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Kamala Harris Prepares To Unveil Economic Policy On Friday; Donald Trump To Address Economy In North Carolina; Russia Pulls Reserves From Key Regions In Effort To Hold Back Ukrainian Advances. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 14, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:59]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: The economy front and center on the campaign trail as the two presidential candidates make their case to voters this week with major speeches explaining why they are the one the trust on the economy.

We're going to look at how important this is for voters and whether after years of high inflation, this issue could be decisive in November.

Plus, a week on the International Space Station has turned into months in limbo for two astronauts, with the possibility of their stay in space lasting well into next year. We're going to have an update on the troubled Boeing Starliner capsule.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And nearly two thirds of young adults now say they believe drinking is bad for you. A new study appears to back them up.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

DEAN: Just hours from now, former President Donald Trump will deliver a speech about the most pressing issue for voters, the economy. Trump is set to speak at a rally in the critical state of North Carolina, just as the new inflation report comes out showing significant cooling and inflation despite that good news for Americans, Trump's campaign has blasted Kamalanomics. Vice President Kamala Harris plans to hit back with a campaign event in the same state Friday laying out her economic policy with details on how she plans to fight inflation.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live at the Trump rally in Ashville, North Carolina. And Kristen, delivering an effective speech on the economy is seen as critical for Trump to stay on message and explain it to voters. The question is, will he and can he do that?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Jessica, and talk to anyone around him. They believe Donald Trump can win this election in November if he focuses on three things, one of them being the economy, the other one being immigration, and the third being crime. These were all things that when you saw the polling against President Joe Biden, he was leading in his handling of those things, and now they believe that he would lead Kamala Harris on the same issues.

But Donald Trump, as we have seen time and time again, has had a very hard time staying on message. Particularly since Kamala Harris entered the race, we have seen him latch onto these conspiracy fringe theories from the internet, particularly talking about her crowd size, saying that photos of the crowd were A.I. generated, something that today when Kate Sullivan CNN zone caught up with him before he came to North Carolina, he reiterated that he didn't know how many people were at that rally.

Now, obviously it has been disproven time and time again that those photos were altered and there was no crowd there. We know that there was a significant crowd, but it's obviously something that's gotten under his skin, and his allies would rather see him focused on things like the economy.

So, what we're told right now, we're in a venue that is not your traditional rally venue. It is seated. This is being billed as a speech, not a rally, and that he is going to focus on the economy. He also said he'd focus on crime. Again, two of the issues, as I just mentioned, that his allies are really trying to double down are the most important.

And this is the beginning in a series of these kind of events that are going to focus on policy specifically.

But as you mentioned, it is just unclear what's going to happen when Donald Trump takes the stage. They can write whatever speech they want for him. He obviously will say what it is that he wants to say. And even when we go to these rallies often, we get his remarks ahead of time, and they are very different from what we hear from him on the stage.

But he right now is at a point where we are starting to see those polls getting better for Kamala Harris. We are seeing the enthusiasm around Kamala Harris getting better, and those around him believe something has to change. We'll see if it starts today.

DEAN: And Kristen, Trump is planning a press conference for tomorrow. What more do you know about that?

HOLMES: Well, I'm told it's also going to focus on the issues that he's going to start there talking about the economy, but he is going to open up to questions and any broad questions from reporters at his Bedminster resort in New Jersey.

[14:05:05]

Now, part of this is a strategy that we have seen from Donald Trump and his team, where they've been pointing out the fact that Kamala Harris has yet to take questions from press other than a handful of questions on the tarmac or sit for an interview or even have a press conference. This is something they believe should be a media narrative around Kamala Harris, and now you're seeing J.D. Vance sit for interviews on Sunday. He did the Sunday show rotation. You're also seeing Donald Trump. This is now the second press conference that he has done in a matter of two weeks.

But again, I will just notice one -- note one thing, which is that not everyone is pleased. And I mean that by people who are close to him, by him doing these wide ranging press conferences nonstop, they believe it allows for opportunities for him to go off message.

However, they the campaign, Donald Trump believes this is an important narrative, so he will be taking questions in New Jersey tomorrow.

DEAN: All right, Kristen Holmes for us from Asheville, North Carolina. Thank you so much.

Let's turn now to CNN's Eva McKend is here with us in the studio. And Eva, Vice President Harris headed to North Carolina as well. She's going Friday to roll out her economic policy, her first big policy speech. What are you hearing about what they're planning for Friday?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: So, they are principally concerned about making this argument that they are -- they care about the American worker. That's what you hear time and time again from the vice president, from Governor Walz.

You know, we're getting scant details ahead of Friday, because they're really trying to build anticipation for this. But on the campaign trail, you hear them talk about going after corporate, landlords, raising the federal minimum wage, which Democrats do pledge to do cycle after cycle, but it evades them when they actually get into office.

