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How Alcohol Affects You Base On Age, Sex; Today: Harris And Trump Lay Out Dueling Economic Plans; CNN Poll: Voters Favor Trump Over Harris On Economy, 50 Percent, 39 Percent. Harris To Spotlight Manufacturing In Pitch To PA Voters; Trump To Women: " I Will Be Your Protector"; Zelenskyy Gives Details Of Victory Plan At United Nations; Trump: "Get This War Finished...Negotiate A Deal"; Zelenskyy on Vance: "He Is Too Radical". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 25, 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]

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, it's a fascinating process, something that as you point out, is relatively new but really growing, you know, we get panel. We talked about this yesterday, but athletic, they made 800 barrels of their beer in 2018. Last year, they made 170,000 of those barrels because that gives you some

idea of the growth.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Of course, I'm thinking about all my Kentuckians who love bourbon, and all the bourbon distilleries there. What this all means for that industry. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, we'll see --

GUPTA: Next week.

BROWN: All right, next week, to be continued. Thank you so much. And thank you all for joining us today. I'm Pamela Brown. You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok and X @PamelaBrownCNN. Stay with us. Inside Politics with Dana Bash starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, making their economic pitches. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both in crucial swing states today, laying out dueling visions for the economy, as polls overwhelmingly show it's the most important issue for voters.

Plus, shocking security lapses on the day Donald Trump was shot. We'll bring you the details from a new bipartisan report that one Democratic senator says, will make you, quote, astonished and appalled.

And minding the manosphere. A top pollster is here to break down why Donald Trump is dominating with male voters, as the Harris campaign knows that cutting into that lead could ultimately determine whether or not she wins the election.

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

First up, pocketbook politics. Donald Trump has a big lead on the issue that will likely define the race, that of course, is the economy. And what sources say will be a wide-ranging economic speech today. We are told that Vice President Harris will detail her policies on competition, on childcare and manufacturing, something her opponent talked about on the trail yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Will lead an American manufacturing boom. We're going to have a manufacturing boom, and a lot of it's just taxation policy, tariff policy. This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs, massively raise wages for American workers and make the United States into a manufacturing powerhouse like it used to be many years ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: CNN's Eva McKend is in Pittsburgh, where the vice president will speak this afternoon. Eva, what do you hear from your sources about what we can expect from the vice president?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, the goal here is to really expand on her economic agenda. She'll focus on American manufacturing. Perhaps no better place to do that than right here in Pittsburgh, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

And we're told by senior officials that this is going to be a pragmatic speech, that she's going to talk about the limits of relying on government alone, about the power in public, private partnerships about the power in harnessing innovation.

And to me, this really seems like an effort to quiet the noise that we hear from the right that this prosecutor, this former attorney general, is somehow a Marxist. She's going to speak directly to that and say, listen, I am a capitalist and really try to continue to -- I think, speak directly to those undecided voters that she is a mainstream Democrat.

Here we're getting a little bit of an excerpt from this speech. Let me take a read for you. It says, for Donald Trump, our economy works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers. Not those who build them. Or wire them. Or mop the floors. I have a different view. I believe we need to grow our middle class and make sure our economy works for everyone.

And Dana, this is not the first economic rollout that we have seen from the vice president. I was with her in North Carolina not long ago, where she really focused on lowering costs for everyday Americans, focused on going after corporate price gouging, as well as building out more options for affordable homes.

So, I expect that this speech very much in line with that will speak directly to this issue of the cost-of-living crisis that so many Americans are confronting right now. Dana?

BASH: Thank you, Eva, for that reporting. And here with me at the table are three other terrific reporters, CNN's Gloria Borger, Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson, who is also a columnist for Bloomberg.

Gloria, I don't think that we can overstate how critical this issue is for -- you know, obviously, to the voters. But for her to try to chip away at the pretty remarkable foundation that Donald Trump has with voters when it comes to how they view the ability of either candidate to make their lives better when it comes to the economy.

[12:05:00]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, if you look at all the polling, it's clear Donald Trump has as a big advantage, but she is -- as you also look at the polling, starting to narrow that gap a bunch. And the question is, how much can she narrow it? And when you talk to voters, the question they have is, well, where are her specifics? I don't really know that much about her.

And so, she's got a thread a needle here because, you know, there is Bidenomics, which is not popular. So, she has to figure out a way to kind of distance yourself a little bit from Bidenomics, make some distinguishing policy choices, and yet take credit for some of the progress that's been made. And at the same time, tell the people we feel your pain.

