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CNN This Morning
Harris Baits Trump In Contentious First Debate; CNN Poll: 63 Percent Say Harris Won The Debate With Trump; Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired September 11, 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]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: 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.
Plus, we'll show you more critical moments from last night's debate as Kamala Harris seemed to roll out practiced strategy. She got Donald Trump to take the bait.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, (D) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:35:00]
HUNT: All right, 5:34 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. That was the home of last night's presidential debate.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us as we continue to dig into what happened in that contentious debate last night between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
It's clear the vice president arrived in Philadelphia with the strategy to try to get under Trump's skin and debate him into arguing on her terms.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. TRUMP: I went to the Wharton School of Finance and many of those
professors -- the top professors think my plan is a brilliant plan, it's a great plan.
HARRIS: This is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent -- the Central Park Five.
TRUMP: The Central Park Five -- they admitted -- they said -- they pled guilty. And I said well, if they pled guilty -- they badly hurt a person -- killed a person, ultimately. And if they pled guilty then they pled we're not guilty.
Our elections are bad and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in -- they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in, practically.
HARRIS: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let's be clear about that. And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, the panel is back.
The back-and-forth with the eyes there as Donald Trump listened to her say that I think kind of says, like, the semiotics of that moment says it all.
And, I mean, Ron Brownstein, we have obviously -- I mean, look, we all cover politics. We pay very close attention. At the end of the day the opinions of the people that matter are the Independent voters, right?
And Ron, we do have a little bit of a clue in terms of how they perceived this. So when we asked who won the debate by party it broke down this way. Ninety-seven percent of Democrats thought Kamala Harris won. Only three percent said she did not. Thirty percent of Republicans were willing to say they thought she won the debate. But look at that -- 69 --
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Yeah.
HUNT: -- percent of Independent voters perceived it that way.
BROWNSTEIN: Well look, I mean, in many ways, Harris -- the Harris on the debate stage was the Harris on the convention stage. She was steelier than you might have expected. I mean, she projected someone who could be president.
And as I said before, I mean, Donald Trump's retrospective job approval has been rising because people have been seeing him mostly through the lens of the idea that groceries were cheaper, they had more money at the end of the week when he was president.
What he did over 90 minutes last night, and not only because she baited him -- many times it was because of his choices and what he chose to emphasize -- he reminded the country of everything else that goes with Donald Trump being back in the White House.
I mean, I still think there is room and necessity for her to imprint on voters more of what she would do to make their lives better. But in terms of the personal contrast that was established last night of her as someone who is kind of steady, strong, normal and Trump, angry, chaotic, kind of out of control, it's not clear to me why they would want to risk another debate and have anything other than that personal contrast be what Americans are thinking about.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, (D) FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: Kasie, let me -- let me push back on the framing of your question if you don't mind this morning. Because you said that -- in laying out the question to Ron, you said that the people that matter are Independent voters.
And those of us who are in Kamala Harris orbit will tell you that she has to improve from 80 to 90 percent with Black voters. She has to improve with Hispanic voters as well.
When Joe Biden was the nominee --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
SELLERS: -- it was a question of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or the couch.
HUNT: Um-hum.
SELLERS: And we were -- we were deeply concerned about the couch --
BROWNSTEIN: Losing to the couch.
SELLERS: -- because people were not going to vote for Donald Trump, but they were going to come out in droves -- or just stay home in droves and vote for the couch.
What she was able to last night was ratchet up -- because you saw in the same poll Democratic intensity. Those people who thought she did well, it was the high 90 percent. If she's able to continue to do that -- if she's able to touch 90 percent with Black voters -- right now I hate -- I hate being in Ron Brownstein's lane but right now Hispanic voters --
DAVID POLYANSKY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, SEN. TED CRUZ: Go in there.
SELLERS: -- Hispanic voters are in the high 30 percents for Donald Trump. If they creep below 35 percent --
HUNT: I mean, some of those people are Independent voters --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- in these surveys, Bakari. SELLERS: Yeah, but they are --
HUNT: Like, they're not all registered --
SELLERS: No, no, no, but there's some --
HUNT: I don't think we're leaving them out of that.
SELLERS: What I'm trying to say, and I think that the -- I know Ron talked about this a long time ago, but I think it was also in The New York Times. She has some belt-tightening to do with the base as well. And there is some slippage there that I think she improved on last night.
POLYANSKY: And by the way, it's not just the base. If you look at that polling in the swing states, the swing voters -- it's an increasing number of Black --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
POLYANSKY: -- and Hispanic voters that are making up that population. It's only 58 percent white, which is usually upwards of 70 percent or higher.
[05:40:00]
SELLERS: Right.
POLYANSKY: And so I think Bakari is on to something there.
But, you know, in addition, I think when you look at those clips with Donald Trump it's not that she got under his skin that matters the most. I don't think the swing voters or the voters that matter the most in the seven battleground states are going to make a decision based on him getting upset about an implication that she makes.
