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Trump Sits for Two-Hour Meandering Chat With Elon Musk; FBI Probes Apparent Hack Targeting Trump Campaign; Putin Says, Ukraine Trying to Improve Negotiating Position. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 13, 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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JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

We begin with what the Trump campaign is calling the interview of the century. Last night, the former president sat down for a rambling two- hour conversation with the world's richest man, Elon Musk. It got off to a rocky start, beginning more than 40 minutes late, due in part to what Musk described as an alleged cyberattack, although others dispute that.

This riveting elevator music kept listeners on the edge of their seats, though, and Trump spent much of the conversation, once it got going, fixating on a man he is no longer running against before finally shifting to his new opponent, attacking Kamala Harris' intelligence and gushing over her physical appearance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Kamala wouldn't have this conversation. She can't because she's not smart. You know, she's not a smart person, by the way. But she's getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on TIME Magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing. And, actually, she looked very much like our great first lady, Melania.

She looked -- she didn't look like Camilla, that's right. But, of course, she's a beautiful woman, so we'll leave it at that, right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: We'll fact check that in a moment, but Trump mainly focused not on his Democratic rival, but the familiar go to grievances and lies often heard in his stump speeches.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: All the courts do is they try and focus on Trump, okay, then let's focus on Trump, who did nothing wrong. I complain about a rigged election. The only one that got prosecuted is Donald Trump. They don't get -- they prosecute Trump. I have to run. I have to go through fake trials with, in some cases, corrupt judges, totally corrupt judges. I didn't need it. I had a nice life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: They called it an interview, but Musk did not push back on those lies about the 2020 election or the justice system. In fact, he didn't push back on any of Trump's estimated 20 false claims. He did, however, heap praise on the former president. That infatuation was clearly mutual.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: But you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit, they go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, that's okay. You're all gone. You're all gone. So, every one of you is gone and you are the greatest. You would be very good. You would love it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Joining me now to break it all down, CNN's Kristen Holmes. Kristen, you have some new reporting on how the campaign is feeling this morning. How do they think it went? I mean, obviously there were moments like that one that we just played there, where he's talking about Elon Musk firing people. I can't imagine that's going to work out too well in those blue wall states. I have to think some of the advisers are tearing their hair out right now.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, you have different groups of people, right? You have the campaign and his advisors, the people who are hyping him up, saying things like, this was the greatest interview of all time, or I think you've said one of the quotes was the best interview of the century.

You know, you have Elon Musk out there saying one billion people engaged with this interview in some way. I mean, I believe I was talking to Steve Contorno, one of our colleagues, earlier, he said, does that mean even babies were involved in checking into what was happening on Twitter last night?

But they are touting those viewership numbers. They are saying that this is all part of a larger strategy, that essentially they are trying to reach people who don't normally engage in politics and doing that through interviews with Elon Musk. They're not necessarily looking for the Twitter crowd. They're looking for the Elon Musk crowd.

It's the same idea of when he sat down with streamer Aiden Ross. They're not necessarily looking for just streamers. They're particularly looking for followers of Aiden Ross who watch his show, who they believe are people who would lean right, not traditional voters, that they want to bring out to the polls. Now, if you talk to any of Trump's allies, well, not any of them, but some of them, they are very concerned. They do not want Trump out there doing these kind of long, unscripted interviews. They believe that he can still win this race against Kamala Harris despite what you're seeing in the polls. They don't think this is over. They believe he still has a shot at the White House.

But to do that, what they say over and over again is Donald Trump has to stay on message. He has to focus on the economy.

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He has to focus on immigration. He has to focus on crime. Those are the things that he pulled above Joe Biden on, and those are the policies they want to link Kamala Harris to and the current administration to.

However, Donald Trump seems to have different ideas of what works and what doesn't work, and, obviously, as we're seeing, part of what he thinks works is doing these long conversational, off-script and off- topic interviews.

ACOSTA: The kind of a bathrobe campaign he's been utilizing lately. Not so many rallies, more unscripted things where he can sort of roll out of Mar-a-Lago and do whatever he wants.

All right, Kristen Holmes, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Trump and Musk agreed on practically everything in there are two-hour conversation on X. The world's richest man gave the former president a platform to say whatever he wanted without any pushback. And not surprisingly, Trump made plenty of false claims, at least 20, most have been debunked repeatedly, some for years.

