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CNN This Morning
Trump: "There Will Be No Third Debate"; Putin Warns West Against "Direct Involvement" In Ukraine; 33,000 Union Workers At Boeing Begin Strike; Flood Alerts For Over 7 Million People. Aired 5- 5:30a ET
Aired September 13, 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 Friday, September 13.
Right now on CNN THIS MORNING:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We owe it to have another debate.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There will be no third debate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Backing down. Donald Trump refusing to commit to another debate with Kamala Harris.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: So we have hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work.
TRUMP: We're going to go comrade, you're fired! Get out! Get out!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Battleground momentum. Candidates emerge in swing states to rally support after their debates showings.
And walking out. Hours ago, hundreds of Boeing union members rejecting a car contract and prompting the company's first strike in 16 years.
(MUSIC)
HUNT: All right, 5:00 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at the nation's Capitol building on this Friday morning.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. We made it to Friday. And if you can believe this, there are just
under eight weeks until Election Day. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are back on the campaign trail after Tuesday night's debate now looking like that will be the only face-to-face matchup between the two ahead of November.
There was this proposal from CBS News offering the chance for, quote, both presidential candidates to participate in an October debate but Donald Trump ditch the idea of a debate rematch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When a prize fighter loses a fight, you've seen a lot of fights, right? The first words out of that fighters mouth is, I want to rematch. I want to rematch and that's what she said, I want to rematch. So because we've done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: There will be no third debate.
Stumping in North Carolina, Vice President Harris maintained that not only is she up for another debate, she stressed the importance of a second face-to-face.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our debate. I believe we owe it to have another debate, right? We owe it to the voters, because here's the thing, in this election, what's at stake could not be more important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Whether another debate would actually make any difference in this extremely tight races, anyone's guess, but a new "Reuters"/Ipsos poll of registered voters conducted right after the debate shows that Harris narrowly ahead of Trump 47 to 42 percent, and essentially relatively not narrow, the margin of error is at 2.7 percentage points. It's a slightly larger than the pre-debate numbers that were released in this same poll late last month.
Joining me now, New York 1 Washington correspondent, Kevin Frey.
Kevin, good morning to you.
KEVIN FREY, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, NY1: Good morning.
HUNT: I want to start off with what our Stephen Collinson wrote about this. He often paints big pictures for us.
He writes this, quote, Donald Trump's refusal to take part in another presidential debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris marks a significant moment in the 2024 campaign, and hence at vulnerability for a political career built on the foundation of his television fame and mastery of stagecraft.
And you know, I have to say having covered Trump, since the first time I interviewed him one-on-one was way back in 2013 when he was first considering running for president and this was the thing that kept him above all of his primary rivals in 2016, it is something that ultimately helped lead him to victory, his dominance basically over various rivals.
That is the thing that of all of the realities that we saw on the debate stage seemed the most changed to me and it's clearly his team didn't want to be tagged with backing away from this, but that's fundamentally what they're doing.
FREY: Right, and it was just wait just a couple of weeks ago that he was saying any place anytime, he was pitching these three different debates on three different venues over the course of several weeks. And now we're back to actually, you know what the one we did there's more than sufficient.
I mean, he's used to -- as you were hinting -- hitting at, he's used to steamrolling his way through these things. I mean, the last debate with Biden, you really have to do much in the way of steamrolling because Biden was imploding in --
[05:05:03]
HUNT: He could sit back and let that happen.
FREY: He just let that happen on his own.
HUNT: Yeah.
FREY; And so now, I mean, Kamala Harris needled him and needled him and needled him, and he took every single bit of bates and look, Kamala Harris gotten all this fundraising as a result of this debate and clearly, her team sees this as a chance to, because of the tight time schedule, put herself right out there in front of folks, let her talk in a very public forum.
And if they can repeat what they did the other night, all the more power to them and their view.
HUNT: Yeah. I mean, Kevin, what is Harris's imperative here because while yes, the that national poll that but "Reuters" put out shows her kind of increasing compared to their previous pole. Her lead again, national registered voters, its not we don't want to take any one poll too seriously necessarily. But she has work to do, right?
And her team will acknowledge that she does. They will say they understand that it is an incredibly close race. She has not had that many unscripted moments in this very compressed time frame.
What do you think is the imperative for her here in the final stretch?
FREY: Well, I mean, lets her campaign keeps and she keeps calling herself the underdog because I think there's a desire to make sure that there's not enough complacency within her supporters, given the excitement that has really bubbled over as a result of her launching this campaign.
