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Trump Rivals Endorse Him at Convention; Growing Revolt Over DNC Plan to Virtually Nominate Biden; Parts of NY Under State of Emergency after Storms. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 17, 2024 - 06:00   ET

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

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Wednesday, July 17. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING --

[06:00:33]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY (R), FORMER 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), FORMER 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let's send Donald Trump back to the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Donald Trump's former foes, uniting behind their nominee at the Republican National Convention.

And a move from the DNC to virtually nominate President Biden ahead of their convention reignites that growing dissent inside his own party.

Plus, U.S. officials learn of an Iranian plot to try to assassinate former President Trump in the weeks before Saturday's shooting.

And the rivalry between two former colleagues flares up on the floor of the RNC here in Milwaukee.

All right. It's 5 a.m. here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 6 a.m. on the East Coast. A live look at the Fiserv Forum as we get ready for day three of the Republican National Convention.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

From challengers to cheerleaders. In Milwaukee, a string of Trump's former opponents in Republican primaries, going back to 2016, take the stage to bend the knee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DESANTIS: Let's make the 45th president of the United States, the 47th president of the United States.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): The only way to make America wealthy and safe and strong again, is to make Donald J. Trump our president again.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): God bless Donald J. Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: You heard first there from Ron DeSantis. Or is that "Ron DeSanctimonious"? That was trunks [SIC] -- Trump's nicknames for him.

You heard from Marco Rubio. Trump called him "Little Marco," "disgusting," "a nervous basket case."

And then there was Ted Cruz. During the 2016 election, Donald Trump retweeted a post that implied Cruz's wife, Heidi, was unattractive. That's an understatement.

And then he falsely hinted that Cruz's father was somehow involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

So, a source told me that Trump made a point to early up his planned appearance in the convention hall last night to make sure that he would be there to listen to his former rivals compliment him and his vision for America.

And we showed you Ron DeSantis. But really the heart of the night was Nikki Haley, his former -- Trump's former U.N. ambassador, who also spoke. She had a longer speaking slot than Ron DeSantis, actually.

The crowd inside the RNC seemed to not have entirely forgiven Haley for challenging and insulting Trump throughout the 2024 primary election. Let's take a look at how she was initially received.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nikki Haley.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: You can hear though, there those mixed cheers and some of those boos.

Haley was trying to speak to those Republicans who have hesitated to support Trump, even after she dropped out of the race in March. She continued to receive hundreds of thousands of votes in states across the country, including over 12 percent of the vote right here in Wisconsin.

Haley told the crowd that Trump had asked her to speak, quote, "in the name of unity."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HALEY: My message to them is simple. You don't have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him. Take it from me. I haven't always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Joining me now, Lanhee Chen, former policy director for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign; Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics senior reporter; Matt Gorman, the former senior adviser to Tim Scott's presidential campaign; and Karen Finney, former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

Welcome to all of you. And Matt Gorman, I want to play for you -- this is a moment we were touching on earlier in the show, but for those who are just waking up at 6 a.m. on the East Coast, we have that moment where Nikki Haley described what brought her there tonight, namely this invitation from Donald Trump.

[06:05:04]

Let's play what she said, and then we're going to get a chance to look at Trump's face right -- right after. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HALEY: President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity.

It was a gracious invitation, and I was happy to accept.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: I don't think you can hear the -- the reaction I said when we saw that.

But Matt --

MATT GORMAN, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO TIM SCOTT'S 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: We need -- we need our friend Philippe Reines to do the Trump impression of "She actually wanted to speak." At least that was what the lip reading --

HUNT: Yes.

GORMAN: -- amateur lip reading saw to me. But yes.

And look, I will say that that was -- that was the first part of the speech. She was smart. She got the endorsement out of the way. She didn't try to make, you know, the crowd or anybody work for it. So that way the crowd got her side. It was a good speech.

And it also touched on -- and DeSantis, to an extent, keeping America safe, right? Foreign policy. Her experience in the Trump administration as --

HUNT: A safe place for her to be politically.

GORMAN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

And so that -- it was a good speech overall. I thought she -- she did the job really well. HUNT: Lanhee Chen, you arguably -- and you know, feel free to correct

me in terms of where you stand now. But this -- the Nikki Haley wing of the Republican Party is one that you find yourself, I'm sure, pretty comfortable in.

You advised Mitt Romney. You've done a lot of, you know, high-level thinking about foreign policy issues, kind of her space.

How do you think she did last night in terms of clearly, she had to do this if she wanted to maintain her viability as a future Republican presidential candidate. But how would you assess how she was able to potentially try to reach out to more voters?

LANHEE CHEN, FORMER POLICY DIRECTOR FOR MITT ROMNEY'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Yes. I mean, I agree with Matt. I thought she did a great job.

And I think, given her assignment, which was to endorse Donald -- I mean, that was her assignment. Let's not mince words about that.

You know, I thought she did well. And I think she does sort of carve out a path for herself electorally in the future, if that's what she wants to do.

