Return to Transcripts main page
CNN This Morning
Trump Derails Economic Speech With More Insults; Ukraine Says It Occupies 390 Square Miles Of Kursk; Hurricane Watch Issued For Bermuda. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired August 15, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:45]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Thursday, August 15th.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's now a campaign. Yeah, people are excited.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is willing to take a bullet for me, then I can come out and support him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Energy in the race. New polling shows voters more excited than ever about this presidential race.
Plus, this --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to talk about one subject and then we'll start going back to the other because we sort of loved that. Don't we?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: It was supposed to be a speech all about the economy. But in typical Donald Trump fashion, he did not steer clear of insults.
And later, Ukraine making more advances inside Russia as they conduct their biggest attack on Russian airfields since the war began.
(MUSIC)
HUNT: All right. Five a.m. here in Washington. A live look at Capitol Hill on this Thursday morning.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
The effort to get Donald Trump to focus on policy over personal attacks, it does not seem to be taking off as his allies might have hoped. Trump is trying to make the shift with a speech focusing on economic policy in North Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to talk about one subject and then we'll start going back to the other because we sort of loved that. Don't we? But it's an important -- no, it's an important. They say it's the most important subject. I'm not sure it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: But then not even a minute into his speech, it was this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Neither she nor her running mate, the beauty, isn't he? He signed a bill. He wants tampons in boys' bathrooms. I don't think so.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Trump also fixated as usual, on polling, trying to find an upside somewhere.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have some very good polls coming out today. I just heard, despite all of the fake publicity about this radical left person from San Francisco.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So what story are the polls actually telling? It's different from what the former president had to say there.
A new poll from Pew Research finds that Harris's campaign is energizing the Democratic Party in a whole new way. Sixty-two percent of Democratic voters strongly support Harris at the top of the ticket. Compare that to last month, when just 43 percent of Democrats strongly supported Biden in the same poll. The swing all but eliminating the enthusiasm gap between the two parties.
Joining us now to discuss, Sophia Cai, politics reporter at "Axios", and Mica Soellner, congressional reporter at "Punchbowl News".
Good morning to both of you. Thank you so much for being here.
Sophia, we, of course, expected or were told I should say by the campaign, the formal Donald Trump campaign, he is going to come and give a speech about the economy. Trump actually kind of mocked that very idea from the stage saying -- well, this is what they want me to do. I don't even think it's the most important.
And then he went on to mock Kamala Harris for how she laughs. Let's watch what Trump said about Harris's laugh.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: For nearly four years, Kamala has crackled as the American economy has burned. What happened to her laugh? I haven't heard that laugh at about a week. That's why they keep her off the stage? That's why she's disappeared. That's the laugh of a crazy person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: So we've talked a lot this week about how a lot of Republicans want him to do something else. But Trump, but I suppose in typical fashion does not seem inclined to change.
SOPHIA CAI, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah, I mean, look, Nikki Haley, just yesterday was asking him and his team to stop whining and get focused on the issues. I think she recognized that Harris has been talking about the future, talking about freedoms, and he thinks that's what Trump should be talking about.
He clearly has not taken that advice. I mean, that's what that shows and he's also saying that he, you know, ultimately will be the decision-maker in terms of what his message will be.
HUNT: Yeah. Mica Soellner, when you talk to you -- you talked to members of Congress.
[05:05:03]
Frequently they're obviously all off running for their own seats. There has been so many, there have been so many polls that have come out in just the last 24 hours and they all seem to show that enthusiasm is up among Democrats. Harris is continuing to get a lead in these national polls.
We still don't have a ton of really good data from swing states, but it does seem to be a situation where the rising tide on the Democratic side is lifting all of the Democratic boats together.
What is your latest reporting on that piece of it?
MICA SOELLNER, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Yeah, absolutely. Kasie, I think that this is all going to come to light next week of the DNC as well. The Democratic enthusiasm, and what I'm hearing from Democratic lawmakers on the Hill, too, is a lot of them are willing, able, and, you know, open to serving surrogates for the Harris campaign especially in swing states. So I think that's going to be a big issue.
That's especially the ones that have been the most vocally supportive of Harris are some of these Democrats in the middle of the caucus who are a little bit more moderate in tougher districts, that were the most vocally opposed to Biden being the top of the ticket.
So, it's a huge shift that we're seeing. HUNT: Yeah. So, Frank Luntz, of course, were now a longtime pollster, Republican and very close to -- particularly, Kevin McCarthy, but also other leaders in the Republican Party, talked a little bit about how the electorate is changing when he did an interview on CNBC yesterday.
