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America's Choice 2024; U.S. Sending Assets To Middle East. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 12, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:40]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Battleground momentum, new numbers showing the Harris-Walz ticket is gaining ground in three key states. Donald Trump's plan to stop his opponent's blue wave surge is unclear. Instead, he seems to be obsessing over crowd size again and spreading wild conspiracy theories. And USA Gymnastics fighting back against the International Olympic Committee's order that Jordan Chiles give back her bronze medal. I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is "CNN News Central."

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening right now, a 2024 race transformed, and it is showing in the numbers. Democrats are riding a wave of momentum right now, and it's not measured just by crowd size friends. Just three weeks ago, Donald Trump was besting President Biden in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Take a look at this.

Now, new polling finds that Kamala Harris is leading Trump among likely voters in each of those battleground states. Harris, for her part, said this to donors last night about the polling. She said, whether they're up or they're down, the stakes are so high, and we can take nothing for granted in this moment.

Donald Trump is fighting back against this new polling trend in a very 2016 2020 way, coming up with a wildly false attack on Harris about her rally crowds. CNN's Jeff Zeleny leads us off this hour. He's joining us now.

Jeff, for Harris and any campaign really, the mission, number one, is create the momentum and then keep the momentum. For the Harris campaign, what does that mean? What does that look like now?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, it simply is keeping the momentum alive that they've had for about three weeks or so. You saw that roll out last week of the vice presidential running mate. That is, you know, a week that happens only once in a campaign.

Now, of course, it's back to some of the basics, actually saying what she would do as president. So we are going to look for that later this week. But, look, this momentum is something that clearly, as you said, has gotten under the former president's skin.

I was at that Detroit rally where he was talking about, there was no crowd. There was a crowd, a very large crowd, thousands of people were streaming out and streaming in. But look, what the Harris campaign is trying to do is not respond to every one of these sort of outrageous claims from their rival, and really try and focus their base and keep their base energized and excited.

The vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, he's out fundraising all week long. Vice President Harris is back here in Washington after her swing last week. They simply are trying to keep their base energized, of course, leading into the Democratic Convention next week.

But it is about policies and proposals that we are expect to hear later this week, because she really has not answered questions at all or say why. In fact, she is running for president, or what she wants to do as president in her first term of a Harris administration. So, of course, they have to put some more meat on those bones, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Let's talk about the meat on the bones. Republicans are attacking Harris. We heard that from JD Vance. I heard it from, you know, surrogates who are on the show just this morning that they -- that Kamala Harris is not rolling out enough policy. What is the Harris campaign saying about that?

ZELENY: Well, look, it is very early in her candidacy, so we are starting to see more. In fact, we heard of some policy proposals late last week. She was talking about the border bill. She said, if she is president, she would sign into law the border bill that was going through Congress promoted by a Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, and a bipartisan group that was derailed in Congress by the former president.

He told Republicans to stop negotiating on this. So she said she would sign that into law. So that's one very serious piece of policy.

There's not been a bipartisan immigration bill discussed for a couple decades here, successfully in Washington. So that is one. She also was following the former president's lead when she was in Nevada over the weekend, talking about the taxes for tips on workers, for servers and things. So that is something else that he accused her of following his lead. And she was, but she also said she would use that to pass a minimum wage bill as well.

[09:05:07]

So we're seeing some of these lines being drawn in, but they are polishing or a promising, excuse me, a more economic policy later this week, perhaps Wednesday or Thursday, to fill in some of these gaps. But again, she is trying to keep this momentum alive going into the convention next week. And then, we're almost at the end of August. So, yes, still 85 days to go. There's no doubt this is going to be -- she believes that there's still underdogs, but certainly not what they were a month ago, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. It's great to see you. Jeff, thank you so much. I mean, look at this video. Tim Walz is one of the more animated faces I have ever seen when it comes -- he definitely has not entered the Botox train yet, I'm just saying. (Inaudible) face. SIDNER: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Just kidding, everyone.

