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Trump to Give Economy-focused Speech in North Carolina; at Least Eight States Will Have Abortion Measures on the Ballot; Support for VP Harris Among Black Men Split Over Various Issues; Julia Louis- Dreyfus to Host Female Governors Panel at DNC. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 14, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': He's been focused on crowd sizes and re-litigating old fights against his perceived enemies in his own party. Yesterday, he got some unsolicited advice from two former primary rivals.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, (R) FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The one thing Republicans have to stop doing, quit whining about her. We knew it was going to be her. She's not going to give an interview. They're going to hold out as long as they can. That's the right --

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, (R) FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The path forward is to focus on policy. Those are the three words for the Republican Party that I think is a path to success, focus on policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Joining me now are two other Republicans who might have some words of wisdom for the Trump campaign, GOP Strategist, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Republican Pollster Neil Newhouse, two extremely big brains here to help us understand this.

Neil, I'll start with you. The Trump campaign, they've been trying different attack lines, he in particular -- too liberal, a chameleon, she won't talk to the press, attacking her racial identity. If the president, the former president, and his campaign are listening, what would your recommendation be based on the data that you see every day?

NEIL NEWHOUSE, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: You know, the first thing I'd say is take your hand off the panic button. Take a chill pill. This is -- we know this is not the race you prepared for, for four years. You were ready to run against Joe Biden, unpopular, mental and physical health impaired, policies that failed the country. You're ready to, more or less, might win in a cakewalk.

But the debate changed all that and the Democrats pulled a switcheroo. So Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden and I'm sure that President Trump is pissed off. He's angry the carpet was pulled out from under his case campaign, but it's not something they can litigate or even protest. It is what it is. It's a waste of time to do that. Move on, next play, get suited up, buckle your chin strap, embrace where you are right now, and prosecute the case against Harris.

BASH: Were you ever a coach like a high school coach or something? It sounds very --

(LAUGH)

BASH: You sounded like a Rudy speech there.

NEWHOUSE: No. Dana, more like more like tee-ball coach?

BASH: OK. That's more my speed. So I feel you on that. Kristen, you wrote about an issue that is going to probably determine this election, if any policy issue does, which is the economy. What the polls say about Harris erasing trumps lead on the economy? Can Trump win this election if he stays focused on that issue?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He needs to get back to focusing on issues, predominantly focusing on the economy. It is somewhere where voters give him the most benefit of the doubt. They think back four years ago when they say, you know, I feel like economically things were better when Trump was president. Right now, there have been a handful of polls that have come out showing that with Harris now in the nomination or presumptive nomination seat for the Democrats, that gap has closed.

No longer are we in an era where Trump is ahead by 10 to 12 points over the Democratic nominee and part of that is because Harris has gotten a little bit of a pass. Attempts to link her to the Biden- Harris Administration, saying it all at once, saying, hey, she owns every bit of Joe Biden's economic record, that hasn't necessarily stuck yet, which doesn't mean there's no time for it to stick.

Voters still do not feel good about the economy. They still feel very concerned. There is a chance for Republicans to prosecute this case and say, if you want a better economy, you need to go back to Donald Trump. But that's not what's happening when he goes off on weird tangents about Kamala Harris not being authentically black or tweeting strange things. I mean, we've had this debate a million times before.

Donald Trump has to stay on message. He rarely can stay on message for very long, but he has got to.

BASH: Yeah. And this is something that didn't come from him. It came from his war room that I'm going to put up on the screen and it's racist. I mean, it just is. It says import the third world, become the third world. On the left, your neighborhood under Donald Trump; on the right, your neighborhood under Kamala Harris. You can see the difference with your own eyes what that shows.

SOLTIS ANDERSON: Absolutely. And it's things like this that I think are somewhat baffling insofar as Donald Trump has actually improved his standing with black voters, particularly with black men relative to where he was certainly in 2020. And so, when you put something out like this, just like the disastrous performance about a week or two ago with the National Association for Black Journalists Conference where he decided to try to make an issue of Harris' race. It's absolutely baffling to see someone who had done so much to have a message to say, look, I've done well on the economy. I think we should secure the border. It's an issue where you can say we need to secure the border, we need to know who is coming into to this country and voters will agree with you on that. But that type of message is not that.

BASH: Neil, I want to -- unless you want to weigh in on that. Go ahead.

NEWHOUSE: Dana, let me put -- (inaudible) put this in perspective, I mean, I think somebody probably hit send too soon on that and it wasn't checked off by the powers that be, but put this in perspective.

