Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Florida Prepares for Hurricane Debby; VP Kamala Hours Away from Picking Potential Vice President; Trump and Team Working Out How to Best Criticize Harris; Trump Call Harris A Low-IQ Individual; Israel Bracing for Retaliation from Iran. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 05, 2024 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:00:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Monday, August 5th, right now on CNN This Morning. Strong winds, churning seas, Florida prepares for a direct hit from hurricane Debby.

Vice President Kamala Harris just hours away from picking her potential vice president. The three names on her list still.

Plus, this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, we have to work hard to define her. We -- I don't want to even define her, I just want to say who she is, she's a horror show.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: -- defining his opponent. Donald Trump and his team still working out how best to criticize Harris.

And this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER: When the supreme leader says he's going to avenge, we have to take that seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: -- Israel bracing for retaliation from Iran as Hezbollah sends a barrage of rockets across the northern border.

All right. 6:00 a.m. here in Washington D.C. We're giving you a live look this morning of Perry, Florida as Hurricane Debby inches closer to making landfall on the Florida coast. The storm strengthening to a Category 1 overnight. It's been packing winds of 80 miles an hour, but it is the rain that is the issue.

We're seeing some flooding along Florida's big bend coast. Debby could drop a month's worth of rain over the next few days. Several days expected to make landfall later this morning. We're going to have more on the storm's path and impacts for Americans across the region throughout the hour.

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

We want to start today with politics. Kamala Harris has the biggest decision to make of her campaign so far. She's given herself just a few more hours to make it. She spent much of the weekend meeting with the top contenders for her vice-presidential pick. Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.

Sources familiar with the process telling CNN it's not clear whether Harris has made up her mind yet. The full Democratic ticket will make its debut on Tuesday at a rally in the must win State of Pennsylvania. Sources also telling CNN, Harris expected to try to keep her choice a secret for as long as possible. This is a story as old as veepstakes has been a story.

Her choice, of course, going to be shaped by the need to keep her campaign's momentum going. And they're going to have to balance that against trying to win voters in swing states. Maybe the same may not be. Four in 10 Democrats say Harris should choose someone from a battleground state, that someone could be Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

In recent days, Democrats have raised red flags about the popular Pennsylvania governor. This is how these things tend to go down. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is reportedly concerned that Shapiro is too focused on his own personal ambitions. The National Women's Defense League has asked the Harris campaign to look into Shapiro's handling of a sexual harassment allegation against one of his former top aides. And pro-Palestinian groups have come out against Shapiro, citing in part, an op-ed that he wrote 30 years ago.

Shapiro is trying to take this head on. Here's what he said on Friday. This was before his weekend meeting with Harris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D-PA): Something I wrote when I was 20? Is that what you're talking about? I was 20. Look, I have said for years, years, long before October 7th that I favor a two-state solution. Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side by side. The vice president has a deeply personal decision to make. She will make the right decision for her and for the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. Our panel's here. Let's bring in CNN Senior Reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere, Matt Gorman, former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee and Tim Scott's presidential campaign, and Meghan Hayes, former special assistant to President Biden. Welcome all. Lovely to see you.

This has been sort of -- I was off last week on vacation. Full disclosure. So, I am probably not as sick of veepstakes coverage as all of you sitting here. But look, it really does seem like, Isaac, the knives have really come out in the course of the last 72 hours, as it seemed as though Shapiro was really the strongest contender for getting this nod. People who -- you know, he and Federman have had this kind of home state rivalry for quite some time.

What is the latest thinking -- your latest reporting about what's going on in the Harris camp as she makes this? It's the biggest decision she's had to make so far.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, look, and the Shapiro attacks actually started at the end of last week. Donald Trump and J. D. Vance also attacking him. It is very clear that a lot of people feel like he is the leading candidate. And there are a lot of reasons why Shapiro should be seen as a strong candidate for vice president, for running mate here.

[06:05:00]

He has won a lot of big victories in Pennsylvania. He is very popular with Republicans and Democrats alike. And Pennsylvania is a state that, if Donald Trump doesn't win it, it gets really hard to see his electoral math to winning. And so, locking that state up, if that's what Shapiro can help do for Harris, there's a lot of reason for it.

But look, Shapiro -- much of the attacks that he has taken are about feelings of where he stands on Israel. Importantly here, he is the only Jewish finalist it seems J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, is Jewish too, but has -- does not seem to be in this final stretch. He has never taken a vote on any foreign policy issue in his life, that may be an issue for him being a running mate, but it is -- to tag him with the responsibility for the current administration's or any other previous American position on Israel is something that has struck a lot of people as being at least tinged with anti-Semitism.

HUNT: Yes.

