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Taylor Swift Concerts Canceled; Harris Tamps Down "Lock Him Up" Chants; COVID on the Rise in Dozens of States; Boeing Starliner Astronauts Still Stuck in Space; Republicans Attacks Governor Walz on COVID Record; Vance Approaches Harris' Air Force Two in Wisconsin. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 08, 2024 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Pointed after three Eras tours shows are canceled, but it's a dramatic reason why. We're going to have the latest details on the foiled terror plot behind it all.

And then, yesterday there was this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JD VANCE (R-OH), REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I just wanted to check out my future plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: -- J. D. Vance trying to flag down Kamala Harris after crossing paths on the tarmac.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:00]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back. Taylor Swift's concerts in Austria have been canceled. Police questioning three suspects in connection to an alleged terror attack plot against her upcoming Vienna shows. The first concert was set for tonight. You can see that Swifties were already flooding the streets of Vienna.

The three suspects ages 19, 17, and 15, according to Austria's director general for public security. Authorities said two of the suspects targeting the concert had been radicalized online. One of them recently swore allegiance to ISIS. Authorities also said suspected explosives were stored at one of the suspects' home homes.

Joining me now is Donell Harvin from Georgetown University's Emergency and Disaster Management Program. Donell, good morning to you. You've also run major operations here in Washington and in New York, looking into exactly the kind of plots that we're seeing play out here. This obviously a different type of target Taylor Swift. It's hard not to notice how young the suspects are in this. Why is she a target? What are you looking for in terms of this investigation? DONELL HARVIN, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY'S EMERGENCY AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT: So, you mentioned two things that are interesting. One, there's a confluence between the age of the potential suspects. And we've seen ISIS and Al-Qaeda over the last decade or so really try to reach out through the internet to the younger population effectively.

The other thing is why this event. You know, after October 7th attack of Hamas and in Israel, we saw calls for jihadi groups to start launching similar attacks. The -- what we've seen over the last five or six years as they try to target, we call soft targets or vulnerable places, concerts, things like that, think back to the Bataclan, think back to 2017 and the Manchester City bombing. And so, those are type of events that aren't really often heavily secured, that they're looking to attack.

HUNT: So, Taylor Swift has talked publicly about the security preparations for her tour, and she pointed to the Manchester Arena bombing. She also pointed to the shooting that happened in Las Vegas, a concert shooting. She says, I was completely terrified, this is from 2019, to go on tour this time because I didn't know how we were going to keep 3 million people safe -- fans safe over seven months. There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put in to keeping my fans safe.

She also notes her own fear of violence has continued into her personal life. She says I carry QuikClot army grade bandage dressing for gunshot or stab wounds. Websites and tabloids have taken it upon themselves to post every home address I've ever had online. You get enough stalkers trying to break into your house. You kind of start prepping for bad things.

I mean, so clearly this is something she's thought about. I mean, that's terrifying.

HARVIN: Well, the other thing that's noted is, you know, these can't -- these concerts had to be canceled. You cannot run a thorough counterterrorism investigation over the course of 48 hours. And so, it's clear that authorities in Vienna, as well as Taylor Swift and her team, place their safety and the safety of her fans over profit. And so, she needs to be lauded for that.

But once again, I mean, when you have, you know, the most popular, iconic artist in the world right now, carrying QuikClot, it shows where we're coming -- where we've come to in terms of violence at these arenas and places that people are supposed to be happy and, you know, celebrate.

HUNT: What's the bigger challenge with an arena like this and a crowd this size?

HARVIN: So, you know, I work with a lot of teams across the globe, particularly Interpol has looked at this. The Manchester Arena bombing really opened up a whole Pandora's box for us in the security realm, looking at how do we secure not just the event, but the queues and the lines, the parking lots, all those things before the event. We call that the last mile. And so, a lot of event organizers say, you know, once they come through our magnetometers, then we own them. But they don't worry about the mile long lines or the venues around the venue, and that's what we're looking to focus on now. So, that's very difficult, and that's what they'll be looking at. That's why they probably canceled the event, because they couldn't secure things outside of the venue.

HUNT: Really interesting. All right. Donell Harvin, thank you very much for being with us this morning. I appreciate it.

HARVIN: Thanks.

