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Vice President Kamala Harris Reportedly Secured Enough Delegates for Democratic Party's Presidential Nomination; Kamala Harris's Campaign Reports She Raised $100 Million Since Joining Presidential Race; Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) Interviewed on Vice President Kamala Harris's Presidential Campaign and Her Not Attending Speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 23, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: So they're asking an appeals court to look at that. They say if the appeals court finds in their favor on that score, then Donald Trump himself should be tossed as a defendant, and that about $350 million of the $454 million, they argue, should also automatically plea be removed from this case.

Now, of course, the judge had already heard many of these arguments during the trial. He rejected them outright. That's why it's on appeal. And the New York Attorney General's office will have their chance to respond against this appeal. Their filing is due next month. And the appeals court could take this up as soon as September, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, great to see you, Kara. Thank you so much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The excitement is real, momentum has begun. Vice President Kamala Harris riding high this morning. Her campaign for president brought in a huge fundraising haul and enough delegates support to secure the Democratic nomination. The momentum building for Kamala Harris's campaign, and Republicans now scrambling to find a weak spot.

Travelers still stuck, delayed, frustrated days after that global tech outage at airports. Delta flights hit the hardest.

And heatwaves across the rest are fueling out-of-control wildfires. Officials say one of them was sparked by fireworks.

We'll talk all about those stories and a lot more. I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, two huge milestones for Vice President Kamala Harris. Her campaign reports she has now raised $100 million since jumping into the presidential race. That was Sunday, not even 48 hours ago. Also overnight, we learned more than half of Democratic delegates say

they support her candidacy. That's more than enough to secure the nomination, and a vote could happen virtually within a couple of the weeks.

We are waiting for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies to officially endorse Harris. That could happen soon. And we learned that Harris will keep much of, most of, almost all of President Biden's campaign staff intact.

CNN's Eva McKend is in Milwaukee where Harris holds a rally today. Arlette Saenz in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where President Biden still is.

Let's begin with Eva McKend in Milwaukee. What are we going to see from Harris today, Eva?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Well, John, she's entering this period here, the first big rally in a midwestern state, since President Biden announced he would not be seeking reelection with some relative strength. You mentioned more than $100 million raised in the last 48 hours. I can tell you that 62 percent of those donors are first-time contributors, more than 1 million donors.

She is really eager to paint a contrast with former President Donald Trump. She sort of telegraphed this yesterday in her conversation with staffers at campaign headquarters. She talks about how Trump sells out working families, attacks reproductive freedom, and undermines American democracy. But she's also painting a forward vision for the country, arguing that if elected president, a hallmark of her campaign would really be focusing on the middle class. Take a listen to more of this vision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, (D) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our campaign has always been about two different versions of what we see as the future of our country, two different visions for the future of our country. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward, to a time before many of our fellow Americans have full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: And John, as Democrats march towards the Democratic Convention in August, this is going to be about the delegate math. And Harris already has more than 1,900 delegates secured. And this really illustrates that in the Democratic Party right now, there is a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I was listening to call last night with thousands of black men from across the country. It was co-hosted by Win with Black Men. And they were really talking about the importance of these men acting as ambassadors for her in their respective communities, John.

BERMAN: Eva McKend for us in Milwaukee where we will see the vice president later today. Eva, thanks so much. Let's go to Arlette Saenz who is in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where

President Biden still is. Arlette, I understand the president going back to the White House today. What's the plan now for him?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, President Biden will return back to the White House a little later this afternoon after spending several days here at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, isolating from, as he was experiencing COVID symptoms.

[08:05:10]

Now, this will be the first time that we will publicly see President Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 race. Yesterday his doctor sent a letter saying that his symptoms from COVID have almost completely been resolved. And the campaign, or the White House announced last evening that he did intend to return to the White House today.

Now it comes at a time when President Biden has pledged to remain fully engaged in this campaign to try to elect Vice President Kamala Harris in November. And he called in to a meeting at the campaign headquarters yesterday to really urge his team to fully embrace and support her going forward. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to say to the team, embrace her. She's the best. I know yesterday's news is surprising, and it's hard for you to hear. But it was the right thing to do.

I'm watching you, kid. I'm watching you, kid. I love you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, the president also said that he is committed to doing everything he can when it pertains to domestic and foreign policy in the final few months that he has left as president. In that call to campaign staff, he stressed that one of his key priorities will be trying to find an end to the war in Gaza and return hostages back to their families. He said in that call that he believes that they are on the verge of being able to do that.

Now, the president on Thursday is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also is expected later in the week to meet with the families of the American hostages believed to be held in Gaza. So certainly, the path forward for word relating to that conflict is something that will be top of mind for President Biden this week.

The president has also pledged to address the nation at some point about his 2024 decision. There are no public events on the president's schedule for today, but he is expected to do that in the coming days. And it's still unclear when President Biden might be hitting the camp campaign trail. Advisers to both the president and vice president have told CNN that they've committed to planning joint events between the two individuals and Democratic president and vice president heading into the summer and into the fall. It's still unclear when exactly that could take place. Biden has said that he will be out there trying to elect vice president Kamala Harris as the next Democratic president in November.

