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Trump Pushes Back On Criticism: "I'm Not A Showman"; Four Protesters Arrested For Breaching DNC Security Fence; Harris Rebuilding Support Where Biden Was Lagging. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired August 20, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.

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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, it is 4:34 a.m. here in Chicago. This is actually a live look at Santa Barbara, California -- Air Force One. President Biden just touching down there moments ago after his speech at the DNC. We're looking at those stairs to see if we're going to watch him walk down those steps. Um, I don't know what's going on there. You've got tall, small.

[05:35:13]

Anyway, he's actually going on vacation this morning. So we'll keep on eye on this. We'll show it to you if we get it here in a moment.

I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us here. It's 5:34 a.m. on the East Coast.

Donald Trump is competing for attention this week with all eyes on Chicago and Kamala Harris here at the DNC. Trump and his running mate were in Pennsylvania on Monday trying to counterprogram in that battleground state. He is also pushing back against Republican criticism that he is not sharply focused enough on the policy contrast he has with Harris in this campaign.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that I'm not a showman. I don't believe I am a showman. I think I'm somebody that has a lot of common sense that did really well in business and made a lot of money. Everything I touched, whether I went into entertainment with "THE APPRENTICE" or wrote books, I was successful at. Now I run for president and I win, and I did a real job.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: Trump specifically dismissing claims from one of his longtime allies, the Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham who told NBC's "MEET THE PRESS" this on Sunday.

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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): President Trump can win this election. 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.

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HUNT: OK.

Shermichael Singleton, Trump clearly not pleased with Lindsey Graham. There was also another instance where he said that Lindsey Graham would not have -- would not have won his election without Trump's endorsement. Clearly, a little bit -- you know, it got under his skin a little bit.

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah, but's not just Lindsey Graham; it's Kevin McCarthy. There's a reason they're bringing back Corey Lewandowski and Kellyanne Conway because many, externally and internally, believe that the campaign isn't moving in the right direction, in part because the former president doesn't appear to be as focused as he once was in 2016 or maybe even in 2020.

I mean, he clearly has some advantages on some issues and I think Republicans would just want him to focus on those issues not only because they would like to win back the White House, but they're also concerned about the impact it could have on regaining control of the Senate and trying to regain -- or trying to maintain, rather, control of the House.

HUNT: Fair enough.

Jackie Kucinich -- I mean, I -- when this was all playing out as Joe Biden was stepping down, I was corresponding with someone who worked for Donald Trump for a long time and doesn't anymore. But one of the -- one of -- what this person was saying to me was running against Kamala Harris is going to bring out the worst instincts in Donald Trump. And we've seen that start to play out in a lot of different ways.

He, of course, has offered this variety of personal insults. They posted a video online yesterday that I don't even want to show because it contains very graphic insinuations about Kamala Harris' sex life. It just gives you a preview of where this may be going from Donald Trump.

Is your sense of this that it's going to get worse or that Donald Trump could actually listen to any of these people who are telling him hey, like, let's do this differently? JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE: I think -- I think a) I think it does get worse because he doesn't -- while there is incentive to not behave like this, I mean, I -- Shermichael is right. Every Republican you talk to really wants him to talk about the economy -- to focus on that. He just hasn't shown the ability or the will to do that.

How detrimental that will be or if it'll be detrimental to his base, they don't care. But to Independents who are watching this who are exhausted by it, this could -- this could be problematic.

But I would push back on one thing. Bringing back Corey Lewandowski to the Trump campaign -- that's 'Mr. Let Trump Be Trump.' I don't know if that is going end up how they think it's going to end up. We'll have to see. But he was something that -- someone that really encouraged the former president to hone some of his instincts that perhaps might turn off voters.

HUNT: Yeah. Well, I mean, that reads to me as Donald Trump declaring he is unhappy with the --

KUCINICH: Right.

HUNT: -- very professionalized campaign that has been trying to push him in this direction.

Meghan Hays, how, if you're Kamala Harris, do you prepare for these kinds of criticisms? I mean, the stuff that we saw in this Truth Social repost were very, very personal and very, very graphic. She's going to have to stand on stage with him in a debate where it's entirely possible that she could face some version of this set of criticism to her face.

[05:40:04]

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING, CONSULTANT, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: Yeah. I think she continues to do what she's doing. She's out there talking to the American people. They're out there doing their thing. They're talking about policy now.

They are here this week. They are reintroducing themselves. We have Gov. Walz now on the ticket. I think the Democratic Party continues to move with what they want to do in a positive forward-looking way and that's what's going to be appealing to these Independent voters in these seven swing states that are going to, like, decide the election.

HUNT: Leah, this is, of course, part of running as a woman candidate. What do you see as different for Harris in this moment because the fact that she is a woman does seem much less remarkable than it has in the past? But at the same time, you do still have to deal with things that male candidates typically don't have to deal with.

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST AND HISTORIAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: Absolutely, and I think, actually, the Harris campaign has factored that into how they are campaigning and how they are approaching this in the long run.

