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Elon Musk Interviews Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump on X Platform; Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Interviewed on Donald Trump's Comments about Closing Federal Department of Education If Elected President Again. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 13, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

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JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But inflation and immigration soured her on Biden, and then she watched the June debate.

CAROL CARTY, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: When Biden was on the ticket, I was going to vote for Trump, but now it's a harder call, just because I am not a fan of Donald Trump.

KING: Nor now of Senator Vance.

CARTY: Not a cat lady. I was a childless dog lady because I didn't meet the right person until I was over 40 years old, so I could very well be one of those childless women. And I found the comment insensitive and narrow-minded.

KING: This is near Carty's summer home on Maryland's eastern shore. She says the conversations back home among her Philly suburban mom friends are crystal clear.

CARTY: Definitely I have more friends saying that they're leaning towards Harris.

KING: But she still has reservations and hopes a Harris-Trump debate helps.

CARTY: Tell me what you did exactly at your last job, and what are your goals for this job if you get the job? And that's what I want to hear from Kamala Harris.

Scoring the campaign just like a job interview. In the suburbs, they usually decide who gets hired.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Delays, softballs, and insults -- President Trump campaign's latest move to stop Kamala Harris's momentum, a two-hour interview with Elon Musk. Harris fighting back, calling them two self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class. And hacked, the FBI says foreign state actors were able to breach the email of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. New details on Iran's coordinated attack to hack the Trump campaign.

And deadly wildfires exploding near one of the world's oldest cities.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Is this thing on? Not a campaign strategy, and also not the way anyone wants to begin what their campaign has promoted as the, quote, "interview of the century." But it did happen yesterday. It was 40 minutes of glitches to start. And then when it did start, it was a two-minute -- two-hour, rather, conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, more chummy banter between friends than actual interview. Donald Trump's big return to Musk's X platform was riddled with lies and false claims about crime, inflation, and other important policy matters. There were plenty of softball questions and plenty of criticism and aggressive attacks against his rival.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Kamala wouldn't have this conversation. She can't because she's not smart. She's not a smart person. She is a radical left lunatic. But if you vote for her, you ought to have your head examined. She's terrible. But she's getting a free ride.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Alayna Treene leads us off, right now.

So there was a lot for Donald Trump to gain being on a platform with the platform's founder on such a big platform. What did they gain?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, you didn't hear anything new from Donald Trump. It really was a two plus hour long conversation with Donald Trump and Elon Musk bro-ing it out. I mean, look, Donald Trump was very candid, and that's part of why I was so interested in this conversation, because we know that when he feels comfortable, when it's a more casual setting, when he's talking to someone who is a friendly interviewer, Donald Trump tends to open up more.

But we really didn't hear anything new from that conversation last night. Instead, it was the same airing of grievances and attacks that we have heard the former president make repeatedly on the campaign trail. He went after Harris. He criticized her position on the border. He claimed that she wouldn't do the type of interview, as you just heard, that he was doing with Musk.

He also went after Biden and spent a lot of time criticizing his former opponents, something we've seen repeatedly play out over the last several weeks, and I know that it kind of shows Donald Trump still wishes Biden were perhaps the one that he was going up against.

You also heard him make the same claims about Jewish voters. I want you to take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I say, if you're a Jewish person or have you believe in Israel, if you're a person that is very pro-Israel, if you vote for her, its worse than Biden. And Biden was bad. But if you vote for her, you ought to have your head examined.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, Kate, I mean, we've talked about these kinds of comments in the past. They're just -- they're very stereotypical of Donald Trump and many times comes off as antisemitic of Donald Trump saying if you are a Jewish person, you vote for a Democrat, how can you actually be Jewish?

But I will say, from all of these different points that Donald Trump made, including many of the controversial ones, Musk kind of let him do it. He amplified a lot of that.

[08:05:04]

And it's a big departure, because this was really Donald Trump's triumphant return to the platform. Of course, it was marred by all of these tech glitches that made it get underway 40 minutes after its allotted start time. But Musk kind of heaped praise on him, and they really were heaping praise on each other. And it sounded, and when I talked to Donald Trump's allies, they said it really sounded like just a two-hour long phone conversation that really yielded not much new information.

