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Laura Coates Live
Trump Insults Harris In Speech Meant To Focus On Economy; Biden Frustrated Over Dropping Out Of The Race; Google: Iranian Hacking Efforts Are Ongoing And Wide-Ranging; Mark Cuban: Musk Has "Lost The Connection To Real World." Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired August 14, 2024 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, PODCAST HOST, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: My hot take in five seconds is the Republican senators are all complaining about their nominee and they really don't understand why they don't have a Haley or a DeSantis.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Who's complaining about this?
SCARAMUCCI: -- they're going -- they're going to -- the Republican --
PHILLIP: -- tell us.
(LAUGHTER)
SCARAMUCCI: -- the Republican senators, the highest profile senators that you can speak to on this show, are complaining in the back offices and in the hallways about their nominee, and they can't believe that they're in this situation because if they had Haley or DeSantis, the polling would look very differently. And they are complaining. And you can pretend otherwise. But I know these people. I've been a donor for 25 years.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: They had some choices in front of them that they didn't take.
SCARAMUCCI: They're going to burn Trump, though, if he loses. You watch how they go.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone, thank you all very much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight: State of the Race." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST AND CORRESPONDENT, PODCAST HOST: Donald Trump zigs when his closest allies want him to zag. But is he off-message or on brand?
Plus, President Biden gets ready to help Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, even as he's frustrated over being ushered out of the race.
And call it election deja vu, Google says Iran is hacking both presidential campaigns and it's happening as we speak. Welcome to "Laura Cotes live." I'm Audie Cornish, in for Laura tonight. We're going to have a great conversation, and we are going to start with the old political axiom. It's the economy, stupid, because that's the issue voters really care about and that's what Republicans really want Donald Trump to talk about.
According to at least his closest allies, what they've said to CNN, winning this fall is pretty straightforward: Ditch the personal attacks and dig in on what they consider a big weakness for Vice President Kamala Harris, Bidenomics.
That is not how it's playing out. Take Trump's comments today in Asheville, North Carolina. It was supposed to be a speech focused on his economic vision for the country. For example, he committed to cutting energy and electricity prices by 50%, although we should use the word "committed" lightly. But the Republican nominee's rhetorical detours took him exactly where his allies did not want him to go, the land of personal attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What happened to her laugh? I haven't heard that laugh in about a week. That's why they keep her off the stage. That's why she has disappeared. That's the laugh of a crazy person.
You know why she hasn't done an interview? Because she's not smart, she's not intelligent.
All over the world, crime is down because they're taking their criminals and their people from mental institutions, and they're putting them into our country because we have stupid people like Kamala and Joe running our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, we've seen how personal attacks are basically a staple of his political arsenal. And it doesn't really seem like that's going to change, no matter how many anonymous allies leak to the press that it should. And they certainly won't get any help from Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries, every single one of which he won. So, I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, Vance is right about this. I mean, Trump took down more than a dozen Republican primary challengers over three separate election cycles, and it has only worked once against a Democrat, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. So, will letting Trump run the campaign he wants to run work in 2024?
Joining me now, CNN political analyst and New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kano-Youngs, and former deputy communications director to Vice President Kamala Harris, Rachel Palermo. And, of course, we have CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton. Welcome, all of you.
Shermichael, you are getting the first question.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: (INAUDIBLE).
CORNISH: I mean --
(LAUGHTER)
-- tell me the strategy, right? Since you're on the record. But basically, up until this point, we have seen in the polling that voters trust Trump more on the economy. Does that feel right?
SINGLETON: In aggregate.
CORNISH: Yeah, in aggregate. At the same time, Harris is gaining momentum even on that issue.
SINGLETON: Yeah.
CORNISH: And then we've got like inflation cooling a little bit, the lowest since 2021. Is there a way for her to talk about this economy effectively, even as people have like not great feelings about it? And does it help her that Trump can't just talk about that?
SINGLETON: I'll answer the latter part of the question first. It absolutely helps that the former president can't stay on message. Can she translate four years -- close to four years of personal feelings, negative feelings about the economy despite the economic conditions appearing to improve?
[23:05:00]
It's probably going to take another two or three quarters before people actually feel it, financially speaking. I think it's possible. I think she can make the case that while I was a vice president to the president making those ultimate decisions, I was still sort of in the backseat or at least a passenger seat of the car. I wasn't the driver. I wasn't able to sort of make the decisions that I would make if I were to personally --
CORNISH: Right. We're going to leave that part to Rachel.
SINGLETON: And people will be open to that.
CORNISH: This is the part she knows.
SINGLETON: People would be open to that.
