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Harris And Trump Square Off In Combative Debate. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired September 11, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:45:37]

PAULA NEWTON, CNN HOST: And so American voters, they got that contentious debate on what has been an absolutely unprecedented campaign.

Welcome. I'm Paula Newton in New York.

And a new chapter in the too close to call U.S. presidential race begins now. That's following, indeed, what was a fiery debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Now the debate you just saw here on CNN began with that handshake and then the real sparring began. Harris and Trump clashing over abortion rights, inflation, and immigration. The vice president seemed to try and get under the former president's skin, putting Trump on the defensive at times during their face off there in Philadelphia.

Now, in a CNN flash poll, 63 percent of debate watchers said Harris turned in a better performance, with 37 percent saying Trump had the edge.

All right. We want to dig deeper into all of this. Joining me now is Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. And with me is Erin Perrine, she's a former communications director for the Trump 2020 campaign.

Listen, lets' get right to it, right? Can you guys give me your key moments, your key takeaways from what you just heard? And especially what voters in battleground states might be looking for.

Erin, we'll start with you, especially since perhaps in a past life, you would have been at the president's side trying to counsel him on this.

ERIN PERRINE, FORMER DIRECTOR OF PRESS COMMUNICATIONS, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: That's right. I think what voters heard was a lot of the same. They saw the same Donald Trump that they've seen for the last few years. And a lot of those realities and his reactions already baked into their understanding of them. It was clear in polling that voters wanted to see more of Kamala Harris, more of her personality, but also more of her policy and for her to dive in more.

But it seemed that Kamala was more interested in being able to use those opportunities instead of talking about her positions to then push and goad the former president to get him off his mark on his positions.

So, overall, I don't -- I think if you ask the American people overall, do you think that anything changed between watching last nights debate and today, overall, they're going to say, no, this is the same thing from both candidates.

NEWTON: Julie, would you agree with that? Especially because although Kamala Harris obviously came off strongly in this debate, especially as we say right from the handshake, she didn't get into a lot of policy detail.

JULIE ROGINSKY, U.S. DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, look, she had more to lose in this elect -- in this debate than he certainly did. And Erin is absolutely right. His approval numbers are baked in. Either you love him or you hate him, he's got a very -- his ceiling and his floor are kind of the same in the sense that he's got a ceiling that's probably not much higher than it is right now. And he's got a floor that's probably not much lower than his is right now.

Hers is obviously much higher and her floor is much lower, which she needed to do was to introduce herself to the 30 percent of the American public who didn't know much about her, show her temperament, show the kind of leader xi is, and I think that sounds she accomplished it.

Which she also did, which I think was brilliant, is diminished him, right? She didn't call him a threat. She didn't say that he's going to be the second coming of the antichrist.

She made him small. She made him almost irrelevant. She made him kind of look like a doddering old guy. And I think from the perspective of Donald Trump, that is the worst thing you could possibly do to him as to make him irrelevant and kind of relegate him to the dustbin of history. I think she did that over and over.

The other thing, I think she did very smartly is on the issues where she wasn't particularly strong where something like immigration or even the economy, things that might be red flashing lights for her, what she did was essentially bait him into changing the subject that he didn't go after her on those issues, talking about dogs and cats being eaten. He talked about all sorts of weird things that were completely a detraction from the message that he should have been on.

NEWTON: Yeah, and, Erin, to Julie's point there, look objectively, he didn't just take the bait. He devoured it. And those may be my words, but the sentiment is coming from many now in the Republican Party.

Did that surprise you, given, as I said, in your position, there would have been people warning him against this, right?

PERRINE: It was very clear from Kamala Harris's team what they were saying publicly to reporters and in interviews that this was very much going to be her strategy, which was to be able to distract Donald Trump to get him off of his mark in his base, to go off on a tangent about something unrelated or about anything else.

[15:50:03]

In that sense, she was successful. But if you look at the totality of the debate here, one in the CNN flash poll, you saw Donald Trump actually tick up two points in people believing before and after the debate that he is better suited to handle the economy. So people did hear that his first 15 minutes, were quite strong for debate. And then as soon as vice president and here is could get them off the mark. She was a little wobbly to start in that same first 15 minutes, you saw him responding to her more instead of setting the conversation.

Then at the end, I think his closing remarks overall were really good. It's just that middle part where she was able to drive the conversation more where he wasn't hitting the point that maybe those middle-class swing voters in those swing states are going to glom onto to make a final decision come November.

NEWTON: Yeah and in fact, Julie, if you think about what we just heard from Donald Trump, that was that look, why hasn't she done any of this for the past 3.5 years? I will get to some of our sites from some voters that we talked to after the debate.

