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Harris Picks Tim Walz. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 06, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That President Joe Biden has enjoyed spending time with him, so much so that advisors have joked, could we find a way to get the Minnesota governor to spend more time with the president because every time he does that, he seemed to be in a great mood.

Just one other final thing that I do want to note, and I'm just going to turn off my phone alarm here that is going off. Sorry about that.

One thing I will note is, what an incredible contrast we have now on the Democratic ticket with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on it at the same time. We have somebody in Kamala Harris who embodies the dynamism, the innovation of big cities, particularly in the coasts of this country, and then in Tim Walz we have somebody who sort of embodies the proud, the resilient, the hard working, patriotic middle of the country. And I do think that we can easily imagine Tim Walz very much embracing and leaning into that contrast. He is somebody who can get up on the campaign stage and say to the American people, look, I might not have gone to law school. I was busy serving in the military. I was busy being a high school teacher. I may not be from a big city on the coast. I was born in a small town in Nebraska. And yet I share all of these fundamental values that Kamala Harris holds dear. And here I am with all of the - you know, with holding all of the same values and views as our vice president, Kamala Harris.

So, you could imagine that being sort of a really complimentary ticket that is, again, aimed at speaking to the really wide breadth of voters that the Democrats are hoping to get to going into November as they are hoping to defeat the Donald Trump/J.D. Vance ticket.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour, and the breaking news is big. In this unprecedented campaign, this season the likes of which we have never seen before, we have one more major development. Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee now for president of the United States, has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate.

A week-and-a-half ago, two weeks ago, maybe seen as a dark horse. Now he has emerged as the choice. Our MJ Lee, Jeff Zeleny, John King, Jamie Gangel, all reporting on this.

MJ just saying maybe Walz a vibes pick. Seen as a midwestern happy warrior.

John King is here with us in New York, watching this unfold before our eyes.

Let's just start, reset at the top of the hour, what Tim Walz means for this ticket now.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It means, number one, the Democrats have their ticket. They're about to go into their convention. And after Kamala Harris clinched the nomination with the most unorthodox nominating process of our lifetime, the president of the United States steps aside after winning the primaries. She wins a virtual voting among the delegates. And then she wants to make this decision. She wants all this cleaned up before they get to Chicago for the convention so that can all be about prosecuting the case against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and against the Republicans.

So, a very truncated process. A lot of pressure on the vice president. So, if voters out there get to judge, you know, how she's handling this first - first big executive decision. So, why Tim Walz?

We're showing pictures of him right there in a jacket and a - and a shirt with no tie on. Earlier we had pictures of him in a t-shirt.

I do think the contrast here is going to be striking. This is a small town Midwesterner. This is a man who won a Republican House seat and held it in very difficult years for Democrats, he held onto it. So, he has that small town, rural appeal, which is why Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance. Sort of the same idea. Can you go into small communities and make the case?

He's the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. I can tell you, his fellow Democratic governors love him. Love him. They think he's smart. They think he builds consensus. They think he's really funny. And so they like being in his company.

And that matters in a campaign in terms of Harris being out, are you confident that you - you know, do you have the loyalty and do you trust your partner out there on the campaign trail? Does that person, at tense moments, and there will be a lot of tense moments in the next 90 days of this campaign, make you laugh and make you smile and maybe take some of the pressure off you? Can you do the small market television? Walz fits that bill.

Now, we're going to see how he plays out. And again, I'll be a broken record on this, there is no data in the 37 years I've been doing this that says your vice presidential pick makes the difference in the end. However, it can hurt you. Some - we could have a conversation about has Vance - has Vance hurt Trump or at least stalled Trump's momentum a little bit there. And it - it can help you in the idea that, again, popular with governors, that helps you raise money. Popular with governors, that helps get more people on the team. Popular and small town America, create a little buzz for Democrats in places maybe were they're not always seen. And that is one of the Democratic Party's problems.

In the years I've been doing this, you know, Michael Dukakis was my first campaign, 1988. He won ten states.

BERMAN: Massachusetts miracle.

KING: Yes. Iowa and West Virginia were states won by Michael Dukakis in 1988. Those who are blue collar Democrats who worked with their hands on farms or in coal mines or in factories, the Democrats have lost those votes.

[09:05:03]

Tim Walz knows how to win those votes.

Again, the presidential candidate decides who wins the election. But a vice presidential candidate can help a little bit. And she's made a governing choice here too. A progressive governor who has been - who was in the military, in the House, then elected statewide and re- elected statewide. So, you have governing experience here, again, in a - in a different mix. A midwestern mix. She's a West Coast politician.

