Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump Advisers Tout Wide Viewership Of Trump's Interview On X While Some Allies Question The Strategy Behind It; Elon Musk Hosts Trump For Two-Hour Interview On X; How Elon Musk Forged An Unlikely Alliance With Trump; Sources: Roger Stone's Email Targeted In Hack; Trump And Harris Both Promise To End Taxes On Tips. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 13, 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]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, grabbing the Musk megaphone. Donald Trump has a new friend who happens to be the world's richest person and owner of the world's most important bullhorn. Did their two-hour conversation on X help the former president halt Kamala Harris's momentum or reinforce her case against him.

Plus, new reporting on the apparent hack of the Trump campaign. We'll tell you who the FBI believes was responsible and the other accounts they may be targeting. And better than the alternative. That's how one Pennsylvania Republican is describing his support for Harris over Trump. CNN's John King is in that must win swing state, asking voters how the change at the top of the Democratic ticket will impact votes come November.

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

They built it as an interview of the century. What it was a meandering conversation about a host of issues. It was also riddled with lies, conspiracy theories and, of course, insults.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (voiceover): All the courts do is they try and focus on Trump. OK. Then let's focus on Trump, who did nothing wrong. I complain about a rigged election. Elon, what's happened is unbelievable. It was so bad, the words that he was using. The stupid threats coming from a stupid face that he was using. I said, this guy is going to cause this a war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: In that last part, Donald Trump was talking about his now former opponent, the President Joe Biden. The Harris campaign responded to the interview in a statement calling Trump and Musk, quote, self- obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024. CNN's Kristen Holmes is talking to her sources in the Trump campaign. Kristen, they're talking about the 40-minute delay, technical issues. But when it comes to the actual impact of this, what are you hearing from your sources?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, it depends on who you're talking to. When I talked to advisors in the campaign, they were relishing the moment. They thought that he did a good job. That this was really reaching an audience that they intended it to reach, essentially saying that they are trying to reach people low propensity voters, first time voters, people who don't engage in politics in the same way that others do, trying to reach that audience. And they think that they did.

They talked about the numbers that Elon Musk himself put out there, saying that 1 billion people engaged in this conversation. And Donald Trump himself -- actually, I'm told, was making jokes about the delay. Was saying, oh, he was flattered at the fact that so many people were trying to get into the chat that he actually shut it down.

But if you talk to people outside of the campaign, outside of those who are promoting the strategy, they are worried about what is going on with the campaign. They are seeing the same poll numbers that we are seeing, which shows Kamala Harris inching over where Joe Biden was.

They are also seeing Donald Trump not engaging on the campaign trail. He's not been in a number of swing states. And I will say tomorrow, he is expected to be in North Carolina, giving a speech that's being billed on the economy, but that's what they want to see more of. They continue to talk about the fact that this campaign is not using the traditional methods that usually win a campaign.

Now, if you look at the other side, they say this is a different strategy. They, of course, are going to have a ground game, but they are also trying to reach a small specific group of voters. We are not going to know whether or not this is successful until much closer to November. But as we look -- I want you to listen to what -- just some of what he said. Donald Trump said last night during this interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): I know President Xi. I know Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I know every one of them. And let me tell you, people say, oh, this is terrible. He said -- I'm not saying anything good or bad. They're at the top of their game. They're tough, they're smart. I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing, and actually she looked very much like a great First Lady, Melania. She looked -- she didn't look -- she didn't look like Kamala.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, from that, you might understand why some of his allies don't really want him doing these long meandering interviews. Instead, they have asked him and asked the campaign for him to focus on policy issues, particularly those policy issues that he was pulling ahead of President Joe Biden on.

[12:05:00]

When it comes to immigration, when it comes to inflation, because they believe they can ultimately link Biden's administration to Kamala Harris as she is the Vice President. But Donald Trump himself doesn't seem to want to focus on that, instead giving this roughly two-hour meandering interview that now has worried about what's going to happen in November.

