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Garland: DOJ's Principles "Will Not Bend To Politics...Will Not Break Under Pressure"; Today: Harris Holding Two Campaign Rallies In North Carolina; Harris Campaign Releases New Ad Using Abortion Comments From Debate; Dems Celebrate Debate Performance, Concede Race Still Razor-Close; Laura Loomer, Who Has Promoted 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, Accompanied Trump To Yesterday's Commemoration Events; A.G. Garland Slams Efforts To Turn DOJ Into "Political Weapon". Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired September 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]

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Wolf. This is the attorney general trying to at least speak out, perhaps for the last time that we're going to be able to hear from him because the election is in less than two months. And we know the Justice Department has a policy whereby he's not going to be able to do speeches after the beginning of October, so to speak.

So, what the attorney general was trying to convey here was not only a rebuttal to what the attacks that you've heard from the former president and some of his allies. But also, from what you saw from the Supreme Court ruling back in July, which certainly made it OK for the former president to be engaging with his Justice Department to try to find ways to undermine the 2020 election.

That's the other thing that is on the attorney general's mind in some of the remarks here, where he talks about the norms of the department and his effort to try to protect them. And really the warning is, Wolf, if the former president does regain the White House, and if he wins the election in November, and he carries through with his -- with his vow to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his critics, people including, of course, Attorney General Garland and anybody else on the Democratic side.

What the attorney general is saying is that there are rules inside the department where anything that the former president tries to do will be known publicly. The career officials here inside the department are not going to just go along quietly. And so, that's one of the reasons why you saw those remarks today from the attorney general. Not only addressing the way things are supposed to work inside the Justice Department, but also the fact that, you know, people are under attack for simply doing their jobs. Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: And he did get emotional at the end when he gave a personal reference of why he believes so strongly in the rule of law at the Justice Department and elsewhere here in the United States. When he spoke about the fact that his Jewish grandparents escaped antisemitic pogroms in Russia to come to the United States and start a new life, and that clearly has had a huge impact on him. He's spoken about that before, right?

PEREZ: Right. He has spoken about that before and spoken about how much that motivates him and his work, not only here at the Justice Department, but also, of course, you remember he was a federal judge for about 25 years. So, all of those things are very personal to the attorney general. And you could see, you could hear his voice cracking as he recalls those memories of why his family members, his grandparents took refuge in the United States from Eastern Europe. Wolf?

BLITZER: It was a very emotional moment indeed, very important speech by the attorney general of the United States. Evan, thank you very much. Of course, we will follow up during the course of today, much more coming up on the attorney general's remarks.

To our viewers, thanks very much for joining me. I'm Wolf Blitzer in the CNN Newsroom. I'll be back later tonight for a special two-hour edition of the Situation Room 5 pm to 7 pm eastern. In the meantime, stay with us. Lots more news coming up on Inside Politics with Dana Bash, which starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, hitting the road. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are back on the trail after 67 million people watched them debate. They're aiming to mobilize voters in crucial battleground states. As polls show, this is a race that will be won by incredibly narrow margins.

Plus, I want to hear more. That's how one swing voter in a swing state is reacting to Kamala Harris on the debate stage. This hour, I'll talk to a top Harris campaign adviser about their plans to reach those still undecided voters in the home stretch of this race.

And as you just saw, the attorney general is issuing a stark warning about threats against Justice Department officials who are simply doing their jobs. He's not naming names, but it's pretty clear where he thinks those threats are coming from.

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

Today, the Harris and Trump campaigns are all over the country. Literally, the vice president is holding two events in North Carolina today as she tries to add some Tar Heel blue to the battleground map, while she's in the Sun Belt -- excuse me, Tim Walz is in the Rust Belt. He's going specifically to the state of Michigan.

The second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, is going to campaign in Nevada and in Arizona. That is where Donald Trump will be today as well. He is campaigning and talking about housing and the economy, though, one can never be sure exactly what the focus is going to be when he is on the trail. And J. D. Vance is going to be in the big Apple trying to raise some money.

