Return to Transcripts main page
CNN This Morning
Former Lt. Gov. Duncan Says He Will Vote For Harris; Trump Returns To Campaign Trail Facing New Opponent; One-On-One With Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA). Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired July 25, 2024 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:31:54]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just after 5:30 a.m. here in Washington. A live look at the nation's capital on this Thursday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
President Joe Biden launched his first campaign for president 37 years ago. That tells you just how long he's wanted the job. But last night, with his family looking on during an Oval Office address, he did something no other president has done in half a century -- he walked away from a chance for a second term.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I revere this office, but I love my country more. It's been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think it's more important than any title. The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule; the people do. History is in your hands. The power's in your hands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Joining me now is the former Georgia lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan. He's a Republican who had endorsed Joe Biden back in May. Yesterday -- Geoff, wonderful to see you -- you said this about Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFF DUNCAN, (R) FORMER LT. GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: If she's the nominee, yeah, let's do this. Let's beat Donald Trump the best possible way we can. If that takes me endorsing her, if that takes me voting for her, if that takes me speaking at a convention, so be it. I'm pot committed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Pot committed.
So, Geoff, are you -- are you formally endorsing her? Would you like to speak at the convention?
DUNCAN (via Webex by Cisco): Well look, I've said this before, including on this show, that I am committed to beating Donald Trump for all the right reasons. I'm willing to make the four-year investment into the Republican Party to fix us, to heal us.
We are a better party without Donald Trump, and I know millions of Republicans don't see that, but they will one day. They'll be embarrassed that they took the bait and followed Donald Trump down a dark path for our party.
And so, I'm committed, and if that means endorsing -- you know, speaking for, voting for, waving a sign, whatever. I don't agree with Kamala Harris on everything. I didn't agree with Joe Biden on everything. I don't agree with my wife on everything. But I am committed to this country, and I think the best -- actually, she doesn't agree with me on everything. I think that might be a better way to put it. But I'm committed to doing the necessary steps --
HUNT: Let's be candid. Any spouse who says they agree with the other on everything is definitely not telling the truth. Maybe for marital harmony but still not telling the truth. Sorry, continue.
DUNCAN: No. Look, I'm willing to -- I'm willing to take -- eat a little bit of humble pie here to do the right thing, and the right thing is to beat Donald Trump.
You know, I couldn't help but think what would have happened if Donald Trump would have done what Joe Biden did yesterday a few months ago. If he would have done the decent thing -- the thing that we all know makes sense, and that's to step away from the job of being the nominee. It -- we would be a better party for it.
I've been behind the curtain with Donald Trump -- everybody who has been behind the curtain with Donald Trump and watched him make decisions know that he's reckless on a good day and dangerous on a bad day. And that's probably the most optimistic way to put it.
HUNT: Yeah.
Geoff, what did you make of President Biden's address last night? I mean he did -- he didn't get into, really, why he had stepped aside. He didn't talk about his health or anything along those lines. But that said, he did note, and we played a little bit of it there, that he was putting aside personal ambition. You know, this was clearly something he didn't want to do but he went ahead, and he did.
[05:35:15]
What were -- what were your reflections -- what was going through your mind as you watched this?
DUNCAN: Well, you know, it just reinforced we might -- the statement that I made early when I endorsed Joe Biden as a decent man. Not somebody I agree with on everything but a decent man. And his Oval Office address was one of decency. It was one of patriotism. It was -- it was doing the right thing for the country.
And I can only imagine how hard it is to walk away from the most powerful job in the world with all of the pomp and circumstance around it, but he's doing it. And it's the right thing and I'm sure it's difficult.
HUNT: Yeah.
Can I ask you, in terms of your friends and neighbors -- those people who -- in Georgia who voted -- enough of them voted for Joe Biden in 2020 to give the state to a Democrat for the first time in a very long time. Do you think those people are going to be willing to go into the ballot box and vote for Kamala Harris or is it going to be harder for -- to convince some of those folks to do that than it was to do it with Biden?
DUNCAN: You know, I think that's up to Kamala Harris. I think she has a huge opportunity here to kind of rebrand herself or brand herself, I guess, to just open up with and to let us see what kind of leader she's going to be, you know? Is she going to try to build bridges or make enemies?
