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CNN This Morning
Harris Puts Trump On Defense During First Debate; Swift Endorses Harris; Hurricane Francine Expected To Make Landfall Today. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired September 11, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:42]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Wednesday, September 11th.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
(BEGIN VIDEEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She got zero votes. And when she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Donald Trump, Kamala Harris face-to-face on the debate stage for the first and possibly final time. We'll show you what happened.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
TRUMP: People don't leave my rallies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Trump takes the bait. Kamala Harris under the former president's skin, putting him on the defensive.
And then there's this --
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
HUNT: A superstar endorsement. How Taylor Swift support for Harris can cause a problem for Trump.
(MUSIC)
HUNT: Five a.m. on the East Coast, a live look at Capitol Hill on this Wednesday morning.
Good morning after the big debate. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
The morning after the debate feeling, very different for Democrats today than it was back in June, I spent all of last night and frankly, some time this morning corresponding with allies of the vice president's campaign and they feel it's just kind of putting it mildly. She did what she needed to do in the debate.
From the opening moments, Vice President Harris seems to be trying to go on offense. She went out of her way to shake Donald Trump's hand at the beginning, and she framed Donald Trump's answers this way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: I'm going to tell you on this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Candidates sparred on issues that range from the economy, immigration, January 6, and then there was this contentious exchange over Trump's Supreme Court justice picks ending Roe versus Wade.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Now, it's not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.
HARRIS: They did exactly as he intended. And now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care in one state. It provides prison for life.
Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Harris's campaign felt that exchange was a particular high point. One top Harris adviser, David Plouffe, who also advised President Obama, noted that there's a 40-point gap in undecided voters who are with Harris in the point that she was making there as opposed to what Donald Trump was saying.
Each candidate also took moments last night to try to argue they would be the stronger leader when dealing with Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, okay? They respect me. They don't respect Biden. How would you respect him? Why? For what reason? He hasn't even made a phone call in two years to Putin, hasn't spoken
anybody.
HARRIS: Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe starting with Poland. And why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor, and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So then, there's. The question of whether the biggest moment of debate night may have happened actually just after the debate concluded.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift posting on Instagram, she cited in part a women's right to control her own body, she endorsed Kamala Harris and she signed the letter Taylor Swift, childless cat lady.
Joining me now to discuss all this, Leah Wright Rigueur, CNN political analyst and historian, Ron Brownstein, CNN political analyst, Bakari Sellers, also a CNN political commentator, and David Polyansky, who is a Republican strategist.
Welcome to all of you. Thanks for certain off. I feel like I just kind of went to bed after the day in fairness.
[05:05:03]
So I appreciate you guys hanging in there with me.
Ron Brownstein, let's start with the big picture here. Because there were such high stakes for Kamala Harris in this debate. She had not been its kind of forum before. She was facing someone who had been on this stage multiple full times.
I have to say the Democrats that I talked to are absolutely thrilled this morning. Is that your takeaway, too? What are you looking at?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the only way that debate could have gone better for her would have been if it was in October 20th, and not September 10th which is not an inconsiderable point.
You know, I felt after the first debate with Biden that if not for Biden's obvious deterioration, we would have been talking about how much Donald Trump's capacity to deliver an argument, to stay on point, to craft a message, had declined. And that's what we saw tonight.
I mean, the age contrast, the energy contrast, the vigor contrast --
HUNT: Last night, technically.
BROWNSTEIN: -- you know, last night, yeah, I guess it was -- it's still -- still are one. You know, one of the key problems Democrats have faced in this race is that Donald Trump's retrospective job approval rating has been increasing to a point where it has been higher in many polls and it was at any point during his presidency. Now why is that? It's because voters I think have been judging him mostly through the lens of what they didn't like about Biden, particularly inflation.
What the debate did last night was remind voters everything else that comes with Donald Trump. And just one last point, Trump sounded like someone who is calling into a Fox News show. I mean, he has spent so much time speaking to his core audience, which is still a strength and, you know, he's going to turn out a lot of those people that he thought -- I think he had lost the ability to talk to a broader audience.
Defending the January 6 rioters, saying that everybody wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned, claiming again that he won the election and kind of the peak of this, insisting that in a very kind of racist argument that immigrants are eating people's cats and dogs.
