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Trump & Harris Campaign Strategies Take Shape With 85 Days To Go; Trump Bizarrely Claims Harris Rally Crowd In Michigan Was Fake; Trump Focuses On Last Opponent: "We're Going To Get Joe Biden Out"; Trump Wants Justice Dept To Pay Him $100M For Alleged Damages From Mar-A-Lago Search; One-On-One With Sen. J. D. Vance; Vance Tries To Turn Tables On Walz: He's The "Weird" One; Vance On Abortion: "We Have To Let Voters Decide". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 12, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, momentum, money and mojo. It all seems to be on the Harris campaign side, and Donald Trump is clearly taking notice. The polls are wrong. The crowds are fake, he says. And he's the one with the wind at his back. We're going to get the inside scoop from reporters following both campaigns.

Plus, one-on-one with J. D. Vance. I spoke to the Republican VP candidate about abortion attacks on Kamala Harris and his attempt to turn the tables on Democrats calling him weird. And online remix. We have new reporting on the Gen Z operation, powering Kamala Harris's meteoric rise on social media. And their plans to use viral moments to get young voters to the polls.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

The 2024 race has completely transformed in three weeks. Coming off, a week-long swing state tour. Vice President Harris now holds a small lead in the must win states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all within the margin of error, but all much better than Joe Biden was doing just three weeks ago.

These are crucial states that went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in 2020, giving him the White House. And with just 85 days to go, the campaign's strategies to woo voters are taking shape. Donald Trump is characteristically going with fear tactics, while Kamala Harris is trying to throw in a dose of optimism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Comrade Walz and Comrade Harris win this November, the people cheering will be the pink-haired Marxists, the looters, the perverts, the flag burners, Hamas supporters, drug dealers, gun- grabbers and human traffickers.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What kind of country do we want to live in, a country of chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law? (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm here with a fantastic group of reporters, CNN's MJ Lee, Bloomberg's Mario Parker and CNN's Kristen Holmes. Kristen, I want to start with you. You've been on the trail a lot with Donald Trump. What is your impression from your reporting, from your sources, about how they are doing with regard to their recalibrating right now?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it depends on who you are talking to, particularly, are you talking to the campaign, or are you talking to Donald Trump himself?

BASH: Let me start with the candidate.

HOLMES: So, the candidate himself is obviously having a hard time dealing with what is going on. He has been obsessed with the fact that she has drawn these crowds. He is not just talking about it at these rallies and in interviews. He's also talking about it privately, saying, have you -- can you believe how many more people she has there than President Joe Biden had.

He has tried several different attack lines on her, including questioning her ethnicity, which was much of (inaudible) of his campaign, who wanted him to focus just on the policies, particularly when it comes to immigration, inflation, crime, things that they believe that he could do better on at the polls than Kamala Harris.

Because their whole entire agenda, them being the campaign for this transition is to just paint her as an extension of Joe Biden, saying these are her policies. Why is it that if she's saying all this stuff now about what she would do, why didn't she do it, if she's already in office? But you're not hearing that from the candidate himself.

Instead, he is lingering on the fact that she has these giant crowds. He is promoting these conspiracy theories. And it's really reminiscent to what we saw in 2020 after he lost the election, and he started really promoting those conspiracy theories from the far right in a way that he had kind of stopped doing for the last year as he tried to get control of this campaign.

BASH: And Kristen, let's show what you're talking about. A conspiracy theory that has been going around on the far right online about a rally that Kamala Harris had in Detroit. This suggested that she didn't actually have the crowd that she actually had, saying it was AI generated. What does this say about Donald Trump's head space?

[12:05:00]

MARIO PARKER, NATIONAL POLITICS TEAM LEADER, BLOOMBERG: Well, it says that she's getting under his skin. Quite frankly, we all know we've covered him for a number of years. One of the things that he relishes the most is crowd sizes. I mean, he made the false claim at the press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he had a bigger crowd size than Dr. Martin Luther King did on a march on Washington, right? So, that tells you that this is front and center for him. So, each time that her campaign post these pics, I mean, we knew last week there was a point where my colleagues and I were speaking when she pulled up to the hangar with Air Force Two really Trump style. We knew at that point. He probably reached the point.

