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Interview With Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL); Inflation Dropping; Who Won Presidential Debate?. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired September 11, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:35]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

This morning, the road to the White House takes on some new twists and turns after a rather fiery presidential debate last night. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, they shook hands, they came out swinging. But, at times, that Trump may have proved to be his own worst enemy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: They're eating -- they're eating the pets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Kamala Harris managed to bait and taunt Trump repeatedly and steer him away from his own game plan. Both campaigns are declaring victory, but polls show most Americans view the debate as rather lopsided.

Plus, watch this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: David Gregory Arce.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jean Arestegui.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Adam P. Arias.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brett T.. Bailey

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: At New York's ground zero 23 years later, the families of those killed on 9/11 come together to honor their loved ones, and the nation joins them to remember the horrors and the sacrifices of that day. We will have much more on that coming up later this hour.

But let's begin this hour with the presidential race.

CNN senior White House correspondent M.J. Lee is here with me, along with national correspondent Kristen Holmes.

M.J., you first. How is the Harris camp viewing last night's debate performance?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there's no question that the Harris campaign was and is feeling very good about last night. They felt like she delivered the message with millions of Americans tuning in. And she saw this as an important opportunity to make that first or maybe even second or third impression for a lot of folks who are still undecided.

They were also really pleased with how often they felt like Donald Trump took her bait on a number of issues, including when she commented about his crowd size. But I think, despite the fact that they were feeling good, we are not going to be hearing the campaign saying this meant that this was a race-changing moment for the campaign.

In fact, I think we are going to continue hearing the campaign calling her the underdog in the race, continuing to say that the election is expected to be incredibly close. And, in fact, a fund-raising note that we saw from the campaign just this morning, the subject line was: "Debates Don't Win Elections."

What that means is that the vice president is going to go back to campaigning and also, of course, juggling her day job. We saw her at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City earlier today. And she was there alongside President Joe Biden, of course, and also Donald Trump.

The two actually shook hands for the second time in the course of just 24 hours, so a pretty remarkable scene there. And as for the campaign, we saw the team last night saying that they're ready for a second debate, trying to clearly signal that they're not afraid to do this one more time. She's going to be hitting the road.

It's going to be North Carolina tomorrow, on Friday back to Pennsylvania, a number of big fund-raisers coming her way as well. And I think the other thing to remind everyone, there was a huge celebrity endorsement that she received last night.

We are clearly going to see Kamala Harris and her campaign try to maximize in whatever ways they can the fact that she got the endorsement from Taylor Swift. She signed that endorsement, of course, on Instagram as "Childless Cat Lady."

BLITZER: We're going to have more on that coming up this hour as well. M.J., don't go too far away.

Kristen, you cover the Trump campaign for us. What is Donald Trump saying today about last night? KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Donald Trump

himself, no surprise, is saying that he won the debate, that it was his best debate ever, pointing to conservative straw polls that showed him as the successful candidate in the debate, which isn't really a surprise.

We knew and we had reported on the fact that many people going into last night's debate had already decided who they were going to vote for in November. So if you only look at conservative straw polls and you see who conservatives believe won, it's not that surprising that Donald Trump would be in the lead.

But, as you noted, most polls across the board show that that's not really the case. Donald Trump's team also on the record saying he had a masterful performance, that he won the debate.

But when you talk to a number of Republican allies, people who had been talking to the president in the days leading up to the debate, warning him that she, Kamala Harris, was going to try to goad him, to not let her get under their skin, they were disappointed in the fact that he did, in fact, let her get underneath his skin, that he was, in fact, reactive, particularly, as M.J. said, to the rally crowd size, stopping the debate to go back to the fact that she had mentioned his rallies, in particular, not sticking to the issues.

[11:05:03]

Now, Donald Trump himself, again, saying he won, but also indicating that he might not want to debate Kamala Harris again. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: When a fighter loses, he says, I want a rematch. I want a rematch. They always -- the losing person, the fighter, the debater, they always ask for a rematch. I won the debate, according to C-SPAN, by a lot.

