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Today: Wisconsin Sends Out Mail-In Ballots; House GOP Tanks Speaker Johnson's Funding Bill; Walkie-Talkie Attacks Kill At least 20, Wound 450 In Lebanon. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired September 19, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

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[05:30:50]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, 5:30 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at New York City on this Thursday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

We're going to get straight to our Battleground Beat. With less than seven weeks until November 5, Election Day, mail-in ballots being sent out to voters in Wisconsin today. The Badger State is just one of a handful of states that will ultimately decide the election.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you win Wisconsin you're going to win the whole thing.

KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The path to the White House goes through Wisconsin.

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HUNT: In 2020, Biden won the state by just over 20,000 votes. This election looking to be just as tight. A new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters in Wisconsin shows no clear leader between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, with Harris at 48 percent and Trump sitting at 47 percent. Voters there telling CNN what issues they see at the forefront of the election.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say the economy is probably the most important.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Integrity. You know, I don't think Donald Trump has integrity.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The most important issue I would say is women's rights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm really concerned about the divisiveness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Immigration is a huge concern. Border protection is a huge concern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And joining us now is Jessie Opoien, a state politics reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Jessie, I'm so grateful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on today.

JESSIE OPOIEN, STATE POLITICS REPORTER, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL (via Webex by Cisco): Good morning, Kasie. I'm going to tell you I'm not a morning person but I'm glad to be on.

HUNT: I am a morning person so hopefully we'll find our way there together. But I love your --

OPOIEN: We'll figure it out.

HUNT: I love your reporting. I followed you for many years. And what I -- what I -- the reason I really wanted to have you on to kind of talk to our viewers is to truly give us a sense of the things that you see here, feel, pick up from voters that are hard to see from inside the Beltway or from studios in New York City.

And I think one thing that surprised me when I saw these Quinnipiac polls is that they showed Pennsylvania was not as close as the race in Wisconsin. Now, all my sources say Pennsylvania is absolutely neck- and-neck, so I have some questions there.

But I am curious what you think of just how close it was shown in Wisconsin because I will say a lot of Democrats I've talked to feel like they're OK in Wisconsin and this seems to show maybe they're not.

What's going on?

OPOIEN: Well, I think Democrats have a real risk of taking things for granted here in Wisconsin. We saw it in 2016, certainly, when Hillary Clinton didn't come back after the primary.

But I think in Wisconsin we have the benefit also for Democrats having Tammy Baldwin on the ballot, who has always run strong and run ahead of other candidates on the ballot. So I think that's probably what Democrats are feeling a little bit more secure here. But that being said -- I mean, Eric Hovde is running a strong race against her.

And Donald Trump is here, J.D. Vance is here, Kamala Harris will be here. I don't -- I don't think the campaigns are taking the state for granted.

HUNT: Very interesting.

Can we dig into one group that may -- has become -- you know, gone in focus here, and that is Polish Americans?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a letter that is from a group of dozens of Polish American Wisconsinites, including current and former Democratic-elected officials. They criticized Donald Trump's comments about Russia's war with Ukraine. They backed Kamala Harris because earlier this year Trump said he would encourage Russia to "do whatever the hell they want."

"Polish people in the U.S. and around the world know that our future is tied to Ukraine because after Ukraine, Putin's next target is Poland."

Now, Politico, by contrast, calls the Polish American vote a mirage. They say while this is just a razor-thin margin is going to decide "in a small group of battleground states, both campaigns leaving no rock unturned."

And there's this fixation on the Polish American vote. "There is just one problem," they write. "The Polish American voting bloc both campaigns are targeting is a mirage. It's a phantom battleground constituency that doesn't really exist anymore."

What is your view from the ground? Does it exist and, if so, how much does it matter?

[05:35:00]

OPOIEN: Well, I will -- I will be honest, this is not something I hear about a lot. But that being said, the races in Wisconsin -- they're decided by 20,000 votes, 10,000 votes, 30,000 votes. So it could be anything. It could be Polish American voters. It could be women. It could be older votes. It could be anything.

So I think you would be -- if you're campaigning here, you would be a fool to ignore any constituency to drive any constituency off.

HUNT: Very interesting.

So, Ron Brownstein, who is a good friend of the show -- he wrote that part of why Wisconsin may be tougher for Democrats than Michigan and Pennsylvania are for a couple of reasons. "The minority share of the population is smaller in Wisconsin than in the other two states. And whites without a college degree, which is the core of the modern GOP coalition in the Trump era," he writes, "cast about three-fifths of the votes there compared to about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania."

