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CNN This Morning

Today, Biden Joins Auto Workers on Picket Line in Michigan; This Hour, Kremlin Critic Navalny in Court for Appeal Hearing; Abrams Tanks Now in Ukraine as U.S. Still Hasn't Granted Zelenskyy's Request for Longer-Range Missiles. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 26, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is plotting his next move and his job is potentially on the line.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Kevin McCarthy does not have the votes.

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: If there ends up being a shutdown, Republicans would largely be to blame.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sit down Hakeem Jeffries and negotiate a way forward.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today, President Biden set to join autoworkers on the picket line against the big three automakers.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is what the president wanted to do to stand, to stand with autoworkers.

SHAWN FAIN, PRESIDENT, UNITED AUTO WORKERS: We invite you to join us in our fight.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Surge at the border, shelters fearing they may soon be overwhelmed by migrants.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More than 100,000 than what we saw crossing all of last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You leave them on the street, we provide shelter. Leaving them on the street is not an option for us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A defiant Senator Bob Menendez flatly denying he did anything wrong.

SEN. BOB MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Not only will I be exonerated, I still will be the New Jersey senior senator.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you want to claim selective prosecution, you have got to prove that.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): If you're indicted, you should resign.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It won't help us to have him hanging around.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone, top of the hour. So glad you're with us here on CNN This Morning. A lot to get to.

Did they figure out, the government sitch (ph) yet?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: I love your optimism. It doesn't track with any reality of the last decade. But you know what, you have got to hold on to it with four days, 16 hours and 58 minutes --

HARLOW: So, the president --

MATTINGLY: -- until the government shuts down.

HARLOW: Maybe the president has had it. He's leaving Washington. He's going to Detroit to deal with another --

MATTINGLY: Pretty significant issue, yes.

HARLOW: He will be, we're talking about President Biden, joining auto workers right on the picket line in Michigan for their strike against the big three. This is the first time a sitting U.S. president has ever done that. And it comes just one day before Donald Trump will also visit Detroit and also speak with union members there.

MATTINGLY: Now, these back-to-back visits to a crucial battleground state could be our clearest view of a potential Biden-Trump rematch in 2024. They are, of course, fighting over union voters, Biden wanting that union endorsement. Notably, a source tells CNN the United Auto Workers union president will be joining Biden on the picket line today but the union is not involved with Trump's visit.

CNN Business and Politics Correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich is live outside the Stellantis plant in Warren, Michigan. This is huge 48 hours both politically, I think, optically. What's actually happening with the negotiations as all of this comes together, Vanessa?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's going to be a historic day. You have President Biden in just a moment, a matter of hours, coming to Wayne County, Michigan, to take to the picket line, the first time we have seen a sitting president do that in what has already been a historic strike against the big three automakers by the union.

Today, I'm in front of the Stellantis facility in Warren, Michigan. This is one of the 38 facilities that were authorized to strike just on Friday. So, these folks have been on the picket line for just a few days now.

I want to bring in James Snow to the conversation. He has been with the company for about 25 years. Your thoughts on President Biden coming to town today, taking to the picket line?

JAMES SNOW, STELLANTIS MOPAR EMPLOYEE WITH 25 YEARS AT THE COMPANY: I think it's good to have any exposure shined on what we're fighting for. I don't think it's the most important thing to be talking about right now. I think we have other more important things that -- the reason why we're out here, the strike that we're really fighting for.

Like you said, I have 25 years. We're not out here for me or all the other guys out here with about the same amount of time if not more. We're out here with the younger guys who were just getting hired. They've been with the company four to five, six years, as temporary employees working 60, 70 hours a day. They only get paid about $15 an hour, they are not eligible for vacation days, they are not eligible for the profit sharing the company likes to keep talking. They have no dental. They have no vision. And the most important thing, they have no clear path to full time employment, and that needs to stop.

YURKEVICH: You've heard that ford has made some progress at the table with the UAW. Stellantis, we haven't heard the same level of negotiating with the union. You are with Stellantis. You work for Stellantis. Your concerns about that?

SNOW: I think we will be out here a while. The company is definitely not trying to do what's right and return the concessions that we gave up in good faith, we opened a contract back in 2008 or '09, agreed to the temporary concessions and they do not want to return those for us. I guess they have a funny way of defining temporary.

YURKEVICH: Thank you so much, James. Thank you for your time this morning.