BERMAN: Arlette Saenz in Delaware. Arlette, thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now is Democratic Congressman from California Brad Sherman. Congressman, thanks so much for coming in. You've joined with so many other Democrats now in backing Kamala Harris for president. She now has -- overnight we know she has enough delegates to secure the nomination, and we've heard from the DNC it's going to be moving forward with his virtual roll call vote, ruling out holding what's described, what's known as an in-person contested convention.

Harris has said and has made very clear they want to avoid the appearance of a coronation, which was what we heard a lot in the last 30 plus hours. Is this starting to look something like a coronation?

REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D-CA): This is the democratic process. The delegates were selected at the grassroots level. Caucus-goers went to the caucus and chose people who would be Biden-Harris delegates. And they did that because Biden-Harris won the individual congressional district. These grassroots delegates are now available to vote. And the -- I think all of them, virtually all of them have chosen to vote for Harris.

Now, the state of Ohio has some bizarre rule that says we need to give them the name of our candidate by August 7th. Ohio has repealed that rule, but a little -- some quirks as to how they did it. And so we don't want Republicans to keep us off the ballot in Ohio.

But this is overwhelming. Every delegate I've talked to, and I've talked to dozens that I think our representative, are all enthusiastic for Harris, and they are elected as part of a democratic process. So we had an open process. Harris won, and she won because she is superb and because nobody ran against her. And the reason nobody ran against her is because she's superb.

BOLDUAN: It's definitely going forward in this way. The governor of Ohio, the Republican governor of Ohio, though, did make clear to CNN last week at the convention when we spoke with them that he was not going to let any shenanigans happen in Ohio with that whole thing. Regardless, it's moving forward where it's moving forward.

Now we know that the former attorney general, Eric Holder, is handling Harris's V.P. vetting process. I want to read for you some of the great reporting from CNN's Jeff Zeleny, which is "North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly are among the Democrats who have been asked to submit information about their finances, family histories, and other personal data, two people familiar with the process say.

[08:10:03] They are part of a group that includes about 10 names, nearly all of whom are elected officials." Congressman, who do you think Harris needs, will be best served as having as running mate to help against, to help campaign against Donald Trump?

SHERMAN: I've been in this for a long time, and I know not to go with my hunch.

(LAUGHTER)

SHERMAN: You have to have -- you have to have focus groups meet. You have to pay people a little bit, get them to spend two, three hours, show them the bios, show them clips of these people speaking, have them discuss it. And these have got to be representative groups of swing voters from swing states. It may cost $1 million or $2 million, it may take a couple of weeks. But the best vice presidential candidate is the one that helps us win. And of course, that's because these 10, and I don't know all their names, but I know the vast majority of them, are all people who have proven to have the capacity to step in as president. That's the first criteria. But I think that criteria is met by any of the people that Harris is looking at.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, often when you're on, we talk about the latest as relates to Israel and its war against Hamas. We know that Netanyahu is in Washington. He's going to be addressing a joint meeting of Congress tomorrow. Kamala Harris has declined to preside over that, which is unusual as V.P. Aides say that it's a scheduling conflict. But every appearance that she makes or does not make is a choice and makes a statement now. Do you wish that she would be there tomorrow?

SHERMAN: I don't keep her schedule, but I think a few things have happened that would affect her schedule that were unexpected and have come up in the last couple of days, like the fact that she is now going to be running for president instead of vice president.

BOLDUAN: Totally. I'm just saying, you make choices when you are, when you, especially in the 36 hours, you make very specific choices on your schedule.

SHERMAN: Everybody makes choices. I don't know what those individual choices are. I do think that it's important, health permitting, that Biden meet with Netanyahu. These are the heads of governments of their countries today. These are allies who have been strong allies since the beginning of Israel in 1948. And what's important from a diplomatic perspective is the meeting with Biden. And I'm glad to see he's back in the White House. I expect he'll be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

BOLDUAN: That is the plan. You will be attending the address? I ask only because I think there are dozens of -- dozens of Democrats who will be boycotting.

SHERMAN: I have sought to be there whenever a head of state or a head of government from any of our allied countries comes. I hope all my colleagues join us there. And it's not a statement that you agree with this or that particular politician, or if I was a citizen of another country, I might vote for the head of their government. I might vote the other way. But as part of the U.S. government, we need to be diplomatic.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Brad Sherman, thank you. It's good to see you.

SHERMAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Sara?

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate.

In his first solo stop on the campaign trail, J.D. Vance testing out attack lines on the woman who is in the job that he wants, Vice President Kamala Harris.

And Congress is calling for change in the Secret Service, it's bipartisan, after that assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Also, a store clerk is accused of trying to steal a $1 million scratch off ticket. How deputies say he got caught.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:19]

SIDNER: All right, we have some breaking news for you. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Jeffries have announced a bipartisan task force to investigate the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

The statement reads: "The task force will be empowered with all investigative authority of the House of Representatives, including subpoena authority." This comes of course, after the embattled Secret Service director was grilled on Capitol Hill by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over this severe security lapses at the July 13th rally.

