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U.S. Defense Secretary Orders Guided-Missile Submarine to Region: Gaza Ceasefire Talks Due to Take Place This Week; Harris Expected to Roll Out Her Economic Policy this Week. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired August 12, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Israel prime minister's allies say that he does want to get to a deal. Hamas is now casting doubt on whether or not they will actually attend that latest round of talks.

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I wonder what Kamala Harris thinks about the fact that she supported policies that opened the American southern border.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We know our immigration system is broken and we know what it takes to fix it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Olympics once again showing that perhaps sport better than anything else can bring people together from all over the world.

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ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Christina Macfarlane.

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from the United States and all around the world. I'm Christina Macfarlane. Max has the day off and it's Monday, August 12th, 9 a.m. here in London, 4 a.m. in Washington, where U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has now ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East. A message of deterrence to Iran and its proxies, as fears grow of a potential attack on Israel.

CNN political and foreign policy analyst Barak Ravid reports that according to a source, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Austin that Iran appears to be preparing for a large-scale attack and this all comes days ahead of Gaza's ceasefire talks due to take place this week.

In a joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany and the U.K. are endorsing calls from mediators urging Israel and Hamas to accept a ceasefire and hostage deal amid concern that a wider regional conflict could break out. CNN's Paula Hancocks is joining me here following developments and

Paula, let's first talk about that missile submarine. It's a quite unusual move for the Pentagon to be so public in its arrival to the region, so what's the strategy here?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, I mean the very nature of these submarines is that they are below the water, you're not supposed to know where they are and they have the element of surprise. So the fact that this has been announced so publicly shows that the main purpose of it being there is for a sign of deterrence to Iran. The fact that this has been publicized shows that it is a very clear message to Iran that the U.S. is backing Israel, that if they are going to carry out some kind of retaliation, that the U.S. will be right by the side of Israel.

This is a nuclear powered submarine, it's armed with cruise missiles, it was carrying out drills in the Mediterranean Sea and then was deployed here, but it is highly unusual to be publicizing this, which shows that the U.S. is being very vocal in its messaging to Iran.

There's also a carrier strike group which is heading to the region, that's been accelerated now as well to make sure that they are seen to be very much by the side of Israel, because they are waiting for this Iranian retaliation. Iran on Friday once again said that it will come, because its sovereignty has been violated after Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief, was assassinated on its territory.

MACFARLANE: So regarding the ceasefire, we know mediators are meeting this week, but it's not clear yet if Hamas are even going to attend that, or indeed if Netanyahu as well feels the need to be present and part of these negotiations at this time.

HANCOCKS: So for months both sides have been blaming each other for this not progressing, and this is no different. The talks according to Egypt and Qatar are still going ahead on Thursday. The U.S. will be part of that as well as the mediation team. But what we've heard from Hamas is a statement saying that they have already agreed to a proposal that President Biden has very vocally put his support behind, and so suggesting they don't necessarily need to be at this meeting.

I'll read you the statement they came out with.

The movement demands the mediation to present a plan to implement what they have presented to the movement and agreed upon on July 2, 2024, based on Biden's vision and the U.N. Security Council resolution, and to compel the occupation to do so instead of going for further negotiation rounds or new proposals.

So if you read between the lines, that is effectively saying we have agreed to this proposal.

[04:05:00]

What's the point in going back for more negotiations? We've heard from the Israeli side though that they are going to send a delegation, the Prime Minister's office saying that, but again there's still speculation as to whether or not the Prime Minister is behind this deal. Whether he fully supports it given the far right wing pressure on his coalition. So that's a very convoluted way of saying we don't know if this meeting is going to go ahead or if anything will come.

MACFARLANE: And if it does it's Thursday right this week?

HANCOCKS: It's expected to be on Thursday.

MACFARLANE: OK, we will wait and see. Paula Hancocks, thanks very much.

Now with 85 days to go until election day, President Joe Biden says he will do whatever he can to help Vice President Kamala Harris get elected to the Oval Office. Mr. Biden's comments came during his first sit-down interview since dropping out of the presidential race three weeks ago.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will we see you out on the campaign trail for Vice President Harris?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, yes, you will. I talk to her frequently and I was talking to Governor Shapiro who's a friend. We have to win Pennsylvania, my original home state.