[07:05:00]

So, listen, negotiations are ongoing, constantly. We know that Ford put an offer on the table that the union is happier about rather than what they have seen from Stellantis and General Motors. Today, President Biden coming to town. Tomorrow, President Trump will be here in the Detroit area holding his own event. But until then, these men and women will be on the picket lines 24/7. Phil?

HARLOW: Vanessa, that was so helpful to hear directly from him what they're fighting for, for other workers, not necessarily ones like him who have been there a long time. Thank you for being on the ground. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Poppy, Vanessa does a great job of that interview of laying out kind of the stakes for the workers here. This is labor dispute and it's a significant one with broad macro economic repercussions, obviously repercussions for the labor union and the big three automakers as well.

But the politics is something you simply can't avoid, and that's going to become very acute over the course of the next 48 hours.

And here is why. President Biden, of course, won in 2020 in large part because he rebuilt the blue wall. We're talking about Pennsylvania. We're talking about Michigan. We're talking about Wisconsin. Why does that matter in this case in particular? Well, I'll tell you. I think the important thing to note is when you actually move into Michigan here, Biden winning the state by 154,000 votes. That's obviously a very big deal, right?

Well, something to keep in mind is track back to 2016, and we'll explain to you why this all matters and why these two visits over the course of the next two days are so significant. Look at this blue wall here. Pennsylvania is red. Michigan is red. Wisconsin is red. In these three states, in particular, the union vote is larger of a share than it is in most states throughout the country. Those are the voters, particularly white working class voters, particularly those without a college degree, that shifted heavily towards Trump in 2016, Biden working very hard to pull them back in 2020.

So let's take a look at Michigan. Look at how close this race was. It was a stunning, stunning result for Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Trump winning the state by 10,704 votes.

So, let's actually pull up the exit polls on what the union vote was in 2016. Union households, Clinton had 51 percent, Trump had 42 percent. That's pretty significant, right, a nine-point victory in union households for Hillary Clinton. No, it wasn't. It was a significant drop-off from where president Obama had been in 2012. It was a focus that the Biden campaign had trying to rebuild that blue wall in 2020.

So, what happened in 2020? Well, let's pull back out and go into 2020 and pull that back up. Biden winning Michigan by 154,000 votes, a much larger margin of victory than Trump had in 2016. Where did the union vote land? Well, Biden enlarging it significantly, 62 to 37 percent.

This right here, this is critical in a state where one in four households for voters are likely aligned with unions. That's why Biden is there. He is aligned with the UAW leadership. He wants that UAW endorsement. Shawn Fain, the UAW president, will be with President Biden on the picket line, doesn't have the endorsement yet. But that is why this is such a political battle, so much as it is a policy or a labor battle. Poppy?

HARLOW: Fascinating. Thank you, Phil.

Let's bring in deputy chief of staff -- former deputy chief of staff for former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Maura Gillespie with us, former Democratic Congressman Max Rose and Bloomberg Senior Washington Correspondent Saleha Mohsin. Guys, thank you for being at the table.

Congressman, I want to start with you, Democrat but you represented a very purple part of New York. So, Biden is going to a battleground state. Then Trump follows him. You think that Biden needs to be careful and, in your words, wake up the campaign on this. Why?

FMR. REP. MAX ROSE (D-NY): Well, absolutely. Look at what happened, okay? Donald Trump initially ate his lunch, right, when he announced that he was going to this site that is traditionally the Democratic base. HARLOW: Stronghold.

ROSE: Now what's interesting, though, is that what everyone thought, the press and myself included, was what Biden was going to do was stay away from Michigan as a consequence there because you don't want to look like you're going there just in response to Trump being there.

But instead, the administration and his campaign has decided to do something that no president, no sitting president has ever done and in the process has completely shifted the narrative away from Donald Trump to this truly unprecedented act in support and in solidarity of working people and unions. And in that sense, it's a political win.

But you mentioned that this is a preview of the general election. This is the initiation of the general election.

HARLOW: Do you think, Maura, it's risky? Because on the one hand, he has to go there as President Trump, the on other hand, he has to go there as candidate Trump. And you've got to belief he's going to be asked by specifics, like, okay, you support our four day workweek, you support X, Y and Z? Is he going to be able to directly answer those questions? What does he need to actually bring as president?

MAURA GILLESPIE, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR FORMER CONGRESSMAN ADAM KINZINGER: Sorry, President Trump or President Biden?

HARLOW: Biden as candidate and president.

GILLESPIE: Right. So, that's the issue here, is that going as a candidate makes sense, right?