HUNT: All right. Let's turn now to this. Kamala Harris, dealing with chance aimed at Donald Trump with this new approach. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: Lock him up. Lock him up.

[06:40:00]

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You know what? Here -- hold on. Here's the thing. The courts are going to handle that. We're going to beat them in November. We're going to beat them in November.

You know what, the courts are going to handle that part of it. What we're going to do is beat him in November.

Hold on. Hold on. This campaign, our campaign is not just a fight against Donald Trump. Our campaign, this campaign is a fight for the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. So, let's compare what Kamala Harris is doing now, how she's handling this, to what Trump did when supporters chanted about locking up his political opponents in 2019 and 2020.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Crooked Hillary.

CROWD: Lock her up. Lock her up. Lock her up.

TRUMP: So, everybody's having a good time, I'm laughing, we're all having fun.

Lock them all up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, there is a distinct difference there, Isaac Dovere, between what we saw Kamala Harris do yesterday and what Trump does. EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, and I can tell you, I was at the rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, as were you, and when the -- there were parts of the crowd that started to do the lock him up chant. I watched several aides to the Harris campaign get very uncomfortable and say, we need to not have this happen.

The -- Harris did not herself address it at the Philadelphia rally, like she did yesterday, but this is not where the Democratic campaign wants things to go. They don't like the tone of it. They don't want it to follow that way, and they also don't want it to make --

HUNT: It makes them look the same as him.

DOVERE: Yes. And they want to focus on the things that they are focusing on.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And we saw this also in 2020, where there, you know, similar chants came up. And look, she is trying to run a positive campaign that focuses, as she said, on the future. That is about joy. That is about excitement and the positive energy.

And if you let it become what we're seeing at the Trump rallies where it's about retribution and it's negative and it's about your enemies, that's a different type of motivation and that's not the kind of campaign she's trying to run.

DOVERE: The trick, of course, is that she wants to be stressing her prosecutor record. That's how --

FINNEY: Yes.

DOVERE: And she talks about that part of it, that she has -- she says, I know his type, from the work that she did, locking up other people. So, it gets into that area. But she wants a strong line --

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST AND FORMER RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: But this is also an opportunity for Harris. You know, if we go back to Joe Biden's State of the Union address, there were a lot of questions of how he would be. And Republicans did him a big favor by jeering him and yelling things, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other folks. That can happen when your own supporters are trying to help you and not really helping as well.

This is exactly -- not only how she should have handled it, but the best she could have handled it. And if they -- these are opportunities as well. The campaign aides are right to roll their eyes and not want it to happen. But when your candidate handles it that well, that's if not a home run, a good triple.

FINNEY: Yes.

HUNT: I want to bring something also new into our conversation this morning, which is some of this new national polling that the Trump team warned as soon as Harris got into this race, we were going to start to see, they were trying to get ahead of this.

This is the Marquette University poll that shows -- it's a national poll, there's a likely voter screen. Kamala Harris, 53 percent. Donald Trump, 47 percent. Isaac, we do not need to put the no clear leader label on the top of this graphic like we often do when we see these national polls. And then, you know, even when you add in third-party candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sits at 6 percent. They've got Jill Stein, Cornel West. It's Harris at 50. Trump down at 42.

DOVERE: Yes, look, it's one poll. We'll see what happens. I do think it's important to think that this is where she is after two weeks. We haven't even gotten to the Democratic Convention yet. That's two weeks from now. The question that keeps coming up is, are they on a sugar high? But the way that the Harris campaign is continuing to go about this is keeping injecting more sugar into the system, right? And that's what they did on Tuesday with announcing the running mate.

FINNEY: More joy. Not sugar. More joy.

DOVERE: But the point is keeping the attention focused on good news for them.

FINNEY: And momentum.

DOVERE: Right?

FINNEY: Yes.

DOVERE: And you see that translating. There were 14,000 people, I believe, in Philadelphia on Tuesday. 12,000 about at each of the rallies. People who had to get out of their cars and walk for a mile in Wisconsin together. That's what they want. That shot when they landed at the hangar in Detroit with Air Force Two and the big crowd that is, first of all, Donald Trump style stage management.

HUNT: Yes.

DOVERE: But it also is something that I never saw on the Biden campaign in -- obviously, 2020 was pandemic, but not this time around.