BASH: Yeah, Kristen, as soon as we saw that she was on the cover of Time Magazine, we knew that that would be a thing in Donald Trump's mind that would come out somewhere, and I think we're probably going to see it again. Thank you for that reporting. I really appreciate it. Now, Elon Musk's rightward shift has happened in real time on the platform he now owns. But he couched his support for former President Trump in his quote, moderate history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA MOTORS (voiceover): My track record historically has been moderate. If not moderate, slightly left. And so, this is to people out there who are in the moderate camp to say, I think you should support Donald Trump for president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Here with me now are a great group of reporters, our very own, Phil Mattingly, POLITICO's Heidi Przybyla, and The Washington Post's Tolu Olorunnipa. Thank you so much for all of you being here. Phil Mattingly, I'll start with you, your takeaway. I mean, I know that you listen to all two hours. I have to admit that I'm probably of like 25 minutes left.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And I was enjoying before the show, watching you, listen to it in real time and seeing react to. And look --

BASH: I was doing some play by play.

MATTINGLY: Trump's allies making clear, this is unscripted. This is on varnish. This is unedited. He can do this. They said, that's a good contrast to his current opponent, who has not been doing things of this nature. They also talk about -- to Kristen's point, the reach of this. I think, you know, 24.1 million people, "tuned into it."

I think more than 180 million views of this, whether or not they were viewing it during the technical difficulty part or the actual conversation part, is an open question. I think, right now, the big question is, is this a long game strategy in the sense of, this is hitting their targeted voters that Kristen was talking about.

The low propensity voters, white males in particular, that they feel like they have done a tremendous amount of outreach through non- traditional media in particular and done it repeatedly over the course of the last several months. They believe that's going to be very effective, and they believe that's going to create a turnout in an area where they know they have a real advantage.

And also, what it does for Elon Musk? He has a Super PAC that he's funding. His support is both important from a megaphone perspective, but also from a monetary perspective in the months ahead. And does that net out as more valuable than a conversation that if people were listening to the unedited and unvarnished version, and you're a swing voter in a swing state who hasn't decided yet. Are they going to get any closer to voting for?

BASH: Let's go back in the Inside Politics way back machine. All the way back to 2022 when Elon Musk was thinking about. I don't think he had already what was too early for him to actually endorse Ron DeSantis, which he did in the Republican primary process. But even before that, Donald Trump was not a fan. Let's listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Elon is not going to buy Twitter. Where did you hear that before? From me. From a fake account. She says fake, lot of them. Now he's got himself a mess. You know, he said the other day, oh, I've never voted for a Republican. I said, I didn't know that. He told me voted for me. So, he's another bullshit artist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Well, maybe he's a BS artist, but he is now a BTS artist who supports Donald Trump and said so on his platform X. Pretty soon after Trump was shot at -- was shot in Pennsylvania. And perhaps, part of the reason he is supporting Donald Trump is why pretty much any businessperson makes a strategic argument or decision to support a politician is, you can try to persuade them to come your way. Well, on that note, listen to what Donald Trump said about electric cars.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm for electric cars. I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. Elon. So, I have no choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This is a man who rails against EVs and does so -- or did so as much as he possibly could. They had a lengthy discussion in part of that two-hour chat about electric cars. But that was really notable that the shift that he made.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA, NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: It's notable. But Trump is a personality who does not and never has had a very strict platform. We've seen it. He's very malleable to people whose views as loyal to him. So, this is another example of this.

What I think has happened just within the past week or so that's notable with Elon Musk and Trump is that it's become very clear now that a lot of the things that Elon Musk said when he purchased Twitter, which is that he wanted to increase free speech, even now that Twitter is going to replace the mainstream media are not true, and it is the media that is exposing this. [12:10:00]

They're looking at the percentage of times that Musk has used Twitter or X to promote his own political views, to promote his own agenda, on anti-wokeness, on anti-immigration, and that the platform itself has actually boosted his posts, that it has suspended posts from progressive Twitter.

