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Hoard Dean is Interviewed about the Democratic Party; Trump to Decide Key Positions; Mark McKinnon is Interviewed about the Election; Biden to Address Nation Today. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 07, 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]

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Into school board races and into city council races and into local representative races, including in very red states. And they're not doing that. Every four years we have this (INAUDIBLE) of raising enormously billions of dollars and we have - we put - I thought Harris had a great infrastructure and I thought she ran a great campaign, but there's nothing underneath. And if you - there are a lot of - now there are a lot of kids who grew up in my campaign who are now 30 and 40 who are running things like Run For Something and stuff like that. But the Democratic Party needs to be doing that, and it's not. And until we learn, we're not going to win.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Sir, you mentioned the grassroots. And that word sometimes, you know, gets conflated with say activists. And some now would probably say -

DEAN: Right.

HUNT: The progressives like AOC and others might fit that criteria. But there does seem to be a divide there between - you know, we were talking about the cultural aspects, the way that, you know, you see colleges and universities and other institutions that certainly Republicans believe are run and influenced by Democrats talk about things, versus the working class. I mean you have Bernie Sanders out, you know, saying it should come as no great surprise the Democratic Party, which has abandoned working class people, would find that the working class has abandoned them.

So, I mean, when you say the grassroots, like, who are you talking about, and do you think that there is an issue with how progressives talk about this stuff?

DEAN: No, I don't think there's a issue with how progressives talk about this stuff. And you brought up the example of AOC, who ran relatively far to the left of the Democratic spectrum. The reason she won had nothing to do with where she was running from and her views, it had to do that she got her - I was shocked and very impressed by her campaign because it was a grassroots campaign. She got out there and knocked on doors and organized people.

This is not about where you are in the political spectrum. There will be some districts where you can be - have to be a little more conservative and some districts you have to be a little more liberal. AOC replaced a guy who had been there for years and years and represented his district very well. The reason she replaced him was not because he was doing a bad job, it was because he wasn't out in the community. He'd been in Washinton to long and thought that's where the world revolved. The world revolves on - in the districts. It does not revolve in Washington. And once you get sucked into Washington, you start to believe your own BS. And the Republicans have done this much better for almost a generation.

HUNT: It's interesting. I mean I guess my push back would be, there is kind of a national question, right, about where it the country when you're running for president. I'm curious where you think the party should be on kind of a spectrum from left to right if you're trying to make a national argument. And also, do you think running and putting yourself where people are is different in this age than it used to be? Obviously, AOC has a very small district, you can't really advertise on TV, but a lot of what she did was on the phone, and a lot of what Trump did, you know, Republicans took some criticism heading into Election Day saying, well, you don't have a traditional field campaign, you know, you're not knocking on doors the way we normally do. They had made a concerted strategy to go on - you know, put Donald Trump on every podcast that they could find to kind of run a national social media based campaign.

DEAN: Right.

HUNT: What lessons do you think there are to pull out there?

DEAN: Well, that was a lesson that was learned in my campaign, which I take no credit for. My campaign was inspirational to young people and this is a time where all these kinds of things, these innovations were invented, podcasts. And I remember having a podcast and outraising Dick Cheney, who was running a $25,000 lunch in California while I was having a ham sandwich in front of my computer because these kids figured - we didn't even have computers that had cameras in them. We had to put a Logitech on top of the frame. And I didn't know what I was doing. I just did what they told me to do.

But they were right, that's how you organize. And we did not do that. And Trump did. I will give Trump some credit. His field was very, very good. And I thought Harris' field was pretty good, too. The problem was, Trump was building on a generation of efforts that had already been previously made in all those states to move them to the right, with school board elections, with city council elections, with state legislative elections. Do you know how many state legislatures they took over the last time we had a presidential election? Until you start taking over state legislatures, we're not going to win presidential races. It's just too hard.

HUNT: Sir, how much blame does President Biden deserve for Trump's victory? And is the second Trump term part of President Biden's legacy?

