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Inside Politics

Harris Repeatedly Baits Trump During Fiery Debate; Trump Attacks Moderators, Claims Debate Was "Rigged"; CNN Flash Poll: 63 Percent Of Debate Watchers Say Harris Won; Taylor Swift Throws Support Behind Kamala Harris; Harris Taylor Swift. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 11, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, who wants a rematch? The Harris campaign is pushing to get back on the debate stage, while Donald Trump claims he won and doesn't need a round two. His advisers may disagree. We have the highlights fall out and fact checks from what may be voters last chance to see the candidates face off before heading to the polls.

Plus, she's in her endorsement era. The biggest star on the planet says, she's a childless cat lady who won't leave a blank space on her ballot. But the question, we can't shake off. I'm going there. Is will Swifties follow her lead?

And 23 years ago today, our country changed forever. On this 9/11, we are going to bring you live tributes as we remember the thousands of Americans killed in the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

You're looking at live pictures of lower Manhattan, the Freedom Tower there, rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center that was destroyed by terrorists 23 years ago today. And so on this solemn day, we start with a rare moment of humanity. This was the scene at Ground Zero earlier today.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, shaking hands, smiling, being civil. You can see Joe Biden and J. D. Vance by their sides, with Michael Bloomberg right in the middle. This kind of civility should not be shocking, especially on September 11. But in 2024 it is especially, because that came just hours after these candidates spent 105 minutes attacking each other at a debate that also started with a handshake clearly initiated by the vice president.

Kamala Harris let's have a good debate. And moments later, the gloves were off. Nothing Harris did was surprising. Her team signaled for days that her strategy would be to rattle Trump, to goad him into getting angry and making mistakes and over and over, Donald Trump took the bait.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busting them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light so she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: The former president spewed lies and conspiracies from the debate stage. He repeated his false claims about election fraud and January 6, and this bogus and blatantly racist story about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: A CNN flash-full of debate watchers last night showed two thirds of viewers say, Harris won the debate. But as we have learned, winning a debate does not mean winning an election.

Joining me now here at the table a group of all-star reporters, PBS NewsHour's Laura Barron-Lopez, CNN's Jeff Zeleny and CNN and Bloomberg's Nia-Malika Henderson, and the one and only Carl Hulse of The New York Times. Hello, everybody.

I'm going to start with you, Jeff Zeleny. You were in the spin room. Give me the real feeling when you got the people who you were talking to off to the side quietly and what they were actually saying to you?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Boy, I mean, what a difference a debate makes. I was just thinking back as I was in the spin room last night to that debate in Atlanta, where you could not find a Biden campaign official for a very long time. Different last night, the Harris campaign officials and surrogates came rushing in.

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One of the first people I saw was Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina. And he, you know, made the argument that he believes this help the vice president in his battleground state because of healthcare and abortion. That those two answers she gave are going to help her dramatically.

Look, we all know we've watched a lot of winning debates. We remember some winning Hillary Clinton debates from 2016. I remember some Hillary or some winning John Kerry debates from 2004 and they lost the election. So, it takes a minute. But in that moment in the spin room, the Trump surrogates were trying to spin away, the moderators were unfair, et cetera.

But privately they were disappointed in his performance that one person said, he didn't take it as seriously as he should have. He underestimated her. And I was thinking he's the one who looked like the incumbent in this race. We talked a lot about that -- the curse of an incumbent who doesn't quite take a debate seriously. To me, he looked like that man.

BASH: So, I want to go back and sort of pick apart some of the highlights, lowlights, whatever you want to call them of the debate. But I also want to talk about the here and the now, and what Donald Trump is doing today as he rehashes with his friends on Fox. Let's just listen to a little bit of his analysis of himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): There was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her. I think ABC took a big hit last night. I mean, to be honest, they're a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it.

