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Israel Prepares For Retaliatory Strike From Iran Or Hezbollah; RFK Jr. Says He Placed Dead Bear In Central Park In 2014; Harris Expected To Make VP Pick Ahead Of PA Rally Tomorrow; New CBS Poll: Harris, Trump Tied In Battlegrounds. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 05, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:32:47]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: President Biden will meet this afternoon with his national security team as fears grow that Iran or its proxies could launch a retaliatory strike inside Israel. CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us now live from Israel. What is the situation there right now, Jeremy?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, I'm joining you from a region that is certainly on edge right now as Israel awaits the possibility of -- and perhaps even the likelihood of Iranian retaliation for that assassination last week of Hamas's political leader in the Iranian capital.

As Iran has vowed to retaliate, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that Israel is prepared to meet Iran in any theater, in any arena, vowing that Israel will exact a, quote, "very heavy price" multiple times this weekend for any potential Iranian attack.

The Israeli military, for its part, says that it is not only preparing, readying its aerial defenses, but that it is also beginning to examine potential retaliatory actions, raising the possibility that this likely potential Iranian attack against Israel could result in a domino effect, a very, very slippery slope for this region at large.

And, of course, Hezbollah, which is only about 30 kilometers to our north, is also threatening retaliation over the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander last week, carried out by the Israeli military. For the moment, though, Israeli civilians haven't been told to change anything about their day to day routines.

The Israeli military's home front command guidance remains the same for civilians, but several cities, including Haifa, where we are now, Jerusalem as well, urging residents to begin taking precautions, staying near to bomb shelters, readying their supplies in the event of an emergency situation.

So there is certainly a lot of tension right now, but also a flurry of diplomatic activity to try and deescalate tensions in the region to make Iran recalculate the possibilities that it is examining. And General Kurilla, the top Middle East commander of the U.S. military is now in the region working to try and revive that international coalition that helped defend Israel from those Iranian missiles and drones back in April, a regional effort that is certainly in play right now to see -- to hopefully try and prevents this situation from escalating further.

Dana?

[12:35:09]

BASH: Jeremy, thank you so much for that reporting. Really appreciate it.

And up next, we are going to turn to the political map, what it looks like, and what Vice President Kamala Harris campaign is hoping to do to expand it in November. Is that realistic? A lead Democratic pollster will join me.

And later, it is a bizarre story with an even more bizarre ending. You definitely will be scratching your head about this. Presidential candidate RFK Jr. did something 10 years ago, fessed up to it this week. We'll talk about it.

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[12:40:19]

BASH: A bear in Central Park found dead under a bicycle. That's enough to get your attention, right? Just that alone. Well, when you find out, it was secretly planted by a presidential candidate, that's a whole new level of intrigue. This actually happened a decade ago. The candidate, Robert Kennedy Jr., just fessed up. And he had an explanation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. (I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it. A young bear. So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear and it was very good condition and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: In case you're wondering, that was Roseanne Barr and her face is all of us. OK. So, Kennedy says he was in the park falconing, which ran longer than expected, and he had to hurry to a dinner at the Peter Luger Steak House which also ran late. This happened then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: I had to go to the airport, and the bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad. I had an old bike in my car that somebody had asked me to get rid of. I said, let's go put the bear in the Central Park, and we'll make it look like he had hit by a bike. It'll be fun and funny for people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Just a prank, he says, to draw attention to a series of bike accidents in the park. Well, back in 2014, this story did make headlines all around the world. It was unresolved. But the mystery was solved yesterday when the New Yorker reported on the story in a profile of Kennedy.

My panel is back. That I assume is why he released that video, explaining it to Roseanne Barr. Maggie Haberman, you are a --

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: New Yorker.

BASH: -- Classic New Yorker.

HABERMAN: Yes. Yes.

BASH: And so, I'm sure you remember this fondly, as does John Berman, which will reprise in one second. Wow.

HABERMAN: We're living in a simulation. I don't actually have an explanation because it's too weird. It involves Peter Luger Steak House, which is a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. And, anyway, I mean --

BASH: Which, obviously, like, you don't want to miss a reservation there.

HABERMAN: Of course.

BASH: So much that you need to dump a bear in Central Park.

HABERMAN: I would say who among us, but none among us. Except for one person. I mean, look, I remember this story when it happened.

BASH: Yes.