DEAN: I don't think so. Look, I - the honest truth about Biden is, whether you like him or not, he has been the most active and the most successful president since Lyndon Johnson on the domestic front. He remade America. And Trump is not going to be able to undo all that stuff.

Ironically, I knew this was going to happen and I said so before the election, Trump - I mean Biden invested millions - billions of dollars in places - states that he knew he wasn't going to win. Ohio, chip plants, battery plants, Kansas, all these places, and then, of course, all the Republicans who voted against his program ran out and took credit for them anyway, which is what you do in politics.

[06:35:12]

Biden has transformed the country in a very good way, and he won't get credit for that for a long time, particularly because of the way he went out. But I think he deserves a lot more credit than he's going to get historically.

HUNT: All right, Howard Dean, very interesting conversation. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

DEAN: Thank you.

HUNT: All right, still coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, while Democrats grapple with their losses, Joe Biden preparing to address the nation in just a few hours.

Plus, now that Trump is set to return to Washington, his allies already vying for roles in his new administration.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

Now that Donald Trump's return to the White House is official, sources tell CNN his allies are quickly scrambling for new roles in his administration. Sources adding that Trump could announce his decisions on some key positions within days.

Trump will also have to decide what to do with two familiar but controversial figures from the campaign trail, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

[06:40:04]

A source familiar with conversations around Musk telling CNN, quote, "It seemed unlikely that he would even want a full-time government position, given what that would mean for his role in the various companies he helms."

As for RFK Jr., CNN reports this, quote, "inside Trump's camp, questions have been raised about whether Kennedy could get confirmed or obtain a security clearance necessary for a cabinet-level position. And even if he could, they doubt Kennedy would want to go through those processes." A former Trump official briefed on the discussion says this, quote, "if you dump a bear in Central Park and think you're above the law, you don't want to have to go through that gauntlet of political correctness."

I spoke with Senator Marco Rubio yesterday about whether he thought Kennedy could get confirmed by the Senate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Well, I think the Senate's going to give great deference to a president hat just won a stunning, what I think is an Electoral College landslide, when all is said and done, and a mandate. And he's being given a mandate to govern. And I think presidents who are given a mandate to govern deserve from the Senate the opportunity to surround themselves with people that are going to help them execute their policies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, our panel has returned.

Brad Todd, will the Senate confirm RFK Jr. to a cabinet level position?

BRAD TODD, PARTNER, ONMESSAGE INC.: No.

HUNT: No?

TODD: No. But I - but I think Marco Rubio is being - giving - discretion is a the better part of valor, and he's being discrete by trying to point to the right direction privately I'm sure.

President Trump is going to - President-elect Trump is going to give RFK a voice, but that does not necessarily mean the word secretary is in front of it.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, it's interesting, this word mandate that he used. It means different things to different people. And, yes, the president won a clear victory and comes in on the strength of that victory, but what does that actually translate to? And a lot of people might actually think that a mandate means, whether it's RFK as secretary of whatever, or six-week abortion bans, or whatever else it might be. And I think the next several weeks will be telling as to how the Trump folks talk about, well, what exactly are they empowered to do, and what have the people blessed their ability to do right out of the gate?

HUNT: "Axios" is reporting this morning that Tom Cotton won't join the Trump cabinet. They wrote this, "Senator Tom Cotton has told President-elect Trump's team he will not be accepting administration roles, despite being a top contender for positions including CIA director and secretary of defense, two sources familiar told Axios. Cotton, relatively young, conservative defense hawk, much-speculated future presidential contender."

You guys surprised by this?

TODD: I mean I think - Tom Cotton's a former client of mine, and I think he has an unlimited potential. And he will have a great deal of influence in this administration because he has a great deal of influence in the United States Senate and - and the president-elect trusts him.

So, I would watch for his imprint on defense and national security policy.

HUNT: Why do you think he's doing this, though, because he wants to distance himself from Trump to preserve his future?