BASH: Yeah.

BORGER: We understand what you're going through, and we've got to get these prices down in supermarkets.

BASH: Yeah. And that's the key, and that was one of the biggest things that Joe Biden, when he was running had the challenge that he had was sort of pivoting from all the things that I've done for you. And people said, OK, great, but I don't feel it. And we're told that she's going to pitch herself as a policy pragmatist with a populist bent.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST & CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. I mean, looking at some of those lines that she's going to use that Eva was talking about this idea that Donald Trump is in it for himself and his rich friends. And I am one of you. I grew up in a middleclass family.

You know, and every time she talks about the economy, she sort of couches it in those terms about. And part of that is educating the American public about who she is, but also saying, I understand your struggles, whole feel your pain. Idea, she is making some progress on this.

You do see some of the polls shrinking, but I think this idea that Trump is in it for himself, that he's just a rich guy. He's just going to make rich people richer, and he doesn't really care about you. That's actually fairly powerful, and you can see it in some of her ads. This is a Pennsylvania ad.

There's former Republicans who are now going to vote for her. They're former sort of regular working class, former white folks in Pennsylvania, and they are making this argument too, that Trump was here. He said he was going to do all these things. He didn't do anything for us and he's for the rich, and Kamala Harris is for us.

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICS REPORTER, NOTUS: It's interesting, because I had been asking her team a bunch whether or not we can expect more fulsome policy rollouts. To your point of people asking, OK, what about the specifics, particularly on the economy?

And it was really unclear whether or not they would, because I don't -- I think they were trying to balance whether or not be better for her to be in the homes and on these -- on those -- on the road with Americans in Pennsylvania, in Georgia versus kind of these larger policy pronouncers.

But then I think that they saw those polls that showed her really tightening the gap between her and Donald Trump on the question of who do Americans trust more on the economy. And so that is kind of why we're seeing her do this big policy rollout today, even though it's not very different from what we heard from Biden.

Biden ran on boosting domestic manufacturing. That's something that he actually had a lot of positive impact on as president. Biden ran on being a capitalist, something that we're going to hear her talk about today.

And I think that is actually the most authentic version of her because at her heart, at her core, she is an incrementalist. And I think that that's what she's going to talk about today, trying to put more money in people's pockets, so that they can put more food on their table.

BASH: And Gloria, I've said this before, and I'll say it again. It is really -- I wouldn't even say stunning, but it is definitely a thing that I am noticing over and over again that Donald Trump doesn't have a 17-point.

BORGER: You know, you know. Go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: I think she is one who has to give her policies. Now, Donald Trump was president, so people know what it's like to live economically when he is president, to be fair. But tariffs --

BORGER: Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tax cuts.

BASH: Let's just listen to a little bit more of what he said yesterday on this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Under my leadership, we're going to take other countries jobs. Did you ever hear that expression before? Have you ever heard that we're going to take other countries jobs? It's never been stated before. And it won't even be difficult. Your only worry will be deciding which job to take. There will be plenty of them. That will be your biggest problem, darling, which company should I go with?

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: There you go. But by the way, you know, the job market is not the issue right now.

BORGER: No.

BASH: It's affordability. Never mind that. But go ahead.

BORGER: But, you know, here he threatens John Deere. They go to Mexico right, with 200 percent tariffs on their products. I mean, who do you think pays that? The American consumer. Now, the Trump people argue that point. Donald Trump argues that point, but his answer to everything is vague. His answer, remember a week or so ago when he was asked about childcare, his answer was, you know, tariffs.

[12:10:00]

So, she gets criticized for being vague and sometimes rightly so, and that's what she's trying to do today is to lay out overview of her policies. But for some reason, you know, it kind of bounces off of him because tariffs are kind of easy to understand, I guess. And the only thing that's out there and tax cuts.

BASH: There's nothing I like better than saying something Nia bank on the table. Take it away. The floor is yours.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: You want some conversations we've had at this table where you were saying, it does seem like there is a double standard. And it turns out that there is a double standard and it's a gendered double standard. There's data -- yeah, that showed that basically voters expect more from women, even when they have policies, they say, well, who else likes these policies, right? They need validators.

And you can see Kamala Harris struggling with this, right? I mean, she sort of name drops the other people who sort of like her, whether it's Dick Cheney or Liz Cheney. So, yeah, it is a gendered thing that's going on, yeah.

BASH: I actually want to read from part of your columns.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

BASH: We're talking about --

HENDERSON: Oh, you got my column here.

