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Harris and Trump Virtually Tied in Swing States Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania; Trump Allies Look to Use Revised Indictment to Their Advantage; Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba Tenders Resignation. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 04, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking just moments ago, behold the polls. Brand new CNN polling from almost all the key battleground states. The math that points to one state, or shall we say, commonwealth, that could rule them all.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: On the heels of the new Trump indictment, this morning some allies of the former president are hoping Jack Smith's court filing can actually help get them off the hook.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And a former top aide for two New York governors charged with acting as a secret agent for the Chinese government. The luxurious benefits prosecutors say she received and how she got caught.

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: And breaking this morning, brand new CNN polling from six battleground states on the race for president, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, three leads. Three is tight as a tick, six days from the high stakes debate, 62 days until Election Day.

So let's get right to it. CNN political director David Chalian is with us. The top lines this morning, David?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Good morning, John. And yes, just two days from ballots going out in North Carolina for people to begin voting, but take a look at our snapshot of those six states, six battleground states. And what you see here, you mentioned there were a few states where there are slight leads.

In Wisconsin, Kamala Harris, 50 percent Donald Trump 44 percent slightly for Harris in Wisconsin, outside the margin of error, same in Michigan, a slightly for Harris, outside the margin of error. In Arizona down here, it's a slight lead for Donald Trump 49 percent to 44 percent. Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, all within the margin of error, no clear leader in those states.

What this shows us, both candidates have paths to 270 and it is a very close race nine weeks out from Election Day, John.

BERMAN: A lot of tight states there, David. How many people still making up their minds?

CHALIAN: You know, this number actually surprised me in our poll, John, because it was a little bit larger of a group of what we call movable voters than I would anticipate. You see here movable voters, 12 percent of the electorate in Georgia among likely voters say they are movable. That means they tell us they could change their choice or they haven't made a choice between Harris and Trump.

And so you see here, 12 percent in Georgia movable, 15 percent in Arizona and Nevada. Let's move to the other three states. And it goes up to 16 percent in Michigan and Pennsylvania. That is not an insignificant chunk in close races to have as potentially movable voters.

BERMAN: Look, so much has changed in this race is understandable. People may want to wait a little bit to make up their minds definitively.

David, what about the issues? What do the polls tell us about that?

CHALIAN: This, John, as you know, covering this race all throughout, the economy is issue number one. That is true across all six of these battleground states that we tested. You see here, pluralities in all these states say that the economy is the most important issue for their choice.

What I want to show you, though, is if you look at it by each candidate supporters, it's a whole different story. Overwhelmingly, Trump supporters say the economy is the most important issue. Look at that. Majorities in each of those states of his supporters, substantial majority say so. But look at among Harris supporters, the economy rates much lower for Harris supporters in all of those states.

And if you look at the battle between Harris and Trump in these states about who is better to handle the economy, who do you trust more to handle the economy, Donald Trump wins that across the board. But look where it gets a lot closer. In Michigan, in Georgia, in Wisconsin, the Trump advantage over Harris on the economy issue is much more narrow than it is in some of these other states. I think that explains some of the results we're seeing in these states and we see her making the economic issue more competitive than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump.

[07:05:04]

BERMAN: Exactly. And, by and large, a lot more narrow than it was when it was Trump versus Biden.

Dave, we're going to be chewing over these numbers for the entirety of our three hour flagship broadcast, but what else jumps out at you here?

CHALIAN: Well, the democracy issue is the number two issue tested. So, overall, among likely voters in all these states, the second issue listed as the most important issue or the one that ranks second is protecting democracy. And, again, if you look at that split out by the candidate supporters, it's a very low ranking issue for Trump supporters. But look at this. Protecting democracy is and I think that this is the number one issue for Harris supporters across all these states, even more so than abortion rights.

And then I just want to show you the Biden factor in these states. I find this so interesting. So, these are likely voters. Those that disapprove of Joe Biden's job, so somewhere between 55 60 percent across all these states are disapprovers. His approval rating, we know, is hovering around 40 percent on average. But take a look here. 12 percent of disapprovers of Biden are going to Harris in Wisconsin. In Nevada, 19 percent, nearly one in five who say, I don't like the job Joe Biden's doing, they're still voting for Kamala Harris.

She's going to want to increase her margins among this group of Biden disapprovers as she tries to separate herself from the president she serves in her day job, John.

