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Harris: Joe Biden's Legacy Of Accomplishments Is Unmatched In Modern History; Secret Service Director Evades Many Questions On Trump Rally Shooting; Republicans Seek To Tie Harris To Border, Inflation. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 22, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to Inside politics. I'm Dana Bash. And we start with the wildest presidential campaign of our lifetime, hands down. Moments ago, we heard from Vice President Kamala Harris for the first time since yesterday's political earthquake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Joe Biden's legacy of accomplishment over the past three years, is unmatched in modern history. His honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his love, deep love of our country. And I am firsthand witness that every day our President Joe Biden fights for the American people and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Her brand new campaign debuted this logo, Harris for President and this afternoon she is going to visit what until yesterday was the Biden-Harris headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. It is now Harris HQ. CNN's MJ Lee is at the White House. MJ, so much news, so much reporting that you and our team have done. What is the latest about where things stand with her and her efforts just in the last not even 24 hours to sew up the nomination in warp speed?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean Dana. This event is typically as apolitical a White House event would get. This is a celebration of the NCAA champions at the White House. But politics of course looms so large given the events of the last 24 hours, the Vice President wasn't even supposed to be leading this event.

Typically it would be the president who would give remarks at the top but of course, he has been secluded in Rehoboth as he is recovering from COVID. I think the remarks that you just played up from her right at the top really gave us a little bit of a preview of how she might handle the coming weeks, as she really gets out there on the campaign trail.

We heard her sort of paying tribute to the president, thanking him for everything he has accomplished in the last three and a half years, and also really lauding his accomplishments, which to be clear, she would say are also her accomplishments made by the Biden-Harris administration.

And also just talking a little bit about the President's character, saying that he is someone of honesty and integrity and faith, somebody with a big heart is what she said. And I think, you know, just trying to give you a picture of the whirlwind of the last 24 hours for the Vice President, obviously, we've done a lot of reporting on the many, many hours she has spent on the phone, reaching out to Democratic leaders and others, that would be important to her locking up this nomination.

I just got off the phone with Reverend Al Sharpton, who was one of the people that got a call from the Vice President last night. And this was such an interesting insight into how the Vice President has been handling herself. He said that she sounded genuinely taken aback that she conveyed to him, I had no idea that this was coming.

We of course reported that the Vice President got that phone call herself yesterday from the president. And he said that the last time that they had spoken was a week ago, and that when that last conversation happened, she had been so emphatic to the Reverend, you have to stay with the President do not abandon him, and that she had been completely loyal and backing him at a moment, remember a week ago was when the floodgates of criticism and the calls for him to drop out had really opened up.

So this is somebody who behind the scenes has been keeping her head down, has been incredibly loyal to the president at a moment of such political peril for him. And now of course, she has to chart her own way forward and try to figure out what her candidacy is really going to be about and how she's going to distinguish herself from the president as well. Dana.

BASH: MJ, thank you so much. What an interesting discussion that you had with Reverend Al. Appreciate that. There's so much more to discuss with more great smart reporters. CNN's Manu Raju, Kasie Hunt and Isaac Dovere and Laura Barron-Lopez of the PBS Newshour.

I was going to ask how your day was, but it feels like I should say how was your year?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What day is it again?

BASH: Your past 24 hours because 24 hours ago, Joe Biden was the candidate for president, just want to say that.

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BASH: Isaac, you have just been with the vice president, with Vice President Harris. You traveled with her to Cape Cod, you were on her plane with her and I know that in addition to that, you have been doing reporting, great reporting on cnn.com right now about how she plans to prosecute the case against Donald Trump. Before I come to you on that, there's our -- the headline of your great story, I want to just give our viewers a little bit of a taste of how she's already been doing that on the campaign trail.

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HARRIS: In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty. You cannot claim to be for unity, if you try to overturn a free and fair election. Do we believe in freedom?

CROWDS: Yeah.

HARRIS: Do we believe in opportunity?

CROWDS: Yeah.

HARRIS: Do we believe in the promise of America?

CROWDS: Yeah.

HARRIS: And are we ready to fight for it.

CROWDS: Yeah.

HARRIS: And when we fight, we win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Take us behind the curtain inside Airforce Two and what you learned.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Look, you may remember in 2019, when she was first launching her presidential campaign then, she talked about Kamala Harris for the people, prosecutor for President. It didn't work then. It didn't work, then in part because she pulled away from it.

There was a lot of progressive questioning of it, whether she was Kamala the cop is the way that people made it out to me. But it also was a situation where she was saying Trump is guilty of all these things. But it was more rhetoric than now, when she is coming forward and saying this guy is a convicted felon, he is on trial for all these things. He did have the E. Jean Carroll civil suit found against him.