SIDNER: So far this morning, Donald Trump has posted three new attacks on Kamala Harris on his Truth social page. This after unleashing a new wild, baseless lie about the size of the crowd at one of her rallies, saying it's AI generated, it was not.

Let's bring in CNN's Alayna Treene. Alayna, the crowd size obsession back again, but his latest attack line is also just as outrageous.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: That's exactly right. Look, any hopes from Donald Trump's campaign and his allies that he would be a more diligent message, or that he would focus on policy and going after Harris' record was dashed yet again this weekend, when he pushed these false conspiracy theories about some sort of artificial intelligence -- excuse me, artificial intelligence being used to create a fake crowd at her rally in Detroit.

And I also, think just maybe even more ominously, he also continued to push the idea that Democrats can only win by cheating, arguing that this is a form of cheating. I'm going to read for you just a little bit of what he said, and then I'll break it down for you, Sara.

He wrote "Has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she AI-ed it and showcased a massive crowd of so-called followers, but they didn't exist."

Now again, let's just be very clear about this. The crowds at Harris' events, including the one in Detroit, you heard Jeff just say this previously as well, are real. We have, you know, many people from different outlets have been there, including CNN. Thousands of people are showing up to her rallies.

But I think it's very clear that this is getting under Donald Trump's skin. It's no secret that he has long been obsessed with crowd size. It's something that honestly has been a point of pride for him in the past years. I mean, of course, he does embellish his crowd size often, but there's no secret that he draws thousands of people to his events.

And over the past, you know, Democrats have not really been able to do that, particularly when you look at Joe Biden and the crowds that he was, you know, drawing to his own events. But that has very much changed with Harris and the surging enthusiasm that we continue to see around her. And it's very much frustrating the former president.

It's not just from what we're seeing publicly. I know this from my conversations with his allies and people close to him that this is really getting under his skin.

Now, another quick thing I just want to point out is that, this isn't necessarily happening in a vacuum, Sara. This isn't Donald Trump just making this up on his own. Instead, he's really buying into these far right conspiracy theories online and then amplifying them. And honestly, I haven't seen this. I don't think we've really seen it to this level since the aftermath of the 2020 election, when he was pushing similar far right conspiracies online. And this is something that the Harris campaign has pushed back pretty fiercely on as well. But clearly this is something that's bothering Trump, and he continues to amplify. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Alayna Treene, thank you so much for your reporting this morning. John?

BERMAN: All right. With us now, Democratic strategist Matt Bennett, who worked in the White House during the Clinton administration, and Scott Jennings CNN senior political commentator who worked in the White House during the George W. Bush administration. I feel like we've got about 16 years here, very well-covered. So thank you both for being with us.

Matt and Scott, I want to read you what Ezra Klein wrote this morning about how the Harris team is approaching Trump may be differently here. Ezra wrote, Biden's communication strategy was designed to make Trump bigger. Harris' strategy is to make him smaller. And then Ezra Klein goes on, the result is that Trump is starved for the resource he craves most attention, as is often the case when he loses control of the headlines. He's making linear and more self destructive arguments.

How do you think that describes where we are this morning, Matt?

MATT BENNETT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think it's exactly right. Look, I think one thing that's important to emphasize here is there's a difference between Trump lying, which he does all the time. In his press conference last week, he just lied continuously. And Trump living in a fantasy world. I mean, talking about the AI generated crowds is insane.

[09:10:01]

There's no basis in reality whatsoever. And I think we have to recognize here that this is a 78-year-old man who substantially diminished mental capacity. We can see it in the way he speaks, way he can't remember names and can't remember facts. I mean, this guy is really struggling mentally.

And I think while it was fair to talk about whether President Biden was up to the task of running for president, being president for four more years, we better start talking about that with Trump, because it is very evident that he isn't, and he is a dramatically diminished guy. This is not the person that we saw 2016 or even in 2020.

BERMAN: Scott, your face betrays that you have something you feel like you want to say.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I got a laugh all these Democrats who, a month-and-a-half ago, were all too happy to tell us that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack and was totally in command of everything, are now worrying publicly about a 78-year-old man's mental faculties. I mean, I think they sold out their credibility on the age issue here.