[12:35:00]

Yes, poll after poll right now is showing Harris ahead of Biden -- I mean, Harris ahead of Trump. But you know what? We've been here before. 2016, I went back and looked at this, and in August of 2016, there were 26 national polls during that month, you know how many of them had Trump ahead? Not a single one. The average of the polls was 47 Hillary and 41 Trump. He's been here before. He has to embrace where he is right now, acknowledge this is a different race and prosecute the case, just as Kristen said.

You got to focus on the job ahead. He's still in position to win it. He has 83 days left and every single day counts between now and then.

BASH: And Neil, one of the major differences between 2016 and now is the Dobbs decision, Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land. There will be abortion rights measures on the ballot in at least eight states, including swing states -- Arizona, Nevada, Florida. Every time a measure like this has been on the ballot, it has really generated a lot of enthusiasm from people who don't tend to vote for Republicans. How can concerned should Donald Trump be and others down-ballot about this?

NEWHOUSE: I think Trump's position that it's a state issue insulates him somewhat from this. It's still going to impact turnout in each of these states. Although turnout is already going to be high. It'll have some effect, but it's not going to have the same impact on these states in a presidential election that it didn't midterms or in off- year elections as we saw in Ohio.

BASH: What about you, Kristen?

SOLTIS ANDERSON: Yeah. I agree that it's unlikely to have as much of an effect on turnout because already in a presidential year, anyone who has even thought about maybe turning out to vote is probably going to be brought out to vote. We are also seeing that that's the switch out at the top of the Democratic ticket, Democrats are reporting slightly more enthusiasm for participation in the election than they were under Biden.

When Biden was the nominee, Democrats were depressed. They were frustrated and it was going to have to be an issue like abortion to kind of pull these people well out to the polls. Now, they are a little bit more, at least for the moment, we are still in that honeymoon period. So I don't know that necessarily abortion will be the turnout driver that it is in a midterm, as Neil said, a lower turnout election. But somebody like Trump is going to have to hope that there are a lot of split ticket voters in a state like Arizona or Florida where they have these ballot measures.

People who will vote for Trump at the top, but then take them more pro-choice position on the ballot measure. Otherwise, he is looking at a really tough electoral map.

BASH: Yeah. And just to keep the sport metaphor going from Neil earlier, this is definitely a shirts-and-skins kind of world that we are living in. So, Neil, so good so you always; Kristen, you as well. Please come back.

NEWHOUSE: My pleasure.

SOLTIS ANDERSON: Of course.

BASH: And coming up next, "The New York Times" calls it "the elephant in the room." Will Kamala Harris have a problem with black men in November. We are going to discuss this after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:42:42]

BASH: Since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket, she's made up ground with key demographic groups in the Democratic Party, like women and young voters. She's gaining among people of color too, but some Democrats fear there's one group that may be reluctant about elevating Harris to the presidency, and that is black men.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs wrote about it earlier this week. And you are here to talk a little bit more about this. This is so fascinating and you do such an amazing job of really giving the nuance of this to people who read your story. And I encourage people to do that. And I'm lucky that you can give it now. So, you call it "the elephant in the room."

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Right.

BASH: Can you broadly explain what that is when it comes to black men and Kamala Harris or other black women who are running for office?

KANNO-YOUNGS: Sure. We know that there were multiple of these calls happening. You know, there was a white dude's call, there was a white woman call, and then there was a black men call too. And what I found interesting about this was that it wasn't just a story of thousands of black men rallying for the vice president, after the switch on the ballot.

But, they also were sort of confronting -- multiple officials were confronting what we call the elephant in the room and that's that there is a history where -- not all black men, it's not a monolith. We are not monolith -- but there has been a slice of the electorate that historically has not thought that being a strong black man leader and that, that is somehow at odds with standing behind a black woman leader. And that has translated to sort of a lack of black women in some leadership position in the community.

This dates back to we went in the congressional archives and saw that Shirley Chisholm at one point was criticizing her peers for not standing with her. Black male peers as well, as well as white male peers. We saw that also Stacey Abrams was struggling to gain support with the black men electorate as well. This has a history that look, dates back to the history of gender roles that were specified and through colonialism as well, and the start of this country.

[12:45:00]

But I think what's key is that it's also those black men that seemed to be trying to overcome this sort of uncomfortable truth.

BASH: Well, let's show our viewers some of the quotes in your piece. This is from Kwame Raoul. He's the Attorney General of Illinois. Sometimes we think that standing behind a black woman as a leader does not display strength as a black man, as you were just saying. I'm here to tell you all tonight that it does the opposite of that, it displays strength. I'm standing behind a black woman to be president of the United States and it doesn't make me any less of a black man.