CORNISH: But come back to this thing about the personal attacks, because on the way to it's the economy stupid, he's just calling her stupid. And --
SINGLETON: He is.
CORNISH: -- like, at what point is that not a good look?
SINGLETON: I mean, look, it excites his base. But electoral politics is about gains. You want to add, not subtract. And for Trump, you're looking at maybe a 4%, 5% national increase he needs in order to pull off a similar 2016 victory.
CORNISH: But it's not working the same way, right? Think about how many nicknames he came up with for like all the rivals. There's no real Kamala nickname.
SINGLETON: Yeah, but Audie, I would say it's not working for a couple of different reasons. Vice president, historic figure. Not only is she a woman, she's a woman of color. It's just different from Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is why I think a lot of Republicans, Nikki Haley, Kevin McCarthy, Senator Lindsey Graham, a host of others, are saying stick to the issues because the dynamics is so fundamentally different.
Harris has changed this from being a policy election and more of like a movement, a cultural movement. And that's a very different type of campaign. If you're a Republican, you have to run against something like that. That's why I don't think it's really working.
CORNISH: Let's let Rachel jump in on that, because we have heard kind of conservative critique that's like this is somehow a kind of empty suit campaign, that because the talk about vibes and social media, she is not getting scrutinized on policy the way she could be by the media. This is why they also talk about her needing to do a press conference, her interview, etc.
So, how are you thinking about how she should actually lay out an economic vision, right? Is it a statement? Is it coconuts and brat? Is it an actual, you know, statement with policies written on it?
RACHEL PALERMO, FORMER DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: The way that I see it is that Vice President Harris shouldn't run away from the record that she and President Biden have had over the last three and a half years.
CORNISH: But isn't that the fun of being vice president? You get to be like, well, I didn't do that part.
PALERMO: Well, I think what she needs to do and what she's doing is remind the American people of where President Biden and Vice President Harris were when this administration started. The reality is that Donald Trump mismanaged the pandemic. The economy went into a tailspin. He was one of two presidents in history to have less jobs when he left office than when he went into office. And then Biden and Harris took office in January 2021. They recovered the economy. They created jobs. And unemployment right now is at a historic low. Inflation is at the lowest that it has been since 2021.
CORNISH: But this sounds so much like what the Biden argument was before he left the race.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And it -- and it didn't resonate, right? I mean, look, the economy as well as immigration, you know, when you look at polls, when you interview Democrats, when you interview Republicans, and most importantly voters, was a political vulnerability for this administration.
We are entering an interesting time here. The reporting shows that the vice president has an event tomorrow where she's going to be focusing on the economy. We are hearing that they are framing a slight shift where no longer just talking about sort of manufacturing and job growth, but more so sort of methods to lower costs as well.
CORNISH: Cost is the buzzword.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Correct. Correct. Consumer costs, which directly -- you know, that's -- that's an effort to sort of confront inflation. The problem is the president was doing that, too. You know, he was talking about junk fees. He was talking about, you know, efforts to rein in Ticketmaster. All of that was also in the vein of trying to reassure Americans that they were doing something about consumer costs. But that messaging did not work.
So, now, if you're Vice President Harris, do you continue to soak up what is really high energy right now, or as you turn to policy and as you turn to the economy, do you run the risk of also tapping into some of the frustrations that voters have felt?
SINGLETON: I think --
CORNISH: Hold on. I just want to ask Rachel one more thing. One thing Trump said in Asheville today that really hit my ear is when he made that joke about Kamala Harris essentially copying his idea about taking away taxes on tips. Everyone is nodding here, right? Like it was a moment where I was like, yeah, pretty much, you know, like I don't -- like help me understand a moment like that, why the campaign would be like, let's start with this before we talk about the whole rest of our economic policy.
PALERMO: Well, I think in terms of that, she was at an event where she'd just been endorsed by a major union that has been historic for advocating for workers and good wages in our country. And so, it made sense given the topic of what she was talking about. But in terms of Donald Trump's speech generally today, just taking a step back, he said he was going to talk about policy, and then what he did was throw insults. He was completely unhinged. His allies keep saying stay on message, talk about policy.
[23:10:00] But the reality is Donald Trump is a bully, and that was on display today. He can't deliver a coherent message. And the reality is he is the one who's graded on a curve. The bar is so low for him that because he mentions the economy, people act like it was somewhat substantive speech. But the reality is that it was just a lot of unhinged insults again from him.
CORNISH: All right. I want to talk about this new Pew poll that's showing that the vice president is making headway with some key demographics by key. I think we kind of mean once Biden wasn't doing so well with. So, young voters, some women voters. And she does significantly better against Trump than Biden did with Black voters and Latino voters, where she shows major improvement.