So, none of this is about increasing free speech, and it feels like this moment where he's endorsed Trump, he's helped start a SUPER PAC for Trump, and now he's using what is ostensibly a media outlet to actually promote him. That this is more of an influence operation, and that it's going to start being called that more and more.

BASH: Well, influence, as you both noted with money as well as just using the platform, which is incredibly powerful. Let's look at the way that the Wall Street Journal reported. Musk is tackling the election effort in his signature hands on chaos be damned style, echoing his 2022 takeover of Twitter.

The political operatives described an estimated 800,000 low propensity voters who could be nudged into getting to the polls, and said that, Trump -- the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee needed a better ground game, the people said. Musk also wanted the consultants to convince unregistered voters in the swing states to register.

So, talking about strategy, in addition to the money, which we don't know exactly how much money he is giving, because it's in the form of Super PACs, but it's got to be a lot.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE BURAU CHIEF, THE WASHINGTON POST: And in addition to the money, Twitter is huge. It has a huge reach. It reaches a number of voters. It has data. It has information. It collects about its users. That information can be copied onto an electoral map, and we could see sort of the places where Donald Trump could get votes by getting the support of Elon Musk, because Elon Musk could help him with his ground game. It could help him with reaching unregistered voters.

Now, at the same time, Twitter is a place where there's a lot of misinformation, and Donald Trump has not been helping his case because he's been talking about mail in votes. He's been saying that there's all kinds of fraud in the voting system. He's been pushing forward misinformation about AI and the crowd sizes that Kamala Harris has been getting.

And so, Twitter can be used in a positive way. It can be used to help get people out to the polls, but it also could be used to spread misinformation. We started to see Donald Trump lean on the side of spreading misinformation, and that could make it harder for him to get the votes.

BASH: Yeah. And that was definitely on display as part of this conversation. I want to play one exchange that was kind of classic. Well, there were a lot of exchanges that were -- exchanges that were classic, Donald Trump, but this one really stuck out to us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUSK (voiceover): Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they're like full cities again. So, it's really

TRUMP (voiceover): Right, well that's great.

MUSK (voiceover): So, it's really not something that, you know --

TRUMP (voiceover): That's great.

MUSK (voiceover): So, it's not as scary as people think basically.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So that was more Elon Musk than Donald Trump talking about, sort of suggesting that what happened almost 80 years ago. I think 80 years ago next year, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now it's OK, kind of trying to blow off the impact of that.

On this -- they were having a conversation about nuclear energy. They did have substantive conversations about it. And what Trump said, well, first of all, I want you to react to this, but also what Trump was talking about there was that nuclear energy has a branding problem. It's not wrong?

MATTINGLY: It's not wrong, on some level. And I think if you look at a fulsome approach to trying to address climate change or changing climate over the course of the last several decades, and going forward this nuclear energy would be considered a key piece of that. From a purely policy perspective, I think there are very real concerns about safety type, not just to the use of nuclear bombs in 1945, but also nuclear disasters in the wake of that which has made it difficult.

But I think in that sense, Trump is not wrong. There is a brain problem. I would just note to what Elon Musk is like go to Hiroshima. There is a museum. It is horrifying. I don't -- it was bad, like they rebuild because of perseverance and resilience. I'm not really sure what point he was making there.

Nuclear bombs and nuclear energy are two very different things, but to say that anything about Nagasaki and Hiroshima are like, totally functioning and great now is not a representation of it, not being awful what happened.

BASH: Right. And on this -- and on the sort of a different point on the same broader topic about climate change. What Trump said was, well, the biggest threat is not global warming when the ocean is going to rise. And then he went on to say, you know, you'll have more ocean front property, right, which is -- which is a window into a reminder that, like he is and was and always will be a real estate guy. Planet be damned.

PRZYBYLA: Well, I don't know about the part of Florida that might be under water, consider that waterfront great. Look, the context here is important. And the context is that this is not just happening in a vacuum on Twitter on X. The problem is there's no accountability mechanism for Twitter, which has become our public square.

