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Inside Politics

Harris Picks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz As Running Mate; Trump: Walz Will "Unleash Hell On Earth"; Walz Defends Himself Against Trump Attacks. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 06, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash. And we start with today's big political breaking news. The VP picks for her VP. Moments ago, a plane carrying Minnesota Governor Tim Walz took off from the Twin Cities, heading east, ultimately to Philadelphia. That is where, later today, Walz will officially be introduced as Kamala Harris's running mate, capping off a whirlwind 16 days since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Kamala Harris stepped in.

CNN was first to break the news this morning. Governor Walz is a 60- year-old veteran, former teacher and football coach who spent 12 years in Congress. The Harris campaign just released this TikTok video, contrasting Walz with the Republican candidate for vice president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN): People like J. D. Vance know nothing about small town America. It's not about hate. It's not about collapsing in. The golden rule there is mind your own damn business. Their policies are what destroyed rural America. They've divided us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Jeff Zeleny is on the ground in Philadelphia, part of the incredible team that broke the news about Governor Walz this morning. Jeff, so many questions. I guess the first is about what you believe the Harris team is hoping to achieve based on your reporting and what they're telling you with this pick?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, the word authenticity comes up again and again in conversations of people who are familiar with the meeting on Sunday that Vice President Kamala Harris had with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He was really a third- tier contender who rose quickly through the ranks, through his television appearances, and that was part of an orchestrated campaign that that people close to him put together. But one adviser tells me, he had to execute on that.

So again and again, day by day by day, he started drawing the attention of the Harris team. He passed the vet. There were no significant issues that they found during that. And then once the vice president met him on Sunday, she was already leaning toward him. She liked his biography. And when they had that meeting, I'm told, she found him to be authentic and warm and found him to be a governing partner.

Now we, of course, will see them on stage here tonight in Philadelphia as they make their debut in this 91-day remarkable stretch to election day. We're getting a glimpse of one of the reasons she chose him through a tweet that she sent out this morning. She said a simple message like this. He's delivered for working families like his, now let's get to work.

So, they definitely are going to lean heavily into his biography as a social studies teacher, elected to Congress in 2006 and then elected to Governor, where he's currently serving the second term. But Dana, you well remember, 2006 of course, a huge year for Democrats in the very end of the Bush administration's time in office. He won a republican district. So, he started off his career as a very moderate Democrat. Now he is a very progressive Democrat.

I am told that they are going to lean on all of that, show his trajectory and try and win back some of the Democratic voters who may have gone to the other side over the last eight years in the Donald Trump era, if you will.

One other adviser told me this. It says, he's designed to win over voters who look and think, who have gone to the Trump campaign from the Democratic Party, so that is something that they are hoping to sell to voters. But first and foremost, also, he's a governing partner, Dana, and his ambition was not seen to get in the way of her plans.

We of course, will see how all of that works out. At the end of the day, this should not be about him. This is about the top of the ticket, but for (inaudible), at least, it's about them and their new partnership and that chemistry. Dana?

[12:05:00]

BASH: Jeff Zeleny, thank you so much. Now I want to turn to CNN's Kristen Holmes, who is also in Philadelphia. J. D. Vance is about to speak there. Kristen, it sounds like, it's very loud already, getting ready for him to come in there. What are we hearing so far from team Trump?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We've heard from Republicans across the board who say that this is a good opportunity for them to continue promoting the lines that they have said about Vice President Kamala Harris, that she is a far-left radical liberal.

One of the things that we have heard Donald Trump say over and over again is that she is more liberal than President Joe Biden. And this is now them taking that a step further, particularly because Walz has been a favorite among the progressives left.

Take a listen to what J. D. Vance said when he arrived here in Pennsylvania. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Many, many, many people said repeatedly that the reason Kamala Harris was going away from the Josh Shapiro selection is because they were worried about antisemitism. They were worried about certain voters. They were worried about some of the leaders in the grassroots activists and their party wouldn't take a Jewish nominee. I think it's despicable. I think it's disgusting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Dana, one of the things I want to point out here is that J. D. Vance, part of the reason they were so excited to have him on the team is because they believed he would serve as an attack dog, a bulldog. He really hasn't had an opportunity to do that because he himself has been under an enormous amount of scrutiny.

You're going to see some of that turn with this Walz pick. He is going to go after him. You expect to see that behind me today. And I do want to talk a little bit about that Governor Shapiro pick, because even though they are attacking Kamala Harris for not choosing Shapiro.