You know, when I was thinking about seeing these numbers, I was thinking about what Trump had to say during his big free-range kind of press conference when he mentioned the voters who he thinks he has some appeal with. I think we have that sound. It's my favorite kind of thing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I was doing very well with Black voters and I still am. I seem to be doing very well with Black males. This is according to polls, as you know. It's possible that I won't do as well with Black women. But I do seem to be doing very well with other segments, extremely well with Hispanic. Jewish voters, way up. White males, way up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Nailed it.
SINGLETON: I mean, look, looking at those numbers, the vice president has improved democratic standings, generally speaking, from where Biden was. But 55 or 52% with Latinos, that's not enough. She needs to be a 60, 61%. She's at 77% with Black voters, writ large. She needs to get 90 plus percent.
CORNISH: And just for context for the viewer, when we talk about what a candidate needs or not needs, there are different ways to do this, right? Like you can expand the electorate, which would be kind of the Obama method, or there are certain people you can turn out who've never turned out before, or you can really do well with, like you mentioned, white males.
SINGLETON: Yeah.
CORNISH: Like it's not -- there's no -- we don't know what the Harris coalition is yet.
SINGLETON: That's a good point, Audie. But I haven't seen anything thus far that will lead me to believe that the vice president is increasing support with low propensity voters. If you want to talk about expanding the tent, I am seeing data that suggests she's overall exciting Democratic voters, yet she still needs to make up room with some key demographic groups, which does present a mathematical opportunity for the former president.
KANNO-YOUNGS: One thing to note here, too, is I know we're talking about the moment here and sort of what the electorate is going to look like for the vice president, but starting in 2023, I remember reporting that the vice president's team, early 2023, identified young voters and Black men as potential weak spots for President Biden and started inviting leaders of those groups to the residence, to the White House, and focusing her speeches and trips on energizing that electorate group.
Now, my question moving forward is, is what we're seeing now sort of the result of that work or is it energy that's more so a result of a change at the top?
CORNISH: And to add one more thing to this, we're getting some reporting now that this economic speech that she's giving on Friday in North Carolina, of course, a key state, she's going to announce a plan to basically prevent corporations in the food and grocery industries from unfairly jacking up prices on consumers which is like, you know, it could be the first ever federal ban on corporate price gouging.
And this is a little bit of a switch, right, from being like, the numbers are really good. Look at all these meta numbers about the economy to, actually, we know some prices are bad and here's what we're going to do.
PALERMO: Well, I think this builds on that and it puts her own spin on it. She was the former attorney general of California. And in that role, she was taking on bad actors. She was holding people accountable. That's really the kind of person that she is, and that's the vision that she's putting forward.
And so, to me, this aligns. It feels like she's building on the progress, talking about continuing to lower costs, continuing to fight for the middle class. But she's also thinking about how she can take on people who are taking advantage of Americans.
CORNISH: All right. We're going to talk more. So, everybody, stand by.
Ahead, President Biden is set to hit the trail with Kamala Harris, and this will be the first time since he left the race. However, new reporting says he's still stewing a bit about being pushed aside. We'll tell you who he's really frustrated with after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:15:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CORNISH: President Biden gets ready to hit the campaign trail with Kamala Harris for the first time since ending his reelection bid. It will not be all sunshine and roses. Politico reporting Biden remains angry and frustrated with former President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and, of course, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for essentially ushering him out of the race. So, this could be, I don't know, like an awkward Thanksgiving dinner next week at the DNC.
But to get the details, I want to bring in New York Times reporter Annie Karni. Hi there, Annie.
ANNIE KARNI, REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Hi, Audie. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So, you've been reporting on this relationship between the president and the former House speaker. And Pelosi herself has spoken publicly, saying that they haven't been in touch. How did that, like, pique your interest? What did you try and find out about that relationship?
KARNI: Well, I think that the -- first of all, Pelosi has been doing a lot of interviews because of the very awkwardly timed rollout of her new book. So, she has been very available. This was planned months ago.
[23:20:00]
She's getting a lot of questions about her role in forcing the president to step aside. She has been remarkably candid about the fact that there is a breach in the relationship. She has said she doesn't know if he's angry at her. She has said she loses sleep. She cries and prays over hoping that they can restore their relationship. She's the one who has told us that they haven't spoken since the day Biden made the decision to step aside and not run for reelection.
So, we know a lot about the rift in this relationship from Pelosi's own candidness about it. I think she's being -- I think what she's saying is honest. I also think it's calculated. This has given her an opportunity to defend President Biden, who she truly loves, they have a friendship of 50 years --
CORNISH: Uh-hmm.