I think it's that she took him off message. His closing statement, which you could tell he had practiced and was prepared for --
SELLERS: It was good.
POLYANSKY: -- was a great closing message and should have been what he drove all across all last night. And instead, when he took the bait, he was off message. He wasn't driving what his advisers wanted him to and needed him to.
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN POLITICAL HISTORIAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: So that's -- so I think that's really interesting because the message throughout was incoherent. And this is one of the things that we have largely missed from Donald Trump that I think Kamala Harris has understood by watching his rallies.
One, it is clear that she prepared not just in terms of debating but also that she has been -- to use a sports analogy, she's been watching the tapes. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
RIGUEUR: She's been going back. She has been watching what he has been saying at his rallies and the kinds of things -- really alarming things that are proliferating in these spaces. And so she was able to drive him into the -- into that space so much so that I think one of the takeaways for the majority of people that were watching this was it doesn't matter what the housing statement was, right? It was just so incoherent. It was all over the place.
I mean, we were talking about there's one moment -- and I think over the course of the campaign, Donald Trump's team has made -- has made explicit statements about how they have made gains with Black and Latino voters, right?
He undid all of that in a matter of hours today, talking about Haitians eating dogs, right -- eating dogs and cats. Talking about sororities and fraternities -- historically Black fraternities and sororities as some kind of party, dismissing their importance. Once again, bringing up the whole Black jobs things.
And I think this is something that the American public is deeply concerned about. We certainly saw that in the kind of snap polling that came out of this about how people are concerned about the messaging that he's putting out -- that there is no message.
HUNT: Very briefly.
BROWNSTEIN: And it was notable that her answer on his history of race baiting was very different than what she did with Dana.
SELLERS: Thank you, yes.
BROWNSTEIN: She did -- she did not just brush it off. She went there. She is aware that she has to improve with those voters. And that was not only one of the strongest answers of the night, that was one of the strongest answers I've ever seen in a presidential debate.
HUNT: Very interesting.
All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, a second debate? The Harris campaign wants one. We'll let you know how Donald Trump is responding to that challenge.
Plus, that endorsement for Kamala Harris from the world's most famous childless cat lady.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAYLOR SWIFT, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "Shake it Off."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:47:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, there eating the dogs -- the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Cats on the campaign trail. That was Donald Trump peddling a baseless conspiracy theory that migrants are eating people's pets.
To the most famous self-proclaimed childless cat lady endorsing Kamala Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SWIFT: Singing "ME!"
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: There is, indeed, no one like her. Taylor Swift took to Instagram and she wrote this. "I'm voting for Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them." And she added, "I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate Tim Walz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman's right to her own body for decades."
Last night, Donald Trump didn't shy away from his role in overturning Roe versus Wade.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: What I did is something. For 52 years they've been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states, and through the genius, and heart, and strength of six Supreme Court justices we were able to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Here was Harris making clear that she wants federal abortion rights protected federally once again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade. And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, David Polyansky, I'm going to put you on the spot because you have a daughter who is a big Swiftie --
POLYANSKY: Uh-huh.
HUNT: -- so you probably know as much or more as anyone at this table --
POLYANSKY: I doubt that.
HUNT: -- about just how people respond to her. But also as the Republican at the table, I'm really interested to know do you think Taylor Swift stepping in and doing this is going to move votes? Is going to make a difference?
POLYANSKY: Sure, 100 percent. You know, look, it was a great night for Democrats last night. There should be some celebration. It will last a day or two and then this is going to get back to the race that we've seen -- a very tight race, which last time was about an 11,000- vote difference in places like Georgia and Arizona.
So the debate will impact and move voters. It'll help shape the narrative. An endorsement like this can really move the needle over the long haul, especially with younger voters -- with voters that I think Bakari talked about earlier -- people that she needs to motivate to get out and vote, and even if they are going to vote to make sure they vote for her and have an enthusiasm about them.
I think it's -- I think it was the biggest part of last night, to be honest.
[05:50:00]
HUNT: One of the things that I thought was interesting Bakari about how she framed this was she said that she was voting for Harris. In many traditional endorsements people will then say to their followers, supporters -- people, you should vote for this person also.
Taylor Swift didn't do that. She said in her endorsement you do your research. You figure out who is the candidate for you. And by the way, you need to be registered to vote. She's clearly talking to a group of people who she realizes may not interact with the political process. It seems to me that if there is power here it's in that.
And I actually -- I give her credit for taking the sort of hands off approach instead of trying to tell people what to do.
SELLERS: You know, my 5 1/2-year-old twin Sadie, she is going to listen to "Bad Blood" this morning while eating breakfast and have a little dance party before they go to school. Like, we listen to Taylor Swift every morning in our household.