So, it's - it's a - it's an interesting combination. You know, politics, I always call it a casserole. You're bringing all these ingredients - you're bringing all these ingredients together and trying to make them work.

The last thing I'll say is, in my travels over the last year, you know, one of the issues is people are so disillusioned with politics. Thats why so - you had so-called double haters, people who don't like Trump and don't like Biden. Well, now, President Biden's out of the race. So that gives the Democrats an opportunity. They have this opportunity to shake up the race, to get people to look again.

So, somebody who's a little different, a little unorthodoxed. Kamala Harris is different. She's a woman of color, right? So, she's different in her own right. Now to bring somebody else different into the mix when you're trying to get another look, it's an interesting pick.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And you - you mention him being a happy warrior.

KING: Yes.

SIDNER: That's not something that you always hear in politics. There's been a lot of people who have been really, really annoyed, pissed off is probably the best word you could use, at the candidates recently using very dark language, et cetera, et cetera. He's not that guy.

KING: Right. No, he makes the case against Trump and Trumpism with a smile. And he says, make it - he urges people to make it with a smile. And he urges people to say, don't demonize the voters. Don't demonize the people with whom you disagree. Try to have a conversation with them. Try to win them over with your own arguments and with your own details, not by, you know, saying you're a moron or you're an idiot or, go away, I don't want to listen to you. Try to find out how they got there.

SIDNER: Minnesota nice, I guess that's what they call that.

KING: What is - yes, what is the - what is the source of their disillusionment and their disaffection, not just pushing them away because they disagree with you.

SIDNER: Yes.

Let's go to Jeff Zeleny now.

Jeff, there is this question about what the relationship was before all this. How much did Kamala Harris know Tim Walz or have ever sort of talked to and had conversations with Tim Walz before the dark horse became the pick.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Sara, I'm told not much. They did not have much of a relationship. But another source, just a moment ago, pointed me back to a visit that Vice President Harris took to the twin cities in Minnesota in March. And she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Of course, she has been the leading champion on the, at the time, Biden-Harris campaign for abortion rights. And that has been one of the really anthems of her candidacy. And Governor Walz was at this Planned Parenthood clinic. It's the first time a sitting vice president has visited such a clinic. And I'm told that she walked away impressed by his demeanor, how he carried himself, and she liked him, but did not know much about him. And of course at the time this would have been unthinkable. Just 16 days ago she was the running mate. She was its not looking for her own running mate. So, that is what is remarkable about this.

But really in the last two weeks, Governor Walz went from a third tier contender in the views of someone who's close to him, to one of the top three. And they believe that was largely because of what he was doing, sort of a very publicly, he was doing every interview he could do trying to make the case to some Democrats and make the case why he is the type and flavor of a - of Democrat that could help win voters back.

If you think back to it - and excuse me for that interruption. If you think back to sort of the Democratic Party, how it was not that long ago when Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, they won a lot of areas that are now red. John was just talking about many of those areas. Governor Walz is someone they believe who can help sort of win back these areas.

There, of course, are limitations to this. Vice President Harris is at the top of the ticket. She is the standard bearer. So, we will see in the coming days how much he can sort of give some calm and relief to some voters who are unsure about this.

But the contrast is something I'm told the Harris campaign very much liked, and the chemistry is something that she also liked in the final days of this search.

Guy. BERMAN: Not a lawyer.

SIDNER: No.

BERMAN: Tim Walz also not a lawyer, which is unusual, right? I guess Al Gore wasn't a lawyer. I mean it's not all been -

ZELENY: A social studies teacher.

BERMAN: Yes, a social studies teacher. You know, often you see, you know, politicians at this point who haven't had experience in the law, especially on the Democratic side.

Let's go to MJ Lee for more reporting on how we got to this point.

MJ, what are you hearing now?

LEE: Yes, John, I do think we should just take an extra beat to take stock of really the - really remarkable and extraordinary series of events that led us to this moment. It was 16 days ago that President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. And as you've been talking about, Vice President Harris was able to lock up this nomination so quickly, but so much so that there was not even at any point, even a blip of a real conversation within the Democratic Party about whether they should consider anybody else other than Kamala Harris.

[09:10:11]

And now we have not only Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, but within a matter of days she has deliberated on and chosen the running mate of her choice. And it is now going to be the Harris/Walz ticket running against the Trump/Vance ticket.