KARNI: -- while disparaging his political team, who she has a big problem with.
CORNISH: And we should mention that book is called "The Art of Power," which I think is sort of relevant here, because even though she's no longer House speaker, we saw her just exert some kind of atmospheric pressure on this whole thing. She doesn't have kind words for Biden's team, which you note in the article. What are the things she seemed to be kind of irked about?
KARNI: I think she's irked. She just doesn't think they built a campaign that was capable of beating Donald Trump. She -- I think she was irked at how they weren't showing him the same data that she was looking at that showed that there was no path. And I -- she just didn't feel he was well-served. I think that, from my reporting, she has had issues with his team going back for some time now. So, I think part of her venting about them was a lot of built up frustration with how they've served the president.
I also think it allowed her to create a little bit of a space to compliment Joe Biden. She said in one interview that he belongs on Mount Rushmore. She's heaping praise on him because she wants to burnish his legacy that she is a huge part of while putting the criticism that she has on the staff. You know, you could ask the follow-up question of, well, who's responsible for the staff? And it's the president, but she's drawing a distinction there very clearly.
CORNISH: You know, I found it interesting that in that walk up to the weekend when he finally left, there were so many different voices coming out. And I remember one of them, of course, was George Clooney. And in this sort of inside baseball political reporting, someone called him like a drone for Barack Obama, which I found completely wild. But it did get at this idea that people believe he didn't do enough. And it sounds like from your reporting, Biden believed that, too.
KARNI: That Obama didn't do enough?
CORNISH: Yeah.
KARNI: Oh, to help him.
CORNISH: To help him, right? Which he already hadn't done in 2016 during the Clinton period.
KARNI: Yeah. Look, they have a long, fraught relationship with Obama and Biden. I don't know that a message like the one Pelosi delivered would have been well received from Joe Biden -- from Barack Obama. There's a chance it could have backfired. Joe Biden has a chip on his shoulder about how he was treated by the Obama team sometimes and maybe would have made him dug in more.
Nancy Pelosi was, you know, a lot of -- first of all, a lot of people delivered this message to him. He met with Hakeem Jeffries one on one. He met with Chuck Schumer. They were all delivering the same message of deep concern about the future of the House, the Senate and the White House.
But Nancy Pelosi could speak to him as a peer. My story outlines that they've been friends since the 1970s. And she also speaks to him from a unique place of -- two years ago, she decided to voluntarily give up power and step down from leadership. Like, so --
CORNISH: I think we're -- oh, yeah, go ahead, Annie.
KARNI: They're not friends right now, but that's the cost of her position of being the bearer of bad news.
CORNISH: Thank you so much for sharing some of this reporting. Annie Karni, appreciate your time.
KARNI: Thank you.
CORNISH: All right, so, I want to talk to you, guys, about this. And Zolan, I want to come to you first because, obviously, you have been watching this White House from afar. And I feel like with all administrations, there are this weird mix of like factions, right? Like, oh, these are the Clinton people, these were the Biden people, these are the Obama people, because everyone kind of works for everyone else. How do you think that affected this kind of stew, right, as people are starting to backbite each other?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yeah. I mean, that week when the president got COVID and went back to Rehoboth Beach, and the week -- the days leading up to his decision to drop out of the race, it really almost, when you look at the people that he was talking to and that were around him, it crystallized just how much there is an inner circle around the president.
[23:25:00]
There are people that -- he definitely relies on his family for advice. But also, Mike Donilon (ph) and Steve Ricchetti, these senior White House advisors that very much were in his inner circle, those are --
COATES: And the people who weren't informed, right?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Right, right, and those are the people that are first informed. Those are the Biden folks, right? But then you've also got Democrats that have been getting increasingly loud with their concerns, you know, about his sort of standing in this race. Nancy Pelosi did it privately. There were others who did it publicly, right?
And just to follow up on Annie's story, we know and we reported that in the days leading up to that decision, you know, Friday and Saturday, the president was stewing, you know, while he was quarantining at home.
He was angry at the speaker, the former speaker, and he also was angry at former President Barack Obama as well, not because there was reporting that he -- that the former president conveyed any concerns, we don't know that, but more so there was an expectation that he might come to his defense and sort of a -- sort of concern that he might be sort of still involved in encouraging other Democrats to come out and voice their concerns. So, there's absolutely factions when it came down to this. Absolutely.
CORNISH: Rachel, I don't know if this is worth relitigating, given that the party is in a way trying to move on, but it strikes me that all of this will be on display, so to speak, at the convention, right? Clintons are going to speak. Obama is going to speak. Biden is going to speak. And Pelosi, I don't know, she'll probably walk into applause, like, what are we going to be looking at with all of these people, personalities coming together next week?
