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Inside Politics

Harris Aides Blame Loss on Short Campaign, Anti-incumbent Mood; Trump's Tariffs Could Drive Car Prices Even Higher; TIME's Simon Shuster Says Elon Musk's Path to Mars Runs Through the Oval Office. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 27, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Tactical mistakes which we could probably all kind of agree at this table. But the big strategic direction or questions of the campaign were out of their control. And that's the decision about two years ago when Joe Biden decided to run Thanksgiving 2022, and that sort of set things into motion, and that was the hand they were dealt with. And they're explaining how they played the hand they were dealt with. But again, I didn't hear a lot of contrition there. And as Jeff and I were talking about it, the internet doesn't love this interview.

(LAUGH)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Not at all. I mean, usually when you're explaining you're losing, this is -- they lost and they're explaining, but they still, look, they -- you can't explain your way out of this loss. But a couple interesting things. David Plouffe said he thought the most effective Trump ad was on Bidenomics. He said that was really an anchor and a weight on the vice president.

But interesting, many, many questions about how she responded or didn't respond to the trans ad. That was one of the Trump campaign's most successful from their view, spots that they put out. And they said that they had a few ads that they devised and they ran them through focus groups, but they didn't think that they responded well enough. So they didn't use them because it was in the vice president's own words. That is a decision that was made.

There's still a lot of uncertainty about why this was made. Was it the right call or not? As you know, some Senate candidates did respond --

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

ZELENY: -- like Sherrod Brown and others, just to sort of push back on this. So look, this did not answer a lot of the questions, but the bottom line, right, it was a short campaign, but was it a winnable one with Donald Trump as the opponent?

RAJU: I mean, look, it was a close race. Things could have made a difference on the margins, even though Trump, but -- ZELENY: Not as close as four years ago.

RAJU: Sure, but still -- But in some of these states, perhaps some things could have changed. You talked about the trans ad that had been, of course, millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars of attack ads being leveled against Harris who didn't respond really at all. This was, as Jeff was mentioning, was mentioned this by Quentin Fulks, who is the Harris Deputy Campaign Manager talking about the decision not to respond.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUENTIN FULKS, HARRIS DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: On the trans attack, one, obviously, it was a very effective ad at the end. I ultimately don't believe that it was about the issue of trans; I think that it made her seem out of touch and it was sort of a pseudo economic ad underneath it. If we spent this entire race pushing back on immigration attacks or crime attacks and pushing back against trans attacks, at what point are we bringing Trump down and/or introducing the vice president on our own terms? We're playing on their field?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So they're saying they're playing on their field, but if you're not responding, you're getting defined by those attacks.

SHELBY TALCOTT, REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Absolutely. And that's what Donald Trump's team went into this when Kamala Harris became the nominee, they went into this with the intention of trying to define her as an out-of-touch, far-left liberal. And for a while, it wasn't working. But at the end of the day, ads like this coupled with the fact that Harris didn't respond to them, helped define Harris in the way that Donald Trump's team wanted them to.

And the one other point I'll make on how close the margins actually were, that's true, right? Donald Trump did win all of the battleground states, but the numbers are fairly close. But at the same time, I hear a lot of Democrats talking about this and saying it is a bright spot for them. Maybe this is me speaking as a former athlete and I use for -- an aggressively former athlete --

(LAUGH)

TALCOTT: But a loss is a loss at the end of the day, right? So this is sort of them looking for those tiny bright spots. But when I used to go to my coach and say, well, I lost in a third set tiebreaker, he'd say, you still lost, it's still an L next to your name.

RAJU: Right.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWS HOUR: And it's not just those anti-trans ads which Donald Trump and Republican allies spent millions on, on traditional media, it's that those narratives also spread across that online information ecosystem that Trump dominated, that vice President Harris wasn't on nearly as much. She got on it, but a little bit late. And I was talking to Democrats in the aftermath who said that two things stood out to them, the amount of people that believed those anti-trans ads, people who were in their own communities and the fact that she didn't respond to them, and also the amount of people that believed that Democrats were out to touch on things like electric vehicles and gas powered cars. That they kept hearing that over and over again in their swing states. And the fact that they feel as though Harris and Democrats as a whole didn't have any response to that was a big problem.

RAJU: I mean, they kept saying over and over again, 107 days, 107 days, we did not have enough time, suggesting perhaps nothing really could have been different. But there were obvious mistakes, including Harris' decision not to really separate herself from Joe Biden. This is what Stephanie Cutter, who was a Harris Senior Campaign Adviser, said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANIE CUTTER, HARRIS SENIOR CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Unless we said something like, well, I would've handled the border completely differently, we were never going to satisfy anybody. She felt like she was part of the administration, so why should she look back and pick out, cherry pick some things that she would've done differently when she was part of it. And she also, she had tremendous loyalty to President Biden.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, the argument is that they would have to explain this over and over again, but you have to separate yourself somehow when the electorate wants change.

