can't forget kind of the Iran angle here.

This isn't about Hamas. Hezbollah really doesn't care that much about that. But Iran is, you know, it is a proxy and partner of Iran. And so, you know, some of this also depends on what the supreme leader wants. Supreme leader also doesn't want to go back or either or have a war either.

So it's - but it's impossible for us to tell. I mean, I think, you know, you kind of know it when you see it and you can accidentally get there.

KEILAR: Yes. You see this for a lot of people who don't seem to want war. There is a whole lot of war that we are witnessing. Beth, thank you, Alex, thank you. Colonel Leighton, we appreciate your insights as well.

And ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, we're learning that the Harris campaign is planning a big rollout next week for her VP pick. The details coming up.

Plus, the new acting director of the Secret Service questioned on Capitol Hill about the assassination attempt against former President Trump. What he revealed about the security failures on the day of the shooting.

SANCHEZ: And officials in California say a car fire started what is now the fifth largest wildfire in that state's history. Why the driver has been charged with arson. Those stories and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:24]

SANCHEZ: It's the sprint to Election Day, 98 days to go and Vice President Kamala Harris' running made decision appears imminent. A source telling CNN that Harris and her vice presidential pick will visit a series of battleground states next week, setting the stage for a major rollout.

KEILAR: And next hour, Vice President Kamala Harris lands in Georgia. President Biden flipped it blue in 2020, of course, and Harris's campaign says the energy is there to do it again. We'll see.

In the meantime, Republican VP nominee Sen. JD Vance is in Nevada. It's a battleground state, of course, but it's also a bellwether as Nevada has a history of siding with the winning presidential candidate. Kristen Holmes is following the Trump campaign.

And also, Kristen, some big Project 2025 news. Let's start with that.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. So let's just go over what Project 2025 is. It is an umbrella organization by The Heritage Foundation of all of these conservative think tanks that essentially put together in 180 day transition plan that they said was for any Republican future president. Obviously, that has been linked now to former President Donald Trump. Most of the people or many of the people are former Cabinet members or formerly served on the administration of Donald Trump. But it has become an enormous liability for the former president.

They have a lot of extreme views that they have put down on paper as the next administration's policy proposal proposals. And you started seeing backlash. One, when Democrats started using it in ads, started linking Donald Trump to it, saying these were his policy proposals. And then you started seeing Trump and the campaign really trying to backpedal away from Project 2025.

[15:20:02]

And now we have learned that amid all of this backlash, the head of Project 2025, Paul Dans, who is part of the Trump administration, has now stepped down.

This is not that surprising, given the rhetoric we have heard from Donald Trump. Just last week in Michigan in Grand Rapids, we were there. He started saying that it was full of extremists, that just because - just like the left has extremists that are far left, that Project 2025 was full of extremists that were far right.

Now, our own Steve Contorno did an entire breakdown of who had written some of the enormous amount of proposals. I mean, this is a brick when you look at it of policy proposals. Most of them or many of them were former Trump administration officials, and many of them are still people who advise Donald Trump, like Russ Vought, who was served at the Office of Management and Budget. People who are still in his circle, like Stephen Miller, that is who is part of 2025.

But clearly, as we step into this new phase of the campaign, he's no longer running against President Joe Biden. They are looking at this as even more of a liability as they face the vice president.

SANCHEZ: And Kristen, quickly, we brought you on to talk about Nevada. The Project 2025 news sort of took precedent, but what's going on in Nevada?

HOLMES: Nevada is an interesting state because obviously Democrats have continued to win. You know, there's a huge movement among union workers there. Democrats have had an infrastructure in that state for decades, really, they call it the Harry Reid infrastructure that he had put in state to get out Democratic voters.

There is some wiggle room there. If you talk to Republicans, they believe, particularly with Hispanic voters, of which there are a lot of in Nevada, they believe there is going to be a huge swell among Hispanic Latino voters in this election. The other part of this is those union rank and file members.

And I want to be very clear here. We're not talking about the head of the unions because generally these unions as a whole vote Democratic. They go Democratic. They support Democratic candidates. However, they do see an opening, they being the Trump campaign, with these rank and file union members, which there are a lot in Nevada.

And one of the big policy proposals, you hear Donald Trump say over and over again, is no tax on tips. Obviously, that is something that would greatly affect a economy like that in Nevada, Las Vegas, entertainment industry, where a lot of people there survive on tips.

KEILAR: Yes, huge there. Probably the number one issue for so many of them.

HOLMES: Yes.

KEILAR: Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.

A wealth of knowledge and information and reporting this afternoon.

SANCHEZ: Impressive, yes.

KEILAR: In Georgia, Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign is hoping to build on a surge of enthusiasm among Democrats while also angling for support from some Republicans. Trump has publicly feuded with Republican leaders in the state after he narrowly lost there back in 2020.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the Peach State's governor has since revealed that he didn't vote for Trump in the primaries. He actually said, Brian Kemp, that he didn't vote at all. Last week, the former lieutenant governor endorsed Harris. The Harris campaign sees those defections as a possible inroad to disenfranchise Republicans.