PALERMO: The way that I see it is that President Biden made a very difficult decision to stop running for reelection. He put him -- he put his country over self. And I think --
CORNISH: But not selflessly like he was asked pretty --
(LAUGHTER)
-- pretty forcefully over and over again to do so.
PALERMO: But at the end of the day, it was his decision. And I think that what's important here is that --
CORNISH: Then why is he still mad?
PALERMO: It's a decision. The way I think about it, too, is that Donald Trump would have never made decision like that. And I think that's why he's actually spiraling out of control, and he can't -- and he -- he still thinks he's running against Joe Biden. He can't comprehend someone putting country over self in this way.
And when I think about next week in the convention, I see a Democratic Party that has never felt more united. There is energy. There's excitement. It feels like everyone is coming together, really rallying around --
CORNISH: Okay, record scratch. So, a former Biden chief of staff, Ron Klain, starts trying to address some of this palace intrigue earlier tonight. Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RON KLAIN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I do think, you know, the president was pushed by public -- by -- by public calls from elected officials for him to drop out, from donors calling him to drop out. And I think that was wrong. That's all in the past, Anderson. He decided to drop out. He decided to endorse the vice president. Her campaign is going well. We have a better chance than ever to defeat Donald Trump this fall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, is that kind of this like tacit admission, basically, you know, from the Biden world that there was no path to victory also?
PALERMO: I think that they're acknowledging that President Biden thought it was time to pass along the baton. And now what we're seeing is historic excitement.
CORNISH: Keeps saying that. He did not --
(LAUGHTER)
-- I mean, come on, he did not think it was time to pass the baton, right? He said, like, well --
PALERMO: He did.
CORNISH: There was more for me to do, which is why I didn't want to do this -- be this bridge. You know what I'm talking about? There was to be the bridge to the next generation, and then he said publicly at least twice, look, I think I have more to do, and I'm the right person to do it.
KANNO-YOUNGS: I mean, let's be clear. Also, earlier that week, I was at the NAACP speech. I spoke, you know, to aides around the White House and his staffers. They were still bullish or at least sort of voicing, you know, that they were going to be proving the doubters wrong at that point. He came out and gave that speech and, you know, fully seemed intent on staying in the race. I talked, interviewed Ron Klain on after he dropped out, and Ron Klain as well was saying that he thought the president was still the best candidate up until he dropped out.
CORNISH: Yeah.
KANNO-YOUNGS: But his inner circle still fully believed that he could still be right.
CORNISH: Yeah, and that the media pushed him out. And Rachel, I'm not trying to say that this talking point is wrong. I mean, we are going to see Harris and Biden side by side, right? They're going to be out there talking. So -- and Pelosi has always said that she thought that the vice president handled that whole run up very well and was very loyal.
So, talk to me about what it will be like for them to campaign together, right? Because it's like -- it's a different scenario in a way where he's got a -- not seed ground, but how -- what do we -- what are you expecting to see?
PALERMO: Well, I do think it has been good that over the last few weeks, it has been Vice President Harris here in the spotlight campaigning. She has been carving her own message. She has been talking about her vision of moving forward and not back and about -- about opportunity and about fundamental freedoms.
[23:30:04]
And she has really been able to do that and -- but -- and think that now that she has been able to define herself over these last few weeks, now it is time for her to be able to stand next to President Biden and for them to be able to talk about the record of what they've accomplished together over these last three and a half years.
And I also think that when it comes to the convention next week, yeah, there's a lot of talk inside the beltway about who is getting along with who and who's mad at who, but the American people don't care about that. What they care about is who is fighting for them, who's fighting for the middle class, who's fighting for my freedoms, and who is trying to take them away, and that's the choice that they have.
CORNISH: Shermichael, I haven't abandoned you. I just wanted to make sure that we got an answer here.
SINGLETON: I just -- if your strategy is, I'm going to run on my own policies, on my vision of what the future should look like, campaigning with the guy with a ton of net negatives, politically speaking, is going to make it very, very easy for Republicans to target those persuadable voters in the middle with a ton of ads attempting to define Harris with Biden's record, which she has been attempting to get away from. And I would argue over the past two weeks, effectively, I think campaigning with Biden would be a terrible mistake. Maybe one or two appearances here or there, but I certainly wouldn't advise it as well.
CORNISH: Well, we'll see one of those appearances tomorrow. I have one more thing that I cannot resist talking about, Shermichael, which is that CNN has confirmed that RFK Jr. tried to meet with Kamala Harris to discuss a cabinet role in exchange for his endorsement. The Harris campaign has not responded yet. He floated a similar proposal to the Trump campaign, I guess, three weeks ago, I read here, but was rejected.
