Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

More Than 12 Million Americans Under Heat Alerts; Inflation Easing?; Polio Vaccination Campaign Begins in Gaza. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired August 30, 2024 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:31:33]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN HOST: Beginning this weekend, a nearly-two-week effort inside Gaza to vaccinate children against polio. The region was free of the highly contagious virus for 25 years, until the war broke out.

Let's bring in CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson. He joins me live from Jerusalem.

Nic, the logistics on this have to be extremely complicated. How is this actually going to be put into place?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, very, very complicated.

The U.N. originally wanted a seven-day complete pause in violence all the way across Gaza, so it could implement this. What the Israeli government and Hamas agreed to was a three-phase approach. They would do the center phase first, then -- the center of Gaza first. Then the south, there would be a pause, and then the north, there would be a pause.

So each of those three phases, three areas, they will get three days of pause in those areas. But each day, the pause actually only lasts from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., so seven hours. They're targeting 640,000 children under the age of 10. They have got to vaccinate 90 percent of them to be effective.

So if you just run the numbers pretty quickly there, if you have got nine days of vaccination across these three days, three different phases of seven hours a day, you have got 63 hours of vaccination time, 640,000 children to vaccinate. That's about 10,000 children to vaccinate an hour.

This is in the middle of a war zone where people can't move around easily or afraid to move. And there's always a chance that the war or some part of it, some bit of conflict could spark up somewhere near one of these vaccination centers.

So it is fraught. It is difficult, but because polo is now in existence in Gaza, one child, 10-month-old child now has a paralyzed left leg because of polio, the real threat is there, not just for the kids in Gaza, for the IDF troops in Gaza, they're also getting vaccinated,but for the whole region, this could spread.

And that's why, although this is a massive challenge, it'll have to be repeated in four weeks because there's a second dose, although it's a massive challenge and not what the U.N. wanted, this is what they're going to go for. And it begins on Sunday.

MATTINGLY: Well, keep us posted. Great reporting, as always.

Nic Robertson, thanks so much.

Well, back now to the 2024 election. In the vice president's first major interview as the Democratic nominee right here on CNN, Kamala Harris defended what the Biden administration has done over the last 3.5 years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: You have been vice president for 3.5 years.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes.

BASH: The steps that you're talking about now, why haven't you done them already?

HARRIS: Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy. And we have done that. I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3 percent, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali joins me now.

Tim, there is no precedent for this moment, and which is why I'm going to ask you the question, hoping for a definitive answer. The idea of walking a fine line here of, want to turn the page, want to be the change candidate, also embracing the positive elements, in her view, of the administration she currently works for, did she thread the needle here?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Only the voters will ultimately decide that.

But last night was a fascinating study in how to try to thread the needle. One of the advantages that Vice President Harris has that, again, as we were talking about unprecedented moments, that she has, that someone trying to do this in the 20th or 21st century didn't have, is that she's running against a former president.

[11:35:15]

So she has the opportunity, and she's using it, to be running as if she's running against an incumbent, even though she is the incumbent administration -- she is in the incumbent administration. When she talks about not going back, she's really saying, I'm running

against the Trump administration. We don't want to go back to the Trump administration.

So one of the ways that she's been able to thread the needle is by making herself the change candidate, even though she's in power at the moment. And that's a very fine line to walk. But I think she did it quite effectively.

Her challenge, however, is that, if President -- former President Trump is disciplined -- and that's a big if -- he can focus on the fact that she is in power and start to ask her questions in the debate about what has happened since he was in power.

The question is whether he's capable of doing that. And I think Vice President Harris is counting on the fact that he's going to have a very hard time hitting those points, because he will focus on the person.

MATTINGLY: Yes, and the campaign clearly trying to needle him into focusing on the personal quite often.

One of the interesting things when you talk to Democrats about where the vice president stands on specific things, you hear from some saying, look, don't get into the weeds on the policy issues. Focus about character. Focus on values, as the vice president repeatedly said last night.

Is that an effective strategy, not actually detailing an agenda, but instead kind of talking more 30,000 foot?

NAFTALI: It has been effective in American history.

Franklin Roosevelt ran on The New Deal. Of course, he was running at a time of economic collapse, and he was running against an incumbent. But he didn't actually say what The New Deal was. Indeed, his ideas about what a New Deal should be in 1932 were very -- would be very different by the time it was 1934 or 1935.

