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New CNN Poll: Harris Leads In Michigan & Wisconsin; Russia Launches New Strikes On Kyiv And Lviv; More Than 60 Million People Under Heat Alerts. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired September 04, 2024 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:37]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Wednesday, September 4th.

Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I can't believe that there's going to be a close election. You know, we're leading in the polls.

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HUNT: Brand new, this hour, as the race for the White House kicks into high gear, brand new CNN polling shows a dead heat race in critical battleground states.

And --

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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I ask Detroit, Michigan, are you ready to have your voices heard?

(CHEERING)

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HUNT: After slipping from red to blue, in 2020, Michigan shaping up yet again to be key to unlocking victory in 2024. we're going to take a deeper dive into this critical state.

And -- the Justice Department files criminal charges against the leaders of Hamas for the October 7 attacks as the White House looks to forge a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

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HUNT: All right, 5:00 a.m. here in Washington. A live look at Capitol Dome on this Wednesday morning.

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

The post-Labor Day sprint to the White House is on. A new CNN polling just out this hour shows a neck and neck race. The polls conducted just after the end of the Democratic National Convention, and they have Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin, just outside of the margin of error in both of those places. Donald Trump holds an outright lead in Arizona, 49 to 44 percent in that Sun Belt state.

Three other battleground states, there is no clear leader, with Harris and Trump in a statistical dead-heat in Nevada and Georgia, a state central to victory in both campaigns. Pennsylvania is a dead even tie.

The new polling comes just six days before the next pivotal moment in this campaign, the first presidential debate heat between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, where Vice President Harris rallied union workers earlier this week.

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HARRIS: It's going to be a tight race to the very end. So let's not pay too much attention to those polls. And we are the underdogs in this race. And we have some hard work done ahead of us, but here's the beauty of us in this room. We like hard work. Hard work is good work.

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HUNT: All right. Joining me now to discuss all this, Erin Doherty, political reporter for "Axios", and Tia Mitchell, Washington correspondent for "The Atlanta Journal Constitution".

Good morning to both of you. Thanks so much for being here.

So, we've got this new polling in swing states. It's the -- you know it's Labor Day when you're getting a likely voter screen and battleground state polling. Lets see, let's all say, I may be a political nerd heard but it's -- it's very interesting to be able to dig into some of these numbers.

And, Tia, our polling team really sort of describes this race that's coming down to Georgia and Pennsylvania because those are the two places. If the map stays largely the same, if Trump wins Georgia and Pennsylvania, that's the ball game for Harris, if she can hold Michigan and Wisconsin, and she can win in Pennsylvania, she'd have to add that little blue dot in Omaha to get there, but that would get her to 270.

This is a really close race, which, of course, is a huge change from when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket. What -- what are these numbers say to you?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Yeah, I think the change in like a month and a half is just astounding and it's proving a lot of the people who, you know that groundswell behind the scenes, and then in front of the scenes to remove Joe Biden, I think a lot of people are feeling vindicated by these poll numbers. I think it does continue to show that Georgia is going to be tight and that's why I think -- Harris also has a bigger ground game right now in all of the battleground states. But it does show that in Georgia, Harris is putting in a lot of work because it is so close and is so tight. But as you mentioned, she does have other pathways.

HUNT: Yeah, Erin, this was what -- Donald Trump was on a podcast with Lex Fridman on Tuesday, talking about how he is approaching this campaign because that, of course, has been the back the other half of the story.

[05:05:06]

Obviously, there's been the changes on the Democratic side, this sort of joy message that the Harris team has brought to the table. But then how Trump is choosing to run in this election. And he was defending himself and his approach in this podcast. Let's watch that. We'll talk about it.

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LEX FRIDMAN, PODCAST HOST: I think you are at your best when you're talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.

TRUMP: Yeah. I think you have to criticize though. I think -- I think they're nasty. They came up with a story that I looked down and I call soldiers had died in World War I suckers and losers. It's a made-up story.

