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Donald Trump Addresses Media From Mar-a-Lago. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 08, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:57]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Any minute now, former President Donald Trump is set to hold a news conference at his Florida home. Trump is now going after Vice President Kamala Harris in the same way that he criticized President Biden. He's accusing her of ducking the media.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Kristen Holmes is standing by in West Palm Beach as we prepare to hear from the former president any minute now.

Kristen, as we watch and wait for him, what are you expecting? Do we know what he's going to be talking about here?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jess and Brianna, we don't actually, no. We've asked several times about what exactly the focus of this is. No straight answers yet, just that Donald Trump wanted to talk. But also told that he's going to take questions. Obviously (AUDIO GAP) latency. We've been burned before on that front.

One of the narratives that we have heard from the Trump campaign when it comes to Kamala Harris (AUDIO GAP) won't sit down for an interview, that she won't take questions from the media.

So, it is likely that this is going to play into that kind of narrative, why he is here, why he wants (AUDIO GAP). The other reason is because he has been largely out of the public eye for roughly a week. His last big campaign event was last Saturday in Georgia. He doesn't have another rally until tomorrow night. (AUDIO GAP) that's at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, so it's a late night rally, and this is a way to try and get involved in the media narrative.

But of course, we're watching closely. We have a lot of questions for him, particularly (AUDIO GAP) in the race has changed since the last time we saw him publicly.

DEAN: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you so much. We're going to check back in with you.

So, as we await former President Trump, let's bring in Lance Trover, Ameshia Cross and Jeff Zeleny, our panel of experts here to talk about this with us.

Jeff, I'm curious just your take on this, because you've been out on the road. You were there at one of the rallies this week with the vice president and Governor Walz, and now we're seeing the strategy from Trump to try to get some of the spotlight back.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I mean, it's been an unusual run, more than a month, actually, where the former president has been out of the spotlight, an unfamiliar place for him, really.

I was in Michigan yesterday, and Senator J.D. Vance was campaigning there as well, really calling out the fact that Vice President Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz, have not done interviews yet.

I think you can probably give the Minnesota governor a bit of grace on that, since he's barely 48 hours in, but the vice president it is a legitimate point. She's not done many interviews. They are riding this wave of energy and enthusiasm, but at some point they will have to answer questions.

I'm not sure voters actually are clamoring for this as much as we certainly are. We think the American people deserve answers to these questions, but look, they clearly are trying to steal back the attention here and goad the Democrats into sitting for questions, which has not been her strong suit in the past.

KEILAR: No, it hasn't, and that might be the issue for her. But if you're a voter, Ameshia who wants to make an informed decision, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered of these candidates, specifically of the vice president. At what point do you think we will see her out there?

AMESHIA CROSS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think it's going to happen very soon. It's very important to recognize that the vice president just became the nominee. We just had the virtual world count what? 48 hours ago?

I think that it matters in context, looking at the time frame here, this is still a really fast process. But in addition to that, she is having those conversations. She's just not having them with traditional media. She's having conversations with various influencers. She's having conversations and sitting down with the TikTok crowd.

The way that young people and a lot of demographics view media today and where they get their news from is vastly different than it was one or two campaign cycles ago.

So, she's meeting people where they are, and she's having those conversations. Will she do it with traditional press? Absolutely, but I -- perspective that's probably going to happen closer to the DNC convention, and definitely afterwards.

DEAN: And Lance, we're waiting on former President Trump to come out to what he's called a news conference. As Kristen was saying, we don't know if he's going to take questions, if he's just going to come out and read remarks.

But if you were advising him about how to best use this moment, a lot of voters are saying, give us -- give us something to hang on to if we're trying to make up our mind, what are your policies? What are you offering me? Do you think he'll do that, or will it be more personal attacks?

[14:05:08]

LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I hope he takes questions. I mean, I think if they're looking to juxtapose someone who's not taking questions, and he should step out to the media and take questions today.

And I think, look, we are less than 90 days at this point from a presidential election, granted she has 18 days she's been the de facto nominee, but what we have seen from her campaign are spokespeople, some named, many unnamed, walking back many of the positions that she's taken, many of these left wing positions she's taken.

Look what happened yesterday, she met with anti-Israel protesters and left open the door to an arms embargo to one of our greatest allies. Then today, we see a spokesperson come out and say, oh no, no, no. She doesn't really mean that. That's why it's so important for her to come out and start addressing some of these issues that her campaign has been walking back on her behalf.