This is an argument that she wants to make and it taps into not only her bio, but the attempt that will be made here by her advisers to make her out as tough, strong. Attributes that they think are part of her being a prosecutor but also fit pretty well with being Commander- in-Chief and also smart. And that's all contrast that she wants to make to Donald Trump.

KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yeah, I mean, I just was so struck watching that video of Harris because obviously, we know she has been out there on the trail for Biden, but we've also seen her as the number two the entire time. And yes, she has had some more moments on -- on abortion rights and other places. But it just hits so differently now that you know, she's at the top of the ticket.

I mean, the contrast between what we would see from President Biden in terms of how she can approach it, the sort of the -- the sheer energy that she brings to the project. It just really underscores how different running against her is going to be for Donald Trump. And you have seen, you know, the Trump campaign had really set up everything to run against Joe Biden, even if -- if you read Tim Alberta's great piece in The Atlantic, you know, he talked to Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. And they were really talking about and they -- they -- they were willing to admit, on the record, they were like the Democratic Party, we would have trouble running against the Democratic Party.

But we're not going to have so much trouble running against Joe Biden. Turns out they got what they -- what they -- not what they wished for, because they did that early debate. And we saw -- we saw what happened. So I think I'm just struck by that in this moment.

BASH: So -- go ahead.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR: And that energy that that Donald Trump's campaign now doesn't know what to do and also Democrats are really excited about, just the Democrats that I've talked to this morning alone have just talked about momentum, everything has changed now, we're not as worried about down ballot races, now.

You know, they really feel as though this is something that -- that totally changes the race for them, totally changes the dynamics. And some -- you know, a state party chair told me that he wasn't too excited going into the convention. And now they're really excited about going into the convention because of their prospects.

BASH: So one of the most important names of the game in politics is to define the candidate and as you said, and you are doing in your reporting, Kamala Harris's people are rightly trying to make sure that she is defined the way they want her to be defined immediately right out of the gate. Well, that's exactly what Trump world is doing as well. Let's just watch a little bit of what they instantly did in an ad.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kamala knew Joe couldn't do the job. So she did it. Look what she got done. A border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead, they created this mess. They know Kamala owns this failed record.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Yeah, I mean, I was talking to a bunch of Republicans this morning about exactly what is the strategy against Kamala Harris. One, they do recognize, obviously, there's a much different race, this brings a different level of energy to the Democratic base. There has been such a huge enthusiasm gap between what Democrats were -- between Democrats and Republicans.

Some of that was very clear in the during the Republican National Convention, but what they are going to try to seize on is to sort of tie some of the more unpopular parts of the Biden administration, his policies directly to Kamala Harris given that of course she was Vice President.

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Of course, she was involved in trying to deal with Central American countries and Mexican -- and Mexico, trying to figure out the root causes of the migration problem. They're going to try to tie everything to border -- all the border problems to her. How does that play come November and also the litigation as well.

And I just talked to Mike Johnson this morning, the Speaker of the House, and he indicated very well that they're going to try to fight ballot by ballot, potentially different states to try to deny her to get on the ballot, suggesting there could be something running afoul of state laws. There's still a question about what exactly that means. Legal experts dispute that, but they're trying to hone-in on what exactly their best strategy is against her.

DOVERE: And that'll also tap into some other stuff that you see coming around here, which is like four years ago, when she was put on the ticket, there was some issue, is she actually a citizen? Can she constitutionally serve? A lot of mispronunciations of her name? It was striking to me in that commercial, they referred to as Kamala, not Harris, not the Vice President.

BASH: At least they said her name, right.

DOVERE: Well, yeah, but you know, there won't be an ad talking about Senator Vance as what did J.D. do?

BASH: Right.

DOVERE: Right? And -- and that is something that Harris is going to go up against. Obviously, it was an issue for Hillary Clinton, we cannot ignore that sexism is quite real in this country and in our politics, and sexism, racism, those are things that, yes, she can tap into a lot of the energy in the base among women, among people of color, but it is part of what's ahead for her.

BASH: Speaking of -- well, first of all, I just want to show because we've kind of -- what is understood to be the case as part of our conversation is she's got this locked up. I mean, there's nobody that we have seen who has come out and said that they're going to run yet. I mean Joe Manchin flirted with it for about five minutes.

HUNT: Well, he came on with us at 6:45 AM and I think by 7:15, someone had called him on the phone and --

BASH: That changed.

HUNT: -- it's clear what happened in that amount of time. BASH: But just to show you, the people who have endorsed her, just in the last again 23 hours, key people who potentially could be -- could have been running. Andy Beshear, the Governor of Kentucky, Secretary Buttigieg, Roy Cooper, Mark Kelly, Wes Moore, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer.