Let's -- let's watch what he had to say and then well talk about it. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANK LUNTZ, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: She's bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden. So the entire electoral pool has changed. And if it continues in this direction, you have to start to consider Democrats winning the Senate and Democrats winning the House. The actual people who are participating, she's got intensity now. She got an intensity vantage. She's got a demographic advantage, and I haven't seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, Sophia, he's there saying this is really fundamentally change things and it's really that she is bringing out new voters who weren't going to show up if this was a Trump-Biden race.
CAI: Yeah. Look, this is the 70 percent of voters who during the Republican primaries said they did not want a Biden Trump match-up. And these are also some of the same voters that the polling has shown Harris doing better with. She's also doing better with minority voters, doing better with women, doing better with younger voters.
All of that is a concern for Republicans and what Frank Luntz is doing right there is he's raising the alarm bell.
HUNT: Mica, I -- what is your sense of how the Harris campaign moves forward from here? Because we anticipate that she -- they've told us -- she's going to give an economic address on Friday, the Trump campaign is criticizing someone for policy proposals as stolen from him, the no taxes on tips.
And "Axios" is also and others have been reporting that she wants to make a break from Biden in terms of trying to separate herself from Bidenomics, from kind of the way the president has done all this so far.
How do you anticipate that playing out?
SOELLNER: Yeah. I think that the Harris campaign is going to be completely focused on contrasting themselves to former President Donald Trump. I think that's going to be the number one thing. They're going to attack him on democracy, his history, especially if he continues with the personal attacks on the vice president. That's going to be a big liability for the former president. A lot of Republicans are a little bit nervous that he's not going to be able to help himself, and continue this streak of these personal attacks that have been highly unpopular. And I think that she's going to focus a lot on policy and also drawing out these voters that were discontent with Biden as Sophia just mentioned.
HUNT: All right. Mica Soellner, Sophia Cai, thank you both very much for being with us this morning. I appreciate it.
All right. Coming up next here on CNN THIS MORNING, Russia on its back foot as Ukraine gains more ground in the Kursk region.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): There was good progress today in the Kursk region. We are achieving our strategic goal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: How Vladimir Putin is trying to fend off Ukraine's advances.
Plus, RFK Jr. considering dropping out of the race? There's a catch.
And the economy taking center stage as both Trump and Harris make their pitch to Americans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When Kamala lays out her fake economic plan this week, probably will be a copy of my planned because basically that's what she does.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:13:46]
HUNT: Vladimir Putin pulling troops out of southern Ukraine and sending them to Russia's Kursk region to fend off an escalating incursion from Ukrainian forces. Ukraine says it now occupies 390 square miles of Russian territory. Moscow caught off guard by the offensive. One Ukrainian military commander says the reassignment of Russian forces is helping Kyiv.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DMYTRO KHOLOD, COMMANDER OF BATTALION "NIGHTINGALE": The Russians are now trying to stop our advance. They have pulled in reserves which has benefited our defense forces in other areas because it's become easier to work there. We have information that reserves were pulled from Zaporizhzhia, Crimea, and Kharkiv regions to stop our advance.
Of course, it will be harder for us to advance further, but we will still advance.
(END VIDEO CLIPO) HUNT: Ukrainians living near the border are watching the incursion with mixed emotions, pride, a sense of justice and fear about what could come next.
Lets bring in CNN's Clare Sebastian with more on this.
Clare, good morning.
Do we have a sense of how significant this is? How many Russian troops are being pulled out of Ukraine to fight the incursion?
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Kasie. It's still early days to know how much of an impact this will make on, on Russia's sort of reallocation of its troops. But this is of course the key question, right?
[05:15:01]
Ukraine has not gone into Russian territory to try to take Russia and territory. This is all about trying to prevent Russia attacking further on Ukrainian territory.
So, like you had that commander who heads a group that is active in Kursk right now, he said that pulling troops from Zaporizhzhia, Crimea, and Kharkiv, tellingly he did not say from Donetsk where, of course, Ukraine is facing the most pressure from Russia.
Russia has been making very, very slow progress there in recent months, we actually spoke to a military spokesperson on the eastern front on Wednesday, who told us that the level of attacks on that front remains broadly stable with what it was prior to the Kursk invasion.
