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Inside Politics

Hispanic-American Civil Rights Group Endorses Harris; Today: Harris Campaigns In Arizona, Then Heads To Nevada; Today: Trump Heads To Montana For Only Rally Of The Week; Harris And Trump Agree To Sept. 10 Debate On ABC; Harris Has Not Done Formal Interview Since Biden Withdrew; Trump Says Abortion Is "Much Less Of An Issue" In Election; Trump Signals Willingness To Block Abortion Medication. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired August 09, 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]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, fun in the sun. Well, Vice President Harris is spending the weekend out west with campaign rallies in Arizona and Nevada. What's her strategy for keeping those states in the Democratic column. And can she get to 270 electoral votes without them?

Plus, tall tale. Donald Trump tells a dramatic story about nearly dying in a helicopter crash with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. The problem, Brown says it never actually happened. And 50 years ago, today -- 50 years ago, at this exact moment, actually, Richard Nixon was flying into political exile as Gerald Ford took the oath of office as the 38th president. We'll look at how fallout from Nixon's resignation continues to reverberate to this day.

I'm Phil Mattingly in for Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Today, Vice President Harris's battleground state blitz. Marches on to Arizona. It's her fifth campaign rally in four days. She'll end the week with one more tomorrow in Las Vegas. The Harris campaign says, they've got the momentum in those states, which for Joe Biden were looking increasingly out of reach.

Now, team Trump admits that, yes, Harris may have had a good couple of weeks, but they're labeling Democratic excitement as irrational exuberance. Quote, they're celebrating getting back voters they should have had to begin with, one Trump campaign official told CNN. They know, as we do, that the fundamentals of the race have not changed.

We start things off with CNN's Eva McKend in Phoenix, where Harris will be tonight. And Eva, the biggest question right now is, can team Harris turn the excitement into actual results in the months ahead?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: You know, Phil, they are under no illusion that it is going to be easy, but they're here in the southwest to really reach the diverse voters that help them power past victories in Arizona, in Nevada. Tomorrow, they are going to talk about reproductive rights.

They will have to address immigration here in this border state. And they're doing it on the heels of getting a key endorsement from the League of United Latin American Citizens. They also say that they have the infrastructure in place in the states to reach young voters, to reach Latino voters. The vice president up with a new ad today, trying to reach these voters by playing up for working-class roots. Let's watch.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

MCKEND: And Phil, a few months ago, I was speaking to this group, Living United for Change Arizona, Lucha Arizona, and they were feeling as though it was going to be difficult to get on those doors and get people to turn out to vote for President Biden, especially in the wake of him really leaning into enforcement policies.

But they tell me that they feel new hope with Harris at the top of the ticket, and especially, encouraged by her tapping Governor Walz as her running mate. They told me that it signals to the American public that we're going to see a progressive no-nonsense presidency from her. So, they feel newly motivated to deliver Arizona. They've already knocked on 100,000 doors. Their gold fill to knock on one million doors by November. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Eva McKend for us on the trail. Thanks so much. I'm joined now by a great group of reporters, CNN's Isaac Dovere, Jasmine Wright from NOTUS, and Semafor's Shelby Talcott.

Jas, I want to start with you. It feels like there has been voters to the Trump campaign's point. Voters are coming home on some level, and Hispanic voters in particular were in a place where Biden was having real issues. Harris historically has done much better than. How real is the momentum right now, outside of just Democrats saying, like, OK, we're into this?

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah. Well, I think if you look at those 12,000, 14,000 person rallies, you would feel that it's real, at least in this moment. A real sense of optimism has overtaken a Democratic Party that a month ago, kind of felt like a funeral. Real energy to get people to sign up as volunteers, or energy to put people's own hard-earned money into the campaign. That is what we're seeing these organic organizing calls, these really high fundraising totals.

I think the question that all of us have is how long it can be sustained, particularly as we know we are less than 90 days to November. And we're starting to see, maybe not in the public the honeymoon being over, but certainly on policy issues, potentially in the media that some of those more realistic campaign themes are kind of coming into play.

[12:05:00]

But I think the vice president and her team are very well aware that they're going to face some bumps going into November, but they're hoping just by kind of brainstorming, the country that they can keep up at least when it comes to people, people and voters.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. And it's important too, because it underscores that at least in the Harris campaigns mind right now, Isaac, that they feel like there are options and pathways to 270 that perhaps had been closed off for Joe Biden, particularly with where they are right now.

And it's interesting, their battleground state director put out a memo this morning saying, in Nevada, we're running the largest in state operation of any coordinated campaign. There is 13 offices, nearly 100 staff on ground. In Arizona, there's 12 offices, more than 120 full time staff. Structurally, the campaign was built to have a candidate that had momentum, now they've got the candidate. Are Arizona and Nevada really moving back towards Harris right now?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, we don't know yet, really, as they --

MATTINGLY: Nevada -- acceptable.