John F. Kennedy ran promising to make the country move again. Well, how vague is that? He ran a vibes campaign for the most part in 1960. Richard Nixon in 1968 promised to end the war in Vietnam, but didn't say how he would do it. He said he had a secret plan. He was as vague as he could be, again, saying: I'm different from the people in power. I'm different from LBJ.

In 2008, Barack Obama promised change. He did promise some policy changes, of course, but he was basically saying, we have had enough with the Bush administration. We have had enough with its wars.

So, historically, a vibes campaign can be very effective, a campaign that is light on policy can be effective. The challenge, of course, for Vice President Harris is that she's actually in the administration at the moment. So, she is going to have to tighten how she explains balancing the green economy with old economy jobs that you don't want to go away. She has to explain a little bit better how she's going to approach the

border issue and why it took three years to implement that executive order. What she has on her side is that she was -- she's vice president. Vice presidents don't make those decisions. It would be OK if she opened up a little daylight between her and Joe Biden.

MATTINGLY: It's going to be fascinating to watch. I like the references. This has happened before, in the sense of not everybody's detailing amazingly detailed, in-the-weeds policy proposals. The secret plan in the war in particular is a good reference.

Timothy Naftali, deeply appreciate your expertise, as always, my friend. Thank you.

NAFTALI: Thank you, Phil.

MATTINGLY: Well, will still to come, some good news for your wallet. The latest inflation numbers are in. It may be slowing, but there may also be some bumps ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:43:44]

MATTINGLY: We're getting some welcome news on the inflation front this morning, some better-than-expected numbers from the Fed's go-to measuring stick.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, we call it PCE, held steady last month at 2.5 percent. That beat economists' projections. But what could it mean for interest rate cuts and your wallet?

CNN economic and political commentator Catherine Rampell joins me now.

I couldn't get Jerome Powell on the phone. We're going with the next best thing here.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTINGLY: Catherine, what's your takeaway from this report?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you. I will take that.

MATTINGLY: Yes, yes, yes. What's your takeaway from these numbers?

RAMPELL: I think it was generally a good report.

It showed that inflation is not all the way down to where the Fed wants it to be, which is a 2 percent rate. But it's on its way. It's 2.5 percent. The core number that they look at which strips out food and energy prices because they tend to be volatile, not because they don't matter -- they matter to consumers. But for getting at the general thrust of where prices are heading, the

Fed looks at that core number. And that's at around 2.6 percent, also pretty good. I see nothing in this report to knock the Fed off of its expected track of cutting interest rates in a few weeks.

[11:45:00]

MATTINGLY: Which leads to the natural follow-up of, by how much?

RAMPELL: Well, that, I don't know. I mean, I don't know at all that they will definitely cut interest rates, but markets are certainly betting on it.

If you look at where markets are expecting things to go, it still looks like the consensus view is that they will cut them by the normal amount, that's a quarter-percentage point, as opposed to an unusually large amount. Some people are calling for a half-percentage point.

We will get some more data between now and then. We will get another jobs report, for example. So never say never. But it does look like they're going to start this gradual path of rate cuts, and the first one will be in a few weeks.

MATTINGLY: Can I say, this one -- this is a very basic question. But somebody was asking me about this the other day, and it occurred to me that people who have lived in a perpetually low interest rate environment for a very long time until the last year might not always understand the answer.

When they start cutting rates, what actually happens for consumers? What are people going to see that will change?

RAMPELL: So, lots of different loans and other financial products are benchmarked against this interest rate that we have been talking about, the Fed funds rate, meaning that that's sort of the starting point, and then everybody sets their rates off of that, banks and other lenders.

So that would mean essentially that, once the Fed starts cutting interest rates, you will start seeing credit card rates, auto loans, mortgages, those interest rates for those products fall. In fact, we have already seen some of that happen because these institutions are relatively forward-looking.

They're expecting the rate cuts to happen. So, for example, mortgage rates have been falling, I think, more or less since April. So some of that is already baked in. But as the Fed continues to cut rates, you will see that filter throughout the economy as more and more financial institutions start to say, OK, credit is cheaper for us. We can make credit a little bit cheaper for our customers. And, therefore, they will bring mortgage rates down.

Now, to be clear, I don't think we are going to get back to the zero percent Fed funds rate that we saw a few years ago, any time soon. I think that there are a lot of consumers out there, borrowers, who kind of got used to this idea that we would have really low interest rates for an extended period of time, potentially forever.