CROSS: I think the Trump campaign is very rich to make a comment about media when he's the person who fashioned enemy of the press, when the media was an enemy of the people. He's the person who -- I was at the National Association Black Journalist conference just last week. He's the person who attacked a network. He's the person who regularly decides that the media is not worth anybody's time and likes to attack the legitimacy of media in general.

So, to in that same vein, try to push Kamala Harris and the Harris- Walz newly appointed ticket to do media immediately. Again, this is a fresh ticket. It's very interesting.

TROVER: But he does take questions. He is not afraid to step in and speaking up, he does non-traditional media as well. I mean, that's what he did when he went to the Black Journalist conference. But he does step out.

CROSS: Black Journalists are traditional media. Those were all traditional media sources that were --

TROVER: Not for -- not for Republicans that we don't typically do.

CROSS: That's a personal choice to not talk to Black journalists or be a part of Black media.

KEILAR: Let's talk about these attacks on military service. J.D. Vance has been hammering Tim Walz on this.

To be clear, Ameshia, Tim Walz has opened himself up to some criticism when it comes to how he has described his rank and when he talked about having a gun in war, which he was not in war. But then there's this issue of, did he dodge a deployment to Iraq? And I mean, I spoke today to someone who totally does not agree with

him politically, who's not going to vote for him, said he'll campaign against Walz, but served with him for more than 10 years, and said that that is a lie.

And I wonder if you think, though, if it still might be quite effective, and if it will matter in the context of Kamala Harris.

CROSS: I think that there are two men who are vice presidential on both sides, and that both of those men served and served valiantly. And the argument that somebody who has not been in active duty combat somehow diminishes their military service is a problem. And both of those men, by the way, were not.

This is a play on words for a majority population that has not served and doesn't know much about service, I would argue that what we've seen from military service members who have called out some of what J.D. Vance has said, in addition to a lot of the military nonprofit organizations, veterans groups, who have called out what he has said, have pointed to the fact that this is a problematic conversation.

KEILAR: I do just want to be clear, J.D. Vance was in a combat zone. He was active duty but he did not see combat. Let's listen to Democrats president -- former president.

DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that our country is right now in the most dangerous position it's ever been in, from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint, both gangs on the street and, frankly, gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are, frankly, very powerful. They're very powerful countries and we don't know what we're doing. We have leadership that has no clue how to handle them or how to handle any other situation.

We have a -- we have a lot of bad things coming up. You could end up in a depression of the 1929 variety, which would be a devastating thing. Took many years, took decades to recover from it, and we're very close to that. And we're very close to a World War. In my opinion, we're very close to a World War. We have people that don't know how to handle it. They're not respected all over the world, they're left at and we can't have that, most dangerous period of time I've ever seen for our country.

With that being said, we have somebody that hasn't received one vote for president, and she's running, and that's fine with me, but we were given Joe Biden, and now we're given somebody else, and I think, frankly, I'd rather be running against somebody else, but that was their choice. They decided to do that because Kamala's record is horrible. She's a radical left, a person at a level that nobody's seen. She picked a radical left man, that is he's got things done that he has positions that are just not -- it's not even possible to believe that they exist. He's going for things that nobody's ever even heard of, heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn't want to have borders. He doesn't want to have walls., he doesn't want to have any form of safety for our country. He doesn't mind people coming in from prisons, and neither does she, I guess, because she's not -- she couldn't care less. She's the border czar.

[14:10:23]

By the way, she was the border czar a hundred percent and all of a sudden, for the last few weeks, she's not the border czar anymore, like nobody ever said it.

And I just hope that the media becomes more diligent, more honest, frankly, because if they're not going to be honest, it's going to be much tougher to bring our country back.

We have a very, very sick country right now. You saw the other day with the stock market crashing, that was just the beginning. That was just the beginning. It's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse, in my opinion.

And fortunately, we've had some very good polls over the last fairly short period of time. Rasmussen came out today, we're substantially leading, and others came out today that we're leading and in some cases substantially, SMIS. NBC came out, or CNBC came out also with a poll that was -- has us leading and leading fairly big in swing states. In some polls, I'm leading very big in swing states because they want safety. People want safety. They want security. They want respect all around the world for our country.

They don't want this horrible culture that is developing, a culture of no common sense. It's really a culture of no common sense, and it's not what anyone wants. We want to have a safe country. We want to have a strong military. We want low interest rates, and we want to be able to have the American dream. We want to be able to have our youth be able to buy homes, housing, get good jobs, and we're really just at the opposite right now. It's so -- it's so sad to see.