This would seem to underscore why the state might be tougher for Democrats than some assume.

OPOIEN: Yeah, absolutely. Look, the industries that drive the state, at the end of the day, it's still manufacturing and agriculture. And it's -- looking a policy is like having goods made in America and protecting those jobs that have driven the state for so many years, whether it's shipbuilding or family farms.

So again, I loath to repeat this over and over again but it's such a razor-thin margin here in a state that again, any constituency should not be ignored.

HUNT: Yeah.

Jessie, is there anything, as we wrap up here, going on on the ground in Wisconsin that you think is really worth paying attention to that perhaps is not being focused on?

OPOIEN: I think what I'm really interested in right now is -- it's Waukesha County kind of became a cliche over the years -- crucial Waukesha County.

HUNT: Yes.

OPOIEN: But what has been really interesting to me, and I've been spending some time there, is that Democrats are competing there in ways that they have not in years past.

I think the county is going to continue to vote Republican, but the margins are smaller and smaller and smaller for the Democrats to lose the area. And so you're seeing Tammy Baldwin and Kamala Harris campaigning in the area. Then you're also still seeing Republicans making a strong play there.

And so I think it's -- you know, it's going to be interesting to watch some of those counties that are populous and predictable, but you can cut into those margins just a little bit.

HUNT: Yeah, really fascinating -- critical Waukesha County. I love it. A Wisconsin segment would not be complete without out, so thank you for bringing that to the table.

OPOIEN: You can't -- you can't skip it.

HUNT: Jessie Opoien, thank you so much for being on the show. I hope you'll come back. I love hearing your reporting from the ground.

OPOIEN: Thank you, Kasie. I'd love to.

HUNT: All right, see you soon.

All right, let's turn now to this story. A government shutdown looming at the end of the month after divided House Republicans tanked their own spending bill on Wednesday.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The yeas are 202, the nays are 220, two voting present. The bill is not passed.

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HUNT: So this bill, which would have funded the government for six months -- it was doomed from the start. Donald Trump urging fellow Republicans to allow a shutdown unless the bill includes a GOP-backed measure requiring proof of citizenship before registering to vote. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says it's back to the drawing board.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): And so now we go back to the playbook, we'll draw up another play, and we'll come up with a solution. I'm already talking to colleagues about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation, and we'll get right to it. I'm disappointed.

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HUNT: All right, let's bring in Farnoush Amiri. She's congressional reporter for The Associated Press. Farnoush, good morning.

FARNOUSH AMIRI, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Good morning.

HUNT: Here we are again. It's so funny, or is it funny? It's not really. We're just talking again shutdown politics, but this time we're 47 days from an election.

How do they get out of this?

AMIRI: I mean, it's the same playbook and that's why you saw more than in previous CR (continuing resolution) arguments that Democrats and even Republicans were saying this is going to fail. We know how Mike Johnson -- and before him, his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy -- was able to fund the government and was able to do a basic function, and that's simply with Democratic votes.

You know, when you talk about margins, if one person is sick you lose a vote on the House floor. Like, that is serious, and Mike Johnson knows that is serious. But when he has someone like Donald Trump in his ear -- when he has that pressure to make election and noncitizen voting so crucial to him order to appease Donald Trump, then you see things like showboats, pretty much, as you saw yesterday. He knew it was going to fail ahead of time.

HUNT: And we saw quite a bit of discontent from the rank-and-file. Our colleagues on the Hill -- Manu Raju was out there asking Republicans about this. Let's watch a little bit of what he heard from some of those members.

[05:40:10]

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REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I think that this is a -- this is a complete failure of the speaker's strategy. Again, we weren't here the entire month of August. We could have finished our 12 separate appropriation bills.

REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): The bottom line is there's not going to be a shutdown. We are 47 days away from an election. There's not going to be a shutdown.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE). Why not now?

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): Because I'm not part of this theater. It's all (bleep), so I'm just not part of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: There are people clearly fed up with the theater of all of it.

What do you make of what they said there? And do you think there's any way Johnson can do this with just Republican votes, or he is going to need to work with Democrats?

AMIRI: It seems more and more likely just given the pretext of what we've seen over his tenure, everything that he has done he has done with majority Democratic votes. Democrats have single-handed because of so much -- so much of his party and so much of his conference is against the idea of continuing resolutions as a whole and against the idea of governing in this way. They have had to overwhelmingly rely on Democrats.

