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Rep. Nikema Williams is Interviewed about the Political Rhetoric; David Rubenstein is Interviewed about His New Book; Musk's Deleted Post. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired September 17, 2024 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Kasie.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Wow. All right, Derek Van Dam for us this morning. Derek, thank you very much.

All right, still to come after the break on CNN THIS MORNING, he spoke with nearly every living president about their time in office. We're going to speak live with David Rubenstein on his new book, "The Highest Calling," and what he learned about those who have served in the Oval Office.

Plus, Georgia Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams joins me live to discuss how heightened rhetoric its impacting today's politics.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:09]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In Washington, we have our disagreements but we all agree that we are here to serve this nation we love and the people who call it home.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): It's a good reminder that maybe we can bring the temperature down across the country in the Congress and everywhere else.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): We don't dislike each other. We work together all the time, Senator Schumer and I do, on a daily basis. We have our political arguments, but at the end of the day we're all Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, in the days after the shooting that nearly killed Congressman Steve Scalise seven years ago. The message from both sides of the aisle, you saw it there, was clear, tone down the rhetoric and try to come together. It was also, of course, the initial message two months ago after the first attempt on Donald Trump's life. But in the two days since the second apparent assassination attempt against Trump, the calls for unity have already given way to partisan finger- pointing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Know it's popular on a lot of corners of the left to say that we have - we have a both sides problem. And I'm not going to say we're always perfect. I'm not going to say that conservatives always get things exactly right. But you know the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have - no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Theres's a lot of rhetoric going on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

TRUMP: And a lot of people think that the Democrats, when they talk about threat to democracy and all of this. And it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining me now to discuss this and more is Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams of Georgia.

Congresswoman, good morning. Thank you so much for being here.

REP. NIKEMA WILLIAMS (D-GA): Good morning, Kasie.

HUNT: I'd like to start just with what J.D. Vance said there and your reaction to how he talked about Kamala Harris.

WILLIAMS: So, it's no secret that I'm not a Trump supporter. But when I heard the news, I don't want that for anyone, regardless of their party. And what I heard from J.D. Vance is, no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris. Would he want that? Why would you say that in a time when we're talking about bringing down the temperature and changing the eric and bringing the country together, unity, moving forward. We can disagree on policies, but we don't want anyone to have an assassination attempt. And so hearing some of the conversation on the other side after these attempts is - I don't get it. We should be, number one, members of Congress should be working on passing a budget that we should be doing, but we also are in the middle of this campaign cycle where talking about threats to democracy is not saying that I'm calling for someone to have threats against them.

I'm a black woman in politics from the deep south. I understand the threats that I get when I had to very early on in my congressional career get personal security that I had to figure out how to pay for because I wanted my family safe. And so to hear something like this is something that we need to address in a way to get our leaders especially running for the highest offices to understand that they too are part of the problem. HUNT: Congresswoman, what do you - and I'm glad you raised your own

personal experience because this has become something in modern times that is a much more acute issue for members of Congress, not just people that - at the highest offices. Obviously, we've seen political violence throughout our nation's history. But the tenor right now seems to be particularly acute.

What is your diagnosis for why that is?

WILLIAMS: So, I feel like there have been conversations that have given people permission to say the quiet things out loud, to act on those things. And there are a lot of people who will here code words and they'll act on them. That's why it is important for leaders to understand that their words have power.

So, saying something like, no one has attempted to assassinate another candidate is not OK, because that shouldn't happen to any candidate. It shouldn't happen to anyone running for mayor, for city council, for Congress, or president of the United States. This is the United States of America. And if we can't have leaders who at the bare minimum are understanding that no one should be the subject of political violence, then that's a problem.

HUNT: Congresswoman, you have been on the campaign trail with Kamala Harris in your home state of Georgia, which is, of course -

WILLIAMS: Battleground Georgia.

HUNT: Battleground Georgia, a critical swing state. She has put it more in play than Joe Biden had when he was at the top of the ticket.