Help me understand what we are looking at here. I don't know what it's like to take that phone call. But I do know for a time it seemed like the Trump folks were feeling like RFK Jr. was a pull on them.
SINGLETON: I mean, I think it mattered several months ago when he was polling around 15 to 18%. And the belief, generally speaking, was that a significant percent of those voters were individuals who were likely Trump supporters.
CORNISH: You think he missed his window?
SINGLETON: Absolutely. He's probably at 5%. Give or take, maybe even less, depending on which poll you look at. I think his relevancy has gone down the toilet.
CORNISH: So, scenario, you work for a campaign, that phone call comes in, do you put it through or are you just like, well --
SINGLETON: No, I'm not taking this call.
CORNISH: Get back to you.
SINGLETON: You missed that vote three months ago. Sorry, dude.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: All right. I want to add to this because new tonight, the Harris-Walz campaign is releasing a new clip of what really happened when Harris called Walz to offer him the V.P. role. The campaign hoping to showcase --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I called you, Tim. I called you, Tim.
GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes.
HARRIS: You didn't answer, Tim.
WALZ: I know. I know. The --
HARRIS: What happened?
WALZ: The most important call of my life, it popped up, and we didn't recognize the caller ID. It went to voicemail.
(Via telephone): Hi. This is Tim. I'm not able to answer --
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Hey, Tim. It's Kamala. I really want to talk to you.
(LAUGHTER)
WALZ: It is an amazing privilege. I'm excited. I just want to be part of the excitement that you're generating.
HARRIS: Well, we're doing it together, buddy. We're doing it together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I don't know. Social media people, like, give them an Emmy. That was a whole movie --
(LAUGHTER)
-- coming to a meme near you. Is it basically showing chemistry?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes. I mean, this is the thing. You know, we've been talking about sort of how to make policy arguments. But up until this point, this hasn't been a campaign on either side, really, full of policy. It has been one to sort of, you know, entertain and one of vibes and one to sort of build emotion. And look, voters connect with emotion. They do.
CORNISH: I've also heard a voter say, look, we actually kind of know what these people represent at this point, and you're voting for what they represent.
SINGLETON: No, I think so, I mean, I don't know how long the vibes will last, right?
CORNISH: I want us to all stop saying vibes.
SINGLETON: Because -- I'm sorry.
CORNISH: No, not you. I just mean, collectively.
SINGLETON: I'm not sure how long this moment will last. Maybe once we get closer to Labor Day and people start to really pay attention. Again, we talked about the economic.
CORNISH: People aren't paying attention yet?
SINGLETON: I don't really --
CORNISH: What am I doing here?
SINGLETON: I don't think we are.
(LAUGHTER)
I think -- I think at the end of the day, when people start looking at their status in life over the past three and a half years and they begin to ask themselves that fundamental question, do I feel good and do I believe I will be better off under this particular person, I think minds may change, I think this race will become a lot closer.
We did not assume that Donald Trump would win in 2016, I believe, by nine points. He was underestimated by five points in 2020. And then I would imagine, if you were to factor in, let's say, three points this time around, you look at the polling numbers, you factor in the margin of error, you're looking at a race that's dead tight.
CORNISH: Your strategist is coming out here.
SINGLETON: I'm so sorry.
CORNISH: Take the numbers. I'm like, let me get a spreadsheet.
(LAUGHTER)
Rachel, I don't want these men to have the last word. So, let me give it to you. What exactly -- I feel like at a certain point, vibes and cool social media will not be enough.
[23:35:02]
And I don't say that to follow the republican talking point. But just legitimately, like, you're going to start telling us somehow what your vision for the country is, will we hear something that detailed at the convention?
PALERMO: I think at the convention, we're going to see what we've been seeing over her stops with these speeches of 10,000 to 15,000 people in the crowd, which is her vision of moving forward. She's going to draw that contrast. And also, she's talking about things like democracy.
CORNISH: But as an extension of what Biden has always said or will we see any kind of detour, new direction splitting off?
PALERMO: I have felt like whenever she speaks, it's never just an extension of what the president is saying. She has her own record. She has her own experience in California and in the Senate that she calls on whenever she's giving these kinds of speeches. And I think what she's going to do is continue building on that. She's going to talk about her own lived experience. And it's going to be something that resonates with people.
CORNISH: All right. Guys, thank you so much for letting me poke.
SINGLETON: We're doing the vibes.
CORNISH: I appreciate it. Thanks for the vibes. And if you thought this election cycle resembled 2016, try this. Google is confirming Iranian hackers are targeting the Harris and Trump campaigns. That's going on right now. So, what's being done to stop it? We're going to have more detail in a moment. So, please, stay with us.