So, we have seen such a remarkable and unprecedented transformation of the Democratic ticket in just, again, a matter of days. And I do think we should note that this moment really marks, in some ways, Kamala Harris defying President Biden. As we have talked about so much, for years and years, President Biden and the advisers that are closest to him had made the argument repeatedly that the person at the top of the ticket had to be Joe Biden, that only he was capable of defeating Donald Trump. That with anybody else, the country really risks a second term Trump presidency.

And in that they were at least implicitly suggesting that the Democratic bench of talent was inadequate. But now here we have Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. Now, Tim Walz right there below her. And the two of them certainly do now represent sort of the future of the Democratic Party in a way that we would not have seen had Joe Biden remained at the top of the ticket.

Now, one thing I will say as we are now talking about this ticket, facing up against President Trump and J.D. Vance on the other side of the aisle, I do think there's something to be said for the way that Walz has conducted himself in the last several weeks or so as he has made the case effectively, a lot of Democrats would say, against Trump and Vance. You know, he is the guy that made the weird messaging really take hold as he described the Republicans on the other side - other side of the aisle as those weird guys. That has been a really politically effective messaging. And he has clearly shown, whether he was intentionally auditioning for this job are not, that he can be that effective messenger for Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. So, all of these things would have gone into that decision making process.

I know that we were talking about this a little bit in the last hour, but I do think sort of that vibes decision, how much that factored into things, just the idea that this is somebody that she would have had good personal chemistry with, that he is widely described as somebody that people just enjoy spending time with. You can imagine that that would not have been - that that would have been, rather, a really big part of the consideration given what a big decision it is and given that at the end of the day the president is going to want somebody that they like, that they like spending time with, if at all possible.

SIDNER: Very good points there, MJ Lee.

Let's go now to John King.

As you're thinking through this whole scenario, there was a possibility to have the Pennsylvania governor, which has a lot of electoral votes that everybody was worried about. Now she goes to Philadelphia, and so does Tim Walz, having to go there into Shapiro's nest. What happens here? How do you see this sort of playing out?

KING: I have no knowledge of this because we've been reporting about Governor Walz. But my bet is that Josh Shapiro's at that event today. Josh Shapiro, he's a good, rising star in the Democratic Party.

BERMAN: A huge moment for him in many ways.

KING: Yes, right, in many ways. And he'll be on the battlefield helping this administration, helping Harris and Walz, you know, his path, help them try to win the election and to just be out there. Again, as I said earlier, as the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Tim Walz is very well liked and so the other governors love him. And, yes, there's a little bit of a bruised ego, of course.

SIDNER: Of course.

KING: You were - you know, you love to be considered and then you're told no at the end. But Josh Shapiro's a rising star in the party. He's younger than both Harris and Walz. And he'll, I assume, he'll take this -

SIDNER: He's a first term governor as well.

KING: He'll take - he'll take - he's a first term governor. When I was in Pennsylvania last week, a lot of voters are like, we'd love him to be vice president, but we just got him. We don't want to lose him. And so, they're - he can turn this into opportunity as well as you go forward. It reminds me a lot of, why did Barack Obama pick Joe Biden, right? He wanted a blue collar guy with governing experience who would sort of balance you, that if you were viewed - you were viewed as somehow, you know, more of a city person, right? So, Kamala Harris is San Francisco and Oakland, West Coast. Tim Walz, the Midwest. More of a blue collar appeal.

Again, we keep seeing pictures of - well, he's in a suit right here, but I think the pictures you're going to see, you're going to see more of him in a, you know, in a hunter's jacket and in a t-shirt and at state fairs and in small communities and going out there because that's where the Democrats need to reach. If they can improve their stand - you know, what Joe Biden - you know, Joe Biden's strength, and we've seen - Harris has brought back some of the young people. She's brought back some of the African American vote. She's brought back some of the Latino vote that was disaffected from the incumbent president. One of the things they're worried about is - you see the pictures here, you know, in the - in the Minnesota shirt there, state fair, hugging, you know -

SIDNER: Yes.

[09:15:02]

KING: One of the things they've been worried about is white working class Democrats and older voters. And so here you have somebody, again, a happy warrior, a good communicator. He's impressed everybody with his television, you know, appearances over the last several weeks or so. And there's joy in the Democratic Party right now. There's excitement in the Democratic Party right now. The challenge is they need to be near perfect, you know, for 90 plus days. And so, don't underestimate the vibes thing. But he also does bring a national guardsman, you know, who can talk about military experience. A guy who held on to a very tough congressional seat with a lot of headwinds, in years where there were headwinds at him. So, he's proven he can - he can win in tough climates. You know, I'm not taking anything away from Governor Shapiro or Senator Kelly or anybody else, but that's an asset in politics, can you win - can you win when the wind is not only in your face, but there's a - like a monsoon in your face.