It seems that she is going to be leaning in on trying to, at least there was some reporting doing these local interviews, doing outreach to local folks in a way that allows you to talk to voters about maybe getting all the national questions. And then she also, through this debate didn't have a lot of opportunity because she was needling Trump all the time, necessarily go into a lot of policies.
So perhaps a second outing would allow her to kind of take that approach to the debate as well.
HUNT: Yeah. I mean, and that's -- that's one thing that that we have been hearing from some of the undecided voters that we talked to in the immediate aftermath of the debate, they said, hey, we want to hear a little bit more about her and those local interviews. I mean, you worked for New York 1, I mean, the un -- I've seen them in terms of when you are a national report traveling with a candidate, its where typically they'll do them pretty quickly right after an event or pull four or before pull asides with usually local political reporters that will then land and on local news stations, it's a little bit of a lower low stakes way to go about this. No?
FREY: Lower stakes generally are not going to get -- no offense to local press -- as many probing questions.
HUNT: Not at all.
FREY: No. No. I'm not taking any.
You won't get it necessarily probing questions. You're also getting a media environment that, look, national media. There is a trust deficit. Local media still has value in the fact that people believe what they're hearing.
And so, if you're talking to what your beloved local anchor and you're the presidential nominee, you kind of have that advantage that people are watching how the eyeballs and it's like, okay, this is a person that's speaking on my behalf.
HUNT: Yeah. It's a really interesting way to think about it.
Kevin Frey, so grateful to have you on this Friday. Thanks for kicking us off. I appreciate it.
Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING: a dire warning from Moscow. Vladimir Putin threatens war for NATO allies if a critical long-range missile restriction is lifted on Ukraine.
Plus, the fight for kid's safety online. We're going to going to talk live with two parents who are speaking out about new legislation.
And, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris make their post-debate return to the stump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: We know would be a very tight race until the very end. We are the underdogs.
TRUMP: We want to get a landslide that's too big to rig. You know, if we have the big votes, they can rig it. They try.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[05:13:03]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be threatening war against the West if Ukraine is allowed to launch attacks deep inside Russia using Western weapons. The U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House today where they are expected to discuss a request by the Ukrainians to ease restrictions on Russian targets they can hit.
President Putin delivering this warning ahead of that meeting.
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VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): This is their direct involvement, and this of course, would in a significant way change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. It will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries, are at war with Russia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. Let's get straight to Max Foster, who is live for us in London.
Max, good morning. Wonderful to see you.
This is, of course, something that right now Americans here are being prepped to expect. The headline in "The New York Times" this morning, Biden is poised to clear strikes deep in Russia. This, of course, ahead of his meeting with Starmer later today, and they report that Starmer and the Brits are eager to allow this to happen.
How -- how do you understand it from your vantage point on the other side of the pond? And what are the potential ramifications considering what Putin had to say there?
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, crucially, the Brits aren't saying they're not going to do it and they've got this meeting ahead obviously today, which is a big moment and that would be a moment to perhaps agree that they would allow these missiles to go into Russia, but they're going to be really specific I think about the type of tickets we're talking about. We've seen how in the Middle East, of course, as so many civilians
have suffered. That is something that America and the Brits will want to avoid. So it's about -- it will be about targeting, particularly military installations within Russia if indeed they agree to it.
But I did have a note from Downing Street last night sort of suggesting what's going to come up in this meeting.
[05:15:02]
And it's interesting seeing what their focus is here. They're talking very much about how the U.S. secretary of state and the U.K. foreign secretary visited Zelenskyy last week and they heard directly from him about his current position. His current position is very clearly that he wants to use U.S. weapons to fire into Russia, and they also point out that there was a big escalation also this week, but not from their side.
And that was Iran has transferred ballistic missiles into Russia. So they may be able to argue that it's Russia escalating here. And they're allowing Ukraine to use U.S. missiles into Russia is just a response to that.
HUNT: Interesting.
Okay, Max, while I have you and ask you also about some rare -- rare glimpse that we seem to be getting into the North Korean nuclear program as we sort of cross -- cross various threats here to the West. This is -- these are pictures of Kim Jong-un from the North Korean state news agency that seemed to show him visiting a uranium enrichment site.
Again, we don't get to see this very often. What's your takeaway from the release of these images? And you know, why now and what's the message they're trying to send?
FOSTER: I think we're doing exactly what they want, which is to show these images. They want to show how powerful they become and it looks pretty sophisticated, doesn't it? Certainly a lot investment there.
