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Trump Spreads Bogus Claim That Harris Used A.I. to Inflate Crowds; New Poll Shows Harris Gaining Ground in Three Key Swing States; U.S. Appeals Decision to Strip Jordan Chiles' Bronze Medal. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 12, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, you are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

We begin with Donald Trump spreading a new and false conspiracy theory to attack Vice President Kamala Harris over a familiar obsession for the former president. His latest lie that Harris is using artificial intelligence or A.I. to create images of, quote, fake crowds, as he calls them. Of course, there's no truth to that claim. And you can see right here, Harris objectively brought out big crowds at her events. We were there. We have the video. That's clearly bothering the former president, who is once again saying without any merit that the press is in on the alleged plot, which it's not.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: They said, oh, she had a big crowd. Oh, the crowd, the press is talking about the crowd. In New Jersey, I had 107, 000 people. The press never even talked about it, because they're fake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Harris campaign is mocking Trump's obvious irritation on his own social media network and out on the campaign trail.

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GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: On Wednesday, the largest crowd of the campaign showed up in Detroit, Michigan.

It's not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything, so --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: The fresh Democratic enthusiasm isn't the only sign of a dramatically reshaped race. A new poll has Harris making gains in the critical blue wall states by a sizable margin. Harris victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would likely mean that she would win the presidency. So, let's break down these numbers. CNN's Harry Enten is live in New York. Jeff Zeleny joins me here in Washington.

Harry, first to you. The economy is obviously a big issue for voters. I mean, they're going to be voting on that, like they do just about every election. What are the polls showing on that issue just three months out?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, you know, the economy, the economy, the economy. It's the economy, stupid. It was Donald Trump's bread and butter. It was the issue on which he consistently led Joe Biden when Joe Biden was in the race. But I want you to take a look here. This is fresh poll numbers from F.T. Michigan Ross poll. And I want you to look, trust more on economic issues. This is nationally.

You go back to July. What do you see? You see Donald Trump with a six- point advantage on the economy. Jump forward to August, and what do we see? We see something that's well within the margin of error, but we see movement towards Kamala Harris. Look at that, 42 percent trust Harris more on economic issues than Trump at 41 percent.

And the movement here, Jim, is key. Why is the movement here key? Because it's something we're seeing across polls. You know me, Jim. If it's just on one poll, I wouldn't necessarily give a flying hoot. But when you see it across multiple polls, that's where it gets interesting.

So, trust more on the economy. This is Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These are the key swing states. What do we see? We see back in May, Trump had 55 percent to Biden's 41 percent on the economy across these three states. Look at where we are now. Yes, Trump still leads in economic issues, but the lead has shrunk. It has shrunk from 14 points down to now, just look at this, down to 6 points, down to 6 points, which when we're talking about the margin of error, you double it, that's actually within that margin of error. So, now we have a race on the economy, within the margin of error, on Donald Trump's key issue.

Now, I want to broaden this out, right, because some people say the economy is the most important issue, some others might say protecting democracy, some might say abortion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, I want you to look here. Trust more on the issue that is most important to you. This is June. This is national. What do we see back in June? We see Trump with a ten-point advantage over Joe Biden, 50 percent to 40 percent. Now look at these key battleground states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, a complete reversal of situations. Now, we have Harris at 50 percent, Trump at 48 percent again, within the margin of error. But a ten-point advantage for Trump in June, now to a Harris two-point advantage. This is a type of movement we're seeing across the board.

It's not just on those top line issues, it's underneath the hood. And that should be truly worrying to the Trump campaign, especially on the economy, which of course, as I said, is his bread and butter. ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, Harry, it's remarkable because you and I have talked about this a number of times and you were saying over and over again, and it made perfect sense, that if Trump is leading in all of these polls in the months leading up to the summer and these critical months before the election, that's big trouble for the Democrats.

[10:05:03]

It's a completely changed race now. You're absolutely right about that.

And, Jeff Zeleny, speaking of the economy, and we were talking about this last week, Kamala Harris is set to roll out her economic policy. A lot of folks are wondering, is it going to be just like the Joe Biden policy? What kind of tweaks are we talking about here to make it her own? What are you learning?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I mean, the economy is still the key issue for so many voters, these bread and butter kitchen table issues. And she's not really filled in many of the gaps. So, despite that, she has seen an increase.

Clearly, President Biden and Bidenomics was a challenge and a bit of a weight on the Democratic Party and voters. But, look, we're hearing she's going to talk more about strengthening the middle class, lowering prices. She'll actually be appearing with President Biden on Thursday this week for the first time, really, in an official-like setting talking about the work the administration has done to lower prices on things, like the cost of insulin, and other things, but she has to sort of explain more what she'll do on economic policy.