HABERMAN: I don't understand. It's so weird on so many levels and I don't feel like I've fully processed it yet. This is the second at least story involving RFK Jr. and a dead animal, I think. There was some of the worm counts. There was a goat or something and another story.

And so there's -- this is a recurring theme. I don't understand why now. I don't understand the point. You're correct that Roseanne Barr's face I think is the reaction most people have.

BASH: So why do we think he was telling Roseanne Barr? Like, why was that a reveal?

HABERMAN: I don't understand.

BASH: It's like, oh, I have a big political --

HABERMAN: Right. BASH: -- reveal to do.

HABERMAN: Right.

BASH: Want to get it out before the New Yorker. Where's Roseanne Barr? Let me call her and get her in my kitchen.

HABERMAN: It's also -- he's been very good at sort of amplifying pieces of another profile that would probably have been smaller without this.

BASH: Yes.

HABERMAN: Now, this is going to be everywhere and here we are talking about it.

BASH: Yes. OK, so John Berman. I gave a little tease to this, so let's actually play what happened when you were with our friend Christine Romans on air on CNN back in 2014 when this was a story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: New York Central Park, a bear cub.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, it's dead.

ROMANS: I know, dead underneath some bushes. They're not sure whether it wandered in the park or someone put it there.

BERMAN: There'd been no bears in the park for a long, long time. It seems as if someone brought the thing there, which is really sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean, you are a crack investigative reporter. Like, you should have been out there really trying to solve this, because you were onto it.

BERMAN: You know, I had an inkling 10 years ago that maybe something was up.

BASH: You didn't get the RFK. Jr. part.

BERMAN: I didn't. The funny thing is, when I first saw that clip last night, and everyone was texting it and emailing it, I was very excited. I'm like, oh, I was right about something, which is rare and every 10 years or so it happens. No, but the point is, I think at the time we all sort of knew that someone planted it there.

BASH: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

BERMAN: It's just so bizarre --

BASH: OK -- BERMAN: -- that it was Robert Kennedy Jr.

BASH: And guess what? It just gets even more bizarre because guess who wrote the story for your paper, the New York Times -- we'll put this up -- Tatiana Schlossberg. Who is Tatiana Schlossberg? She's RFK Jr.'s cousin. She is the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy. She wrote the story for the New York Times, obviously, not having any clue that her cousin, Bobby, was the one who put that in there.

[12:45:01]

MICHELLE PRICE, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Yes, I mean, as you said, this is -- this has been a weird year, but this one is probably one of the weirdest stories. There is very little in this that I think is relatable to the average American. The day falconing that goes along in your steak house.

BASH: You mean, he is not average bear?

HABERMAN: The bear who (INAUDIBLE) to some people who hunt

PRICE: We've all lost track of time but, you know, I think, the other thing to keep in mind is Robert Kennedy Jr. had a reputation as an environmentalist. And he seems to be playing around with the dead baby animal. There was the dog story earlier. I mean, it just kind of questions that reputation he has as his friend of the environment when you're posing for pictures with these animals.

You know, if there's one thing we learned from the Kristi Noem story about her shooting her dog is that bipartisan -- there's a bipartisan agreement that we really just, as Americans, don't appreciate killing animals for, you know, cuddly animals or posing with dead animals. And it just -- it's hard to see how this is going to do many favors.

BASH: I mean, it's just so weird because it is the name of the -- it is the word of the 2024 cycle. So we're just going to keep embracing it.

Thanks guys.

Up next, Democrats are gaining ground with Kamala Harris at the top. Is it enough to overtake Trump? A Democratic pollster will be here next.

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[12:50:35]

BASH: Election Day is 92 days away and the race is tied. Tied nationally and in seven battleground states. That's according to a new CBS/YouGov poll. For Democrats, that's a better environment, certainly than they were in before Harris became the presumptive nominee. Blueprint, a Democratic polling and research group, is looking at all this data, trying to figure out what Democrats need to do to win.

And joining me now is Blueprint's lead pollster, Evan Roth Smith. Thank you so much for being here. It's nice to see you. Let's start with what is happening right now in the race, which is that Kamala Harris is trying to figure out who to pick as a running mate. Just focusing on the data right now to get elected, is there any pick that you see as a must pick for the electoral strategy?