They ought to take away their license for the way they did that. Somebody that maybe even had the answers. I mean, I watched her talk, and I said, you know, she seems awfully familiar with the questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that she did not have the answers. She did not know what the questions were. Specifically, that that they were going to ask every issue that they asked about was pretty clear. It's been in the front burner of everything. One more example of what Donald Trump said this morning about the possibility of another debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): When a fighter loses, he says, I want a rematch. I want a rematch. They always -- the losing person, the fighter, the debater, they always ask for a rematch. I won the debate. I don't know that I want to do another debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Nia?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Listen, I think his advisers will probably suggest to him that he should have another debate, because he was so terrible in this debate. He took the bait. And you could see from the very moment she got out on that stage. She goes right over to him. There were questions about whether or not they would be a handshake. She initiated the handshake. Showing that she was in his space and going on offense. And that's what she did the entire time from the moment she did that. And then there was the Wharton bait, right? He likes to talk about his being a brilliant student at Wharton. And she said, well, listen, those folks at Wharton think your economic plan is trash. I mean, that's essentially what she said.

You know, the other thing is, she made him seem small. He is someone who wanted to come into this debate, almost as like Hulk Hogan, right? He was talking about, well, she shouldn't be able to have any sort of stand on a box to seem bigger. So, he wanted to seem the sort of bigger, more masculine, towering presence. And she made him seem small.

I think she emasculated him in many ways, saying that he was a laughingstock on the world stage, saying that he was weak, saying that he could be easily swayed by dictators. It was just a masterful performance. I mean, I went in thinking she would be fine. She's a great debater, but she almost was flawless in this debate. Kept him so off script that he couldn't really land anything against her.

BASH: But she didn't have to keep him off script. If he stayed in the moment and did what he was supposed to do, which is, she's going to bait me. Don't take the bait. Say what you want to say. But as you said, she did it in such a way that it was for him almost constitutionally small c, impossible for him not to answer.

I want to bring you in, Laura. Let's just listen to some examples of what Nia was talking about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit.

TRUMP: I went to the Wharton School of Finance, and many of those professors, the top professors, think my plan is a brilliant plan.

HARRIS: His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the Republic would never survive another Trump term.

TRUMP: And you take a guy like Esper. He was no good. I fired him. So, he writes a book. Another one writes a book, because with me, they can write books.

HARRIS: World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.

TRUMP: Let me just say about world leaders. Viktor Orban, one of the most respected men. They call him a strong man. He's a -- she's a tough person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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BASH: Just for people who aren't totally familiar. Viktor Orban is the leader of Hungary, and he is a autocrat.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. Who has exerted anti-democratic, small d democratic policies in Hungary. And yet Donald Trump repeatedly, whether it's in the debate or on during his campaign speeches, constantly refers to Viktor Orban as a good evaluation of his own character.

No, all of those clips show that time and time again, when she tried to get under his skin, he couldn't let it go. And rather than sticking to whatever question the moderators asked about immigration or on the economy, he ended up responding to her over and over again.

And I was just in a focus group this morning of voters that voted for him in 2016, voted for Biden in 2020. But you know, there was some question about whether or not they would actually vote for Harris, and the majority of them -- actually all of them, and there was nine.

So, this is anecdotal, but it's nine voters, all in swing states, were asked if you had to vote today, whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Who would you vote for? And they said Harris. That they were now leaning far more towards her after watching that debate that they felt as though she checked the boxes in terms of questions, they had about her ability to demonstrate presidential character and to potentially be a commander in chief.

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I mean, I think she was super prepared, and Trump seemed to be thinking he's going to trump his way through this, right? And that is what showed. I think he missed some opportunities on immigration, which is probably his best issue. But instead, he gets into the dog eating commentary, you know, and it blew up on him.

I think to me, the big thing to come out of this debate is that she gets a new burst of energy, right? We thought maybe this was dissipating a bit from the convention, and of the New York Times poll showed a little bit of that. But I think this debate and this high- profile celebrity endorsement that we're talking about, I mean, it gives them new juice somewhere to go from.