BOLDUAN: Clearly one that at least several people wanted to listen in on, or millions depending on who you're actually, who is tracking it. It's great to see you, Alayna. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I liked how Alayna described it as bro-ing it out, which is sort of like, you know --

BOLDUAN: You and I every day.

BERMAN: We bro it out. Nice.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: So how did the Harris campaign respond to all of this? They put out a release calling it a pair of self-obsessed rich guys who will sell-out the middle class. Let's get the very latest on the reaction. Isaac Dovere is with us this morning. What are you hearing?

ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, look, John, for the Harris campaign, this is another chance to kind of make fan of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, both of them turned into a bogeymen for Democrats, and not have Harris herself respond, but have it be part of this ongoing strategy of belittling Trump, making fun of him, making fun of not just the glitches, but some of the things that he said, and not having this same kind of high-minded criticism that Joe Biden would have of saying that Donald Trump is this great threat. It's just their ridiculous, they couldn't get their platform working, they're self- obsessed, they're rich guys, in that dismissive way and hoping that that gets under Trump's skin in a way that will continue to help them, they feel, going forward here.

BERMAN: So Isaac, the Harris campaign, I think, is working hard to turn the page towards the future. But as we're getting this new convention schedule for next week, first few nights, not exactly about the future terms of the speakers, at least insofar as we've seen.

DOVERE: No, that's right, but it is about unity for the party. Obviously, this summer has been a really tough one for the Democratic Party. You've never had a situation like what happened with Joe Biden being turned on by his own party and then essentially pushed off the ticket. And what the convention next week is going to be about is saying that the party now stands together. Monday night, you're going to have Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton speaking. Tuesday night, Barack Obama Wednesday, Bill Clinton. Also Wednesday, of course, Tim Walz, and then all building up to Thursday when Kamala Harris will speak.

There will be lots of other speakers, up and coming politicians, but that connection between the generations of Democratic politicians, all these presidents standing together saying they're united behind Kamala Harris is not only what the Democratic Party wants to -- excuse me -- put across here, but is in stark contrast to the Republican Party. Think back to the convention in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago for the Republicans. And then there was not any previous presidential or vice presidential nominee. They're backing Donald Trump.

BERMAN: Good point. Isaac Dovere, great to see you this morning and every morning. Sara?

SIDNER: All right, with us now is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. He serves on both the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. Thank you so much for joining me this morning, Eric.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): My pleasure. Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: I want to -- I want to quickly go through a couple of things that Donald Trump has said. He was trying to make news last night, not much news was made when he did this two-hour interview with Elon Musk. I want to get your quick response. First here is Trump talking about the fact that Biden ended his campaign for president and Kamala Harris started hers. Hear what he says.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave and they said we can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way.

ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: Yes. They just took out back behind the shed and basically shot him. TRUMP: What they did with this guy. And I'm no fan of his, and he was

a horrible president, the worst president in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Your response to his comments there?

SWALWELL: Donald Trump wants to call Kamala Harris at the top a coup. Well, he knows a thing or two about a coup. But he is cuckoo. And he's desperate. And we saw that last night on his Twitter conversation.

And sara, by the way, he's not going out to the battlegrounds anymore. He's just sitting on the couch and are conducting Twitter space conversations with someone else in the billionaire boys club. And I don't know where's he going to be tonight, at a Boca book club? Get out there and talk to people like Kamala Harriss is.

So you can kind of feel bad for three people who were a part of that last night, the Republican Party, because they have an almost 80-year- old in decline as their candidate, any investor in Twitter, because the platform has been reduced to nothingness, almost like the candidate that it's seeking to prop up. And even Donald Trump, I mean, he's just, he's boring now. He's a former president, and it's no way for a president to let themselves go like that.

