Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump Back On Campaign Trail After Apparent Assassination Attempt; Trump And Vance Blame Dem Rhetoric For Apparent Assassination Attempt; State Troopers Monitoring Springfield, Ohio Schools; Sean 'Diddy' Combs Charged With Sex Trafficking & Racketeering Conspiracy; U.S. Atty: Combs "Abused, Threatened & Coerced Victims" From 2008 To Present; Harris To Take Questions From Natl Assn. Of Black Journalists; Harris Sits Down With Spanish Language Radio Host Chiquibaby. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 17, 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, the reality of rhetoric. Donald Trump is now blaming Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's rhetoric for the second apparent assassination attempt. This coming from a man who has arguably pushed more incendiary political rhetoric than any other U.S. president or candidate.

Plus, the breaking news we just heard live. Horrifying details from a new indictment against Sean Diddy Combs. Prosecutors want the rapper behind bars after he, quote, abused, threatened and coerced victims for 16 years. We're going to bring you all the breaking developments.

And the Senate is voting this afternoon on a bill to protect IVF. But does it actually have a chance of passing, or is this all about election year politics? I'll speak with Senator Amy Klobuchar this hour.

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

Donald Trump is hitting the trail today for the first time since the apparent assassination attempt at his West Palm Beach golf course this weekend. The former president is holding a town hall in must win Michigan, while his running mate campaigns next door in Wisconsin.

Kamala Harris is also in a crucial swing state, Pennsylvania, and Tim Walz is heading to the Sunbelt with events in Georgia and North Carolina today. But sadly, in 2024 politics is not the only focus of these campaign events. With all four candidates on the trail, security is a major concern.

CNN's Alayna Treene joins me now. Alayna, what are you hearing now ahead of this first time actually at a campaign event after what happened on Sunday?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah. Look, I mean, I think a lot of people are eager to see Donald Trump in person for the first time. We did hear him speak last night during an X spaces' event, but this is the first time people will be seeing him, and we're actually going to see what security looks like in the aftermath of what happened on Sunday.

I spoke with a number of senior advisers today to Donald Trump, and they told me that you should expect security enhancements going forward. We know that Donald Trump is continuing his schedule as planned this week. He has a number of stops, including, as you mentioned today, as that town hall in Flint, Michigan. Tomorrow, he'll be in Uniondale, New York. Thursday, he'll be in Washington, D.C., and over the weekend, he's traveling to Wilmington, North Carolina.

This was his schedule. They have not changed it, but I am told they are ramping up security. Now, they will detail exactly what those new security measures look like, of course, because it's so sensitive of an issue right now, but they said you should see some of that on the ground today in Flint.

Now I do want to turn to your attention, Dana, to what you mentioned about the rhetoric around this. You know, we are hearing Donald Trump really go on offense and blame Democrats, specifically Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their language for some of the political violence that we are seeing.

I want you to take a listen to what he said yesterday on during that X conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAROKH SARMAD (voiceover): This was a second attempt on your life in under two months. What do you make of that?

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (voiceover): Well, there's a lot of rhetoric going on. A lot of people think that the Democrats, when they talk about threat to democracy and all of this. And it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, Dana, I think what's really notable about this is how different this reaction is when you look back on his immediate reaction in the aftermath of that first assassination attempt in Butler. Donald Trump himself, but also his team and his surrogates had all called for unity.

The Republican National Convention was just after that weekend, and everyone was saying, we need to be unified. Donald Trump himself was saying he was a changed man. It wasn't several weeks later until he started arguing that perhaps the rhetoric from the left was responsible for this.

Now you're seeing him say that immediately, they are really injecting this as a key part of his campaign messaging. When I talked to his advisers, they say, you should expect the type of language from Donald Trump, but also J. D. Vance and other surrogates throughout the rest of this week and looking ahead to November. Dana?

BASH: Alayna, thank you so much for that reporting. I'm joined now by some other fantastic reporters here at the table. CNN's David Chalian, The Washington Post's Leigh Ann Caldwell, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times. Hello, everybody.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Hello.