It was all -- he looked like someone who was coming out of a dark movie theater in des sunshine and kind of squinting because he has spent so much time talking to this narrow universe, he really had nothing to say to a broader audience.
Now, real quick, I mean, the underlying realities are still there, 60 percent of Americans think they are not better off because of the policies of the Biden administration. When Trump was able to get to that, it's a reminder that those are going to be headwinds for Harris, but she couldn't have done any more than she did last night.
HUNT: Well, David Polyansky and Leah, I i want you to weigh in and obviously want everybody to weigh in on this.
But, David, I want to -- I would like you to defend -- to address this point of the -- because I got multiple notes from people say, wow, it's like I think we have seen which candidate is entirely online because there were these all of these moments where Trump was focused on issues that seem very in one corner of the universe.
I, you know, I was talking to -- it's anecdata, but when you get texts from all your family members who don't really pay attention to this stuff until big moment like this, they're kind of like, what is this -- what is he talking about?
DAVID POLYANSKY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I don't know fully, but look, I think last night, all of us that have been a part of politics for most of our adult lives, and participated in debates, know one truism, which is if you end up sending their candidate to the spin room after the debate, you didn't win.
And last night, Donald Trump went to the spin room inexplicably and took questions from the press. The vice president went to a debate watch party. It's a pretty good sign of where they both though, the night ended up. And, you know, in terms of the message -- well, look, she was incredibly well-prepared. Make no mistake. You could see that from the start.
But I think the most important part of it where she was on offense from the minute she -- not only the minute she started talking, but the minute she walked on stage, she walked across to former President Trump's podium and made him shake her hand.
She was prepared. She was confident. She was on offense from the start.
I think that played into his worst fears in terms of not only not being able to proactively drive his message put to your point, fall back to what he's comfortable with, which is more conservative media.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I think from the very beginning, one of the things that Ron Brown -- Ron brought up was that those of us who watched Joe Biden versus Donald Trump realizes that Donald Trump gave the second worst debate performance in American history.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
SELLERS: The problem was that the person who gave the worst debate in American history was also on that stage. And so when you actually tell --
HUNT: Now, you've been free to say that.
(CROSSTALK)
SELLERS: Listen, 75 days makes a lot of difference. When you take -- when you take Joe Biden out of that debate, you see someone who is not capable and that gave Kamala Harris a little -- a little bit of the confidence.
Look, she was nervous the first 5, 6, 7 minutes, everybody saw it in. And she had the ability to bait him and counter punch him, and that's what I said this debate was going to be about.
It reminded me so much of Ryan Garcia versus Devin Haney, which was a fight that happened maybe three months ago.
[05:10:02]
HUNT: You're going to have to fill me on that one.
SELLERS: But no, Devin Haney was supposed to be a jabber and a good puncher. And Ryan Garcia was a counter-puncher and Kamala Harris came out and she baited, she baited, she used a jab and then she counterpunched. She counterpunched. She was able to hit him, pivot and move to the American people.
Last night, you saw someone who was very prepared and you knew about 9:28. I think I marked at 9:28 was when this thing was over. That's when she went into the rallies. When she started talking about his rallies, which for him is his --
HUNT: It wasn't clear it was going to be over at that point.
SELLERS: Oh, but no, I think --
HUNT: But once he's sort of people came back at her --
SELLERS: Those of us around the orbit said, look, at that point, he was going to unravel. It was going to go downhill and she was going to be able to find a groove. Up into that point, it might have been even. It might have been nip and tuck.
BROWNSTEIN: The abortion answer was before that, that was pretty strong.
SELLERS: She was strong, though. She was strong, but he unraveled --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
SELLERS: He unraveled on rallies. She gave a very sound answer on reproductive freedom, scoring on substance, but he was done for after she questioned the size of his rallies.
HUNT: Well, it was two-pronged, right? Because on the one hand, she had to make a case for herself her own policies and she was put on comfortable footing when she was asked very at that mirror at the top of the debate about abortion. And we saw that some of that nervousness fade away when she did that.
And, Leah, then as Bakari points out, the other thing that she was clearly had spent a lot of time practicing was how to get under Donald Trump's skin.
