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Inside Politics

Harris Vows "A New Way Forward" As She Accepts Nomination; Harris Becomes First Black Woman, First Asian Women To Be Nominee; Trump Did Phone Interviews Last Night With Fox, Newsmax, Fox Again; Today: Trump Campaigns In Arizona And Nevada; RFK Jr. Set To Drop Out Of Race Today, May Endorse Trump. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 23, 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, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash live from what's left of the Democratic National Convention site in Chicago. The balloons are now deflated, the confetti swept away.

Democrats, of course, are hoping the energy and excitement of last night will carry them into November. The reality is the next 73 days are going to be a dog fight. The race will likely come down to a small number of voters in just a handful of states.

A top Democrat tells CNN that Kamala Harris remains, quote, clear-eyed about what comes next. And she's all too aware that momentum Democrats are feeling could easily wane. But for now, her party is basking in the magnitude of this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: On behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey, on behalf of Americans, like the people I grew up with, people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another, on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth. I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Joining me now here at the table, CNN's Audie Cornish, Astead Herndon of The New York Times, and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS. Hello, everybody. I got up here, and I turned around, and I went, oh, we're awake. That's sad, are we? OK, I'm going to go. Since we're so awake, and you obviously got a very good night's sleep, and you've had a chance to digest last night. Your thoughts?

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: My thoughts are that after this long week of kind of a party, kind of a revival of energy and even expectations for Democrats. It was fascinating to see Kamala Harris come out and give a kind of sober, steely, let's get down to business kind of speech. She did her biography, and I think that she did it effectively.

But by the end of the night, I felt like, oh, we also have a lawyer in chief, you know? And she wanted to look like commander in chief. And the images you would see of her today on the front of your local paper is of one looking presidential and really sending the message that, OK, now the actual work of winning this is about to begin.

ASTEAD HERNDON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I think that that comes through. I think it's a reflection of who she is. I mean, the lens of identity that I think is best to understand her is probably through that prosecutor, lawyer, since I think that came through in the speech.

For me, it felt like a week where the Democratic Party did more than just pass the torch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. But from kind of an older version of the party to reintroducing the country to a different version of Democrats, one that has a more diverse bench, one that has a new roster of elected that have come up in the post Trump era and look and talk differently.

Nothing that came through all throughout the week, whether it was Raphael Warnock, whether it was Josh Shapiro, whether it was some of the, you know, Gretchen Whitmer and others. You have some people who had their legacy moments, and thinking about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden --

BASH: Like Bill Clinton

HERNDON: And Bill Clinton, certainly, but it really felt like a party that was introducing you to their next step. And I think Kamala Harris is the tip of the spear there, but there's a top to bottom kind of transformation for Democrats that has been coming over the last several years.

But frankly, Joe Biden has been kind of keeping that lid on -- you know, he has kind of been a filter that's not allowed that to really jump out, because so much of the focus has been on him being a backwards looking figure. Now that that's no longer there, I think it comes through more clearly.

[12:05:00]

BASH: Jasmine, you covered the then Senator Kamala Harris and her campaign for president back in 2020 for us here at CNN. I know because I saw your work behind the scenes, how much you got to know her and the people around her. Given that experience, what are your thoughts and what are you hearing from our sources about last night and the way forward?

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Well, they're incredibly excited about last night. I think that's something that folks around the vice president recognizes that she's not maybe the best speech giver, but they were incredibly impressed with the speech that she gave. They felt it was both meticulously planned, that it struck all the right notes.

I think following her for so long, one thing that you always hear is how difficult it is to get her to talk about herself, get her to reveal personal anecdotes. And even though I've covered her since 2018, there were some things that she said on stage that even I hadn't heard before, really trying to get these personal anecdotes that not just explain who she is, but also stands in contrast to the former president.

And so, I think that that was a major, major part of it that shouldn't be understated, but people around her are excited. They feel that she did a good job. But going forward, I think, to Audie's point, they recognize that that is when the real work begins, and she wants to stay focused on winning in November.

CORNISH: Can I just add one more thing?

BASH: Yes, of course.

CORNISH: Because we're going to move past without talking about this. It was also fascinating to watch Democrats put to bed a bunch of grudges and sort of frustrations, right? The reception Hillary Clinton got, Elizabeth Warren being in tears, right? Bernie Sanders, whoever it is. There was -- in a way, a kind of unfinished business.