I also think that some -- that people aren't picking up on something else she did. Hillary Clinton, in 2016, was "I'm With Her" and she made the race more so about her, right, and not about the public at large. I mean, that's the biggest criticism of the Hillary Clinton, as much as a love the Madam Secretary.
What Taylor Swift actually talked about was she didn't lean into the fact that Kamala Harris is going to be the first female President of the United States. She didn't lean into the fact that she's going to be the first Black female president, et cetera, et cetera. She talked about the issues that matter to her substantively. About things like reproductive rights and those freedoms.
And so I think that gave -- we're in such a permission structure as a -- as a - as a community, as voters, I think it gave other women permission to say look, you know what? I'm standing on these issues. I'm standing on them loudly and proudly the same way Taylor Swift did.
BROWNSTEIN: You know, a long time ago in galaxy far away I wrote a book called "The Power and the Glitter," which was the history of the relationship between Hollywood and politics going back to the '20s. And what I concluded was the main value that celebrities can bring to candidates --
SELLERS: It was about Elvis Presley, wasn't it?
BROWNSTEIN: No, it was about Louis Mayer and Herbert Hoover going way back.
But what celebrities do most of all is expand your communications bandwidth. They put you in front of voters who are not going to find you through the normal political channels.
And as we were talking about before -- as Bakara was mentioning, her challenge, in many ways, is to reach voters -- younger, non-white voters, in particular who are not necessarily easily contacted through conventional political channels. And what Taylor Swift does is reach them through other means. And they will hear -- and hear about the campaign, hear about her endorsement, hear about the need to register in a way that the debate itself, for example, was not going to reach all of those voters.
POLYANSKY: They might not have seen it -- the voters.
BROWNSTEIN: They may -- they probably did not watch the debate.
HUNT: Yeah.
RIGUEUR: Although -- so although one of the things that she did really quite brilliantly is that she linked to vote.org, which is an organization that she has partnered with for years now.
BROWNSTEIN: Um-hum.
RIGUEUR: Um, and --
HUNT: And we've seen her impact on registration --
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- numbers when she has done this before.
RIGUEUR: One hundred percent. And one of the things that we know coming out of last night is that vote.org experienced a massive spike at two points: 1) during the debate when Kamala Harris was talking, she mentions this point. She says register to vote, right? There's an immediate spike and it's amongst that young demographic that she needs to win over.
But 2) when Taylor Swift comes out and says hey, this is the choice that I'm making and I'm couching it in a framework of optimism, and joy, and hope, that immediately triggers another spike. It also triggers a fundraising spike, which is deeply important for these larger implications.
SELLERS: One of the things I saw last night when that happened, I called Beyonce. I don't know if I have the right number, but I was just --
HUNT: OK.
SELLERS: -- I was calling, and I said I know it's late. Tell Jay I said what's happening. But we need your endorsement. So that's the next endorsement that I'm waiting on and that might be why she has me blocked.
HUNT: Yeah.
BROWNSTEIN: It could be.
RIGUEUR: They're waiting for the inauguration. That's when they'll come out.
BROWNSTEIN: A Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Springsteen rally in Philadelphia in early November is going to be --
SELLERS: It's going to be epic.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. That's going to be epic.
HUNT: Well, I mean, I'm actually -- I was at the one that Hillary Clinton tried to do at the end, and you could actually tell at that rally, which was a huge deal -- a big crowd or whatever. But somehow the energy was not -- it short of presaged what ended up happening.
BROWNSTEIN: She sent Beyonce to Cleveland and not to Detroit. That tells you everything you need to know about the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign.
HUNT: Oh my gosh, OK.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
HUNT: Guys, thank you so much for being here at this very early or late hour. I don't know if anybody stayed up all night, but I did not, thankfully.
But we've got another hour coming up here right on CNN THIS MORNING. Donald Trump made a surprise appearance in the spin room to defend his performance last night. We're going to discuss how both campaigns are reacting to last night's debate with one of Donald Trump's top advisers, Jason Miller. And we'll talk to Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.
Plus, a far different debate than the one two months ago. We'll show you more of the biggest moments from last night's fiery meeting between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Understand if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban.
[05:55:00]
TRUMP: There she goes again. It's a lie. I'm not signing a ban and there's no reason to sign a ban because we've gotten what everybody wanted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL)
HUNT: It's Wednesday, September 11. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: We can chart a new way forward.
TRUMP: But I just ask one simple question: Why didn't she do it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: A head-to-head confrontation. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump meeting for the first time on the debate stage.
Plus, this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Taking the bait. How Harris' strategy of putting Trump on defense paid off.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Will she allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month?
HARRIS: Come on.
TRUMP: OK, would you do that?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Contentious moment after contentious moment. All the policy arguments from abortion to the economy and immigration.
Then later, there's this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SWIFT: Singing "Bejeweled."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:00:00]
