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CNN This Morning
Joe Biden Steps Down as Democratic Presidential Candidate; Kamala Harris Announced Presidential Bid; Speculation Swirls Over Possible Harris V.P. Choice. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired July 22, 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: -- Vice President Kamala Harris hoping to make the move into the Oval Office. How she plans to earn and win the vote of the people.
[06:00:09]
Plus, this --
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REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): I do think she's the best candidate.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): I'm here for Kamala, because Kamala has been here for American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Several top party leaders backing Harris. One big name hasn't given an endorsement just yet, though, and that is Barack Obama.
Plus, could Senator Joe Manchin be preparing to challenge Kamala Harris? I'm going to talk to him live. We'll ask him directly, coming up.
All right, 6 a.m. here in Washington. A live look at the White House on this historic Monday. The race to earn the right to live there, to run the country, completely upended this morning as history has unfolded, fast and furious, over the course of the last 20-some odd days.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Years of history unfolding in just 24 days. On Sunday, President Joe Biden stepping aside, Vice President Kamala Harris stepping in. That moment, coming 106 days before election day and over a half a century since the last time a sitting president decided to end his bid for reelection.
That was President Lyndon b. Johnson in March of 1968.
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LYNDON B. JOHNSON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
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HUNT: President Biden's decision coming less than one month after he faced off against Donald Trump at that debate, right here on CNN, a debate where Biden started off like this.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID -- excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with -- look, if we finally beat Medicare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Biden's performance seen live by over 50 million people. And it so alarmed Democrats that conversations about replacing him began before he even stepped off that stage.
And within weeks, they were becoming impossible to ignore, until a man with a gun climbed atop a building in Pennsylvania.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: -- something they said. Take a look at what happened --
(GUNSHOTS)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down, get down, get down, get down!
(GUNSHOTS)
TRUMP: Wait, wait, wait.
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HUNT: That assassination attempt, the first time an American president or candidate had been injured since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. A harrowing historic moment that led to this battle cry at the Republican National Convention, just days later.
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TRUMP: I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting, and started shouting, "Fight, fight, fight!"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fight, fight, fight!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fight, fight, fight!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fight, fight, fight!
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: Dejected Democrats, watching an ecstatic RNC and, at the same time, learning that their man was leaving the campaign trail; Biden sidelined by a COVID diagnosis.
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HUNT: As the president isolated at his home in Delaware, we learned that he began to rethink his place atop the Democratic ticket.
And now, just days later, Biden put out this letter yesterday. This is what he wrote: quote, "It's been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down."
History made repeatedly; an election radically transformed in weeks. And so, we watch and wonder together, what is history's next turn?
Our panel is here: Alex Thompson, national political correspondent for Axios; Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former deputy assistant attorney general during the Obama administration; Kate Bedingfield, former White House communications director for President Biden; and Jonah Goldberg, the editor in chief of "The Dispatch." Thank you all for being here on this momentous day.
Kate, I want to hear your reflections in a second, but Alex, I just want to start with you on the reporting, how we got here, how the president got here, because this was a very long, very long time coming.
ALEX THOMPSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: Yes. I mean -- and while a lot of people are praising his decision today, let's be clear: this was not something that Joe Biden wanted to do.
[06:05:00]
This was a reluctant ceding of power that happened because of the fact that Joe Biden decided to do that debate early; the fact that, whether or not you believe the reasons of, like, the travel schedule was the reason for the bad performance or something else; that basically led to a panic in the party that Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders basically decided that this is not our guy.
As someone in the White House basically told me, it was -- this was -- this was a -- the party decided situation. And Joe Biden, who has long been a party man, has basically been, in some ways, the median Democrat for his entire career, basically said the party does not want me and came to the conclusion that there was no path forward.
HUNT: Kate Bedingfield, a very difficult day for a lot of people that have worked for Joe Biden for many years. You are among them.
But it did become clear in the final days that there really was no path for President Biden to win reelection. What do you know? What have you heard? How are you understanding everything that's unfolded?