[12:35:00]

NICHOLS: Look, if there's one thing they can do over, and I don't expect them to cop to this publicly, but it would be the answer on "The View" that Kamala Harris gave where she was asked, and this would be my question to Stephanie, I ask it in good faith, is that did they prepare the vice president for that question? Which is --

RAJU: But how could she not have been prepared? Right? That was like an obvious question.

NICHOLS: The answer to me didn't strike me as a politician that had been deeply prepped and was waiting for that question to hit it out of the park and to say, whatever the right answer was. So to me, we can run this campaign back a hundred times, right? I'm a tennis player too, but I'm going to pretend that I played a real sport like football or something like that.

(LAUGH)

NICHOLS: You just -- tennis is an easy sport. You just have to win. You just have to win the last point. It's really easy.

(LAUGH) NICHOLS: You -- we can run this back a hundred times and that would probably be the mis -- the change that most coaches would make, and they'd have a different answer to that.

ZELENY: And she did correct her answer later on in the Town Hall with Anderson Cooper. She said, of course, I would be different. Just look at me, I would be different. Even that answer on "The View" would not have been as devastating because it ended up becoming like, yes, "The View" audience, but it was much worse than that. It became the central focus of a Trump campaign ad that was played almost as much as the trans ad was.

BARRON-LOPEZ: I think at the end of the day, like across everything that we're talking about, is this theme of like, they were very cautious, more cautious than Donald Trump was by any means. But, it's something that I think Democrats haven't figured out yet in terms of how do they run against a candidate like Trump and not being as cautious and not running as traditional of a campaign as both parties had basically up until the last 10 years.

And they're going to have to figure that out, especially with the new way that people get their information because they just don't get it in the old ways anymore. And Democrats don't seem to be acknowledging that they have to be in those spaces much more. And that maybe the traditional way of boots on the ground campaigning isn't going to work anymore.

RAJU: But while they would not accept blame, they did fail to read the electorate. They failed to read how the anger at Washington, that was a clear mistake. And look, Harris also ran behind the down-ticket Democrats in all these swing states as well, including in House and Senate races.

TALCOTT: Yeah. There were certainly a number of things that they could point to in terms of where they could have made a difference. And again, there -- it was a short campaign and perhaps a longer campaign would've helped them more. But if they had done this same strategy with a longer campaign, I think they would've gotten the same result. Again, you go back to that answer on "The View," Donald Trump's campaign was foaming at the mouth over that answer. They loved it because they realized that was the moment in which she had directly tied herself to Joe Biden when the American people had clearly stated that they did not want somebody like Joe Biden.

ZELENY: It would've been a risk to try and separate herself. I mean, they said it would've been, would that have been authentic for her to sort of throw him under the bus. But it may have been a risk that I think a lot of people will wonder what would've happened. But at the end of the day, she was Joe Biden's vice president. That's what lost her the risk.

RAJU: Yeah. No question about it. All right. So much -- I'm sure books will be written about this. They already are being written about this, so much to discuss about what happened and what went wrong for her. All right. Up next, President-elect Trump promising big tariffs to protect the U.S. auto industry. But what will that mean for anyone looking to buy a new car in 2025? Let's just say, buyer beware.

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[12:42:43]

RAJU: Remember candidate Trump warned of a bloodbath for the U.S. auto industry if he lost and promised hefty tariffs aimed at protecting auto workers' jobs, but tariffs like the ones he just announced on China, Canada, and Mexico, where we get a lot of cars and car parts, could actually drive car prices significantly higher. Here to explain it all is CNN Business and Politics Correspondent, Vanessa Yurkevich.

So Vanessa, is it a risk to buy a car in 2025?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: It could be if these tariffs take effect. We know that we have the big three automakers here in the United States, but no cars that they make are all American anymore. Ford, Stellantis and General Motors, all use parts from other countries to make their cars and they even bring in fully assembled vehicles from other countries like Mexico. So a tariff of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, and even an additional tariff of 10 percent on China where we still do get some car parts, will be significant for the average consumer.

Just look at this list of cars that are assembled here in the U.S. but get car parts from Mexico, for example. You have Tesla on that list. You have Honda Ridgeline and Ford F-150, which is the bestselling car in the country right now. And then look at these cars that come in fully assembled from Mexico already. You have the Chevy Blazer, the Honda HR-V, the Ram, and the Chevy Silverado.

So looking at that, that is going to impact all of those vehicles and more. And the reason that U.S. manufacturers build and bring in parts from other countries, specifically Mexico, is because it's a lot cheaper. Labor is cheaper there. And right now, there are no tariffs in place. This is something that President-elect Trump negotiated to be able to trade freely with Canada and Mexico.

But if these tariffs take effect, some might be asking, well, why don't we just make the whole car here in the United States? Well, we simply don't have the resources for that. We don't have the facilities for that. Labor is a lot more expensive. Right now, the U.S. is trying to stand up 16 semiconductor facilities using money from the federal government, that will take three to five years alone.