Housing, I'm told, is a central concern for her. Of course, it's a major concern for Americans. The price of housing simply is a key inflation indicator. So, we will see what she does. But she's gaining by not saying exactly much what she will do. They have to put some meat on the bones. I'm told they will do that this week.

ACOSTA: And also, there's just some key metrics moving in their direction, right? I mean, we're seeing interest rates coming down as the stock market has been kind of, going back and forth over the last couple of weeks. And, you know, inflation has been coming down as well. But apparently the Harris campaign has a big ad buy out right now. I mean, that is going to -- or Trump has a big ad buy coming out to sort of, I guess, blunt some of this momentum.

ZELENY: Well, that's what's sort of interesting. I mean, as we are now 85 days before Election Day in November, a week before the Democratic Convention, the Trump ad buy that is coming out is just, we're learning about it this morning, some $23.8 million. A lot of it is going to Georgia. A lot of it is going to North Carolina and he's traveling North Carolina this week. She is as well. We're told the vice president will be traveling to North Carolina later this week.

So, now the battleground is back to what it seemed like it would be at the beginning of this campaign. It's no longer just those three blue wall states. They are very important. But they've also -- both sides clearly see North Carolina at the center of this. And that's very interesting, perhaps the most interesting development here. The Trump campaign is slightly more worried about North Carolina than they were. Of course, this is a red state that President Obama won it in 2008. It's not been won by a Democrat since then.

ACOSTA: That's fascinating. And also Trump talking about Georgia and going after the governor, making a lot of Georgia Republicans nervous about that state as well. Jeff Zeleny, thanks very much. Thanks to Harry as well.

The Trump campaign says it was hacked over the weekend and is blaming Iran. Politico says it received anonymous emails with documents from inside the former president's campaign, including internal research on Trump's V.P. nominee, J. D. Vance.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now. Kristen, you know, it's summer, but, you know, we're right before an election, so it's been busy out on the campaign trail, but this just came out of nowhere. What do we know about this?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It did. And the details are a little bit murky. So, what we know is that Donald Trump's campaign said on Friday that it had been hacked. They blamed Iran. And this came in direct response to Politico saying it had gotten these internal documents. Some of them, as you said, were vetting documents for J.D. Vance.

Now, they do point to a report that we had seen the day before Microsoft had put out the saying that Iran was ramping up its efforts to try and interfere with the 2024 election, that they had targeted an unnamed presidential campaign, then the Trump campaign making a direct link to them saying it was them that was hacked.

Now, I will tell you, the Microsoft report never said anyone was successful in hacking. It just said that they tried to hack a top campaign official get sending a spear fishing email, obviously, as we've come to be familiar with those.

Now, here's what the Trump campaign responded to Politico. They said, these documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States. They were trying to interfere with the 2024 election, and so chaos. Microsoft not giving us any other details, the FBI, they're not saying anything. The campaign wouldn't even say if it contacted law enforcement.

Obviously, this is a far change from what we saw in 2016 when Donald Trump was encouraging Russia to release any emails it had from Hillary Clinton. Now they're saying that we shouldn't release any kind of information received from this, quote/unquote, hacking because the fact that it's hostile governments, Russia, obviously a hostile government, but this is their line right now. We still don't have the details that link what Microsoft put out there to what happened in these documents that were obtained by Politico.

ACOSTA: Yes. Kristen, I remember, all too well, you do as well, Trump out on the campaign trail in 2016, talking about how much he loved WikiLeaks. We heard that time again at those rallies. Kristen Holmes, thanks very much.

Coming up, it is the controversy engulfing Olympic gymnastics. Have you heard about this? The U.S. fighting for Jordan Chiles to keep her bronze medal.

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You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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ACOSTA: Man, what a show. Snoop Dogg was a staple at the Paris Olympics, so it was no surprise that he helped pass the baton to Los Angeles for the next Summer Games in 2028.

If you didn't see this, you got to see this. Tom Cruise added a Hollywood ending to the closing ceremony, jumping from the top of the stadium and then joining Simone Biles and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for an Olympic flag handoff.

The final day of the games was emotional for Brittney Griner.

[10:15:01]

If you didn't see this, take a look at this. She broke down in tears as the national anthem played after the U.S. women won the gold and basketball, a sensational game. She later said this medal will hold a special place for her. She said, quote, my country fought for me so hard to even be standing here. This was her first Olympics after she spent almost 300 days detained in Russia.

