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CNN This Morning
Kamala Harris Accepts Democratic Nomination; Trump Reacts To Harris DNC Acceptance Speech; Nearly 20 Million Under Heat Alerts, Hone Nears Hawaii. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired August 23, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:41]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, August 23rd.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESE & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Simply put, they are out of their minds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: It was the most important speech of her life. Kamala Harris accepting the Democratic nomination for president.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really liked her confidence. She's really seemed presidential.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just not moving for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: We spoke to some undecided swing voters. Was Harris able to sway them?
And later --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She's complaining about this and that. She's complaining about prices. Why didn't she do it?
They didn't build the wall. We built the wall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Donald Trump reacting in real time to his opponent's big night. (MUSIC)
HUNT: Four a.m. coming pretty early here in Chicago. It is 5:00 a.m. on the East Coast.
A live look at the United Center here in Chicago. Look, you can still see some of those stray balloons up on stage, but, man, they did a real good job of getting most of the 100,000 of them out of here in just a few hours.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention now in the history books with a very different ending than the one that was envisioned by the party just four short weeks ago. Kamala Harris, completing her rise from running mate to the top of the ticket.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination to be the president of the United States of America.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The vice president accepting the presidential nomination and telling the American people her life story growing up as the daughter of immigrants, her mother from India, her father from Jamaica.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: At the park, my mother would say, stay close. But my father would say, as he smiled, run, Kamala, run. Don't be afraid. Don't let anything stop you.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: From her past, Harris then laid out some specifics for a potential future administration, like reviving the border deal that Donald Trump opposed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. And here is my pledge to you.
(APPLAUSE)
HARRIS: As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: That was just one of the many moments in her speech where she tried to draw distinctions between herself and her opponent Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un, who are rooting for Trump...
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: ... who are rooting for Trump, because, you know, they know, they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump wont hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: With the balloons and the confetti falling at the conclusion of her speech, Harris and running mate Tim Walz now enter a new phase of the campaign. It's a real sprint to the finish. There are just 74 days left until Election Day.
Joining us now to discuss, Margaret Talev, senior contributor at "Axios", Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst, Shermichael Singleton, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist, and Meghan Hays, Of course, a consultant for the Democratic National Convention.
Welcome to all of you.
I'm afraid to count the hours of sleep among us.
But everybody go to bed and get back up again because --
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We hit double digits, that's the thing.
HUNT: Because this hall was rocking very, very, very short time ago.
Ron Brownstein, let me -- let me start with you kind of big picture here.
Did Harris do what she needed to do tonight? And how does it set her up for this 74 day sprint to the finish?
[05:05:01]
BROWNSTEIN: You know Marshall McLuhan famously said, the medium is the message. I thought last night. The messenger was the message.
HUNT: Let me pause you for a second. I don't know if our audience can hear this, but what they're doing is popping balloons. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, really.
HUNT: Don't be alarmed. But --
BROWNSTEIN: Right, I know --
HUNT: Anyway, the medium is the message.
BROWNSTEIN: No, Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. I thought the messenger was the message. I mean, there were a lot of interesting themes and arguments but more important than any of them was her presence.
She was steely. She was strong. She was energetic. She embodied the idea of change.
You know I kept thinking of the Nikki Haley line from February where she said, the first party that ditches their 80-year-old nominee is going to have a leg up.
If her core argument is that we can turn the page on what we have been living through in the Trump era, this kind of valley of conflict and polarization, she embodied her message in a powerful way. Now, I think the one blind spot was she did not give people enough sense of how she's going to help them make ends meet she kind of went she talked more about Ukraine than about inflation, I think.
But overall, you see the power of the contrast that she embodies implicitly with Biden and now explicitly with Trump.
HUNT: Margaret, do you think that she brought any new people in with this speech?
MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I was really struck by the messages that she spent most of the time hitting on, because so many of them had to do with issues that actually do cross party aisles and transcend partisanship -- gun safety, children's safety in schools. Yes, gun control is unpopular with the base of the Republican Party, but widely popular with most Americans, including many Republicans.