[08:10:06]

SIDNER: All right. I want to talk about another thing where he talks about a policy that he may enact when he becomes president. Here's what he said he would do with the Department of Education if he becomes president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to close the Department of Education, move education back to the states where states like Iowa, where states like Idaho, you know, not every state will do great because states that basically aren't doing good now, you look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he's terrible. He does a terrible job. So he's not going to do great with education. But up the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: At the beginning, I went to close the Department of Education, which happens to be a major talking point of Project 2025, a project that Trumps says he had nothing to do with. What's your response? He attacked your state. He went after the Department of Education. What do you think about this?

SWALWELL: Doesn't Donald Trump want our kids to be smarter than he is? I mean, that's kind of my first approach is why would you want to punish the kids? Trump's Project 2025, it goes after women and their right to make decisions about their bodies, same-sex couples and the right to love who they want to love, and it goes after books and your ability to read them and have access to them at the library. But why can't we at least leave the kids out of it?

And so he's just an unserious person. And he represents the past. Kamala Harris is talking about the future. When it comes to the border, she's got a solution for the border. She wants to solve the issue. He wants to scream about the issue. When it comes to our kids she wants to protect them in their in their classrooms from gun violence and give them the tools that they need so they can compete for a job in the 21st century.

SIDNER: But Congressman Swalwell, to your point about Kamala Harris, why hasn't Kamala Harris laid out her policy agenda? It's not even on her campaign's website?

SWALWELL: So she's doing that this week. She's talking particularly about her economic message. She's also been going across the country, filling arenas, and talking about what she's going to do on the rights that were robbed for women when Roe was taken away, the border crisis that she's going to solve, that her economic policy won't benefit billionaires, but it will benefit hard working Americans. She calls it, it's working for working people. She's stopping before going onstage and talking to reporters, and I expect more of that as we go into the convention on Monday.

SIDNER: A lot of people expecting her to do a proper sit down very soon, frustrated that it hasn't happened yet. Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you so much for coming on this morning. Appreciate you.

SWALWELL: It's my pleasure.

SIDNER: Kate?

BOLDUAN: Longtime Trump operative Roger Stone hacked, the FBI now investigating how the heck happened, who is behind it, and how much bigger the effort was to target the Trump campaign and beyond.

Plus, new evacuation orders this morning as crews are battling to protect Athens from deadly wildfires that are still underway.

And a new heart health warning today about a popular sugar substitute.

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[08:17:59]

BERMAN: So new this morning, multiple sources tell CNN, the FBI believes hackers breached Roger Stone's personal e-mail account in a cyber attack ultimately meant to target Donald Trump's campaign.

The hackers apparently sought to use Stone's account as an access point to try to hack into the e-mails of a senior Trump campaign official, the Trump campaign blames Iran.

With us now is CNN's senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Andy, great to see you. You had a chance to look at the details here. What jumps out at you? ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I think, John, the first thing that jumps out is the evolution in the Iranians' tactics and sophistication.

If you look back at the 2020 election, we know that the Iranians attempted to interfere with that election as well and their efforts were kind of a downscaled version of what they've done here.

In that case, they were just going straight at the targets they wanted to collect on. This is kind of an evolution in sophistication. They've realized kind of employing almost human collection strategies. They're going after someone first who they think can guarantee them access to the targets they really seek.

In this case, it looks likes that person was probably Roger Stone because of his ability to communicate with those people inside the campaign that the Iranians were most interested in. They used Mr. Stone as an access agent to get to where they wanted to be.

BERMAN: What does it tell you that the FBI is investigating, how they will investigate and the fact that now they're looking at possibilities, the Iranians tried to get into both campaigns?

MCCABE: It doesn't surprise me at all, John. This is what the FBI Cyber Division does. They are focused very intently on keeping track of our most significant adversaries in cyberspace and trying to understand when those adversaries are making efforts to undermine our Democratic process.

I think people need to kind of -- we have a tendency to think about these things in a very kind of bilateral way if a political target of one party is hacked, we assume that the actor prefers that party or prefers the other party. That's not exactly what's happening here with intelligence collection.

[08:20:10]

Intelligence agencies want access to all the information they can get regardless of party affiliation. And they want to use that access to undermine the public's confidence in the election, to undermine the perception of democracy around the world because those sorts of things are very damaging to governments like Iran, who cannot be democratic because the people in power there would lose if they let the population actually make a decision. So, they are targeting democracy writ large and it's important that the FBI protects us from that.