BASH: You know what, you say it here, it comes up there. That's exactly what we're talking about. That is the real thing that happened, shot by CNN photographers, or perhaps it was our broadcast news pool. That is the plane, that is the crowd. Those are the people. Again, I'm not saying that because there's any doubt. I just thought, you know, why not show the real thing that happened.

Meanwhile, MJ, the other thing that Donald Trump did, which was striking to us is that when he did have one big event in Bozeman, Montana. Montana not being a swing state, but there is a very tough Senate race there, and he went to campaign for the Republican. He talked a lot about Kamala Harris, but he just can't seem to quit the guy who was on the ballot until three weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to get Joe Biden out of the White House. What's he doing now? Greg, what's he doing? You know, they took it away from him. They really did. They took it away. The guy had 14 million votes. She had none. What do you like better? Doesn't matter anymore.

But what do you like better, crooked Joe or sleepy Joe? Sleepy Joe, crooked Joe. Joe is bad. Joe couldn't hear. He couldn't -- he couldn't do anything. We spent $100 million fighting crooked Joe Biden. And then all of a sudden, they decide to take him out and put somebody else in. She never got one vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, this certainly seems to show you and demonstrate that running against Joe Biden was working for Donald Trump in a lot of ways. Those were the talking points that he felt really comfortable with. He had those nicknames lined up. He knew exactly what to say to try to get under Joe Biden skin and the campaign skin. The nicknames like sleepy Joe, you know, calling out Joe Biden for being older than him. All of those attacks don't work on Kamala Harris.

And I think you're totally right about just knowing that this is an issue where Donald Trump has, you know, the campaign -- Harris campaign has managed to sort of get under his skin. I mean, there are a handful of topics, where -- when you see Donald Trump talking about it, you know that he is unhappy.

And you know the enthusiasm and the burst of energy we've seen on the Democratic side is just undeniable, and it is a remarkable shift from the Joe Biden campaign. Harris is managing to do something that President Biden and his campaign was not able to do.

I went to a number of campaign events for the president, and they weren't able to always fill the room. They would have to put the press riser in the middle of a gymnasium, for example, because that is the number of people that they could get. So, Donald Trump very much knows that this is a different campaign and a different candidate. It doesn't quite seem that he has made that full transition in his own mind, that this is somebody else that he's running against somehow.

BASH: Yeah. And certainly, on the Kamala Harris side, she is trying to -- we've talked about this on the show really since the beginning of her candidacy. She is continuing a less is more approach when it comes to responding to him on some of the more incendiary things that he is saying about her.

She's also doing something on the campaign trail in these rallies that we don't see in the Trump campaign. And that is, she's trying to almost to use what's going on in the world. And in this case, it was the Olympics to rally America to say, you know, pro U.S.A. And I just want you to listen to an example that really struck me watching her over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Just a few hours ago in Paris, they won the gold. And I got more for you. A few hours before that, our women's national soccer team won the gold as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So that is just a very, very different vibe. Now, having said that, you hear from people like J. D. Vance, who told me over the weekend, Kamala Harris's campaign is a movie. It looks really good, but what's behind it? Where is the -- where is the substance? And she hasn't given a lot of new information about what her policies are. They say that it's going to happen this week, but so far, not a time.

PARKER: It's been a controlled space, no doubt about it. The Democrats, her campaign has really -- have really control the narrative availability to the press. You saw some of those attacks from the Trump campaign landing about her media availability. We saw her kind of talk to the press on Tarmac, et cetera.

[12:10:00]

I'd like to go back to that earlier point. For the last eight years or so, Democrats have ceded the flag of patriotism to the Trump campaign, right? He would come out. He would hug the flag, et cetera. We're seeing her now, at this moment with the Olympics. She has spoken with Team U.S.A. right -- in Las Vegas, right before they departed as well. We're seeing them take that back from that Trump campaign.