[07:10:01]

You want to show your support for the unions, because, largely, they have been -- he is the most pro-union president, as he has said countless times. But going as president, you have to show up with something. You can't go there and be happy to throw your support and do nothing else. They are going to want to know what you're going to do tangibly as president to help them.

So, I think it is an issue for the president to go there and not have anything but walking with them and being Candidate Joe as opposed to President Joe Biden. But I would also say the bigger issue is we're dancing around it and they're ignoring the fact that policies that the president put forward are going to hurt the unions, that are going to hurt these auto workers because introducing E.V., while it's great and it's going to be the future, it does impact them at the end of the day.

So, I think ignoring that issue Donald Trump will hit on that, Donald Trump is going to point out these issues that Biden is going to have with the auto workers and he's going to compel to them in an emotional level and try to relate to them despite obviously contradictory aspect of the fact that the former president has his own issues as a businessman and with workers and not paying them or not paying them enough. So, it will be an interesting sort of next few days here. MATTINGLY: It's fascinating, right? Because if you look at what Trump did with the National Labor Relations Board, if you look at what Trump promised in Lordstown, where I'm from in Ohio, that never actually came to pass. If you want to have a policy debate, I'm pretty sure the Biden folks would take that.

I think the question, though, and I think you're getting at this, is the ability to have that kind of political knockdown, drag out fight, when you're technically the president -- there's a reason presidents don't go to picket lines, right? They're trying -- they're not part of this negotiation. They're not a party. They try to stay in the background and hope to facilitate. You've covered this team's economic policy and efforts closer than anybody. How do they operate in this space given the politics?

SALEHA MOHSIN, SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG: To me, it's a sign of desperation. If the president is making this huge move to show up and outshine the last president, who was a candidate, who is his big opponent, it is showing how hard he is fighting. Because what Donald Trump is doing is trying to recreate that 2016-like attraction, that pull to blue collar workers that got him to the White House.

And Biden grabbed those votes in 2020 and they're uncertain now about him. That constituency is not shared because he's backed electric vehicle production. Trump is talking about how that's going to wipe out your jobs because they need less union workers to produce those kinds of cars. They're shipping those jobs to China. That's exactly how he won in 2016. He's recreating that. And so Biden is rushing in to do the counter-narrative, but he's showing up a little bit empty handed when it comes to policy fixes on making sure union jobs are protected.

HARLOW: I mean, what power -- you make this good point that the president needs to tell these workers he won't allow the E.V. transition that this administration backs so fervently to chip away at good-paying jobs. But he doesn't really actually have any power to make those promises, does he?

MOHSIN: He has signaling power to show up and to make it clear to the big automakers that I'm the president and I support this. Unless he's willing to go back on those promises on E.V. production, which he's not, that's going to upset a lot of people in the climate change sector, he can't really do anything here.

MATTINGLY: That's to that point, I mean, the balance here, right? Biden has tried every single time he talks about this to say, when I talk about climate, I'm talking about jobs, I'm talking about union jobs. And that's his message. It doesn't necessarily track particularly with autoworkers. How does he navigate this, because what Maura is pointing out is 100 percent true? And that's the UAW is in a different spot than other labor organizations and unions here.

ROSE: Well, there's of course the opposite point, right? The Biden administration successfully negotiated the dock workers and the railroad workers union deliberations. They did so very quietly, diplomatically and I don't think they got credit for it despite the fact that those were also historic agreements.

So, politics is, yes, about nuance and pros, but it's also about poetry and it's also about large, symbolic acts. So, certainly, when this negotiation does end, and I do believe that these workers have a very strong position and significant momentum, there's an argument to be made that the Biden administration will receive more credit this time and the UAW's endorsement, because although the UAW has said they will not be endorsing Donald Trump, they're still very open to endorsing Joe Biden.

MATTINGLY: Does that endorsement matter?

GILLESPIE: It does. I mean, they have largely had this kind of stranglehold on this group of voters, this bloc of voters. But, again, Republicans are looking at Michigan and this could be a real opportunity to make some headway there.

MATTINGLY: I think Fain is aligned with his rank and file than UAW presidents have been in the past.

HARLOW: Thank you, guys. I appreciate it very much.

All right, this is ahead, the House back in session today. No spending deal in sight, Speaker Kevin McCarthy running out of time. We have got the latest on these negotiations.

MATTINGLY: These are they days Max really misses the House.

HARLOW: Don't you, Max?

