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Trump Addresses Media from Mar-A-Lago; Trump Says He Has Agreed To Three Debates In September; Soon: Harris, Walz To Speak At Campaign Event In Detroit; Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) Discusses About Appeal Of Kamala Harris With Working Class Voters In Michigan. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 08, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And because of Obama, it started with him, and then Biden, because he didn't know what the hell he was doing, they've now become one force. And then now they're adding Iran to it and they're adding North Korea to it, pretty powerful force. This is something that is unthinkable that they allowed to happen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) just to put a (INAUDIBLE) on this, you're - so you're saying (INAUDIBLE) you're not going to change your campaign strategy, you're going to keep going with the issues. So what if this so-called honeymoon period doesn't end and --

TRUMP: Oh, it's going to end. The honeymoon period is going to end. Look, she's got a little period, she's got a convention coming up. It's about policy. It's not about her. I think she's incompetent, because I've watched her. She destroyed California. She destroyed San Francisco. Everything she's touched has turned to bad things. I want to use - I'm not going to use foul language - but everything she's touched has turned bad. She's incompetent.

The reason she's not doing what I do, and she's not doing what she should be doing, she won't even do interviews with friendly people, because she can't do better than Biden. Now, he had a reason for not doing well, and he was never, 25 years ago, the sharpest or brightest bulb in the ceiling. That I can tell you, okay? He wasn't. But he could do interviews, at least. Not lately, he couldn't, perhaps.

But she's - she should be doing interviews. She doesn't want to do interviews. And the reason she doesn't is, number one, her policies are so bad. Just to answer your question, I think that it's not going to change, because it's really, ultimately, not about her as much as about her policies. She wants open borders. She wants to defund the police. She wants to defund the police. She wants to take away your guns. Anybody that thinks they're not going to come after your guns - you know, when I was president, I totally protected the guns and I think it's very important.

And I know I take some heat sometimes for it, but you have to have safety. You have to have - when the bad guy walks in with a gun, you've got to have some way of protecting yourself. And, boy, that would be - you would see crime go up at levels that you've never seen.

When people say, on this side of the house, this house has guns. We will use the guns. They say, let's pass. We'll go someplace else. You have to have them. And for four years - and, you know - as you know, the NRA endorsed me very powerfully every time I ran, every time. My sons are members, and I guess, indirectly, I'm a member, too. But they gave me the strongest of endorsements and that's against very strong competition - people that - you know, felt the same way.

No, you have to have - you have to have that right.

Our Second Amendment is a very important right, and it has to be protected.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. There's a lot to fact-check there, so we're just going to run through things here. He said that Kamala Harris is in favor of - is not in favor of giving Israel weapons. She made it very clear - her campaign did this morning - that she is not in favor of an arms embargo of Israel. He said that no one died on January 6th.

People were killed. We know that Ashli Babbitt, three others died from medical emergencies. One officer died immediately after having been pepper-sprayed in the day following. There were four officers who died of suicide in the months after.

He talked about how there's a constitutional issue for how Kamala Harris was chosen by the Democratic Party. That's not true. The Constitution doesn't govern how the party selects its candidates.

He also talked about the border. He said 20 million people over the border. That's grossly exaggerated. He could have just gone with the actual number. It's not a great number. He chose 20 million. But actually, crossings are down for the last four months, the lowest they've been in three years since the President signed his executive order. He certainly did not mention that. That is not the picture that he painted.

And he also said that in Afghanistan, there had been no deaths in the 18 months before the withdrawal, that no one was even shot at. We'll tell that to the service members who were wounded in 2020. They certainly would disagree with what he said there.

He is right, though, that no one died until the withdrawal. And that is in part because that 18 months he's talking about, that is the timeline for when his administration negotiated with the Taliban to secure a deal for the U.S. leaving Afghanistan. He negotiated - his administration negotiated that deal, and then he left the execution of that for the Biden administration.

Yes, the withdrawal turned out to be a debacle. Critics of the deal also say the deal was a debacle.

There are a number of other things and that includes the crowd size, which he told a lie about of Kamala Harris.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Which clearly is getting at him because he stayed on crowd size for a long time. Jeff Zeleny is back here with us. You were at the rally yesterday in Detroit. You've been to many Trump rallies. This is something that is bothering him, and he felt the need to exaggerate and lie about it.

[15:05:01]

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: For sure. I mean, it's almost back to the future on crowd size. This is something that has really been at the center of the former president's line of thinking. Success is measured in crowd sizes. He's often misstated his own.