He says, you know, this program is about self-defense. We don't know if that's true, but it could be self-defense. The concern obviously in South Korea is that it's an aggressive move because there's still officially at war.
I think, you know, what's emboldened him to be able to put these images out? What do you bell to would have done that in the past? Worried about provoking the U.S. and South Korea into reacting against that I think it actually speaks to what we were just talking about, which is Russia, which is now allied with North Korea. North Korea is making weapons for Russia, the closest alliance. Apart from that, the North Koreas got or relationship at least is with China.
So all of these countries forming an axis more emboldened to face off against America effectively. So I think the image is pretty poignant. And he wants to be that. HUNT: Yeah, for sure.
All right. Max Foster for us this morning -- Max, always grateful to see you. Have a good weekend.
All right. Still ahead here on CNN this morning, a rough year for Boeing is getting worse, tens of thousands of workers going on strike after rejecting a new contract offer. We'll bring you the details in the morning roundup.
Plus, new campaign ads featuring some of those moments that we saw in Tuesday's debate.
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[05:22:21]
HUNT: All right. Twenty-one minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our members rejected the contract by 94.6 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: New this morning, Boeing hit by a massive labor strike, 33,000 employees walking off the job after their union voted overwhelmingly to reject a new contract with the aircraft manufacturer. Boeing is one of America's largest manufacturers and is the nations largest exporter.
The last strike at Boeing in 2008 lasted almost two months.
Today, Justin Timberlake expected to enter a guilty plea after his June DWI arrest in New York. He had initially pleaded not guilty, but according to "The Associated Press", he is expected so to plead to a lesser charge in today's hearing.
A 34-year-old man arrested in facing arson charges for allegedly setting the Line Fire in southern California. That fire has burned more than 58 square miles in San Bernardino county and caused more than $7 million in damages.
All right. Time now for weather. Francine no longer a hurricane, but the flooding threat remains very real for millions as cleanup continues and the hardest hit parts of Louisiana. Morgan City, Louisiana, took the brunt of the storm as it made landfall as a category two hurricane, toppling power lines, damaging buildings. There are still roughly 130,000 people without power across the state.
Let's get to our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, with more.
Allison, good morning.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And good morning, Kasie. You can see the impacts from some of that very heavy rain in this
video behind me, this from New Orleans, Good Samaritan rescuing a man whose truck got stuck in those very floodwaters from Francine a few days ago. Now, here's a look at where the storm is again, very well inland, much weaker as a system, but it's also moving very slowly. It's only moving at three miles per hour.
Just for reference, that's about how fast an average human could walk. Okay, so again, very slow, but that means its got a lot of time now to dump a tremendous amount of rain over a lot of areas already several places in Mississippi and Louisiana picking up eight and even nine inches of rain. It's not over for some of those areas because again, this system will slowly start to progress eastward in the coming days as we go through the weekend, but not fast enough.
And so it's going to produce a lot of rain, really shifting from Alabama, Mississippi, over into Georgia and eventually into the Carolinas as we go through the weekend.
Now some of those areas are dealing with drought. They need the rain, but just maybe not this much in a short period of time, a lot of these areas you can see that wide swath there of two to four inches, but some of those spots, especially right there along this red line in- between Atlanta and say, Birmingham, and up through portions tens of southern Tennessee.
[05:25:00]
Now, you're talking widespread six inches, possibly as much in some of these areas, seven or even eight inches, not out of the question for some of these and that's going to be a concern. Yes, they need the rain. They just don't need all of that in a very short period of time.
So that's why we have the slight and even moderate risk for excessive rainfall in some of these areas because they're going to be dealing, Kasie, with a lot of that rainfall as we go through the rest of the weekend.
HUNT: Very helpful, Allison.
I have to ask you about your sweater.
CHINCHAR: It's Cloud Appreciation Day today. Happy Cloud Appreciation Day for those who celebrate.
HUNT: I had no idea. I had no idea, but it's perfect for that, you know? Happy Cloud Appreciation Day to you. We'll see you next hour. Thank you.
CHINCHAR: See you next hour.
HUNT: All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, the push for kids online safety. We're going to talk to two parents who are fighting for legislation after they lost one of their children as a key bill stalls in the House.
Plus, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris head to pivotal swing states for the first time since Tuesday night's debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We had a monumental victory over comrade Kamala Harris.
HARRIS: It was the same old show, same old tired playbook we've heard for years. Folks, look, it's time to turn the page.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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