There is no question that Trump's got to find a frame for this election. He had one down against Biden. He had one down against Hillary Clinton the year that he won in 2016. He is capable of it. He's got to find it here, though, because if he doesn't, it's going to be a dicey fall.

It exists, the evidence there to prosecute the case exists, but it's on him. It's on his shoulders. The campaign can do what it can do, but it's really on him to find it and not get off of it. And he's -- he's -- he's struggling with it right now.

BERMAN: And, Scott, I will say, over the weekend, article after article. I mean, first there was Maggie and Jonathan Swan in the New York Times, and then Axios had a slice of that. Scott, we just saw Republicans sort of on the record pleading with Trump to stop what he's doing with the Willie Brown and the helicopter, with I had bigger crowds than Martin Luther King, with stuff like this AI stuff. It really does seem that the Republicans are nervous here.

JENNINGS: Of course, because they see the Kamala Harris candidacy for what it is, which is a someone -- who's got a record that could be run on, both from her own presidential campaign and from her time in the White House. None of the things that you just described are part of that.

You also still have the conditions in the country that have not changed. People are still very upset about inflation and high food prices. People are still very upset about their own economic anxiety, which they believe were brought about by the policies of Biden and Harris.

So all this smorgasbord of stuff exists that can be run on, none of it, none of it is what you just said. So yes, Republicans want Donald Trump to focus on what matters. And what matters is what people are upset about. 70 percent of the American people think the country is off on the wrong track, use that. Use that and use her role in it, that's the focus that they wanted to bring to the campaign.

BERMAN: Matt, how much policy does Harris, the vice president, and the campaign owe the American people this week, as soon as this week?

BENNETT: I mean, some, and she's already begun to roll it out. She talked extensively about immigration when she was in Nevada. She's going to talk about the economy coming up later this week. But remember, she's only been the candidate now for a few weeks, and she's the vice president, which means she's been carrying the Biden agenda for most of that time.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that, in 2016 Hillary Clinton had 295 policy proposals on her website, Donald Trump had seven. One of them was respect the police, which is not a policy proposal. So policy doesn't necessarily win elections.

In 2020, the Trump campaign ordered the RNC not to have a policy platform. So I don't think Democrats need to be lectured by Republicans about being detailed in their policy proposals during a campaign. I think it's pretty clear where the vice president stands on the big issues that voters really care about, and she'll do more to talk about her vision for the future.

BERMAN: Go ahead, Scott.

JENNINGS: Let me respond to that because it's not about her coming up with new policy proposals, coming up with a detailed platform. It's about one thing, explaining her record and explaining today how she can be against everything she ran on when she ran for president back in 2019-2020.

We're not talking about stuff she came up with 20, 30, 40 years ago. When she ran for this office, she laid out a clear set of proposals that were as far outside the mainstream as you can get. Now, through anonymous press spokespeople, she claims to have repudiated all that.

I'm not interested as much in white papers as I am as interested in her explaining, how can you be for defund the police here, but not here? How can you be for the most permissive border policies here, but not here? That's what most Americans need to hear. Who are you, the person that ran for president then, or the person that ran for president now, because you're claiming to be something that you were not four years ago.

BERMAN: Scott Jennings, Matt Bennett, we have to pick this up another time, because I do think there's an interesting discussion about the role that policy shifts in the old days, people might call them flip flops, if they have a place anymore in modern political debate after everything we've seen. But that's for the future. Thanks so much. Kate?

[09:15:04]

BOLDUAN: Russian authorities are telling thousands to evacuate as Ukraine surprises Russia with a new push into enemy territory. Plus, the Pentagon is rushing deployments to the Middle East as Israel prepares for what new reporting suggests could be a large scale retaliatory attack from Iran. And not giving up without a fight, USA Gymnastics is now appealing a decision to strip Jordan Chiles of her bronze medal. The new evidence, the new piece of evidence that they think proves their case. We'll be back.