TODD: I'll let - I'll let him speak for himself, but he has a - he's running for conference chair in the U.S. Senate. He has a great chance of winning that post. Conference chair is worth having, right? Republicans have 53 members in the United States Senate. And being in leadership matters. You have a whole new leadership team coming in. I think he can do whatever he wants there.

HUNT: Interesting.

Let's talk for a second about chief of staff. "The New York Times" reporting, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who are, of course, two - two bylines we're going to be reading a lot about, even more so. We read them during the Trump - the first Trump administration. The second Trump administration, I think they're going to be all a bit more critical. They report that the likely twist for chief of staff is Susie Wiles, who, very interestingly, I thought, Isaac, when Trump on Tuesday night told her to take the microphone, basically refused and gave it to Chris LaCivita instead, her fellow campaign manager.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, I mean that's the kind of role that she's had through this campaign as being in the background, helping run things, helping manage things. I think most people who looked at the Trump campaign, whether they were on - had a - a real inside view of it, or even those who were informed from the outside of it saw her as a really important part of the campaign functioning in the way that it did.

But I - we can over index any staffer all the time, right? I think what is true here is that Donald Trump won because of the way that he is, because of the way that the country is and how he tapped into it. So the question now is going to be taking that and figuring out what this looks like, what a mandate looks like, what a governing approach looks like for Donald Trump, and whether he - and how he will respond to it.

We've had - all through the campaign we've heard, well, if he comes back into power he's not going to have - he's not going to want any of the guardrails around him, he doesn't like, even less so than when he first came into the White House eight years ago.

So, Susie Wiles has figured out so far how to navigate that role around Donald Trump. If she's in as chief of staff, then she will be having to figure out that role in a much different capacity and with a lot more intensity around every decision.

TODD: Can I say something about Susie?

[06:45:01]

HUNT: Sure.

TODD: I've known Susie for 25 years. And it - America should hope she takes this job. She is a thermostat. She is capable of turning the temperature down of any heated situation. She's a really impeccable manager who's very organized. People trust her. She learns your strengths. She marries your strengths to your job. She would be a quintessential White House chief of staff who could succeed.

HUNT: All right. A ringing endorsement.

DOVERE: She would also be the first woman to be chief of staff at the White House.

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING: Yes.

HUNT: Really?

HAYS: I was going to say that.

HUNT: Interesting.

All right, straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, Mark McKinnon joins us with an open letter to his two daughters after the defeat of Kamala Harris.

Plus, President Biden preparing to speak to the nation in just a few hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But there's also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We put our pocketbooks above people's lives, above women's rights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm scared for what that means for us as women, and also as a country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Kamala Harris supporters now facing a reality that many of them feared.

[06:50:02]

Their hopes of seeing the country's first female president will have to wait.

In an open letter to his two daughters, our next guest offers this to them, quote, "I say this as a father, one who cares the world for you: As you have seen in so many other aspects of your lives, the pendulum often swings over and over," Mark McKinnon writes. "And sometimes it just takes an incredibly long time. Progress is never linear, forward or constant. But damn. It shouldn't be this hard either."

Joining us now is Mark McKinnon. He's a former adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain, and one - the creator of Paramount's "The Circus."

Mark, good morning to you.

I know you had thought that Kamala Harris was going to win here. Obviously, her defeat was pretty sweeping. How do you understand it. And, of course, you were speaking to your daughters there. What's the impact?

MARK MCKINNON, CREATOR, "THE CIRCUS": Well, you know, I've been through a bunch of these, Kasie, in my time. Obviously, it wasn't the outcome that I expected or wanted. But, you know, like I said, I've been around the block a lot of times. I've learned a lot from my losses more than I won campaigns.

But the pain that I really feel is for my daughters, and daughters everywhere who, you know, I remember in '16, you know, my - my youngest daughter, I couldn't get her out of bed for three days. And she was just now starting to, you know, to grasp again this notion that, you know, that a woman could assed (ph) to the presidency. And, so, what I - what I don't want to see happen is for that light to be extinguished. Hope is a fragile, essential and precious thing. And I just want that light to be kept alive.