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HUNT: So he says, I think they are nasty. And then there was also this op-ed from Lindsey Graham in "The New York Times" where he basically argues Lex Fridman was trying to hand Donald Trump that, right, saying, you're at your best when you do it this way.

Graham says this: Far more worthwhile for Mr. Trump is his record of success. The road to the White House run through a vigorous policy debate, not an exchange of barbs.

Clearly, that is not how Trump is approaching this heading into the debate.

ERIN DOHERTY, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Exactly, and former President Trump is trying to project confidence going into this debate, but also, he sort of acknowledging that he has not shifted his approach with Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, and obviously he sort of sharpened his attacks against President Biden for he had several months to sort of refine what he was going to say to try to compete with President Biden when he was at the top of the ticket.

And now with Harris, there, this is sort of his signal that he is going to be aggressive as we've seen him run in past campaigns. And I expect that during the presidential debate next week, we can expect to see several of the sort of sharp attacks against Kamala Harris unfold. HUNT: Of course, Tia, the Democratic side, right? One of the

criticisms of Harris has been that she has not necessarily delineated her policy views are distinctions from the sitting president in a way that certainly her critics would like to see. James Carville, longtime Democratic strategist, wrote this in an op-ed: To be the certified fresh candidate, Ms. Harris was clearly in decisively break from Mr. Biden on a set of policy priorities she believes would define her presidency. Don't run from your differences with the president. Embrace them, respectfully and honestly.

How do you look at that advice and what role does that have to play on the debate stage next week?

MITCHELL: So, I think the Harris campaign believes that as she traveled across the nation, you know, we've talked about this being a vibes campaign about joy and freedom. And they don't necessarily feel like people on the ground are clamoring for her to get way into the weeds on policy, but that's different than what she's going to have to accomplish on the debate stage. And quite frankly, there will be tens of millions of Americans possibly watching the debate.

And that's when she is going to have to drill down. She is going to have to be clear about the contrast. She's also going to have to be clear about her own evolutions just personally on some of these issues like fracking or border policy.

So that's where the debate stage, but I think they believe that they -- that voters that they're trying to make sure turnout for them aren't necessarily asking for those specifics. They want that broader message.

HUNT: So, Erin, one of the other themes, of course that were seeing and were we flush this out a little bit in our poll in terms of how men and women are breaking differently in the gender gap here is absolutely enormous. In Pennsylvania, men break for Trump 55 to 40 percent. Women go for Harris, 53 to 42 percent. It looks similar in Wisconsin. Men break for Trump 52 to 43 women. For Harris, 55 to 38 percent.

How do these realities help, help us understand what each of these candidates are doing on the trail?

DOHERTY: Yeah. As Tia mentioned, Vice President Harris is sort of trying to invoke this message of joy and optimism.

And I think that were also seeing, we saw last week during the CNN interview that Harris is not really making her gender or her race a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. When she was specifically asked about some of the offensive comments that former President Trump made about her, she very pointedly said, next question.

I think by not saying much about her gender or her race and sort of the history making nature of what her presidency would be if she's elected in November, she is sort of signaling that she would obviously be a historic candidate if she won, but she is focusing on the policy issues and again, these sort of centrist policy issues to appeal to a broad range of the electorate.

HUNT: All right. Erin Doherty, Tia Mitchell, thank you, guys both very much for being here this morning. I appreciate it.

All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING: A major cabinet reshuffle for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine's foreign minister tenders his resignation ahead of Zelenskyy's visit to the U.S. later this month.

Plus, a former top staffer to the governor of New York charged for allegedly acting as a Chinese agent.

And after a shocking Trump victory in Michigan eight years ago, the state, of course, flipped blue in 2020.

[05:10:04]

We're going to dig in to look at what both candidates would need to do to secure that state in 2024.

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TRUMP: Look, we did something that they're very angry about. We beat somebody that should have been beaten in an election that we weren't anticipated to win. But I told we're going to win because I came to Michigan the night before, we had 49,000 people. She came to Michigan the night before because she was told she may lose it.

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HUNT: All right. Breaking overnight, Russia launching a new round of missile and drone strikes in Kyiv and in Ukraine's western city of Lviv, near the border with NATO member Poland.