BASH: Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Trump's promise to protect women. It's sort of a new version of it.

(CROSSTALK) BASH: So, this is a new version of it. You know, we have all the columns, as you're right, Nia. You note in your blogs. Inside joke, inside joke. He notably doesn't promise high paying jobs and a career path. The former president, it turns out, is running to be the nation's great father and husband. Who needs policy when you have a patriarchy? OK, so it's a next version of that -- this is based on what he said.

HENDERSON: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is his sort of message to women. He, of course, has a 21-point gender gap. He is essentially saying, I will protect you from this terrible world you live in and the high grocery prices. Because in his world, it is the women who are doing all of the grocery shopping. It isn't that they're in corporate boardrooms or anything like that.

So yeah, there is a sort of gendered flavor to his reaching out to women. And I think it's backfiring. It's going --

BASH: But I think you're going to --

WRIGHT: The vice president on the stage today try to make the case that it's on serious, right? It's not grounded in reality and it's not something that somebody can actually change the way in which he says that he can change it. You can't just wave a magic wand.

BASH: We don't -- we have to go to break. We don't have time to run it. But I do want to say people should check out Phil Mattingly's piece because he went to a town in Lawrenceville -- Lordstown, Ohio, where he talked to people who were supposed to get jobs back from Donald Trump. He promised it. They're not happy about it. Some of them are still going to vote for him.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

BASH: Anyway, don't go anywhere. Coming up. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in the U.S. He's in the U.S. this week, and you're going to hear what he had to say about Donald Trump and J. D. Vance. Republicans are not happy. And later, Republicans have won with men in every election for a generation. Kamala Harris's task this year, lose them by less. We'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly this morning, where he gave some details about his plan to achieve peace in Russia's ongoing invasion of his country. CNN's Alex Marquardt is at the general assembly for us. Alex, there were some pretty remarkable moments from Zelenskyy's speech today.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Several of them, Dana, are really an impassioned plea for world leaders here to unite behind Ukraine and against what he called Russian colonialism. He said that it was insane. What we're seeing in terms of a Russian power grab in Ukraine. And he really highlighted the urgency of the moment, talking about Russia wanting to attack Ukrainian nuclear facilities.

He talked about a moment two and a half years ago at the beginning of the war, when he got a report that they intended to strike the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is the biggest one in Europe. They have now occupied it.

And he then talked about Russia's future plans to continue going after Ukrainian nuclear facilities as they try to essentially destroy Ukraine's energy grid. 80 percent of which he says has now been taken offline. Here's a little bit more of what he said about the Russian plans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: Putin is looking for other ways to break the Ukrainian spirit. One of his methods is targeting our energy infrastructure, and these are deliberate Russian attacks on our power plants and the entire energy grid. This is how Putin is preparing for winter, hoping to torment millions, millions of Ukrainians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: Weaponizing winter is usually what he calls it, Dana, and he made the point that when there is nuclear fallout, that it doesn't know any borders, that it could, of course, spill out beyond Ukraine. Dana, President Zelenskyy travels from New York to Washington D.C.

Tomorrow, he meets with President Biden to present what he's calling his plan for victory, which I'm told by someone who's gotten a preview of the plan, will focus on long term economic and military aid, security assurances that Ukraine wants from the U.S. And of course, we can imagine President Zelenskyy is going to continue to ask for those permissions to fire U.S. made missiles, those long-range attacks, missiles into Russia. Dana?

[12:20:00]

BASH: Alex, before I let you go, I want to get your take on something that President Biden said this morning. He was on the view, and he was asked by our colleague Alyssa Farah Griffin about whether or not he's concerned about what's happening right now between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon, spreading out and becoming a broader conflict.

He said, he's hopeful about a ceasefire meeting with Hamas. But he also warned that an all-out war is possible. What are you hearing?

MARQUARDT: Well, certainly, when you hear that from the president, that raises a lot of concern. But -- and this comes, I should say, against the backdrop of the top Israeli general just saying moments ago that they are planning for a ground incursion into Lebanon.

We know that at least two reserve brigades have been mobilized to go up to the north. The top general up in the north says that they have now entered a different phase. So, this is really causing concern that the situation up there is going to escalate very soon.

I am told, along with my colleagues Kevin Liptak and Natasha Bertrand, that the U.S. is now working on a new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah to try to quieten the tension and to stop this escalation, to deescalate the situation. They're working on that with France and other countries.