But they'll also be on a bus tour on Sunday in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania, beginning the bus tour in Pittsburgh, and then they have $90 million coming in the weeks ahead in an ad buy to really help them boost this argument. They're going to be up on the airwaves in these critical battleground states and in small communities where people might not necessarily be used to seeing these ads, including Erie and Marquette, Wisconsin, so Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.

The next couple of weeks, the airwaves will just be blanketed with these ads where you're really going to hear a lot about the personal biography of the vice president as they try to make their case. We've heard the former president say that he's really going to kick into high gear in the fall. And what we're hearing from the Harris campaign is that they don't have any time to waste.

DEAN: They just want to do it now, when they have that map up. I mean, that's kind of the ball game. And it is interesting to note that is where Harris and walls are spending pretty much all their time right now.

All right, Eva McKend, thanks so much. Boris? SANCHEZ: Let's dig deeper now with CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten and CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for The Atlantic Ron Brownstein. Thank you both for being with us.

Harry, Vice President Harris, preparing to roll out this economic agenda. Take us through how much voters care about the economy and how they view her performance on the issue.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, all right, Boris, let's take a look at this. You know that this election so tight right now. So so tight.

So, I want to look at undecided voters in those key battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. What is their top issue when it comes to their vote for president? Look what's number one right here, the economy and inflation at 21 percent, you can see on your board here. There's no other issue that's anywhere close. Abortion is number two, and that comes in at just seven percent.

So, economy and inflation three times as important as the second most important issue, abortion. So economy, inflation, number one.

Now, you also asked me about how they view Kamala Harris on the issue, and how does she -- how is she viewed in comparison to Donald Trump? I think that this kind of gets at what is so frustrating to the Donald Trump campaign, they trust more on the economy in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, among likely voters.

Look, Donald Trump still has an advantage over Kamala Harris, but that advantage right now is six points. You go back to May when Joe Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee, you see right here, Trump had a 14 point lead on this particular very important issue in the vines of the voters.

So, what essentially has happened is Kamala Harris has gone into Donald Trump's core issue into his house and has taken supporters away from him on the basis of the economy. And it's going to be very interesting to see over the days and weeks and months to come. Can Kamala Harris slice this advantage that Trump has even more, or will Trump be able to -- be able to reinvigorate his advantage on this particular issue?

If you can answer me that question, I can probably tell you who's going to win this campaign come November.

SANCHEZ: It is that significant. The stakes are really high on this issue. So, Ron, seeing that eight point difference that Harry just pointed out. What could the vice president do to sort of differentiate herself further from the Biden administration, which for some time now, we've shown in polling, Americans don't have as much confidence when it comes to the economy?

[14:10:15]

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and Boris, this is what I think is really significant about the trend of Harris narrowing the gap with Trump on the economy in multiple polls, the most dramatic of which was the Financial Times University of Michigan poll that actually showed basically a dead heat, slightly more voters trusting her than Trump on the economy.

What I think is especially ominous for the Trump campaign in those findings is that assessments of the economy itself have not really improved. You know, some Republicans say, well, it's vibes, or, you know, media coverage that is causing people to have more faith in Harris.

It's not that the -- it's not that people are more confident about where the economy is now, in fact, in that FT poll, half of voters said they were worse off under the Biden administration.

So, what could explain her gains? What explains her gains I think it is a broader confidence in her to provide more energetic and less divisive leadership. It's kind of -- it's kind of a faith in her to solve the problem, rather than Biden going forward to solve the problem.

And I think that applies to a lot of issues. I mean, we've seen in a number of polls, including some today out from Monmouth and others, that she has gained substantially relative to Biden when compared to Trump on all sorts of personal attributes, and I think that is the key to her improvement on the economy, and it makes it more difficult, I think, to just push back by arguing that, for example, she hasn't put out enough specifics.

SANCHEZ: The Trump team seems to still be trying to figure out and articulate its messaging on the vice president. A lot of voters have already defined former President Trump, so I'm wondering, Harry, the third time he's running for the White House, how popular is Donald Trump right now compared to when he ran back in 2020 and 2016?

ENTEN: Yes, this, to me, is one of the more interesting statistics, because if you've been following the campaigns of Donald Trump through the years, you know that he's won or came close to winning, despite the fact that he was not a popular individual.

And at this particular point the campaign, I took an average of the polls the other day, what you see is he's actually more popular now than at the same point in either the 2020 or 2016 campaign. You can see that in the favorable ratings. Look at this. He was at 33 percent in 2016 a campaign and he went on a win. In 2020 he was at 41 percent and now he's at 44 percent.