BERMAN: 62 days to do that work, six days before the debate, such important new information this morning, David, so much to chew over. David Chalian, thank you so much.

And a little bit later, we're going to plug some of these new numbers into the map here, the race to 270 electoral votes. I'm going to give you a little teaser here. All these new numbers, they point to one state, or shall we say commonwealth, being very, very, very, very, very important. Have I circled that enough for you to tell you how important that one commonwealth, Kate, might be?

BOLDUAN: Everyone in Pennsylvania is like, what is happening right now?

BERMAN: Well, they're about to get a lot of visitors, I think --

BOLDUAN: And also, we now have a new group of voters to focus in on from the double haters that we learned about this election to now be Biden disapprovers. S, we've got -- there's a lot going on today.

Let's also go to this. This is part of the conversation. Today, Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail, headed to one of these battleground states, the one that John keeps circling, set to hold a town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He's still circling Pennsylvania, guys. That's -- and now he's going over to Massachusetts. Chill out.

All right, Donald Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, he's set to speak in Arizona, and the campaign has put out a new memo overnight arguing that they have the momentum in this race.

CNN's Alayna Treene joins us right now for much more on this. Not in Pennsylvania, so you're not feeling the circling that John Berman is doing on that, on the commonwealth right now. Regardless, most importantly, what are you hearing from the Trump campaign, and what more are you getting from this new campaign memo? ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, Kate, this memo is really trying to kind of put their finger on the pulse at this moment. We are just nine weeks out to Election Day. And what they're trying to argue in this memo is from Donald Trump's co-campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. They're trying to argue that Donald Trump is the one who has the momentum, not Kamala Harris, despite, of course, all the enthusiasm and energy we've seen around her, really, that she's been able to sustain since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee and then officially the Democratic nominee at the convention last month. They're arguing he has the momentum and that really that the media is biased against Donald Trump and is not portraying the race in the way that they believe they should.

Now, I'm going to read for you just some of what they wrote specifically, because there's a couple of very interesting lines in here. They wrote that three weeks ago, quote, three weeks ago, the Democrats newly crowned nominee. Kamala Harris was leading in Nate Silver's Electoral College modeling. That's from -- I'll just say this on Nate Silver, just to pause there, Nate Silver, they very much heavily look at, they look at his polling, they look at that data. This is something that Donald Trump's campaign focuses very heavily on. So, keep that in mind.

But I'm going to continue. The forecast has since inversed in President Trump's favor. The state of the race is clear, with just nine weeks until the most consequential election in American history, the Trump-Vance campaign has the momentum. The memo goes on to say that despite the bias, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would be re elected.

Now, again, this is them trying to put their finger on the pulse, it's also just a couple days before that very crucial debate also in Pennsylvania where that will be next Tuesday. And, look, I will say from my conversations with Trump's senior advisors, they do feel like the race is settling. They recognize that Harris was having a great few weeks after Biden ended his campaign, and it was clear that she would top the Democratic ticket.

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But they feel like now it is really a head-on race with Harris. They know that they have a lot of work to do, but they also think that he has many pathways to 270 Electoral College votes in November. And that's really what they laid out in this memo. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Yes, maybe a bad month, if you will, behind them, but there's still, even though a short amount of time ahead, a very -- a lot of time to make up ground. It's good to see you. Alayna, thank you so much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, Kate. Breaking overnight, Russia launches a new deadly attack just as Ukraine's foreign minister and several other cabinet members resign.

Plus, brand new CNN reporting how some Trump allies are trying to use Jack Smith's new indictment to get out of their own legal troubles. And two American men now have a shot at winning a tennis grand slam, something we haven't seen in more than 20 years. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

SIDNER: New this morning, the revised indictment against Donald Trump is giving his allies new hope they can escape prosecution. After the Supreme Court granted broad immunity to Trump for official acts he did as president, Jack Smith removed some references to communications between Trump and federal officials while Trump was still in the White House. That includes former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and Trump's former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz discusses this with me now. How could this affect sort of the state level charges against Meadows and against Clark?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Sara, it may help them, or at least their attorneys are making quite clear in court filings over the past week that they think this helps them with the way that Jack Smith has filed the superseding indictment rewarded things against Donald Trump in federal court. But, Sara, our sources, there were several of us where we were talking to sources across the Trump universe, and there is a sigh of relief for a lot of people.