[05:15:07]

Poland now reporting its air defenses have been activated.

Also overnight, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tendered his resignation. The move comes as part of a major reshuffle within President Zelenskyy's cabinet, all ahead of his expected visit to the United States coming up later this month.

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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine and our state institutions must be set up so that Ukraine achieves all the results we need, all of us. To do this, we need to strengthen some areas of the government, and we have prepared personnel decisions but there will also be changes in the office. I'm also counting on a slightly different wait for certain areas of our foreign and domestic policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: And CNN's Christiane Amanpour joins us from Kyiv with the latest.

Christiane, so grateful to have you this morning. Help us understand this reshuffling. Why now and what's the impact?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: So the president did a address to the nation last night. And as you said, and you saw, he explained that there needs to be a reshuffle with 13 months into this war now. And certain ministers have been changed over the last couple of years, including the defense minister, the new one just in Washington to talk to the administration, talked to General Austin as well.

And they simply want I think to put a new face on to try to see who can be more powerful and more effective in which different positions, the formality I believe the resignations, so everybody has to submit their resignation and either the president and the parliament accepts it or doesn't, or maybe move certain people from one portfolio to another.

It's deemed that its considered that Dmytro Kuleba, who is very well known to the international community, who is the foreign minister who's extremely effective messenger for Ukraine's diplomatic and military posture and its -- and its needs. It's assumed that he will remain somewhere. We can't be 100 percent sure.

We did talk to him. I did yesterday before this announcement. And just after this massive attack on Poltava, in Central Ukraine, which ballistic missiles from Russia struck a military academy and re- energized the administration here, the government's years demand and request for anti-missile defense systems. This is what Kuleba told me yesterday.

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DMYTRO KULEBA, UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: I actually got myself from Poltava region. My father is from there. So this geography is very familiar to me. And we had a very detailed briefing and the main takeaway, the main lesson that I want to everyone again to hear about, and we will not get tired of reminding of it, this is just another reason why delivery of air defense systems to Ukraine must be expedited.

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AMANPOUR: So, Kasie, that was yesterday afternoon. And as you mentioned, overnight, yet another ferocious Russian barrage of missiles and they really are stepping up the use of ballistic missiles, which are really, really difficult. They're very strong, they happen very quickly. You can barely get to shelter by the time the air raid sirens has sounded and you try to do what you can to get to shelter. So that's why they cause a lot of deaths and injury.

But I did also speak to other seniors here in Kyiv and they do believe that their own system, that general system of production, of self- sufficiency , of really ramping up their own defense establishment has to begin in earnest, just begun, but it has to continue in earnest as well as trying to get as much weaponry from the United States and other allies -- Kasie.

HUNT: Yeah. Christiane, can I ask you -- obviously, we saw the Ukrainians trying to push into Russia to put pressure on Vladimir Putin. Now were seeing these ballistic missiles used.

How do you understand the interplay between those two things, and how does what the Ukrainians want to do on Russian soil play into what they're asking the U.S. for during this visit later this month?

AMANPOUR: So there is a lot of debate both externally and internally about what was the strategic point of the Kursk incursion because, yes, it is coincided with an uptick of Russians pushing into their frontline positions here in the east, threatening a key logistical hub. You've heard the name Pokrovsk, right? So that's that.

Plus now, we've seen this uptick in this past week of what I call the war of the cities. In other words really, you know, going all out all across this country.

Now, I asked Kuleba about it. They're very reluctant to associate them on the war of the cities, which is against infrastructure, not just energy infrastructure, but also they're trying to target military infrastructure as well.

[05:20:04]

And Kuleba says, look, the Russians, again, know that winter is coming up. They've already crippled 50 percent of our energy supplies over the past 30 months, and they're trying to really take us out over the winter.

And this is the terrible thing for morale, for actual practical daily life. It's a very difficult thing in country like this in the location that it is to have such little electricity with there is heat, energy, or whatever over these long dark, cold winter month.