According to every single -- I think we have 14 polls that we sent to you. Everyone had me winning the debate. So, I don't know that I want to do another debate.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: So generally speaking, maybe that's correct, but also Donald Trump had already agreed to and promoted the idea that there would be a debate on September 25, NBC trying to get Kamala Harris to agree to that debate.

Now you see him kind of backing away from this idea of doing a second debate. Not obvious -- it doesn't seem, at least, that they will come from a position of strength if you're trying to back out of any sort of future debate.

But, again, as M.J. said, it's really similar to what the Harris campaign is saying. Are they going to say that this was a full-on loss? No, and they don't believe that. They believe that, no matter what, at the end of the day, there are still two months until the election. There's a lot of ground to make up and that this is going to be a very close race.

And that is what you're going to hear from the campaign over and over again. They don't believe this was a defining moment, but, again, those Republicans that I have spoken to were a little bit disappointed in his performance last night.

BLITZER: Kristen Holmes, thank you very much. M.J. Lee, thanks to you as well.

Over the course of last night's debate, by CNN's calculations, former President Trump made at least 33 false claims, from false claims about migrants eating pets, to crime statistics, to abortion, to inflation numbers.

However, Trump wasn't the only one who made some misleading comments. Vice President Kamala Harris made some as well.

Joining us now are our senior reporter covering all of these issues. Daniel Dale is our fact-checker.

Daniel, let's begin with Trump's claims about the economic impact of tariffs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID MUIR, "WORLD NEWS TONIGHT" ANCHOR AND MANAGING EDITOR: Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?

TRUMP: They're not going to have higher prices. What's going to have and who's going to have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years.

I charged -- I was the only president ever. China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. And so were other countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: That's a lot of wrongness, Wolf.

CNN colleague Katie Lobosco asked the Trump campaign for any evidence that his proposed across-the-board tariffs on imported products would not raise prices for Americans, and they sent her a study which, when you read it, actually says prices for Americans would rise if and when those tariffs were implemented.

And that's what happens with tariffs. That is normal. Tariffs are taxed on imported products, but that tax payment to the U.S. Treasury is not made by foreign countries like China. It is made by the importer who brought the item into the U.S.

And, in many cases, we know that business passes on some or all of the costs to the final U.S. consumer. We have study after study, including one from the bipartisan Federal Trade Commission, that found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump's existing tariffs on China.

So, when Trump says he took in hundreds of billions from China through those tariffs he put on as presidents, no, Wolf, that money was from Americans.

BLITZER: Interesting.

Now, you say Vice President Kamala Harris made at least one misleading claim about fracking for oil and gas. Let's listen to that. Let's listen, and then we will discuss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right, do some fact-checking for us, Daniel.

DALE: Sure, well, so this Harris claim about 2020 is at least misleading.

What she's referring to there when she says she made it very clear in 2020 that she wouldn't ban fracking is her V.P. debate that year with then-Vice President Mike Pence. But if you read that transcript, as I did again last night, nowhere in that debate did Harris say she had changed her own mind on a fracking ban.

What she said twice was that Joe Biden, then the head of the Democratic ticket, would not himself ban fracking. Now, that made sense at the time. He was the presidential candidate. She was talking about what the presidential candidate would do. But she certainly nowhere in that 2020 debate made clear that her personal position had changed, that she personally wouldn't want a fracking ban if she were ever president.

BLITZER: Excellent fact-checking as usual.

Daniel Dale, thank you very, very much.

I want to bring in CNN political commentator and former communications director for Vice President Harris Jamal Simmons. Simmons, also with us, the former spokesperson for Republican Governor Doug Burgum's 2024 presidential campaign, Lance Trover.

Jamal, let me start with you.

As we just heard, Trump lied, according to Daniel Dale's fact-checking -- he's excellent, award-winning -- Trump lied at least 33 times during the course of the debate last night, while Kamala Harris made at least one misleading claim.

[11:10:07]

What does that tell you?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it tells us that Donald Trump keeps Trumping, right?

This is what we have seen from Donald Trump since he came down the escalator. He is bombastic. He says things that are untrue. He doesn't have any feel to previous facts. And so my friend Hasan Jeffries, who is speaker -- speaker-to-be Hakeem Jeffries brother, likes to say -- he's a professor of history at Ohio State University.