Some of the other issues, women's reproductive rights, it's a broadly popular issue. It may divide the Republican Party, but there are many Republicans in the suburbs women in particular, who care about these issues are her conversation, her discussions about the military and strength, American strength, NATO, partnerships that transcends political parties in America. It splits the Republican Party.
I'll also say, if you look out on that audience last night, you would see a sea of women in white jackets, suffragette white. But if you looked on the stage, that was not suffragette white, that was straight out of law and order, and she had shown up to give her --
BROWNSTEIN: That was not Momala last night. There was very little Momala on that stage. That was something much tougher.
HUNT: Yeah, it when you think about how those decisions that she made to present herself in this way, Meghan Hays, it does stand out.
Now, I will also say the program that led up to her kind of underscores some of this. And you saw a group of veterans take the stage. You saw senators from the critical blue wall states. We're going to dig into Ron's latest kind of thinking about that a little bit later on in the hour.
But I also wanted to kind of bring this into it. Peggy Noonan wrote about the speech -- of course, a Reagan speechwriter and "Wall Street Journal" columnist. She said: Kamala Harris speech was fine delivered with assurance, stuck to resume values, life experiences rather than a sharing of her thinking. I'm not sure it advanced her position with those who aren't already with her.
She says there's a small but persistent cloud that follows her, distilled down to the idea that she was swiftly and mysteriously elevated to a position. We don't know everything about how that happened. People aren't fully comfortable with it. I don't think she succeeded in lightning or removing the cloud.
Your thoughts?
MEGHAN HAYS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I don't -- judging from this room and judging from the coverage of it and how people are reacting, I don't think that people are uncomfortable with how she got there. I think that that was a call from the Democratic Party. So I disagree there.
But I also -- I've seen her give dozens of speeches in person from her acceptance speech in 2020 to now. That was the best speech she's given. Her presence on that stage was commanding.
And I do think that you're -- the vice president is the most famous, unpopular -- famous, unknown person in the country. She got to reintroduce herself to the country. And I think people who did not know her were very impressed last night.
Yes, of course, she needs to give more specifics about how -- what she's going to do in the policy she laid out yesterday, and that's what the next 74 days are going to be about. But I have never seen her give such a commanding speech with such presence than I did last night.
HUNT: Shermichael?
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, look, I think visually, esthetically, she looked great. She wore the right colors. I think a part of the calculus if I'm advising her, we know that there's going to be some men out there who are skeptical about a woman. I want to showcase strength.
She talked in great detail about bolstering our military capabilities across the globe. That's another thing that speaks to capabilities. Despite the fact that she's a woman, she didn't even get into race. She didn't even get into her gender.
BROWNSTEIN: At all.
SINGLETON: It's obvious. So tactically speaking, those are all very smart things.
HUNT: Yeah, it is --
BROWNSTEIN: At all. Never, never brought up -- you know, the history of her candidacy. This was about I am ready to be president.
You know, we talked about this before, when we talked about double haters, why do double hitters exist? Because there was not a majority that wanted to reelect Joe Biden. And there's not a majority that want Donald Trump back in the White House.
[05:10:04]
So to some extent, her -- I thought she was she went on, more than I expected in making the case against Trump, because you don't entirely have to do that. There's not a majority that you -- what you have to do is reassure those who are already inclined not to put Trump back in the White House, that you are an acceptable alternative and the presence last night -- you know, the vigor, as you know John Kennedy, John F. Kennedy might have said was I thought the principal argument more than any specific thing she said she was the message right.
HUNT: Well, and if you one of the key tests I think for political events, obviously, this is something you listen to with the sound on. But if you watch it with the sound off, right, there is a specific presentation. It was it was frankly, a contrast with how Hillary Clinton did it in 2016.
BROWNSTEIN: Doug Sosnik test, right? Who looks best with the sound off?
HUNT: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
HUNT: Love a -- love a good Doug Sosnik reference at 5:00 in the morning.
Very briefly, Meghan, there was a lot of speculation about Beyonce showing up here at this convention. There was a TMZ report that she was coming, someone put up on, I don't -- I don't always like to pull tweets, but this one was funny, the DNC planning a surprise. I'm told this is from a show called "Nathan for You", I hope you're hungry for nothing.