BASH: I want to start because Alayna just played that sound bite from last night of Donald Trump saying that it's the Democrats rhetoric in talking about the fact that he is a threat to democracy, alleging that that was what precipitated these two apparent assassination attempts.

[12:05:00]

And I want to go into the not very far way back machine of last week, starting a week ago today, which was the debate. And then play a couple of other clips of Donald Trump since the debate over the last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're a failing nation, and it happened three and a half years ago. And what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III. She's a Marxist communist, fascist, socialist. We must stop her country destroying liberal agenda once and for all. She shouldn't be there anyway. She got no votes. She's a threat to democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This is just over the last seven days, David Chalian, and we could maybe fill up the whole show with other remarks that we've heard over the last eight years.

CHALIAN: Yeah. And I just question as a strategy, what targeted voters that the Trump campaign is looking to bring on board, who voters that are not already on board is going to believe he's a credible messenger on calling out rhetoric about political violence. It, to me, it's just something that's not -- it's not going to ring true with the voters that they're trying to reach. Or at least to me, he's a complicated messenger, as you just proved on that point.

So, you know, I get -- he's trying to sort of co-op this and turn this around and say, hey, this is a democratic problem, and try to just whitewash and erase all of his rhetoric and language over nine years in the center stage of American politics on this. I think that's a tough sell to the voters that they're going to need.

BASH: And not long after the -- what the incident on Sunday, which certainly does feel like an apparent assassination attempt, and then not me saying that that's law enforcement. Elon Musk put something on his social media platform X, asking why Kamala Harris was also -- has also not been targeted, and then he deleted it. J. D. Vance said something a bit different, but similar yesterday in Atlanta. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not going to say we're always perfect. I'm not going to say that conservatives always get things exactly right. But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we -- no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Leigh Ann?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CO-AUTHOR, THE WASHINGTON POST "EARLY BRIEF": So, well, first, we don't know that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple months. This is the secret service's job to keep people safe. There are threats on a daily basis of the president, the vice president, elected officials, members of Congress.

But J. D. Vance is also the person who started the false rumors more than a week ago about Springfield, Ohio, about false claims, about the Haitian immigrants there, and that has led to bomb threats, school evacuations, city hall evacuations, and a feeling of terror in that community, as far as reporting is concerned.

So, you know, there's a complete double standard here. And you know, I don't see that this political rhetoric, this on -- you know, is going to die down. Seems like the Trump campaign, based on what has happened in the past couple days, is only going to continue to escalate this argument and those comments.

BASH: And on that, what happened in Springfield after -- on Sunday, when I interviewed Senator Vance. After I told him what the mayor of Springfield had said, which is suggesting that there is a cause and effect between this rhetoric and the threats that they have, he pretty aggressively pushed back on any culpability, on that which he still is.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Whether or not, there is a cause and effect. This has been something that federal law enforcement officials have been warning about for years now. The idea that false statements put out by public officials could incite violence, could encourage those to commit violence attacks.

I remember after the attack on the Capitol on January 6. I spent a lot of time just talking to law enforcement officials about just how much do you fear that this could become the norm. This being public officials in their statements, encouraging people to commit violent attacks. And that fear was palpable then, and it seems like it's only becoming, you know, a norm now, that being violence connected to our elections and to politics.

I mean just the fact that right now you have a former president who, yes, has been the target of apparent assassinations twice, but is also an instigator of political violence. You know this is somebody that has encouraged people at his rallies to go after hecklers in his rallies.

[12:10:00]

We know what happened on January 6 as well, and the encouraging up people to go to the Capitol. And then the later attack on that Capitol. Just that fact that you have both a former president that is a target and instigator at this time. I think, is emblematic of just the heightened sort of threat environment that we're in right now when it comes to political violence.

CHALIAN: And I don't think we should lose the thread that Alayna pointed out, which is just the night and day difference in the response to the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting. And now -- and what is different? Obviously, the circumstances of the two events are totally different. He was actually -- shot him, bleeding and like, yes, I take that.