He says Trump is a guy who doesn't have any realty to principal, party, or patriotism, right? So he's this guy who's going to only do what's best for him. He's not actually looking out for the Republican Party. He's not like an ideologue, so you know what he's up to. And he's not really looking out for the country in any big way.

He's really trying to figure out what's the best place for him to be at any moment, which makes him hard to debate, which is why it's so great that the vice president was able to debate him last night, one, get under his skin, but, two, dismiss him with just the look of her eyes.

And you see the memes are exploding all over social media because of that.

BLITZER: Very interesting indeed.

Lance, one of Trump's lies was that rather bizarre conspiracy that he reiterated again last night about undocumented immigrants coming to the United States and eating pets, dogs and cats, belonging to American families. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: 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.

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is the ...

TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.

HARRIS: You talk about extreme. When we listen to this kind of rhetoric, when the issues that affect the American people are not being addressed, I think the choice is clear in this election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What's your response to that? LANCE TROVER, FORMER BURGUM PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SPOKESPERSON: I

don't know much about the dogs and the cats in Ohio. I do think it's one of the missed opportunities for him in this debate, where he allowed her to get under his skin.

Look, she obviously put some points on the board in this campaign -- or in this debate last night.2 There's no question about it. But what I ask myself as a political operative is, did she do enough to sway the middle of the electorate, these swing voters that are out there?

I mean, you and I, sorry to say it, Jamal, are not normal people. What are the undecided voters out there thinking right now? And I don't think that she did. Does he have his own way of talking and speaking? That may have been a falsehood, yes.

But the real question is, what are the undecided voters out there saying? If you look at the CNN snap poll last night and the story in "The New York Times" this morning, I think she still has a lot of work to do when it comes to defining herself with the electorate.

BLITZER: Jamal, Trump's comments about these undocumented immigrants coming to the United States eating dogs and cats came right after Kamala Harris mocked his rallies. Take a listen to a few of her other jabs that really stood out last night. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess.

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, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a dealmaker. Even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal.

World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you're a disgrace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That needling, Jamal, clearly set Trump off and he fell for those traps from her time and time again.

SIMMONS: He did.

One of the ones that's sort of underreported is at the very outset when she began talking about the economy, she said a group of economists at the Wharton school, the Wharton school economist, rated her better than him on the economy.

And you could just tell that initial Jacob Blake, because he went to Wharton, or at least the undergraduate school -- he likes to kind of fudge the number here. But he went to Wharton. And when he says that -- when she said that, he couldn't respond -- he couldn't help but to respond.

And I think she just set him up from the very beginning as she kept coming after him. And she talked about all of these instances, including his crowd size and people leave his crowds because they can't take the whole show, and he just couldn't resist it.

And I think that kind of psychological operation was part of their plan from the beginning. Donald Trump couldn't resist it. He couldn't not respond. And I think it showed up in a way at the end where he was really incoherent and rambling.

BLITZER: Yes, the Wharton school, by the way, is at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

And, Lance, not only did Trump spread repeated lies, as we just heard from our fact-checker, Daniel Dale, repeatedly, but he also spoke about Kamala Harris this way. Listen to this.

[11:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Wait a minute. I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please. Does that sound familiar?

She refused to be there because she was at a sorority party of hers. She wanted to go to the sorority party. I read where she was not black that she put out. And I will say that. And then I read that she was black. And that's OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: She's a graduate of Howard University here in Washington, a historically black college, as we all know. What do you make of that?

TROVER: Look, I have been very clear about this time and time again. The personal attacks are not the way to go. I don't think that's what voters want to hear about.

But, again, I do think, while she did put points on the board last night, Donald Trump still has an opportunity over the course of the next eight weeks to change the trajectory of this election and define her, because I don't think she did enough to define herself last night.

And, yes, we can talk about all the hits and I hear Jamal and what he's saying that she really got under his skin. I tend to agree with that. But at the same time, while she spent so much time getting under his skin, she did not spend enough time outlining her policy positions. And I think if you read perhaps like in "The New York Times" story this morning, many voters were hoping to hear more policy-oriented solutions from her, and they didn't get that last night.

