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CNN This Morning
Trump's False Claims on Inflation and Economy; Trump Says He's Entitled to Personal Attacks on Harris; Biden and Harris Tout Medicare Drug Price; Harris to Debut Economic Policies at NC Rally. Aired 6- 6:30a ET
Aired August 16, 2024 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:00:00]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right. It's Friday, August 16th. Right now on CNN This Morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Kamala Harris is a radical California liberal.
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HUNT: Donald Trump says he's entitled to attack his opponent on a personal level. Plus --
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KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: I could speak all afternoon about the person that I am standing on this stage with.
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HUNT: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden appear together at an event for the first time since his exit from the 2024 race. Ahead of Harris' first major economic address set for today since she become the presidential nominee.
Plus, just three days from the Democratic Party's biggest stage where Kamala Harris will officially accept the nomination to lead the ticket.
And then, a pollster well respected by Republicans, Frank Luntz is here to talk about the bolt of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris that he sees changing the race.
All right. 6:00 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the White House on this Friday morning. We made it. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Another day, another Trump event marked by some dubious claims and some interesting moments. This one, while the Republican presidential nominee stood next to a table of groceries, including ketchup, bacon, coffee, and a certain cereal.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Wow. School lunches up 65 percent. How can a family afford that? But look at this over here. What a nice job. I think I'm going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun, like the Cheerios. I haven't seen Cheerios in a long time. I'm going to take him back with me.
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HUNT: Standing in front of his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey, the former president repeated his now common false claims about inflation, immigration, and the results of the 2020 election, as well as his legal cases. And when asked about calls from his fellow Republicans to focus on policy instead of making personal attacks against terrorists, here's how he answered.
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TRUMP: I'm very angry at her that she'd weaponized the justice system against me and other people. Very angry at her. I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence. Whether the personal attacks are good, bad. I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a soundbite. And she called J. D, and I weird. He's not weird.
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HUNT: He's not weird. Trump's remarks coming just hours after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made their first joint appearance since the president exited the 2024 race.
The two walking out to Bruce Springsteen's "We Take Care of Our Own" before promoting the administration's new agreement to lower the price of 10 top selling prescription drugs used by Medicare.
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KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: And now, Medicare can use that power to go toe to toe with Big Pharma and negotiate lower drug prices.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Joe.
HARRIS: Thank you, Joe.
CROWD: Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That welcome from a friendly crowd for a man whose decision to step aside has, polls show, dramatically improved Democrats chances of keeping the White House in November. Harris didn't mention Trump, but for President Biden, personal insults were not off the table.
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JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Not a single Republican voted for this bill, period. Not one in the entire Congress. Now, the reason I say that is not to make a political point about them, if they had gotten their lesson, but guess what? They wanted -- they -- the guy we're running against, what's his name? Donald Dump or Donald, whatever.
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HUNT: Whatever happened to when they go low, we go high. Joining me now to discuss Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor, Annie Linsky, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Mike Dubke, former White House Communications Director for President Trump, and Karen Finney, CNN political commentator, former senior adviser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
So, Elliot, we did see President -- Former President Trump on message yesterday on inflation and that he was standing, you know, surrounded by these groceries. He did talk about it. However, the event also, you know, went on and on and was filled with well beyond that, the personal insult, saying he's entitled to making these personal attacks.
Clearly, it was designed to inject him into a new cycle that otherwise likely would have focused on President Biden, Kamala Harris. What did you see in that event and how it played out yesterday?
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST AND FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS: I think a continued lack of discipline from the former president. It's, in many respects, a lot of the conditions in this election ought to be around or favor the former president, looking at where the economy is, where voter sentiment is, how people feel in America right now. When he has gimmies like this to just stand there and talk about the economy for a few minutes, he can't resist the personalist hacks that many people around the country seem to be tired of at this point. And so, I think he'd use the term unforced error or I heard it at one point in the program, and I think that's what you're seeing again.
HUNT: Mike Dubke, I mean, where do you sort of come down on this? Because there's clearly this tug of war going on between, in some ways it's Trump's own campaign, right?
MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Right.
HUNT: I mean, they are trying to -- I mean, you know, you flash back to the price of milk in 1992 and how that became a central thing, right? Like he's standing there with Maxwell House and Folgers and Cheerios and all the things that, yes, are way more expensive, right? Like people are taking his groceries --
[06:05:00] DUBKE: Way more expensive. Inflation is a huge issue he should be focused on. But this reminds me of a job interview when you're interviewing somebody and you go, oh, my gosh, this is the right candidate for this job in the first 45 minutes of that interview. And then, they keep talking and they keep going on.