And Team USA's gold in women's basketball added to a dominant overall medal count. We really racked them up this time. 126 total, 40 of them gold. One of the medals from the Paris Olympics is still at the center of a controversy though. We're waiting to see whether U.S. Gymnast Jordan Chiles would get to keep her bronze medal after a shocking announcement by the International Olympic Committee that says she'll be stripped of the medal after a court ruled, that the challenge that adjusted her score and landed her on the podium was four seconds too late, four seconds. The U.S. Olympic Committee says it is appealing the decision and has the receipts.

CNN's Melissa Bell joins me now. Melissa, I did not want the Olympics to end. To some extent, I guess this keeps the Olympics going, but not in the way the U.S. would like to see it happen. Where do things stand?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It certainly keeps the controversy going and all our eyes very much on this, because it is, of course, the performance of all these athletes, Jim. It is also one of those iconic images that we've had from the last couple of weeks, which we'll remember saw Rebecca Andrade, who won that floor routine for Brazil, saluted by Simone Biles on one hand and Jordan Chiles on the other, the first all-black floor routine women's gymnastics podium. An iconic image, even as it was first published. The question now of whether Jordan Chiles' bronze will hold is now what we're going to be talking about for the next few days. We don't know exactly how long this is going to take because we know that Team USA is appealing that decision. Essentially, immediately after the scores were published, the Romanian Ana Barbosu was in position to take the bronze. It was an appeal by Team USA, which meant that the difficulty score that was attributed to Jordan Chiles' routine allowed her to pip at the post, the Romanian taking that much coveted third position and that bronze.

At the time, the Romanians had been outraged. There had been heard outraged, appealed, expressed by their prime minister in the shape of his refusal to attend the closing ceremony all together because two of the Romanian gymnasts felt they've been (INAUDIBLE) by the judges, and as a result had been penalized in terms of their overall medal count.

This now we heard on Saturday meant that because that appeal said the International Gymnastics Federation was lodged just seconds after that one minute deadline, it meant that they reverted back to the Romanian taking bronze.

But that appeal that's now being made by Team USA, clearly full of promise. What the Americans are saying, essentially, Jim, is that they now have video evidence for that, photographic proof that they didn't have access to before that will allow them to show that, in fact, the appeal was lodged within that minute, within 47 seconds.

So much hangs in the balance. The Olympic hopes of both these gymnasts, of course, the medal count of each country, Jim.

ACOSTA: Absolutely. All right, we're all going to be watching to see how that plays out. Melissa Bell, thank you very much.

Joining me now for more on this, staff editor at The Athletic, Tess DeMeyer. Tess, you know, this is such an obscure rule that is at the heart of this, that I'm sure a lot of Americans are scratching their heads and saying, wait, what is going on? Is this appeal from the U.S. side expected to work?

TESS DEMEYER, STAFF EDITOR, THE ATHLETIC: To be honest, appealing decisions by the Court of Arbitration for Sports has proved to be incredibly difficult. It's a little unprecedented. So, I suppose we'll have to wait and see if the U.S. says they have solid evidence that overturns the claim of the four seconds too late. They have the solid evidence.

ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, that's the thing is if the U.S. says, hey, we have this video and the video evidence shows it was only 47 seconds, I mean, that should be pretty open and shut. But how unprecedented is this? I thought I heard during -- I was glued to the Olympics almost the entire time they were on. I thought I heard during some of the coverage that this has come up before.

DEMEYER: So, inquiring about scores is fairly common. You know, we've seen it at past Olympics. We've seen it at world championships. But the messy situation that's kind of arisen from this score inquiry and the timeline of how it's been handled by the various organizations and governing bodies is totally unprecedented.

ACOSTA: Wow. And how long could this drag out? Because, as Melissa was saying, this matters to the overall medal count. So, there is that.

DEMEYER: Right. I was quite shocked with how quickly the CAS and then the International Gymnastics Federation and then the IOC made the decision to reallocate the medal. So, that process went a lot faster than I was expecting. I'm not sure if that will dictate how speedy USA Gymnastics appeal gets reviewed and decided upon. We saw how long the figure skating medals took to be decided. But like I said, this is nothing we've ever seen before.

ACOSTA: Yes. And we saw the Romanian prime minister, I believe, I mean, he was threatening all sorts of things, if the medal was not awarded to the Romanian gymnast.

[10:20:09]

I mean, sometimes politics you know, enters the chat, so to speak, with Olympics and how these things play out. Do we suspect that that's a part of this?

