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Trump Campaign Lays Out Plan To Counter DNC; Harris' Historic Welcome To Top Of Democratic Ticket; Tight Security, Street Closures In Chicago For DNC. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired August 19, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

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[05:34:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, 5:33 a.m. here in -- actually, it's not 5:33 a.m. here. The script says Washington. We're in Chicago. A live look inside the United Center here in Chicago where it is actually 4:33 in the morning.

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

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to accept her party's nomination to cap off the DNC this week. When she does, she's going to make history as the first Black woman, the first Jamaican American, and the first Asian American to become a major party's nominee.

It was eight years ago -- just eight years ago -- it was a long eight years ago when Democrats nominated the first woman to the top of the ticket.

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HILLARY CLINTON, (D) 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Tonight we've reached a milestone in our nation's march toward a more perfect union. The first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president. When any barrier falls in America it clears the way for everyone.

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[05:35:00]

HUNT: All right. Tonight, Hillary Clinton will be on stage again. A person familiar with Clinton's thinking tells CNN, "She'll talk about how many cracks have been put in the glass ceiling, but she will also talk about what she sees once the glass is shattered -- once Harris does it."

Our panel is back.

Sabrina Rodriguez, this set of firsts that Kamala Harris will represent -- I mean, she's actually on the campaign trail. I mean, she doesn't shy away from it but it's also not something that is at the center of what she's doing either. And I think watching how she has navigated that has been telling.

What do you see in how she's approached that?

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I mean, I think it actually shows the progress from these very long eight years where she is not leaning into her identity. She is not leaning into it because she knows everyone else is going to.

So it's not something that she needs to be touting on the campaign trail. It's not something that she needs to focus in on her campaign ads. I mean, we're talking about it on the panel. It gets talked about on a regular basis from Democratic strategists.

So she understands the history of it, but she also understands the difficulties that come with that. She's aware that when it came to Hillary Clinton that she did not end up shattering that glass ceiling.

So I think there is an awareness that she needs to be focusing on policy issues. On defining why she would be the best president; not why she would be the best woman president and not why she would be best Black woman to do this. And I think that's where she's really trying to define herself and say this is not about identity. This is that I am the best person to do the job.

And I think that is an evolution and the message around identity and gender that we've seen within the Democratic Party, and I think more broadly, in the country.

HUNT: Yeah.

Margaret Talev, how is this different than it was in 2016, and how does Hillary being on stage tonight make -- how does that play? How does that work?

MARGARET TALEV, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, AXIOS, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR DEMOCRACY, JOURNALISM AND CITIZENSHIP, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: It's a couple of things. One is that I think there are among many women voters and some non-women voters as well a feeling -- a sense that was very, very close and it was a missed opportunity, and there's a desire to finally have the first female president.

I also think, like, from a tactical perspective, Kamala Harris -- in the polling so far that we've seen, at least -- has the ability really to energize younger people, women, and women of color. That's a pretty powerful combination and it comes at a time when reproductive rights, abortion politics, the post-Dobbs decision, the end of Roe v. Wade -- none of that had happened when Hillary Clinton was running for president. That has all changed.

Now, my colleagues Mike Allen, Jim VandeHei, and I have talked about the boys versus girls' election, and you have --

HUNT: Yeah.

TALEV: -- some themes of that. And it, in many ways, doesn't help Vice President Harris. There are maybe men who will not or some women who will not vote for her because she's a woman. But she also can harness, sort of, the power of women voters and voters in America who want to see the first woman president elected.

So she has to balance it, I think. She doesn't want it to be all identity but in the ways that it helps her she wants to activate those buttons in a way --

HUNT: Yeah.

TALEV: -- that it doesn't help her. She wants to minimize it and focus on policy.

HUNT: Well, and it is a contrast. I mean, Shermichael, I have to say coming out of Milwaukee -- I mean, the word that -- I think it was my colleague Chris Wallace who first used it on the air. I heard him use it on our air. He was, like, this is the testosterone --

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah.

HUNT: -- convention, right? This is different.

SINGLETON: I mean, it is different but you're also seeing that gap between men and women voters persist in 2016. There was an 11-point difference with men voters with Trump compared to Hillary Clinton. You fast-forward to 2020, and President Biden was only one point behind the former president.

A recent Fox News poll shows that Trump is performing 12 points better than Vice President Harris with men. And when you look at men voters of color -- Black men, young Hispanic men under 40 -- she is not performing as well as she needs to. She has certainly improved her margins with Black voters writ large, but she's still far behind.

HUNT: You're nodding.

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE House DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: No, yeah. I just -- she does need to focus on that, and I think talking about the economy helps her do that.

But to your guys' point, she doesn't need to talk about her identity. It's very clear she's a Black woman. There's nothing she needs to talk about. She can't hide that. It's who she is, right? Like, she -- that's who she is.

But I also think that Sec. Clinton -- she also can talk about the pitfalls of -- you know, she kind of telegraphed what President Trump was going to -- former President Trump was going to do and no one believed her. And so, she can get up there and talk about, like, we were here and we talked about this, and now we saw it happen. We don't want to go back to that.