DOVERE: Focusing on him in that way, calling him Genocide Josh when other people, who by the way, including Tim Walz and Mark Kelly, have very similar positions on Israel that he has, but you don't hear Genocide Mark or Genocide Tim. There is a focus in that way, and it connects to other things about how progressives now have used that as an entryway to raise other issues about him. The Fetterman stuff is connected to long-standing issues between the two of them from when Shapiro was attorney general and Fetterman was lieutenant governor.

And there's also -- for a lot of Jewish voters, and I reported on this last week, a lot of Jewish Democrats, a lot of anxiety just in -- is America ready for a Jewish vice president?

HUNT: Yes. DOVERE: And what it would mean to have Kamala Harris with all the things she is historically, demographically, than with Shapiro there, too.

HUNT: Well, and of course, just the general rise in anti-Semitism, of course.

DOVERE: Absolutely.

HUNT: That being a huge part of that. I mean, Matt Gorman, if you're a Republican, do you want her? Who do you want her to pick of these guys?

MATT GORMAN, FORMER SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER, TIM SCOTT FOR AMERICA AND FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, NRCC: I will say this, like when it comes to that whole thing that Isaac talked about, that is sort of that is coming back. I mean, just a few short months ago, we were talking about those riots and, you know, massive protests on college campuses.

When college students come back, I would not be surprised if that becomes a story again, especially as you teased in the opening with new developments in Israel and kind of a regional possible kind of conflict. Don't expect that issue to go away, certainly.

I will also say this. Stepping back, we are seeing the Democratic Party remade possibly for the next 15 years, right before our eyes. Remember, Joe Biden was always supposed to be a jump ball among the coming fight between the liberals and the kind of the more establishment, moderate faction, and whether he served two terms or one. And now, with Kamala coming in, you know, without kind of a primary and now, picking a vice president, that fight is being shaped in a way that, you know, without a primary and without kind of that battle being rage, if Kamala wins and serves two terms, you know, whomever the VP is, you're -- this is a generational battle that's happening and we don't know it yet. At least we're not aware to it yet.

HUNT: Yes, Mehgan, I mean, way in there because --

MEGHAN HAYES, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes. No, I definitely agree with you. But I also think that we need to look at this is who's going to be the best governing partner for her and who would be the next president. Because that's, to your point, of what's moving the Democratic Party forward.

If they were to win, this person is going to run for president someday. And I think that we need to look at their policies and we need to understand. Because right now, I think that the vice president is also reintroducing herself to the rest of America because they don't know where she stands on a lot of things. And so, bringing someone else in, they're going to need to be closely aligned or it's going to be -- we're going to see a lot of negative stories here.

HUNT: Mehgan, you have a really sophisticated understanding of how this -- I mean, this is a campaign and its infancy that is having to grow up overnight, right? There are less than a hundred days before November. What is going on behind the scenes in the Harris campaign as they try to work out how to -- I mean, we've never seen a campaign move from one candidate, you know, to the other, ever, really, in modern times. And now, they have to make this decision.

Who is really actually the person she is listening to here, and what is your sense of kind of what does that mean for this big choice?

HAYES: Look, I mean, we saw on Friday that she brought in a bunch of Obama people that were -- historically Obama people that now brought into the campaign. You have the Biden team that was already in place. You have her brother-in-law that's there with another group of folks. I think, you know, it's interesting because Joe Biden was sort of the North Star on policies, and sort of the North Star of leading where the policies were going, and she was the number two, so she got to just execute on those ideas.

So, we're having to see her come up with a lot of her own new policies, and there's been, you know, a little back and forth on where she stands on things. So, I mean, I don't know who she's listening to yet. I think she's still trying to figure out where she fits in all of this and trying to figure out her next 90 days, but they are going to need to do that very quickly, and adding another person into this and their own ideas and their own record, it's going to be complicated, and they need to capitalize on the momentum to keep that going.

DOVERE: Yes. And look, when it comes to the running mate choice, it's obviously a big decision if she's elected president. It's also a big decision just in the campaign. I wrote a piece over the weekend that leaps of faith are not Kamala Harris' style. She likes to take a lot of time with decisions, go through a lot of data, see things over and over again, cross examine it.

[06:10:00]

She just doesn't have that option. She's got two -- 15 days ago, Joe Biden was still running for president. In two weeks, she's had to get this campaign up and do all the vetting and all of it. And she had -- she doesn't know any of the three people who she interviewed yesterday very well. She's actually known Shapiro for about 20 years, but not in a deep way, and she's got to figure out, like, how is this going to work? How does the chemistry work? Who can she trust? What if they are elected? How is that going to work? That's really hard to do. It'd be hard for any of us to do. And this is a super high stakes situation.

GORMAN: Imagine building a billion-dollar company from scratch. That's how it is at the best of campaign over a two-year cycle, you're doing it in a hundred days.