One of the things that's really remarkable about how Harris has approached this is that it's as if Donald Trump doesn't exist, which actually adds to the problem with Donald Trump. Part of what he is upset about is the fact that she does not respond to these kind of wildly inappropriate sexism and misogynistic points.

She knows that they are going to come. She knows that he's going to be distracted. And, in fact, it's -- part of the argument here is just let him cook. Let him talk. He puts his foot in his mouth. It pisses off other Republicans. It pisses off Independents.

And the way that we do this -- the way that we handle this is that we see what happened last time. We see what happened with Hillary Clinton and how she approached it.

And, in fact, we're going to take a slightly different approach. We're going to take an approach that says we don't actually have to address this even as we acknowledge that being a woman -- being a Black woman, being an Indian woman is highly different and also is going to come with these kinds of attacks.

And I think, actually, what we're seeing now, particularly in the bounce that came in the immediate aftermath of the announcement that she would be running for the Democratic nomination -- that she had essentially received it -- and after what's going to come after this convention is that voters, including swing voters and Independent voters, really do like this approach that she is taking. This one that is not about engaging Donald Trump on every single little offensive thing that he says but instead, allowing him to lay it out. And she just keeps moving forward.

HUNT: Interesting.

All right, let's go now to this. Chicago police are reevaluating DNC security this morning after four people were arrested for breaching a containment fence outside the United Center. That breach was caught on camera.

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Pro-Palestinian protester breaching security fence near United Center in Chicago.

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HUNT: Following those arrests, law enforcement working to determine whether the fencing would be sufficient for the next three days of the Democratic Convention. The answer seems a little straightforward, but let's watch what they said.

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LARRY SNELLING, SUPERINTENDENT, CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT: Our job here is to make sure that we keep the DNC safe and keep our city safe and keep our people safe. We have no idea what they would have done if they'd gotten on to the other side. But as I said before, we're not going to tolerate anyone who is going to vandalize things in our city. We're not going to tolerate anyone who are going to commit acts of violence.

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HUNT: Authorities say the pro-Palestinian protesters who knocked down the fence never reached the inner security perimeter.

Meghan Hays, I know, it's part of your role organizing the convention and it's something you thought a lot about. It does seem like the protests are not of the size that was potentially expected if Joe Biden were still at the top of the ticket, quite candidly. But the -- but the protesters that are left are doing things like what we say.

HAYS: Yeah. I think the Chicago Police and Secret Service, and all of the law enforcement partners I think have worked for the last year and a half on this. But also, as Democrats, we are the big tent party. We expect people to come protest. And again, unlike our opponent who would like to deport protesters, we are -- we understand, but they need to do it peacefully and they need to do it respectfully. And going through a perimeter is obviously, they're going to end up in jail and the Chicago police are going to take action.

HUNT: Breaching the fence is a very, very straightforward no.

Leah Wright Rigueur, I'm so grateful to have you. I think you're coming back later on this week. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.

All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, Kamala Harris working to rebuild the coalition that propelled the Biden-Harris ticket to victory four years ago. Are those efforts paying off, so far? We'll talk to an expert on all of that, Ron Brownstein.

Plus, moments ago, President Biden arriving in California for his vacation after his farewell swan song last night to his party. Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell joins us live to help us look back at his legacy.

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JIMMY FALLON, NBC HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": Democrats paid tribute to Biden who delivered the convention's opening speech. When Biden took the stage, the cheers were so loud that even Biden could hear them.

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[05:48:45]

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BIDEN: MAGA Republicans found out the power of women in 2022, and Donald Trump is going to find out the power of women in 2024.

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HUNT: President Biden passing the torch last night to Kamala Harris. She's, of course, trying to run with it and rebuilt support from key demographic groups where President Biden had been slipping.

CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein writes this. "Harris' twin challenges were to shore up support with the groups where Biden was weak and to maintain his standing with the groups where he relatively stronger. Harris' performance on each of these fronts has reopened the electoral map."

And we have seen the polls back this up. Here is the new CBS News poll. Harris has a 12-point lead over Donald Trump among female voters. That builds on a slim three-point lead that President Biden held over Trump in July.

Female voters have been a strength for Biden and Democrats, and Harris and her supporters are trying to build on it.

And Ron Brownstein joins our panel now.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Good morning.

HUNT: Good morning.

BROWNSTEIN: Good morning, everybody.

HUNT: Good evening, depending on how you're --

BROWNSTEIN: Right, exactly. This is later.

HUNT: -- how you're oriented.

BROWNSTEIN: This is later than I'm usually on with you from California, so I -- this is actually like sleeping in.

HUNT: That's -- there you go.

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, yeah.

HUNT: Fair enough.

BROWNSTEIN: Everything is (INAUDIBLE).

[05:50:00]

HUNT: So this clearly -- what you -- what you write about here is that she needs to really add to, especially, some of these demographic groups --

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

HUNT: -- Latinos and Black Americans -- BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

HUNT: -- where Biden was slipping.

BROWNSTEIN: Single women.

HUNT: How do you see her performing?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, right. So if you kind of look at where Biden was in '24, he had this strange kind of inverted pattern where he was slipping among many core Democratic groups --

HUNT: Yeah.