It looked like closure at the start of the week. Maybe not for Joe Biden. I think that for him, this was still very bittersweet, but watching some of the old guard come on stage, they came on in a position of like, we get it. You're saying thank you, because maybe the next generation is coming.

BASH: I love that. One of the things that was not said explicitly at all by Kamala Harris was the historic nature of her candidacy, whether it be gender, whether it be her race, her background. Although she did talk about the fact that she is a daughter of two immigrants, which I was trying to remember and we can talk about this another time, unless somebody just happens to know, like, when was the last time we had.

If she wins a president, who -- both of whose parents were not born in America. I mean, even George Washington, I think his parents were born on colonies. But in any event, I'm sure we'll find out the answer.

WRIGHT: Yeah. The internet will tell -- got on it.

BASH: Yeah. They'll tell us -- they tweet at us.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

BASH: So, maybe she didn't talk about it, but it was not lost on --

WRIGHT: Sure.

BASH: Everybody, including and I just want to give a shout out to your story, Jasmine. Black women leaders see decades of struggle vindicated in Kamala Harris's ascension. WRIGHT: Yeah. I think it's two parts, right? This is a vice president who has never wanted to talk about her blackness. Her woman is that is not a new phenomenon. I know that people are coming to the beat and writing about it, which is important. But it is not a new thing that she -- she's never wanted to talk about it. She's allowed, always people to talk about it for her. She does not want to be pigeonholed. She does not want to be just the president for black America.

I think, as people have said. She doesn't want to be the president for just women, although those are two very important parts of her identity, Southeast Asian people. So that is just a facet of her being, and it's really never going to change, no matter how much people want her to embrace that talk, those kind of talking points.

Secondly, though, I think that black women really do see the through line between folks like Fannie Lou Hamer, who gave that first testimony at the Democratic convention in the 1950s to Shirley Chisholm, who was the first black elected woman of Congress, and then the first black woman to run for the Democratic nomination.

They see those struggles that black women have really clogged through to make a pathway that the vice president is now enjoying and trying to create her own pathway. The vice president is somebody who -- even though she doesn't talk about her blackness, and even though she doesn't talk about her womanness or her asianness, in that way, really understands the responsibility and the pressure that it means to come first. This is something that her aides and people closer have talked to me a lot about. She recognizes it and feels it on her shoulders.

HERNDON: And I also feel like, I mean, some of the conversation, you know, is funny to me because what do we want her to say? Whether she says it or not, the reality exists. Kamala Harris has been a woman of color every day of her life and that's everyone knows that. Look at her --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Yeah. But you can put even the female thing, like Hillary Clinton talked about breaking the glass ceiling and so.

HERNDON: People spoke to that somewhat on stage. I think about Michelle Obama statement about she's a testament, you know, she speaks -- her dignity is a testament to her mother, my mother, maybe your mother, too. There was a through line, I think I've to connect people across a lot of ways.

Barack Obama didn't really talk about his identity and blackness. That specifically, I think there's a sense that, like, you know, if you put that in the air, then maybe that it kind of complicates the politically.

[12:10:00]

BASH: Well, I get that.

HERNDON: I would also say, though, you know, to Jasmine's point about black women working for this moment, it was not inevitable that there was this smooth of a transition from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. We know from the reporting that folks have done for a long time, including myself and Jasmine and others, that there was a lot of fear about Kamala Harris. There's a lot of whispers about Kamala Harris not being someone who can take off.

BASH: There weren't know.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: They weren't just whispers.

HERNDON: Yes. There was open speculation about replacing her from the ticket, and there was a lot of concerted effort that went into the moment that went from when Joe Biden had that debate until now to make sure that this party was as unified around Kamala Harris as we saw this week. And a lot of that work was done -- a lot of that work was done by black women in the party.

BASH: I want to talk about what she did emphasize. And you talked about prosecutor in chief -- commander in chief. The way she talked about the other leaders that she would be dealing with if she became president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are rooting for Trump. They know Trump won't hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself. And as president, I will never waver in defense of America's security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand, and I know where the United States belongs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Audie?