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[09:20:15]

SIDNER: New overnight, fresh signs of worry over potentially wider war in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East. He also sped up the arrival there of a carrier strike group in anticipation of any potential attack from Iran against Israel, an attack that could be large scale and come within days.

CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto joining me now from Washington with more on this. We just talked about the Defense secretary sending in that guided missile submarine in addition to speeding up, sort of the arrival of the carrier strike group. What does this signal, Jim?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Sara, key phrase there is guided missile submarine, the submarine, in addition to a show of force deterrence is about missile defense. It's part of a network of missile defense that the U.S. and its allies, and Israel have in the region to be in position to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones, and Hezbollah missiles and rockets as well.

We saw that work very well in April when Iran launched that large scale attack then. And keep in mind, it's a number of players involved. It's not just the U.S. -- although the U.S., you could say, is the principal asset here, certainly Israeli missile defenses, but also allies such as Jordan. They don't like to advertise their participation, but they have missile defense systems on their territory, which worked well in April, and the hope is that they could do the same this time around.

The trouble is, Sara, that Iran is wise to that and will attempt, at least, depending on their goals, to try to overwhelm that system. And we see Russia do the same in Ukraine, it's about firing a lot at the same time, even timing those attacks to when those systems reload. That's the biggest concern here.

And you see that sub there as part of a plan, they hope to be able to shoot down most of these missiles and neutralize an attack.

SIDNER: Yes, it's a good point that in April, they could have used that as a bit of a test to see how to thwart the systems that are in place to try to protect Israel, all right. Let me move on to Ukraine, because this is fascinating. It's unprecedented in this war so far.

We are hearing now this weekend from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, acknowledging that his troops are fighting inside Russian territory. What are we hearing from Russia? Because they had been mum on this for a while.

SCIUTTO: Russia is acknowledging it as well, and they can't not acknowledge it because we have the geolocated videos of Russian forces operating miles inside -- Ukrainian forces operating miles inside Russian territory, just off Ukraine's northeastern border. And you have videos of Russian residents there complaining that this has happened, expressing fear.

So the world has had eyes on this for some time. It took a little bit of time for Ukraine to say, yes, indeed, our forces are there, and now for Russia to acknowledge it. There is no one, Sara, that I speak to who follows this war closely. On the U.S. side, European side, who saw this coming a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, I was having conversations with folks on the state of the war just prior to this operation, and they consistently described it as a stalemate in the east, that bloody conflict we've seen along the eastern front for months, really years now. So this was a surprise. It was intended to be a surprise, very close hold among Ukrainian officials, and now it appears to be a success.

The question is, what is the intent there? It's unlikely Ukraine intends to stay in large parts of Russian territory for a long period of time, that's just hard to defend. Do they move back and occupy some of that territory as a potential trade in any peace agreement remains to be seen. But right now, it just seems they're enjoying their success.

SIDNER: I know you've been having these conversations, and it was a surprise clearly to the Russians, because a bunch of soldiers had to surrender Russian soldiers to the Ukrainians.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you what your conversations were like on how Washington and other allies of Ukraine are seeing this, and what this means to the wider war.

SCIUTTO: So listen, for one, they're happy to see Ukrainian success, right? I mean, this is their ally and they don't want Ukraine to lose this war. But there are real sensitivities here.

As you know, Sara, the U.S. has long been concerned about the use of us supplied weapons, in particular, to attack Russian territory proper. And in fact, those weapons have been supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. with provisos that they don't strike Russian territory.

It's not clear that there are U.S. weapons directly involved in this operation, but that is sensitivity because, as you know, the U.S. concern is about a broader escalation here.

SIDNER: Jim Sciutto, thank you so much for talking us through that. I appreciate you this morning.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

SIDNER: John?

[09:25:07]

BERMAN: Love me some Jim Sciutto, all right. We are just minutes away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures up slightly this morning as investors brace for key data on inflation set to come out tomorrow. And then, do voters think that Donald Trump is "weird." We've got new polls that show how well the Harris campaign signature line of attack is now working.

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