[06:45:00]

It's something that Hillary Clinton never saw in 2016. It goes back to Obama levels of excitement. We'll see whether that lasts and whether it transclates.

HUNT: I would argue, it's Obama, re-elect more than Obama.

DOVERE: That is fair.

HUNT: Your point is taken.

DOVERE: 2012, I think is where we are about in the calibration so far.

HUNT: Yes, yes. All right. Coming up next here on CNN This Morning, COVID is on the rise in dozens of states. Dr. Anthony Fauci is going to join us to talk about that and so much more in his new book.

Plus, the word of the year seems to be weird. This attack that we are hearing over and over again.

Plus, we want to check in on those Boeing Starliner astronauts. They are still stuck in space. Might they be there until 2025?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Mark Watney. And I'm still alive. Obviously. I have no way to contact NASA or my crewmate. But even if I could, it would take four years for another manned mission to reach me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:50:00]

HUNT: All right. 49 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. A new accusation in the case against Hunter Biden. In a recent filing in Hunter's tax case, Special Counsel David Weiss claims that Hunter once agreed to lobby on behalf of a Romanian businessman. Hunter is not facing new charges. Weiss instead wants to introduce the allegations into the tax case. It's set to go to trial next month.

A $50 million wrongful death lawsuit now filed by the family of a former French explorer who died in the Titan Sub implosion last year. The suit claims the crew suffered terror and mental anguish because of persistent carelessness and negligence by OceanGate, the company that owned and operated the submersible.

And this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEN BOWERSOX, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, NASA SPACE OPERATIONS MISSION DIRECTORATE: At some point we need to bring Butch and Suni home. While they're up there, we have extra crews, we have extra hands, they can do a lot more work, but they're also using up more consumables, more supplies. So, we have to maintain that balance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: There is still no clear plan to get two astronauts stuck in space for more than 60 days back home. Their originally 10-day mission has been extended because of issues with the system that is supposed to get them home, made by Boeing. Now, SpaceX might have to send another spacecraft. That could take another six months. If that were to unfold, they would be stuck there until 2025.

With Tim Walz now officially Kamala Harris' vice-presidential pick, some Republicans are choosing to go after Walz for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic when he was as governor of Minnesota, Walz's former House colleague, Republican Tom Emmer, told The New York Post this, quote, from overseeing the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country, to asking neighbors to tattle on one another for violating lockdown mandates, to forcing hospitalized COVID patients back in their nursing home facilities, Tim Walz proved during the pandemic he does not have the competency to lead in times of crisis.

Joining me now is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the author of a new memoir, "On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service." Dr. Fauci, I'm so grateful to have you here. COVID, of course, is going to be part of attacks that are likely to be leveled by Republicans. The deep politicization of this is something that I know that you were deeply affected by, have thought a lot about in your time at the close of your time in public service.

How do you evaluate how Minnesota handled the lockdowns and the questions around how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic as this issue, perhaps, becomes another issue in our presidential race?

ANTHONY FAUCI, FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: You know, Kasie, it's very difficult to -- for someone from the outside to come in and pick apart how any particular state, city or region handled it. But the one thing it was very clear that Minnesota was trying as best as possible to protect the lives and the safety with regard to exposure to and results from getting infected.

They did what they felt was the correct thing to do, according to recommendations that were coming from the public health authorities, that were coming from the CDC, that were coming from the various groups. So, I have no criticism at all of that. I don't know all of the details of it, but from the time that I recall when I was in the White House as part of the coronavirus response team and the coronavirus task force, that we had no issue with what they were doing.

HUNT: Dr. Fauci, you, of course, are still involved in many of these political conversations about the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. They brought you up to Capitol Hill earlier this summer to testify again about these issues. Your colleague Dr. Deborah Birx was on this program with me in June, and she had this to say about this lab leak theory, the Wuhan lab that has been at the center of a lot of these conversations. I want to watch. what she told me then and ask you about it. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Do you think there is any veracity to some of the Republican accusations that there was an effort to discredit the lab leak theory?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COVIDE RESPONSE COORDINATOR: I think early on, people did take very definitive sides and it did divide along party lines.

HUNT: But on the lab leak specifically, you think that happened?