What do all those people have in common? They also could be -- could be potential running mates. And that's another big, big challenge that she's going to have like immediately. She's got no, no time to do that. Let's just take a listen to what one of the people on that list, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky said this morning on another network.

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GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): J.D. Vance ain't from here. And the nerve that he has to call the people of Kentucky, of Eastern Kentucky lazy. Listen, these are the hard working coal miners that powered the industrial revolution. We should be thanking them, not calling them lazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now that is an audition.

BARRON-LOPEZ: That is and Governor Roy Cooper was also making an audition this morning. And the two of them are on that list for -- and they're the names that come up a lot from other Democrats. And when it comes to who they'd like to see on the ticket with Vice President Harris.

I think that we could very well see her decide on a VP pretty fast, if not this week, because of the fact that Democrats are still trying to figure out whether or not they're going to do that virtual roll call vote on August 1, or if they can actually wait till the full convention. But if they have to do it on August 1 because of the concerns about litigation, then she's going to want that VP pick.

BASH: We have to take a break but somebody who has not come out and talked, who endorsed her is Mark Kelly, whose name is definitely kind of --

HUNT: Very, very (inaudible) top.

RAJU: But then you have to replace that in the Senate, which is a real challenge.

BASH: But there's a Democratic --

DOVERE: In 2026.

RAJU: In 2026.

BASH: OK. So we're going to talk about this later. Coming up as the great philosopher Ferris Bueller once said, life moves pretty fast. Well, here's a check, private citizen Donald Trump wrote more than a decade ago, to -- can you see it there? That's right. Kamala Harris when she was running for California Attorney General. Fast forward to today, what is the Trump plan to attack his likely new opponent? We're going to talk more about that, next.

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BASH: Right now the Director of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle is testifying before a House committee. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are grilling her about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, just nine days ago.

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REP. PETE SESSIONS (R-TX): So no employee has been disciplined and no employee has been placed in any position that would place their job in jeopardy nor their standing in the agency.

KIMBERLY CHEATLE, DIRECTOR OF U.S. SECRET SERVICE: We are still in the process of --

SESSIONS: That's not what I asked. I -- you're the person that runs the place. You're the person that knows right from wrong, good from bad. You've had a number of days and now you come before this committee, knowing you're going to be before us and you've got to slough it off to someone else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Whitney Wild is joining me now from Capitol Hill. Whitney, you've been covering this. You actually talk to Kimberly Cheatle, last week with a great interview. I have to say I've covered Capitol Hill for a long time. When you have Pete Sessions and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez saying almost the same thing, showing the same frustration, that tells you something.

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WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a remarkable moment. And I think these Congress members are getting increasingly frustrated with a lack of answers here. They are asking very specific detailed questions, many of them asking the same question over and over, much of that surrounding the perimeter, Dana.

And so the big question here is, why was the perimeter so small when they knew that it was a credible threat from Iran prior to this rally? And just to bring our viewers back into sort of the -- the logistics of this rally, this building where the gunman climbed up onto and shot former president Donald Trump, that was just 150 yards from the podium and what Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez pointed out was that that perimeter is smaller than the range of not only one of the most powerful weapons, but one of the most popular an AR-15 rifle, which is the exact type of weapon that that gunman used. So many questions there. She's saying very plainly that the lack of

answers here is not acceptable, because they have to make changes and they have to make them fast. And if they don't know what the challenges were, they can't provide the answers and can't course correct. Meanwhile, there were other members, certainly on the other side of the aisle, for example, Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs really pressing her on some of the details.

And one of the other major questions here, Dana is what communication was passed along to the Secret Service, because what we know is that the timeline here, put Thomas Matthew Crooks, that shooter as a suspicious person well, before the former president took the stage. And so the question becomes, why was he not deemed a threat immediately?

Why was that information not passed to his detail? Why did the Trump team allow him to take the stage in the very moments when law enforcement was trying to assess the threat here? And what we've learned, the very little detail that Director Cheatle has led out now is that there was a team that was supposed to contact him, here's a moment from the hearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHEATLE: Those individuals that are identified as suspicious, we will send teams out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was -- was a team sent out here, then?

CHEATLE: There were teams that were sent to identify and interview that individual.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: Every time we hear a new answer -- answer Dana, we have a new question. And the question now is why were those teams not able to contact him? Why was this not stopped when it seems like there was ample time to do so? Back to you.

BASH: Whitney, thank you so much. Just extraordinary. And that's very well put. Every time there's a new answer, there's a new question. Thank you, Whitney.