BERMAN: Well, let's talk about Josh Shapiro here because I do feel as if this - this is so unique because we have a person who has only been the nominee, or the presumptive nominee, for - wasn't even in the race 16 days ago, Vice President Kamala Harris.

But Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a commonwealth that the Democrats need, really do need to win, does Harris, does the Harris team now need to explain either very, very directly, or at least indirectly, why you didn't pick Josh Shapiro as you are going to that state today to announce this pick?

KING: I think one of the fair observations about the vice president, and again, this just happened 16 days ago. But one of the questions has been, when are we going to see her doing more interviews? When are we going to see her out there? Of course she's going to get asked this question. And she's going to have to manage this because you have a Democratic Party - if you ask Democratic voters and Democratic leaning independents, do you want Vice President Harris to continue the policies of the Biden administration or do something new and different and break out, it's almost evenly divided.

So, she's trying to manage this Democratic family. She's done a good job so far. Part of it's just with the energy coming forward, the improving poll numbers. That makes people happy. She's going to get asked these questions.

You know, there were people campaigning against Shapiro, not because he was the only Jewish candidate in the race per say, but the idea being that you have so many young voters who are angry over the - over the Israeli government's - what they view as excessive killing of civilians in Gaza. Do you want to risk angering those young voters when you're trying to get them back? Is that fair to Governor Shapiro? I would argue not. The policies of all these governors, or even Senator Kelly, the policies of all the finalists on this were pretty similar that we think - they think Netanyahu has crossed some lines. They also think, you know, don't ever forget that Hamas is a terrorist organization that started, you know, that started all this back on October 7th.

Is she going to have to answer these questions? When she does interviews, she will have to answer these questions. And how she answers it will show - you know, she's now the CEO of the Democratic Party. She wants to be CEO of the United States of America. So, you get asked tough questions. Comes with the territory.

BERMAN: I do have to say, and I don't know if it was performative or not, but one did get the sense from Republicans the last week that Shapiro may have been the candidate that they feared more. Is that fair? Do you think that Republicans see more of an opening now with Walz on the ticket?

KING: I think Republicans understand the importance of Pennsylvania. And if you could make the argument that in a state that's 80,000 votes, you know, if Shapiro gets you a point or a half a point or something like that, or if he just camped out in Pennsylvania, does he help the ticket there? Yes.

Look, you can see in the ad spending, you can see in Trump's campaign, you know, reprehensible what happened at the rally in Butler, but where was he, he was in Pennsylvania, right? He - Trump understands how important Pennsylvania was to him in 2016, and how just losing Pennsylvania - you have - the three blue wall states have gone together in every presidential election since 2004. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. They tend to go together. And Pennsylvania, you could argue, is the most complicated one because, you know, you have the African American vote in Philadelphia. Then you have the suburban collar around Philadelphia, where I'm heading as soon as I'm done here today to talk to voters. And then you have, you know, you have the middle of the state, which is very rural. This is what - so Josh Shapiro is the Pennsylvanian who, in 2022, won a very impressive victory in Pennsylvania. So you could argue, looking at the resumes today, that he's your best candidate in Pennsylvania. You can also make an argument is, we live in nationalized climate now. We live in a nationalized election climate. It used to be, you know, the issues in one state, fracking. You know, it might not be an issue in another state, immigration, you know, Arizona versus Pennsylvania, or Ohio versus, you know, pick another one. Now we live in this nationalized climate. And if you look at Minnesota and those small, rural counties and where Walz's House district was, you can overlap those communities with Pennsylvania just fine, and with Wisconsin and with Michigan. Is he as well-known as your own governor? Of course not. But can you get into those communities? And I suspect when Tim Walz goes to those communities in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro's going to be right there.

SIDNER: All right. I'm going to quickly go to Whitney Wild. She is outside of the governor's residence as we are waiting to see when this phone call its coming.

What are you learning out there this morning? We've seen a lot of people going by taking pictures now that they know that he is the presumptive pick here.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right when that news started breaking, we saw more and more neighbors coming out. This is a big walker/runner community.

[09:20:01]

We've seen many people this morning getting their morning run in. But right now what we see is people stopping, taking pictures, chitchatting. We saw a family come out with their children. People in this area know this is a major moment on an absolutely perfect, crystal clear blue day here in St. Paul.