BLITZER: What do you think Trump did well last night?

TROVER: I thought he focused really well on immigration. That came through in the CNN snap poll afterwards. He really hammered the immigration issue. It's obviously an issue that polls and tests well that voters are very concerned about. I thought he did really well on that front.

BLITZER: All right, Lance, thank you very much. Jamal, thanks to you as well.

Still ahead this hour: Are these two men on the same page? Trump claims he hasn't even asked his own vice presidential running mate about his stance on abortion. I will ask a Republican congressman about that and more. That's coming up next.

Plus, a new report just dropped showing inflation here in the United States is slowing down and now stands at its lowest rate since February 2021. You're going to find out which everyday expenses are about to get even cheaper.

Stay with us. You're live here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:35]

BLITZER: New this morning, inflation is loosening its grip on the American economy, and that has investors hoping that the Fed will issue a long-awaited rate cut when it meets next week.

CNN anchor and correspondent Julia Chatterley is joining us right now.

Julia, the latest inflation report just dropped this morning. Give our viewers, first of all, the numbers.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: First of all, the numbers.

I tell you, it's good news for borrowers, to your point, Wolf. What we saw was prices rising 0.2 percent on the month, which translates to a yearly inflation rate of 2.5 percent. That is the lowest level that we have seen in more than three years, which is welcome news for those hoping for rate cuts beginning next week.

In terms of what's continuing to cause pressures on prices, rent. We know there's an affordability crisis going on in this country and it continues, housing, shelter costs still rising 0.5 percent last month. Airfares, a surprise. We have had five months of declines. They popped higher, perhaps some late summer travel influencing these numbers.

And something that a lot of people keep coming to me and saying, car insurance prices are off the charts. They rose once again last month. And it's a huge part of the cost of buying a new car. On the downside, it's all about energy, energy prices falling, gasoline prices in particular falling some six-tenths of 1 percent, used cars also down.

According to AAA, the average cost of a gallon of gas now down double digits over the past year, which is also welcome news. But the big question is, what does this mean for the Federal Reserve? This number and this data point tells me why they're saying, look, we're less worried about price pressures, as painful as they are. We're more focused on the jobs market.

But the stock market today is disappointed because I think it's saying, look, these numbers don't justify a half-a-percentage-point cut. We're probably going to get a quarter. But if you're a borrower out there, Wolf, don't panic. More cuts are coming, the date September 18. We will see what they do.

BLITZER: We will see what happens. It's very significant indeed.

Julia Chatterley, thank you very much.

Coming up: Trump won't commit to round two with Vice President Kamala Harris on the debate stage. We're going to get reaction from one of his top surrogates. Congressman Byron Donalds is standing by live. We will discuss when we come back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:28:33]

BLITZER: This morning, both the Trump and Harris campaigns are claiming victory following last night's rather fiery debate. Trump told FOX earlier today that he won -- and I'm quoting him now -- "by a lot" and therefore would not commit to yet another debate.

But a CNN poll of viewers who actually watched the debate tells a different story; 63 percent of viewers say Vice President Harris won the debate, while only 37 percent sided with the former president. And when you look at it by party, 30 percent of Republicans say Trump lost the debate, while only 3 percent of Democrats felt the same about the vice president's performance.

Joining us now to discuss this and more, Florida Republican Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate Byron Donalds.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

What do you make, first of all, of these polls?

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): Oh, look, I think, when you talk about who won or lost, that's not the key thing. It's, where are undecided voters?

Last night, Reuters actually had a focus group of about 10 undecided voters going into the debate last night. Six of 10 left the debate saying they were going to vote for Donald Trump. Only three said they were going to vote for Kamala Harris. One was still left undecided.

That is the true measure of who won and who lost. And the reason why I think undecided voters are going to lean towards Donald Trump is because Kamala Harris did not talk about the issues facing the American people. She spent her time trying to needle and get under the skin of Donald Trump.

[11:30:02]

That might work well in a televised debate, but you can't needle Vladimir Putin. You can't needle Xi Jinping. You got to have serious leadership and serious policy, and she did not provide that last night.