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[23:40:00]
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CORNISH: New tonight, Google confirms reports of an Iranian hacking operation targeting the 2024 election. The attacks have been aimed at the Trump and Harris campaigns and President Biden. The company says hackers linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard began the operation in May and that the attacks continue today.
Google says hackers accessed the email of a -- quote -- "high-profile political consultant," but didn't reveal a name. Sources previously told CNN that suspected Iranian hackers breached the personal email account of longtime Trump ally, Roger Stone.
Now, Iran, so far, denies any involvement, saying -- quote -- "The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the U.S. presidential election."
We're going to talk more about this with someone who knows a ton about cybersecurity and elections, Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook and chief information security officer at SentinelOne.
So, Alex, first of all, Google says that this alleged operation is ongoing, that it's more widespread. Can you tell us what we know about Iranian hacker kind of operations in general, like, what are they trying to achieve?
ALEX STAMOS, CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER AT SENTINELONE: Yeah, so, the Iranian hackers often operate out of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the Iranian paramilitary force that reports directly to the Ayatollah and is generally home to the best hackers that work for the Islamic State.
And the IRGC has been active for at least 15 years. We have seen them go after American businesses, the State Department, the Commerce Department, and in the past, a number of American political campaigns. This is not the first election that they have been involved in.
They had some activity in 2016, but they were most active, most notably in 2020, when they tried to run an influence campaign that tried to create the idea that the Proud Boys had hacked the voting systems in multiple states and were trying to rig the election on behalf of Donald Trump. They sent death threats to members of the NAACP and such, released videos. That was fortunately debunked pretty quickly by the FBI and other government agencies. But this is not the first time the Iranians have tried to influence a U.S. election.
CORNISH: Right. I mean, I want to ask you, because Google said in its report that they continue to observe unsuccessful attempts at hacking personal accounts. But, you know, you testified before Congress that the U.S. is kind of losing the battle in this arena. Is it a good sign that these are unsuccessful attempts, that Google was able to report it out publicly?
STAMOS: So, we've now heard from both Google and Microsoft, which are the two largest hosts of email in this country for both personal and corporate accounts. And, as you said, what we've heard is that Roger Stone had his personal Gmail account hacked. And then what looks like what happened is his account was then used to trick members of the Trump campaign into giving up their credentials to their professional Trump campaign Microsoft account.
So, that's the sequence that happened several months ago that allowed the Iranians to get into the files and email accounts of the Trump campaign. So, they have been successful. What Google is saying is that they're continuing to attack it.
The challenging thing here is that, you know, campaigns are things that are kind of stood up for a relatively short period of time. And so, all of the people involved in the then Biden, now Harris campaign and the Trump campaign are people who use their personal Gmail accounts, their Outlook accounts, their Yahoo, maybe AOL accounts, depending on their age, for a lot of their correspondence, because that's what they use as political consultants or political professionals for a long period of time.
And those are accounts that are not being controlled or monitored or secured by security professionals, perhaps unlike the campaign accounts themselves. And so that makes people who work on political campaigns much better targets than perhaps the people, you know, who are working directly in the White House, for example.
[23:45:03]
CORNISH: Alex, in the short time we have left, you said they're vulnerable, but shouldn't they be better prepared, especially since 2016?
STAMOS: Yes, it is -- it is kind of shocking. And what we've seen is there has -- they have not been effective in getting to the Harris campaign. And I think that's because, you know, Democrats looked at 2016 and have taken this threat very seriously.
Republicans have said that 2016 was a hoax. And I think that was a huge mistake, unfortunately, because many Republicans believe the Russian hack of the Hillary campaign was a hoax, that Russia did not really interfere in 2016. Republicans have not taken this threat seriously. And now, they are paying the price for not believing that foreign interference is something that should be a real bipartisan issue that all Americans are concerned about.
CORNISH: Alex Stamos, thank you for your expertise here. We appreciate your time.
STAMOS: Thank you.
CORNISH: Okay, next, the world's wealthiest man is trying to use his social media platform to amplify his political views. But Elon Musk is also spreading a lot of misinformation while doing it. Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban says Musk has lost the connection to the real world.
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[23:50:00]
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CORNISH: This week, highlighting the growing power of Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and owner of the social media platform X, a.k.a. Twitter. His audio conversation on X with Trump drew more than 25 million listeners, at least according to the Trump campaign. It also generated headlines for days.