BASH: Yeah. Maybe that's part of why I --

HOLMES: I would argue too, that just the difference in the patriotism is that you're uniting your rally behind something positive versus uniting your base around something negative, which is, yes, Donald Trump does talk about patriotism. Does talk about bringing the country together, but it's often in a way that is to overcome Joe Biden, or because the economy is so bad, or because immigration is so bad. We have to come together. We are America.

You see a different side here with Kamala Harris saying, look, we are America. Look, what we just did as a contract, the best we put forward -- our best and we won. That's incredible. That's a very different kind of uniting the base for --

BASH: Can you imagine that moment happening in a Trump camp?

HOLMES: No, but part of the reason you can imagine that moment happening in a Trump campaign is because a lot these athletes have come out and spoke about Trump. And then he cannot respond without any kind. We've seen the way he attacked the Olympics. Four years ago, and several of the athletes in it because he didn't like the way they had spoken about him.

BASH: Let me just get in and ask you, whoever wants to jump in, go for it. Maybe you Kristen about something that just happened this morning. The Trump team, Trump world, his lawyers, filed a $100 million claim with the Justice Department, alleging that the federal search at Mar- a-Lago in August of 2022 was inappropriate and hurt his reputation.

HOLMES: Yeah. That mean this is something he's been saying for months. He's been saying, he's going to file legal action. It seems like a complete long shot. And any lawyer that you talk to says that that's completely absurd, particularly given what they found there. The fact that they had requested these documents on a number of occasions. They gave him multiple chances to turn them over, but he has said that this hurt his reputation for some time, and obviously, now he's seeking financial compensation.

LEE: I just wanted to take an extra beat on the Olympics thing that you were talking about. I think one thing that has been so remarkable in the shift that we have seen going from the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign is that Donald Trump was so central to the Biden campaign's messaging.

You know, any time you ask the Biden campaign, when are you going to start seeing the pages turn in this election? They would almost inevitably say, once people see that we are running against Donald Trump, once people are really reminded that the other guy is Donald Trump. I think there is a real political risk, as you know very well.

When your messaging is more about the other guy as opposed to something affirmative about yourself. And I do think the Harris campaign -- now the Harris, Walz campaign is trying to take a different tact when it comes to that. Yes, Donald Trump is the person we are going to be running against in November, but here is also what we stand for, and for at least this moment, it happens to be a little bit more upbeat and a little bit more joyful.

BASH: Yeah. Such a good point. Great reporting. All of you, don't go anywhere. Coming up, Donald Trump's attack dog. We're going to bring you some noteworthy moments from my interview with Republican -- Republican vice-presidential your nominee, J. D. Vance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a fundamentally fake person. She's different depending on who she's in front of.

BASH: With respect, you changed your position on an important thing, which is Donald Trump?

VANCE: Of course, I did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance made the Sunday show rounds this weekend, trying to help seize back the narrative from the Harris-Walz's campaign. I sat down with him in his home state of Ohio for a wide-ranging interview. Here's part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: I want to move on to something that Governor Walz has called you and Donald Trump, and that is weird.

VANCE: Sure.

BASH: And it is taken off. The New York Times reports then when Donald Trump was asked about it, he said, not me, they're talking about J. D.

VANCE: Well, certainly they've levied that charge against me more than anybody else. But I think that it drives home how they're trying to distract from their own policy failures. I mean, look, this is fundamentally school yard bully stuff. They can accuse me of whatever they want to accuse me of. As Harry S. Truman once said, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

And I'm doing this because I think that me being vice president will help improve people's lives. So, I accept their attacks, but I think that it is a little bit of projection. Dana, if you think about, you know, just take a couple of days ago, Tim Walz gives this big speech. He's been announced as the VP nominee.

And I remember when I had just been announced as the VP nominee, I gave my big speech and I saw my wife, and I gave her a big hug and a kiss, because I love my wife, and I think that's what a normal person does. Tim Walz gave his wife a nice firm Midwestern handshake, and then try to sort of awkwardly correct for it.