WILLIAMS: That's actually every job interview I've ever done. So --
DUBKE: OK. And then, you get to the point of, oh, maybe not. So, I think if the president -- I'm going to join all of the other allies of the president to say, let's focus on the Biden-Harris back -- a history here because that's a winning message for the American people. And when you get into the personal attacks -- I understand why he feels like he can go there, he just doesn't need to go there.
KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But can we just take a pause? So, this was supposed to be about middle-class people and the struggles of everyday Americans in front of a country club that very few Americans can actually afford to be at. And with all the groceries there, the thing I kept thinking was, has he ever been in a grocery store? When was the last time? And I can tell you Vice President Harris actually goes to the Safeway on Wisconsin, probably not so much anymore now that she's at the top of the ticket, but people would see her there on Sundays.
HUNT: I'm sort of surprised she doesn't use Instacart.
DUBKE: But can't get through security --
HUNT: At the observatory.
DUBKE: Yes.
FINNEY: Because she actually likes to walk down -- you know, that's just how she does her shopping because she cooks Sunday meals. So, my point is just, you know, she grew up middle-class. She understands from a personal experience what people are facing. And for Donald Trump, it has to be in a notebook that he reads and it's very esoteric.
ANNIE LINSKEY, REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The notebook that he's reading, my colleague, Greg just wrote this wonderful column pointing out that whatever grocery store Donald Trump is going to, they are really ripping him off because he's saying that, like, the price of bacon has gone up just by 70 percent, and yes, the price of bacon has gone up, but it's not by 70 percent, and you know, Donald Trump is saying that he's paying $5 a gallon for gas, well, guess what? The price of gas is actually about $3 a gallon. So, I'm not saying --
HUNT: Maybe he drives a car that takes --
LINSKEY: I'm not saying this --
(CROSSTALK) LINSKEY: And I'm just being the journalist here. I'm saying that the facts are the facts, and you know, political campaigns exaggerate, people certainly are affected by pain, but he's being ripped off by his grocery store.
DUBKE: I am going to take issue with that, because the cost of everyday goods has gone up, and they haven't come back down.
LINSKEY: But not 70 percent.
DUBKE: So, when you look --
FINNEY: Actually, they are starting to go back down. I was reading CNBC last night, and they were showing a number of things that are starting to prices coming back down.
DUBKE: They are not going back down to where they were prior to Biden-Harris taking over their administration. We have seen record inflation, and while it has calmed down, the American middle-class is paying vastly more now for everyday goods than they did before. That is a fact.
FINNEY: Is -- hold on.
LINSKEY: I'm just sort of being the fact-checker here.
FINNEY: But we can't divorce that fact from the other fact that we had a global pandemic. And that impacted supply chains, then Russia -- hold on let me finish, then Russia invades Ukraine, both of those facts have also impacted prices and --
DUBKE: And the $2 trillion that this administration injected into the economy, which was --
FINNEY: So, that people wouldn't go off the cliff.
DUBKE: We had already put $1.2 trillion into it.
HUNT: Well, the Trump administration started it.
FINNEY: Yes.
DUBKE: With 1.2. And then, you have the Biden-Harris administration coming in with an extra two. Guess what? When you flood the market with money, it has inflationary aspects to it, and we're still there.
HUNT: So, can I ask you a question, Mike? What is the difference, in your view between, Biden and the way voters view him and the economy, and Harris? Because we are seeing those numbers change. Harris -- you know, their campaign took heart from an FT poll that showed them basically even her a little bit ahead. The PBS poll. We can put up kind of the difference. It's not huge, but clearly, voters trust her a little bit more on the economy than they did Joe Biden. It's within the margin of error instead of outside the margin of error. Why is that? Why, in your view, do voters think that she's better at this? DUBKE: As much as you will continue to hear me and other Republicans say Biden, Harris, Biden, Harris, Biden, Harris, or if they don't shame on them, they really should be. The Biden administration hid this vice president for three and a half years.
HUNT: No, they didn't.