But there is still a lot of disinformation that proliferates on X, and Musk is still helping to spread it. Case in point, the unfounded claims that an Olympic female boxer from Algeria was not a woman, posed by some X users, including Musk, fueled much of the misinformation about the athlete. And now, she is suing Musk over it. Some CEOs may think these are taboo topics, but fellow tech billionaire, Mark Cuban, believes Musk wants to be in this position.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK CUBAN, BUSINESSMAN, INVESTOR: Elon and being one of those powerful people, he's trying to be the most influential man in the world. It sounds like a commercial, but literally, that's what Twitter has given. You get to that point sometimes where I think they've lost the connection to real world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: With me now, an expert on misinformation, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
So, Imran, I want to talk to you for a couple of reasons. One, because you've been sued by Musk at one point, right? But also, because you keep a close eye on what's going on in social media. And it feels like with Meta, Facebook, et cetera, they kind of stepped back from politics or said like, look, we don't want to be in this arena so much, and Musk has gone completely in the other direction. So, what does that mean for like spread of misinformation?
IMRAN AHMED, FOUNDER AND CEO, THE CENTER FOR COUNTERING DIGITAL HATE: Well, I think Elon has very much seen X as being a platform to get his way. I mean, I think with Mark Zuckerberg and others, what they did was build platforms that let them make tons of money. Elon Musk clearly isn't in it for the money. He spent an enormous amount of money on it, on a failing platform that is losing hand over fist every year.
CORNISH: And the advertisers fleeing.
AHMED: Advertisers fleeing in part, he says, because of the research that we've done showing a massive rise in toxicity on this platform. But he built it. He has bought this platform because he wants to be able to get his point of view across. He wants to be able to get his way. And he knows that Twitter is the single most influential platform when it comes to politics and journalism. It's the way that elites have communicated to each other for some years now.
CORNISH: But as a result, is it -- we've all heard Twitter isn't real life. So, like, when you actually, like, look at it today, does it have the power, or as journalists, elites, et cetera, are we overplaying it talking about this the way we are?
AHMED: I think you're right to an extent. It absolutely doesn't reflect reality. And in fact, bad actors have worked out to weaponize that platform to create fake -- fake proof for the popularity of their ideas. But let me ask you a question. When something happens, what do most journalists, what do most politicians turn to immediately on their phones?
CORNISH: Why did you have to call me out like this?
AHMED: Right.
CORNISH: I don't like it. I don't like it.
AHMED: It's every time. And that's the problem is, that it does -- it does give us reality. You know, in the last few weeks and months when we've had the Olympics going on, there have been riots in the U.K., race riots, which, you know, all over the United Kingdom in the election period. And when, of course, that very dramatic moment when Joe Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris -- Kamala Harris started her ascendancy, we were all glued to that platform. That's where the power comes from.
CORNISH: So, let's talk about that power --
AHMED: He has been weaponizing it.
CORNISH: -- because he actually sued your organization and lost. But, recently, he sued an ad industry group that was leading a boycott of X specifically over the issue of misinformation. It was called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. They basically said, look, we're shutting down because this has drained our finances. So, can you talk about how he tries to go after his critics?
AHMED: Well, I think it's -- it's not just his critics. Look, Elon Musk's output, the things he says sometimes are quite bananas. But he's very rational when it comes to protecting his business and his revenue streams. And he knows that he has made a terrible, economically, terrible mistake by buying X, $44 billion. It's losing billions a year, and he has to pay 1.5 billion a year just in interest payments. So, he's in real trouble there economically.
The advertisers are all fleeing. So, the first thing he did was sue the organization that's proving that toxicity is increasing. That was us. Now, he's literally suing the advertisers, saying, how dare you leave my platform?
[23:55:00] You're all leaving en masse. In doing so, that is somehow an antitrust violation. And really, this is sort of an increasingly desperate attempt by a man. First of all, he sued his critics. Now, he's suing businesses because they won't be his friends. And it's -- I mean, he can't see the problem, which is that it's his own behavior --
CORNISH: Yeah.
AHMED: -- that's causing all of this, all of his problems. There is something almost, you know, sort of -- sort of like a biblical parable to be written from his own actions, hubris leading to the downfall of a man who was once widely respected, but now is increasingly seen as a bit unhinged.
CORNISH: Imran Ahmed, thank you so much for talking with us, giving us this context. We appreciate it.
AHMED: My pleasure.
CORNISH: And we want to thank you all for being with us tonight. I want you to also consider keeping the conversation going online over at CNN Audio, where we're asking, how did Trump win over Silicon Valley's loudest voices like Elon Musk? How is Kamala Harris using her California roots to woo tech industry donors? My podcast is called "The Assignment," and we're going to be tackling all those questions and more. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for watching. "Anderson Cooper 360" is next.
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