[12:15:00]

It may be starting to dissemble now a bit because of the problems of accountability on there, but right now, there's nothing stopping of the misinformation that's being put out on this public square. The mainstream media love us or hate us, we have standards. We have accountability. We have to issue corrections. When this happens on X, it goes out to hundreds of millions of people unvarnished.

BASH: Everybody standby. Coming up, long time Trump operative Roger Stone is at the center of another campaign controversy. Why the FBI believes Iran hacked into his email?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

BASH: Multiple sources tell CNN that the FBI believes hackers breached long time Trump ally Roger Stone's personal email account. And cyberattack targeting Donald Trump's campaign. The Trump campaign has blamed Iran.

CNN's Sean Lyngaas joins me now. Sean, you been doing some excellent reporting on this. What can you tell us that you've learned?

SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: Well, Dana, it's -- this is the first real sort of wakeup call the election season from my perspective, in terms of election security, in terms of a foreign intelligence agency, potentially trying to actively influence the election, at the very least, collect information on some of the campaigns.

Based on our reporting, Iranian hackers are believed to be the suspects behind the intrusion of Roger Stone's email account. And then they're trying to use that access to burrow further within the campaign network. So, the Trump campaign, which is a common tactic, you know, personal email accounts are less protected than ones on the official campaign network, and they look for people who might be in touch with the campaign but might have weaker defenses.

And we also reported yesterday, Dana, that the Iranian hackers are believed to be -- have targeted the then Biden campaign, now the Harris campaign in June, and that the FBI brief the campaign on that. We do not have any evidence that those hacking attempts were successful. However, we've seen this movie before. In terms of hack and leak operations, it's a common way that foreign intelligence agencies try to sow doubt about the election by leaking information to the public on the eve of the election, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. They certainly have been successful -- when I say they, obviously Iran, Russia, in hacking, but also more broadly, as you were sort of alluding to, in playing in the arena of social media and really trying to sow even more chaos and poor discourse among Americans. Thank you so much, Sean, I appreciate that.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now agree on something, eliminating taxes on tips. But how would that actually work and who would it help? And later, will the real Kamala Harris, please stand up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: One of those women will be my guest this hour.

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Vice President Kamala Harris will unveil her economic agenda on Friday at a rally in North Carolina. The speech comes as her opponents point out that her campaign, not even a month old, has been light on policy. Part of her speech will include the VP's proposal to end taxes on tips, which was first suggested by Donald Trump a few weeks earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: When I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips. We're going to do that right away first thing in office, because it's been a point of contention for years and years and years.

HARRIS: When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Matt Egan joins us now to dive deeper into what those policies would look like. So, let's just stick with the policy proposals that they are both offering, which seem to be the same, no taxes on tips. How much would that actually help workers who rely on tips?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Well, Dana, isn't it kind of nice to hear the two campaigns broadly agree on something. So, the problem is, this is one of those campaign ideas that sound great to politicians but terrible to experts. Now listen, there still a lot we don't know here. The details are pretty slim.

But what we do know from the Harris campaign is that their call is to eliminate taxes on tips for hospitality and service workers. They say that tips would still remain subject to the payroll tax. They would pair this with a push to raise the minimum wage, and this would all require congressional approval. We don't have many details from the Trump campaign, but the goal here is simple, right? Boost take home pay for tipped workers.

Last money to Uncle Sam would mean more money for Uber drivers and bartenders and waitresses to pay their own bills. But there's some concerns that have been raised. First, that it would be kind of messy to implement. Two, it would be expensive. And lastly, there's some fairness questions here, namely, how is it fair for the bartender to get to duck taxes on tips while the warehouse worker making the same amount of money still has to pay taxes on wages?

Now, one of the points here, though, is there's a question over how many workers would actually benefit because even though it feels like we're tipping everyone these days, Yale found that just 2.5 percent of all workers make tips right now. And many of them are in lower paid jobs, like hotel staffers and food delivery workers.

So low, that a lot of them pay very little or almost nothing in federal income taxes, so they wouldn't benefit at all from this policy. That's why some of the experts I'm talking to, they say that.

[12:30:00]