DOVERE: Well, you know, I got to tell you like it is. But the battleground states director is someone that I talked to at the lowest point for Joe Biden. A couple days before, he dropped out. And he was telling me, look, structurally, we have a campaign that's built here. Because it's not like this structure just came about in the last two and a half weeks since Harris became the candidate.

But structure, campaign office, all that stuff was going to be what pulled Joe Biden over the line in the minds of the then Biden campaign. And what he was saying to me then was, we think that we can still get there. But what they were saying publicly and privately is that Nevada and Arizona, these are not places that they were really going to campaign and do much anymore, especially after the debate.

Harris is there because they feel like they can win them again. And that Arizona especially is a place that feels possible with that Senate race there. Nevada is a state that Democrats had -- every election cycle has slipped further away from Democrats in the last 10, 12, years. There's a Senate race there too. This is not just about Kamala Harris. It's about the Senate Majority, where it might be. And it is definitely a different feeling that the campaign has.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. I feel that we're all going to have to start the engine back up on our read machine stories in Nevada for Harry Reid. You know, we're going to get more, Shelby, to the Trump press conference yesterday in a moment. But structurally right now, you know, you've seen a lot of stories about state party officials and the Republican Party saying, like, we don't really know what the Trump campaign has going here. We know that they've outsourced a lot of it as well.

I will note, James Blair, the political director for the Trump campaign and the RNC, when X yesterday laid out that, no, no, we have battleground operations. We have staff. We have offices right now. But you combine that with what's been happening in the last couple weeks. You pull up what Harris has done. We've all talked about it. You know, she was in -- since July 23, Wisconsin, went to Indianapolis, Indiana, Houston, Texas, Atlanta, Houston, Texas, Philadelphia, Detroit, Wisconsin, Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas tomorrow. You pull up where Trump has been, Grand Rapids, Charlotte, battleground states for sure. Chicago didn't go great. Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and then Bozeman, Montana, presumably for Tim Sheehy, the Senate candidate there.

Are they ready for this moment, despite what they say?

SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yeah. I think this has been a shift for them, and they've been sort of figuring out exactly how they want to move forward with against a new candidate. Even as they say that their campaign strategy hasn't changed, they're up against somebody completely different. And so, it does change a little bit.

And when I thought was interesting during that press conference yesterday was Donald Trump sort of suggested that he would be doing more campaign events after the DNC convention, which confused a lot of people. I'm told that he's actually going to be ramping up his schedule before then, and that he'll be hitting all of the battleground states. And that during the DNC convention, we can expect to see a lot of activity from Donald Trump's campaign.

So, it's a little bit different than what he suggested during his press conference. But certainly, this is sort of -- these last few weeks have been the Trump campaign reevaluating, figuring things out, trying to figure out how to message around Kamala Harris and how to define her in a way that works with voters, while also figuring out. OK, where do we need to go now? Has the map shifted? Do we need to change our thought process and maybe go to different places that we wouldn't have considered before?

DOVERE: It's a different dynamic for the Trump -- for Trump himself, right? In 2016 he was the insurgent and the celebrity. In 2020, it was covid, and everything was weird about the campaign. But there wasn't a lot of campaign going on. And Joe Biden wasn't campaigning much at all. This is different. This is a new situation, and Trump himself seems to be having a little bit of trouble figuring out where he wants to stand on that, and the campaign has figured out.

MATTINGLY: And there's a lot of elements to that. And one of them has been the debates, where Trump pulled out of the debate or said he wasn't going to do it because Biden wasn't the nominee anymore. Now, this is what he said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But I think it's very important to have debates. I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight. So, I just look forward to these debates. I think it's very important that we have them. I hope she agrees to him. September 4, September 10, September 25, and I think they'll be very revealing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:00]

MATTINGLY: Just that vice president has said, yes, September 10, we agreed to that, that's on. They have not answered yet whether the other two are on as well. What's their thinking right now?

WRIGHT: Yeah. I don't think that we can expect to see her September 4, at a Fox News debate. I just don't think it's going to happen. There's -- what is the upside for the vice president in her campaign for her to go on Fox News? I know that they've said that they want that September 10 debate to happen.

They're excited that president -- I mean, former President Trump has said, yes. They will be planning for it. They'll be looking for it, because they think that that's somewhere that the vice president shines, particularly for America to see that contrast in real life. Of course, it sounds a lot like how they pitched Biden.

If we're going to be honest, doing a debate much earlier in June, and we know how that turned out. But I think that they see things going differently, one because it is a different candidate, because they feel that vice president is actually pretty good in debates. They felt that she was really successful in her debate against Mike Pence in 2020 that she had successful moments in debates in 2019.