[12:05:00]

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is in Charlotte, where the vice president will speak this afternoon. Priscilla, North Carolina is interesting because when Joe Biden was still on the top of the ticket, they had kind of given up on that no longer.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, and it's also a state that he had lost in 2020, but campaign officials see a strategy here. They know that they need to appeal to some voters who may not be diehard Democrats but are also not entirely interested in Donald Trump.

One advantage in their argument that they're trying to use is the governor's race here and tying the GOP gubernatorial candidate to Donald Trump. And in that way, try to get to more voters, especially as undecided voters. But another one of the top issues in the state of North Carolina is reproductive rights.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper saying right after the debate that it was the moment that Vice President Kamala Harris spoke on reproductive rights and healthcare that were some of the strongest and could move the needle in his seat. And the campaign is trying to capitalize on those moments with a brand-new ad released just minutes ago. Take a listen.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

ALVAREZ: Now, Harris aides had told me just before the debate that they had planned to needle the former president on reproductive rights, on that debate stage, and they think it paid off, which is shown in this ad. This is going to run in the battleground states. Again, another example of how the campaign is trying to use this issue to get to voters and make their argument, especially for those who are undecided.

Of course, another important aspect of these campaign stops here in North Carolina today and in Pennsylvania tomorrow is that early voting is just around the corner. So, the campaign trying to get the vice president out and quickly after that debate.

BASH: OK, Priscilla, thank you so much. Really interesting new ad. Let's bring in a terrific group of reporters here at the table, CNN's Kayla Tausche, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Tolu Olorunnipa of The Washington Post, and journalist Gretchen Carlson, who is co-founder of the nonprofit organization, Lift Our Voices is here. Welcome to Inside Politics.

GRETCHEN CARLSON, CO-FOUNDER, LIFT OUR VOICES: Thanks for having me.

BASH: It's so great to see you. Welcome to all of you as well. I want to start with where Priscilla left off, which is the Harris campaign is obviously leaning into this notion that she had a very good debate, cherry picking, first and foremost, the abortion issue, and her answer on that, which they're hoping that will help in some of these swing areas in the swing districts.

And so that is a focus, but they're also obviously very happy with how she did. And just as an example. Her campaign tweeted late yesterday, our new ad just dropped, and if you hit the link, it's the entire debate. JEFF ZELENY, CNN'S CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Right. I mean, they are hoping to capitalize on this debate, keep it front and center, fresh in people's minds. Obviously, people are not going to watch the debate again. Who knows? Some might, but a lot of people watched it the first time, some 67 million, and that is just watched it live. I mean, so many more moments are playing out.

And I'm not surprised that A, she's in North Carolina as her first stop, and B, she's talking about abortion. We talked to a Governor Roy Cooper right after the debate, and he said, healthcare and abortion are going to move the needle in North Carolina. We shall see.

You ask why North Carolina? A, it is the top example of a state where she can block Trump. It's also an insurance policy for her, if she doesn't win Pennsylvania. Without Pennsylvania, you can still hit 270 by North Carolina and one other state. So, a lot of reasons to go there. Ever since she's been on top of the ticket, they have seen new promise there, because of the 10 HBCUs across North Carolina, because of early voting.

Barack Obama won in 2008 because of excitement and enthusiasm. I remember that campaign very well. It's a different state. A lot of new voters in there on both sides, but they see real promise there.

BASH: Yeah. We're going to talk later in the show about something that's down ballot in North Carolina. And how that contributes or doesn't to what's going on at the top of the ticket?

Gretchen, I want you to listen to a Debbie Dingell, Congresswoman from Michigan, of course, who I kind of call the Cassandra of the Democratic Party, because she back in 2016 was warning more privately than publicly, the Clinton campaign. You've got to get Hillary Clinton to Michigan. And we know what happened. She ended up losing Michigan because perhaps they didn't heed her warnings. Listen to what she said to Kasie Hunt this morning.