He and I are putting together a campaign tour in Pennsylvania. I'm going to be campaigning in other states as well and I'm going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most.

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MACFARLANE: Well the President also shared new details about his decision to suspend his re-election campaign saying his goal is to defeat Donald Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris is also promising to reform the U.S. immigration system. Here's what she told her supporters at a rally in Nevada on Saturday.

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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We know our immigration system is broken and we know what it takes to fix it. Comprehensive reform that includes, yes, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.

(APPLAUSE)

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MACFARLANE: Meantime a new poll by the New York Times and Siena College shows a tight presidential race overall with no clear leader but it also shows Harris leading Donald Trump by four points in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Over the weekend Harris returned to her home state of California for

the first time since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. She attended a fundraiser in San Francisco telling her donors that the real work for her campaign is still to come.

CNN's Kevin Liptak has more.

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KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Vice President Kamala Harris is looking to extend the momentum that has surrounded her presidential campaign into a new week. She did conclude a five-city introductory tour of the new Harris Walz ticket. It was followed by an enormous amount of enthusiasm and energy.

All told Vice President Harris spoke to tens of thousands of people at her rallies across last week. That has also extended to her fundraising. On Sunday, the vice president spoke to 700 donors in San Francisco bringing in around $12 million to her campaign war chest and her message to those donors was don't be complacent.

She told them she's never been one to really believe in the polls and that they can take nothing for granted. She does acknowledge that it's been a good couple of weeks but we have a lot of work to do. And I think Vice President Harris would be the first to acknowledge that good vibes alone are not what's going to win the election in November.

And to that end she did tell us on Saturday that she plans to unveil new policy proposals in this upcoming week specifically related to the economy and bringing down prices for Americans. In fact she did unveil one new piece of policy at her event in Las Vegas on Saturday evening saying she would work to eliminate federal income taxes on tipped wages. That's something that's enormously popular among workers particularly where she was in Las Vegas.

It's also a policy proposal that Donald Trump has raised on the campaign trail and he wasted no time calling her a copycat. A Harris campaign official said that her proposal would need to be worked through with Congress, that it would include income limits and would also include provisions to protect against fraud.

Now in this upcoming week she will continue this push on the economy. We will see her for the first time with President Biden, their first official joint appearance since she replaced him atop the Democratic ticket and it was interesting.

In an interview just this weekend the president discussed how he would be campaigning for Kamala Harris in the months ahead. He said he was planning a tour of Pennsylvania, his home state, and he said he plans to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help the most.

Kevin Liptak, CNN, Washington.

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MACFARLANE: Republican vice president nominee J.D. Vance claims that Harris and other top Democrats are anti-child. Here's what he told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday.

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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: You called out Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg in particular. Kamala Harris has two stepchildren. Pete Buttigieg and his husband have adopted twins.

Do you recognize them as parents and more broadly as being part of families?

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well of course I do, Dana. I never, Dana, criticize people for not having kids. I criticize people for being anti-child.

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MACFARLANE: Well in 2021 Vance called some Democratic politicians quote childless cat ladies. In recent weeks Vance has tried to recover from the uproar over that comment and on Sunday Vance responded to being called weird by his Democratic opponents.

Now Natasha Lindstaedt joins me to discuss this. She's a professor of government at the University of Essex. So much to discuss here, Natasha. I want to get to Vance's comments in just a second but first can we just reflect on Harris's polling numbers?

I mean this is obviously a big boost for the Democrats to have a slight lead into these crucial battleground states but how likely is she to maintain this momentum? Given we just heard from our reporter Kevin there that good vibes alone are not really going to be enough.

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: That's true. We're still 80 days away and a lot can happen. If you look at the polls from 2020 and 2016 in August and then what happened in the actual election in November, there was a lot of movement. So this is not over of course.

You know she's enthusiastic about the recent New York Times-Siena College polls as the Democrats are as well because in three key swing states in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania she's now ahead by four points and this is a must win either for Trump or for Harris. They have to win one of those states or all of those states in order to win and this of course is a huge change from when Biden was running against Trump.

I mean Biden was down by four or five points in those states and other polling is showing that Harris is neck and neck in states like Arizona and Georgia and apparently the New York Times reported that there was private polling in Ohio that showed that it was really, really close there and that's of course where J.D. Vance is from and has been a state that has gone Republican.