I was also struck by Trump's comments this morning. His people have been trying to get him away from this retribution, revenge talk that he is fond of, and instead, he's threatening to yank ABC's license, right? And I don't think that goes over so well.

BASH: He's 78 years old. He's not going to change. And it's just -- I just -- I mean, they're trying, but it's just not going to happen. You mentioned some of the past debates where one of the candidates clearly won the debate but lost the election. Hillary Clinton is one of those examples that you gave. She put the following on Instagram, this picture, which is now, I think, an Insta classic photo of Kamala Harris that look. She crushed him. Joined this winning team, kamalaharris.com.

Here's the yeah-but (Ph). The yeah-but is something that we saw in our poll last night, which anecdotally, we're also hearing. And that is what people want to hear from her about what she would do, particularly on the issue that is dominating, which is the economy.

Before the debate, Donald Trump 53, after the debate 55. Kamala Harris before 37, after 35. So, virtually no movement on that. And if anything, I know it's margin of error, but it went down a little bit.

Now I will say, I said to a Trump adviser this morning, you know, because that was -- that's definitely part of the Trump spin. She didn't move the needle on the issues that people care about. She didn't articulate her vision the way people want. Maybe -- let's just say, for argument's sake, that is true, but compared to what?

I mean he has -- he's considering a plan to consider a plan on a lot of issues. That is always his MO and she's -- maybe she's being held to a different standard, and maybe that's just the way it is, and life isn't fair. But I think it's important to point out.

ZELENY: Look for those voters who are deeply concerned about the economy, they are going to still have some questions. It's one reason that she wants to do a second debate. But I think the -- what the Harris campaign wants to focus on is her answers, and really the issue of protecting reproductive rights and healthcare.

I thought the answer from Donald Trump, will have a plan soon on healthcare. How many times have we heard that? We covered the Trump administration, and obviously --

BASH: I remember him telling me that in a 2016 debate.

ZELENY: So many times. The reality is now this is a broadly popular plan, the Affordable Care Act. So, I think that is Exhibit A. So, yes, there're no question. There are concerns about the economy. Those will linger for some voters. Also coming at the same time where interest rates likely to go down, gas prices also likely going down. That timing is in her favor.

But look, she did not win the election last night. There's no doubt about it, but she did win the debate, and that is one step closer to November. She still has a tough race ahead of her. There's no doubt.

BASH: And the question is, what is she going to do? How is she going to harness this? Is she going to do what a lot of Democrats on our air came on last night to say, she's got to go kick the tire. She's got to go talk to voters more and be more accessible. We'll see where they take this from here.

Don't go anywhere, because coming up, Swift approval.

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BASH: Miss Americana herself responds to the debate with a coveted endorsement. Will it get her fans to the polls?

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BASH: That was Kamala Harris walking off stage last night at a post- debate party to Taylor Swift's lyrics, 'The Man' a song about misogyny, especially poignant moments since it came minutes after Taylor Swift endorsed her in a post on Instagram.

Swift wrote, I'm voting for Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes, I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader, and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. She signed off on the post Taylor Swift, childless cat lady. And then she dropped her microphone.

My panel is back to discuss. Jeff Zeleny, I'm going to start with you because you're the biggest swiftologist at the table.

ZELENY: He may be second to you.

BASH: But I care more about what you think than me.

ZELENY: Look, I think that it's been the question. One of the questions hanging over the race, is she going to endorse or not? Certainly, after the convention, I was struck by what she said at the end of her post.

She said, I've done my research. I've made my choice. Your research is all yours to do. But wanted to encourage new voters to register to vote. I think that's probably the biggest impact of this, and then puts a link how to register. So, people knew that she was likely to support Kamala Harris.