Apart from the circumstances being different, the politics of the moment are totally different. Joe Biden was his opponent at that time, and Joe Biden was losing that election, and Donald Trump was on a winning streak in that election, heading into his convention, feeling very good about his prospects. The call for unity was the option for the messaging for that.

That is not the political position Donald Trump finds himself in right now. He finds himself in a much more competitive race against Kamala Harris, still seething, as some of those clips from last week pointed out, that she is the Democratic nominee, and not Joe Biden. And he chooses a different kind of approach in response to this, this finger pointing, this blaming approach. I don't think we can lose sight that his political circumstances are different. That may also have something to do with his different reaction here.

BASH: Yeah. That's such a good point. And I think it's also important to say, like all of these things can be true that the rhetoric has gotten way too hot across the board. There certainly seems to be more of it on one side historically than or in recent history than the other, but it's gotten too hot.

And you do have people who don't appear to be well, who have access to firearms, who decide that this is an opportunity to act on whatever it is that's going on in their head. And, you know, the blaming on politicians for this, I don't necessarily think help solve the problem.

CALDWELL: Yeah. The access to firearms is really interesting. That was a topic that came up briefly after the Butler shooting. Of course, there's lots of conversations right now among the White House, among secret service and on Capitol Hill about the former president's perimeter, secret service perimeter.

How much funding secret service needs. But some Democrats are saying, we are also not talking about how many firearms are there, and why someone who has access to these guns are able to get so close to a former president?

BASH: Well, that's a whole different conversation which has been going on for decades at this point. We are following another very big story here at CNN. The indictment of entertainer Sean Diddy Combs on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges in New York. We're going to have a live update for you from the courthouse.

And later, Vice President Harris is sitting down with a national group of black journalists. And we're going to have some new reporting on that and her broader campaign strategy right now, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: We are following a big story developing out of New York. Sean Diddy Combs charged with conspiracy and sex trafficking. Here's what the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said about the music mogul moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAMIAN WILLIAMS, U.S. ATTY. FOR SOUTHERN DIST. OF NEW YORK: Combs abused, threatened and coerced victims to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct. As a legend the indictment to carry out this conduct, Sean Combs led and participated in a racketeering conspiracy that used the business empire he controlled to carry out criminal activity, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and the obstruction of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to go now to CNN's Kara Scannell, and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig. Kara, starting with you. You were in the room. I mean, absolutely, wow. It's hard to really wrap your mind around how something like this happens in 2024. Never mind for so many years and it being somebody who's so famous involved, and apparently, according to the indictment, the mastermind.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana. And that kind of goes to the heart of these charges. Prosecutors are alleging that Sean Diddy Combs has been involved in this sex trafficking operation since at least 2008, and that he had the help because he was the head of Bad Boy Records.

He had the help of some of his senior level employees at that company, high ranking officials, his security team and his household staff, according to prosecutors, who helped him conduct this sex trafficking operation and also helped cover it up or try to cover it up. So, the sweeping indictment hit with three serious federal charges. One of them, sex trafficking by force, has a minimum sentence of 15 years, a maximum of life. And according to this indictment, prosecutors say that Diddy used force, but threats of violence, hanging potential music careers over these women to get them to participate in these sexual acts and what were called these freak-off parties. According to prosecutors, at these parties there were copious amounts of drugs. Some of these women were forced to take drugs, and they were forced to have sex with male prostitutes.

[12:20:00]

So, prosecutors say that they recovered some evidence of these parties when they searched Diddy's homes in Miami and Los Angeles earlier this year, including some tubes of lubricant and baby oil, as well as a cache of weapons. That they say, Diddy use to both coerce some of these women and to also scare them into staying silent. Dana?

BASH: And Elie, part of this says, not only was he involved in this broader -- this broader sex trafficking ring. He personally was responsible for striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at and kicking women. Now we saw some video of this recently. Thanks to our terrific reporting from Elizabeth Wagmeister and other colleagues. This is -- it seems as though what this is saying is that was part of a pattern.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, Dana. This indictment and the other documents really paint an utterly damning portrait of Sean Combs' behavior and the violence features centrally in that. There is physical violence, there are threats, there is all sorts of coercion. And the reason that plays into this case, it's important to know assault and sexual assault are not federal crimes in and of themselves.