We don't really have many details. One U.S. official telling Natasha that a deal is very close at hand. And I should note that it's not just about the de-escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, but also with Hamas. As you know, Dana, those ceasefire talks with Hamas have essentially been stuck.

And what, you know, this moment now really highlights the fact that the U.S. has not been able to get to a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And has not been able to stop the escalation of tension in the northern part of Israel.

One final thing, France, highlighting the difficulties of this moment, has called for an emergency session on Lebanon tonight. So, the world is very closely watching, and of course, hoping that the U.S. and others can de-escalate that situation. Dana?

BASH: Alex, thank you so much. I appreciate it. In fact, with my friends here at the table, I want to talk about this in the -- obviously, through the prism of the 2024 election. And just remind our viewers what Donald Trump said about what he would do in Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Do you believe it's in the U.S. best interest for Ukraine to win this war, yes or no?

TRUMP: I think it's the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then listen to what Zelenskyy said in The New Yorker. My feeling is that Trump doesn't really know how to stop the war, even if he might think he knows how. I've seen many leaders who are convinced, they know how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it's not that simple.

BORGER: Yeah. It's very clear. He also called in that same interview, J. D. Vance a radical. And it's very clear to me that that Zelenskyy is fearful of what would happen if Donald Trump were to win, and J. D. Vance were to win. Biden has been his ally.

He hasn't given him everything he's wanted, obviously, but he -- there's a clear sense, and he's not afraid of stating it that Trump has no sense of what's really gone on in Ukraine. And don't forget, you know, they have a history together, the infamous phone call that led to impeachment, right? And, you know, I think Zelenskyy says, he tries to stay out of American politics, but that was pretty political.

BASH: Well, in -- what precipitated the first impeachment, I would argue that he was almost unwittingly pulled into.

BORGER: He was.

BASH: He was U.S. politics. Here he is jumping in --

BORGER: Give me a favor, that was Donald Trump.

BASH: Yeah. Not only did he say this about Donald Trump, but I just want to give explicitly to our viewers what you mentioned about his statement about J. D. Vance, because it was really remarkable.

This is a world leader who is really relying on U.S. support, not sure who is going to win, but what he said about J. D. Vance. He said, he's too radical. Vance has come out with a more precise plan too. This is the interviewer interrupting him, to give up our territories.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Which is -- it's a more precise plan that Donald Trump is also on board with, right? He doesn't really care about Ukraine's territorial integrity. You saw that over and over again in the debate. He seems to be happy if Putin just got his way with Ukraine.

You know, Donald Trump doesn't really believe in democracy, right? I mean, he sort of believes in force. He believes in sort of authoritarian power. The people he likes are like Viktor Orban, right? I don't think he's going to meet with Zelenskyy, right? There was apparently a meeting that was supposed to happen, and he's not going --

WRIGHT: He's not going to met with Orban.

[12:25:00]

HENDERSON: Yeah. He met with Orban and is bragging about Orban. But he doesn't really believe in Democratic values and principles, and that America has a unique place in the world and these alliances. NATO is important and territorial integrity important. We don't want to live in a world where a stronger nation can just invade and take over a weaker nation (Ph).

WRIGHT: And just to put a point on this, I mean reading those comments in New York, I'm sure that Harris and her campaign were ecstatic, because this is one of the places in which she wants to draw a major contrast with the former president. Something that she feels is that she kind of brandished her reputation on foreign policy in tandem with Zelenskyy.

She presented him with evidence before Russia invaded of their plan. She was the person who made these grand speeches at the Munich Security Council about Russia's actions in Ukraine. And so, this is a place where she wants to draw that major conscious.

We'll see her also meet with Zelenskyy tomorrow when he's here in D.C., trying to show Americans that there are two people on the stage, and only one of them is a real friend to Ukraine. I think that's something that the Harris campaign wants to put project out there. And this is something obviously that Zelenskyy is aware of because of those comments.

BORGER: Yeah. But the problem is that there's a little bit of battle fatigue in this country regarding Ukraine. And so, she's got a -- she's got to balance that, right?

BASH: I still think -- I mean, maybe I'm old school, but to hear a world leader, particularly somebody in Volodymyr Zelenskyy's role, say such things. I mean, not only about Trump, but about J. D. Vance, that was like, whoa.

All right, everybody stand by. Coming up, a Senate investigation reveals stunning security failures, leading up to the first attempt at assassination of Donald Trump. So, what's the secret service doing about it? We have some new reporting from inside the agency next.

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