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. It is a really difficult day for the people who work with him and who've worked with him for a long time and who, you know, believe in what he was able to achieve in defeating Trump in 2020, and what he's been able to do in the first four years as president.
So, it's an emotional time. But, you know, I think he ultimately looked at the -- the lay of the land and said, I accept that I can't win.
And I think, actually, the fact that he didn't want to make the decision, in some ways, means he should get more credit for it, that he put country ahead of self, that he said, I'm not the best standard bearer to -- to defeat somebody who I think poses an existential threat to our country. And so, I'm going to do something I don't want to do, and I'm going to step aside.
And there aren't that many moments, at least in modern political history, where a candidate, you know, a political figure says, I am -- I don't believe that I am the solution. That's a really rare -- that is a really rare thing.
And so, I just, you know, as somebody who worked for him for a long time, cares about him personally, knows how hard this decision is and also just how hard the last three-and-a-half weeks have been. I mean, this is somebody who, you know, as Alex was saying, has been a loyal Democrat his entire life and has had to watch, as you know, a lot of people that he's worked very closely with have been very critical in a really, sometimes personally humiliating way over the last three-and- a-half weeks. That is a really hard thing for anyone to have to endure.
HUNT: Jonah, you're a student of history. What -- what do you see?
JONAH GOLDBERG, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE DISPATCH": First of all, we have to -- for the rest of our lives, we can't just glibly say, as I normally do, debates don't matter right? I mean, that's over.
And -- and I kind of agree with that.
HUNT: Possibly the most consequential one in -- in history.
GOLDBERG: Yes, sure.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think it's the most consequential 15-second moment in debate history, that sort of moment that --
HUNT: The "beat Medicare"?
WILLIAMS: -- that we saw. GOLDBERG: I think his cumulative performance was --
HUNT: Yes.
GOLDBERG: Yes. But I think the -- the sort of argumentum ad Jon Meacham to try to find historical parallels here kind of gets overdone. I mean, like -- I mean, we're going to go back to Rutherford B. Hayes or something. Which actually is a good historical parallel.
HUNT: But see, this is why I asked you.
GOLDBERG: No -- no, I think, look -- I think that, you know, one of the problems we deal with in this age is that -- is that there a rule of thumb that says, if you don't know how something works, you think there's a conspiracy going on. And this is true about people's theories about the media, theories about all sorts of things in politics, theories about in the presidential assassination attempt.
THOMPSON: Right.
GOLDBERG: I think there are a lot of legitimate questions about how this whole thing rolled out. And I agree that the party decides thing, which is -- for viewers is a big insider Poli Sci term -- that applies here.
But it's sort of like Hemmingway's bankruptcy. The party decided very, very slowly and then suddenly. Right? Because this is not something that Biden wanted to do. Voters were telling elites in Washington and in the party for two years, this is a real problem. And then it was only this cascade effect at the very end. And that's going to be studied for a long time.
WILLIAMS: To your historical point. And just think about to speak with almost a tale of two speeches in August.
Imagine if President Biden had stayed in. And the speech he would have given on the final day of the convention. Just think about how everyone in the country would have picked that speech apart, every flub he made, any mistake, even though the substance might have been perfectly defensible and even if were the same substance that Kamala Harris or whomever else might have given. It would have been eviscerated, that speech.
Compare that to Joe Biden on the first night of the Democratic National Convention and essentially -- essentially, giving George Washington's farewell address, saying for the good of my country, I am stepping down and handing over to a new generation.
Even if it's painful for people who are around him to watch, that is an historic moment that we are never going to forget as a country, whether you like Joe Biden or not. This -- you know, he created here something that might've been personally difficult, but it's going to create a moment that will be in the highlight reels forever.
[06:10:15]
HUNT: Yes. We are -- it's just a remarkable morning.
Now, I will say, we have done this serious history. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to go with a little bit of art imitating life.
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JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS, ACTRESS: I'm not leaving. POTUS is leaving. He's not going to run for a second term. I'm going to run.