But, Julie, a point here, even if everything that the Democrats are saying about Kamala Harris in this debate, performance is true, right? So what? Because so many people point out you can win the debate, you still may lose the presidency.

ROGINSKY: You know, wait a second. First of all, when Donald Trump left office, the economy was in shambles. I mean, literally the biggest -- the biggest job losses since the Great Depression, right?

Here, you have lowest unemployment rate in decades. Here you have under Kamala Harris, lowest unemployment rate in decades, highest stock market, because job creation in generations.

So I think she's got a pretty good record to talk about here. Contrast that with what he was doing. He can waver (ph) on COVID all he wants, but this is the man who told people to ingest bleach and perhaps COVID would not have been as bad or resulted in the kind of disaster that it did economically if he had actually taken it seriously from the very beginning. So let's put that on him as well.

I would say to you, look, she has that record to defend, but she's also looking forward. He's looking back and she's talking about what she's going to do in the future. I think she might have done a better job potentially talking about what she's already done in the last three-and-a-half years because the economic record is actually quite good. Inflations coming down.

Again, inflation was a function of COVID, something and that was created under him and so as a result of all of this, I think she has to talk much more about the record that she and Joe Biden have created because its quite a very record economically, I think.

NEWTON: And I will dive deeper into that point in the moment. I do want to point out though CNN poll also found that a majority of registered voters, right, registered voters watch that bait and say, look, it just didn't affect their choice for president.

CNN's Phil Mattingly, he talked to some of those swing voters right after the debate in Pennsylvania. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: With this debate, who do you think won by show of hands?

Former President Trump?

Two. I'll give it four, but tentative two over there.

What about Vice President Harris?

More hands.

For those of you who fought this debate could be determinative how many of you have made up your mind based on what you saw tonight onstage in Philadelphia? Raise your hands.

All right. I want to ask you why? What did you see that brought you to a conclusion?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's important to remember that we are voting for the leader of our country and not who we like the most or who we want in our wedding party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEWTON: Quite a comment there.

I mean, Erin, look, you were the one who said before the debate that you can't be looking in the rearview mirror, you have to look out the windshield if you want to win this. By that measure, arguably, Donald Trump and perhaps even Kamala Harris came up short.

But do you think his campaign is able to pivot now?

PERRINE: I think they will be able to, especially if you look at the polling right now.

What the American people are telling -- telling pollsters and telling politicians is they want to change. They want a new direction in this country. So this is really the perilous part of this for Kamala Harris.

She wants to try and say yes, I've been there, I've done this, I've been part of for the Biden/Harris administration, but she needs to also chart her own path. And right now, people don't see her as the change candidate. They see it as Donald Trump.

This is the time were Donald Trump can take that change mantra. I'd start hammering Harris on the failures of the administration, on how things have cost more and they feel less faith in this country and now, there's more geopolitical conflict. Talk to people about what's going on in their communities, and then

use that message to get them out. This is the time to do that.

NEWTON: Julie, and last word to you here. I mean, given the fact that she did face a lot of criticism about not doing interviews, she hasn't done any town halls. Would you advise her to kind a mix it up a little bit more because voters continually say they want to hear more?

[15:55:00]

ROGINSKY: Well, first of all, she has been doing interviews. She may not be doing them with the people who want them done, some journalists.

But the reality is she was on Tavis Smiley the other day. She's been doing Univision. She's been -- she's been doing the media that she feels that she needs to be doing to get to the voters that she needs to get to.

I'll just say this --

NEWTON: But even "The New York Times" poll said that they wanted to hear more. That was just a few days ago, right?

Go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted you.

ROGINSKY: Well, they heard a lot. They heard a lot. They heard -- yeah. They heard a lot yesterday, I think looking to you to hear a lot more over the next 50 days.

But I'll also say that, look, if you want to talk about a change agent, you had somebody talking about the future in Kamala Harris, you had somebody re-litigating his grievances over and over again. It's crowd sizes, January 6, his record.

I mean, there's not one forward-looking policy that Donald Trump talked about yesterday. And so you want to talk about a change agent. You're not -- you're talking about a 70-something-year-old man. This is not exactly somebody coming in on a white horse we don't know about, who's going to somehow change.

NEWTON: Julie, I have to leave it there.

PERRINE: But that's what people think.

NEWTON: Julie, Erin, we will continue this conversation because it has been a good one, but I want to thank you for joining us on our post-debate coverage. Appreciate it.

And I want to thank you for being here as well for this replay of the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Stay where you are, and we'll be right back with more analysis on "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS".