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CNN News Central

Many, Including Trump, Harris and Biden, Attend 9/11 Ceremony At Ground Zero; Aftermath Of The Fiery Debate Between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris; Donald Trump Won't Agree To A Second Debate; Trump Anecdote About Migrants Eating Pets Is Debunked. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 11, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Football star Patrick Mahomes, she recently allegedly liked a post of Trump's. So, there's been a lot of conversation about that.

But Taylor and Brittany are very good friends, and there's many people in this country who are good friends and have different political leanings. Now, one thing I want to point out that Taylor said in her statement is she referenced Trump's AI posts that were fake about her. That could have possibly drove her to make this endorsement.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: All right, Elizabeth Wagmeister, thank you very much. A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: The morning after the fiery presidential debate, the former President and current Vice President standing closer to each other than on the debate stage. They are here in New York remembering the thousands of Americans killed in the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. Our Kate Bolduan is live from the 9/11 Memorial this morning for us.

Also, Kamala Harris threw out the bait and Donald Trump took a bite every single time. For nearly two hours, Trump was on the defense, Harris was like a prosecutor in court. But debates don't historically win elections. So, what will the impact be this time around? And right now, Hurricane Francine hurtling towards Louisiana. When and where it is expected to land. That's all ahead. I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: You can hear the names being read out loud by a young child's voice in the background right now. Today is 9/11. We are here in Lower Manhattan on a beautiful morning, a somber occasion, the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. 9/11 families gathering once again to read the names of their loved ones aloud, to honor them and to never forget. I want to show you also some video that we saw play out moments ago,

minutes ago. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, all here attending this ceremony together. And you see right there, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump shaking hands just before the ceremony began. That was less than 12 hours when since they were on that debate stage, that contentious debate stage last night.

A moment of unity we are seeing. Maybe a brief moment of unity, but a moment of unity nonetheless that we are seeing on this 9/11 anniversary. Brynn Gingras is here with me as we've been listening and watching all of this play out this morning. And we are about to have another moment of silence.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. And you saw Michael Bloomberg there. It is he who basically said, I want this day to be about the families. So, they had their pictures, but now you can hear these family members reading the names of all those people who were killed here in Pennsylvania and also at the Pentagon and also people who have died since that fateful day on 9/11.

As you said, we're about to come upon our second moment of silence at 9:03. That signifies when the hijacked plane hit the South Tower here at the World Trade Center site. And then, of course, four more moments of silence after that. And you can probably feel it, Kate, how heavy this moment is, especially when you see these young kids and people who never met their loved ones.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, Brynn.

GINGRAS: Certainly read these names.

BOLDUAN: Let's listen in to this together.

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(BELL RINGING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And my grandfather, FDMI Captain James J. Corgan (ph). We love you so much and we miss you so much. Me and my three sisters wish we got to meet you.

BOLDUAN: Honoring her grandfather, she says she wished she had got to meet him.

GINGRAS: And some of them say they feel like they do know them because their families talk about them so much. You know, I just talked to a woman who was 10 when her father, a Lieutenant, a firefighter in the FDNY, was actually right at that building when it happened. Came across the street. He died. And she said, for her today is obviously a heavy day, but she thinks of 9/12, the next day when the country fully comes together and unites.

And if you remember that day, there were flags everywhere across this country.

[09:05:00] People were talking about coming together. And for her, that was sort of her moment. You might hear that again as we are in this divisive moment in our country in a political election.

BOLDUAN: That unity seems far, very far off sometimes. But in this, in this moment, especially in this day, especially today in Lower Manhattan, you can feel the call for it, and you can, and you see the candidates, President Biden, you even see former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who walked past us just a short time ago standing next to J.D. Vance as they're attending this ceremony. Much more ahead here from Lower Manhattan as we continue to honor the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. John?

BERMAN: Thank you so much, Kate. So, this morning, brand new, totally false claims from Donald Trump. He's saying the debate overnight was rigged. That is not true. What is true is that reviews for the performance of Kamala Harris are much better than his. These are some of the fiery moments.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So, let's be clear about that. And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Wait a minute. I'm talking now. If you don't mind, please. Does that sound familiar?

HARRIS: You're going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances, and name calling.

TRUMP: We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation's history.

HARRIS: What we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess. World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.

TRUMP: I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I'm a threat to democracy. They're the threat to democracy.

HARRIS: Why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: All right, that was Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last night in the debate. With us now, CNN's Eva McKend and Alayna Treene. They are in Philadelphia, the dust still settling at the debate site. Eva, what are you hearing from the Harris team this morning?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, bottom line, they believed it was a mission accomplished. They set out to characterize the former president as fundamentally unserious, as more caught up in his own grievances than the concerns of everyday Americans and is easily susceptible to being needled on trivial matters like crowd sizes on conspiracy theories, like maligning immigrants for eating pets.

And in addition to this, they also believe that the Vice President commanded the stage and had a good mastery of the issues when it came to foreign policy, when it came to the economy, and especially when it came to reproductive rights, that she illustrated real compassion. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: You want to talk about this is what people wanted. Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because their healthcare providers are afraid they might go to jail. And she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot. She didn't want that.