[12:10:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): I was ecstatic, like every other democrat. As I watched the debate, I thought she got under his skin. One of my township supervisors called me and wanted to know what I thought. And I said, well, what did you think? And that discussion brought me right back down to earth. It's just closer than people realize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It's trench warfare right now. Six of the seven battleground states early voting starts either today or moving forward in the next week. The biggest thing to me is that Harris needs to get voters to back Harris and not just oppose Trump. So, the abortion ad, to me, is excellent. However, people know where she stands on abortion. That's a hotbed issue.

What you just heard from those undecided voters earlier is they want to know more. And if I were advising Harris's campaign, she needs to separate herself from Biden. She needs to get out there more in these battleground states, do every interview possible.

In that New York Times poll that came out over the weekend, 60 percent want change from Biden. However, only 25 percent think that's Harris. 58 percent think that's Trump. If that is not a telltale sign that she needs to separate herself, which she started to do in trying to be more moderate. She needs to get out there, do interviews. I know her campaign staff has not wanted her to do that. I'm not necessarily recommending more debates because she did so well, but she has to do more media interviews.

BASH: Yeah. And on that question of, that's media interviews, but also maybe trying to separate herself a bit from Joe Biden. It's interesting that apparently, when she said I called it the triangulation, I'm not -- I'm not him, meaning Donald Trump, and I'm not Joe Biden. I'm my own person that seemed to have done the best on the dials with focus groups during the debate.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE BUREAU CHIEF, THE WASHINGTON POST: And she multiple times said, it's time to turn the page. She tried to present Trump, not as a change agent, not as an insurrection person going against the status quo, but as a member of the status quo who has really soiled the American politics for the last nine years.

She really tried to present him as someone who is exhausting, someone who has really coarsened our politics for a long time. And said it, we don't need to be like this. We need to turn the page. That was part of her message in trying to change those numbers, which those numbers do show that Trump is seen as a change agent.

People are unhappy with the way things are currently in the country. And so, she has tried to take the first step of saying Trump is taking us backwards, and she says, we're not going back. But she also needs to show that she has a vision for the future that would allow people to have confidence that she would be different than Biden and not more of the same.

BASH: What are you hearing from the sources?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: She did a very little, if any, back slapping of the Biden administration during the debate on policy. You know, whereas President Biden, his proclivity was to take a victory lap on the things that they had already done. And she did the opposite of that, where she really focused on her own policy positions going forward, saying, if I were in office, this is what I've already told you that I would be doing.

And she's going to try to continue to make that case when she goes on this new way forward tour. But she has the potential for some hitches in the coming week, because they're going to be many more off the cuff media engagements in the battleground states, which as Gretchen notes, she hasn't really done before because of the condensed timeline.

She's not going to have the multiple days to hunker down and prepare for all of these various engagements. She's going to meet the teamsters rank and file. She's going to be at NABJ. And they're going to be a lot of opportunities for some off the cuff moments and a lot less time to recover.

But as Jeff was talking about early that the real strategy behind that schedule that she and Tim Walz are having over the next few days is because of early voting. 161,000 people have already requested absentee ballots in the state of North Carolina. That is more than double the number of votes that Trump won in 2020.

BASH: Wow. That's really interesting. I want to turn to the Trump side of the ledger. And talk about the fact that some figures in Donald Trump's orbit are concerned about someone who has been traveling with him lately. I'm talking about Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist. She's called herself pro-white nationalism and a proud islamophobe.

These are things that this woman who was with Donald Trump has said. And yesterday, she was with Trump at 9/11 ceremonies in New York and Pennsylvania. This is someone who pushed a conspiracy that the attacks were an inside job with Donald Trump at Ground Zero or at the areas in and around the 9/11 ceremonies.

Loomer was also seen getting off Trump's plane in Philadelphia ahead of the debate, and some blame her for putting stories like the immigrants' eating pets, lie into his head. She's even too extreme for Marjorie Taylor Greene, who isn't exactly a poster child for political correctness. Greene responded to a racist post that Loomer put up about Kamala Harris.

Greene wrote. This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump. This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever. Now, Trump aides have tried for years to keep Loomer away from him. Obviously, that is not working. Tolu, what are you hearing from your sources about this?