But as a border czar, she's been the worst border czar in history, in the world history. I think the number is 20 million, but whether it's 15 or 20, it's numbers that nobody has ever heard before. 20 million people came over the border in the last during the Biden-Harris administration, 20 million people, and it could be very much higher than that. Nobody really knows what the number is. Nobody knows. Nobody has a clue.

And the gotaways, they call them the gotaways. The gotaway numbers, somebody was quizzing me on it the other day. No, no, I don't think so, sir, I don't think so. They have no idea what those numbers are, but they're much higher than you would think.

Just like far more people were killed in the Ukraine- Russia war than you ever report, just like the October 7th would have never happened. Russia would have never hit Ukraine had the election result been called differently.

It was a very bad call, but Russia would not have attacked Ukraine. October 7th in Israel would have never happened. You wouldn't have inflation. A lot of great things would have happened. But now you have millions and millions of dead people, and you have people dying financially because they can't buy bacon, they can't buy food, they can't buy groceries, they can't do anything, and they're living horribly in our country right now.

With all of that being said, I think it's very important to have debates, and we've agreed with Fox on a date of September 4th. We've agreed with NBC, fairly full agreement, subject to them on September 10th, and we've agreed with ABC on September 25th.

So, we have those three dates and those networks, they're very anxiously awaiting that date and those dates so we have September 4th, September 10th and September 25th.

We have spoken to the heads of the network, and it's all been confirmed, other than some fairly minor details, audience, some location, which city would we put it into. But all things that will be settled very easily, very -- I think it'll be very easy.

The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree. I don't know if they're going to agree. They -- she hasn't done an interview, she can't do an interview, she's barely competent, and she can't do an interview.

But I look forward to the debates, because I think we have to set the record straight. Why is it that millions of people were allowed to come into our country from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, insane asylums, even insane (INAUDIBLE). That's a -- it's a mental institution on steroids. That's what it is.

When you see the people that are coming into our -- these are institutions that are being emptied out, not in South America, all over the world, including South America. All over the world, prisons are being emptied out into our country because we have a president that's the worst president in the history of our country. We have a vice president who is the least admired, least respected and the worst vice president in the history of our country, the most unpopular vice president.

[14:15:14]

And because of political reasons or because of being politically correct, even though she never received a vote. Don't forget, she was the first one defeated, as I remember it, because I watched it very closely, but she was the first one, she never made it to Iowa, the first state, she never made it to Iowa.

She was the first one that was defeated. She was the nastiest to him. She was nasty with the calling him a racist and the school bus and all of the different things. She was very nasty to Biden, and shockingly, he appointed her, asked her to serve as Vice President.

Well, I don't know if he's happy about that decision right now, this was taken away. The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden. And I'm no Biden fan, but I tell you what, from a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away, and people were saying he lost after the debate, he couldn't win.

Well, I don't know if that's true, necessarily, but whether he could win or he couldn't win, he had the right to run, and they took it away. They said they're going to use the 25th Amendment. They're going to hit you hard. Either we can do it the nice I heard -- I know exactly, because I know a lot of people on the other side, believe it or not.

And they said, we'll do it the nice way, or we'll do it the hard way. And he said, all right, so that mean they've really taken -- what they've done is pretty incredible.

And now I'm running against somebody else, and we're leading. We're leading. So, I'm not complaining. I'm saying it's a -- for a country with a constitution that we cherish. We cherish this constitution, to have done it this way is pretty severe, pretty horrible. You would have thought they would have gone out to a vote. They would have had a primary system. They would have done something, but to just take it away from him, like he was a child, and he's a very angry man right now, I can tell you that.

He's not happy with Obama and he's not happy with Nancy Pelosi, crazy Nancy. She is crazy too. She's not happy with any of the people that told him that you've got to leave. He's very unhappy, very angry, and I think he also blames her. He's trying to put up a good face.

But it's a very bad thing in terms of a country when you do that. I'm not a fan of his, as you probably have noticed, and he had a rough debate. But that doesn't mean that you just take it away like that. Or you go out to a vote, you do something. He had 14 million votes. She had no votes. She got no votes.

And I think she's crashing. I think when people find out, and I think people are starting to find out what a bad job she did, what a bad job she did on the border, she's trying to say she had nothing to do with the border. She had everything. She was appointed to head the border. And then they said border czar, oh, she loved that name. She loved that name, but she never went there.