Now, Jeffrey Clark, his relief is that he's cut out of the federal indictment related to Donald Trump, and so his attorneys are trying to use that in other things where he's trying to keep his bar license, and then Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, he's cut back in the indictment. There were a lot of things that he had been privy to in the version of the charges against Donald Trump before. Now, he's just in a small part of it.

What his attorneys are saying in his state case in Arizona, there's a court hearing coming up on Thursday related to that. They're writing to the court that it wasn't an alleged criminal act by Meadows. As chief of staff, he was carrying out his official duties, even if the president was engaged in official activity. And so his attorneys are making this bid that bubble of official duties around Donald Trump, that should extend to Mark Meadows as chief of staff.

And when Jack Smith even rewrote that indictment last week against Trump, it phrased what Mark Meadows was doing a little bit differently. It called him specifically the chief of staff who sometimes handled private and campaign related logistics for the defendants. So, Meadows' team is looking to carry that forward as they continue to argue against his state charges in Georgia and in Arizona. And then there's a bunch of other people too affected who are no longer in the indictment and thus may not be witnesses ultimately if and when Donald Trump goes to trial in federal court. Sara?

SIDNER: It has changed a lot of things, this new indictment, because of the Supreme Court ruling. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for your reporting. John? BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, the biggest shakeup in Ukraine's leadership since the war began as Russia unleashes a new wave of attacks. And this morning, an 11-year-old is in custody after confessing to killing a former mayor and his daughter. New details on the murder weapons hidden in the scene.

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[07:20:00]

BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, a major reshuffle in the Ukrainian cabinet under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has tendered his resignation as Russia launched a new missile attack overnight, killing at least seven people.

CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour is in Kyiv this morning. This attack targeted Lviv and the surrounding western areas, Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: John, it did. And as you say, seven people, including a teenage girl. And it was directed actually at the city center and probably quite close to perhaps targeting the railways. It's clear that the Russians are trying to go after a number of targets. So, there's the transportation and what they think is the, you know, the transport of vital supplies for the Ukrainian war effort.

There's what happened in Poltava, Central Ukraine, yesterday, attacking a military academy causing more than 50 deaths and more than a hundred injuries. This uptick of attacks on the infrastructure, the grid, as they see winter coming, and they again want to cripple this nation's ability to warm itself and to keep itself -- you know the lights on throughout the winter.

So, amid all this is this reshuffle that President Zelenskyy, in fact, announced in an address on television last night to the nation, and he essentially said that we need to get our best people, our best minds, we need to reshuffle to be able to assault, or rather to be able to deal with the next phase of this war.

Dmytro Kuleba, who's been foreign minister since March of 2020, i.e. before this full scale invasion, and has been a real champion, for the narrative of his government for the message of Ukraine to the world, I spoke to him yesterday just before news that he attended his resignation. We'll get to that in just a second. But what he says and what the others say who are telling us that this is kind of pro forma, there will be resignations tomorrow, there'll be a whole set of reappointments as 50 percent of the cabinet will be either shuffled out or reshuffled and reassigned. So, we'll wait to see what happens to Kuleba himself.

But I asked him about this latest uptick in Russian attacks, and I also asked him about the strategy behind Ukraine's Kursk invasion, which happened earlier, about four weeks ago. What was the point of it? Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Now, we showed everyone we defeated, not only we defeated the Russian army in Kursk, we defeated the argument so popular in, among our partners, that there was a stalemate. Because now everyone sees that when, everyone sees what we've been talking about all the time, when Ukraine has everything it needs we do not lack courage and military skill to advance and win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:25:01]

AMANPOUR: So, that is the important message they are trying to send to their partners, the United States and others, that don't think that your weapon systems are not being put to good use. When we get them, when we get them in time, we can use them on the battlefield. We've completely reshaped the sort of strategic thinking in terms of being able to take Russian territory inside Russia. That's their point right now.

And what we need are more weapons. We need to have the shackles removed from the usage of those weapons. We need to be able to direct them into Russia against targets that are launching the attack on Ukraine. And they say, we need more, obviously, given the ballistic missile, assault on these cities now, we need Patriots, we need air defense systems, and we need those now. Those are the big messages they're trying to send right now to the U.S. and others, John.

BERMAN: A flurry of new developments. Great to have you there in Kyiv. Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: There's new polling out this morning, diving deep into it, showing who's breaking away in which battleground states, who has momentum, and also just how close the race still is 60 plus days out from Election Day.

And what we're also learning this morning about a former top aide to two New York governors charged with acting as a secret agent for the Chinese government.

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