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CNN This Morning
Trump Struggling to Stay on Message; Trump's Personal Attacks Against Harris; VP Harris Side by Side with President Biden in Maryland; Harris to Call Crackdown on Price Gouging. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired August 15, 2024 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Thursday, August 15th, right now on CNN This Morning.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are really excited.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are excited. Understandably so.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And so, we're very excited about leading the ticket.
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HUNT: A wave of energy as new polls show voters feeling a burst of enthusiasm for this reshaped race.
Plus --
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're not going to let this incompetent socialist lunatic keep breaking our economy for four more years.
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HUNT: -- Donald Trump hits the ground to talk about the economy in a swing state, but he could not keep himself from leveling personal attacks. And Kamala Harris is going to be side by side today with President Biden for the first time since becoming the Democratic nominee. And J. D. Vance, not quite ready to commit to debating his counterpart as Tim Walz accepts the invitation to meet in October.
All right. It is 6:00 a.m. here in Washington. A live look at the White House on this Thursday morning. Good morning, everyone, I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Donald Trump back on the campaign trail and struggling to stay on message.
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HUNT: The Trump campaign billed his rally in North Carolina as focused on his economic policies. Trump himself wasn't so sure.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy. A lot of people are very devastated by what's happened with inflation and all of the other things. So, we're doing this as an intellectual speech. You're all intellectuals today. They say it's the most important subject. I'm not sure it is.
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HUNT: I'm not sure it is. Instead, Trump continued personal attacks on -- that many of his Republican supporters have urged him to stop doing.
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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 in 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, I will tell you. If you haven't known her, she's crazy. She's crazy.
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HUNT: This version of Trump has emerged, of course, because he is suddenly faced with a real race against Harris. Naturally, he is fixated, again, on his poll numbers.
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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. How's San Francisco doing? Not like North Carolina. Now, we have some very good polls coming out, so that's good. You know, considering --
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HUNT: All right. Let's see about those polls. A new Pew poll finds that Trump and Harris are effectively tied at 45 and 46 percent support, with independent Robert F. Kennedy pulling 7 percent support. A new Monmouth University poll shows a massive shift among registered voters 2024 race. 85 percent of Democrats now describe themselves as either very or somewhat enthusiastic about the election, that is up a staggering 39 points since June when Joe Biden was still in the race. Republican voters have remained steady throughout the last two months with 71 percent enthusiastic about the election.
A recent Financial Times poll showed that Harris and Trump are trusted equally on handling the economy, a subject that Trump did eventually touch on at his North Carolina rally.
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TRUMP: People go to the grocery store and they have less than half a deal. In fact, I had something here. I did have something I would show you. Wait a minute. I don't know if you've seen this. I used it once. Oh, I have it. I do have it. Look at this. Look at this. So, this is Tic Tac's, right? But that's what happened. This is inflation. This is Tic Tac.
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HUNT: OK. Joining us now to discuss Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Brad Woodhouse, senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, Shermichael Singleton, Republican strategist and CNN political commentator.
You're laughing. It's
BRAD WOODHOUSE, SENIOR ADVISER, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: It's good times. I mean, in economic speech where he attacks the -- you know, attacks the vice president, makes fun of her laugh, and actually says the economy is not the number one issue on the same day that inflation went below 3 percent for the first time since, you know, 2021. So, you know what? I think he should do more events.
HUNT: Shermichael, do you agree?
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SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I mean, yes, but not that type of event, Kasie. I mean, look, the former president still has an advantage by a lot of polls on this particular issue, which is why you saw a former speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, you saw former Governor Nikki Haley, former -- or not former, but current Senator Lindsey Graham, all saying, stick with the message because we have the advantage. Kenny, I don't know.
HUNT: Elliott Williams, one of the things that The New York Times wrote about how Trump goes with his instincts over strategy, right? They say this, Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist, warned that Trump's attacks on Harris threatened the permission structure that he's been building for Republicans outside his base of support to support him. Quote, you have this very strange victimhood and grievance, which can, when channeled well by Trump, be effective. Right now, it's actually actively harming him because he's marinating in that rather than trying to actually drive a campaign message and define Harris.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR AND FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS: Yes, I guess the question is anybody shocked by any of this at this point? And, you know, to Shermichael's point, people have -- people around Donald Trump have for years been saying, stay on message, stay on Netflix, "Star Wars," stay on target. Stay on target.