And I'm hopeful that she tries to find ways to work with the 10 percent in the middle like myself -- like a lot of the folks here in Georgia that represent this middle ground that want to talk about tough issues like inflation and the border. That don't want to be demonized for having somewhat conservative viewpoints.
If she's able to do that and speak with a tone that reminds us of a president instead of a punk like some other people in this race, then I think we're going to be in a better spot. And I do think states like Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and Wisconsin wake up and say you know what? We don't agree 100 percent on these policies but we're willing to hand the keys to a decent person.
HUNT: All right, Geoff Duncan for us this morning. Geoff, always grateful to have you. Thank you so much for being here.
DUNCAN: Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both at the campaign trail in this new political landscape. Neither holding back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Trump attacking Harris by trying to tie her to President Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She's worse than him because he's a fake liberal. You know, he wasn't that liberal. He was fake. She's a real liberal. She really is a real liberal. She's much worse than him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. These first few days of the new campaign offering a preview of what we're going to see in the coming months.
Plus, new polling conducted after Biden's announcement that he was exiting the race. This is from CNN released yesterday. It shows a tight contest. No clear leader in the Trump-Harris matchup but this is a little bit better for her than the previous was for Biden.
Joining me now, Matt Brown, national race and politics reporter for the Associated Press. And, Jackie Kucinich, the Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Good morning to both of you.
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE: Good morning.
HUNT: Thanks so much for being here.
MATT BROWN, NATIONAL RACE AND POLITICS REPORTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Good morning.
HUNT: Jackie, we've started to see -- and we had this remarkable memo yesterday, or the day before yesterday, from Tony Fabrizio, the Trump pollster, that basically acknowledged that there was going to be mass -- a national polling bump for Kamala Harris. Remarkable only because they usually refuse to acknowledge if the polls are not going their way.
But we're starting to see some movement. This is now a competitive race where perhaps it wasn't before.
KUCINICH: Um-hum.
HUNT: And, of course, we saw Trump on the stump yesterday for the first time since this happened saying you know what, I'm not going to be nice.
What does that look like?
KUCINICH: There is a race right now to define Vice President Harris in public. Yes, of course, she's been vice president for 3 1/2 years. She has -- and she was a senator before that. But I think more broadly, Americans are being reintroduced to her.
And so, you're seeing it on the Republican side really trying to get out there that she's a liberal, et cetera. But they also -- they also have to be careful because the minute they start focusing on her race and the -- and her gender, they're losing. So you're hearing a lot of top Republicans say please focus on policy. Please focus on what she's done rather than who she is.
HUNT: Yeah. Well, and Matt Brown -- I mean, so far, Trump himself seems to -- you know, in that rally yesterday -- the one thing he does is repeatedly mispronounce her name, which does have some layers to it in terms of it strikes me as something that seems to underscore that she is -- or tries to underscore that she is not from here. That seems to be the insinuation.
[05:40:05]
And it's something that -- I mean, he does it relentlessly. The number of times he said her name in that campaign rally yesterday very high. Every single time it was wrong.
Now, that said, his direct lines were all about her record in contrast to some members of Congress who have been running around calling her a DEI candidate.
What do you make of the distinction and the mispronunciation?
BROWN: Right -- absolutely, Kasie.
So what we saw yesterday from Trump and with him mispronouncing Harris' name, this is something that we've seen from Republicans going back since David Perdue during -- if you remember in the 2020 Georgia Senate primary -- Senate election. We've been seeing this mispronunciation, while either intentional or unintentional, on the right for quite some time.
That is not necessarily the same thing as these DEI attacks that we're now seeing from Republicans. I mean, as you mentioned, we had at least three members of Congress yesterday saying that they believe that she was a DEI hire or directly going after her because of her race.
That's not what Trump is doing in this situation. He's actually kind of doing what he did against what we saw -- for instance, his GOP rivals. Against Ron DeSantis, for instance. Workshopping right now.
Working with the crowd to see, OK, well do you like Lyin' Kamala Harris? Do you like that I'm calling her incompetent? Do you just like that I'm, like, yelling that she's mean, that she's nasty, like he said against Hillary Clinton?
He's figuring out what is his line of attack at the moment and what are the ways that he wants to be resonating with his base on this. Is that going to resonate with swing voters? Is it going to resonate with the rest of the country? I mean, that's entirely to be seen.
HUNT: Yeah.
Jackie, what do you make of this -- his repeated mispronunciation of her name?