But did they let this go on too long? The speculation.
HAYS: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was kind of it just got a little out of control. The rumor started yesterday or Wednesday and they just kept going. So, yes. But also, I mean, I guess it drum up some -- some interest for people to tune in that normally probably wouldn't have tuned in. But I think strategically having her here yesterday would have been -- having Beyonce here yesterday would have been taking away from the message and taking away from her speech.
HUNT: So you definitely want to be the biggest star.
HAYS: Yeah.
HUNT: Right?
HAYS: Yeah. But yeah, to answer your question, yes, it went on.
HUNT: And as Meghan knows, I was texting her all night last night being like, is she coming or not?
All right. Up next here on CNN THIS MORNING, Donald Trump has a long list of complaints about Kamala Harris's speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She didn't talk about China. She didn't talk about fracking. She didn't talk about crime.
Images of their catastrophic --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: He posted more than 40 times on social media last night. He called into three different shows afterward. We'll show you a little bit about what he had to say.
Plus, Kamala Harris makes her pitch to the middle class and lays out her -- or some of her economic plan.
And it was a somber moment. This was really quite something -- Americans impacted by gun violence told their heartbreaking stories on stage at the DNC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIMBERLY MATA-RUBIO, DAUGHTER KILLED IN UVALDE, TEXAS SCHOOL SHOOTING: We are taken to a private room where police tell us she isn't coming home. Uvalde is national news. Parents everywhere reach for their children. I reach out for the daughter I will never hold again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:17:13]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences -- but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. (END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: While Kamala Harris made her case against a second Donald Trump presidency here at the DNC last night, Trump seemed to be paying very close attention. He reacted to Harris in real time, a long series of Truth Social posts published to his account during Harris speech.
Is she talking about me? Trump posted at one point. Well, other posts targeted some of Harris specific policies.
Shortly after the speech concluded, Trump joined Fox News. Then he went on Newsmax. Then he called back into Fox News.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: Why didn't she do the things that she's complaining about? All of these things that she talked about, were going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do everything. But she didn't do any of it. She could have done it 3-1/2 years ago, she could do it tonight by leaving the auditorium and going to Washington, D.C., and closing the border.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Panel is back.
Ron Brownstein, what would you make of how Trump so reacted?
BROWNSTEIN: I thought he simultaneously showed his greatest asset and greatest vulnerability, the greatest asset is that 60 percent of Americans, even after the switch, 60 percent of Americans say they are worse off because of the policies of the Biden administration.
And when he kind of argues, well, you know, she said she's going to fix it, she's been there and it's been getting worse, that is probably his best argument between now and November. The weakness is her, you know, her core argument is, do you really want to go back to four more years of the kind of chaos and division and volatility of Trump and all of that was on full display.
But you know, one thing that is true for all the excitement and the importance of eliminating the concern among voters that the Democrats are nominating someone who was not capable of doing the job anymore, which is real and has propelled her enormously, most Americans do not think they are better off as a result of the Biden administration, and she still has to navigate through that, through that headwind.
And he reminded that that is not gone. That has not disappeared.
HUNT: I mean, one thing, Margaret, that that stuck out to me, and they have fished around, right, for the best way to push back against her. And Trump has kind of gone back and forth between the policy arguments that Ron points out, but also the personal attacks.
But the one thing that that he did say that did stick out to me is like, okay, well why didn't she do this over the course of the last 3.5 years? How is Kamala Harris going to answer that?
TALEV: She's going to need to answer it. Well, I think what we saw last night, to the extent that she spoke about the economy was kind of her version of Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain".
[05:20:09]
She did suggest that she has been to the grocery store by saying that she and her opponent had, you know, she did all that stuff. But what are you going to do about it? Why is there inflation now? Why has it been so difficult to get under control? Would any administration have experienced inflation or were there policies particular to the Biden administration that helped fuel that inflation?
And I think on the board -- these are the two things she's going to be most vulnerable on if the polls that we've seen for the last year hold up, which are inflation, the cost of housing, the price of goods, and the border and border security and I think a convention speech is a time to create a mood and set a feeling. But like, hey, guess what? Voting starts in a few weeks.