EVAN ROTH SMITH, LEAD POLLSTER, BLUEPRINT: There's no must pick, and picking the vice president is a big part of Kamala Harris defining who she is to the American people, which is really her number one task right now. And I think it makes a lot of sense to pick someone like Josh Shapiro. Pennsylvania is an incredibly important state.

Also makes sense to not rock the boat. She's riding a lot of good energy, you know, tone change in the election that has benefited her, benefited the Democratic Party. There's some internal debate over Josh Shapiro within the party, and maybe she wants to go a different direction. But I don't think the vice presidential pick is going to be decisive or determinative in this election.

BASH: But what about a state like Arizona, for example? Let's say she picks Mark Kelly. You don't think that will help her -- or will it help her in Arizona? Or is that something that is not a given?

SMITH: There could be a small, very modest bounce in the state that the Vice President is from, but really it's about what the Vice President signals, right? Mark Kelly might signal some strength on immigration, right? He's a border state senator and Harris has one of the only real enduring vulnerabilities we see for her at this point in our data, at least, is a deficit on immigration and the border to Donald Trump.

She's erased many other deficits that Joe Biden had on the economy, on inflation, on prices. So maybe she wants to double down on that, right, with someone like Josh Shapiro or Tim Walz, who can talk to sort of bread and butter economic issues and things like that.

BASH: I want to get to the economy in one second, but just first keeping sort of the big picture, I mentioned the CBS/YouGov poll that shows Harris and Trump tied in battlegrounds. The battlegrounds, we're talking about Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Do you think -- because I know she's raising a lot of money, but at some point they're going to have to make decisions -- based on her strengths and her weaknesses as all candidates have, is the blue wall strategy if we put that back up, meaning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, the best or is it the Sun Belt strategy?

Which one do you think makes most sense for them down the road? Now, they're going to play in all of them.

SMITH: Right. Well, there's plenty of time left in this election. 90 days is not a long time in real life, but in politics --

BASH: It is.

SMITH: -- it is a long time.

BASH: Yes.

SMITH: I think they need to shore up the blue wall first. They need to make sure they're on pretty firm footing. I think Kamala Harris knows she has a real shot in the Sunbelt states, that Joe Biden maybe was slipping out of his grasp. Maybe she gets to the point where she can turn there. I think she wants to.

I think that's why she was looking at people like Roy Cooper or Andy Beshear initially as part of her vice presidential pick to grow her appeal in a place like Georgia. But I think, first, they have to make sure they feel good about Pennsylvania, they feel good about Wisconsin, they feel good about Michigan, and then maybe you try and really go for it in some of these other places. But, if we lose Pennsylvania, there are not too many other ways.

BASH: It's Pennsylvania or bust.

SMITH: More or less at this point in the race.

BASH: Yes, yes, because of the way that the electoral map is. So let's talk a little bit more about the economy because of, you know, nothing happens in a vacuum. She is the Vice President of the United States. Even though there were bonkers, great numbers for months and months and months on jobs, even then, you can tell me, people were saying we don't feel it, we don't feel good about the economy because of inflation.

Now today, you have Wall Street having trouble, and that's, you know, very much in people's faces. Your July poll found only 23 percent of voters associated Harris with inflation. What do you believe she needs to do to continue to disassociate herself with the things that voters don't like about the Biden economic policy and associate herself with those that they do?

[12:55:06]

SMITH: Well, a lot of voters are still kind of discovering Kamala Harris in terms of her economic policy. What kind of Democrat is she? Is she a Bernie Sanders style progressive? Is she a, you know, corporate Wall Street Democrat? A lot of voters aren't quite sure which archetype she fits because she hasn't been front and center on economic policy for the administration.

So, our -- what we see in our polling is as one of the best ways forward for her is to come out swinging as sort of a working people's champion, which is aligned with who she's been in the past and particularly to lean into some of the prosecutions and suits she conducted while she was California Attorney General. So she doesn't have to talk as much about her time in the Biden administration and say, I went after the fat cats.

I went after, you know, the folks who rip people off on during the housing crisis. I went after the insurance companies, right? A people's prosecutor.

BASH: Right. Well, we have, as you said, 90 days is a very long time in politics.

SMITH: Yes.

BASH: Please come back. Great to talk to you. Learned a lot.

SMITH: Thank you.

BASH: And thank you so much for joining Inside Politics, CNN News Central starts after the break.

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