HUNT: Stay on target.
WILLIAMS: Stay on target. Stay on target. Yet somehow, after four years in the presidency, three plus years, the Biden administration, it has not caught on and no one should be shocked at all here. The fact is he's now got an opponent that doesn't even need to capitalize on. It can in effect sit there and wait and let Donald Trump implode as a candidate. It's -- I just -- I guess I push back a little bit, not to you, Shermichael, but on this idea that there is somehow something remarkable about the fact that Donald Trump can't stay on the neutral.
SINGLETON: In neutral. That we're going to get a new Trump, right?
WILLIAMS: Yes. I mean, and even in some -- you know, there was certainly -- there was tragedy confronting the campaign some time ago, and that was going to be the moment that Donald Trump changed. Then there was getting a new candidate that could revivify the Trump campaign, and that didn't work. It's not going to change. It's just a question now for people as to what they want when they go to the polls in November.
MOLLY BALL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes. I mean, I think that's exactly right. He's always the same person, and he's a famously undisciplined candidate, and his frustration, you know, the bad mood that he's in because he's in a different situation, campaign wise, only causes him to be more undisciplined. And to make more of these zany personal attacks.
He's never been someone -- and for a lot of his followers, this is a plus, right? That he is always the same. He's not like those phony politicians who stick their finger in the wind and say whatever different messages on their teleprompter from one day to the next. He's up there arguing with the teleprompter and saying, well, it says here, I should talk about the economy, but I think that's kind of boring. And it is kind of funny.
But it -- but, you know, obviously, the campaign has a theory of the case that if this is an election about the issues, he wins. If this is an election about this administration's policies, the Biden-Harris administration and how it has handled, particularly the economy and the border, then they believe that Donald Trump wins that contrast. But if instead it's about, you know, what race is Kamala Harris or this -- or, you know, were the crowds real or were they A.I., or all of these other insane things that, again, are constantly coming out of Donald Trump's mouth. This is not new. This has been his entire decade in politics. But if the campaign is about Trump, basically, that is a much more difficult election for him to win.
WILLIAMS: You know, Kasie, in the last hour you ran that classic clip of Reagan saying, are you better off today than you were four years ago? And ultimately, that's the question in any presidential election. And somehow people seem to have forgotten what they got with Donald Trump as president. It was a lot of this in a time that's, you know, even -- and we could talk about inflation later in the program with a different economy and so on, but you had a president who was out there every day, particularly during the middle of a major crisis, speaking like this, and somehow that's gotten out of people's heads. Now, obviously --
HUNT: Well, when it was Biden, it was a different situation, right?
WOODHOUSE: Well, it --
HUNT: I mean, Biden couldn't stand up against Trump was offering, right?
WOODHOUSE: Well, it was a different situation. But to your point, you know, when Trump lost in 2020, one of the reasons were people were tired of this shtick. They were tired of the chaos. They were tired of the tweets. You know, of course, you know, I think it --
HUNT: Well, it was also COVID. I mean, it was kind of the inject bleach situation.
WOODHOUSE: Yes, inject bleach. And it was -- and now, we're back to -- you know, one thing about Trump is he's into instant gratification. Like he can't give an economic speech because people aren't going to go wild. You know, he couldn't stay on script at the Republican National Convention when he gave that speech, the first 30 minutes were very heartfelt, very emotional, but the crowd wasn't reacting to it the way that they react to red meat. So, he went on 60 minutes of a complete diatribe.
I think, you know, we were talking -- Shermichael and I were talking in the green room about, this is a professional campaign. And I mean, Chris Leviticus (ph) particularly has been around for a long time. The problem they have is at the top of the ticket and the lack of discipline. And so --
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HUNT: Well, and in a world where they were running against Joe Biden, the campaign was a little bit free to just do its thing, run its race, stay ahead, and they didn't have to worry about it as much.
WOODHOUSE: Well, and I think the emergence of this new ticket has just freaked Donald Trump out. I mean, the fact that he is spending as much time trying to push back on crowd size as he is talking about, you know, the economy or the border or crime, it's just an indication of who Donald Trump is, and he's easily baited.
SINGLETON: I mean, Kasie, I get all of those points, but the race is still very close.
HUNT: Yes, close. Yes.