And so I made - I've been around long enough to know that it comes back around. So my message to young women is, you know, it just takes awhile and stay in the fight.

I'm - I'm also an Akams Razor fan, Kasie. And I think you're - you and your panel got it right too, in which is, I mean, in a - in a win that's this sweeping and resounding, you can point to a thousand things or one thing. And the one thing that I think is quite true is that it goes back to the sort of fundamental campaigns, which they are essentially in presidential elections about change or the status quo, change or more of the same. And exit polls from this race show that seven out of ten voters were very unhappy with the direction of the country. And when you have a 70 percent wrong direction and you are the incumbent, as a vice president of this administration, that's just a huge hill to climb, which is not to say that lots of mistakes weren't made, but again, you can't point to like one thing where she should have done this or should have picked Shapiro or whatever. I - you know, I think she could have done all those things right and - and ultimately would have come up short because people just wanted change. And, you know, so, at the end of the day, if you're voting for change, even if you're a woman of color, that you're a vice president of the administration that's been at the wheel for the last four years, it's a tough - it's a tough row to hoe.

HUNT: Mark, what do you think Democrats are missing for working class votes of all races and ethnicities? I mean we've talked a couple times already this morning about the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in Queens, the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in New Jersey. I mean we didn't call New Jersey for Kamala Harris until I was, you know, on the air after 4:00 in the morning on Wednesday.

MCKINNON: It's incredible that the kind of coalition that Trump has put together, and taking it away from Democrats, particularly working class Americans. And that's what Democrats have to figure out over the next four years.

But I'll tell you, the one thing in politics I've learned is, that if you spend enough time in the desert, you figure out where the water is, right? And the Democrats are now in the desert.

And, you know, you asked me, what's going to happen? Are they attack left? Attack the middle? They've just got to attack and attack hard. They've got to attack somewhere. And the way to do that is a process over the next four years of putting candidates through the primary process, which is not what Harris got to do. She didn't get those reps. She didn't earn the - you know, earn it through, you know, a lot of spring training. And that's what Democrats will do this time.

And you ask me, you know, how are they going to get out of the desert, how are they going to find water? It's going to be leadership. And it's going to be somebody who fights their way through the next four years, emerges through a tough primary process, battle and bruised but tougher and smarter to lead the way for Democrats out of the wilderness.

HUNT: Mark, do you remember that - that scene, I think it's - I think it's Michael J. Fox with Martin Sheen, if you give - maybe he'll drink the sand in the desert trying to convince him that leadership is all you need in the White House. That's just what's playing - playing in my head as I'm listening to you today.

Mark McKinnon, thank you. I really appreciate it.

MCKINNON: Exactly. Exactly. Roll the tape.

HUNT: All right, see you soon.

MCKINNON: Kick it, Kasie. Thanks.

HUNT: All right, after congratulating Donald Trump yesterday on his electoral victory, President Biden will address the nation from the Rose Garden later this morning to speak further on his vice president's loss to the man that he once warned was an existential threat to our democracy.

[06:55:05]

But within his own party, some Democrats are blaming Biden, angrily accusing him of starving Harris a valuable months on the campaign trail by refusing to drop out of the race earlier, even when it was obvious that his stamina and mental acuity would be a significant obstacle in his campaign against Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Is it worth the risk?

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think anybody's more qualified to be president or win this race than me.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the heart of your case against Donald Trump is that he's only out for himself, putting his personal interest ahead of the national interest. How do you respond to critics who say that by staying in the race you're doing the same thing?

BIDEN: Oh, come on. Well, I don't think those critics know what they're talking about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They're just wrong?

BIDEN: They're just wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Critics are just wrong, he said then.

Meghan Hays, if - was the original sin for Democrats this cycle that President Biden decided to run for re-election?