I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade. And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It's insulting to the women of America.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCKEND: And though you could see campaign aides with a little pep in their step last night in the spin room, so happy about the debate that they're calling for another one, they are under no illusion, Sara and John, that the next couple of weeks are going to be easy.

They still view themselves as the underdogs and know that there is going to be a difficult road ahead. That is why they are already building out the week with the Vice President campaigning both here in Pennsylvania and in North Carolina.

SIDNER: And that road to the election getting shorter and shorter. We are less than two months away. I want to talk to you, Alayna, about what Donald Trump is saying now. He said this morning, he was on Fox saying that he doesn't need to debate again because in his mind, he won, which, as you have noted, John, that that is not what the majority of folks, including voters, have been saying. But how does his campaign think that he did last night?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, between his campaign as well as many Republicans I spoke with last night, I was texting with many of them throughout the debate. I was in the spin room talking to his advisers. There's a couple of things.

I think there's no question that people were very frustrated with his missed opportunities, particularly on some of Harris' answers on the economy, on her changing her positions. They believe that that was an opportunity for Donald Trump to really set his own message, to talk about the key issues.

[09:10:00]

They believe voters care about specifically the economy and immigration. Instead, on many of those answers, he took the bait from Harris and turned the entire conversation into an airing of grievances, of talking about bizarre things like migrants eating pets. As Eva pointed out, something, of course, that we know is false and has been debunked. There was some frustration around that.

Now, I did talk to some people as well, who acknowledge, Republicans acknowledge that he fell for the goading that Harris led him down. And remember, this was a key thing in my conversations with senior Trump advisers leading up to last night, that they had advised Donald Trump on. This was the key concern.

They said, even more than the substance on the issues, they were concerned about Donald Trump's tone and his temperament and going off onto these different tyrants, really, about random things that didn't relate to his own messaging. And that's kind of what we saw last night. It appears that they were not successful in that.

However, a key claim that they continue to make, and Donald Trump made this this morning, is that the moderators were biased against Donald Trump, that it was a three on one debate. Although I'd argue, though (ph), we know that often when you're attacking the refs, you're often on the losing side. Sara, John?

SIDNER: That is a good point. Alayna Treene, Eva McKend, thank you both so much. Live from the City of Brotherly Love.

BERMAN: All right, Taylor Swift in her endorsement era.

SIDNER: That's good, John.

BERMAN: Did that land the way it was supposed to? Throws her support behind the Harris-Walz campaign.

SIDNER: And Donald Trump not committing yet to a second debate against Kamala Harris. His campaign Press Secretary will join us to discuss.

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[09:15:00]

BERMAN: So, will there be another debate? This is what Donald Trump told Sean Hannity overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: She wants it because she lost.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Do you have an answer?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know. I have to think about it. But if you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn't do it. Why should I do another debate?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And Trump National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is with us now. And Karoline, just so you know, Trump just went on Fox a short time ago and once again expressed doubt that he would do another debate. He said, I don't know that I want another debate. Why? What is he worried about?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, TRUMP 2024 NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I haven't talked to the president since he made those remarks, John. As you know, he's at the 9/11 Ground Zero Ceremony this morning commemorating the anniversary and the lives lost in that terrorist attack. However, what I will say is that all of the debates that we have announced on this campaign, and there have been many of them, have come from President Trump directly. So, I will let him make an announcement on that front.

What I can also say is last night was a big success for President Trump. He was able to highlight his record of success in his first term with the failures of the last four years of Kamala Harris, and Kamala Harris needs to do a sit down interview, John. President Trump, I can assure you, one thing I can say this morning is he will absolutely continue to do media interviews, sit downs with local stations, like we do in every battleground state.

We travel to hours long podcast interviews and press conferences. Kamala Harris is going on day 52 of not doing any of that. And she has to, because after last night, the American people still have a lot of unanswered questions about her record and where she stands on the issues.

BERMAN: In the CNN snap poll after the debate, a majority, a pretty large majority, said they believed that Kamala Harris turned in the better performance. You called it a success for Donald Trump, 63% said that she had the better performance. 37% say Donald Trump. And you know what? This is actually a Republican audience here. Four points more Republican than actually registered voters. So, what do you make of that?

LEAVITT: Well, you know what that audience also said is they said that they trust President Trump more to handle the economy than they do Kamala Harris. And his support on the -- on the issue of the economy actually increased after last night's debate because he outlined the problems that people are experiencing at home. The 50% increase in mortgage rates, the 50% increase in gas prices since Kamala Harris has been Vice President, and how those were not an issue in Americans' lives under his leadership.

And so, voters trust President Trump on the issues that matter to them. That was proven in CNN's poll. And I think the debate was summarized best by a woman in one of your focus groups last night from Erie, Pennsylvania. And she said, when facts come to facts, my life was better under President Trump. That is the main question in this election. Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Kamala Harris refused to answer that question on the debate stage last

night because she knows the answer is no. Americans are not better off today than they were under President Trump. And the American people know that, too, because they feel it in their lives and in their pocketbooks every day.

BERMAN: Did Donald Trump prepare enough for this debate? I mean, everyone seems to think that she got under his skin. How is it that he let her get under his skin?