And now back to our top story. Donald Trump's campaign is recalibrating, quickly, trying to shift from going after a President Biden as his opponent to now Vice President Kamala Harris as the woman very likely to be on the top of the Democratic ticket. Our great reporters are back here to weigh in.

You both talked a little bit about the way that Republicans are calibrating both from Capitol Hill and of course, potential concern, even though they're not admitting it in public, inside the Trump campaign. I want to just play a little bit of what we have seen just in the last 24 hours or so from Republicans as they try to land on the best lines of attack against Kamala Harris.

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JASON MILLER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: Harris was Joe Biden's Border Czar. That's going to be a disqualifier.

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): In three and a half years, we have literally went from a secure border to no border, safe streets to record crime, $2 dollar gas to $4 gas, and we went from stable prices to record inflation.

KEVIN MCCARTHY, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: Why did she lie to the American public? This is the Democrat's Watergate. It is not going to be washed away. They want to know who knew and when and why didn't they say anything?

STEPHEN MILLER, FORMER TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: This is its full frontal and attack on American democracy as we've ever seen in the history of America's major political parties.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This is the kind of thing that is playing out all over conservative media. I just want to do a little bit of record correcting. There's no -- there's not record crime right now. Number one, Harris was put in charge, as you said earlier of combating the roots of immigration. She was not and is not the border czar. And inflation was very high in 2020, too close to a record high. It has come down since.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we're going to see them go after her, as Manu said on immigration a lot. They're also going to try to you know -- but I think that to what Isaac was saying earlier, they also are not going to be able to necessarily help themselves when they're talking about a candidate who is the first black and Indian woman who is the vice president. And then mispronouncing her name isn't new. It's something that when I was on the trail in 2020 they did repeatedly over and over again.

BASH: Is that -- can you just explain this to me? Is this just a sign of disrespect?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I think it's a sign of disrespect but it is also a sign of -- of othering the vice president.

HUNT: It's like a reminder this she is not like you.

BARRON-LOPEZ: That she's not like you and it also is of the same thing as attacking former President Barack Obama saying that he was not a citizen.

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HUNT: Oh and they brought the same Obama.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Right, the same thing --

BASH: They are also actually explicitly saying that about her. BARRON-LOPEZ: Right, they're doing it about her too, questioning her

citizenship, questioning these black and brown people when it comes to, you know, their citizenship. And also yes, trying to make them sound as though they are not fully American because of their names. And because their names may not be --

DOVERE: Also a, one of Trump's great political skills if you want to call it that, is what happens, bullies do, which they turn the weakness into a strength. You see from some of the clips you pull up there, how sensitive they clearly are to being seen as a threat to democracy. Right?

And the -- the people who invaded the Capitol on January 6 were not there for anyone other than Donald Trump. And that is a sensitive point. Joe Biden's campaign knew that was a sensitive point for all the other problems they had. And now turning into this closed process, whatever it -- right? Yes, there are issues here with how things have come to Harris but it's not quite the same as rioting in the capital.

HUNT: There really are concerns inside the Trump campaign about Harris, it is harder for them to run against her than it is going to be when it was to run against Joe Biden. I mean, I was having a conversation with top sources of the RNC last week, who had acknowledged that they were doing this polling about her and how -- they can see how it changes the race fundamentally, right?

It's like young, white men might not like her as much, but young people in general, are much more inclined to support Kamala Harris. It also shores up the issue of the Democrats were seeing with the erosion among black voters. There are -- there are some significant changes here. And I think one of the other things, I got to note, from a source, somebody who had worked in Donald Trump's orbit knows him pretty well, doesn't work for him anymore, pointed out that the biggest risk to Trump's campaign is often Trump himself.

RAJU: Yeah.

HUNT: And his inability to control himself. And this person said, can you imagine how hard he's going to have to work on his own self to avoid attacking a black woman, everyday?

RAJU: Yeah, I mean -- and this explains why getting -- Joe Biden getting out of the race was so critical, because what was the whole effort in the Biden campaign. It was to make the race about Trump himself. But when Biden was in the race, it became a race about Joe Biden and now that Joe Biden is out of the race, this changes it completely. Democrats have an opportunity to shift the focus back to Donald Trump and that's what we're seeing. The Trump campaign trying to shift the focus back to Kamala Harris, we'll see you succeed.

BASH: Just as we go to break, I just want to show our viewers one thing quickly, which is just a -- to Donald Trump from his former Vice President Mike Pence. He just released something saying President Joe Biden made the right decision for our country. And I thank him for putting the interests of our nation ahead of his own. Talk about projecting. I mean, that was -- DOVERE: Seems almost like an endorsement for Harris.

BASH: Really. Coming up much more on the brand new 2024 presidential campaign. Don't go anywhere.

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