I was on the phone with someone moments before we broke the news that Governor Walz had been the pick. Who was saying that they hoped it was Governor Walz over Governor Shapiro, because they believe there was a lot more risk, particularly with the battleground state of Pennsylvania, when it came to Shapiro.

So, even though they are insulting her for not making that choice, there's least part of the campaign that is relieved, but that's not something they have to contend with, but again in this critical state.

BASH: All right, Kristen, thank you so much. I've got a great group to break it all down with us. CNN's Sara Sidner, Bloomberg's David Gura, CNN commentators David Axelrod and S.E. Cupp. What a day.

David Axelrod, I'm going to start with you, because as far as I know, you're the only one of all of us who was actually interviewed candidates for vice president, and that would be Joe Biden when you were senior adviser to Barack Obama. What do you think of the pick?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, you know, the one thing about Tim Walz is that he kind of dropped out of a Norman Rockwell painting, OK. He comes from small town America. Enlisted in the National Guard when he was 17. You know, a social studies and geography teacher, who took a losing football team and helped coach it to the state championship.

I mean, you know, he looks and sounds like small town America. So, if you want to reach out in those ways, he's very, very good. He also ran a bunch of races in the swing congressional district. You covered him in Congress. Jeff is right. He was a more moderate candidate then, but the things that brand him as a progressive are very much economic things like, you know, paid family leave and childcare help and so on. I think Democrats are running on those issues now, and so people may try and brand them.

Now, the first thing that the Trump campaign did was put out a tweet about the George Floyd aftermath. And I think you're going to hear a lot of that. But I don't know that they're going to impeach this ticket on the grounds of them being too progressive. And I think Tim Walz doesn't look that or sound that way. I mean, that's not the way that I would necessarily go.

So, you know, I -- he doesn't help you win a state. That was something I said to you long ago. I would look at Pennsylvania. I'd look at Arizona. And she did look at Governor Shapiro. She did look at Senator Kelly. But, you know, in terms of the persona of Tim Walz -- and last thing I'll say, I want to -- last thing I will say is, I do think this issue, as I understand it, of chemistry was very, very important. She's friendly with Josh Shapiro and knows him well.

But the question was, could they get together on what the role should look like? I think she feels very comfortable that she and Walz can get together on what the role would look like, and that's why we ended up where we are today.

BASH: And as you talk about his resume. He was -- he's been governor since 2019. He was a congressman for 12 years, school-teacher, as you said, high school football coach, and was in the National Guard for 24 years. Of course, Minnesota, at least right now, it doesn't look like is a swing state.

[12:10:00]

AXELROD: No.

BASH: It would have been before.

AXELROD: It would have been. Yeah.

BASH: But S.E., maybe he doesn't bring a state, but what the Harris campaign is banking on is that he brings a kind of voter that resides and is critical in key states, particularly the blue wall states in Minnesota -- excuse me, in Michigan, Wisconsin and even Pennsylvania.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. In that way, he's very much a traditional VP pick, in that he addresses deficiencies on the ticket, which is what normally you try to do, whether it's geographic or demographic. And he does, he brings in military background. He's a geographic counterweight to Kamala Harris's sort of coastal, you know, liberalism, and it's sort of the opposite of the Trump, Vance pick, which doubled down on attributes Trump already had, all white, all male, all MAGA.

So, it really is a complete ticket. You know, he is more progressive. You don't -- you don't get Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal to all endorse if you're not progressive, and they're all behind him. So, he'll have to answer for that. He'll have to answer for George Floyd.

An episode, he admitted, he said, was an abject failure of leadership in that state, he's going to have to defend his record. But so is she. Neither of them have had to lay out an agenda or answer tough questions about what they would do or what they have done. So, the good vibes will keep going for probably this week, but eventually they're going to have to answer not just to Republican attacks, but to the media.

BASH: Two words of the summer, vibes, and of course, weird. OK. So, let's get to weird. This means nothing. This means nothing, Sara. We're so cool, but I know that you can explain. I was talking to a Harris adviser this morning who was saying that, yes, of course, in the last week, everybody has been campaigning who really wants it, including walls.

But until then, it was kind of organic. And one of the ways that it was organic was the fact that he is the first person to come up with the idea that he would paint Donald Trump and the Republicans as weird. Let's listen to some of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALZ: These guys are just weird. That's who they are. So, it isn't much else. Don't give them the power.