HUNT: Yeah.

All right. So all week throughout this convention, Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, are going to be out counterprogramming in battleground states.

Today, Trump and Vance are holding two different rallies in different parts of Pennsylvania focused on the economy. Tuesday will take them to Wisconsin and Michigan talking about crime and safety. Wednesday they'll be back in North Carolina to talk national security. And on Thursday, President Trump will visit the southern border in Arizona while Vance campaigns in Georgia.

The campaign says that these events will be at smaller venues designed to focus in on key policy issues that Trump allies believe are the key to retaking the White House.

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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): His policies are good for America and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman may not win this election.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU, (R) NEW HAMPSHIRE: So the message is very clear. If you stick to the issues, if you stick to what matters, this should be an easy race for Donald Trump.

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HUNT: So I will say, Margaret, when they say that the event is going to be a smaller venue --

TALEV: Yes.

HUNT: -- it's typically because it's a lot easier to fill up said smaller venues.

Now, that said, you can see in this map where the election is being fought. I mean, it's really all -- and if you talk to Trump campaign aides, it's all about Pennsylvania, right? There are -- they are completely zeroed in there and they do still have, to Lindsey Graham's point, advantages with voters on issues like immigration and the economy that they can try to take advantage of. Now, of course, it's gotten caught up in Trump's personal attacks.

But the bottom line, too, is that it's very hard to get attention during a convention week like this.

TALEV: It is hard to get attention during a convention and there are many Republicans across the country who are advising the former president please, focus on the policy. But he's the one who keeps taking it away from the policy. And I do think whether you have a crowd of 10,000 or a crowd of 100, you can still go completely off the rails if that's what you decide that you want to do.

But I do think one of the elements that is going to be interesting is watching how former President Trump and how Sen. Vance try to balance out the groups to whom they're messaging as well as the geographic places where they're messaging. And we were talking about boys versus girls a minute ago. One of Sen. Vance's problems is the woman vote right now, quite candidly.

The effort to try to bolster or recapture support in Georgia is also a dynamic that I think is really interesting.

The -- what was the Biden-Harris ticket and is now the Harris-Walz ticket does have vulnerability on two issues -- and one of those issues in inflation, and one of those issues is the border. And while we are seeing that American voters don't fully blame Vice President Harris for all the things that they might not like about what's happened in the last four years, the border really is an area where she is vulnerable. And that's going to be something that she is going to need -- she'll be -- she'll be coming out of the defensive on. And Trump is right to see a vulnerability there.

HUNT: Well, and why do we think he's going to Arizona to the border --

TALEV: Yeah.

HUNT: -- on Thursday so that when the news is covered --

TALEV: Correct.

HUNT: -- with her acceptance speech, it's him at the border and her here.

But, Sabrina, this, of course -- while the campaign -- and the Trump campaign this time around is -- has been very focused and disciplined in a way that we did not see from his previous campaigns necessarily. But again, they went into this saying we know who our candidate is. We understand kind of how he approaches these things.

I think it was clearly easier for them to deal with that when Biden was at the top of the ticket. Now, of course, with Harris, Trump has been calling her stupid. They have been -- many Republicans have been trying to convince him not to do that.

Here was the latest round of him doing that -- calling her stupid. This was, again, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Let's watch.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have people that are -- they're babies. In many ways, I guess they're stupid, you know? People say please don't use bad language. Please don't call people stupid. They're stupid people.

How else do you describe it? I want to use a different word -- a highly -- a more sophisticated word than stupid but there's no word. It's a perfect word. They're stupid people.

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HUNT: So he's pretty clear about what he thinks there.

RODRIGUEZ: Yes, he is.

I mean, there is no question that having Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket has been triggering for Donald Trump. I mean, this is, like, the word I've used for weeks here. Because he keeps going back to these attacks on race, on gender, on her intellect.

And they just keep being personal attacks when Republicans repeatedly are saying publicly that is not what he needs to be leaning on. That he needs to be focusing on the economy, on immigration -- on these issues that clearly -- I mean, we see in polling for months that Republicans do better on or are trusted more on -- and Donald Trump, specifically.

But he can't help himself. And I think that is where the question is this week as he goes to these events, regardless of the size of the audience, is will he headline from those events be him talking about these issues or will the headlines from these events be him attacking Kamala Harris and what those attacks look like. Because they're not scripted. They're usually -- you know, you see the teleprompter.

You see -- we saw it at the RNC where he has his prepared remarks and then there's what Donald Trump wants to say. And there is no one on his campaign and there is no one in the Republican Party who is going to be able to stop him from doing that.

[05:45:00]

And I think it's a question of discipline if he decides at some point, OK, I do need to lean in a little more on policy. But the Donald Trump that we have seen for all these years does lean on those attacks and it's hard to see that changing.

HUNT: I keep going back to the -- Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan had that piece in The New York Times a Sunday or two ago where he basically acknowledged to the donors, I am who I am.

TALEV: I am what I am.

HUNT: Fair enough.