One of the issues she's really been campaigning on, and I know is something you've worked on as well, reproductive rights and abortion care.

I'm curious, your diagnosis of how that is going to affect voters, particularly women voters, in Georgia. Georgia is also known for being - having conservative religious bedrock in many places. Are there any downsides or challenges for Democrats in how they run on this issue? And what are the things that women in Georgia are facing under the current six-week ban? There are some exceptions, but it's still a six week ban.

WILLIAMS: So, Kasie, I understand what it's like to be a Christian, but also understand that the government should have no place in my personal medical decisions.

[06:40:06]

And that is where we are in the state of Georgia.

We - I hear from women all the time that while they might not choose abortion for themselves, they don't think the government should be involved in these decisions for any woman. And that's where we are.

Just yesterday we had a report coming out of Georgia of a young woman who was seeking abortion care. It was the week that the Georgia decision came down. Six weeks before most women even know that they're pregnant. That's the Trump ban that we're under in Georgia right now.

And so she traveled to North Carolina to get care. She got back and had complications, needed a D&C, something that is a standard procedure, and the hospital afraid to give her the care that she needed because of the laws that were in place and doctors fearing prosecution. She stayed in a hospital bed and died from these complications. Something that could have been avoided had this Trump abortion ban not been in place in Georgia. That's what women are hearing about. That's the fear that we're living under.

When these bans went through in Georgia, I was in the state senate. I spoke on the floor and read stories from women, my constituents, who understood what they would be up against had these bans gone into effect. And now we're living with that nightmare.

These are the things that we warned Republicans about when they passed these laws and they didn't care. They thought we were Henny Penny, the sky is falling. But now here we are. And we're seeing women dying.

Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, mirroring that third world countries for black women. But yet half of our counties don't even have an ob-gyn and we're living under an abortion ban.

HUNT: All right, Congressman Nikema Williams, thank you very much for your time this morning. I really appreciate having you on the show.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

HUNT: All right, still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, we are in a sprint to the finish of this presidential election. Coming up next, we're going to talk with David Rubenstein about what he learned in his interviews with most of the living presidents about their time in office.

Plus, flames shooting into the sky in Texas. A natural gas pipeline burning for hours now. In our roundup, what caused this to burst into flames.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:27]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (January 12, 1989): It's been my responsibility, my duty, and very much my honor, the serve as commander in chief of this nation's armed forces these past eight years.

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (January 14, 1981): I owe my deepest thanks to you, the American people, because you gave me this extraordinary opportunity to serve. GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (January 15, 2009): It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your president.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (January 10, 2017): It has been the honor of my lifetime to be your commander in chief.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (July 24,2024): It's been the honor of my life to serve as your president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The honor of my lifetime. At the conclusion of their terms, that's been how nearly every U.S. president describes their experience in the single most important office in the world, the American presidency. In a new book, "The Highest Calling," conversations on the American presidency aims to shed light on just what it takes and what it's like to hold that office. Through interviews with nearly every living president and the scholars who've studied them, author David Rubenstein paints a portrait of these men, how they differ in background, personality, and approach as they attempt to leave their mark on history.

And joining me now is the author of the highest calling, David Rubenstein. He's also the host of "The David Rubenstein Show," co- founder of the Carlyle Group and, of course, the owner of my beloved Baltimore Orioles.

David, I'm so grateful to have you on the program this morning.

DAVID RUBENSTEIN, CO-FOUNDER, CO-CHAIRMAN, THE CARLYLE GROUP: Thank you very much for having me.

HUNT: This book, I've started really digging into it and it is just fascinating what these presidents have had to say to you as they have sat down and discussed what it's like to hold this office. And your own reverence for the presidency really comes through.

One thing that I think stuck out to me as you were talking to these men was about what brought them there as people, and their parents in particular, and what they might feel.

Tell us a little bit more about what you learned.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, each of these people become president of the United States because they have some ambitious. They worked their way to get there. When you think about it, since Woodrow Wilson, this has been the most important job in the world. You've got about 6 or 7 billion people on the face of the earth. But the most important person on the face of the earth, many people would say, is the president of the United States. And what he or she decides to do affects the lives of almost everybody.