And Hakeem Jeffries told me and several other reporters yesterday we knew this was going to happen. We can't wait for him to reach out to us in the same way that he's done before and for us to fund the government before October 1.

HUNT: Yeah, all right.

Farnoush Amiri for us this morning. Farnoush, come back as we hurdle towards this deadline. It's great to have you on the show today.

AMIRI: Thank you.

HUNT: All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING a new phase in Israel's conflict with Hezbollah. First, it was their pagers; now it's their walkie-talkies. Inside Israel's deadly explosion operation.

Plus, the New York Yankees are back in the playoffs. I don't know who made me read this tease. The Bleacher Report is next.

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[05:46:28]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

First it was their pagers; now Hezbollah's walkie-talkies are exploding in Lebanon. The devices detonating Wednesday killing at least 20 people and wounding 450 in a fresh Israeli attack targeting the terrorist organization. A day earlier, pager blasts killed at least 12 people and injured thousands.

CNN has learned that this operation has been planned for a long time. Israel deciding to act now because Hezbollah was about to find out about it. Israel is not taking responsibility for the explosions but they're also not denying it.

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YOAV GALLANT, ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): The IDF has made excellent achievements together with the ISA and Mossad. The results of their work are impressive. We know how important it is at this time to carry out our activities in close cooperation.

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HUNT: Overnight, the IDF says they targeted Hezbollah infrastructure sites and a weapons storage facility with airstrikes in southern Lebanon.

Let's bring in CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official, Philip Mudd. Sir, thank you so much for being on the program. I'm very grateful to have you.

This is quite an operation, and I want to ask you about something that The New York Times reported about how this happened.

And so, they write that even before Mr. Nasrallah -- of course, the head of Hezbollah -- decided that he was going to -- going to expand the group's pager usage -- this was because of concerns about cellphones -- "Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer. By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo.

In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers."

So they're writing here these devices weren't tampered with; they were literally made by the Israelis.

Can you help us understand the scope of this and just what you make of it?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL, AUTHOR, "BLACK SITE: THE CIA IN THE POST-9/11 WORLD" (via Webex by Cisco): I can, sort of. But I only spent 25 years at the CIA and the FBI and this, after 25 years, this -- when I was talking to some friend yesterday this is really good. You talk about a bit of scope, but that is just establishing the shell companies, establishing the physical infrastructure, rent some buildings.

Think about the piece that I find really fascinating. You have to understand enough about the Hezbollah procurement infrastructure -- how they buy stuff. Who they buy it from. How they establish the bonafides of a company they're going to work with. Whether you trust the intermediary -- that is, the company that you're working with, and Hezbollah might have checked the backgrounds of company officials to ensure that they weren't Israeli intelligence.

It's not just the physical infrastructure -- and that's impressive alone to establish some shell companies -- it's the intelligence for the Israelis to get into the gears of how Hezbollah buys stuff that I find really fascinating, Kasie.

HUNT: Yeah. I mean, what do you know and what can you -- and for our -- I know a lot of our viewers know you well, but you worked in this region kind of up and down through the CIA, the White House, the whole -- the whole bit. But what is it about Israeli --

MUDD: Yeah.

HUNT: -- intelligence that makes them able to pull off something like this?

MUDD: Well, I've dealt with them a long time. They're some of the best on the planet.

[05:50:00]

There's a few things that you need to think about.

One is if you look at Israel outside the defense sphere and you go to Wall Street, Israel's technical expertise for a company that size is incredible. The number of tech companies they have listed on the New York Stock Exchange, incredible. It's only a country of a few million people, so great technical expertise.

The second is training. The training of people who've been at war for many years since -- almost since the inception of the state of Israel is remarkable. The people I dealt with knew what they were doing, and they knew it well. They've been doing it for years and they trained day after day after day.

The last thing I'd say is really interesting. It's the softer piece, and that is audacity. You've got to look at this and say there's flip side of this. What's Hezbollah going to do in response? If you're dealing in the White House, the president's going to say if we do this and Hezbollah counterattacks, are we ready?

The audacity to go and say we're going to blow up pagers and walkie- talkies, and the heck with what happens the day after, that takes -- not every intelligence service would do that. I'm not sure we would have done that at the CIA.

HUNT: Well -- and John Kirby was at the podium yesterday basically saying I don't have anything for you on this, right? We didn't know about it, and I don't have anything further.

MUDD: Yeah.

HUNT: What did you make of that part?