And this, I think, is going to be the key question for both the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign. For the Trump campaign, the question is, wait a minute, our guy is more popular, basically, than he's ever been, and yet he seems to be falling behind in the polls. How do we change that? Is it possible to change that?

And then the question for the Harris campaign is, wait a minute, maybe we shouldn't take things for granted, because Trump has won when he has been so unpopular in the past, and now he's more popular than he's basically ever been. Maybe this guy really is going to be tough to put away, and I think that is going to be the very interesting question going down, the sort of finale of this campaign is, can Harris not being Trump enough, or is she going to have to maintain her high favorable ratings that she's been seeing?

And again, I don't know the answer to that question, because this campaign has been absolute lunacy over the last month to two months, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Even that feels like an understatement, Harry. Ron, I'm curious --

ENTEN: I know.

SANCHEZ: I'm curious to get your read on those numbers and what you attribute that jump in popularity too.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I think not only has Trump's favorable has been rising, but his retrospective job approval has been rising. And I think the answer is pretty clear, I think voters are looking at him primarily through the lens of what they didn't like about Biden, and focusing on the idea that inflation, cost of living and immigration seem more under control when Trump was president, and that has eclipsed some of the other elements that come with Trump, the chaos, the fighting, the division, the tweets that caused his approval rating to never reach 50 percent at any time during his actual presidency, the first president you know ever in Gallup polling that was true for.

So, the question against the backdrop of Biden, I think Trump was rising because voters saw him as an antidote to what they didn't like in Biden. The question is whether Harris, now as the backdrop, causes vote more voters to remember what the other things, the other aspects of Trump's presidency that they didn't like, beside the fact that gas and groceries, you know, seem more affordable then.

You know, the shift -- the shift in the backdrop here is just critical on so many fronts for us. I mean, you know, consistently in polls all year, somewhere around a majority, or slightly more than a majority who said they doubted whether Trump was too old to execute the responsibility of the president, that issue never really emerged, because you had this, you know, tsunami of concern about Biden's ability, but suddenly he's the old guy in the race, and at times he has certainly shown it, like at that press conference last week when he had trouble, you know, kind of fashioning a coherent argument.

[14:15:14]

So, in a lot of ways, the landscape has shifted for Trump, not because voters are viewing him differently, but they're viewing him in a different context, and that creates all sorts of problems that they're going to have to figure out how to resolve.

SANCHEZ: To that point, and it's obviously probably difficult to quantify this, but just from a perspective that you have covering politics for so many years, would it make that significant of a difference for Trump strictly to focus on policy, say later today in his economic speech, as so many Republicans are calling on him to do, if it seems that a lot of voters view him more favorably now and view the job that he did when he was president more favorably now?

BROWNSTEIN: Right. I mean, you know, voters were set. I don't think it would obviously be better than the alternative that we've seen for him, but I agree with the premise of your question. I don't think it would fundamentally change the dynamic here.

I mean, we had -- during Trump's presidency, most Americans were satisfied with the economy, and yet a majority did not approve of his performance in office, and that was before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

I think the core question in this election remains, do you -- with Biden out, the core question reverts to, do you or don't you want to live in the America that Trump is sketching out?

I don't know if Harris has to be more acceptable than Trump on all of these issues, she has to cross a threshold of acceptability for voters who are resistant to live in the kind of society that Trump is offering with mass deportation and, you know, mass firings in the civil service and all the other polarizing elements of his agenda.

Don't forget, in 2022 Democrats did better than we have seen in modern times. As I'm sure Harry would agree, among voters who are dissatisfied with the economy and dissatisfied with the president's performance, precisely because they were so resistant to moving in a Trumpian direction. There's a big audience for the you know, the America that Trump has on offer. I think the evidence of the last three elections is a slightly bigger audience against it. And the question for Harris is, can she bring that coalition back together, which it clearly splintered under Biden over concerns both about his age and inflation.

SANCHEZ: Ron Brownstein, Harry Enten, great to see both of you. Thanks for joining us.

Ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, more embarrassment for the Kremlin. Ukraine says it's pulled off its biggest attack on Russian airfields since the war began as its soldiers advanced even deeper into Russian territory.

Plus, NASA giving an update on the two Starliner astronauts still waiting aboard the International Space Station for that much desired ride home. We'll talk about when they could be returning to Earth.

And later, inflation is cooling, but that doesn't do much to help those who depend on Social Security, their benefits never quite catching up with the rising cost of living. We're going to dig into those numbers in just moments.

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[14:22:51]

DEAN: Ukraine is pushing farther inside Russian territory more than a week after its surprise cross border assault. Today, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy praising his military after launching drones and what Kyiv is calling the biggest attack on Russian airfield since the war began.