She went to a location once along the border, but that was a location that you would love to go and have dinner with your husband or whoever. That was a location that was not part of the problem that was not really going to the border. So, essentially, she never went to the border.

And if you listen to Tom Holman, if you listen to the great border people, Brandon Judd from Border Patrol, if you listen to Paul, I mean so many different people. I speak to them all the time, and I did when I was president, we had the best border in the history of our country. Now we have the worst border in the history of the world, millions of people coming in, and our country cannot sustain it. Our country is going down because of this, because of incompetent people.

So, I just look forward to these debates. I think it's very important that we have them. I hope she agrees to them. September 4th, September 10th, September 25th and I think they'll be very revealing. I think they'll be very revealing. Do you have any questions, please?

I haven't recalibrated strategy at all. It's the same policies, open borders, weak on crime. She's -- I think she's worse than Biden, because he got forced into the position. She was there long before. She destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed California as the A.G.

But as the D.A., she destroyed -- she -- San Francisco, friend of mine, Bob Tisch (ph), you just -- you know all the Tisch family. He was in many cities with companies. He said the greatest city in the country is San Francisco. That was about 20 years ago, and he passed away a while ago, and he would be looking down, said, what happened? He thought it was the best city in the country. He had divisions there, lows and he would be looking down on horror now when he sees.

She destroyed no cash bail, weak on crime, terrible. And yet, they weaponized the system against me. They have me. I got so many lawyers, now they want to delay cases. I won the big case in Florida, I won the big case, nobody even wrote about it. The big case, the judge was a brilliant judge, and all they do is they play the ref with the judges. This judge was a fair but brilliant judge, and as you probably heard, the big documents case, I won it.

[14:20:29]

Now Biden lost it because he didn't have presidential immunity. He didn't have the Presidential Records Act. He lost it. But the special -- I call it prosecutors, Special Counsel, special prosecutor to me, he appointed by him and appointed by Garland.

He said, the man is incompetent. He can't stand trial, but he can run for president. But we no longer have to worry about that, because we have somebody that, in my opinion is more incompetent. She couldn't pass her bar exam and lots of other things, and she should not be in a position.

Because if she becomes president, our country is going to be a giant fail. It's going to fail. It's going to be a failure, the likes of which this world has never seen.

Yes, please. How about you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

TRUMP: You have to speak louder.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A big part of the strategy for your campaign, before Harris became the nominee, was appealing to Black voters.

TRUMP: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know you really like going after her (INAUDIBLE) really see Harris being proud of that group, and I'm wondering how you are going to go after Black voters now she's the nominee and (INAUDIBLE).

TRUMP: Well, it changes around a little bit. I'm getting other voters. Perhaps, you know, I was doing very well with Black voters, and I still am. I seem to be doing very well with Black males. This is according to polls as you know. It's possible that I won't do as well with Black women, but I do seem to be doing very well with other segments, extremely well with Hispanic, Jewish voters, way up. White males, way up. White males have gone through the roof. White males, way up.

I don't know. All we're doing is giving you the stats that you have, it could be that I'll be affected somewhat with Black females, where we're doing pretty well, and I think ultimately they'll like me better, because I'm going to give them security, safety and jobs. I'm going to give them a good economy.

We have a very bad economy right now. We could -- we could literally be on the throes of a depression, not recession, a depression, and they can't have that -- they can't have that. So, I think I'm going to do well with everybody, especially when the facts are out.

Yes, please in the back.

Well, I don't know. I know Josh Shapiro. He's a terrible guy, and he's not very popular with anybody. I think that this election maybe is better than Josh Shapiro would have been. But I think other than Josh Shapiro, I think she had some good choices, but Josh Shapiro is not one of them. He's caused a lot of damage with a lot of people, and I don't think he would have been better. I think he would have been maybe the equivalent, maybe not as good.

But they had some people that they were looking at that were good, far superior to her. They actually had a story where they had everybody including, they had like 10 people that she was looking at and her and they said she was the worst of all.

In other words, she was the worst out of the 10 people and her (ph).

I don't know how that's going to work out. We'd like to do three debates. We think we should do three debates. We think Fox and ABC, and we also have CBS is going to do the vice presidential debate.

So, CBS will do vice presidential and I have to tell you, J.D. Vance has really stepped up. He's doing a fantastic job.

Say it. Oh, give me a break.

Listen, I had 107,000 people in New Jersey. You didn't report it. I'm so glad you asked, what did she have yesterday? 2,000 people.