If she wanted to find her way into a national security position again in the Trump administration, part two, we could potentially see that happening.

And you know, the challenge, of course, is still the question of whether her voters follow her. I think that is the big unanswered question. How much of the support for Nikki Haley was about Nikki Haley, or separately, what she represented in this campaign? And I think that's something that we will discern as we go on.

I mean, the Trump campaign reports that they've got support from 94, 95 percent of Republicans. If that's the case, then all of those -- many of those Nikki Haley Republican voters will vote for Donald Trump.

I think the question then becomes, you know, how about those independents, maybe, that supported Nikki Haley in open primaries like in New Hampshire?

So, we'll see where it goes. But I thought she did great last night.

HUNT: Yes, I'm not sure if I have New Hampshire here, but I want to tick through some of these vote boards, guys. Just put up these graphics that we have that kind of show you where Nikki Haley's support was.

Here in Wisconsin, Donald Trump 79, Nikki Haley, 12 percent. Michigan, 68.1 percent for Donald Trump, 26.6 percent for Nikki Haley. Pennsylvania, Donald Trump, 81.9 percent; Nikki Haley, 16.4 percent.

Georgia, 84 percent for Donald Trump, 13 percent for Nikki Haley. Indiana, 78 percent Trump, 21 percent for Nikki Haley. Indiana is actually kind of an interesting one, although it's not going to be on the map for Biden, for sure.

Stephen Collinson, this is a significant chunk of people. However, the thing that -- that seems to me to be the game changer here, as fascinated as I have been by those voters and to see what they were going to do so, is Joe Biden's complete collapse on the debate stage.

And the way that it has become so much harder for Democrats to plausibly argue that he is a better choice than Donald Trump in the fall to people who maybe voted Republican their whole life.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. And a lot of these voters that were voting for Nikki Haley were Republicans who are disaffected with Trump in 2020. They were looking for somewhere else to go.

And the president, Joe Biden, was very successful in getting a lot of those voters.

I think you're right. I think the president's debate performance hurt him with this group.

These are important voters. They're suburban voters. All of the events that Haley was holding in Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina, they were on the edges of the big cities. Lots of female voters.

So, although she only won a couple of primaries, this is a potentially important vote in an election where you could see a handful of states and a few thousand votes decide it.

But I think, just talking to Republicans here so far, there's a strong sense in this party that Trump is going to win. The unity that that breeds, I think, will make it a lot easier for some of those voters who still have reservations about the former president to jump to him this time.

HUNT: Well, and I have to say, Karen Finney, if you had told me that -- that here in July at the Republican convention, we would be talking about Democrats being divided, I would have asked you, like, what are you smoking, because that's clearly not going to be the case.

[06:10:10]

I mean, this party, the Republican Party, has been divided for the last, you know, quite frankly, eight years that I have been covering a Washington under Trump and then Joe Biden. But the reality is, there still is this big question hanging over your party.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, but it's July. And I think what we've learned in the last week, every day is about a month. So, there's a lot that can happen between now and --

HUNT: Not an unfair assessment.

FINNEY: -- I'm just going to go between here and Friday. Forget about here and August. Right?

And there's a couple of things.

I think one of the most important things to remember: the issue landscape has not changed. If you are worried about a national abortion ban, that has not changed for you. And you are more likely to say, I will vote for 50 percent of Joe Biden over 100 percent of Donald Trump, because that is a fundamental concern for me.

And so, when we talk about how Democrats are going to continue to do outreach to these voters and try to make the case, a lot of it's going to be around the issues that are driving this election and the very different visions of the country.

They don't like hearing demonizing immigrants. They don't like -- you know, they care about climate change. They see that inflation is coming down. They don't like trickle-down economics.

I mean, again, there are some issues that I think really driving this campaign that have not changed, that if that is what you care about, you're not going to all of a sudden just say, Well, now that Nikki Haley likes him and he seems like he's a nicer guy, I'm going to -- I'm going to go with Project 2025.

HUNT: I'm -- I'm flashing back to Donald Rumsfeld and his, like, you go to war with the Army that you've got. Because I -- you've got -- you do have some issues that are potentially -- potentially, places where you can motivate folks. But candidly, it's an uphill battle.

All right. We're actually going to talk much more about this in our next block.

Still to come on CNN THIS MORNING, that growing revolt inside the Democratic Party over plans to speed up Joe Biden's official nomination.

Plus, more details on an Iranian threat against the former President Trump.

And is Donald Trump now a changed man after his near brush with -- after his actual brush with death?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting shot in the face changes a man. Is your father a changed man?

DONALD TRUMP JR., SON OF DONALD TRUMP: I think actually, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:42]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

Do you remember back when the biggest story in the presidential race was whether or not President Biden was going to step aside? I sort of do. Feels like a lifetime ago. It's really only a week or so.

Those concerns are once again bubbling to the surface inside the Democratic Party. CNN has learned that there is a growing revolt over a DNC plan to virtually nominate Biden before August 7, well ahead of next month's convention in Chicago.