This is a federal prosecution, but the way they play in is the allegation is that Sean Combs was running a racketeering enterprise, an ongoing criminal business, and that the way he enforced that was through these violent acts. And the proof of that, we can already get a flavor of, is going to be quite straightforward.

We've all seen the video. Prosecutors have alluded to that video. They are going to use that video and also, Dana, one thing that's really important, prosecutors said in one of their filings today that they have, quote, dozens of victims.

So, we're not talking about five or 10 here. We're talking about dozens of victims. So based on what we've seen so far, we've of course, not seen any sort of defense case. We're far from that, but this is a really damning portrait.

BASH: It sure as. Elie and Kara, thank you so much for bringing that all to us. Appreciate it. And coming up, back to U.S. politics. Kamala Harris is heading to must win Pennsylvania again. There she will have a critical interview with the National Association of Black Journalists. We're going to talk about that and more of her strategy, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Vice President Harris is heading back to Pennsylvania today. This time for a pretty high stakes interview with reporters from the National Association of Black Journalists. That stop comes as her campaign launches a new effort to reach out to a demographic that Harris has struggled with men. CNN's Eva McKend joins me now with the details. Eva?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana. This conversation with the NABJ is a Q&A session in Philadelphia. It's an unscripted event, and she doesn't do many of these. So, we're watching that space closely. Now, online, in person, on campuses and in their communities, the plan this week for the campaign is to reach out to college students everywhere that they are.

That's why Governor Walz today is in Asheville and in Georgia. And in all, the campaign will support more than 130 youth voter registration events this week alone. New today, my colleagues; Arit John, David Wright and I learning the campaign, also aiming to frame this issue of abortion in a way that will be particularly resonant with men.

That's because even small gains through a combination of driving up turnout among Democratic men and persuading some moderates and independents could really make a difference in states like Pennsylvania. The Harris campaign has tied this issue to a larger fight over freedom and youth surrogates to share their personal stories of how abortion bans threaten the lives of pregnant women and their ability to conceive in the future.

In the story, we speak to a man, a 50-year-old electrician by the name of Chris Scholding. He attended the reproductive rights bus tour over the weekend, and he said that he was there because he has two daughters, a 20-year-old college student and a four-year-old toddler. And he felt the second Trump term would pose a broad threat to people's rights.

He rejected the idea that the former president would be better on the economy, or that economic issues were more important than that freedom. He said, if I have to pay more for gas, so be it, he's more concerned about this broader issue of reproductive rights. So, they're hoping to capture more men like him, Dana?

BASH: Eva, thank you so much. It's a great piece. I encourage people to check it out on cnn.com. I want to bring back my excellent colleagues here. Let's talk more about Kamala Harris, because she is doing a little bit more today. Later today, she will be talking to the NABJ. It will be largely well -- it will be unscripted. She's going to get questions from those reporters.

This morning, she did a radio interview. And we're just getting this information. It was with the Spanish language radio interview. So, we're getting information about some of the highlights -- CHALIAN: And so, she made -- yeah, she made her first comments. Again, this was an interview with the Spanish language radio outlet. But she made some comments for the very first time, beyond her written statement on Sunday about the attempted assassination in Florida on the former president, the second time in two months.

She said, well, I was briefed immediately after it happened. And I have to tell you political violence of any kind, I strongly condemn it, and like Americans, I'm grateful that he's OK, but we all have to stand up and say, enough of this approach. We have to have civil dialog and discourse. We have to be able to talk through our differences and violence has no place.

Again, this is the message we've heard from Harris, from Biden, from Walz. We heard it from Schumer and Jeffries. Like the Democratic leadership across the board has just been -- in response to this being, like walling off, there is no space for political violence and end of sentence. And she's doing that here as well, while also acknowledging --

[12:30:00]