LEAVITT: Well, I don't think that happened at all. In fact, I think President Trump was defending himself from attacks and lies from Kamala Harris that, unfortunately, were not fact checked by the moderators in this debate. They fact checked President Trump five times.

They didn't fact check Kamala Harris once, even though she repeatedly lied about President Trump and his positions on the issues. She said he supports a federal ban on abortion. That is unequivocally false. He has said repeatedly he does not support a ban on abortion. Kamala Harris says that he supports --

BERMAN: Karoline -- Karoline, last night on the debate stage -- last night on the debate stage, I will say this.

[09:20:00]

It was a position I had not heard before from him, which he refused to say that he would veto a national ban on abortion. He was given a chance multiple times to say he would veto a national ban and he wouldn't do it.

LEAVITT: Well, he has said multiple times as well that he will not sign a ban on abortion, and it's because it's a state's rights issue now. And Kamala Harris also refused to say if she supports a ban on late term abortions in the 8th and 9th month of pregnancy. President Trump pointed that question at her directly twice. She refused to answer it, and she laughed it off. And voters deserve an answer to that question.

BERMAN: Let me just say one thing. I just want to read a Tim Alberta tweet. Tim writes for The Atlantic now. Used to write for The Conservative National Review. He said, one way to look at it, ABC moderators fact checked Trump two to three times and Harris zero times.

Another way to look at it, ABC moderators fact checked Trump two to three times instead of 500 times. I do want to ask you about his concept of a plan on healthcare. He said you'll be hearing about it in the not too distant future. When are we going to be hearing about that concept of a plan?

LEAVITT: Well, as he said, in the not too distant future, and President Trump's healthcare plan --

BERMAN: Do you have a date? Do you have a date? LEAVITT: -- can be summarized best by -- I don't have a date for you this morning, John, but I'll definitely get back to you with one as soon as I can. What I will say is that President Trump's plan to drive down healthcare costs, which have increased 30% under Kamala Harris' leadership as Vice President, is to let the free market thrive, to increase competition in the healthcare marketplace, to give Americans more options for healthcare

That is the opposite of what Kamala Harris wants to do in healthcare. She was the co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders's socialist Medicare For All plan. She said last night she doesn't support that anymore. That was also a lie that wasn't fact checked by the moderators. Kamala Harris' radical healthcare plan will eventually force every American off of their private health insurance. That is socialism. We've seen this happen in other countries. It does not work.

That's why people in Europe and other nations around this world come to the United States of America for healthcare because we have better care here. And President Trump wants to drive down costs and increase the quality of care here at home. And you do not do that by forcing people off of their private health insurance plans like Kamala Harris wants to do.

BERMAN: All right. She said that is not her plan last night. Karoline Leavitt, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate your time. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. She set him up and he walked right into it. More on the reaction and fallout from last night's pivotal presidential debate. And Secretary of State Blinken arriving on the ground in Kyiv, the intel he'll receive on long range missiles. That is all ahead.

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[09:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating -- They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country.

DAVID MUIR, ABC NEWS REPORTER: The Springfield City Manager says there's no evidence of that.

TRUMP: We'll find out.

MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you've heard.

HARRIS: You talk about extreme. You know, this is I think one of the reasons why in this election, I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SIDNER: Donald Trump last night repeating the myths that has been debunked by not only the City Manager, but also police. They said they have no reports of this, that Haitian immigrants are eating household pets in Ohio. It was one of at least 33 false claims the former President made during the debate.

Kamala Harris had a couple of false claims herself, one of which she said that Trump said there would be a bloodbath if he is not reelected. He did use the word bloodbath, but he used the term when referring to auto manufacturing.

Joining me now to discuss, CNN political commentator and former White House Communications Director, Kate Bedingfield, and former Trump White House Counsel, May Mailman. She is also the Director of the Independent Women's Law Center.

First to you, May. You heard this claim that is now on social media. It is a far right talking point that has gone viral on many different levels of social media. Why did he bring this up when it has already been debunked by police and the City Manager?

MAY MAILMAN, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE ASSOCIATE COUNSEL: Well, it hasn't been debunked. They said that they didn't -- they hadn't received any complaints --

SIDNER: They had no reports of it.

MAILMAN: -- to that. Exactly. That they don't have reports of that. So, you know, I think there's a couple of thoughts here. One is that it is, you can be too online, right? You can be too on Truth Social, too on Twitter, and forget what people are thinking, you know, in the real world.

But I think the other point is people are concerned about the level of immigration and including the level of Haitian immigration in Ohio, where they have not been able to manage the numbers. I mean, the Attorney General has said, this is not a migrant problem. This is a too many, too fast, there's nowhere to put people problem.

And so, you know, the point itself, that there have been more than 11 million illegal border crossings. The historic high levels over these four years is true. Can you be too online? That's also true.

SIDNER: But isn't this fear mongering, Kate? I mean, ultimately, he's talking about Black people, and particularly Haitians, eating people's pets, and to a lot of people listening to that, to a lot of immigrants and Americans who were born and raised here, it sounds like fear mongering.

[09:30:00]