But look, we all know that Trump campaign rallies are large. Some of the largest we've seen in modern days. I was at the Harris rally last night in Detroit. It was the size of a Trump campaign rally, if not bigger. Certainly bigger than most Democratic rallies. In fact, all of them have been this year. Thousands were at the rally last night in Detroit.

It's impossible to get a precise number, but let me describe it for you. It was a large airport hangar that there were risers on both sides. It sprawled out onto the tarmac. A large area out there where Air Force Two was parked. Four risers were filled. Rows of chairs were filled. People as far as the eye could see. So thousands were there, he said, 1,500.

But I think perhaps one of the other headlines out of this is debates. He said that he wants to have three debates in September. We will see what the Harris campaign says to that. They've agreed to one of those on ABC, but the other details are still being worked out, of course.

DEAN: Right. And he had those three debates that he wanted on different networks.

I believe we also have Anthony Scaramucci with us who was a former Trump White House communications director.

Anthony, you've known the former president for a while. I'm curious what your general thoughts are on his press conference. He did take questions from the press for - and is still answering them. And also, too, why he feels the need to lie about crowd size, of all things.

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, I mean, that's something, you know, he made Sean Spicer lie about that - the day after the inauguration, so he's going to consistently do that. He's also - I mean, he spent the whole time talking about fear mongering. He's talking about fear on the border. He's talking about fear in the economy. He's talking about fear of crime and so it's a very fear-based approach.

I don't think any strategist working with him agrees with what he's doing right now. They're sitting there cringing. He's sitting there saying, okay, we're flailing, so I'm going to show you how it's done. I'm going to go out to the press, speak unhinged for 40 minutes to an hour and I'm going to set everybody straight on what we're doing. And so it's not working. You know, if I - if I'm a Democrat here, Democratic strategist, please let him go on for another two hours like Benito Mussolini or Fidel Castro. Just let him unwind himself.

And so the Harris campaign is actually very smart here, saying little about this and just fact checking things related to Israel. But I know the president, 71 campaign stops with him, 11 days in the White House. But I did work with him for almost a year. That is a frustrated - and believe it or not, that is a frightened Donald Trump. He's looking at the poll numbers and it was a big tell when he does the accordion thing and tells you how great he's doing in the polls. That's a big tell for him. He's not doing well in the polls. He knows that and so that's another big lie that he's saying from that podium.

So, you know, let him keep talking. He'll dig a bigger hole for himself. And people will remember, well, I don't really want to go back to what was going on in this country 2017 to January of 2021.

KEILAR: All right, Anthony, if you can stay with us, we're going to get in a quick break. You're watching there former President Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, answering questions of reporters there at Mar-a- Lago. He said many things. He also said many things that were untrue on the crime - on crime, on the economy, on the border. We have fact checks on some of those issues right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:13:08]

DEAN: We just saw former President Donald Trump taking questions from the media for roughly an hour. There were a number of falsehoods and lies in - during that time, including he kept saying over and over again that Vice President Kamala Harris was the border czar for the Biden administration. She was not ever officially the border czar. She did work to try and spur economic development in some of those countries to try to curb the number of people who were coming to the border.

But let's go to Tom Foreman, because he's got a lot more specifically on the border, on immigration.

Tom, what did you notice?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm glad you got started on this, because there is a lot to unpack in terms of falsehoods. Let's start with the economy, a big thing for many issues out there. He said we could literally be in the throes of a depression, not a recession. He said close to 1920's depression. 1920's depression was 25 percent unemployment. We're at 4.3 percent now. Not even close, not even the same ballgame.

He also mentioned, weirdly enough, people can't buy bacon. I checked on bacon sales. They seem to be doing just fine.

On the border, as Brianna noted earlier, he grossly overinflates the number of people coming over the border there. He also repeated a claim that he's made many times before that he really must like, even as the numbers fall here, saying this notion that people are coming out of mental institutions and prisons, as he said, all over the world. They're emptying into the United States. He said this many times, never offered any proof for it.

About Kamala Harris, he says she's the most unpopular/worst vice president in history, couldn't pass her bar exam. Scholars surveyed by the LA Times ranked VPs from 1933 on, they put Harris at 11 out of 18. Not great, but certainly not the worst and she did pass her bar exam, even though she had to do it more than once.

He said President Biden had the presidency taken away from him. Not true, that is false.

[15:15:01]

President Biden agreed to leave the presidency. He wasn't happy about it, nobody would be, but he agreed to leave and he backs Harris in her campaign.

He said everybody wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. The country overwhelmingly wanted this and returned to the states. Not true, even now, more than two years afterward, a Pew study said that 63 percent of people still think abortion nationwide should largely be legal, not left up to the states.