[12:15:00]

OLORUNNIPA: There's a lot of concern that Trump is trying to sort of go back and recreate the 2016 narrative that he had, where he was sort of this upstart candidate, where he was saying things that were controversial, where he was bringing in people who were not part of the Republican establishment.

He's trying to recreate that, but now he's bringing in people that are highly problematic, people that have these very noxious views about different Americans who embrace racist ideology. And so there are people who are trying to create the feeling that Trump has a professional organization, people like Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

When you bring in someone like Laura Loomer, you blow that up. And it makes it very clear, as we saw in the debate stage that Trump is not going to have a professional approach. He's going to go back to his instincts, which is to blow things up. And Laura Loomer, someone who's helping with that. CARLSON: And he's certainly not trying to get any independent voters or suburban moms when they see this kind of behavior. Look, when you have Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that something's bad, you should really pay attention. He's invigorating MAGA only.

And I think that's a huge mistake, dog whistling to the racist crowd. I guess he's banking everything on simply turnout of MAGA. We all know that independents have a lot to do with, you know, evaluating and solving elections, but maybe he's thinking that this is going to be a win for him because he's just going to invigorate them so much.

BASH: Real quick?

TAUSCHE: I just think that this is a massive gatekeeping failure of the Trump campaign. I mean, covering the Trump administration in every single meeting in the Oval Office, aides were jockeying to be the last person to leave the room, to try to moderate whatever the president had heard during that meeting, and try to --

BASH: -- this reason?

TAUSCHE: -- that final fingerprint on what he ended up saying or doing.

BASH: OK, everybody, don't go anywhere. Coming up. Don't you dare turn the Justice Department into, quote, a political weapon. That is what Attorney General Merrick Garland is warning today, and it's pretty clear who he is talking to.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: These images from January 6, 2021, are seared in so many of our minds, a violent mob attacking the U.S. Capitol, threatening lawmakers and stopping for a time the peaceful transfer of power. That's why there is a new plan to give Congress increased federal security when the 2024 election is certified on January 6, 2025.

The homeland security secretary designated the day as a national special security event, which means more officers will be on the ground, broader security perimeters and technology to detect potential material used in weapons of mass destruction.

I want to turn to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who spoke moments ago about attacks against Justice Department officials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this department solely for doing their jobs. And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law. You deserve better. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Evan Perez is at the Justice Department. He didn't name names, but he made no mistake about who he was referring to.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: No, absolutely not. Dana, the attorney general was addressing, you know, really the threats that you've heard, not only from the former president, but also members of Congress who referred to some of those very people that you pointed that you just saw carrying out those attacks on January 6. They referred to them as political prisoners, and they've tried to portray them in a totally different light from the violence that you see there.

And what the attorney general was talking about today in a speech to employees, to U.S. attorneys who were in town for a conference, was that the department is going to stick by its norms right, to try to make sure that the department cannot be weaponized. Here are some of those comments from the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARLAND: That we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon, and our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And, Dana, what the attorney general, of course, is referring to is the vow from Donald Trump and from people, some of his supporters, that if he were to regain the White House, that he is going to turn the department to try to use it, to weaponize it against some of his critics, including, of course, the attorney general and people in the Biden administration.

Also, he was talking about the ruling back in July from the Supreme Court, which essentially blessed some of the conduct from Donald Trump back in 2020 where he tried to use people from the Justice Department to support his false claims that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Those are the things that the attorney general was addressing in this speech today. Dana?

BASH: Really scary, but really important stuff as we get closer and closer to election day, and of course, beyond. Thanks, Evan. Appreciate that.

PEREZ: Sure.

[12:25:00]

BASH: And coming up, she is coming off a winning debate performance and a superstar endorsement. But is that going to translate to actual votes for Kamala Harris? Her campaign co-chair is here next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BASH: Buckets of money, a strong debate performance and a superstar endorsement, and yet the presidential race is essentially a tie. That's the situation Vice President Harris finds herself in. So how is she going to capitalize on her very good week?

Kamala Harris' campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu is here with me now to help try to answer that. Nice to see you. Thank you for coming in. I want you to -- I just want to get right to it.

[12:30:00]