Is he a danger to women's health? Yes. Is he a danger to world peace? Yes. But don't give him more credit than he needs. He's just a strange, weird dude. And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What do you think, Sara?

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, there is this issue, and you touched on it of Minneapolis. And what happened with George Floyd?

BASH: You were there.

SIDNER: I was there. And when people saw what happened in that city, of course, the officer who murdered George Floyd was the big story. But then the story shifted because of the violence that was there, and he was blamed for not sending in the National Guard early enough. And there was a lot of tough talk from some of the folks in the state about his lack of doing so quickly.

But he was reelected in 2022. And he was able to sort of move on from that and do things like free school lunch and breakfast in some schools, trying to protect abortion rights in his state, which people there appreciated. Going after the gun lobby, basically putting in some gun legislation, even though he says, look, I'm a father. I'm a gun owner. I'm a veteran. I believe in the Second Amendment.

But I believe in some restrictions here to try to keep children in particular safe, knowing that they are dying at these incredibly terrible rates in this country from gun violence. And so, he's been able to surmount that, but it is certainly going to be a talking point. We have already heard it from the Trump campaign. They're going to come after him on that issue.

But there is, of course, the issue he's running with the black woman who has been attacked mercilessly by Donald Trump, trying to undo her identity that she has created for herself and that she should be able to create. That has leaves a nasty taste in the black voters that Donald Trump has been trying to go after and that could be a real pivotal point here, too.

BASH: And David, you know, S.E. was talking about the fact that Donald Trump picked somebody who is just like him in a lot of ways. And what I was -- I was texting back and forth with the Republican strategist today, saying that he believes that obviously Tim Walz and Kamala Harris do not look alike. They're different genders.

I mean all of the things. But when it comes to policies, they are going to argue, well, he's progressive, she's progressive, but it is going to be harder to pin him down on that because is it progressive, or is it populist? And the populist idea isn't something that Republicans hate anymore.

DAVID GURA, HOST, BLOOMBERG'S "THE BIG TAKE" PODCAST: I'm so glad that you bring this up, because as we talk about identity, I think it's a moment when we can talk about what progressive means.

[12:15:00]

BASH: Yeah.

GURA: Is he just a kind of pragmatic politician? He says that he is. I was struck, and we've all learned a lot about him over these last few weeks. Yes, some of us have covered him for longer. But in interviews, he talks about how he really respects and thinks that thinks that Trump voters are winnable.

He thinks something isn't clicking in the messaging that Democrats have had to those voters, and he feels very enthusiastic about, being able to do that. And from the clips that you just showed, he thinks there's a more effective way in which someone like him can talk to those voters and bring them over.

I'm very curious if the messaging that we've seen these last couple of hours from the Trump campaign will stick. I mean, you look at him and he's affable and avuncular, calling him a dangerous liberal or a radical person.

AXELROD: Yes.

GURA: Again, I think it's a moment when words that are tossed around, people are labeled with, will be reevaluated and, dare I say, redefined in this moment. And I think that's probably what the Harris campaign is hoping for that. He is somebody. He's a vessel through which they'll be able to do that.

AXELROD: He's also, you know, the contrast with J. D. Vance is pretty striking. You know -- he is who J. D. Vance purports to be. He actually is from a small rural town. And he looks and sounds like that. He also looks like an adult.

And, you know, one of the things when you're picking you asked me before about being involved in this process, there are, first -- there are two things that are table stakes. One is, is the person sort of palpably qualified to be president. This guy's been a governor. He's been a congressman.

The second -- the second piece is, are you pretty sure he's not going to embarrass you? And it seems like Trump failed on both tests because they were so filled with hubris in that convention that they decided, we can afford to take a flyer on Vance. You know, the Trump boys liked him. Tucker Carlson liked him. And they went with him, and it's been a disaster ever since.

BASH: All right. Well, everybody standby. We've got a lot more to talk about. Coming up, as we have been discussing, the Democratic ticket is set. We are going to look at Republican efforts to find a winning message to take them on. And we're going to get some inside scoop on Tim Walz's record as governor from his friend and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips.

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BASH: Incompetent liberal, far left, radical, West Coast wannabe. I don't even know what that means exactly. But these are just some of the labels team Trump is throwing at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. They even released a new ad already this morning.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: Governor Walz's previewed how he will respond to Trump, painting him as Ultra liberal. In an interview with our own Jake Tapper on State of the Union, just a little over a week ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALZ: What a monster. Kids are eating, eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own healthcare decisions. And we're a top five business state and we also rank in the top three of happiness. Look, they're going to label whatever they're going to label. He's going to roll it out, mispronounce names, you know, to try and make the case.