I'm going to read one other quote. This is from W. Mondale Robinson, Mayor of Enfield, North Carolina. Ms. Harris is not a trusted messenger for black men. Everything she says will be looked at with a side-eye from black men because there's a lack of trust in politicians coming for you in election years, saying they're going to do something and then they don't -- didn't deliver on it.

So that's less about sort of the gender issues and the race issues, and it's more about just like politicians shouldn't be trusted. But what is noteworthy about this dynamic that has been going on for years, all the way back to Shirley Chisholm, is that even if it is really miniscule --

KANNO-YOUNGS: Yeah.

BASH: -- in an election, and particularly in swing states that could be decided on the margins, no matter how small it is, it matters.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Slight, insignificant part of the electorate. I think that's totally right. There are layers to this, right? We just described that uncomfortable truth, but I think has been a conversation within the black community for a while, but maybe just is not sort of amplified to more mainstream audiences. But there's other layers here too. I think what the mayor was referring to there as well as, look, the vice president has her own specific challenges here. For one, she has the challenge of -- she's a Democratic candidate and she has just jumped into the election. And for years now, I've talked to black men on the voter level, on the leadership level, who have acknowledged that there has been growing frustration, a feeling that, look, we are one of the more reliable voting blocks for the Democratic Party. And yet, I am not seeing my life improve at that fast of a rate despite my consistent support.

So there's a frustration with the overall party. I think what the overall number -- I think the reporting shows what the overall system with the overall faith that the American government can deliver for you. That's what the mayor was referring to. But also with the vice president specifically as well, you've seen her lean into her prosecutor record her here as well. And that's been effective against the former president. But in the 2020 primary, we saw some backlash there as well.

BASH: Kamala as cop is not necessarily a positive thing in some communities.

KANNO-YOUNGS: In some communities, that's right. That's right.

BASH: Yeah. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate you bringing this reporting to us.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Appreciate it. Thank you.

BASH: And up ahead, Selina Meyer is headed to the DNC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want to know if you've changed your stance on abortion. R.E. (ph)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Voters can show -- so you could say as a woman, I believe in --

SELINA MEYER: No, no, no -- no, no, no. I can't identify myself as a woman. People can't know that. Men hate that, and women who hate women hate that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:52:38]

BASH: She was America's first female vice president. No, I'm not talking about Kamala Harris. I'm talking, of course, about Selina Meyer, a.k.a. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the former Seinfeld star went on to win six straight Emmys for leading actress on the HBO hit series "Veep." And next week, she has a new staring role at the Democratic Convention.

CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister is here with the scoop. So, she has a big job that she is going to be doing in Chicago. Tell us what it is.

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Dana. So Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I have confirmed with her publicist that she is going to be moderating a panel discussion with the eight Democratic female governors in this country. The panel is going to shine a light on these female leaders, but also on many issues that are facing women in this country.

We know that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, she has been a longtime Democratic supporter and she has a long history with the Biden-Harris Administration. She spoke at the 2020 DNC. She appeared in a fun bit with then Vice President Biden at the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner. And she says that these eight female Democratic governors have shattered what she calls the marble ceiling, not the glass ceiling, and she says that she's excited to shine a light on all of their accomplishments.

BASH: Yeah. And she has a terrific podcast where she talks to mature women about what they've learned, which I absolutely love.

OK, before I let you go, I have to ask what everybody wants to know -- and by everybody, I mean me. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, are we going to see them at the convention?

WAGMEISTER: When you say that you mean you, you also made me because I am wondering and I have been trying to get the scoop for you, Dana. The answer is, at this point, we don't know. I have reached out to the convention, to the campaign, to both reps for Beyonce and Taylor. But since I am essentially a professional celebrity detective, here is what I will tell you that we do know. I broke the news for us last month that Beyonce gave her sign-off to vice President Harris to use her song 'Freedom,' which has become her official campaign song.

So, we do know that she has her endorsement, so you would think it is possible -- Beyonce did show up in 2016 to perform for Hillary at the week of the convention.

[12:55:00]

Now, when it comes to Taylor, she kicks off her shows in London tomorrow night. She has five shows at Wembley in the U.K., but she would be free for the final two nights of the convention, both Wednesday and Thursday. Again, I've reached out to Taylor's rep. We haven't heard back, but I have also reached out to the 'Swifties for Kamala', which is this group that has organically formed online ever since Vice President Harris has gotten the endorsement. They are going to be at the convention and doing a rally, Dana.

BASH: That is some good detective work. I'm impressed, Elizabeth. Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Thank you so much for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after the break.

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