BASH: Donald Trump has been attacking Kamala Harris's racial identity.

VANCE: He has not been but ask your question.

BASH: Well, he questioned her racial identity. He said a number of years ago she happened to turn black. Her father is Jamaican. Do you believe Kamala Harris is black.

VANCE: I believe that Kamala Harris is whatever she says she is. But I believe, importantly, that President Trump is right that she is a chameleon. She pretends to be one thing in front of one audience. She pretends to be something different in front of another audience.

[12:20:00]

Look, Dana, she's not running a political campaign. She's running a movie. She only speaks to voters behind a teleprompter. Everything is scripted. She doesn't have her policy positions out there. She hasn't answered why she wanted to ban fracking, but now she doesn't. She wanted to defund police, but now she doesn't. She wanted to open the border, but now she doesn't.

She should have to answer for why she presents a different set of policies to one audience and a different set of policies to another audience. And I think that's what President Trump is getting at. This is a fundamentally fake person. She's different depending on who she's in front of.

BASH: With respect, you changed your position on an important thing, which is Donald Trump.

VANCE: Of course, I did.

BASH: And so, why are you not a chameleon?

VANCE: Because Dana, I've explained to the American people what's different. People change their minds, when the facts change.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: My great panel is back here. He went on to say that which we've heard him say many times before, when asked the question about why he went from really not liking Donald Trump in 2016 to now being his vice-presidential running mate. Saying that, he believed what he saw in the media and that now he really thinks that he turned out to be a good president.

I want to talk about both the substance of this and the political strategy of him even being out, combined with Donald Trump doing the long press conference. You know, on its face, the first reason tactically is they want to show a contrast with Kamala Harris not doing interviews, not doing long press conferences.

Although, as you pointed out in the first segment, they kind of pulled her out to do a couple of questions on the Tarmac. What are you hearing from your Trump sources about the clear deliberate strategy to do what I just described?

HOLMES: So, Vance was chosen in part because they wanted him to be an attack dog. They think he's really good on television. Donald Trump thinks he's really good on television. Part of the reason he was convinced into choosing him was because he was shown clips of him defending Trump on air, and he liked the way that he did that. That is what they wanted from J. D. Vance.

They have not had an opportunity for the last several weeks because J. D. Vance has been under his own enormous amount of scrutiny. He hasn't really been able to be on the offense because he's been so much on the defense about his previous comments. This is what they planned on using him for.

Now, of course, as you said, this is also a strategy because they want to continue drawing attention to the fact that Kamala Harris is not sitting down with press, that she is not having interviews. But a lot of this really was pre planned in terms of Vance to be the person arguing the policy proposals.

Remember, Donald Trump is out there skewing all of these conspiracy theories. He is never going to be the guy who sits down with an interview with you and stays on message about policy. He never has been. He is never going to be. That was part of the reason they liked J. D. Vance. They thought he'd be out there attacking Democrats, attacking Democratic policies, and do it in a smart way. So now he's actually doing it, rather than spending the last month or so being on the defense.

BASH: Really good point.

LEE: And in your interview, by the way, confirmed that we appear to be in the, you're weird, no, you're weird.

(CROSSTALK)

LEE: I don't know -- yeah, I don't know how we should feel about all that. Look, I think when you are going through the VP selection process, what political strategists will always say is, you want to pick the person that isn't going to harm the ticket, and if they are able to bring some additions to the ticket that all the better. That is going to be a bonus.

I think the issue to Kristen's point with the J. D. Vance pick so far is that there have been so many distracting, negative headlines about J. D. Vance that he has now brought to the ticket. As you said, he has been very much on the defense as opposed to being able to go on the offense.

I think the Trump campaign is probably very much hoping that what Donald Trump said recently is right, that historically, VP picks tend to not ultimately matter. I mean, just based on the performance of J. D. Vance in the last couple of weeks, I think they're probably hoping that all of this is going to sort of wash out.