The fact of the matter is, where you see the policies that Vice President Harris was a part of making Democratic governors across the country executed those policies. And quality of life is higher. The economies are better. All of those things.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: Wow. The panel is back. He called it, he said pretty much everything that they would do about him, including, I mean, the fact that even in this they are intentionally mispronouncing her name. I mean -- I think we need to keep repeating that that's not an accident, obviously.

SIDNER: Over and over and over again. Donald Trump has also done this on his Truth Social this morning. He's trying out different names. I don't understand what the point of that is, other than to annoy people. I just don't understand.

AXELROD: Maybe they can raise the money and have people vote on the epithet that they think is most effective.

SIDNER: And every Republican that we have talked to, whether it's on our air or outside, has said, and you can back me up on this essay. Stick to the policies, stick to the policies, stick to the policies. And what is Donald Trump to continue to go after Kamala Harris. He's again called her not a smart individual. She's saying the people around her that are running the vice-presidential candidate picks are smarter than she is.

I don't know where he thinks low IQ individual people --

AXELROD: Which people don't believe, which no one believes you. She is freaking lawyer for God's sakes and was a senator and an A.G. and a district attorney. But ultimately, he keeps going after her on a personal level. And I think that's having a back -- that's backfiring on him.

BASH: You are a Nikki Haley's voter. Is that it was fair. You know, we were talking in the break about whether or not the Tim Walz on the ticket will help to pull those voters in.

CUUP: Yeah. Listen, the Nikki Haley voters I spoke often with. We're hoping for Josh Shapiro for a number of reasons. You know, as a sort of stick, it's progressives who didn't want Josh Shapiro to also show Kamala Harris's toughness that she wouldn't be cowed by the far-left flank of her party.

[12:25:00]

It's why we voted for Joe Biden, because he ran as a moderate and didn't fall, you know, to what the progressives in the far left wanted him to do. Yeah, so there's some disappointment. But what Nikki Haley voters like about Tim Walz is his military background. And like norm core, he's normal. And that that we appreciate that that's what drew us to Nikki and away from the other Republicans in the field because she seemed normal there.

BASH: And then there's normal authentic, which is, like, it's the Holy Grail of politics, right? Yes. And when you try to be authentic.

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: It's really, really hard. This is maybe the most important quality that you can have in national politics, you know? And maybe you can get away with faking it. George Burns once said about show business, all you need is sincerity. And if you can fake that, you got it. But generally, you have to have it, and he has it.

BASH: By the way, tell our viewers that they can Google who George Floyd is? Sorry, David.

AXELROD: I'm going to stay away from my next Milton Berle --

SIDNER: Cross remarks.

AXELROD: No, no. One of the things that I think is working for Harris right now is that she seems far more comfortable in her own skin than she did four years ago, when she ran for president. She seems connected to what she's saying. She seems very purposeful. She seems very authentic, and that is a real big thing.

GURA: I think that's very much true. And something else that I'm kind of interested in is just how this has played out over these last 19 days, which is crazy to say. But you know, you had these six-dozen, dozen to six to three to two. People are the running for this job to be the -- be the running mate. You know, they campaigned like crazy. They auditioned publicly on cable television and made the case for Kamala Harris. That's not going to disappear overnight.

And I think what it's laid bare is there's a very deep bench here in the Democratic side, and people who can elucidate what she wants to do, spell out her message, sell that to voters. And I think that's going to be very powerful going forward here. I know that, you know, people are looking their wounds.

So, could have been Governor Shapiro, who, I know that Kamala Harris has this relationship, but there was this kind of fold of ex attorneys general she knew. And clearly that was something that was binding a lot of these folks together. But I think that's going to be very powerful here in the weeks to come, and again, on such a compressed campaign schedule. I think that's going to serve a lot of momentum.

AXELROD: One of the interesting things tonight is the rally in Philadelphia. I suspect you're going to see Josh Shapiro front in center.

BASH: Yeah. You just took the words out of my mouth --

AXELROD: I'll help you here.

BASH: Thank you. Josh Shapiro was not only going to be there. I'm told he is going to speak in a very robust way. So that will be a very telling moment. Thanks, everyone. Don't go anywhere. Up next, we're going to talk to a friend and colleague of Tim Walz, fellow congressman from Minnesota, Dean Phillips.

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