HAYS: Yeah.
TALEV: You know, so there could be -- no, I mean, it's true. So, yes, 74 days or whatever until Election Day. But early voting begins in September in battleground states. So --
HUNT: And this is August 23rd. So we are -- we are just a handful of days from September.
Shermichael, one of the things Trump talked about when he called into Fox News was a Project 2025, which is something Democrats have highlighted quite a bit here. It does actually seem, based on his comments, that he seems to realize or looking at -- be looking at the same data that Democrats are looking at in that its a problem for him because this is how he talked about it. Let's listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: Well, she knows I have nothing to do with Project '25. They throw it out, a group of people got together. They did a thing.
I haven't even seen it. I don't want to see it. I told them specifically. I don't want to see it.
People know where I stand. I lower taxes. She's raising taxes.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: So, he's basically -- we know we've reported here at CNN that many of the people that worked on this plan were actually Trump advisers.
What do you make of what he said?
SINGLETON: I mean, I worked in the former president's administration. I worked for Dr. Carson. It's like if I were to go work for a think tank, all of a sudden, the ideas and projects I worked on, the ideas and projects of my previous boss -- absolutely not.
I mean, I understand why Democrats are attempting to gin up fear where certain aspects of Project 2025. I've read the 900-plus pages and some of it is a bit ludicrous, but at the end of the day, you can only scare people so much. At the end of the day, you can only excite people so much.
When the fear wanes, when the excitement wanes and people wake up the next day, to Margaret and Ron's point, they have to deal with the fact that that credit card defaults are up, CNBC had a report that came out several days ago talking about the number of Americans who aren't able to pay their mortgages or pay their rent. I mean, these are very saleable things for a lot of people.
So I get the fear tactics I also get the excitement. But that does not allow people to have money in their pockets to deal with the very real issues that they're facing.
HUNT: Quick last word, Meghan.
HAYS: Yeah. No. And I agree with you that people need to have a plan and understand her plan. I think that's what the next 74 days are about. And to Margaret's point, this was for a mood to set and some overarching ideas.
But Donald Trump has lied continuously through the last four years when he was president and then now on the campaign. And so for people not to think that project 2025 is his idea is a little bit ludicrous on that end, too.
HUNT: Well, certainly, Democrats were trying to make sure Americans were convinced that it was definitely his idea, he's trying to say, no, it's not. I think that tells you everything you need to know about where each side thinks this is headed.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, Kamala Harris wading into a difficult subject during her acceptance speech. We'll show you what she said about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and how she says shed handle the situation as president.
And, an unexpected ovation.
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
HUNT: Maybe not unexpected, but certainly emotional. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth warren moved to tears while she got a long and loud welcome from the crowd on the final night of the DNC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:28:45]
HUNT: All right, 28 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: I respect him, he respects me. I have no idea if he's going to endorse me.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: Donald Trump calling into Fox after Democrats closed their convention. He and RFK Jr. both going to be in Arizona today with Kennedy expected to drop out of the race and possibly endorse Trump.
Late yesterday, Kennedy withdrew his name from the Arizona ballot.
Today, CIA Director Bill Burns is heading to Cairo to discuss a possible ceasefire in Gaza. The visit comes during a back and forth over an agreement between Israel and Hamas. Over the next few days, mediators are set to work through various sticking points in the proposed three phase agreement.
A volcano in Iceland spewing hot lava and smoke for the sixth time since December. Iceland's minister for foreign affairs says the impact is limited to a
local area which was apparently evacuated. The fissure was about 2.5 miles long. It grew by a mile in 40 minutes. Wow.
All right. A temperature whiplash continuing across the country today heat alerts in the south. More fall-like temperatures across the northeast. Hawaii keeping a close eye on a tropical storm, or just I wonder who's awake at this hour watching in Hawaii.
Let's get straight to our weatherman Van Dam, the -- our meteorologist.
Derek, you have the latest. What's going on?
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hey. Yeah, I think, Kasie, there's a little bit of confusion in Mother Nature.