HAYS: I mean I think a lot of people are going to try - are going to say that. But the fact of the matter is, he did run for re-election. We're in the spot we're in. and I think we need to start to look forward, because you can do the would have, should have, could haves until we're blue in the fact, but that - that doesn't change the fact that we have a President-elect Trump, and we have a Democratic Party that's in shambles, and in pieces. And so I think that we need to take a hard look at ourselves and move forward.

DOVERE: I think Joe Biden may have - he was going to go down, it seems, as the only Democrat to defeat Donald Trump. If he had dropped out earlier, there would have been a messy primary. I think you can look at the Harris folks who say that she didn't have enough time to run, but there are others who say, this was actually the best scenario for her because more time -

HUNT: I was going to say, I think a lot of people thought she would have lost the primary.

DOVERE: Right. Well, not just that, but like even if it had been two months earlier, like more time would not necessarily have benefited Kamala Harris. And this is - look, Joe Biden's legacy is going to be defined by the fact that Donald Trump won here. We'll see what it looks like in the full scope of time. But this is a -- as I was saying earlier, given what this loss looks like for Democrats, it does seem to me that you can place blame in a lot of ways, you can say it's all these different things going on. It's all of them at the same time, and it's bigger things than any of it. And it doesn't - and you'll find some Biden supporters who say, oh, he ran ahead of Kamala Harris in certain - in a lot of counties and -

HUNT: Everywhere, basically.

DOVERE: Yes. Right.

(CROSS TALK)

DOVERE: But it's a different election. It's a different election. It functioned in different ways. And Joe Biden is the easiest person to blame here. That's not to say he is not deserving of a lot of the blame. But it's just a lot of it at once.

WILLIAMS: That primary point cannot be made enough. And it's easy to say, well, there would have been a primary, and the heavens would have opened and it would have been fine. No one in modern history, no sitting president, has faced a primary from within his party and gone on to win. And Lord knows if a president stepped down, his vice president faced a primary, that that vice president would go on to win. Look, it happened to Jimmy Carter. It happened to - there's another one, you know. But it just - she would not - I just don't buy that she would have coasted to victory there.

HAYS: Yes.

TODD: She got the best campaign she could get. She was able to hide for six weeks from interview. It was a completely scripted campaign. She had a compliant media that helped project exactly what she wanted. It wasn't the messenger, it was the product. Democratic governance lost.

HUNT: Yes.

TODD: The challenge for Republicans is to make sure that our government's can win next time.

WILLIAMS: LBJ and George H.W. Bush, those are the two.

HUNT: There you go.

All right, we want to leave you on a little bit of a lighter note. The magic wall, of course, you may have seen it, it was shining again in the election night spotlight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, COMEDIAN, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE": And, remember, you can always change some of the colors. You've got blue, blue again, a little bit a red right over there. A little bit of blue. And, of course, if you want to make something out of green, we've got a little face here, some whiskers. We can make a cat.

Now, let's take a little bit of Oregon. Let's move it out to the ocean. It's going to be - it's going to be surrounded by water. That's very, very dangerous.

Check out Michigan, I can make it bounce.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: You've got to love it. The old "Saturday Night Live" sketch got new life on election night because it went viral again online as the real magic wall pros got to work.

And we just want to take a minute to salute our actual magical magicians, Phil Mattingly, John Berman and, of course, the legendary John King, who manned the wall throughout our election night and day coverage, breaking down the race like only CNN can.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So you asked, are there any places that the vice president is over performing Joe Biden in 2020. So, we can show you that as well. We can just bring that out here. Harris over performing 2020.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Holy smokes.

[07:00:00]

KING: There you go. So, let this go away and see if there's anything on the east side there.

TAPPER: Literally nothing?

KING: Literally nothing.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: John, you're a youthful individual, but you know the game in Nevada. The game - the game in Nevada is right here.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: For me it's craps, but that's a different story.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Got to love them.

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