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Kamala Harris Accepts Democratic Nomination for President in Historic Speech; Harris Slams GOP for Restricting Reproductive Rights, We Trust Women; Trump Lashes Out After Harris' Historic Acceptance Speech. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired August 23, 2024 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Sarah Sidner with John Berman. Kate Bolduan is in New York. We're here, we're awake, you're welcome.
The party just ended here in Chicago, and with one historic speech. And 100,000 balloons later, America is now back on the brink of possibly electing its first female president.
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KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: My entire career, I've only had one client, the people.
On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination for the president of the United States of America.
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SIDNER: There were cheers. You see her husband there. There were also a lot of tears as we watched people listen to her and think that she may be the one that breaks the ultimate glass ceiling.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And she talked a lot about herself. She talked a lot about where she came from and she talks a lot about unifying or trying to the country. Listen.
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HARRIS: Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward.
I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: This morning, this is a photo, not this one, obviously no one cares, that captures the magnitude of this moment for millions of little girls. This is Harris' great niece, Amara, alongside her dad, watching her great aunt give a speech no woman of color has ever given before. She is the same great niece who earlier in the night, with her sister, Leela, taught the crowd how to correctly pronounce Kamala Harris' first name, a direct dig, of course, at Donald Trump, who often purposely mispronounces it.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody over here say, Kama.
CROWD: Kama.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody over here say, La.
CROWD: La.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Together.
CROWD: Kamala. Kamala. Kamala.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Who upstages Kerry Washington? They did.
BERMAN: They sure did. So, as we said, Harris spoke a lot about herself, where she came from, who she is, but she also spoke about Donald Trump. Here's more of that.
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HARRIS: In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.
Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.
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BERMAN: All right. Let's get right to CNN's Eva McKend, who has been covering the Harris campaign for its entirety, five weeks this Sunday. All right, Eva, how does the campaign feel this morning? Where do they go next?
EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, John and Sara, we survived the week. We survived the DNC. But listen, what I can tell you what stuck out to me is the way that she uplifted her core values. She said that all Americans deserve to live with safety, dignity and justice. She talked about her personal story. She leaned into her immigrant story, her family's immigrant story. And then she also gave us a sense of what a Harris presidency would look like. She said that a defining goal of a Harris presidency would be to uplift the middle class.
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She spoke about immigration, saying that she would both lean into enforcement and then pursue a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. And then also, notably, she took on the war in Gaza. Take a listen.
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HARRIS: I will ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7th.
At the same time what has happened in Gaza over the past ten months is devastating, so many innocent lives lost.
President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKEND: And, Sara and John, a recognition now from the campaign that the real work lies ahead, the vice president and the second gentleman, in addressing supporters, acknowledging that last night. They do have a robust volunteer operations, so many people, especially in the state of Wisconsin, for instance, have signed up to volunteer over the last couple of weeks. We don't know where they are headed next, but they do plan to hit those battleground states hard. I think it's instructive that they didn't even really take this week off holding that big rally in Milwaukee simultaneously as the convention was happening. John, Sara?
SIDNER: Eva McKend, thank you so much. You look gorgeous this morning. I know you've had no sleep late last. So, you know, congrats to you and your DNA.
Can I just quickly say that last night being on the floor and watching that particular moment, it was the most cheering from the crowd, and anything she said, that was the moment where she threaded the needle with what happened in Israel and what's happening in Gaza. And for the first time, I heard a crowd that was together on all of it, because that has been a point of contention, especially for Democrats. It was remarkable to see that happen on the floor last night.
BERMAN: Yes, it was definitely a moment. And she covered a lot of ground in that speech between her own history, Donald Trump, and foreign and domestic policy as well, Kate.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And it seemed that Donald Trump wanted to react to all of that, all in real time. But congrats to your DNA as well. That's what we're going to be talking about.
Coming up, President Trump responding to Kamala Harris' speech in real time, dozens of posts and a call in to a late night show. What he said, we'll bring that to you. And a man accused of threatening to kill Donald Trump in multiple social media posts has been captured. What police are saying about him and his plans potentially this morning.
And forgotten radios, missed warnings, there is also new reporting on the major failures leading up to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
We'll be right back.
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HARRIS: I've traveled across our country and women have told me their stories, couples just trying to grow their family cut off in the middle of IVF treatments, children who have survived sexual assault, potentially being forced to carry a pregnancy to term.
One must ask, why exactly is it that they don't trust women? Well, we trust women.
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BERMAN: That was Vice President Harris last night with a CNN senior political analyst, senior editor at The Atlantic, Ron Brownstein, a journalist I have admired for decades.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, gang.
BERMAN: Convention since 1984 in San Francisco.
BROWNSTEIN: Everyone since, yes.
BERMAN: So, Ron, Harris delivered that speech last night. We just played part of it there. What did she accomplish in that?
BROWNSTEIN: You know, we all remember from our media study courses way back when Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. I thought for her, the messenger was the message. I think more important than anything she said was how she said it. She was energetic. She was steely. She was strong. She was confident. And she was in a very vivid contrast to the man she replaced and the man she's running against.
And about halfway through that speech, I was thinking of what Nikki Haley said back in February, when she said the first candidate that ditches their 80-year-old nominee will have a leg up. Harris had the advantage. I think she could have done more in some areas, particularly talking about inflation and helping people meet the cost of living, but she had the great asset of embodying her message.