But, of course, Ukraine is not just attacking hang on the ground in Russia, we saw on overnight into Wednesday what they are claiming was the biggest attack on Russian airfields since the beginning of the war, four different air bases targeted. We don't know exactly how much impact that has made as of yet.
But President Zelenskyy, in his nightly address on Wednesday praising that and saying that with the help of the West, they could do more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZELENSKYY: Thank you for the accurate, timely, and effective strikes on Russian airfields. All Ukrainian drones are working exactly as needed, but there are things that drones alone cannot do. Unfortunately, we need other weapons, missile weapons, and we continue to work with our partners on long-range solutions for Ukraine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEBASTIAN: Well, Ukraine's partners, including the U.S. so far seeing broadly supportive of what's happening in Kursk, but separately, Kasie, I want to bring you some new images that CNN has obtained because another part of what Ukraine is doing inside of Russia seems to be what they call replenishing the exchange from fund. This they say was the biggest capture of Russian troops. Russian now prisoners of war since the start of the war, there's 102 in one go at this will help, but according to President Zelenskyy and other officials in getting back, some of the Ukraine's 8,000 or so Ukrainian troops that are still in Russian captivity.
So as we look at the motivation here, this appears to be part of it.
HUNT: All right. Clare Sebastian for us this morning, Clare -- thank you very much.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN this morning, talks to end the Israel-Hamas war are picking back up in Qatar. But one key player will not be at the negotiating table.
Plus, why RFK Jr.'s campaign tried to get a meeting on the books with Kamala Harris's team.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:21:59]
HUNT: All right. Twenty-one minutes past the hour. Here's your morning round up.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. trying to rub elbows with the Harris campaign. Kennedy reached out to the campaign to arrange a meeting about dropping out and endorsing Harris. But only in exchange for a role in her administration.
Sources say New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will appoint his former chief of staff, George Helmy, to replace Senator Bob Menendez. Menendez will officially resign later on this month after being convicted on federal corruption charges in July. Helmy will finish out Menendez's term and the seat is back on the ballot in November.
Israel ceasefire talks resuming in Qatar today, but Hamas will not be there. Instead, they'll meet with mediators after the meeting between the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Qatar. "Axios" reports Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, urging him to take the deal and get the hostages home. But Netanyahu's office is denying that conversation ever happened.
All right. Time now for weather. Hurricane Ernesto causing nearly half of Puerto Rico to lose power and it's now moving toward Bermuda, where a hurricane watch is in place.
Let's get to our meteorologist, Derek Van Dam.
Derek, good morning.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, Kasie.
You know, Puerto Rico got hit, particularly hard and we know from previous events that Puerto Rico's electrical services are very vulnerable to storms of this magnitude. So here's the situation on the ground. This is what it looked like in Puerto Rico yesterday afternoon and evening. You can see the extensive flooding that inundated this area. We saw over ten inches of rain and a few locations, especially in that southeastern portion of the country.
But with the winds that moved through the area, we did knock out quite a bit of power. Right now, the latest numbers that just shy of half 1 million customers. So were talking about third of the people on Puerto Rico, the island of Puerto Rico without power. So that's the concern, of course, as the temperatures start to warm and as the system moves away from the Caribbean and Leeward Islands.
Eighty-five mile per hour with Hurricane Ernesto, so we're getting this 5:00 a.m. update just moments ago from CNN. And this is the latest information to pass along to you. They've upgraded the watch in Bermuda to a warning.
So what this means is that in within the next 36 hours, we expect hurricane conditions to impact the island of Bermuda. So things are going to go downhill rapidly with the system. It's going to take advantage of some warm waters over the western Atlantic, strengthen and broaden out. Its wind field as well.
So this will be a large storm system as it approaches Bermuda this weekend, late Friday into early Saturday. That's where we could see some of the strongest winds.
And, Kasie, a lot of people along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. wondering, will we feel impacts? Well, yes, rip tides as well as large swells expected along the coastal beaches of the Eastern U.S. -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Good to know. Derek Van Dam for us this morning -- Derek, thank you very much.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING: both campaigns trying to take the lead on the economy. We're going to take a look at how Donald Trump pitch his economic plan to voters and what we might expect from Kamala Harris.
Plus, President Biden gets ready for his first official public event with Harris since he left the race. It comes as reports claimed he's getting angry with some party leaders, quite a long way from his somber Oval Office address.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I revere this office. I love my country more. It's been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in defense of democracy, which is a stake, I think is more important than any title.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:30:00]