WOODHOUSE: Absolutely. SINGLETON: In 2016 and 2020, the former president was underestimated by nine points, five points. If you were to factor those numbers in this time around, based on the current national polling, that gives the former president still a point or two ahead of the vice president. There are still some issues that the vice president is struggling on, some demographics she's still struggling with. She's still behind where she needs to be for a Democrat, with Latino voters. She's still behind where she needs to be with black voters.
You look at men in general, she's having a lot of issues there, particularly with young men of color. So, there are still some opportunities for the former president to make his case to potentially return back to the White House.
HUNT: Well, and this is why his behavior matters so much, right? It doesn't matter as much in a race that is not close, but he could either -- it's -- he could lose it for himself by continuing to do this.
All right. Coming up here on CNN This Morning, President Biden, Kamala Harris together again. They're going to be in Maryland today, their first trip together since the president's exit from the race.
Plus, Tim Walz locks in a commitment to debate J. D. Vance, so far stopping short of doing the same.
And Donald Trump makes that visit to North Carolina ahead of his opponent's trip to the same battleground state. We're going to dig in to the economy.
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TRUMP: Does anyone here feel richer under Kamala Harris than Brooker Joe than you were during the Trump administration?
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TRUMP: When Kamala lays out her fake economic plan this week, probably will be a copy of my plan because basically that's what she does.
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HUNT: Both campaigns making economic pitches to voters this week. Donald Trump was up first in North Carolina last night. This was a pledge he made to seniors.
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TRUMP: To help seniors on fixed incomes who are suffering the ravages of inflation, there will be no tax on Social Security. We're going to stop it. It only came into existence in 1984, and at that time, it only affected a very small number of recipients, but now, nearly half of all seniors are forced to pay income tax on Social Security, and thanks to inflation under Harris. She is horrible. This tax hits more seniors every year.
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HUNT: Vice President Harris is next in economic policy speech set for Friday. According to new reporting here at CNN, Harris expected to call for a federal ban on price gouging aimed at lowering grocery store prices. The plan would give the Federal Trade Commission more authorization to go after price gougers.
The focus on the economy is, of course -- here's why, voters have consistently said it is the top issue in the campaign. The recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll shows likely voters giving Trump a 51 to 48 edge over Harris handling on the economy. That is within the margin of error, and it's closer, Molly Ball, than it was when Biden was at the top of the ticket, when that was 54, 45.
It does seem like there is an opening here for Harris. There's also reporting from Axios that says that she wants to be different from Joe Biden on this. She wants to make distinctions. Do you think there's an opening with voters for her to do that?
BALL: There clearly seems to be, and it's a little bit ironic considering that she is literally in the White House right now, that nonetheless, the majority of voters, and some of this polling say that she's the candidate who represents change in this race. She's the candidate who represents a new generation, turning the page going forward into the future, and you hear her making this case in her speech is talking about the future versus the past and, you know, in a race where so many voters previously were annoyed that they were facing the same two candidates as last time.
And so, many candidates were -- sorry, so many voters were tired of this Trump versus Biden race. She's really managed to break out and be seen as offering something different. And as a result, even though she's been part of this administration, voters don't seem to be hanging all of its policies that they don't like on her to the degree that they were Biden, and she does seem to have an opening to define herself in a different way, and a lot of that is going -- it seems like, is going to be just talking about the same policies in a different way, talking about this push against corporations by invoking her past as a prosecutor is one example.
So, when she talks about, you know, this price gouging effort, she can say, I've gone after big corporations. It's what I did, you know, as attorney general. And so, by invoking her experience, I think there's a hope that she can cast some of these initiatives in a different light, even if there are a lot of the same initiatives.
HUNT: Yes. Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster was on CNBC yesterday talking about the economy and kind of what Harris needs to do, and he said it's pretty simple. Let's watch what he said briefly. [06:20:00]
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FRANK LUNTZ, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: If that plan of action, those details are things that the public wants, they will ignore the criticism and these soft voters will become intense voters. She's talking about the number one issue facing the country and Donald Trump is talking about crowd size.
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HUNT: I mean, look --
WOODHOUSE: Frank Luntz just nailed it right on the head. I mean, look -- if you look, there's at least one poll that shows that they're -- that she slightly had her tied on the economy. The poll you just showed, it's just -- it's within the margin of error.