And one more thing, he talked for quite some time there about how he protected Hillary Clinton and always wanted to keep her safe, but at least more than a half dozen times in recent years, he has said publicly, she should go to jail and a whole lot of other Democrats as well.

KEILAR: All right. Tom Foreman, thank you so much for that. That was quite the list. Let's go to Kristen Holmes, who's there in the room, asking some questions as well. Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna, if you asked Donald Trump, I was asking stupid questions because I asked why he hasn't been campaigning at such a critical point for his campaign. And I will tell you, speaking to his allies, they have been very concerned that he's not out there on the campaign trail. One of the things he said was because he was leading by so much and that he would pick up his campaigning after the Democratic convention.

But I will tell you that, again, from speaking to senior advisors and people close to the campaign, they do not believe that he is leading by so much. Are they cautiously optimistic? Yes. Do they believe at the end of this day that fundamentally they can make this the same kind of race it was against President Joe Biden?

Yes, they do, because they believe that they can focus on those policies, like inflation, like economy, like the economy, like crime, but that does not mean that he is leading by a lot. And he has been largely behind closed doors for the last week with the only rally that he's doing this week in Montana, 10 PM East Coast Time, in a state that is not a swing state. Now, he defended those decisions, saying that some of the states that he was visiting that were Republican states were because he was helping other Republican candidates. But he mostly clearly got upset when talking about campaigning against the Harris campaign, in particular, those crowd sizes, obviously. One thing we know about Donald Trump is he is fixated on the amount of people who attend both his rallies and the rallies of his rivals.

He was fixated on that today. When he was asked the question, he did not let it go. He said over and over again that his crowds were bigger. He listed enormous crowds that he had had various times and saying that Harris' crowds were much smaller than that.

So clearly, even though he is projecting this confidence that he is leading by a lot, that this is something that he is paying very close attention to. And I can tell you from my conversations with allies of his, he has brought it up in those conversations, the crowd size itself.

So as we go forward, some of the news that was made, not just the rambling and the ranting that we saw, was the fact that he has agreed to three debates, one with Fox, one with ABC, one with NBC. That is something that now is in Kamala Harris' court. Obviously, both of them have agreed to the ABC debate, so that seems like it's going to happen on September 10th.

But other than that, this seemed like it was just Donald Trump taking advantage of an opportunity to bring press here and take those questions. And I will remind you, one of the things we said coming into this press conference, he was going to say over and over again that Kamala Harris has not taken a question from the press. He did, in fact, do that when he was up at the podium today.

KEILAR: Yes. And I should have fact-checked that as the first thing that Kristen Holmes asks smart questions.

DEAN: That's right.

KEILAR: We're all just very aware of that. It goes without saying. Kristen Holmes live for us from Palm Beach, Florida, thank you very much.

DEAN: I want to go now to Julia Chatterley, who we talked to earlier in our show. And, Julia, we were - you were explaining what a lot of this economic data is showing to us. The former president is saying that if he were president, there would have been no inflation. He said that we were headed for what he called a 1929-like crash. Can you fact-check all that for us?

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: I'd love to. I don't know what economy he's looking at, but it's not the U.S. economy. There was a lot of nonsense, quite frankly, in what he was saying. Let's do the President a favor, former president, because I think he needs it.

Let's not use 1929. Let's use peak crisis 1933. Growth collapsed 30 percent. Right now, in the United States, we're tracking growth of around 2.9 percent, so positive and not bad. Back then, unemployment rate 25 percent. One in four American workers were out of work. Right now, we've got an unemployment rate of around 4.3 percent. That's just over 7 million workers out of work.

Wages back then collapsed 40 percent. For those that were still working, we've got positive wages. Prices back then collapsed 25 percent. We know we've got an inflation rate that we're not keen on. No inflation, wrong. We did have inflation. We just weren't worried about it in January 2021. It was around 1.4 percent.

Now, by June of 2022, here's the problem for Biden. It was 9.1 percent. And I think economists agree a lot of that, one, we were coming out of the pandemic.

[15:20:01]

But we spent trillions of dollars trying to help people, including the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Biden signed it into law. And I think everybody agrees that didn't help the inflation picture. Prices were up over 20 percent an hour and this is what people are struggling with today since February of 2021.

So I hate to give him talking points, but if you want talking points, that would be a better one than any of the nonsense that he said. And if you want anything more, I can talk to you about oil prices and more. But hey, nonsense, my takeaway, sorry.