And so, they will really be trying to prepare for it, making sure that she is prepared. Of course, I think we're going to hear some can lines. I bet you were going to hear -- I'm speaking from the vice president, if Trump tries to interrupt her. But this is a place that they feel comfortable going in in September 10, and we're going to see that in the lead up.

TALCOTT: I also think that's interesting because Donald Trump's campaign has essentially the same exact argument, which is they believe that Donald Trump is going to do really well in this debate. And they've argued to me that Harris falters during the debates historically, and then that's where she's vulnerable. And so, they've been sort of trying to figure out a way to get her out into the public, into more unscripted remarks as much as possible.

We saw that with J. D. Vance trailing her throughout the week, sort of trying to coax her into talking to the press more often, because that's where the Trump team feels they can sort of pullout Harris in a way that we haven't really seen her so far.

DOVERE: And it's dynamic -- as far as I know, I don't think Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have ever met, right? And even Joe Biden --

WRIGHT: Was he on that plane? The Trump plane --

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: I thought, go ahead.

DOVERE: No. And so, it's just a debate is about all sorts of things, including about the interpersonal dynamic. And they don't associate either of them with many people like the other one.

MATTINGLY: You both have, but you especially, we sat next to each other in the White House, both as you were covering the vice president's office. You were an embed. You covered her throughout. This idea, she's not taken. Yesterday, she took some questions from the press on the tarmac. She's done some off the record conversations with the press on the plane. The Trump campaign is really going after her about not doing press conferences, not doing what the former president did yesterday for an hour. What's the theory of the case there for the Harris team?

WRIGHT: Yeah. Well, when I was talking to somebody yesterday on the campaign, they basically dismissed this idea that they need to be goaded into an interview by Former President Trump. I think their argument is that the people of America are not asking for it. Elected officials are not asking for it, in the way that they ask for President Biden to sit down for an interview after that debate. But instead, it is the media, and it is the Trump campaign.

I think that the vice president has always been somebody who has kind of dismissed the political game in D.C. where you have to sit down and talk to media, particularly something that her allies have felt a media that does not necessarily understand her as a person.

But I do think that the time is coming, where she's going to have to sit down. She's going to have to engage with the media, and she's going to have to maybe it's with her new running mate, Tim Walz, but she's going to have to answer questions that, yes, will be helpful for the American public, but it will be also helpful for the media.

DOVERE: I feel like when you have to think about what we actually got yesterday of Donald Trump, yes, it was an hour of him talking to reporters. But him saying a lot of things that were not true, including, we'll get to the helicopter story, but many other things, his crowd size, all this.

So, there is -- he was in front of reporters, but what was it that we got there? Kamala Harris has a lot of questions to answer, including how she has all of a sudden changed her positions on a whole long host of issues. Why she is running? But that -- it's apples to apples in ways that we need to focus.

MATTINGLY: I understand, why step on momentum when you've got it? Why get in front of Trump when he's going to do what he did? Yesterday, a member of the media, I like asking questions to people. Those questions in particular also have covered her in the Senate. She would answer questions in the hallway. She's very capable of government of doing.

[12:15:00]

So, all right, stay with us, because you've heard the panel tease it like seven times. You can't make stuff up, but apparently Donald Trump can. The story of Trump nearly dying in a helicopter crash with the former Mayor San Francisco, which literally no one seems to remember, except for him. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: Former President Trump's news conference yesterday wasn't just about crowd sizes and debates, despite what you may think. He also made clear what he thinks this election won't be about.

[12:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think the abortion issue is written very much temper down. I think that abortion has become much less of an issue. It's a very -- I think it's actually going to be a very small issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: I too try and manifest things that I would like to happen, even if they are unlikely. Shelby, we can talk about a lot of things about yesterday's press conference. There were some policy things, not answers on how to implement the mass deportation that he has pledged, but on abortion and the abortion pill.

Specifically, there are two issues yesterday that I think we will hear about constantly going forward. Starting with abortion, we don't know how he's going to vote in Florida on the state abortion ban referendum. And let's start there. Can he really make this not an issue in 2024?

TALCOTT: I'm skeptical, just because Democrats are making it such a big issue, and we've seen in the midterms that they have successfully made it an issue. So why would that sort of shift in this election? But certainly, Donald Trump's campaign and really Republicans at large do not love talking about the issue of abortion. And Donald Trump has been more willing to talk about it than most, albeit in maybe sometimes not answering sort of terms.

But still, he is -- he's clearly trying to -- trying to argue and make that a reality, that it's not going to be an issue, because he has given his answer on abortion and what he says he will do if he is elected. And so, for him, he has answered that question. Let's move on. Let's not even worry about it. But Democrats are coming hard at Republicans throughout this entire cycle on abortion, and it's probably not just going to go away.