One Democratic Congressman tells CNN, but "if the election were held today, he would get crushed. We have got to do something about it."

Now the two party committees are getting ready to meet this weekend. Depending on how those meetings go, state party delegates could potentially start casting ballots as soon as Sunday.

Karen Finney, you of course, are very familiar with the rules. That August 7 date is important, because it is the date by which the state of Ohio says you have to have a nominee if you want to be on the Ohio ballot.

This push is to actually do this virtual roll call well before August 7, potentially. Take us behind the scenes and help us understand, like, what the options actually are here.

FINNEY: Well, so this decision was made back in May. We should start with that, because they realized that, in order to make sure we did not face legal challenges, you had to essentially do it virtually.

And -- but here's the thing. We're talking about a whole committee of people. So, what happens is an email goes out and says, now you may begin voting. And you have to have a certain number of days to vote.

So, it's not -- I think the way it's been characterized is that it some sort of in the middle of the night, people are going to, you know, jump online and vote. And that's really -- it's really not.

And it genuinely is about making sure that our nominee is able to be on the ballot in Ohio in the fall.

But this -- can I just say? This goes back to something. Two weeks ago, when members of Congress started talking about this fantasy land of -- of replacing Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, I kept saying on our network, they do not know the rules. They did not understand the rules of our party. They do not understand. None of them were paying attention to the very fact that the date was moved up because of -- again, it was in "The New York Times," by the way. Nobody was hiding it.

Not to mention the fact that, by getting 14 million votes during the primary, Joe Biden got the 3,900 of the 4,000 delegates he needed. Each of those people ran in their local communities to become delegates.

And members of Congress, the way our voting works, they get to vote on the second round. So that means 3,900 regular folks in our party vote before members of Congress have a vote.

So again, they were sort of -- my mother used to say when I was a child -- negotiating with power they don't have.

HUNT: I'm going to steal that one.

FINNEY: It's a good one, right? You're like, oh, you're so right.

But again, it's -- you know, they didn't understand the rules, not to mention many of them don't understand the challenges if we were even to consider removing President Biden from our ticket, in terms of what that means financially, what that means logistically, what that means for ballot access in the fall.

HUNT: Yes.

FINNEY: So --

HUNT: But the problem is things like -- Stephen Collinson, Congressman Adam Schiff running for Senate warning in a private meeting his party would suffer overwhelming losses in November if President Biden remained at the top of the ticket.

[06:20:05]

And if you look at some of these -- we're going to talk more about this later, but some of these Senate races, it's just devastating. And this conversation has flared back up.

COLLINSON: Yes. And I take your point about the rules and the way that millions of people who voted for the president.

I think a lot of people outside politics wonder is -- and I think it's fair to say a growing sense of despair among many Democrats -- Democratic voters who are not involved inside politics that this ticket is the one that's going to drive them to defeat.

So I think a lot of people are saying, well, they -- they might be the rules, but is there a chance to change course, given that we saw a version of the president that wasn't available to us when we -- when the votes will being cast in the primary?

FINNEY: Well, or a year ago.

HUNT: Yes.

FINNEY: People could have made that decision.

HUNT: Fair enough. We're going to push pause on this conversation. We're going to resume here in just a few moments.

Up next, a state of emergency in upstate New York following a string of severe storms.

Plus, the Secret Service under intense scrutiny after sources tell CNN there was already a credible threat on former President Trump's life from Iran.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:30]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

The clean-up continues this morning in part of upstate New York, the National Weather Service confirming a tornado touchdown in Ontario County earlier this week and downed power lines knocked out electricity and damaged some homes there.

Let's get straight to our weatherman, Derek van Dam.

Derek, good morning to you. What are we looking at?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. These are impactful storms for upstate New York. Here's some damage video coming out of Rome. And this is actually from a confirmed tornado, according to the local National Weather Service office. You can see some of the roofs that have been damaged and some of the trees that have been toppled.

Now, thanks to those storms, there are over 100,000 people -- customers, I should say -- without power within the state of New York.

But it's not just New York. Look at Pennsylvania, New Jersey, into parts of Massachusetts, even Illinois and Indiana from storms that occurred Sunday into Monday.

We have had nearly 1,000 storm reports through the course of this week. And there's more severe weather possibilities today for a large chunk of our population on the East Coast: Philadelphia, D.C., Richmond to New York. Damaging gusts of wind and large hail a possibility.

Not much going on right now, but there's certainly the potential for some flash flooding. Flood watches in effect for parts of Missouri and Arkansas.

Two to four inches of rain locally for this area. The good news is that there's a cold front that's going to bring some relief. So, one more day of the heat along the East Coast before things cool down -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Our Derek van Dam for us. Derek, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next here, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, is going to join me next to talk about that threat from Iran against the former president.

Plus, the verdict in for Senator Bob Menendez and his corruption trial. That and more in our morning round-up.

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[06:30:00