DUBKE: Yes, they did. I mean, if we really -- if we were talking about -- if we were having this conversation prior to June 21st in that first debate, there was not a lot that the Biden administration gave the vice president to do. She is a -- she is an -- no, I don't want to say she's an empty book to the American people. There are certain things that they know about her, but she has the ability now, and this is a great advantage of hers, through being -- through the announcement and the vice-presidential pick. And now, we're going to have four days of love in Chicago. The American people are being introduced to her for the first time.
[06:10:00]
So, I explain those numbers to a great extent by the fact that she has benefited from the fact that the Biden administration didn't utilize the vice president very often in the first three and a half years of their administration.
WILLIAMS: Let me you a quick question.
FINNEY: Hold on. If you talk to the reporters who covered her, they would agree with me that's a misstatement. Because the people who covered her were on the road all the time with her as she traveled across the country, talking about the Biden-Harris administration. Once she could, once she didn't have to be in Washington to talk break ties.
WILLIAMS: Just to frame it as a question to you, where, other than Dick Cheney, would that not be the case for any vice president of the United States --
DUBKE: I couldn't answer that. I think you're absolutely right.
WILLIAMS: Right. I mean --
DUBKE: No, I am not saying that this is a bad thing, and I'm not saying --
HUNT: I mean, Mike House was kind of relegated this standing point to Donald Trump.
DUBKE: Absolutely, and she benefits from it. I'm actually saying there is a lot of benefit that she is accruing. You've asked me about the numbers. I think those numbers are because the American people are finally -- they don't paint her with the same Biden-Harris brush that they should be.
LINSKEY: But we can also say that Republicans were focusing all of their attacks on Joe Biden. And so, there is an impact to that. And I think that's what you see in the numbers is that Bidenomics, the Biden economy. Thank you, Joe. I mean, there were all of these -- you know, there's all of this messaging that was absolutely, you know, focused completely on Joe Biden. And now, that he's not there anymore, I mean, you see that Harris did not -- I mean, she was not painted by that brush, by the Republicans.
DUBKE: Right.
HUNT: Yes, I mean, I'm at the point where we need to have a laundry list of all the reasons why a 100-day campaign benefits Kamala Harris in extraordinary ways.
DUBKE: I think every political party is going to do this in the future. It's great.
WILLIAMS: Well, again, England, it's -- what is it like six weeks?
DUBKE: Oh, I didn't even have six weeks. Yes.
HUNT: It would be great for my general health. I will say. We have a lot more time to hit the gym and like do all sorts of other things.
WILLIAMS: But rationally speaking, there's no reason why candidates need to run for office for two years.
FINNEY: Thank you.
WILLIAMS: I mean, it's not, look, I love America. I love how we do things here, but it just doesn't need to be this way.
HUNT: We're very competitive, Elliot. You cannot ask people to put down those competitive instincts.
FINNEY: And what would we talk about on cable television?
WILLIAMS: I know, right?
HUNT: Like, come on.
WILLIAMS: We have legal issues all day. All day.
LINSKEY: They economy, maybe.
WILLIAMS: The economy.
HUNT: Yes. All right. Coming up next here on CNN This Morning, President Biden debuting a major new agreement on drug pricing, how that might affect the race for the White House.
Plus, Michael Smerconish joins us live to talk J. D. Vance, Tim Walz, the upcoming VP debate.
And what do voters really think of the new Trump vs. Harris contest? We're going to hear from Frank Luntz and a group of voters who wouldn't support Joe Biden, but will back Kamala Harris.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Switch because Harris is a breath of fresh air.
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[06:15:00]
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Portman --
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HUNT: That was the late Republican Senator John McCain back in 2017, dramatically killing his party's Obamacare repeal bill. And we can't forget how then-Vice President Biden described that landmark health care legislation seven years earlier.
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BIDEN: This is a big -- deal.
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HUNT: Now, 14 years later, Biden is still championing the Affordable Care Act and still going after Republicans for trying to reverse it.
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BIDEN: Folks, there's more. My predecessor and his MAGA friends in Congress tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which is a different Obamacare. And tried to repeal it over 50 times. We stopped them. Along the way, I made the Affordable Care Act even stronger.
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HUNT: President Biden and Vice President Harris announcing a major new agreement to lower the cost of 10 popular drugs commonly used by Medicare patients.
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TRUMP: I'm going to keep the Affordable Care Act unless we can do something much better. We'll keep it. It stinks. It's not good. If we could do something better, we're going to do something with it.