MATTINGLY: And their most prominent voice for Democrats is now the presidential nominee for their party. The other issue, which was stunning, because you talk about giving your answer and then moving on. He gave an answer on mifepristone during the debate, which was really took it off the table on some level, saying, you know, the Supreme Court just ruled on the abortion pill. I'm not going to change anything about that, despite what you've seen from my allies, who desperately want to use any lever they can in the government. He was asked about it at the press conference. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are other things the federal government could do, not just a ban. Would you direct your FDA, for example, to revoke access to Mifepristone? That's one of the things that's been discussed.

TRUMP: So, you could do things that will be -- would supplement, absolutely. And those things are pretty open and humane, but you have to be able to have a vote. And all I want to do is give everybody a vote, and the votes are taking place right now as we speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that's something you would consider?

TRUMP: There are many things on a humane basis that you can do outside of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: You know, it took maybe 20, 15 minutes for the Harris campaign to put something out on this, attacking it. What was your sense of what happened right there?

WRIGHT: Well, I think two things. First, I think that that was actually pretty off message for the former president. I think that he's actually done a lot of work in both the primary and part of the general and trying to see more tame about abortion in comparison to other Republicans. And I think comments like that undermine -- undermine his position and have people who maybe are more pro-choice kind of questioning now where he's at.

And then the B of it is that the Harris campaign loves that. Any time that they can get the former president, other Republicans talking about abortion, saying things that sound very non-pro-choice is a plus for them, because he's not talking about a great immigration. He's not talking about the economy. He's not talking about other places that are maybe more prickly for Democrats.

Abortion is something that this campaign knows, understands. Abortion is something that Vice President Kamala Harris understands and knows. And so, any time that they can really push the -- push on that -- push on the offense of and put Republicans on the back foot when it comes to abortion, something like Shelby said, is not a place that Republicans really want to be talking about. Is a net plus on the side of Democrats, on the side of the Vice President Harris's campaign.

MATTINGLY: And it's a net plus on abortion. On the abortion pill, it's a net terror plus to make up a word. And one where, again, Trump's allies around him know that the executive authority of a president, through the FDA, through agencies, utilizing a very old law known as the Comstock Act.

He can actually do these things without Congress, without courts, and he opened the door, and I'm not really sure why, and certainly we're going to hear a lot about it. But I do want to move on to the helicopter. Isaac, you know, Democrat. You know --

WRIGHT: Isaac is getting -- MATTINGLY: I wasn't my cleanest. I wasn't my cleanest segue, but since we teased it so many times in the block. Trump telling a helicopter story actually, just listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was -- he was a little concerned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:25:00]

MATTINGLY: So, Willie Brown is a famed Democrat power broker in the state of California, former San Francisco mayor. Relationship with Kamala Harris was also one of her mentors. I think coming up in California state politics. He has been asked if this happened? He has said, absolutely not. It did not. I would note that there is a Governor Jerry Brown -- former Governor Jerry Brown from California. Who was on a helicopter with Gavin Newsom the former president during wildfires. What is going on?

DOVERE: I mean, look, Donald Trump told the story, and it seems like he was never in a helicopter with Willie Brown, that the -- he didn't have an emergency landing in a helicopter with anybody, California named Brown. The reason why he was telling the story, it seems, is because he was saying Willie Brown told him some terrible things about Kamala Harris. Willie Brown says that never happened.

Jerry Brown says that never happened. Gavin Newsom is the current governor, who was in the helicopter with them, says this never happened. We have a completely made up story here. And I do think this is an issue where, like -- we have to think about what it means when we know that Donald Trump doesn't tell the truth about things.

Now, he seems to have invented an entire scene out of a movie that dramatically -- that he maybe has said it in private before, but it just didn't happen. It's completely made up. And that is a very strange thing. We don't have a lot of examples of politicians doing that. And when they do, do, when they have done in the past, it's been quite scandalous.

MATTINGLY: Right. And then you remember, he's the oldest guy running in the race.

DOVERE: That is also true.

MATTINGLY: We got to go, but real quick, Trump campaign.

TALCOTT: Yeah. So, I was told that he has told this story, or a degree of this story in private to Trump aids before. It is unclear exactly no one has spoken to him, to my knowledge about it since yesterday. But it does also remind me of sort of, you know, when I interviewed him on his plane last year and he made the bravado comment about the documents, right?

So, is this sort of an exaggeration? Is it a compilation of multiple different stories that maybe happened all separately, that has morphed into one story? I have no idea.

DOVERE: It seems to me fair to ask whether he was deliberately lying about this story, or whether he is confused, and he thinks the story happened?

TALCOTT: Absolutely.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. It wasn't the most important moment of like 70 at the press -- you know, it's a little strange. All right, up next. Trump ever actually go on trial for the January six case? The special counsel says, he needs more time to determine how to move forward after the Supreme Court's immunity decision.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)