So the campaign has a lot of momentum. There seems to be a big movement. The crowd size is huge. All of this is irking Donald Trump and he's going to need to reset and

so far he hasn't. He's just been focusing on personal attacks. He's been caught off guard. He's been talking about this idea that Biden is going to join the race again. He's been throwing out falsehoods about being on a helicopter.

He'll have to focus a lot more if they're going to turn things around and thus far he hasn't shown the discipline.

MACFARLANE: And on that comment about Biden needing to rejoin the race we heard from Biden over the weekend that he intends to help Kamala Harris in any way she needs but we know specifically that he is hoping to help her win the battleground of Pennsylvania. That is of course what he won in 2020. It's where he is from.

How crucial will his help be to Kamala Harris? Is there a bit of a delicate balance to strike here because she is still trying to distinguish herself away from what is gone and the connection with Biden?

LINDSTAEDT: So I don't think it's that crucial that Biden is on the campaign trail. He will help just to provide unity and she's going to rely on the help of other surrogates like Josh Shapiro who's going to be very important in Pennsylvania as the governor of Pennsylvania and was a likely vice presidential pick. But she has chosen a really good vice presidential pick of Tim Walz and the two of them have a lot of good chemistry and he's a lot more charismatic than I think people originally thought. And so they're on the campaign trail and they themselves as a duo seem to be in lockstep. They seem to be really connected and they're also connecting with audiences and large numbers of people are, you know, waiting in line in the heat to see them.

This type of energy behind the campaign is something that that Trump is lacking and he maybe thought he would get that with J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance turned out to be a terrible pick for him. In fact they weren't even on the campaign trail together.

Donald Trump was doing a press conference. J.D. Vance was sort of following Harris's campaign but we've yet to see them together bring the type of energy that Harris and Walz have been bringing.

MACFARLANE: Yes and let's just show our viewers that clip of J.D. Vance again over the weekend kind of flailing in response to the weird comments. Take a look at this.

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VANCE: So I think that what it is, is two people Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who aren't comfortable in their own skin because they aren't comfortable with their policy positions for the American people. And so they're name calling instead of actually telling the American people how they're going to make their lives better. I think that's weird, Dana, but look, they can call me whatever they want.

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MACFARLANE: So I think, Natasha, this is kind of encapsulates how the Republicans still haven't figured out an effective attack strategy against Democrats that they are flailing in response, that they don't have the limelight. How quickly do they need to sort this out?

LINDSTAEDT: Well they need to sort this out pretty quickly because everything is moving in the wrong direction for them. I think that they should focus on issues that resonate with Republicans of course but also those that are maybe undecided issues like immigration, issues like inflation and just keep hammering that home again and again. Instead they've been focusing on personal attacks.

J.D. Vance was questioning the military record of Tim Walz and how is that going to play well with veterans? That didn't look well -- that didn't look go across very well to attack someone who served in the National Guard for 24 years.

The past comment of calling the leadership in Washington that it's been run by childless cat ladies again he could have just apologized for that. J.D. Vance also had a softball question of what makes you happy? Instead of saying something like, you know, spending time with my children. He comes up with some convoluted response that what makes him angry are the policies of Harris and Walz.

So they need to reset badly and they have a really well run campaign. It's a lean machine compared to, you know, 2016 when they had a lot more people involved.

But Trump just isn't listening. He's lacking the discipline and more importantly he's just not on the campaign trail very much. If you compare to 2016 and 2020 he was campaigning all the time. 2024 he just thought he was going to have to campaign against Biden and he has very few campaign stops.

So he's going to have to campaign much more and be much more focused on the issues that his constituency would care about.

MACFARLANE: Yes and it'll be interesting to see how much of a misstep it might have been for him to be in Montana over this weekend rather than those key battleground states as you were saying. Natasha Lindstaedt, appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

A video circulating online appeared to show Ukrainian troops raising their flags in Russia. We'll get the latest details on this stinging embarrassment to the Kremlin just ahead.

Plus, firefighters are working to contain a rapidly moving wildfire which is making its way towards the Greek capital and has officials ordering evacuations.