KUCINICH: I mean, he doesn't do anything without a reason -- and you hear other Republicans do it, too. I mean, particularly, we have -- this is someone who has trafficked in this before referring to President Obama by his full name over and over and over again in rallies and even here before that -- before he was running for president. So you have to imagine this is -- this is very much on purpose and it is to potentially otherize her in the eyes of Americans. But listen, you have it on the Democratic side where they're actually
-- they're trying to define her, too. You see that's why she's out on the campaign trail. And I think we're going to start seeing more -- you know, more ads and more introductory-type things from them as well to make sure that they solidify their view of Vice President Harris in the mind of Americans.
HUNT: Yeah.
Matt, one line of attack is, of course, around what Kamala Harris did or didn't know about the state of Joe Biden's health and capacity. There -- Republicans are going to continually use the phrase "coverup" between now and November.
How effective do you think that is or isn't?
BROWN: Well, this is an interesting line of attack because if it was a coverup, it wasn't to cover up that the American people weren't aware of. I mean, voters have been telling us for a long that they didn't think that Biden should run for re-election because of his age.
KUCINICH: That's right.
BROWN: This wasn't a secret. This was -- and it's also not a question of whether Biden -- I mean, Biden literally gave a speech last night where he was speaking in the Oval Office about why he was not going to be running anymore.
So it's going to be a question of can Republicans make the conspiracy that they're claiming. This sweeping idea that Joe Biden is literally not running the government resonate with voters when that's not necessarily what we were hearing from voters, though.
We heard a dissatisfaction that they didn't think Biden was inspiring. That they didn't trust his -- him to have the leadership that Americans wanted to see out of the president. But that's not the same thing as I don't think that Biden is literally running the government, which is what Republicans have been claiming in some of the more maximalist claims that we've been seeing.
HUNT: I should put that word in my -- in my arsenal. I don't use it enough. Very interesting.
Matt Brown, Jackie Kucinich, thank you both very much.
KUCINICH: Thank you.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here on CNN THIS MORNING, President Biden making good on his commitment. Reaction to his historic Oval Office address.
And Congresswoman Lori Trahan joins us with her thoughts on Biden's departure and the next 100 days ahead of us.
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:47:57]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Biden now delivering on that promise he made back in 2020 that he would have a transitional presidency and eventually make way for a younger generation of leaders.
Speaking for the first time since his historic decision to not seek re-election, Biden touched on that message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America's future all merited a second term. But nothing -- nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It's the best way to unite our nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And joining me now to discuss, Congresswoman Lori Trahan of Massachusetts. She's a co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. Congresswoman, good morning. Thank you so much for being here.
REP. LORI TRAHAN (D-MA): Thanks for having me.
HUNT: A remarkable moment from President Biden last night -- your reflections? And also, in your role, you work on getting people in tough races elected to the House. This decision seems to have really changed that game.
TRAHAN: Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I think that the American public wanted a different choice this election cycle than Donald Trump and President Biden, and they support the decision that President -- that the president made to end his campaign.
And last night, we got to hear him explain why he made that decision because he understands the stakes of this election for women, for workers, for the future of our democracy. And it was a tough decision for him to make and we saw that, but it was one that he did out of a profound love for our country.
[05:50:00]
So I do think that the American public has gotten all too used to leaders who hold onto power -- politicians who hold onto power at all costs. I mean, President -- former President Trump willing to overturn the will of voters. And President Biden did the opposite. He's passing the torch, putting his country first, and paving the way for the next generation of Democratic leadership in Vice President Harris to bring out country forward, not back, and improve the lives of all Americans.
HUNT: We've already seen from Republicans that -- a line of attack they're going to use against the vice president, but also probably against a lot of your candidates for House and Senate, is this idea that Democrats in Washington knew -- were trying to cover up what they knew about President Biden's health. And Republicans argue he's -- he wasn't up to the job, Democrats knew about it and they covered it up from you, the voters.
Does that argument resonate when you test it, and how do you push back against it?
TRAHAN: Look, I think that those are just more games by a Republican Party that's desperate to talk about anything besides their policy failures.
I mean, the reality is Vice President Harris has united the party. She's incited incredible enthusiasm among Democrats, and she's already out on the campaign trail these last three days talking about what choice we have this election.