Right now we haven't seen the governor yet. We're seeing very little activity outside the house. We've seen a couple aides come in and out. But we're certainly waiting for the man of the moment to make an appearance. We have no idea -

SIDNER: Just so you know, behind you the door is opening. Just - just so you know, behind you the door is opening.

WILD: The door is opening. Here we go. We see one vehicle leaving. We see - we see one of these suburbans leaving. Let's see if we can see who's inside. It's too dark, guys, I'm sorry, I can't see who's inside. But it's just one suburban.

So, you know, again, we're waiting for some activity. What we know, we - you know, we've been, you know, in communication with someone - see, here we go, you hear that energy, picking up in this neighborhood.

What we're waiting for is for when his media (ph) - his Minnesota state troopers are going to hand off his security to the Secret Service. That doesn't come until after that announcement is formally made. So, what we did see, though, is it appeared that his detail expanded this morning. Right when we got here early this morning, there were four suburbans. That expanded to about ten law enforcement vehicles later in the morning. And now we're waiting to see when the Secret Service is going to come and actually pick him up as one of their designated protectees. That will be another huge moment.

But for now, guys, the energy out here picking up. Neighbors clearly taking in the media buzz, taking in the moment. And we'll keep you posted.

SIDNER: Yes, they have been watching and they know what's going on in their neighborhood. They are cheering. And we've been seeing them running by taking snaps right outside of the governor's home.

All right, let's go to Jeff Zeleny.

Jeff, can you just sort of break down who Governor Walz is? The entire country may not know who he is. We know he was a veteran, a gun owner, a hunter, a father. And - but he also is unapologetically progressive.

ZELENY: He is, Sara. He's 60 years old. And his first elective office was not the school board or city hall, it was Congress. Think back to 2006. This, of course, was the end of the Bush administration. And Tim Walz, who at that point was a social studies teacher from suburban Minneapolis, just south of there, and he decided to run for Congress. It was a very, very good year for Democrats. He unseated a Republican, a member of Congress, and he served in Congress in Washington for more than a dozen years. He left during the Trump era to run for governor. And he is now in his second term as - as Minnesota governor.

And, yes, Minnesota is not a classically swing-state, but I call Minnesota the reddest blue state in the country. And here's why. Donald Trump, in 2016, narrowly won the state of Minnesota over Hillary Clinton. And in this campaign, they have been trying to also put Minnesota into play.

In fact, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were campaigning in Minnesota just a week or so ago. With Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, polls showed that Minnesota was indeed in play. That has snapped back a bit. So, even though Minnesota has not voted Republican since 1972, it has been much closer than that.

But Tim Walz, back to him, yes, he served in Congress on the Veterans Affairs Committee and other things. He wasn't a prominent member of Congress. He was a workhorse, not a show horse in the words of one of his supporters. But through that he did gain relationships. Through that he showed that he worked across the aisle in a bipartisan way. Back when that was more the norm in Washington, of course. It has not been in recent years.

But the question here going forward, there's no doubt Republicans already are taking a close look at his record. We are going to learn a lot more about Governor Walz record in the coming days. But it was after his re-election in 2022, when Democrats had full control of the House and Senate in Minnesota, where he began signing very progressive pieces of legislation. Before that, Republicans controlled one chamber. So, his first term was not nearly seen as progressive, but he was signing these bills into law. And unapologetically so, talking a lot about free and reduced lunches for school children across Minnesota.

But what he brings to the ticket, the Harris campaign believes, talking to a source just a few moments ago, is a contrast with Vice President Harris. They believe he balances out her ticket in a way that is certainly different, but certainly has echoes of the 2008 campaign with Barack Obama and then Senator Joe Biden.

Of course, Governor Walz did not run in the primary. He did not even have national ambitions. But when this opening came just about now 16 days ago, this has been an extraordinarily fast whirlwind and whiplash. He became part of the national conversation because he is intent on trying to expand the base of the Democratic Party.

Again, we should point out, this is Vice President Harris' ticket. She is at the top of the ticket. That is what the majority of voters vote on. But they believe that he is a contrast in not only the vice president, but also to J.D. Vance, in his talk about rural America.

[09:25:06]

John and Sara.

BERMAN: Jeff Zeleny, in Philadelphia.

MJ Lee in Philadelphia.

John King, still working his phone here in New York.

Stick around, everyone. We are not done yet. We are at this new phase of the campaign. The breaking news this morning, Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

This unprecedented election season continues. Stay with us.

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