All right, Sabrina Rodriguez. Thank you very much for your time this morning. I really appreciate it.

All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, a new standard- bearer for the Democratic Party. President Biden passing the torch to Kamala Harris. We're going to talk to a man who knows the president better than most, former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain.

Plus this.

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Chicago protesters.

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HUNT: Protests in Chicago on the eve of the DNC. How police are preparing for me demonstrations ahead.

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GOV. J.B. PRITZKER, (D) ILLINOIS: If there are troublemakers, they're going to get arrested and they're going to get convicted. But the fact is that the vast majority of people who are protesting -- and we've seen this before -- are peaceful protesters that want to have their voices heard. They're going be heard, no doubt about it, and we're going to protect that.

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HUNT: Parts of downtown Chicago locked down this morning as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the city of Chicago prepare for protesters here at the DNC. Large security fences now in place alongside walks and parts of the loop, the Gold Coast, along the Magnificent Mile.

Pro-Palestinian protests already crowding the streets of Chicago. Governor Pritzker has deployed 150 members of the state's National Guard in a standby role.

Vice President Harris trying to get ahead of these protests when she campaigned in Pennsylvania on Sunday.

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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will not speak for him, but I will tell you that these conversations are ongoing and we are not giving up. And we are going to continue to work very hard on this. We've got to get a ceasefire and we've got to get those hostages out.

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HUNT: All right, our panel is here. And we also have Joel Rubin. He's a Democratic strategist and former deputy assistant Secretary of State under President Obama.

Joel, I'll start with you just in terms of what we're expecting from these protesters. I know you're actually in touch with a lot of these groups and there is a change in how they are approaching this because Harris is the person that is going to be accepting this nomination and not President Biden.

How is that playing out on the ground?

JOEL RUBIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah, that's right, Kasie.

Really, there's a couple of different lanes now in front of us for these protests. There's the people who are organizing the uncommitted voters, and they're going to be participating alongside the convention. They have delegate representatives and have largely expressed support for Kamala Harris as the nominee. And then separately, there in the street protests, much more aggressive strain.

And I think we're going to see that split continue. I think it's very important to ensure that there is a policy discussion, as there should be, about what happens on Israel and Gaza and how president-to-be Harris will handle that.

But when it comes to the street protests, the danger here is that they can veer quickly into hate speech and some of what we saw in Washington a couple of weeks ago when Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington, which Kamala Harris, as vice president, condemned appropriately.

So I think that's where this is heading. The sort of pragmatic strain that wants to work to try to shape policy, and then the street strain which, quite frankly, may not really want to listen to any argument that is put forward.

HUNT: Yeah.

Meghan Hays, how is the convention kind of preparing and differentiating between those two groups, and what are you expecting this week?

HAYS: I think that people are expecting that the uncommitted voters are coming here and they have the right to voice their opinion. The First Amendment right is part of our freedoms here. And I think that the Democratic Party welcomes people to express their opinion unlike the Republican Party where Donald Trump said he would deport protesters.

So I think you heard the governor say that the city of Chicago is prepared. I think folks are here and prepared and expect protests. I think that's just part of being Democrats. We're a big tent party so I think we're welcoming and inclusive, but I think we'd like to have, obviously, it be peaceful.

HUNT: Margaret, I mean, we have seen -- I mean, what happened outside Union Station in Washington was -- I mean, they're painting Hamas symbols -- graffitiing Hamas symbols. If that happens here that is going to be something that you're not -- people aren't going to be able to look away from.

TALEV: You know, there's sort of these two political concerns I think for Democrats at the convention this week. One is do the protests actually, like, reach into the convention space and do they just literally disrupt the convention? But another is if a lot of activity breaks out in the streets -- tens of thousands of people -- how do the police handle it? And does it hurt Democrats' ability to say that they have public safety under control, which has been a liability for them?

I have an Axios colleague who is based in Chicago who has been covering the protests or the pre-protests. And I was talking to her last night about this and her conversations and asked her do the protesters she's talking to differentiate between Donald Trump's policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Biden and Harris administration.

HUNT: Yeah.

TALEV: And she said they're really saying no. They're saying they're the same.

So I think from a messaging perspective, one of Vice President Harris' goals in addressing thousands of Americans who feel like the --

HUNT: Right.

TALEV: -- people in the streets is to deal with that as well.

HUNT: All right, Joel Rubin, Margaret Talev, Meghan Hays. Thank you all very much. Shermichael is going to stick with us and we'll see you at the top of the hour.

All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, some of entertainment's biggest names expected to show up here at the Democratic National Convention. We're going to take a look at the list of stars expected to voice their support for the Harris-Walz ticket.

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Plus, the most important night of Kamala Harris' political career on the horizon this week when she accepts the Democratic nomination and lays out her vision for America's path forward.

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HARRIS: And years from now, this moment will have passed, and our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and they're going to ask us where were you when the stakes were so high?

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HUNT: It's Monday, August 19. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING, the Democratic National Convention begins in Chicago where Kamala Harris will accept her party's nomination for president.