So, I tried to go back and interview some of the former presidents and some of the current presidents as well. I mean I interviewed Joe Biden. I interviewed Donald Trump. And their view and reverence for the office is quite amazing. Even though they have political spats from time to time, they really agreed that what they can do as president of the United States really can change people's lives for the better. And that's why they're really in the business of being president.

HUNT: Yes.

So, you spoke with George W. Bush, actually, and he's a little bit more distant from the office than some of the others. Obviously, you spoke with Biden and Trump, who are - Biden currently president, obviously Trump vying to be president again. Bush's interview with you was in some ways - I thought in some ways more revealing than some of the others, in part because of that distance that he has.

And he said this when you asked him - you talked about populism. He said, quote, "you wonder why populism is on the rise. It starts with taking taxpayers' money, giving it to the powerful. It really irritated a lot of Americans and they haven't gotten over it yet."

He is talking about the bailout for banks here. And then he goes on to say, "we've had candidates say, you're mad, I'm going to make you madder, as opposed to, you're mad. I have solutions to make you less mad. We're in kind of the madder stage where people are exploiting the anger as opposed to dealing with it like leaders should."

What did you make of - of W. Bush's reflections here?

RUBENSTEIN: Well, President Bush has stayed out of politics largely since he left office. Some presidents stay involved. They campaign. He's largely staying out of it. And I think he hasn't even said who he's going to vote for this time. He reflects on the fact that when he had the bailout, so-called TARP bailout, he really was shocked when the proposal came to him because he said, I've been against bailing out banks, I'm not Mr. Wall Street, and now you're telling me we're going to bail out Wall Street and I can't really do that.

[06:50:03]

But, in the end, Ben Bernanke and his secretary of treasury, Hank Paulson, convinced him there was no economy coming around tomorrow if we didn't do it. So, it did get done. I don't think he - in hindsight, it wasn't something he would have wanted. But I think, in reflection, he realized it was necessary. Just something he didn't really like.

HUNT: Yes. Very interesting.

You did also speak, of course, to Donald Trump for the book, and you also spoke with Maggie Haberman, who's a CNN analyst here, obviously, "The New York Times" chronicler of Donald Trump. And she said to you that there are two main influences in his life. One was Roy Cohn, and the other was Fred Trump. Fred Trump being Donald Trump's father.

What role do you think Fred Trump played in shaping Donald Trump and Donald Trump's presidency?

RUBENSTEIN: Well, I didn't ask him about that when I interviewed him. I've interviewed him a few times, but I didn't ask him about his father. But from what I've read from others and from Maggie Haberman, it seemed as if his father was a domineering figure and really instilled in him the importance of always winning and not admitting defeat.

Donald Trump is a unusual person to become president of the United States. The only person who had never had any government experience who became president of the United States. And so he didn't have a background that some other people had. But the amazing thing about Donald Trump, when you think about it is, he's been the nominee of his party three times in a row. And no other person's ever been nominated three times in a row by the Republican Party.

So, while we can make fun of many things he's done, and people criticize him, and I understand that criticism, he does have the ability to rally his troops and he does have the ability to be the nominee of the party three times in a row. And I think even now we don't know what the outcome of the election is going to be.

But the main thing I really wanted to do with this book was to say to people, vote. We have 80 million people in this country who could vote legally but don't vote. We how about 160 million people who do vote, but 80 million people don't vote. About a third of the electorate don't vote. And I just hope that people will learn more about the presidency, get interested in it, as I have been, and vote because it's 49 days away and I want people to really go out and vote.

HUNT: Yes, I will say, I think, in reading the book, it - our times have been so turbulent and oftentimes our discourse so petty that having a chance to kind of step back and think about kind of the grandeur and the historic nature of this office was something that I've been - really enjoyed as I've been reading it.

One question I guess I do have for you. Did you read what - what W. said here, that our candidates are saying you're mad, I'm going to make you madder, is he talking about Trump? Is he criticizing Trump?