MUDD: Um, interesting. If you're in the intelligence business, you don't want to tell your allies everything for the simple reason that a) you don't want to tell them no. I'm sure the White House would have said please don't do this -- we've got enough to handle already with Hezbollah and already with Palestinians.

But also, you don't want to have the Israelis come out the day after if they told you and say the White House told us no and we said we don't care, we're doing it anyway. You want what we call plausible deniability. So it doesn't surprise me that the Israelis wouldn't have told anybody. We wouldn't have told them, I think, if we were doing the same thing.

HUNT: Fair enough.

All right, Philip Mudd. Sir, so grateful to have you. Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.

MUDD: Thanks for having me.

HUNT: This is a fascinating story. All right, see you soon.

All right, time now for sports -- the baseball season. Guys, we are heading to October. The playoff picture is starting to come into focus.

Carolyn Manno joins us with more in this morning's Bleacher Report. Carolyn, I already had to say nice things about the New York Yankees and I'm very unhappy about that. I'm still holding out for my O's. But what have you got for us?

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: That's where we're starting. That is where we're starting less than two weeks away from the start of the postseason. All the teams, all the seedings not quite set yet, as you know, Kasie.

But we know that there is going to be playoff baseball in the Bronx. The Yankees clinching at least a wildcard berth, getting there in the most bizarre way. The Mariners had the tying and winning runs on base with no outs in the bottom of the 10th inning.

Check this out. Randy Arozarena striking out swinging and lost his bat in the process. Julio Rodriguez had wandered off third base and ended up getting picked off while trying to avoid the flying lumber.

Justin Turner then struck out to end the game.

So the Yankees win it 2-1, securing a spot in the playoffs for the seventh time in the last eight seasons.

During the postgame celebration captain Aaron Judge making it clear that winning the division crown is still the goal.

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AARON JUDGE, DESIGNATED HITTER, NEW YORK YANKEES: We're excited, you know. We definitely know the job is not finished. We're hunting this division. But get an opportunity to punch our ticket back in the postseason after last year missing out -- it means a lot. We've got a special group here. The boys are definitely excited, but they know the mission that's definitely ahead of them.

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MANNO: The Milwaukee Brewers clinched the team's third NL Central title in the past four seasons. Before they took the field against the Phillies last night, they got an assist from the Cubs who lost the ace earlier in the afternoon. The bottles were popping. And a couple of hours later, Milwaukee walked out the Phillies 2-1.

Manager Pat Murphy led that celebration.

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PAT MURPHY, MANAGER, MILWAUKEE BREWERS: Party till midnight and then remember you've to decide -- make the choice that you're going to believe that there's a reason this group ended up first place wire-to- wire. Make sure you understand that.

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MANNO: Shohei Ohtani continues to move closer to becoming the first player in Major League history with 50 homes runs and 50 steals in a season. After going yard for the 48th time on Tuesday, the Dodgers' superstar stealing his 49th base of the season last night in Miami. That is nearly double Ohtani's previous career high of 26 steals. He ended up going one for five with two strikeouts in L.A.'s 8-4 win. He still has 10 games left to get to that 50-50 mark.

And the Falcons are set to host the two-time defending Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, on Sunday night.

The team is making sure that every fan heading to the stadium will be well fed, too. In celebration of owner Arthur Blank's induction into the Falcons Ring of Honor, the team is giving away -- get this -- two free hot dogs, two bags of chips, and unlimited free Coca-Cola in a souvenir cup. The team bought 100,000 hot dogs and chips for Sunday. That is roughly 18,000 more than the total sold during the entire season last year.

[05:55:00]

Kasie, I'm going to spend the rest of the morning looking into this. I know that 100,000 dogs is roughly 10 times what they sell in a regular game. And I think two is the baseline. I think you can go, and you can get your Joey Chestnut on if you want. You can just keep eating and eating and eating. But free food, I'll take it.

HUNT: I was going to say if you're giving them away, I think -- I think they might be able to get -- to move more hot dogs than they would if they weren't. Who knows how much they charge for hot dogs at football games? Very expensive lately.

Carolyn, thank you. I really appreciate it.

In our next hour here on CNN THIS MORNING the Fed delivering a jumbo- sized rate cut. The move is throwing the central bank right into the middle of this tight election season.

Plus, in a move we haven't seen since the '90s, the teamsters union refusing to endorse a candidate. That didn't stop Donald Trump from accepting it for himself.

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TRUMP: I was honored to receive the endorsement of the rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters. I love the Teamsters.

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