And the other thing that kept sticking out to me too was that she clearly had studied how to use the split screen to her own advantage. And we've seen times when that can cause problems for candidates. I mean, when Barack Obama debated Mitt Romney, the first time, it was the way he look kind of agitated in the box next to Mitt Romney that made it seem as though he was struggling.
She was doing things like this. I mean, if you've opened your social media feed this morning, that is what you are seeing.
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN POLITICAL HISTORIAN: Yeah. And I think also one of the things that she did really quite effectively as she has this line that she's been repeating over and over on the campaign trail, which is that Donald Trump is a deeply unserious man. He is a deeply unserious candidate, who has serious consequences for the American public.
Those facial expressions, that mastery of the split-screen, was all about showing the nation just how unserious, but how dangerous he is. And I have to say, she -- you know, I actually think that we're not giving her enough credit. She eviscerated him last night in ways that are going to are -- that I have not seen in, you know, 60-some-odd years of modern American presidential debates. One of the things that I think we are not used to is that were not used to seeing Donald Trump be beat so mercilessly on stage. We are used to kind of Donald Trump who can get under people's skin, who comes up with nicknames, who really just dominates in bullies, right? This is the through line for the Republican presidential primaries in 2016, and again in 2024.
But what we saw with somebody like Kamala Harris is that she put him on the -- she put him on the defensive. She controlled the narrative from start to finish, and she did exactly what she was trying to do, which is she told the American people who she was, but she set the narrative about who Donald Trump was and just how dangerous he was for democracy.
SELLERS: One of the -- one of the things that I was afraid of just as someone who -- I wasn't in the room but talking to people in the room, I was afraid of the imagery of Donald Trump standing next to the Kamala Harris, and I will readily admit that because of the fact that she's about 5'4", maybe he's 6'4", 265, 255, whatever he is.
But I just felt like that imagery was just going to be this personification of strength. The fact sheet went over there and own that at the very beginning. It's just -- for people watching -- I mean, for every woman in the room, I was talking to my wife and others who were just like, oh, yeah, from the very beginning, she brought it. This is what we did deal with every day. We don't care about the fact that I'm 5'4", in heels, you know, I have to jump over these high bars.
She took it to him from the very beginning and I think that actually is something small. But for her, I think it actually set the tone.
BROWNSTEIN: Contrast it with Biden walking out. It was a different debate before anybody spoke.
HUNT: Yeah, for sure.
All right. Coming up next here on CNN THIS MORNING: Taylor Swift labeling herself a childless cat lady and endorsing Kamala Harris. But her support play a key role with younger voters.
Plus, the vice president's strategy of baiting Trump into one of his favorite topics seemed to pay off for her.
And then there's this, Kamala Harris reminded voters that she is a gun owner as Donald Trump argued that she wants to take away Americans' firearms.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is a radical left, liberal that would do this. She wants to confiscate your guns.
HARRIS: We're not taking anybody's guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:19:06]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She has a plan to defund the police. She has a flat plan to confiscate everybody's gun.
HARRIS: In this business about taking everyone's guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away. So stop the continuous lying about this stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Kamala Harris there reminding Americans that she is a gun owner. It is something that she has mentioned. She did five years ago when she was running for president and she brought up that relatively unknown fact, again, trying to focus on -- or appearing to signal her focus on moderates ahead of the election day on November 5.
Bakari, I'll be honest, I had forgotten that this is something that she had talked about in the past because it was something that perked my ears up immediately. My sense this reminding people of this might do one of the things that many advisers have been telling her to do, which is identify more with moderate pragmatic voters because I feel like my surprise may reflect the way other Americans might feel about this.
[05:20:07]
SELLERS: I think it was twofold. It was one to point out the fact that Donald Trump is a -- just a consummate liar, and she was able to articulate that over and over and over again. You got to realize the strategy was to hit him, pivot and move to the American people.
So it was, look, you're a liar, boom, hit you, jab, boom, and then pivot to the American people like, look, I'm a gun owner, just like the rest of you guys. I'm not going to take away your guns. That's just something that is so far-fetched.
And on this particular issue, she's very sound because I think it's not an issue that is polled that much anymore. You know, there's some elections where you have like second amendment or who's better on common sense gun reform or whatever that poll extremely high. I don't think it's one of those issues.
But with school shootings in the news and those type of things and violent crime, someone who can actually talk about common sense gun reform and be a gun owner. I think goes along way.