And remember, Donald Trump led on people who thought he could do better on the economy over Joe Biden, when Joe Biden won in 2020. So, just making it closer, I think is critically important for the vice president. But, you know, I think she's got a plan. I mean, you know, people -- I keep hearing, well, where's your plan? Where's your details? Well, here, we got one today. You know, the price gouging plan and I think --
HUNT: Well -- I mean, sure. I will also say that this headline in the Times is, vagueness is a strategy, as Harris prepares her economic message. Like, they're kind of doing it on purpose, it seems.
WOODHOUSE: Well, I'm not convinced that The New York Times knows what's going to be in her speech tomorrow, or what the details are going to be in --
HUNT: Well, they say, Ms. Harris will outline a sort of reboot of the economic agenda, according to four people familiar with Harris' plan. She will lay out an approach relatively light on details, they said.
WOODHOUSE: Well, we'll see. I mean, you know -- but I think what you will -- what you see on the economy, though, is that the Republican argument against the Biden-Harris administration is evaporating. I mean, you know, we have -- for the first time since 2021, we have a two on the number of inflation instead of a three or a four or a five. We have low unemployment. We have great growth. And almost every analyst out there in the -- you know, the big -- you know, the big folks on Wall Street are saying no recession.
WILLIAMS: And look. it's a political horse race and your opponent is imploding and shooting himself in the foot. And why go further than you need to when you have Donald Trump out there not taking what's been handed to him on that inflation point. You know, inflation hasn't been below 3 percent since I think 2021.
The one sentence is, guess who wasn't president anymore in 2021? Me. The last time you had this kind of -- you know, the economy doing as well as it is, I was president. He can't say those words because he's a disastrously poor candidate and she is riding a wave of enthusiasm. It's almost, let the other guy do his work for you and hope you make it to November 5th.
SINGLETON: I mean, look, staying on message obviously matters. There is definitely an opportunity for the former president to make a case against Vice President Harris. I get the point of when she was a prosecutor, she went after corporations for price gouging, but she's been the vice president for three and a half years now. And the Biden's positions on the economy, generally speaking, is also Kamala Harris' problem on the economy, generally speaking.
HUNT: Right.
SINGLETON: And there is a reason why I would argue the vice president is sort of lacking on detail is because they haven't figured it out what's the message or the plan under a Harris-Walz administration to decrease inflation further, to increase wages for the average voter?
If you were to look at Governor Walz, for example, high taxes in his state are having more people leave the state versus coming in. And so, I think there's a strong case for voters to make on that front.
HUNT: I'm sorry, Brad, we got to go. But, I mean, look, again, this is reason 705 why this short, short, short campaign really works to Harris' advantage.
All right. Coming up here on CNN This Morning, Harris returning to the role of just vice president for the day. She's joining president Biden in Maryland, their first joint trip since he dropped out.
Plus, Hurricane Ernesto dumping nearly a foot of rain on parts of Puerto Rico. A look at where the storm is headed next.
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HUNT: All right. 27 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. Watch.
Lava and ash spewing from Mount Etna in Italy, forcing officials to shut down a nearby airport. An eruption last week caused mass travel disruptions in Sicily.
A train derailed following a deadly collision with a semi-truck in Wisconsin. The truck was carrying, get this, 5,000 gallons of manure. And it crossed the tracks and stuck a trick struck a train. It's very sad. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene.
And --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's having a seizure. She's stuck. She's in the water. Help her. Help her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. Hop in.
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HUNT: -- heroic video released by Texas police shows a young boy flagging down an officer to help his mom get out of a sinking car. The boy says that his mom had a seizure. The police were able to get her out, and she's recovering at the hospital.
And --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hammered in the air. To left field. History. Number 300.
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HUNT: -- Yankee slugger Aaron Judge belting his 300th career home run last night. A three-run shot against the White Sox. He reached the milestone in just 955 games. No one has ever done it that fast, not even Babe Ruth. Thanks to my Yankees loving producer for making me read that.
All right. Here you can see cars partially submerged as Hurricane Ernesto causes flooding in the British Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico also hit by the storm and nearly half the island lost power.
And with that, it is time for weather. Hurricane Ernesto dumping six to 10 inches of rain on parts of southeastern Puerto Rico. The storm now moving into open waters and a hurricane warning in effect in Bermuda. Let's get to Derek Van Dam with more on this. Derek, good morning.
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Kasie. So, here's the result of that six to 10 inches of rain. This is footage coming out of the northern side.
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