At the same time, we know that the Russians, the Ukrainians, that they're trying to figure out how or whether there's any room to maneuver in trying to deescalate what we call the hot phase of this war. And so there's just a lot of negotiating happening on the battlefield essentially. And that's what it's all about.

As well as the Ukrainians still saying that they're not about to give up any territory. So this meeting in Washington associated around the U.N. General Assembly meeting, it's going to be very important because Zelenskyy says that he's going to present his four-point victory plan.

Again, I couldn't get the details out of Kuleba yesterday, but we'll see what it is.

HUNT: Yeah. No, it's a plan that's going to have a lot of relevance once this comes back around and his facing U.S. Congress, as well as something they've been very much looking for. Christiane Amanpour, so grateful to have you on. Thank you so much for

being there for us. I appreciate it.

And still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, with just 61 days until Election Day, the race, of course, comes down to the wire.

Coming up, were going to take a closer look at swing state of Michigan. It is purple. It's gone for two different parties in the last two elections.

Plus, the song you will no longer be hearing at Trump rallies. We'll take into that in our morning roundup.

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HUNT: All right. Twenty-five minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup.

In a few hours, a 17-year-old will be arraigned on attempted murder charges in San Francisco. He is accused of shooting the 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall during an attempted robbery this weekend. Pearsall left the hospital on Sunday.

And --

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HUNT: A federal judge ruling that Donald Trump must pause using the song "Hold On, I'm Coming" at his rallies. The decision coming after the estate of late R&B artist and songwriter Isaac Hayes asked for an emergency injunction to prevent the former president from using the song.

Take a look here. Pope Francis, welcome to the presidential palace ahead of his meeting with the Indonesian president. The pope is currently on his longest trip, yet, where he is getting countries in southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

All right. Time now for weather. More than 60 million people under heat alerts this morning as temperatures well above average continue in parts of the Western United States.

Let's get to our meteorologist, the weatherman, Derek Van Dam.

Derek, good morning to you. It's actually quite lovely.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Kasie. Welcome back.

HUNT: Thank you -- here on the East Coast. It feels a little bit like fall for the first day of school but sounds like not elsewhere.

VAN DAM: No. You want to talk about heat, you got to see this record that Phoenix just broke yesterday, 100 consecutive days where the temperature reached 100 degrees or higher. Phew, that's incredible, and very oppressive.

Previous record was 76 consecutive days of temperatures above 100 but they're shattering that. It's just really saying something about the summer that they've had many locations over the southwestern U.S. having the hottest summer on record, very consistent with our warming planet. And you can see the temperatures here over the next few days not abating much.

In fact, the heat will only build for portions like Los Angeles towards the Coachella Valley, Las Vegas, Phoenix. This is a 60 million Americans that are under heat alerts today and that stretches towards the Pacific Northwest. So, Portland to Seattle, not places you really think of when you talk about heat.

Well, yeah, you're going to warm up a very warm over the next several days. In fact, Portland will likely top above the 100 degree mark for the day tomorrow. So above average temperatures, that's the main story. Below average where were located across the eastern half of the country. Let's enjoy it while we can because we know now how quickly that can flip.

The flood threat continues across the Gulf Coastal States. Check it out, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, another few inches of rain.

Kasie, with this look at what they had to deal with yesterday in San Antonio. Hopefully, that's all done.

HUNT: Yikes! I would hope so.

And yes, I will say, Derek, the weather here is quite nice, so I'm going to take it while we can get him.

VAN DAM: Enjoy it.

HUNT: All right. Derek Van Dam for us this morning -- Derek, thank you. I'll see you next hour.

All right. Coming up next here on CNN THIS MORNING, the Department of Justice charging several senior Hamas leaders, specifically focusing on their role in the October 7 attacks against Israel.

Plus, Michigan, of course, one of the states most likely decide the election. We're going to talk to two Michigan based journalists as the Biden-Harris campaigns make their final push to November.

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SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the lie at the heart of Kamala Harris's campaign. That if you elect her, she somehow going to be different than she already has been in office word her policies have caused higher grocery prices, higher food prices, and, of course, a wide-open southern border.

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