[07:15:00]

MATTINGLY: Also in just moments, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is expected to virtually attend an appeal hearing from the penal colony where he's been serving his 19-year prison sentence for charges of extremism.

HARLOW: This coming as Ukraine claims they have killed a prominent Russian commander in their attack on Moscow's Black Sea fleet. Our Chief International Correspondent Clarissa ward joins us live.

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MATTINGLY: Well, this hour, Alexei Navalny is expected to virtually the end a hearing where he'll appeal his latest sentence on extremism charges. A Russian court handed down a new 19-year punishment to Navalny last month. That's on top of an 11.5 year sentence he was already serving.

In 2020, Navalny was the victim of a suspected poisoning while on a flight to Moscow. A CNN investigation with Bellingcat found evidence that before Navalny fell ill, he was being followed by agents from Russia's security service.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You don't recognize them?

ALEXEI NAVALNY, RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER: I don't recognize any of them.

WARD: Would it surprise you to learn that some of these men went on more than 30 trips with you over the course of three years?

[07:20:01]

NAVALNY: This is absolutely terrifying. I don't know if terrifying is a good word.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That was our own Clarissa Ward interviewing Navalny. And here she is, confronting one of the FSB members who was involved in Navalny's poisoning, trying to get answers, and he just shuts the door.

Navalny spent months recovering in Germany before he returned to Russia in early 2021, where he was immediately arrested. He is Russia's most prominent opposition leader. He says the charges against him are all politically motivated.

Here with us at the table this morning, happy to have our Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward. Good morning.

WARD: So happy to be with you.

HARLOW: Such a treat to have you in person. So, today, this hearing, why does it matter and what happens?

WARD: Well, in terms of the ramifications of it, I wouldn't expect much. Basically, it's an opportunity, though, for people who are close to Navalny, for people who are watching in terms of human rights abuses, what kind of condition he's in.

Previously, when we have seen him by video link, he has been incredibly emaciated, not in a good way. He has posted on his various social media channels that he has been in solitary confinement for the last four days, he's been held in deplorable conditions. He has all sorts of health issues. He said that he was being put on very strong antibiotics at one stage that were giving him real stomach problems. He is now being served with 19 years, various different charges, extremism.

But I think the reality is, and I think this is something that he probably always understood, that there is no prospect for this appeal to be successful, that there is no prospect for Alexei Navalny to be a free man as long as President Vladimir Putin remains in power.

MATTINGLY: And just to be clear, the charges themselves, what are they based on and are any of them valid?

WARD: None of them are valid. They are a series of trumped up charges ranging from extremism to fraud. You have to understand that President Vladimir Putin has effectively eviscerated now civil society inside Russia. And Alexei Navalny posed a legitimate threat, not because of the number of people supporting him, but because where he was really probing the hardest was on the corruption of the Kremlin, not trying to appeal to Russians who might be interested in liberalism or want to live a more western life.

He understood that that doesn't really play with the Russian base, but corruption and the idea that people are stealing from the ordinary Russians, that the elites are stealing, that is an effective tool, and it made him a very dangerous man, as far as Putin was concerned.

HARLOW: You also have been on the front lines many times since the war, Russia's war on Ukraine began, and we got news yesterday that Zelenskyy says the first Abrams tanks from the U.S. have come, and there's, according to the White House, many more to come. What actual difference does that make in this counteroffensive, which has been very slow?

WARD: Well, I think that the key is the number, right? We're talking about a few dozen Abrams tanks. So, they may be very helpful on the battlefield, but if you're talking about 30 tanks, it's not realistically going to make a widespread difference.

My guess is that they will use them together to make a real push in one area, but the broader issue on the ground is that this counteroffensive is moving slowly. And that is what President Putin is counting on. He can keep grinding and keep the Russian people suffering for as long as he wants to. President Zelenskyy has to keep his allies on board.

And we are heading into the season. It's called a rasputitsa. It basically means it gets very rainy, it gets very muddy then it gets very cold, the ground freezes over, it becomes that much harder to push through those fortifications.

And the Russians at this stage, it's important to remember, they're playing defense.

HARLOW: They're getting a little better too, right?

WARD: They're not playing offense and they're improving, okay? They made terrible mistakes in the beginning. They suffered humiliating defeats. They are absolutely beginning to learn from their mistakes. And so this is going to be a very tough battle for the Ukrainians going ahead.