Let's discuss with CNN Senior Political Analyst, Ron Brownstein. He's also a senior editor for The Atlantic.

Ron, you wrote a new analysis for cnn.com arguing that Vice President Harris can do something President Biden was unable to and that is, quote, consolidate the voters who agree with her on abortion. What do the numbers tell us about how that coalition of voters could show up for Harris in some key battleground states?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it's something that's received almost no attention, but it really is one of the biggest changes in the landscape in '24 relative to the last few cycles. In 2020, three quarters, roughly three quarters of people who identified as pro-choice supporting abortion, legal abortion in all or most cases voted for Biden. In 22, Democratic House candidates again won three quarters of voters who supported abortion in all or most cases. And individual candidates like Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro won even more. They won over four-fifths of voters who described themselves as pro-choice.

Well, I collected a lot of unpublished polling data from CNN and other sources, Marquette, YouGov and it found that Biden this time was generally running at only around 60 percent among voters who support legal abortion. Significantly less than he did in 2020 and less than he needs in these battleground states.

And so the question now becomes, can Harris do better? She is certainly a better messenger on this issue. She doesn't carry the burden of doubts about her capacity to do the job that Joe Biden did. But Republicans believe there's another factor that has driven down Democratic support among these pro-choice voters, which is that they believe Donald Trump is less vulnerable on the issue and that other issues are looming more important for voters than they did in 22, particularly inflation and immigration. So we're going to see.

But this certainly seems like, Boris, the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest voters for Harris to bring back into her camp.

KEILAR: And you have also delved into what may be the question for Harris, Ron, and that is, can she draw both young nonwhite voters that Biden lost and can she keep the older blue collar white voters that Biden won with but may be in jeopardy of switching over to Trump, at least in some numbers?

[15:25:09]

What did you find?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. I mean, you know, I think clearly Harris is in position to improve on the places where Biden was weakest. If you look at where Biden was in '24 relative to where he was in '20, the biggest change was his erosion among young voters and nonwhite voters, both black and Latino voters.

Well, Harris should be in position to improve among young voters and there's some polling suggesting she already is. She should definitely be in position to improve among black voters, Latinas as well. Less clear that she's going to improve among Latino men, as you were just talking about in Nevada.

And given the abortion, the choice issue, she may be also able to squeeze a few more points out of college educated suburban white women. Brianna, I think the key question is whether she can do all of that enough to bring back into play some of the Sunbelt states that have drifted away from Biden, particularly Georgia, where she is today, Arizona and Nevada.

She might be stronger than Biden, but still lose them, right? And if she does, then she's in the same position that he was in, which he would have - which is that she would have to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the three states that Trump has lodged from the blue wall. And if that's the case in 2016, if that's the case, then she clearly has to hold Biden's stronger performance than Hillary Clinton among older and blue collar white voters.

So, you know, you really have to be strong at both ends of the continuum. But if she can't get over the top in the Sunbelt, winning those Rust Belt states are going to require her to really be able to hold a lot of that improvement that Biden made over Clinton in 2020 and that's going to be a challenge.

SANCHEZ: And some of that has to do with the way that you define your opponent. Both campaigns have been testing out some new messaging strategies. We've seen Republicans sort of tinker with different things. The Harris campaign and its surrogates have recently turned to the phrase weird. They've been calling their supporters, including the supporters of Donald Trump and JD Vance, weird.

I'm wondering what you make of that, because there's been some criticism, including from The New York Times' Thomas Friedman.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, look, I mean, I think that, you know, each side has a - modern American politics is a fight for the last 8- or 10 percent of voters and not really only swing voters. You know, you're kind of competing, not so much for voters who might go to the other side, but you're competing with voters or whether they're going to get off the couch and come vote for you.

And there are a lot of different arguments you can make at that last few percent. I mean, clearly, you know, the Trump campaign wants to eventually get to Harris as some out of control, woke California, San Francisco liberal who doesn't share your values.

Well, this is it in reverse, right? I mean, this is that Trump and Vance are someone who are candidates who don't really share the values of kind of average Americans. You know, none of these arguments by themselves are enough. You know, you see Harris' first ad today, for example, not focusing so much on the democracy and rights arguments or even the weird argument that we're talking about, but basically making the case that she is on your side economically.

You know, it's a multi front war. All candidates have to be able to communicate in stereo. But I do think a lot of it is trying to either establish or deny to the other side a cultural affinity with those last few points of voters who may be open to voting for each side or deciding whether to come out for you or to stay at home.

SANCHEZ: Ron Brownstein, appreciate the analysis. Thanks for joining us.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Still to come, the FBI revealing a social media account believed to belong to the Trump rally gunman posted extreme and politically violent messages online years ago. We'll discuss next.

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