[06:55:00] DR. BIRX: I do think it happened. I think people were -- if you look at what people said about Bob Redfield and how they disparaged him as a scientist because he wanted to bring forward the lab leak potential. And I think the reason he felt he needed to bring it forward to push -- was to push against this, it had to be this way, because we didn't know and we knew we would never know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: Is Dr. Birx correct there? How would you respond to that?

DR. FAUCI: Well, when she says people, I mean, we've got to be really careful because there were different people that did different things. If you look at the e-mails and the conversations I had early on, it was completely open-minded.

In fact, on the very first suggestion that there may have been a lab leak, I wrote to colleagues and said, we've got to investigate this fully. If necessary, bring in the FBI or MI5 and go to whatever extent possible to find out the basis of this. Is it possible? So, I can't comment on What Debbie Birx meant when she said people. Well, I just can speak for myself.

HUNT: All right. Fair enough Dr. Fauci, one of the things you write about in your book is the relationship -- the fraught relationship that you had with Donald Trump when he was president. And I know you've also dealt with the fallout of the politicization of everything that you dealt with in that you have to have security because there have been so many threats against you and against your family.

We're now facing the prospect that Donald Trump could be restored to the White House, and there are questions about -- certainly Democrats have raised the prospect of him taking vengeance against people he considers to be his political enemies. I think my question for you is, are you concerned if Donald Trump were to become president again that you or aides to you during this time might be prosecuted or face additional consequences for what happened during the pandemic?

DR. FAUCI: Well, Kasie, I don't know what one would prosecute me for. I mean, figure something out. What are we talking about? I mean, as a public health official, a scientist, I played a major role in the development of the vaccine that was responsible for the saving of millions of lives. So, if that's what you're accusing me of, then I'm definitely guilty of that.

But I'm not sure what people talk about when they say prosecute. For what? I mean, there was no crime there. There were just public health officials like myself and others who were on the team who were doing our best to save the lives of people in this country and worldwide. So, I mean, I'm -- I don't want to be cavalier about it, but I don't even know what they're talking about.

HUNT: All right. Fair enough. Dr. Anthony Fauci, I really appreciate your time, sir. It's always great to see you. The new book is "On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service." All right. Let's turn back now to the 2024 race. This was a rather, shall we say, awkward moment. J. D. Vance approached Kamala Harris' Air Force Two while his plane and her plane were both on the same Wisconsin tarmac yesterday, here was his explanation of what he was trying to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JD VANCE (R-OH), REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Hey guys, how are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good.

VANCE: I just wanted to check out my future plane, but I also wanted to go say hello to the vice president and ask her why Kamala Harris refuses -- why does she refuse to answer questions from the media? And I also thought that the press gaggle following her might get a little lonely.

I at least have enough respect for you all and for the American people you report to, to come and talk to you and to answer some questions. And so, I thought her reporters might actually benefit from that as well. So, had a little bit of fun. I don't think the vice president waved at me as she drove away, but I'm glad to have done it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, far, I'm never going to question, you know, politicians should talk to the media, as blanket rule. However, I am a little curious, Isaac, what might have happened had he actually encountered Kamala Harris on the tarmac? How that would have gone down?

DOVERE: Yes, we'll never know, I guess. Look, J. D. Vance is obviously trying to have a better week for himself than he had last week. And has been getting covered for other reasons now. But I guess he saw the opportunity on the tarmac yesterday and decided to try for it, but --

HEYE: There are like eight states that we're focusing on. So, this could happen again in any of those places, anytime.

HUNT: Well, he's kind of following her around, if you look at the schedules, right?

HEYE: And I would warn the Trump campaign, even though, yes, you defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, history is replete with male candidates overstepping their bounds against female candidates. And the backfire that can have, especially if you don't have a real plan, or even if you do --

HUNT: It does feel a little uncomfortable.

HEYE: Yes. It gets real creepy real quick if you make a mistake.

FINNEY: It does. And also, like, what was his vision? He was just going to roll up on her and Secret Service was not going to be like, dude, what's going on? I mean, it's bizarre.

HEYE: As Senator Rick Lazio, right?

FINNEY: Right.

HEYE: Senator Erskine Bowles.

FINNEY: Right.

[07:00:00]