MATT WALSH, ACTOR: Yes! I did not see that coming!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Kamala Harris, hoping to be the next Democratic nominee. Top leaders already lining up behind her.
Plus, later on this hour, Senator Joe Manchin joins me live for his first interview since Biden announced this news. Will Manchin throw his name in the ring?
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BIDEN: Well, it's your help that I seek first, as today I announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.
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[06:15:42]
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LOUIS-DREYFUS: Gary?
TONY HALE, ACTOR: Yes, yes.
LOUIS-DREYFUS: I'm going to be president.
HALE: Of course you are. I mean, there's always hope, ma'am. We've got plenty of hope in this world.
LOUIS-DREYFUS: No, no. No. I mean, POTUS is -- is going to resign. And I'm about to become president of America!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Art imitating life.
All right. Kamala Harris, the current vice president, waking up this morning to an entirely new reality in the presidential race, one that could put her on the path to become the first black woman and first Asian-American to lead a major political party ticket.
Now, America has gotten to know her over the past four years as she has served as President Biden's No. 2. But many were first introduced to her when she ran for president against him in the Democratic primary in 2020. Just a little flashback to that.
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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I stand before you today, clear-eyed about the fight ahead and what has to be done. I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.
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HUNT: So of course, to all of you. Kamala Harris has been very busy working the phones behind the scenes. Her statement said very clearly, she wants to earn the Democratic nomination, Jonah. And I think that says a lot about the fears in her camp.
I mean, they have been very kind of careful as they have approached this not to show that they are entitled to it.
What kind of job do you think she's doing around that so far? Do you think this is locked down? What's next?
GOLDBERG: Yes. I think she's going to be the nominee. We've seen this. I think it was very smart to come out, to leak -- which clearly, they did -- the list of potential V.P.s And all of a sudden that kind of changed the game theory for a lot of people who said, you know, I'm probably not going to win this, but I should come out early so that I'm in consideration. And there was sort of a galvanic effect about all of that.
I think it would be good for her -- and I think they kind of know it -- to have some sort of competitive process here. Even if it was a kabuki theater kind of thing. You're going to talk to Joe Manchin about this. You know, I don't know what that looks like at this point. You know, Joe Manchin is not going to be the guy.
So, you know, I don't think Kamala Harris is the best candidate for the Democratic Party; but she is the path-of-least-resistance candidate, and she's going to be the nominee.
BEDINGFIELD: Well, I think -- look, I'm sure I would just define her as only the path-of-least-resistance candidate.
There's no question this is going to be a close race. I mean, this is -- I think this has sort of been the delusion that has hung over this conversation over the last 3.5 weeks.
This is going to be a close race, regardless of who the Democrats have at the top of the ticket.
And so, you know, yes, Joe Biden had what was probably a fatal wound. And I think he made the right and selfless decision to pull out. But I don't think Democrats should delude themselves that there's somebody that they can slot in at the top of the ticket, given you know, the way Trump motivates his base, given the calcification of, you know, polarization in this country. So, I think we should just stipulate that at the top.
You know, I do think she has done a really good job in this last 24 hours of showing that she is. You know, reaching out, that she's, you know, trying to earn support, that she's not sort of sitting back and saying, well, you know, it has to be me. And so therefore, it will be.
You know, and she's had some important -- she's had some important support, including some of the state delegations, which remember, at the end of the day, what she's trying to do here is lock down the delegates. And she's had state delegations come -- I think North Carolina, I think maybe Louisiana; I'll double-check that -- but who've come out and said they're with her.
So, you know, she's -- she's doing the work.
HUNT: Yes. All right. Well, we're going to talk a lot more about Kamala Harris coming up next here. Now that she's running, who might she pick to be her vice president, if we get there?
Plus, Democrats lining up to support Harris less than 24 hours into her bid.
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BIDEN: This country needs a leader. And leaders change attitudes about people.
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[06:25:05]
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BIDEN: The choice -- the choice we make this November is going to decide the future of America for a very, very long time. And I had a great choice, great opportunities. I had a great choice, but I have no doubt that I picked the right person to join me as the next vice president of the United States of America. And that's Senator Kamala Harris.