RUBENSTEIN: He has resisted talking about President Trump for a lot of reasons. And Jeb Bush ran against Donald Trump in the primaries years ago. And I think the Bush family is probably not that close to the Trump Organization, I think it's fair to say.

HUNT: That's fair.

RUBENSTEIN: And I think last time I think President Bush said that he voted a write in, which was Condi Rice. And I think so forth he hasn't said who he might write in. But I think it's pretty clear that he's not likely to vote for Donald Trump. Rightly or wrongly, that's his position.

HUNT: Yes.

All right, David Rubenstein, are we going to the World Series?

RUBENSTEIN: It's my hope we get there. I hope you'll come and watch it, OK.

HUNT: Are you kidding me, I wouldn't miss it for the world. We're thrilled -

RUBENSTEIN: All right. Well, thank you for having me.

HUNT: I know Baltimore's so thrilled to have you.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, thank you.

HUNT: Truly. Thank you very much for being on the show today, sir. I appreciate it.

All right, don't forget to grab your copy of "The Highest Calling." Proceeds are being donated to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the Harlem Park Elementary and Middle Schools in Baltimore. So, it's all for a good cause.

All right, 52 minutes past the hour. Here is your morning roundup.

Sean "Diddy" Combs arrested last night in New York. A source tells CNN that Combs was arrested in a Manhattan hotel, but the charges are unclear. Combs has been at the center of an ongoing sex trafficking probe and has also been hit with several lawsuits accusing the music mogul of sexual assault.

The Coast Guard revealing the first image of the Titan submersible sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean during a hearing into the implosion that killed five explorers last summer. The tail cone of the Titan was severed from the rest of the vessel, which was found several hundred yards from the Titanic wreckage.

Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is not getting his Arizona 2020 election criminal charges moved to federal court. A judge ruled that the alleged crimes fall outside of his official duties as White House chief of staff, meaning that the case can be tried at the state level. Meadows has also failed to get a similar case in Georgia moved to federal court.

Live images from Texas this morning where flames have been shooting into the sky for hours now after an SUV crashed into a natural gas pipeline. At this point, no air quality issues have been reported, but several nearby homes have been evacuated. One woman recalled the moment of fire started.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know I hear a big boom, and then I felt the house shake. And I was like, what was that? So, I immediately ran out of my bedroom and everybody's like freaking out. We - I looked out the window, I ran downstairs, I opened the front door and there was this fire and I seen the fence was on fire. And I was like, we got to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles appealing the decision that cost her an Olympic bronze medal at the Paris games this summer.

[06:55:06] A score review team that the USA asked for is at the center of the controversy. Chiles is appealing the decision to the federal supreme court of Switzerland, where the court of arbitration for sport is located.

All right, let's turn back now to our conversation with the impact of political rhetoric.

The Secret Service is now being asked about one of the world's wealthiest men, Elon Musk, the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter, of course it is now called X, following the apparent assassination attempt on Sunday. One user of his social media site asking, why do they want to kill Donald Trump? Musk then responded saying this, quote, "and no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala." Musk added the thinking face emoji.

After a swift backlash, Musk deleted that post and followed up saying basically it was just a joke. He said, quote, "well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's all going to be - it's going to be all that hilarious as a post on X," and, quote, "turns out that jokes are way less funny if people don't know the context and the delivery is plain text," end quote.

Yes, OK.

The White House called Musk's deleted post irresponsible. Asked by CNN, the Secret Service said they were, quote, "aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees."

David Urban, is this productive from Elon Musk?

DAVID URBAN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Oh, no, of course not.

HUNT: What - like, why - why is he doing this?

URBAN: Listen, I - I've got to spend a little time with Elon Musk one on one. And - and he's a different kind of guy. And so I would say that -

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Fair.