CNN's Daniel Dale joins us now with a fact-check. And, Daniel, as I like to say to folks, Daniel, you know Trump's lies better than maybe Trump does. You catalog them for years. You know them all too well. And we heard a lot of them repeated last night.

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: We did. This was the same stuff I've been dealing with, some of them for five plus years, been fact checked dozens of times, but he keeps saying them, as we know.

ACOSTA: Yes. Let's listen to this one bite about crime. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Their crime rate is coming down, and our crime rate is going through the roof, and it's so simple. And you haven't seen anything yet, because these people have come into our country, and they're just getting acclimated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: But what -- I mean, we know, I mean, generally speaking, crime is down across the country.

DALE: Crime is down, Jim. This claim is not only not true, it's the opposite of reality. Crime has been falling for 1.5 years-plus, violent crime and murder, significantly. We had a 6 percent decline in violent crime in 2023. It was a 15 percent decline in the first quarter of 2021, even starker declines in murder at 13 percent in the in 2023, 26 percent in the first quarter of 2024.

So, these are preliminary figures that the precise numbers might change when we get the final numbers, but there is no doubt about the direction. Crime is certainly going down and it is now lower, violent crime and murder, than they were in 2020 under President Trump.

ACOSTA: Yes. And Kristen was talking about how the campaign wants to appeal to younger voters. Well, younger voters are concerned about climate change and Trump had some thoughts on that. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. The big -- and you'll have more ocean front property, right? The biggest threat is not that the biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: What did you make of that?

DALE: So, Trump says a lot of wrong things, Jim. This claim about the extent of sea level rise with global warming is one of the very wrongest.

So, Trump keeps saying sea levels are going to rise an eighth of an inch in 200, 300, 400, once he said 497 years. It is actually more than an eighth of an inch now per year, some more per year than he says is going to happen in four centuries. According to NASA figures, it's about a sixth of an inch per year, 0.17 inches per year today. Over 300, 400 years, we're talking about feet.

And if we want to bring this point home for former President Trump, it is -- especially in South Florida, we have a tide gauge right near Mar-a-Lago and that data shows that sea levels right there are rising about an eighth of an inch every nine months. So, he says every 400 years, it's every nine months.

And I'll add, he keeps making this joke, oh, a sea level rise is going to give people more oceanfront property. Yes, it's a joke, but it's a ridiculous joke. We're talking about communities becoming uninhabitable, people losing their homes, infrastructure damaged, more flooding, more destructive hurricanes. This is bad stuff. It's not really a laughing matter.

ACOSTA: Yes. All he has to do to fact-check this is to walk out his front door at Mar-a-Lago. He can see the sea levels rise right in front of his eyes.

Daniel Dale, thanks a lot. I appreciate it very much.

Let's discuss with CNN Political Commentator and Democratic Strategist Maria Cardona and Republican Strategist Katie Frost.

Katie, let me go to you first. I mean, do you think this was helpful to Trump? Was he speaking to the same audience that usually tunes into what he has to say? They don't mind that he tells sort of the same half truths and falsehoods and spinning those tales that he typically does?

KATIE FROST, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, it's good to be with you, Jim. Good morning. You know, it's interesting to see President Trump go out and do a long form conversation like this. You know, it's not exactly like a rally speech, where you have the audience that's very engaged in providing him feedback. This was a conversation between the future leader of the free world and the wealthiest man in the world. And we got to sit in on it. And it was very interesting to see.

You know, I think it's very important to realize that this kind of open, candid conversation rarely happens with presidential candidates. So, it was a very unique opportunity for the American people to listen in on that.

ACOSTA: Maria, what did you think? The Harris campaign, I mean, they trolled the chat referring to it on social media as, quote, whatever that was. They added Trump's entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself. And I have to think, and I suppose the Harris campaign is already doing this.

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They're already making some hay out of that comment that Trump made to Elon Musk about laying people off and cutting people and how that's good for business.

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, absolutely, Jim. This was the furthest thing from interesting. It was weird. It was crazy. And sure, I guess you wanted to listen in on it the way that you kind of can't keep your eyes away from something that is just so freaking bizarre, because that's exactly what it was. It was a two-hour glitchy rant of all of Donald Trump's perceived, you know, crimes against him, I guess is what you would say, frankly, nothing different from what we would see at his crazy rallies.