So it's going to take some time to catch up if these tariffs do go into effect. And ultimately, it could actually be more affordable just to pay the tariffs.

[12:45:00]

But of course, for the average consumer, this is a concern, especially if you're trying to buy a car in the next couple years. One thing I'll note, Manu, is that if new car prices do end up increasing, that'll put pressure on the used car market and ultimately, we'll see used car prices go up. That's when you start to get into inflation, something that Americans don't want to see.

And ultimately, probably something that President-elect Trump doesn't want to see because, as we know, voters voted for him because they want lower inflation and an economy that works better for them, Manu.

RAJU: All right, Vanessa Yurkevich, on the impacts Trump's tariffs could have on consumers. Thank you for that report.

And coming up. First Buddies, what does the world's richest man want in return for his friendship with a president-elect? And will that bromance actually last? That's next.

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[12:50:15]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He is character, he is a special guy, he is a super genius. We have a new star, a star is born, Elon.

ELON MUSK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TESLA MOTORS: As you can see, I'm not just MAGA, I'm dark MAGA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Donald Trump and Elon Musk, a match made in MAGA heaven, or is it? Here's how TIME's Simon Shuster sees it. He says, " For now they act like partners, bonded through the favors they are trading and their shared desire to disrupt the institutions of government. They may deliver commands with one voice for a while. But their agendas do not align on everything. Both are willful, impulsive, and accustomed to being in charge. What will happen if they start to clash?"

Joining me now to try to answer that question is the Senior Correspondent for TIME who wrote that piece, Simon Shuster. Simon, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. So, take us through the Trump-Musk dynamic and how long do you real realistically think this partnership will last?

SIMON SHUSTER, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, TIME: Well, it's been quite a longstanding relationship and it has been rocky over the years. If you go back to 2017, during Trump's first presidency, Elon Musk lasted only a few months as an adviser to the White House on economic issues before they clashed, and Musk left those advisory councils in a huff over Trump's climate policies at the time.

Then a few years later, in 2022, they clashed again when Elon Musk was supporting another Republican candidate for the presidency, and he said that Trump should "Sail into the sunset that his time in politics had passed." And that got a really angry response from Trump. So now, in these elections, of course, it looked like a package deal. Musk and Trump were riding high together. Musk was instrumental, I think, to Trump's victory.

But the question now is how firm are the foundations of that relationship? And fundamentally, what do both of them want to get out of it?

RAJU: Yeah.

SHUSTER: And that's where I think you start to see instability.

RAJU: Yeah, and I want to -- to that point, I want to read to our viewers another interesting part from your piece about what Elon Musk wants in return for support of Trump. You're right, Musk has a lot to gain from that arrangement. As long as he sticks to the role of First Buddy, he might expect an easy ride from the regulators Trump appoints throughout the government. His clearest path to Mars could thus run straight through the Oval Office.

So tell us, Simon, more about the calculations that Elon Musk is making.

SHUSTER: Well, I think, it's quite clear. I mean, it's often written on the T-shirt that Musk wears in public all the time, Occupy Mars. That is his obsession. That has been his dream for more than two decades since he founded his company, SpaceX, the company. And from talking to one of his friends for the story, it's clear that that his mission, his ultimate goal has not changed and he sees his role, whatever that role may look like, in the future Trump Administration as a path to achieving that goal eventually or more quickly than he otherwise would.

The clearest advantage would be regulatory hurdles that have been put in front of Musk and his companies in their ambitions. I think that's certainly something that Musk might expect in his relationship with the Trump Administration in the future. But, on many things, their views, their agendas don't align. And there's also a pretty obvious tension between Musk's stated goal of helping Trump cut frivolous government spending and his longstanding goal of -- his very expensive longstanding goal of reaching Mars.

RAJU: And you know, Elon Musk, of course, is worth nearly $350 billion. He's the richest man in the world. He has the ear of the president of the United States. He has the loudest -- one of the loudest megaphones being, of course, having X, owning the social media platform X. You compare him almost to Citizen Kane, the fictional character based off William Randolph Hearst from the newspaper magnate from the early 1900s. Is that how you -- is that how you see him? Or has there really never been a figure like this before?

SHUSTER: I think that's the earliest example we were able to think of here in the newsroom of someone, a private citizen, who has really loomed so large over so many dimensions of American life. But if you look at that example of William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s, yes, he helped a lot to get FDR in power. But they very quickly began to clash and they then remained enemies for quite some years once they fell out.

[12:55:00]

And they fell out very soon after FDR took office. So, I think it won't be pretty if Musk and Trump do begin to clash. I think ultimately, the one who will have the upper hand in a fight like that would be the one who has the instruments of power in his hands and that will be Trump.

RAJU: All right. Great reporting. Simon Shuster from TIME Magazine. Thank you for joining us and bringing us that reporting about Elon Musk. We'll see how long that partnership lasts.

SHUSTER: Thank you.

RAJU: And thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break.

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