URBAN: I would say that, you know, like he said, that he thought it was funny at the time and he tweets it out and it's not funny. It's not funny. So -

HUNT: I'm not going to lie. I think - I mean, I don't know, I figured out that plain - that jokes don't translate it plain text like when I first got an email address and like, I mean, I don't know what year that was, 2000. Like -

URBAN: You'd think the guy - he owns the platform. Maybe he'd figure - yes, might have figured it out. JONAH GOLDBERG, CO-FOUNDER/EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE DISPATCH": Who could

have guessed that an (INAUDIBLE) engineer, who does a lot of late night weed smoking, somehow doesn't quite grasp that some tweets - some jokes don't translate.

HUNT: Let's be a little careful about how we characterized the spectrum. I know there are a lot of people who deal with that in their own lives and people who have their own children.

But I take your point about engineers and, you know, the - the social, whatever's going on here with Musk.

Alex Thompson, I mean, this guy has become the center of the campaign in many ways. Like, he's - he's really firmly at the center of it.

ALEX THOMPSON, : Well, and he put himself there.

HUNT: Right.

THOMPSON: I mean the reason why he is now tweeting his group texts, which I would not advise anyone to do, is that - is that he - he does it for the lulls (ph). He does it for the attention. He wants to be at the center of the attention. And he, you know, he has amplified, in some ways, a lot of crazy things in this election cycle.

HUNT: Karen Finney, again, part of this is - and the question that I keep coming back to is how much of what happens online, and Elon Musk is probably like one of our most online - he's very offline too, actually, but he's very online, one of our citizens. It manifests in actions offline.

FINNEY: Absolutely. I mean he should, at a minimum, be aware that he has millions of followers. He has a platform. And I think there's a level of responsibility and accountability when you have a platform how you use it, and being aware that you may think it's funny, but there will be people who don't think it's funny. And maybe joking about people getting shot is not ever really that funny.

URBAN: Yes, look, you guys, -- I'm sorry, he's a genius. I mean, clearly a genius in terms of what he's done in Starlink and Space Lab and he's revolutionized space travel. I mean he's incredibly good at certain things, and obviously terrible at other things, right? So maybe stick to the lane of things you're really good at and -

GOLDBERG: Well, that's sort of my point is that, you know, here's a guy - we all talk about how Twitter is a terrible distraction for us, or X, or social media or whatever, right? And here's a guy who literally has done more than anybody else to make humanity an interplanetary species and he does all of these incredible sort of I'm - out of - strait out of (INAUDIBLE) or engineering feats and marvels and he gets so distracted by Twitter he actually buys it and then spends all his time on it. And it's a huge waste of time and money for the guy, you know?

HUNT: Yes.

GOLDBERG: I mean its at - it's like - it's -

URBAN: Case in point, right?

FINNEY: Exactly.

GOLDBERG: It's Musk scale distraction by Twitter, you know?

FINNEY: Yes.

HUNT: Yes, it is - I mean it is remarkable. I mean watching - just watching the SpaceX astronauts with new space - like, NASA hasn't produced new space suits in 40 years.

URBAN: That's incredible. And I think the government couldn't do that for 100 years, right? And Elon Musk does it like in a blink of an eye, transform space travel, transforms satellite technology. I mean he's an amazing character. But, obviously, sucks at this one aspect of his life, right? So, maybe stay off the - the political texts.

FINNEY: Yes.

HUNT: But, I mean, Alex, I'm sorry, we're wrapping up here, but, I mean, his decision to go all in on Trump this time has also potentially jeopardize some of his businesses, including particularly Tesla.

[07:00:10]

THOMPSON: Absolutely. But I will say, if Trump wins, the fact is, Trump has already said that he's going to appoint him some sort of czar to look at government efficiency. Do you know who has some of the - some of the biggest government contracts in the entire government? Elon Musk.

HUNT: Right, around all of these various as we were just discussing.

All right.

URBAN: He basically runs it. He is NASA now (INAUDIBLE) to a large extent. I mean if we didn't have Elon Musk, we wouldn't have a space program to a large extent.

HUNT: Well, I guess we'll see.

Thank you guys for being with us this morning. I really appreciate it.

Thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.