BROWNSTEIN: -- including Black voters, Latino voters, young voters, single women, but holding his 2020 support relative better among blue- collar whites, older whites, and college-educated whites.

So her job was to maintain where he was doing relatively better and shore up where he was eroding. And you can look on each front. By and large, she is holding his support in polling among white voters, including those blue-collar white voters who many expect to be the most receptive audience for Republican arguments that she's weak on crime and immigration, and an extreme cultural liberal.

She has regained ground among all of the groups that he had been eroding with, but she hasn't yet gotten all the way to where he was in 2020. There's an incomplete on that side of the test.

And these two tasks have cleared geographic implications. I mean, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin -- states that fell out of the blue wall in 2016, they're all at least 80 percent white. That -- the job there is mostly to maintain what Biden has been doing among white -- among white voters.

Sun Belt, the opposite story. Southeast and the Black voters North Carolina Georgia. Southwest, Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada. That's where she has to rebuild the losses that he had been suffering.

HUNT: Yeah. Ron, how real do you think the Sun Belt conversations are -- Arizona, Georgia? I mean, is that -- is it realistic for us to put those on the potential map for Harris or not?

BROWNSTEIN: I think Arizona and Nevada, definitely. And Georgia and North Carolina, TBD. I mean, there his positive polling in North Carolina and Georgia, but the erosion among -- you know, those non- college white voters in those states are heavily evangelical and the Democratic numbers among them go to catastrophic lows. I mean, they just -- you know, sometimes below 20 percent.

And she is doing better with Black voters but not quite all the way back to where Biden was. And there's a question of whether she can ever really get there given that the concerns that were driving away some of the Black voters were not only about Biden and his age; they're about inflation and what economic opportunities look like for the last few years. So it's funny. Her gender gap, so far, is not unusual. I mean, she's not running particularly better with women than Biden did in 2020. But it would not surprising if by the end there was a wider because she -- in this polling that groups have done she is regaining ground with Latinos, with Black women, with single white women. Less movement among men.

HUNT: What are your thoughts, Meghan, on how she's doing here?

HAYS: I think she is shoring up the base. I think she is moving along. But I do think she needs to continue to talk about the issues. She needs to lay some more policies to shore up some of these things, talking about inflation --

SINGLETON: Yeah.

HAYS: -- and how she's going to tackle that.

But I think that she is going to hold onto the coalition -- the Biden coalition and then she's going to shore up the base. So I think she's doing the things that she needs to do but she needs to now talk about the issues.

SINGLETON: I mean, look, I think the gender gap is a very real issue for the vice president. We saw this in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden was able to increase those margins and was only behind by one point.

I also think that, to Ron's point about younger men of color, there is a lot of work there. And despite the fact that the vice president has improved her margins, she is certainly not where --

BROWNSTEIN: No.

SINGLETON: -- she needs to be --

BROWNSTEIN: No.

SINGLETON: -- as a Democratic. And when you look at some of those battleground states, Democrats need to overperform by, what, two million votes give or take, Ron? I'm not certain if the vice president is there yet. So there's a lot of work she still has to face.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, one thing we forget is that the decision overturning Roe happened after 2020. Like, it -- and therefore, she has the potential to do better among college-educated white women who are a big share of the electorate and a growing share of the electorate. And if she does, that will give her some buffer in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to lose some ground among the blue-collar whites.

You know, the proportions could change here. But in those states -- 80 percent white electorate in Michigan and Pennsylvania, 90 percent white electorate in Wisconsin -- that is where Republicans I think are going to focus their firepower overwhelmingly on making the case that she cannot keep you safe. And either that will work and Trump can squeeze out something that

looks like 2016 in those states --

HUNT: Um-hum.

BROWNSTEIN: -- or it won't. And places like Oakland County, the suburbs of Philadelphia, the WOW counties outside of Milwaukee, Dane County in Wisconsin will all improve for her and push her to eventually even a bigger victory than Biden had in some of them.

HUNT: Well, regardless of who wins, Ron, we have to get you a "I named the blue wall" --

BROWNSTEIN: I named the blue wall.

HUNT: -- because we were talking about that in the break. I don't know. For those of you -- I did not realize that the reason we all say blue wall on TV over and over again is because of this man that's a legend.

[05:55:02]

BROWNSTEIN: The sentence -- the sentence was call it a blue wall. Call it the blue wall, and they did.

HUNT: And you can read it now on The Atlantic.

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, yeah.

HUNT: It's a -- it's a National Journal story.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

HUNT: Jackie, Ron, Meghan, thank you guys so much --

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

HUNT: -- for being up early with us this morning.

KUCINICH: Yeah.

HUNT: Shermichael is going to stick around for the top of the hour.

And coming up in our next hour here on CNN THIS MORNING, powerful testimonies putting reproductive rights at the forefront of the first day of the DNC. Speakers share deeply personal stories about how the overturning of Roe versus Wade hit them.

Plus, President Biden's swan song as he gives an emotional farewell to his party.

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BIDEN: Let me know in my heart when my days are through. America, America, I gave my best to you.

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