Russia claims it shot down more than 100 drones and four missiles from Ukraine. One Ukrainian military commander telling CNN Moscow now has pulled its troops out of key regions in an effort to block Ukraine's advances, sending them more than 100 miles away. Zelenskyy says Ukraine advanced about a mile in the past day alone.

And for more on all of this, we're joined now by Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton. Colonel, great to have you here. There's a lot to talk about, because there's a lot of dynamics happening here.

Let's start first with Ukraine is holding this security zone that is in Russia. And now Ukrainian commander says Russia started pulling. As I was just saying, their reserves from inside Ukraine up into the Kirk (ph) to stop -- up into that region to stop the advance. Tell us more about that.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Sure, absolutely, Jessica. So, what we're dealing with this is the area right here that the Ukrainians have.

DEAN: This little blue area.

LEIGHTON: This little blue area right in the middle there is where the Ukrainians have made their advances. So, what has happened is the Russians will give them a red color here. They've been able to pull their forces -- they've had to pull their forces out of these particular areas right here. And actually, I should make it a little bit like this.

And what they're forced to do is take some of those forces and move them into this area to defend against the Ukrainian assaults at this particular point.

DEAN: And so, what does that mean? Because this is where the Russians have been making some -- at least been making some progress, right in Ukraine?

LEIGHTON: Absolutely, yes. So, when you look at, for example, the eastern part right here you have -- you have the different areas that the Russians have actually made some advances in.

Now, Ukraine has gained some territory back around Bakhmut, but the Russians are moving in areas like this, and basically they move-- they're moving into an ark right along this front line right here. They're not going to be able to do that consistently if they have to pull their forces back, and that's why the Ukraine moves up north are very important.

DEAN: And so then we combine that with what we were just talking about, that what Ukraine is saying is its biggest attack on Russian airfields since this began, targeting four airfields with drones.

[14:25:05]

So, talk us through what that attack does in conjunction with what we're seeing what you were just talking about.

LEIGHTON: Right, so these are a fields in Voronezh, Savasleyka, Borisoglebsk and Kursk, of course. And these airfields were ones that the Ukrainians attacked with drones. What's important about this is that this interdicts to some extent, Russian air activity.

The Russians use weapons known as glide bombs, which they mount on aircraft, and those can be really launched from any area off of Ukraine right here. They don't even have to fly into Ukrainian airspace, but if the Ukrainians attack them at airfields like these, they will then interdict or prevent the Russians from using those aircraft and attacking Ukrainian cities, the civilian infrastructure and, of course, the military infrastructure as well.

DEAN: And if we look at this map, where you have those red dots, that's getting pretty far into Russia. Now, President Zelenskyy has been asking the allies, including the U.S., to be able to use long range weaponry that would take them even farther inside, right?

LEIGHTON: Potentially, yes.

DEAN: Do you think the U.S. would ever approve that?

LEIGHTON: Well, it depends. What we don't want is an escalation of the war or for it to go out of control, in the sense that it would involve NATO directly, or the U.S. and Russia in a shooting war.

But what could happen is that the U.S. could give permission for the Ukrainians to use us weapons against airfields that are being used directly against Ukraine.

So, these would be the types of airfields where that kind of a ban could be lifted for as long as the Ukrainians don't attack, let's say, Russian civilian infrastructure or anything like that. And that is really what it boils down to. They also don't want the Ukrainians to attack any element of the Russian nuclear forces. So, this would be what they would limit it to.

DEAN: Right. And just lastly, we know Zelenskyy has said 100 Russian servicemen has been captured, and that he believes, "This will accelerate the return of our guys and girls." Do you think that's right?

LEIGHTON: It's possible, because one of the main reasons, you know, when you look at what has happened here in the Kursk area, they have captured a whole bunch of Russians, not just 100 that that we know about today, but several others. The Ukrainians have lost some of their men to the Russians as well, men and women, I should say, because it involves both.

And one of the things that is critical is this exchange of prisoners that goes on between the sides. It's gone on since February of 2022, and even before that. And now it's important for the Ukrainians, in essence, to have bargaining power.

So, the two things the exchange of the prisoners of war, plus possible exchange of territory, areas that the Ukrainians control in Russia for areas that the Russians control in Ukraine.

DEAN: It's all very fascinating. All right, well, more to come, as we've -- as we've been saying, it's maybe a, potentially a turning point, but we're waiting to see how long it can go on.

LEIGHTON: Exactly, Jessica, and we have to be a little bit patient. This is a small area. There's a lot of territory involved in all of this. And the Russians, we have to remember, have captured about 18 percent of Ukraine.

DEAN: Right, not an insignificant number. All right. Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you so much.

Still to come, their week long mission has turned into months in space. What NASA just said about when the Starliner astronauts could finally come home.

Plus, cases of a respiratory virus that dwindled during the pandemic are on the rise again. What you need to know.

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