BASH: When he made the comment about Tim Walz being weird because he gave his wife a good old Midwestern handshake. I said to him. I literally don't know what you're talking about. You mean that he doesn't have affection for your wife. I really didn't. We have the video. I guess that is initially what happened. He was -- he was shaking hands with people. He did pull her in and then gave a hug. But they hugged. I guess the reason why I wanted to show that is because I didn't catch that. And I'm pretty attuned to -- HOLMES: Oh, this kind of why conspiracy. Let's just talked about all of a conservative social media before he even brought this up.

BASH: Well, that's why he brought it up.

HOLMES: Yeah.

BASH: I mean, then I went back and looked online, and I said, oh, OK. But like -- why? What's he trying to get at beyond the conservative ecosystem? Like, how does he think this is going to help get swing voters over?

[12:25:00]

PARKER: I don't know if it's going to help get swing voters, but what it does do is make sure that his boss, Donald Trump, doesn't continue to point the finger at him as being the one is weird, right? Which is what you pointed out during the interview, Dana.

J. D. Vance has to earn his keep. That's the main thing right now. He is -- his selection in some ways, is a relic of a campaign about three weeks or so or so ago, where he was thought to be the apprentice for Donald Trump, an heir apparent, a legacy builder, but also articulate his points on television as well.

What's happened since then is that he's been an albatross on the campaign, and the campaign has shifted, right? It shifted underneath the Trump campaign's feet, where maybe, if you go back three weeks or so ago with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, one maybe isn't sure whether or not J. D. Vance would be the selection.

BASH: Then let's talk about a little bit of the substance of what we discussed the issue of abortion, which even Donald Trump knows in his heart of hearts, is going to be a tough one for him in some of these key states.

I asked J. D. Vance specifically about the story of Kate Cox. She's a Texas woman. She and her husband. She was pregnant with a baby who had a fatal congenital disease. She wanted to end the pregnancy because the doctor said she wouldn't -- the baby wouldn't survive, and she ran the risk of not being able to have more kids. I asked him about that particular story. Let's listen to how that went down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANCE: Well, first of all, Dana, my heart breaks for this woman. I don't know her personally. I've certainly heard this story and our heart breaks for her. And we want people to have healthy, happy families. And it's extremely unfortunate that sometimes, you know, medicine, the act of God, whatever happens, just doesn't work out. What the president has said, I think, very clearly, is that he is not trying to prevent women who have non-viable pregnancies from getting access to the medical --

BASH: But allowing -- but allowing the states to decide, a place like Texas, which has very strict laws now, doesn't allow Kate Cox to end a pregnancy that is fatal and could potentially hurt her ability to have more kids.

VANCE: But what President Trump has said is that we are going to let voters make these decisions. And again, Texas might have a view that President Trump disagrees with. They might have a view that President Trump agrees with, but you've got to let the voters make these decisions.

BASH: So, you're comfortable with that law in Texas?

VANCE: I'm not comfortable with anything, Dana, because I'm not passing judgment on what these laws should be. You asked me my own personal view. I campaigned against an Ohio referendum. But I think that we have to let voters decide. And when they speak their mind, you have to be respectful. Agree or disagree with whatever voters decide, they're going to make these decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Still an animating issue for the Democrats?

LEE: Well, and you know, J. D. Vance's own views of being anti- abortion and very stringently. So, I mean that is well known. And actually, a couple of weeks ago, when we all thought that Kamala Harris was going to be running as the second person at the top of the ticket, we were working on reporting on how she planned on debating J. D. Vance on the VP presidential debate stage.

I should say on this particular issue, they very much believe that he would be helpful on one of the issues that she is most outspoken on has really taken the lead on for the campaign and the administration. And I think that interview clip actually shows how -- yeah, he's not necessarily going to be helpful when it comes to trying to attract certain segments of the population on this issue.

BASH: OK, everybody standby. Up next. Can Kamala Harris win over Michigan voters who were ready to abandon Joe Biden? The state's senior senator will join me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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