Joining me now is CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former Deputy Director of the FBI, Mr. Andrew McCabe. Thank you so much for coming in this morning.

Just a reaction to hearing now that this bipartisan group coming together to investigate this, both sides asking for her to step down. Can she survive this?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: It's really hard to see a pathway to her staying in this job to be perfectly honest.

I think the announcement that you just went through, the fact that they're pulling together this bipartisan commission to investigate it, this is the clearest example of what happens when an Oversight Committee hearing goes completely off the rails as yesterday's did.

Theres no question that the members walked away from that engagement yesterday on both sides thinking the director is not cooperating with us, she's not providing any significant information to us. We're going to have to fight her to learn anything about this.

And so, they elevated in essence, the standoff with the service to a new level and it's a level that the service is not going to be able to resist -- subpoena authority, there's going to be lots of hearings.

She's going to be in contentious fights over revealing agents' names, and people who are in tactical positions, and things like that. So, this is -- this story we're going to be talking about this for a long time.

[08:20:16]

SIDNER: You talked about the hearing and it was rough watching that. Cheatle struggled to even answer a question about the timeline of all of this. How is that possible?

MCCABE: You know, Sara, I think she suffered -- and I'm guessing here because I watched the same hearing you did and I'm trying to put this together. But it seems to me that she suffered from a couple of things.

One, a poor preparation by her staff and by her comms team. Her comms team has made really very strange decisions since the very beginning, right?

The decision not to send a single representative to the first press conference that law enforcement held on the night of the attack was inconceivable. The misinformation they have put out since then, the statements attacking local law enforcement, just a lot of really self- inflicted wounds there.

And it did seem yesterday, that she seemed particularly ill-prepared for the hearing. The fact that she didn't have a detailed releasable timeline is just -- it's mind-boggling. That's the bare minimum of what she was going to be expected to address and she didn't do it.

I think she also suffered probably from some poor advice, which is common in the law enforcement community and that is this idea that anytime there is an investigation pending, you can refuse to provide information.

That's not actually true. That's something that we do to protect an ongoing criminal case, an ongoing criminal prosecution for very good reasons. But here, you don't have that problem. There is no prosecution that's going to happen. She should have been far more revealing with the committee.

SIDNER: Yes, the shooter is deceased, was killed after all of this and I think sometimes we do -- everyone talks about the president was almost assassinated, but there was a father, a firefighter killed in all of this and two other people wounded that all have injuries that they'll have to deal with for their entire lives.

When you saw this hearing, was there something that stood out to you that you thought, whoa, I've not seen something like this with someone who's at the head of an agency that is this important? MCCABE: Yes, I mean, I'll tell you, honestly, the first thing that

stood out to me is my heart went out to her because I know what that feels like. Anyone who's run an agency, particularly in the aftermath of a crisis and has been called up to the Hill, knows that that is a very tough day.

You're never going to get out of that hearing in good shape. They're going to come after you and score as many points as they can. That just goes with the territory.

But what stood out to me from her performance there was this startling lack of information that she provided, which was just really illogical under the circumstances.

As you said, this is an attack in which an American citizen was killed, two others were critically injured. And it was also one that the entire country watched happen on television.

So, there's not a cloud of mystery here that she needs to protect and yet she seemed really kind of disengaged and unwilling to provide even the most basic facts that, let's be honest, most people know already from the news coverage and everything we saw with our own eyes.

SIDNER: Yes, we piece together a short timeline ourselves just from all the video that's out there, Americans doing it themselves online. So, it was really stark to see the way in which she responded to that committee.

And now, we've got the breaking news that they're coming together and they're going to put a full blast investigation together against her.

Andrew McCabe, thank you so much. I appreciate your insight into this -- John.

BERMAN: Right, something of a meltdown at Delta. Trips delayed or cancelled for thousands of travelers as the company struggles to get back on track after the huge tech outage.

And this is just in, first on CNN, Vice President Harris just picked up a new key endorsement. After the break, we will tell you who it is, but it rhymes with Shmorge Shlooney.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:49]

BERMAN: This morning, Delta Air Lines has cancelled a new round of hundreds of flights as problems from last week's global tech outage continue. There may be issues through the end of this week.

CNN's Isabel Rosales is at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. What's the latest?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, good morning.

It is the fifth day of this mess. On day one, from that Microsoft outage, we saw several airlines impacted but right now, this is really a Delta issue, unfortunately.

So many customers are just frustrated, stranded in different airports, unable to get hotels, unable to get back home to their destinations.

And take a look at all of this, right here at baggage claim in Delta, you can see all of these thousands of bags just splayed around and you can see these Delta employees in these blue vests, they are actually volunteers.

They are from different departments, different roles, giving Delta that extra manpower, organizing the bag, scanning them, trying to reunite passengers back to their bags. Here's one passenger I spoke with.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARTHUR GINOLFI, DELTA PASSENGER: It is frustrating to travel, but this is the worst experience I've ever had in my 35 years of business travel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:30:10]