Democrats, led by Vice President Harris -- we're going to continue lowering your health care costs. We're going to bring down the cost of childcare. We're going to build safer communities and we're going to make sure that we protect a woman's right to make decisions over her health care.
Take that in contrast to Republicans and Donald Trump who have a 900- page manifesto in Project 2025 that would eliminate overtime pay for workers who want to work extra to make ends meet. Health care -- health insurance corporations that would eliminate coverage for pre- existing conditions and literally, government tracking and monitoring women's pregnancies.
So I think that is what they're running away from is that contrast because they know that their policies are deeply unpopular with the American people.
HUNT: Congresswoman, the prime minister of Israel addressed Congress yesterday. I know you did not attend. You met with hostage families.
Outside the Capitol, there were scenes of violence with protesters ripping down American flags and burning them.
What was your reaction to that? What would you say to the people who did that?
TRAHAN: Look, we have a strong tradition in our country of peaceful protest and it's very much a part of our foundation and our democracy. But when that protest turns violent -- when it impinges on other people's freedoms, there's no place for that in our -- in our country, in our discourse. And I think you're seeing that reaction to those protests this morning, and that will continue.
HUNT: All right, Congresswoman Trahan for us this morning. Congresswoman, I really appreciate your time. I hope you'll come back.
TRAHAN: Thank you.
HUNT: All right, let's turn now to sports. There was a chaotic scene at the very first event in the Paris Olympics at the soccer match between Argentina and Morocco.
Andy Scholes has this morning's Bleacher Report. Andy, good morning.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yeah, good morning, Kasie.
You know, the opening ceremony isn't until tomorrow, but some competitions are already underway. And the Paris Olympics getting off to a wild start yesterday.
So in men's soccer, Moracco was leading Argentina 2-1 deep into stoppage time, but Argentina would score this wild goal here to tie the game. They would crazy, but so do the Morocco fans in attendance. Many of them throwing trash. Some of them running onto the field.
So officials tell the players to leave the field and they make all the fans leave stadium. So it ends in a tie game, right? The broadcast even signed off. But Morocco argued that Argentina was offsides on the tying goal and they went to a video review, and that was the case.
So about two hours later in an empty stadium, Argentina and Morocco retook the field and finished the game with Morocco winning 2-1.
The Argentina coach saying after it all this was the biggest circus he'd ever been a part of.
All right, the U.S. men's soccer team, meanwhile, back in the Olympics for the first time in 16 years, but not getting off to the start they wanted. In the men's tournament, teams are made of players 23 and younger with three exceptions.
Now, the U.S. held tough for the first half keeping the game nil-nil, but France would break through in the 61st minute and they would go on to win 3-0.
The women, meanwhile -- they're going to take the field today for their opening game. The team only has eight players returning from the 2020 Tokyo team and they're led by Coach Emma Hayes, who has been in charge for just two months.
Rose Lavelle -- she was a member of the team that won bronze in Tokyo three years ago and she told our Coy Wire despite the lack of experience, the expectations are still the same.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROSE LAVELLE, MEMBER, 2021 TOKYO BRONZE MEDAL TEAM: It's exciting. I think we have, obviously, a lot of new faces, but I think they're all really good and special. They bring something different, and I think they just, like, added so much to the group and elevated us.
[05:55:00]
When you play for the U.S. Women's national team, like, that's like pressure is just kind of there always. So I think it kind of becomes your new normal and you, like, learn to live in it and learn to thrive in it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: All right. And finally, the NBA yesterday announced it signed its new media rights deal with Disney, NBC, and Amazon after saying it was not accepting Warner Bros. Discovery's matching offer. So, Warner Bros. Discovery is CNN's parent company and has been airing the NBA for 40 years.
And WBD announced they were matching Amazon's bid. They had matching rights based on their previous deal. The NBA, though, said it was not a true match, to which WBD said in a statement, Kasie, "We will take appropriate action." So it looks like this battle is going to head to the courtroom.
But it really just set in yesterday for a lot of NBA fans that this upcoming season is likely the last for "INSIDE THE NBA."
HUNT: Yeah, a lot of upheaval there.
All right, Andy. Thank you so much --
SCHOLES: All right.
HUNT: -- for that. I really appreciate it.
OK. Ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, President Biden's historic speech to the nation and the reaction of his decision to exit the 2024 race. Plus, we'll speak live with Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell on the president's passing of the torch.
(COMMERCIAL)