BROWNSTEIN: You know, we've talked a couple of weeks ago about how Todd Divine (ph) has been doing Democratic Electoral College strategies since the 1980s, describes the pivotal state in the country as MiPeWi (ph), which is basically Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, they voted with the winner in every election since 1980.
They have voted the same way in every election since 1980, except for 1988 when two of them went for Bush and one for Dukakis, blue blue- collar white voters are a bigger share of the electorate there than they are nationally. A lot of them own guns, a lot of what you heard. I thought last night reflected the primacy, the likelihood that those states again, are going to be the tipping point states in the election, not only guns, but fracking obviously.
And her -- she -- her advocacy of gun control, the Democratic advocacy for gun control over the last 20 years as part of the reasons why places like Oakland County, Michigan, the suburbs of Philadelphia, Madison, in Wisconsin, had become so overwhelmingly Democratic. I mean, it's not only an issue that helps Republicans, but she does have to maintain a baseline of competitiveness in -- among non-urban blue collar voters in the states that are likely to decide the election. And talking about herself as a gun owner may help her clear that bar.
HUNT: All right. Still to come here after the break, today, of course, we remember a dark day in our nation's history. It is the anniversary of 911. We're going to look at how President Biden and Vice President Harris are honoring the lives lost that tragic, terrible day.
Plus, in last night's debate, everything from abortion to the economy was on tap last night. We're going to take a closer look at what the candidates had to say about the issues.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit.
TRUMP: She copied Biden's plan and it's like four sentences, like run, spot, run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:26:59]
HUNT: All right, 26 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup.
Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks. A live look at New York City on this Wednesday, as we mark this terrible, tragic day. President Biden and Vice President Harris will travel to New York this morning for the ceremony at Ground Zero, and then they'll go to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon for wreath-laying ceremonies. Donald Trump also plans to travel to New York and Shanksville.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too many families have lost loved ones and many families are still looking for answers. They deserve those answers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo faced tough questions from a house subcommittee about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic the hearing focused on nursing home deaths, and a controversial 2020 directive from the state department of health and hospital discharges in nursing home admissions.
And take a look at the web cam video of the Bridge Fire spreading through Los Angeles national forest in California. Thousands of people in Wrightwood forced to flee their homes and businesses, 4,000 acres already burned by yesterday afternoon.
All right. Time now for weather. Hurricane Francine strengthening this morning, expecting to make landfall in Louisiana later today.
Let's get to our meteorologist Allison Chinchar.
Allison, good morning. What should folks expect today right?
ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right. So, so the real question is whether or not this intensifies even further. And to say it category two before it makes landfall, landfall for this storm is a little bit more than say about roughly 12 hours from now.
Right now at the moment, you've got those sustained winds at 90 miles per hour gusting up to 115. You've got a lot of the watches and warnings in place. The hurricane center saying it does expect it to get up to 100 miles per hour by early this afternoon. That would put it at a category two hurricane and then continued which make its way inland, likely landfall time around late this afternoon, early into the evening hours and then continuing to spread a lot of the heavy rain inland.
We've already had very heavy rain so far. Several of these areas in Texas picking up at least 3, 4, even as much as seven inches of rain. In Brownsville, that means they've had more rain in the last 48 hours than they would normally see in the entire month of September.
More rain is on the way. Were starting to see some of those outer bands begin to spread into areas of Louisiana. That's one of the concerns today. Another is going to be obviously the potential for damaging winds, but also tornadoes and water spouts.
And that's not just for areas of Louisiana, but that spreads all the way over into the panhandle of Florida. That's going to be concerned this afternoon and well into the evening hours, too. We talk about the heavy rain along the Gulf Coast, but look at how far that rain spreads inland, even a place like say, Memphis -- Memphis, Tennessee could possibly get four to six inches of rain out of this.
Storm surge, certainly, going to be a big concern, especially in the red area here. You can see south of Morgan City.
Kasie, we could be looking at five to ten feet of storm surge. HUNT: All right. Allison Chinchar for us this morning -- Allison, thanks very much for that.
And still ahead here on CNN TIS MORNING, the biggest moment of the night might have happened after the debate concluded. Taylor Swift announced she is endorsing the vice president. What this might mean for the race.
[05:30:00]