And so he didn't share anything new. He just went down his rabbit hole. And, frankly, I hope he does this every single day, Jim, because that will demonstrate to the American people that he not only wasn't fit for the first four years that he took office, but he is even more unfit, perhaps more deranged, clearly going into massive mental decline, and that he is the furthest thing that the American people want or need or deserve as a president of the United States.

And meanwhile, you have Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz that just came back from a massive blitz during the last week in the battleground states, talking about what voters really care about, lowering costs, continuing to have access to health care, increasing jobs, growing the economy.

And so, yes, I hope he does this every single day, Jim, because the contrast for this election, he makes it easy for us.

ACOSTA: Yes. And, Katie, I mean, how do Trump's comments about Musk being the greatest cutter of jobs help win over union voters? I mean, that is a voting bloc that he has specifically targeted, that his campaign has specifically targeted as being very important. When you make off-the-cuff comments like that, that can't be helpful. I remember when Mitt Romney got in a lot of trouble back in the 2012 campaign talking about how he liked to be able to fire people.

FROST: For your typical Rust Belt voter, if that's, you know, the demographics we're talking about here, you know, they're going to look at the issues that are impacting them. And you do have remarks like that. They factor that in, but they factor in that they can't fill up their gas tank, that they are having to struggle to make it -- for them --

ACOSTA: Yes.

FROST: The lack of security in our country. These are serious issues that impact everyday Americans. They're not adequately being addressed by the vice president's campaign. She's going out there saying all these things she's going to do on day one. She doesn't have to wait until day one. She is in power right now. She's the vice president United States. She and President Biden can do these things.

You know, I do look forward though to her doing an interview, you know, and I think we're going to see more. I want to hear more policy positions from the vice president. We haven't really heard a lot so far. Of course, she is borrowing some things from President Trump. She's copying his no tax on tips policy that he rolled out a few months ago. So, we'll see. Maybe if we want to know what Vice President Harris is on issues, we can just wait a month and she'll be copying what President Trump is doing.

ACOSTA: Maria, quick response from you.

CARDONA: Look, what former President Trump is doing is actually making fun of the American people, thinking that we can't remember what it was like four years ago. And, again, the only thing that the Kamala Harris and Governor Walz campaign need to continue to do is to speak to voters about the issues that they care about.

They have raised over $300 million, just $36 million the day that Governor Waltz was announced as the vice president. They're talking about lowering costs. They're talking about making a future optimistic. They're bringing joy back into the electorate. Every time they go and do an event at a battleground state, Jim, they increased their volunteers by hundreds. So that is the kind of ticket that the American people want and deserve. And I think it's going to be great for the contrast in November. ACOSTA: And I think both sides are certainly trying to energize their bases right now. Perhaps that was more of what Trump was trying to accomplish last night than anything else.

Maria and Katie, ladies, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

All right, coming up, disturbing new details about the Trump campaign hack, how cyber criminals try to use a Trump ally's email account to target the campaign. That's next.

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ACOSTA: New this morning, the FBI is now looking into an apparent hack targeting Donald Trump's campaign. Sources tell CNN that investigators think hackers breached the personal email of Roger Stone, one of Trump's top allies and political advisers. The suspected hackers then apparently tried to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official in an effort to access the former president's campaign network. So, Trump says Iran is behind the attacks. CNN has also learned the FBI briefed the Biden-Harris campaign in June about Iranian efforts to target them.

Iran has denied any involvement, but a source says that the techniques match those associated with Iranian hackers. Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is pushing the FBI to release more information.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I want to see the FBI and the intelligence community do a vigorous investigation as to who are behind these hacks, who's behind this influence operation and provide as much of that information to the public without compromising sources and methods and do it in a timely way.

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The big mistake I think that was made in 2016 is it took a long time for the then-Obama administration and intelligence community to speak out about what we were seeing of Russian interference in the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Let's continue this discussion. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Congressman, thanks for joining us.

We saw the Russians intervene in the 2016 election. How worried are you about this election?

REP. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D-MA): We should all be worried. There's no question there are foreign and domestic threat vectors that want to disrupt U.S. elections, and now they are armed with deep fakes as well. We saw the use of deep fakes, some consensual, some non- consensual in Indian elections a few months ago. I worry that we'll see them more ubiquitous in American elections to make politicians appear as though they're saying or doing things they never said or did.