And Banksy strikes again. How the anonymous artist is keeping Londoners entertained with this ever-growing animal menagerie when we come back.

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MACFARLANE: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is blaming Russian forces for starting a fire at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. He shared this video online showing smoke coming out of one of the towers at the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine. But Russia claims the fire erupted after a Ukrainian attack.

Russian forces seized the nuclear plant shortly after the war began and have occupied it since. Zelenskyy says Moscow is just using it to blackmail Ukraine and the rest of the world. He added that radiation levels in the area are normal.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are pushing deeper into Russia's Kursk region after launching an incursion last week. The latest report by the Russian Defense Ministry indicates they've advanced up to 30 kilometers inside Russia. On Sunday, Zelenskyy said his military is doing what's necessary to end the war.

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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Only from the beginning of this summer and only from the Kursk region, our Sumy region suffered almost 2,000 strikes -- artillery, mortars, drones. We also monitor every missile strike, and each such strike deserves a fair response.

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MACFARLANE: Well, Clare Sebastian is here to discuss this. Clare, it's been some time since we've heard anything about the Zaporizhzhia power plant. So how concerning is it that this is now resurfacing at a time when Ukrainian forces are making serious advances on Russian territory?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, look, we have no way of verifying what's happening there. It's been occupied by Russia since I think the second week of the war. The IAEA have inspectors at the plant that they've had there for almost two years now. And they are saying that they did observe a fire at one of the cooling towers. There's no radiation risk as of yet.

But look, Russia occupies this plant. It does, as we know, and has throughout this war rattled the nuclear saber at various points. It did so back in the autumn of 2022, when Ukraine was in the midst of a series of very successful counteroffensives. We later learned via our colleague Jim Sciutto that the U.S. had been actively preparing for the potential use by Russia of a tactical nuclear weapon.

So look, we don't want to cause alarm here. We don't know what's happening. There is no radiation risk. But Russia pulls this lever on occasion. And we have seen a pattern in the past where they've done it at points where Ukraine has the initiative. So this is something that definitely bears watching as we try to figure out how Russia is going to respond to this now week-old incursion by Ukraine into its territory. MACFARLANE: Meantime, we heard from President Zelenskyy there about the incursion into Russia. I mean, the strategy here is to destabilize Russia, to string out Russia's defenses. Is that happening? And how likely are they to be able to maintain such a move?

SEBASTIAN: Well, that is the big question, right? They've gone in. It's been, as I say, the best part of a week now. We're actually monitoring this morning. Evacuation is happening in a different region, in the Belgorod region, just to the south of Kursk. There's unofficial reports there that Ukraine might have potentially tried to attack on the border.

That's coming from Russian military bloggers. So nothing official on that yet. But the governor of the Belgorod region calling it a disturbing morning, enemy activities on the border.

Is this another attempt to try to sort of stretch again the Russian forces? It's not clear yet. I think we don't know yet for Ukraine whether this gamble has paid off, whether they've managed to draw out Russian forces while not doing that to their own forces, of course, because we know they were scarce in certain areas of the front line. Manpower has been a serious issue, but they're in there. They're holding on.

[04:25:00]

I think Russia is clearly amassing forces and trying to push them out. That's probably why we're seeing these mass evacuations of civilians as well.

So, look, it remains to be seen how much they can hold on, whether holding on is actually part of the strategy or if this is just about disruption and distraction.

MACFARLANE: Brilliant stuff, Clare, thank you.

Now, after the break, an alarming scene out of Australia after a helicopter crashes into a hotel. We'll get the latest details.

Plus, the Paris Games were not without some controversies. We'll bring you the latest developments in the saga involving American gymnast Jordan Chiles' bronze medal. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACFARLANE: Hi, welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. Here are some of the top stories we're following today.

The United States is speeding up the arrival of a carrier strike group to the Middle East and sending a submarine with cruise missiles to the region in preparation for Iran's possible retaliation against Israel.

Meanwhile, ceasefire and hostage negotiations for the war in Gaza are set to pick back up on Thursday.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump says he'll be interviewed by Tesla founder Elon Musk today. Musk, who also owns the social media platform X, has endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.

Tropical storm watchers are expanding westward across the Leeward Islands, including the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. The system is expected to become a tropical storm in the coming hours.

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