HUNT: Yes, and again, the thing that I keep thinking about, too, and thinking about her decision-making campaigns, I think oftentimes more than companies, are the embodiment of the person that's probably going to take it.

GORMAN: Absolutely, y es. HUNT: And their ability to make decisions, their personalities, as everyone that is underneath them is trying to give them exactly what they want.

GORMAN: You're the living breathing Coca Cola.

HAYES: Yes.

GORMAN: You are.

HAYES: Yes.

GORMAN: You are.

HUNT: And it really -- it's what makes or breaks campaigns in my experience. All right. Coming up next here, Donald Trump's struggle to attack his new rival.

Plus, a bizarre story. RFK dumped a dead baby bear cub in Central Park, he is admitting to it. We will explain it.

And Hurricane Debby strengthening as it inches closer to landfall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): There's going to be a lot of trees that are going to fall down. You're going to have debris. You are going to have power interruptions. So, just prepare for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to defeat crazy Kamala. Kamala. You know, there's about 19 different ways of saying it. She only likes three. She was here a week ago. Lots of empty seats. But the crowd she got was because she had entertainers. She refuses to even say the words illegal, alien, or radical Islamic terrorist.

She is considered more left-wing than crazy Bernie Sanders. Look at her. She's worse than Bernie. And she happens to be really a low-IQ individual.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: A low-IQ individual. That was a selection of the various ways in which Donald Trump is going on offense against his new rival. Since Joe Biden's exit from the race, a little over two weeks ago, Donald Trump has been trying to figure out how to define Harris. And even some of his biggest supporters are raising questions about how he's doing it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Every day we're talking about her heritage and not her terrible, dangerous liberal record throughout her entire political life. It's a good day for her and a bad day for us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It seems though, Senator --

GRAHAM: So, I would encourage President Trump to prosecute the case against Kamala Harris' bad judgment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. panel's back. Matt Gorman the low-IQ individual, that thing that he had to say. I mean, this is -- just like -- can you just like lay out what this is actually about?

GORMAN: Yes. I mean, look, I think it was -- there was a common thread when she -- about 15 days ago, when she was picked, that, you know, we have to define her in the first week. And it was so crucial. I think that was always a fallacy. Because, at that point, the media and the left, who was just so exuberant that Joe Biden was off the ticket, it wasn't -- you weren't going to be able to define her in a week. So, therefore, that got us through the first week, kind of that political honeymoon.

And then, so you get to the last week, and I think I saw a lot of Republicans openly kind of frustrated at -- especially after this weekend, exasperated because you saw the NABJ conference leading into kind of the Georgia conference and it's like, OK, we have a lot of good political, like, oppo (ph) hits, so to speak, on, you know, whether it's fracking and -- a ton of the flip flops.

HUNT: You're saying there are plenty of ways --

GORMAN: Plenty of things to define her.

HUNT: -- where Republicans could use her policy positions in ways that could influence voters?

GORMAN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

HUNT: But instead, we're doing this.

GORMAN: We're going after other stuff. And I think there's a lot of exasperation among Republicans that we are wasting time and weeks, much to Lindsey Graham kind of -- I think he put it well, a lot of people have been very outspoken about this over the last, I would say, 96 hours. That we can go back on track, and candidly follow the paid messaging of the Trump campaign. They're on air in a lot of these states with ads about this messaging, back it up with what you're saying on the stump and through our media.

HUNT: Yes. I mean, Mehgan Hayes, this low-IQ stuff, I mean, it's definitely race related, right? And this is a thing that -- I mean, when it was clear that Joe Biden was leaving the race, one of the notes I got from a Republican in Trump's orbit was that this is going to mean that he is not going to be able to resist going to these places. What do you think -- I mean, if you're the Democrats, are these the kind of kinds of attacks, in some ways, you would say, well, that's going to actually backfire? It's going to help us? I mean, how do you look at it?

HAYES: No, I definitely think it helps the Democrats. I think going back to -- this is in five or six states with 10,000 people in each state that are going to determine this election, and most of these people are independent women. And they're like the non-Trump people, the Nikki Haley voters that we were calling them earlier in the cycle, these are not people who are going take finally -- kindly to calling a woman having low-IQ, calling out her race, making like personal attacks against her, that's not going to win you voters.

That energizes your base and it might be great for fundraising, but it is not what's going to win you the election in November. They need to go back to policy. People need to start talking -- both sides need to start talking about the economy. That's what really matters here and that is what it's going to win the election

[06:20:00]

DOVERE: And it's a question of wasting time. It's also a question of whether Trump is repelling voters who are coming to him earlier in the cycle. We saw a lot of polling and reporting that showed that, for example, among black voters, there was interest in Trump, much higher interest than ever before, and that was in part of reaction to how people were feeling about Joe Biden. When we --

HUNT: We can bring up some polling on that, if the team wants to dig through that, we'll bring that up. Continue.