I've got legislation introduced in a bipartisan format that would hold the social media platforms accountable for platforming defamatory disinformation deepfakes that can disrupt our election. Because whether it's Republican or Democrat that's being attacked, it doesn't matter. We are going to protect our elections because the American public should decide, not cybercriminals.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, the FBI also briefed the Biden-Harris campaign about Iranian hackers targeting that campaign. Do we know how many nations out there, adversaries of the U.S., that are trying to do this? I can't imagine it's just the Iranians.

AUCHINCLOSS: I can't imagine either. I think North Korea for sure and probably others. But as Adam Schiff said, the FBI should be the one to investigate and lay the facts out before the American public. And these kinds of attacks are totally unacceptable.

I will say in this case, it's not totally clear to me that it's going to make that much of a difference to the Trump campaign. I mean, if you listen to those two hours last night between Trump and Elon Musk, that's what the American public is seeing and hearing. It's this pathetic two-hour litany of grievances that really just makes the case for the Harris campaign, that it's a contest between your future or Donald Trump's past. And the American public's going to choose their own future.

ACOSTA: And I do want to ask you about Ukraine, the offensive in the Kursk region inside Russia that the Ukrainians are behind right now. What do you make of that? And also what do you think of Vladimir Putin saying that Ukraine is going to pay a price for this?

AUCHINCLOSS: Well, he's rattled, and he's rattled because Ukraine has the most valuable thing in warfare, and that is the initiative. It's just as much psychological as it is tactical. And we need to seize the initiative now by empowering Ukraine to use those U.S.-made weapons, the ATACMs, the F-16s, to strike all sites of military application within Russia. That means troop staging sites, that means logistics sites, that means launch sites, and most importantly, that means oil refining sites. We hit those oil refining sites and their ability to export refined oil is going to dry up and they will not be able to fund this war machine.

ACOSTA: And, I mean, what does this say about the vulnerability of the Russian forces right now? And how far should the Ukrainians try to go? I mean, is this -- I mean, obviously they're trying to send a message. Perhaps they're trying to get inside Vladimir Putin's head, but can they go too far and perhaps do something that strategically might come back and haunt them in the end?

AUCHINCLOSS: Well, I'm not going to give tactical advice to the Ukrainian command. I'm not on the ground seeing all the angles there. I think from the American perspective, the most help that we can be is to authorize the Ukrainians to use the weapons that we've given them. And the F-16s and the ATACMs are serious air-to-surface and surface- to-surface, long range attack platforms, to be able to sustainably strike inside the Russian heartland and then to marry that authority with tighter maritime sanctions, the ones that the Treasury Department right now is lobbying the White House to put into place, because by impairing oil revenues to the Kremlin, we are in the long run preventing Vladimir Putin from waging this brutal war. That's going to be, I think, even more impactful than 350 miles of territory taken inside the Russian border is the long-term threat of attacks on their critical infrastructure.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, just finally, I did want to get your reaction to some of these comments by J.D. Vance going after Kamala Harris' vice presidential running mate, Tim Walz, in his 24 years of service in the National Guard. You served in the Marine Corps. Is that healthy to see that sort of thing going back and forth? Obviously, we saw this launched by J.D. Vance after Tim Walz was named as Kamala Harris' running mate.

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AUCHINCLOSS: No, it's despicable and desperate. J.D. Vance started off his campaign attacking women. Then he attacked the police saying he hates the police. Now, he's attacking veterans. It just seems like he can't help himself but alienate broad swaths of the American electorate and take politics to a gutter.

And it's not who we are as a country. Tim Walz served honorably for 24 years. He deployed multiple times to disaster areas. He made a decision about running for Congress before his battalion received notice that it was going to deploy to Iraq. When he realized that they were deploying to Iraq, he struggled with that decision, decided he could do more good in Congress for veterans, and he did. He became the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, went on to expand access to the G.I. Bill and mental health services for our veterans.

And to go after a former command sergeant major who gave back to his country for a quarter of a century out of political expedience is despicable, and it says a lot more about J.D. Vance than it does about Tim Walz.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Jake Auchincloss, thank you very much for your time this morning. We appreciate it.

AUCHINCLOSS: Thanks for having me on.

ACOSTA: All right. Still ahead, it's been a haven of GOP support for years, but now people in a Florida retirement community break out the golf carts in support of Kamala Harris. What's behind it? We'll take you to The Villages next.

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