CORNISH: She's been to the Munich Security Conference, I think, three times given a fairly well received speech. She also, I think, notably was a person who sat down with President Zelenskyy to give early warnings about Russia. One of the things that I think we're all forgetting is Occam's Razor.

She might have just really been learning on the job. She really has been put in positions to learn, and you see the fruits of it in the way she talks, and she even used words like the lethality of the military.

HERNDON: That's (inaudible) to me.

CORNISH: Yeah. It's a way of Democrats seizing some ground relinquished by Republicans in their effort to be more America first.

BASH: You know, a Democrat said to me last night that she has been training in plain sight, which I love -- CORNISH: Yeah. If we weren't watching. You know, that's one thing about being a black woman sometimes is like people don't see you. And I think for a time, people did not see Kamala Harris.

BASH: Or if they did, they were seeing, maybe the thing --

CORNISH: What they wanted to.

BASH: Well, the things that people said about her that were critical. All right, everybody standby. Up next, angry phone calls to conservative networks and relentless social media rants. Donald Trump is not happy about what he saw here last night. As we go to break though, I want to talk about something that makes me very happy, Pink. Look at her performing with her beautiful daughter, Willow, right here the last night.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: Is she talking about me? In case you didn't spend your night on Truth Social, we did it for you. That was one of the countless commentaries that Donald Trump posted during Kamala Harris' acceptance speech last night. And then he called into Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (voiceover): Why didn't she do the things that she's complaining about. All of these things that she talked about, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do everything, but she didn't do any of it. In the end, the Democrats did the same thing to Joe Biden.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS, ANCHOR: Mr. President, thank you very much for the time. We appreciate that last feedback.

TRUMP: OK. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: The former president had a lot to say, but as you just saw, the anchors had to wrap things up. We know how that goes. The next show was about to start. So, six minutes later, he called into Newsmax.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): I personally thought it was a terrible speech. It was very nonspecific. It was also very short. She just wanted to get off the stage because her ideas are bad. Look, she's a Marxist.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: But the record show that Kamala Harris is not a Marxist. But Donald Trump wasn't finished, so he called another Fox host during a commercial break and popped up on TV again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREG GUTFELD, AMERICAN TELEVISION HOST: Mr. President, I'm on this. I'm live now. Say hello to my audience. Don't say anything that will get you in trouble. All right.

TRUMP (voiceover): I don't know. At this point, what difference does it make? We're doing well. We're leading in the polls.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Kristen Holmes covers the Trump campaign. Kristen, this -- what happened here behind us is clearly getting under Trump's skin.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Probably the DNC and the state of the race overall. And by the way, Dan, I don't think this is the last we're going to hear about Kamala Harris's speech. We're going to see him twice a day. Once in Nevada, and then another time in Arizona. And I believe it's likely he's going to bring it up again.

I mean, let's talk about what he saw at the DNC. It was relentless attacks on him. It was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of excitement, big crowds and big ratings. All things that get under Donald Trump's skin. And it comes at the same time where Donald Trump was really trying to break through in any way that he could.

[12:20:00]

He visited five battleground states every single day of the week. He participated in interviews. He likely would not have normally participated in, including with us. He tried to deliver messages in different ways, posing different questions and holding different events, like these smaller messaging events.

But it is clear that we are entering a new phase of the campaign right now. And it's not necessarily a place Donald Trump wants to be, because there is a lot of excitement and a lot of momentum around Kamala Harris. And ultimately, at this stage, it's going to be up to Donald Trump to try to seize some of that back.

BASH: And Kristen, you are in Phoenix, Arizona. That is where RFK Jr. will announce, he is ending his campaign that will happen this afternoon. What are you hearing about a potential endorsement of Donald Trump?

HOLMES: So, here's where we believe things stand, and this is according to obviously, sources that we talk to about it. RFK is expected to suspend his campaign in a matter of hours. And there are high level conversations going on between Donald Trump's team and RFK's team that have been for a number of weeks over Donald Trump securing that endorsement. Of course, there might be some questions as to why it is so important for Trump to secure that endorsement, particularly given we've seen RFK's campaign has been plagued with a number of controversial issues, including sitting down for a variety, our Vanity Fair article and avoiding questions on allegations of sexual assault from a nanny and putting a dead bear cub in the middle of Central Park.