MATTINGLY: We've seen an uptick in the tempo of Ukrainian efforts to hit Crimea, to hit specific, I think, strategic, critical points in Crimea in particular, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. There had been reports that perhaps a very high ranking official had been killed.

Just in just moments ago, Russian Ministry of Defense has now put out a video appearing to show the commander of Russia's Black Sea fleet suggesting he's alive despite those claims from Ukraine that he was killed. This back and forth, I guess, what do you make of it, but more broadly, this strategy that you've seen from the Ukrainians?

WARD: What do I make of it? I make of it that we have a very tough job as journalists because this is an information war. And so yesterday, you had the Ukrainians coming out saying that they had killed this commander. This would be a very big deal, the biggest really since they sunk the Moskva ship last year, 30 or more than 30 officers killed alongside. Now, you have the Russians saying well here is. He is he's still alive. How do we know what to believe?

But most importantly, coming to your question about the sort of tactic, this is a very effective tactic for the Ukrainians, right?

[07:25:05]

It may be incredibly difficult to push through those fortifications, but to keep the pressure up in Crimea, to keep up this idea that you are safe at no place on the battlefield, whether you are a commander or whether you are a rank and file soldier, you are constantly at risk of this very specific targeting. That is a very effective tool both in terms of the impact it has on the battlefield but also psychologically.

So, I think you're going to see a lot more of these almost like guerrilla-like tactics going forward.

HARLOW: We're just waiting for those images to come in so we can show our viewers that Russia is saying here's the proof that the commander of the Black Sea fleet is alive.

As we wait for those, the increasing drone attacks inside Russia on Moscow that President Zelenskyy publicly denies are coming from Ukraine, but then also talks about the effectiveness of doing that. Should we expect those to increase?

WARD: I think you should expect that to increase both on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side. Technology has been at the forefront of this war from the get-go, right? The Ukrainians understood that this was kind of their superpower. And you have this strange juxtaposition of a war that is being played out in the trenches, reminiscent of World War I, but at the same time is implementing some of the most sophisticated technology that we have ever seen on the battlefield.

Again, though, the Russians are starting to play catch-up. The Russians are buying lots of drones from the Iranians, they're stockpiling them. And as we head into this so-called rasputitsa season, right, where you might see fewer or less movement on the actual physical battlefield, I think you're going to see a lot more drone attacks coming from both sides in Ukraine and also beyond.

MATTINGLY: Can I pull back for a minute? I think we get so -- and I'm as guilty of it as anybody, getting so caught up in the weeds on these congressional funding fights and the kind of absurdity that we do this every single year, every single fiscal year.

And Ukraine funding, an emergency Ukraine funding, the administration asked for an additional $24 billion, is a piece of this larger battle. But there has been a shift, particularly among House Republicans, but also some shifts in terms of how the American people feel about the funding.

When -- if you're the international community, if you're the Ukrainians who -- you've mentioned Zelenskyy needs his allies desperately at this moment, talk about what this battle on Capitol Hill means more broadly.

WARD: I think this is an existential battle for the Ukrainians. They understand that if the Republicans decide to really pull back on this funding, if the American people are really starting to tire of this war, it is going to be next to impossible for Ukraine to win it. They desperately need this funding, not just in terms of the weaponry, not just in terms of defense spending. I'm talking simple things like paying government salaries.

Ukraine's economy is effectively being underwritten at the moment by the U.S. and by the Europeans as well. And if there's any sense that that support is starting to wane and that there's a kind of malaise kicking in, that is going to be setting off alarm bells. I think it already is setting off alarm bells in Kyiv.

And that is exactly coming back to my original point, what President Vladimir Putin has been betting on from the beginning. We can keep grinding. We were born for this moment, whether it's two years, five years or a decade. But the West does not have the same appetite for suffering. And the west, of course, in general, has to answer to its voters.

HARLOW: Yes, absolutely. Clarissa, thank you, a treat to have you here. We appreciate it.

And just take a look at this. We just got this in, I believe. This is Russia saying this is proof that the commander of their Black Sea fleet was not killed, as Ukraine claimed yesterday, that he is alive. But as Clarissa rightly put it, it makes the job for journalists very tough with all of this information from both sides. We'll keep following that.

MATTINGLY: Absolutely.

Well, to get a grasp, a better grasp of the migrant crisis facing the U.S., CNN's David Culver traveled to Mexico's border with Guatemala. His report, that's coming up next.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's Guatemala over there. And that, if you look here, are folks crossing, they're waving at us, migrants who have made the journey from various countries.

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