We saw that following the financial crisis. We saw that following the pandemic. And those were really unusual circumstances. So just because the Fed is cutting rates doesn't mean that we should bank on, for example, mortgage rates going back to 2 percent or 3 percent, which was extraordinarily low, for a while.

They will probably go down, but they're not going to be quite as cheap as they were during those unusual periods.

MATTINGLY: Yes, just to put a finer point on it, folks, if rates go back to zero, that's not good. That means something terrible has happened.

RAMPELL: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTINGLY: Like a pandemic.

RAMPELL: Exactly. That was in response to crises. Exactly. Exactly.

MATTINGLY: Or a once-in-a-generation financial crisis.

Real quick, before I let you go, the vice president's economic agenda, she's talked about it. She kind of led into the interview last night laying out specific pieces of it. I know where you are on the price gouging proposals or the theory of the case economically on that.

More broadly, though, how she detailed things last night, did anything stand out to you?

RAMPELL: I thought she remained relatively vague in talking about her policies. She talked about generally valuing investments in the middle class, opportunities for the middle class.

And I think that's pretty much a winning message. What that actually translates to in action, I think, is yet to be seen. I am heartened by the fact that she talked about the child tax credit as something that she would push on her very first day. I think this is a -- personally, I think this is a really important issue to make it more available, especially to lower-income families.

I think that there is some potential for bipartisan support for expanding the child tax credit. There has been in the past. And next year, a huge portion of the tax code is going to come up for grabs because the Trump tax cuts are expiring.

So there will be an opportunity to put that on the table, among other tax changes. So that's the part that I'm going to hold on to as most encouraging. But, in general, she's still speaking in pretty vague terms about what she wants to do, potentially because, when she gets more specific, she's vulnerable to criticisms.

And, to be clear, Trump has been specific on some things, but there are largely things that are antithetical to the objectives that he says he wants. He also talks about bringing down -- helping the middle class, bringing down prices, et cetera. But if you look at the things he's put on the table, they tend to be things like tariffs that would actually raise prices.

So there are no heroes here, but, again, there are some things in Harris' agenda that I think could be promising.

[11:50:04]

MATTINGLY: I still think a debate over what the extension of the 2017 tax cuts should look like would be a great debate. And you and I may be the only ones who would like it, but it would be a fascinating debate.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTINGLY: Catherine Rampell, all...

RAMPELL: Well, it will matter to a lot of households eventually, yes.

MATTINGLY: Exactly, more than anything else at this point.

Catherine, thanks so much, as always, my friend. Appreciate it.

And still to come: Millions of people are heading out for the last -- summer's last hurrah. What to expect on the road and in the airport terminal this holiday weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: It's Labor Day weekend, and time to check in on the weather forecast for your get-togethers to say goodbye to summer.

CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam joins us now.

Derek, what are we looking at?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: OK, I know you're a father, so you probably got some barbecue plans with your kids or something, just like I do.

And this may be the weekend to enjoy that outdoors, especially if you're located across the Midwest and the East Coast, because cooler- than-average temperatures are going to tumble into that part of the country.

[11:55:08]

So we have been feeling the heat lately, but now we're going to get some relief. So it'll feel more like the middle to end of September for many locations, let's say, Chicago all the way to Boston, as well as New York City and perhaps into the nation's capital as well.

But there's certainly some heat there. And it's really sandwiched in between these two fronts located across the Ohio River Valley and much of the Deep South, but you will not be shielded from the cooler weather if you're in places like Nashville or Tennessee -- or Atlanta, Georgia. Things will cool into the first parts of next week.

And the culprit is this cold front. So it's going to slide east, another reinforcing shot of cold air behind it, taking you through the long holiday weekend. We still have one more day, the Labor Day, of course, our extended holiday. And with this kind of clash of two different air masses, we get a chance of thunderstorms, so showers and storms possible both today in Michigan, but along the interior of the East Coast for the day tomorrow.

Here's a look at your temperatures. Phil, what are you going to be doing this weekend? Look at that. Not bad.

MATTINGLY: I mean, apparently, you have committed me to a barbecue with my kids, which I will happily do.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Derek Van Dam, as always, my friend, thanks so much.

And thank you for joining us this morning. I'm Phil Mattingly.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with Manu Raju is up next right after a quick break.

Have a great weekend.