DEMEYER: I'm not sure you could make that claim given the Court of Arbitration for Sports was the one who made the initial ruling. They kind of kicked it to the International Gymnastics Federation, who then kicked it to the IOC. They haven't spoken. The IOC hasn't spoken, you know, at length as to why they decided to reallocate the bronze beyond the CAS said Jordan Chiles' initial score should be reinstated, which then places her in fifth. That's all they gave us.

ACOSTA: Yes. And do we think this is going to spur any changes to how these things are scored in the long run? I mean, it was a little surprising. I thought it was a little surprising that the Americans were able to say, hey, wait a minute. Here's a challenge because, you know, this routine was actually more difficult than the judges gave it credit for.

DEMEYER: I don't think that part of the inquiry process will be changed because, as I said, other gymnasts inquire about their D scores (ph). It's not a first necessarily. But I could see the one minute rule for the last competitor being extended because other competitors in the floor exercise final lineup had until the next gymnast score was posted. They had that a lot of amount of time to file an inquiry. But because Jordan Chiles was the last gymnast, she only had a minute. So she had significantly less time to get in this inquiry. And when it's four seconds we're talking --

ACOSTA: That's incredible, one minute time for any kind of challenges there. It's just incredible to see that this may come down to just that.

Tess DeMeyer, thank you very much. We appreciate it. We are going to miss the Olympics and another Olympic athlete making news this morning. British diver Tom Daley is telling British Vogue that he is retiring from the sport daily. He became an internet sensation in 2021 when photographers captured him knitting, do you remember seeing this, in the stands during the Tokyo Olympics. In Paris, Daley won a silver medal with his partner, Noah Williams. Daley has five medals since his Olympic debut in the 2008 Beijing Games when he was just 14 years old.

Coming up, stop me if you've heard this one before, former President Donald Trump harping on crowd size. It's just the latest example of the MAGA misinformation pipeline, something CNN's Donie O'Sullivan has spent years investigating. Donie, what can you tell us?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. Yes, we've spent a long time talking about how artificial intelligence could be used to sow chaos in this election, and now it is happening. That's coming up after the break.

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ACOSTA: Former President Donald Trump's obsession with crowd size is back and now artificial intelligence has entered the picture. Trump is falsely claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris is using A.I. to create images of, quote, fake crowds, as he's described them. A digital forensics expert weighed in on Trump's bogus claims posting this on LinkedIn after analyzing a photo from Harris' Detroit rally saying, while the lack of evidence of manipulation is not evidence the image is real, we find no evidence that this image is A.I.-generated or digitally altered. We should also note the press was at all of these events, has video. The crowds are real.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan joins us now. Donie, you've been in the thick of the MAGA misinformation pipeline for years. And we could also call it disinformation, in some cases, just intentional misinformation. Take us inside this claim and how something like this spreads like wildfire. I suppose there are folks out there saying, you know, you really shouldn't talk about this conspiracy theory stuff, but if we don't debunk it, then it gets around, and that's why we turn to you, Donie. Tell us more.

O'SULLIVAN: Look, Jim, I mean, yes, it was everywhere this weekend, right? And then, of course, you saw the former president himself sharing and talking about it. And I think what you mentioned there about the difference between misinformation and disinformation, it's an important distinction. Look, any of us can kind of share misinformation unknowingly. We can share false information without knowing that we're doing that.

Disinformation is when you know that what you're sharing is B.S., when you know it's false. And I got to say, when it comes to these images that were going around this week where they were claiming that it was A.I. when it wasn't, most of these folks know a lot better. And they know that there's press there and media there, and there's tons of other images and videos out there of the crowd sizes at these events.

Look, for a few years, this kind of -- the idea of how A.I. might be used in a presidential election to sow confusion or chaos, it's been pretty theoretical, right? But academics who've been studying this have mentioned something called the liar's dividend. Because when we've talked a lot about A.I., we've talked about, okay, well, maybe somebody will make a fake tape or create a fake image. But what people who term this the liar's dividend say, well, actually, you can use A.I. and the existence of A.I., the idea of it, to create disinformation as well without creating anything fake. You can just start claiming that real things, are fake, and say, well, no, that didn't happen, that's A.I.

And Trump has already developed a reflex on this. I want to show you these pictures, right, from a few months ago. I think they were taken outside a courthouse in New York by the press by the media.

[10:30:01]

There's tons of pictures. He's got these kind of red blotches on his hands. You know, whatever they were, it doesn't really matter. But --