DOVERE: But what we have seen in some of the polling that's been done that shows black voter enthusiasm up over the last two weeks and some of the reporting that we had CNN and other people have done just talking to voters out there, that when they hear things like she's a DEI hire, they are taking it personally, about experiences that they have had about being dismissed, and that is bad news for Donald Trump.

Look, black voters, obviously an important part of the electorate anyway, and --

HUNT: Let me pause you for one second, because I just want to talk through what we're seeing on this slide. This is from the CBS poll, which we're going to dig into in a little bit. But now, 81 percent among black voters choose Harris, 18 percent choose Trump. Why -- look at that's a six point swing from where Donald Trump was against Biden.

GORMAN: It's below 22. I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. It's below 20.

DOVERE: But also, I believe there was a CBS poll over the weekend that had --

HUNT: Yes, that's this.

DOVERE: Sorry, but there was --

HUNT: Yes, yes. This is --

DOVERE: Sorry. There was another question in there that said likelihood to vote had gone up by about 20 points. And that -- look, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin to an extent, Georgia, North Carolina, huge concentrations of black voters, battleground states, if Donald Trump is not getting as much of the black voter share as he was, that is not good news for him. And if what he is doing to try to define Harris continues down this road, it may continue digging the hole for him.

HUNT: Yes, and to your point, it's now under 20 percent.

GORMAN: Yes, that's the number to watch.

HUNT: Yes, very interesting. All right. Let's check in on this, Hurricane Debby is picking up steam. It's strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane in the Gulf Coast and it's set to make landfall any moment now. Historic flooding possible as it makes its way through into the southeast.

CNN's Elisa Raffa is on the coast of Florida, that's already feeling the impact. Elisa. good morning. What are you seeing where you are?

ELISA RAFFA, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning. The winds have been howling here, Kasie, as we just came through the eye wall of this Category 1 hurricane, they actually calmed down briefly because we are getting into the center of the eyes. The calm is part of the storm, and then we'll pick up again as we get on the other end of that eye wall.

We're standing here on the Steinhatchee River in the Big Bend of Florida with that landfall, that exact center of the storm here happening pretty much right now. It's pretty imminent as we just came through that front end of the eye wall.

Parts of Cedar Key already seeing storm surge over five feet. This area just got hit by Idalia last year. A lot of the locals were telling me that they literally just put up a lot of these docks, just finished these projects from last year as things were destroyed from intense storm surge and flooding in Idalia last year, and they were worried about if their progress was already going to be ruined by Debby this morning.

So, we'll have to continue to watch that storm surge as it continues to come in. This storm also rapidly intensified in the last 24 hours again. We have another landfalling hurricane, that was a tropical storm just 24 hours ago and rapidly intensified because our ocean temperatures are near record warm. We're talking about upper 80s and low 90s. That is fuels for hurricanes, and it allows them to intensify just before landfall. And intensifying hurricane means higher storm surge and higher rain totals as well.

The problem as we go into the week is going to be a slow-moving storm. When you have a tropical system that crawls, we're talking about you could even walk faster than this pace of the storm, we are going to have prolific amounts of rain along the Georgia, South Carolina coast, possibly breaking all-time records. Catastrophic flooding is a serious concern. Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Elisa Raffa for us. Stay out -- stay safe out there, Elisa. Thank you very much for that report. All right. Coming up here on CNN This Morning.

Rioters in the U.K. setting fire to hotels being used to shelter immigrants. That's going to be next in our Five Things. Plus, markets in Asia plummeting. Could be a rough morning ahead for U.S. stocks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:00]

HUNT: All right. 28 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. Violent riots across the U.K. after a deadly stabbing spree last week. Rioters deemed far-right thugs by Prime Minister Keir Starmer set several hotels on fire. Those hotels being used to house asylum seekers. The riots fueled by rumors that the knife attacker is an immigrant, but British authorities say the suspect was born in Britain.

A boat off the Coast of Florida lost its sails as Hurricane Debby was approaching the area, leaving two boaters adrift at sea. A U.S. Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew, that's a lot of information about that helicopter, ultimately rescued the two boaters. No injuries were reported.

A small plane made a crash landing on a golf course in Sacramento on Sunday. It skidded to a stop next to the pro shop. The pilot on board walked away with minor injuries. No other injuries were reported. Matt Gorman, that's for you.

Noah Lyles is the fastest man on earth, capturing Olympic gold in the 100-meter dash. But not by much. The U.S. sprinter won by five thousandths of a second. The blink of an eye takes 20 times longer than that. Just look at this photo finish. It took nearly 30 seconds for the judges to figure it out and declare Lyles the winner with a time of 9.784 seconds. Wow.

All right. Hurricane Debby expected to make landfall in Northwest Florida soon. The outer --

[06:30:00]