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HUNT: All right. It also comes at a critical moment in the presidential election, something that Trump seems to recognize based on the rhetoric from his own speech yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HARRIS: We believe deeply every senior in our nation should be able to live with security, stability, and dignity. And so, in the United States of America, no senior should have to choose between either filling their prescription or paying their rent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. The panel's here. I actually want to play again what Donald Trump said in Asheville, because I think it's extraordinarily interesting and seems to suggest a major shift on the part of Republicans. Let's watch it one more time.
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TRUMP: I'm going to keep the Affordable Care Act unless we can do something much better. We'll keep it. It stinks. It's not good. If we could do something better, we're going to do something with it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, I mean, wow. Mike Dubke, I mean, this is what people have been telling Republicans they should do the whole time, right? Like, you need to have a replacement plan if you're going to get rid of this.
DUBKE: Right.
HUNT: But now he's saying we're going to keep it.
DUBKE: What I heard him say is, we're going to come up with a better replacement plan. What did you hear?
HUNT: That's what I heard. That's what I'm saying.
DUBKE: Yes, exactly.
HUNT: I'm saying like he's finally listening.
FINNEY: He said or. Or. We're going to -- unless we find a better replacement plan.
DUBKE: Look, all I keep --
FINNEY: It's pretty -- but hold on, that's a big flip flop for Donald Trump to say, we're going to keep the Affordable Care Act. I wish he would have to say Obamacare because it would just kill him from the inside out. But basically, he's acknowledging --
HUNT: But him doing that neutralizes this significant line of attack that Democrats have been able to rely on for a long time.
FINNEY: You know what? The problem with this is that I don't think the majority of the American people -- healthcare is an issue that Democrats tend to pull better in terms of who do you trust.
[06:20:00] I don't think the majority of American people will trust that he means it given how many times Republicans have tried to repeal it or replace it with something that would be awful. So, he's going to have to say, since we're all into like, let's talk about policy, let's say our policy plans. Great. Let's hear from him. Specifically, are you specifically saying you're going to keep it or specifically what are you going to do instead?
HUNT: Yes. Well, still, really --
LINSKEY: Yes. I mean, I'm going to say, just take this off the table. I mean, what's nice bit about this campaign as it's -- we've had this argument over and over and over again, and it's kind of nice that this piece, at least, looks in this very short period of time will be a debate that doesn't have to be rehashed.
HUNT: I feel like I've been covering the Affordable Care Act for basically the entirety of my political journalism career.
All right. Straight ahead here on CNN This Morning, a typhoon is barreling toward Japan with winds north of a hundred miles an hour and it's placing Tokyo on high alert.
Plus, another massive Zoom call for the Harris campaign. This time featuring Jewish women voicing their support for the vice president.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, it's been said that Jewish women are known to speak out and tell you what they think. And I'm one of them. I'm so tired of hearing Trump put down America.
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[06:25:00]
HUNT: All right. 25 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. A Florida couple attacked at their own front door after two men followed them home from a casino. That moment captured on their video doorbell. The couple had just won a $3,000 jackpot. The suspects were arrested.
Body camera footage showing the moment that Utah first responders free a driver from a burning car. That car bursting into flames after colliding with a tree. The driver survived and is being treated for second degree burns.
A powerful typhoon closing in on Japan, bringing intense waves and winds up to 130 miles an hour. Tokyo also on high alert with heavy rainfall canceling hundreds of flights and train routes. Mandatory evacuation orders are also in effect.
And this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. And it's so fun. And I getting dirty sometimes. And it's so -- the chocolate tastes so good.
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HUNT: You know what? Chocolate does taste so good. That was eight- year-old pie eating champion Zack Lucas. He stole the show when he won one of the pie eating contests at the Iowa State Fair. And again, you heard him, the chocolate, it wasn't half bad. Oh, my gosh. Look at that. I love this so much.
All right. I love this one too. You are never too old to cross off a bucket list item. 102-year-old Ruth Werning throwing out the first pitch at yesterday's Brewers-Dodgers game. Werning says she is a lifelong Brewers fan. Look at that. She got it over the plate. Go, Ruth.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN This Morning, what are voters thinking about the rapidly changing 2024 race? We're going to talk with the Republican pollster and consultant about what focus groups are saying about the new Trump-Harris matchup.
Plus, Democrats gearing up for their national convention next week. What to expect when the party hits the ground in Chicago.
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