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HUNT: Fast forward four years, and now Vice President Kamala Harris will be making that same choice as the likely Democratic nominee. Who might she choose as her running mate?
Already speculation swirling over a list of names that includes swing state governors, popular senators, and administration officials.
This is a little bit -- this graphic is two big. Well, we'll shorten it for you in a second.
Just this past week, Harris offered her praise for two of the rumored contenders: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.
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[06:25:00]
HARRIS: I'll tell you, it's good to be back here in Pennsylvania with the governor, who's been a great partner to the president and me.
And it is so good to be back with so many incredible leaders, including my dear friend Roy Cooper. You know, Roy and I served together when I was attorney general and California, and he was attorney general in North Carolina. I've known him for almost two decades, and he is an extraordinary leader.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Panel is back.
Elliot, there really are four names, it's my understanding, on the list right now: Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona; Andy Beshear in Kentucky; Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who you heard Harris talking about there; and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
I didn't ask my team to produce it, because I kind of thought better of it, but there it is. Look at those faces. What do those faces have in common?
WILLIAMS: Four -- four beautiful white faces. And -- no, but beautiful, boring, white faces. And I think part of the exercise --
GOLDBERG: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) would say, Look at those punims.
WILLIAMS: Shayna punim. You want to squeeze it.
But -- no, but there's something to that. And I think, throughout history, vice presidents have very rarely flipped a state for their candidate, other than I think LBJ in 1960. It doesn't really happen.
What -- what the V.P. does is sort of launder some aspect of the president or the -- you know, the nominee's background.
It helps the Democrats here, and potentially Vice President Harris to have someone that -- that -- a boring white guy on the ticket that can perhaps attract voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or whatever else that may be.
This is all the most bizarre election in our lives shaping up already. And it's hard to know if any of the conventional wisdom on any of this stuff will play out. But those are likely obvious faces that I think we end up with.
HUNT: Alex, do you think there's anyone higher -- high-low at this point?
THOMPSON: I think those are the choice -- are the main candidates. Kamala Harris has often been a risk-averse politician. But there is definitely a line of thought within some parts of the Democratic Party that, yes, you are completely right. Usually, the V.P. is a balance.
But occasionally, you double-down, right? Like Clinton-Gore, both Southern -- Southern Democrats, '92. Just recently Trump-J.D. Vance. You double down.
Maybe you actually pick another woman; you pick Gretchen Whitmer. You basically say, OK, you're going to have Hulk Hogan and the -- the chair of the UFC introduce you right before the -- your speech at the RNC. OK. We're going to go full like boys versus girls here.
WILLIAMS: But seriously -- serious question, though. And frankly, for you both. I do ask the question of is America ready to see two women on a ticket?
HUNTS: Yes. Well --
WILLIAMS: And I think it's a -- particularly when -- when the top candidate is a black woman. I just -- it's a simple reality about the sad America we live in. And I just wonder if deep down, when people go to pull that lever, if they're ready to do that.
HUNT: I had somebody who used to work for Donald Trump also say that Kamala being -- Kamala Harris being a black woman is going to bring out the worst --
GOLDBERG: Oh, yes.
HUNT: -- in Donald Trump, as well, which would raise the specter of more ugliness there.
All right. Elliot, thank you. Always great to have you.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, a wave of elected Democrats supporting Kamala Harris following Joe Biden's stunning decision to leave the race.
We're going to talk to one of her supporters, Congresswoman Annie Kuster from the maybe swing state of New Hampshire.
Plus, later, Senator Joe Manchin joins us live. Will he choose to challenge Kamala Harris for president?
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UNIDENTIFIED MAEL: Harris polls well against Trump. I think she has a real shot at winning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It feels pretty hopeless at the moment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's exciting. However, I still don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would absolutely vote for Kamala.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think she will (ph). It's too late.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: -- Vice President Kamala Harris hoping to make the move into the Oval Office. How she plans to earn and win the vote of the people.
[06:00:09]
Plus, this --
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