BERMAN: All right, we have to talk about Roger Stone here for a second, Andy, because Stone, of course was convicted though he ultimately had his sentence commuted in part because of testimony he gave to Congress about questions about connections he may have had with WikiLeaks when they were leaking things in the 2016 campaign.

So if you're the FBI now investigating this situation right now, how complicated is it to deal with a character -- and I use that word specifically, like Roger Stone? MCCABE: Super complicated. I mean, at the top level alone there's a bit of, live by the sword die by the sword theme happening here, right? This is a guy who has meddled in elections his entire life. If you believe his biography, he is somebody who certainly was supportive of the Russians' efforts to steal information from the Democratic National Committee and from the Clinton campaign, and to try to use that information against her.

So, now he finds himself on the kind of pointy edge of that sphere this time coming from Iran, not Russia. And Mr. Stone has a very checkered past about making misstatements and false statements and using opportunities with the media to kind of pump up his own resume.

I'm confident the FBI is keeping all that in the back of their mind as they deal with him. They must deal with him. He is clearly a victim in this scheme and they deal with all victims in the same way. But at the same time they're thinking -- I'm sure they're thinking twice about the representations he makes.

BERMAN: Andy McCabe, great to see you this morning, thanks so much -- Sara.

SIDNER: Ahead, we've been watching really terrible images of a devastating wildfire in Greece, how an international effort to help protect Athens is underway.

And, new polling tracks Democrats' enthusiasm, but how well the polls actually predict turnout with this much time to go before the election?

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[08:27:12]

SIDNER: Here's some breaking news, just in, the CEO of Starbucks is stepping down, this is effective immediately. That's what the company has just announced after just a year in the role.

Starbucks is now tapping Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol to be its new chairman and CEO. The change, that change is effective September 9th. Starbucks pre-trading stock jumped more than 10 percent at the announcement, much more to come on that.

BOLDUAN: So there's also another big story we're watching overseas, raging wildfires, and new evacuations underway near the Greek capital of Athens, because the fires that have destroyed homes and businesses and everything in between, at least one person has died, dozens injured so far.

CNN's Eleni Giokos has more on this live in Greece for us. What is the latest?

ELENI GIOKOS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate, I mean, the latest from the Fire Department is that there are no new fronts at this point that they seem to have things under control. As you can see, wind has subsided, which is vitally important for it to not spread further. But you mentioned one woman has died, and actually this is the building where she lost her life.

What we heard from authorities is that she was taken out this morning. There were evacuation orders given for thousands of people within this area in Bedelia and other surrounding areas as well. She, for some reason went to work. She arrived here. She stayed and then when the fire arrived from what her co-workers say, moved rapidly to the building and she lost her life.

This is just one of the stories, Kate, it is one of those personal stories that really hit hard not only for residents here and for people that worked here, but also for Greece as a whole.

You've got these fires that moved so quickly after moving around 40 kilometers to where we're standing right now, burning down homes and really difficult to get it under control.

And finally today, we are seeing just the aftermath. People are trying to come to terms with their loss, the devastation that we've been seeing. But more importantly, they have a lot of questions. They're asking this, why wasn't it contained quickly enough? Was it the wind, I mean, is climate change to blame? Could government do more?

These are the questions that we keep hearing on a yearly basis and the hope is that as the seasons continue and of course the prognosis is that fires are going to become an annual phenomenon in Greece, what they can do to try and mitigate the impact that has now moved so close so the center of Athens.

BOLDUAN: Eleni, thank you so much.

I mean, we talk about wildfires all the time, but some of this video coming in -- this is a video from yesterday that's right in the box next to you, just truly troubling, people racing to help anyway they can.

This home completely engulfed in flames. It's just a really sad to see this all going down.

Eleni, thank you so much -- John.

BERMAN: All right. War is coming home. The new threat by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Russia after a surprise incursion by Ukraine into Russian territory.

We are standing by for key numbers on inflation. What they could mean for the stock market and your wallet.

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