If you're talking about a fresh start and turning the page, you almost didn't have to listen to anything she said. She radiated change in the way she presented herself last night. SIDNER: When you sit back and think about lines from the speech, you can't remember a line, but you remember something.
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What is it people would take away from that? Because we can remember lines from Michelle Obama, we can remember lines from Barack Obama, but not necessarily this speech. This did something else. What was that?
BROWNSTEIN: This was energy, strength and change. You know, I think conventions are better at portraying a positive message about the nominee than necessarily a negative message about the opponent. She is the first nominee since Hubert Humphrey in 1968, who was either not an incumbent president or had spent a year-and-a-half running for president, right? I mean, she arrived with less on the canvas. I think that anybody, since Wendell Willkie for the Republicans in 1940.
So, the need, the necessity of filling in her story, seemed to me -- obviously, they're imperative. They put much more emphasis on that than on laying out kind of what you're going to get from a Harris administration.
BERMAN: For the base or for the possibly persuadables, what do you think that speech or who do you think that speech hit?
BROWNSTEIN: I think the speech was about reassuring people that she is ready to be president and she is tough enough to deal with the world and she is tough enough to keep you safe.
Why did we talk about double haters all year? The double haters reflected the reality. There was not a majority. That wanted to reelect Joe Biden, but there was not a majority in the country that wanted to put Donald Trump back in the White House. She did not have to dwell -- the convention as a whole did not dwell as much on making the case against Trump, although she did quite a bit.
Her job, I think, is to reassure, to convince that majority that already does not want to put him back in the White House, that she is an acceptable alternative, and she tried to do that last night, I think, more through her personal story and the kind of presence, the presidential presence that she projected, a lot of P's there, than by, you know, really detailing the agenda.
By the way, I think we know what her agenda would be. The agenda of the Democratic Party is very clear. It's bottom up. It's a vast amount of it is stuff that the House passed in '21 and '22 that Sinema and Manchin blocked. But she did not do that last night. It was more about here. I am. I am change. I am energy. I am ready to be president.
SIDNER: Not trickle down, bottom up. But thank you for reminding us of Wendell Willkie from 1948.
BROWNSTEIN: You know, it hadn't come up all week. It hadn't come up all week.
BERMAN: We both covered that campaign.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes, exactly right.
SIDNER: Ron Brownstein, it's always a pleasure having you. Thank you so much.
All right, RFK Jr. set to address the nation about his path forward today. Will he drop out of the race and endorse Donald Trump? That's the rumor.
And with Georgia back in play, Donald Trump tries to make up for his attacks on Governor Brian Kemp. How he tried to do that, ahead.
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BOLDUAN: Donald Trump spent the week trying to counterprogram the Democratic Convention, but last night, he decided to unleash on social media and elsewhere.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The biggest reaction is why didn't she do the things that she's complaining about? All of these things that she talked about, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do everything, but she didn't do any of it. She could have done it three and a half years ago. She's got four and a half, five months left. She could go there right now. She can do all of the things, many of the things that she's talking about and complaining about.
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BOLDUAN: Today, Donald Trump will be in Arizona. Coincidentally or not, Robert Kennedy Jr. is to be in Arizona today as well, where he is expected to end his campaign.
CNN's Steve Contorno is tracking this one for us. So, Steve, what are you hearing about that?
STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Kate, Trump's team went into today believing that if RFK Jr. did indeed drop out, that it was likely, but not guaranteed, he would endorse the former president. Trump himself said, quote, it's possible that the two will meet today since they are so close to each other. And as you said, they have been teasing a special guest at tonight's rally.
And the belief within Trump's camp is that even though Trump RFK Jr.'s support has been dwindling, that it does pull from some of the pool of people that they believe that would be supporters for Donald Trump. And they have been working aggressively behind the scenes led by Donald Trump Jr., trying to court RFK Jr. to not only drop out of the race but get behind Donald Trump. So, that's what we don't know about today. Here's what we do know. He does have two events, one in Vegas, one in Arizona, and we expect him to continue what he's done all week, try to sort of provide some economic messaging, sticking to some of the issues that his campaign would like him to talk about, but also commenting on the DNC. It's been very clear. He's been watching it closely. Just take a look at some of these Truth Social posts from last night where he was commenting on everything from Vice President Harris' way she says, thank you, posting. where's Hunter, and also, quote, is she talking about me?
BOLDUAN: Okie-dokie. What is happening, though, with Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp? Is Trump trying to make nice now?
CONTORNO: That's what it seems like, because just a few weeks ago, he was in Atlanta where he called Brian Kemp, quote, disloyal and very average. Disloyal is about the worst thing Donald Trump could call somebody in his book. But overnight, he decided to put out a little bit of an olive branch to the Georgia governor, saying, thank you to Brian Kemp for all your support in Georgia.
And this is key because there are Republicans in Georgia who are very concerned that Donald Trump, with those remarks a few weeks ago, was making the same mistake that he made in 2020, where his attacks on Georgia and the governor and Republicans there, after the 2020 election, torpedoed their chances in those two key Senate runoffs that ended up Republicans with Republicans losing both those races, Kate.
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BOLDUAN: Yes, interesting timing now trying to make nice with a very popular governor in a very critical state. We'll see.
Good to see you, Steve. Thank you so much.
New details from Pennsylvania law enforcement about what went wrong in the lead up to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Forgotten radios may have had to do with it.
And how the Harris campaign is going to try to harness the energy from the Democratic Convention now to take it to the campaign trail.
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