If I ever had 2,000 people, you'd say my campaign is finished. It's so dishonest the press. And here's a great example. I had in Michigan recently 25,000 people and 25,000 people were just -- we just couldn't get them in.

We had in Harrisburg, 20,000-25,000 people and 20,000 people couldn't get in. We had so many. Nobody ever mentions that.

When she gets 1,500 people and I saw it yesterday on ABC, which they said, oh, the crowd was so big. I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size. And, no, they never say the crowd was big. That's why I'm always saying, turn around the cameras.

[14:25:13] I'm so glad you asked that. I think it's so terrible when you say, well, she has 1,500 people, a thousand people, and they talk about, oh, the enthusiasm.

Let me tell you, we have the enthusiasm, the Republican Party and me as a candidate, but the Republican Party has the enthusiasm because people want to see crime stopped. They want to see a country that's respected. Think of it.

If I were president, you wouldn't have Russia and Ukraine, would've never happened. Zero chance. You wouldn't have had October 7th of Israel. You wouldn't have the horrible withdrawal. And I don't mean to withdraw, because the withdrawal was fine. I was ready to withdraw from Afghanistan, and we were going to do it with dignity and strength. And we were going to -- we were keeping our equipment. We weren't leaving $85 billion worth of equipment behind, that we wouldn't have had 13 great soldiers. I know the families of those soldiers well.

We wouldn't have had these soldiers killed, and we wouldn't have had 45 soldiers obliterated, no legs, no arms, the face, none of that would have happened, and you wouldn't have had inflation. You wouldn't have had any inflation, because inflation was caused by their bad energy problems.

Now they've gone back to the Trump thing because they need the votes. They -- you know, they -- I don't know if you know, they're drilling now because they had to go back, because gasoline was going up to $7.00, $8.00, $9.00 a barrel. So, they said, we better do what Trump did.

But the day after the election, if they won, you're going to have fuel prices go through the roof. Everybody's going to be forced to buy an electric car, which they're not going to do, because they don't want that. It's got a great market. It's got a market. It's really a sub market.

People want gasoline propelled cars. They want hybrids. They want to have everything, and they want electric. But they want everybody to have an electric car. We don't have enough electricity. We couldn't make enough electricity for that.

And you know what else? The weight of a car, the weight of a truck. They want all trucks to be electric. Little things that a lot of people don't talk about. The weight of a truck is 2-1/2 times -- 2-1/2 times heavier. You would have to rebuild every bridge in this country if you were going to do this ridiculous policy.

So, but on crowd size in history for any country, nobody's had crowds like I have, and you know that, and when she gets a thousand people, and everybody starts jumping, you know that if I had a thousand people, would say, people would say, that's the end of his campaign.

I have hundreds of thousands of people in South Carolina and 88,000 people, in Alabama I had 68,000 people. Nobody says about crowd size with me, but she has a thousand people or 1,500 people, and they say, oh, the enthusiasm is back.

No, no. The enthusiasm is with me and the Republican Party because they want to stop crime. They want to stop people from pouring into our country, from places unknown, and from countries unknown, from countries that nobody ever heard of, that's where the enthusiasm.

I don't know. I don't know if I can or not. I got him elected. Without me, he wouldn't be governor. I got him elected. He was doing terribly. I got him elected. With that being said, I hope we can repair it, but if we don't, the people are still the people, and they're going to vote. We're leading in Georgia by a lot. We're leading in Pennsylvania by a lot.

So, but I don't know. Now in Pennsylvania, I have great relationships. In Georgia, I do too, but unfortunately, not with the governor.

I've never understood it. When you get somebody elected, they're supposed to like you. He's not exactly for some reason, and you'll have to ask him about that. Yes, I'd love to see it get repaired.

I think that if we don't win Georgia, Georgia is a big -- is a big win, is a big state. So, I won Alabama by a record. Nobody has ever gotten that many votes. I won South Carolina by a record, you don't win Alabama and South Carolina by records and lose Georgia, it doesn't happen.

And the people of Georgia understand that, there was tremendous anxiety and problems in Georgia. A lot of people say, what happened and we have to hit -- all we want is honest elections. If we have honest elections in Georgia, we have honest elections in Pennsylvania, we're going to win them by a lot.

Well, he actually said it two ways. First he said it incorrectly, then he corrected himself. Do you agree with that, right? You know, if you watch him, he said it two ways. No, no, no. I mean, he said it two ways because he doesn't really know what he said. Why didn't he bring it up at the debate? You know, he had a chance for 90 minutes to bring it up at the debate.