KEILAR: Well, we appreciate that and the history lesson as well, Julia. Thank you so much.

All right, guys. What did you think, Lance, of his press conference there?

LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I'll go back to where we started. I can't wait for the Vice President to come in front of reporters, not a pre-screen list, and take questions for an hour. I think that's what needs to happen. What we saw today was a pretty typical Donald Trump press conference.

But I think if you're the campaign, you accomplished two goals that you set out doing, you've made news on debates and you put the Harris campaign on the defensive and you leaned into, I stood and took questions for an hour, it's time for her to come out and take questions as well.

AMESHIA CROSS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I don't think the Harris campaign is on the defensive. What we saw in that hour-long hodgepodge of lies isn't any different than what we see at Trump campaign rallies. What he did there was showcase his level of fear, to be honest.

This is a guy who continues to advocate for the 2020 Election being stolen. This is a guy who is seeing the numbers that show that Georgia is more than in play and would like to act as though it has been stolen, even though every other Republican on that ticket won, except the guy at the top. I think that this is also a guy who decided to use his MAGA greatest hits and attack everyone, from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to the current ticket that he's running against.

Nothing there was anything other than what people expected, quite frankly, and they're used to the lies. Trump is running scared. He doesn't want to really have to have a true conversation with his opponent and he's advocating for a very interesting set of debates when we think about it, like what are they, a week - a little over a week apart for - in one month? I think that's completely ridiculous. We'll see how this shakes down, but Trump is scared.

TROVER: You're picking apart because he wants to do debates? I mean, what it looks like ...

CROSS: This is a ...

TROVER: I mean, what's the timeframe? Who cares if they're going to do debates though?

CROSS: Nobody is settled for a debate every eight days, like that's a little bit crazy.

TROVER: I was talking to a pollster before we came in here and we were talking about what he does. I mean, the one thing about Donald Trump, and we can debate this, his favorability rating right now is the highest it's ever been. I saw some polling with some competitive congressional districts this week, same thing. His polling, people know who he is, they know where he stands and so we can talk about how all the things that he did in here, but people kind of know that. They kind of come to expect it with him. And I think, again, I think he accomplished the goals he set out to do today.

ZELENY: One thing he did say, he said, the vast majority of the country does support me. That is not quite true. He's never won the popular vote.

TROVER: I didn't say that.

ZELENY: I know you didn't. He said it, though. He said the vast majority of the country does support me.

I think, though, Kristen got on to a point that got under his skin, obviously, about how he has been campaigning. He simply hasn't been campaigning as much, and I think this is one of the biggest differences from his other two presidential campaigns. He was certainly out there more, so we'll see if it changes after the Democratic convention. There's no doubt that things move on after summertime, but he's different in this campaign. There's no doubt about it.

KEILAR: Yes. He hasn't been campaigning as much.

DEAN: Mm-hmm.

KEILAR: And we'll have to see if Harris starts taking questions. They both can hit each other on that. We'll see. Thank you so much, panel. We really appreciate it.

We have much more ahead. Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:11]

DEAN: Any minutes now, we expect to hear from Vice President Kamala Harris as she holds a second event in Detroit. She has been on a battleground blitz, campaigning in critical states with her new running mate, Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.

In the meantime, as we wait on that, we have Democratic congressman, Dan Kildee, of Michigan joining us now.

Congressman, thanks so much. I know you stuck around a little bit longer than anticipated, so we appreciate your time.

I want to start first with the vice president there in Michigan with her new running mate. How do you think she can best appeal to the white working-class voters in the Midwest, but specifically in Michigan, that Joe Biden historically did really well with?

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): Well, I think she can just bring the message that she's been bringing in her time in - as attorney general, in the Senate and as vice president. She's focused on families, and she's particularly focused on economic policies that bring back American jobs.

You know, Michigan's a manufacturing state. She's about to appear at a UAW event. This has been the most pro-worker administration, really, in my lifetime. And she needs to emphasize that that will continue to be part of the Harris administration agenda. She's proven it already, but we have to say it.

So talking about those issues - kitchen table issues, I think, really has to be the focus. We saw it yesterday. I was there at the rally. By the way, it was a huge crowd, just for the record.

DEAN: I know. Jeff Zeleny was describing those numbers as well. He was also there.

You mentioned the manufacturing. We also know the labor unions. The United Auto Workers president spoke at the rally last night. He's endorsed this ticket, this Democratic ticket, in this race. Do you think that he is indicative of where the rank and file is on this, in terms of UAW membership?

[15:30:03]

KILDEE: Yes, I think so. Of course, UAW is a large organization.