But I think coming out, it really shines a light on the potential of the youth vote but getting people to a register. That was a problem in 2016. How many celebrities were at Hillary Clinton rallies? And she didn't win. So, of all the lessons hanging over, I think this is one more, you have to register to vote. But of course, it was a big deal, a nice cherry on top of the debate winning. But again, an endorsement does not win an election.

BASH: Yeah. As I said to Jake last night, I still stand by this. She's not your average celebrity. She is not even my favorites, Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. Anything bad about --

ZELENY: She has the movement.

BASH: She's next level. 283 million followers, 2.2 million likes in 30 minutes. I just want to actually go back quickly to that song we heard of her, Kamala Harris, walking out to. These are the lyrics. I'm so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man. And I'm so sick of them coming at me, because if I was a man, then I'd be a man.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Listen, she has gotten involved in politics before endorsing in a Senate race involving Tennessee. People were running for Senate in Tennessee, obviously endorsed Biden. Listen, Donald Trump wanted this endorsement like he did a whole fake, AI thing. BASH: She mentioned.

HENDERSON: She mentioned that in her post. I think this is different from Hillary Clinton because this seems more organic. It seems more just natural, like, you know, you had like LeBron James endorsing Clinton in 2016. It didn't seem like such a good fit in terms of where we are culturally, in terms of women, in terms of young women, in terms of women in sports, in terms of women in music. She was the biggest superstar in the world.

You know, Beyonce is obviously up there as well, Rihanna. They have -- they have moved the economies. They have led women to all of a sudden like the NFL because she's dating Travis Kelce. Listen, you know, if you're Donald Trump, you can take heart that you have. Brittany Mahomes, who endorsed, and you know, he will do that.

BASH: OK. Nia, I appreciate you and I want to bring you in. I appreciate you, setting up my next sound bite, which is from Donald Trump talking about Mrs. Mahomes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better. If you want to know the truth. She's a big Trump fan. I was not a Taylor Swift fan. It was just a question of time. She couldn't -- you couldn't possibly endorse Biden. You look at Biden, you couldn't possibly endorse it. But she's a very liberal person. She seems to always endorse a Democrat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARRON-LOPEZ: I mean, Donald Trump is obsessed with celebrity. We all know that. He has a demonstrated pattern of that. So, he does like to trot out the few celebrities that he gets. I mean, Brittany Mahomes endorsement, she's not as well-known -- is the fact. I mean, she may be more well known now because of the fact that Taylor Swift stands alongside her at Chiefs games.

But to Nia's point, Taylor Swift and celebrities like her, like Beyonce move people. They influence people in a way that those endorsements Hillary Clinton got in 2016, those celebrities didn't. I went and I checked to see how many followers Beyonce has, because I know that a lot of us are wondering if she is going to also endorse prior to November. She has more than 300 million, so more than Taylor Swift.

BASH: These move economies --

HULSE: I do think this could spark some vigorous kitchen table discussions between Republican politicians and their daughters about what's going on here.

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BASH: Republican voters? HULSE: Right. And the -- and it's also -- who knows what this really means. But if they can -- if it can get more people to register to vote, more younger people to go vote for the vice president. That's a win. I do think it also shows the staying power of that cat lady comment.

BASH: OK. I'm sorry. Can we --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: That (inaudible) going to kill me, but you have cats on your --

HULSE: Yeah. It's sort of a coincidence, but I figured --

BASH: Serious, was it?

HULSE: Well, sort of, but I figured --

(CROSSTALK)

HULSE: There's a lot of discussion about cats, but I do, guys, I said from the beginning, this was going to be a bigger problem than people thought. It was such a comment denigrating this huge block of people that they needed to win this election, and it really has stuck with them.

BASH: We're going to have to leave it there. Meow, thank you. Coming up. It is insulting to the women of America. That's how Kamala Harris summed up Donald Trump taking credit for overturning Roe v Wade. Could that moment cost the former president some key votes that he needs most? We'll talk about that, next.

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