But it's all about those margins. We believe us, media, Harris's campaign, Donald Trump's campaign. Everyone believes that this election is going to be divided -- decided by a razor thin margin, and any votes can be helpful.

I just want to go over one quick thing. Here in Arizona, RFK was pulling at 6 percent in recent polling. Does Donald Trump's team think that if, RFK drops out and endorses Trump, he's going to get all that 6 percent, no. They understand that's probably not likely.

However, they believe that if they can siphon off any of that, it will be helpful, particularly in a battleground state like this. And this is not the only state which RFK was pulling decently well and in a way that could impact those razor thin margins, Dana.

BASH: Yeah. Michigan especially, and that was a place where he was actually on the ballot. Kristen, thank you so much for that great reporting. As always, Audie, Astead and Jasmine are here.

Astead, let's sort of turn back to the opponent, the main opponent that Kamala Harris has, and the way that he has been thumpering around -- that's the official political term, trying to find a way to go after Kamala Harris to be a competitor against a very, very new opponent.

HERNDON: Yeah. I mean, he has thrown everything against the wall, nothing sticking ever since the switch has happened. And I think it really puts Donald Trump at a disadvantage, partially because it's now a substance driven race. Joe Biden allowed him a kind of get out of jail free card, because so much of that unpopularity was driven by something that Biden could never change, right?

Now that they have a different person in the race, it has exposed the fact that this is not a Trump campaign that has grown its margins, that has expanded its portion of the electorate. And I think even the J. D. Vance pick is reflective of a moment they were a month ago, where they were doubling down rather than expanding out.

And so, I think, you know, there was that rally earlier this week where Donald Trump was asking his own audience. Should I go personal, or should I stick with the substance? The audiences is encouraging him to go personal.

I think that spells kind of the negative tone that we might see this campaign take over the next month or so, and you have Republicans basically begging him on television and media to not do this. But this is who Donald Trump is. And so, it's going to be very difficult for him to reposition this race. And I think this debate has now grown in terms of importance, because you now have the very opposite of what was going to be happening in the first debate, where the Democrat is now in the ascendancy, and it's Donald Trump who needs to change the tides of momentum here.

CORNISH: Also, Trump has been living rent free in the heads of Americans for about a decade now. And, you know, he's not used to having to call around for attention, right? He's not used to saying, is she thinking about me? Like this is a feeling he hasn't had in a while, probably since the 90s, where he's trying, literally to break into a news cycle, because even with his criminal trial, he was the center of attention.

So, I think that even coming from this position is difficult from him. You did hear one message talking point that will be consistent from Republicans, which is that you were vice president, and why didn't you act on issues that you are talking about now. I think that that is something we're going to hear again.

BASH: Yeah. Don't talk about day one, day one was four years back.

WRIGHT: But I also think that Americans are going to reject that. I mean, why would Americans believe that a vice president can actually enact laws. That is not how the system works. I mean, maybe some people that would be convincing, but I think that whole holistically, like that really doesn't -- that's not a salient argument.

[12:25:00]

But I think even beyond that, right, the vice president's campaign, likes, when Donald Trump is taking personal attacks, obviously they're mean, or they don't feel good, have at it. But when he's talking about personal attributes about the vice president, he's not talking about policy.

He's not talking about the things that they know that she is vulnerable. He's not talking about immigration. He's not talking in a substantive way about the economy, to issues in which they recognize that Americans don't know exactly how she would govern. Obviously, her speech yesterday was meant to face that head on. But they don't mind when Trump is taking these low personal shots because they're not hitting them on things that Harris is vulnerable.

BASH: Well, one thing I will say is that one of the -- one of the reasons for hand wringing among Republican leaders in the past couple of weeks is that Donald Trump was still going after fellow Republicans, especially a popular Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, well he put on social media.

Thank you for all your help and support in Georgia to Brian Kemp, where a win is so important, so on and so forth. So, he's trying to at least make up with a guy who could actually hold publicly. This is actually -- this is about the most on Donald Trump thing, I've seen it.

(CROSSTALK) CORNISH: Yeah. And what are their internal polling numbers?

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: All right, thanks everybody. So great to see you. Get some rest. But not yet, stay with us, because coming up, GOP congressman, veteran and Trump supporter Mike Waltz will be with us.

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