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New Poll Shows Harris Gaining Ground In 3 Key Battleground States; Trump & Musk To have Live Conversation On X Tonight; Harris Hunkers Down In DC With One Week To Dem National Convention; White House Urges All Sides To Attend Thursday Ceasefire Talks; Hamas Says Its Soldiers Shot And Killed One Israeli Hostage, Wounded Two Others; Israel Still Bracing For Potential Retaliation By Iran, Hezbollah. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 12, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:39]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: New opponent, same old playbook. It's 2024, but the presidential race is starting to feel a little 2016. So we're going to break down former President Trump's attack strategy as Vice President Kamala Harris endorses a policy first proposed by the Trump campaign.

Plus, bracing for attack. We are live in Israel, where a retaliatory attack from Iran could be imminent. A U.S. carrier strike group and a guided missile sub headed to that region right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And a future fear for the Olympics. Fewer cities could find themselves in the running to host the games, as climate change threatens to torch city's Olympic ambitions.

We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

DEAN: In just a few hours, former President Trump will go live on X, speaking one-on-one with the social media platform's owner, Elon Musk, who promises, quote, an unscripted conversation. Both men are notorious for leaning into conspiracy theories.

And Trump is back to using that playbook once again. Over the weekend, he falsely claimed a photo showing a large crowd at one of Vice President Harris' events was generated by AI. Meantime, Harris has seen a groundswell of supports since stepping into the race just three weeks ago.

New polls have her ahead among likely voters in some key battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Now, still important to note, these are all margin of error races, so no clear leader. CNN's Kristen Holmes is here with more.

And Kristen, the former president certainly seems unsettled by all of this. It has knocked him off his game. And we're seeing him go back to kind of his comfort zone, in a way, with these personal attacks. What are you hearing?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. There's a lot of concern. It's not just the former president. It's also allies, donors who I've spoken to, who don't know what exactly this race is going to look like. And they're concerned at the way that Donald Trump is handling it.

What they want is they want to see Donald Trump out there on the campaign trail, visiting these crucial battleground states. They want to see JD Vance by his side and they want to see him focusing on a variety of issues that they think make the case for Donald Trump. And that's particularly about immigration and inflation.

Those are the things they believe that Donald Trump could focus on. You even heard Kevin McCarthy today talking about that, that he should - he being Donald Trump - should not be focused on crowd size, instead should be focused on Kamala Harris' policies, particularly the fact that Harris hasn't given out a detailed plan on that.

But Donald Trump seems unable, at this point, to do so. He has been putting up these conspiracy theories on social media. And it's important to note, this is kind of the behavior we see from Donald Trump when he is in a position of vulnerability. He starts to listen to the people who are on the outer fringe of his orbit, and there are plenty of them, who put these forward, and then he promotes them.

So what he does in the next couple of weeks, that's what's going to be really interesting. Because if you talk to the campaign, they believe that Harris is still on a bounce, that this is her kind of honeymoon period and they think it's going to last past the DNC.

Of course, she's going to get a boost from that, just the way that Donald Trump did from the RNC. But where does she land, and what does Donald Trump do in the meantime? Because again, right now, he's not doing the things that Republicans really want him to be doing, the reason that these people were getting behind him, particularly the donors.

Instead, he's kind of peddling in these fringe theories, which is really reminiscent to Donald Trump around 2020, 2016, the kind of behavior that we see from him whenever he is boxed into a situation like he's gotten into now.

DEAN: When his back's up against the wall.

HOLMES: Right.

DEAN: And so then that leads us to tonight.

HOLMES: Yes.

DEAN: And this conversation on X, which he's not been on in a long time --

HOLMES: Right.

DEAN: -- with Elon Musk. Musk has already endorsed the former president in this election. What's the thinking behind doing this?

HOLMES: Well, and also, they have such a weird relationship, right?

DEAN: Yes.

HOLMES: Like one moment they both like each other, the next moment Donald Trump is trashing electric vehicles, and then Elon Musk is saying he's going to give a bunch of money to Donald Trump, then he's not. But that aside, their kind of eccentric relationship, there is a real belief among the campaign that this election, and I think if you look at either side, they both believe this, is going to be decided by a finite number of voters.

And the Trump campaign believes that they have to reach out to those voters in nontraditional ways. And part of that might be doing an interview with Elon Musk.

[15:05:05]

Elon Musk has a big social media following. These are people who aren't going to tune into traditional news, who aren't going to follow politics in a traditional sense, but they are going to tune into Elon Musk doing Twitter spaces with Donald Trump. It's the same reason you saw him sit down with streamer Adin Ross. It's the same reason he's been doing a series of podcasts and MMA stuff.

This is a group of people who are probably first-time voters, potential voters, and they believe that those people would swing in favor of Donald Trump. So that's who they're trying to reach with these various kinds of events.

DEAN: It will be interesting to see what that conversation is like.

HOLMES: Yes.

DEAN: Nice outfit, by the way.

HOLMES: I have twin.

DEAN: On Mondays, we wear pink. Always good to see you, Kristen. Thank you.

HOLMES: You too.

DEAN: Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. Let's talk more about all of this with Brian Stelter, my former colleague. He's a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair.

All right, Brian, you know it well. Trump's preoccupation with crowd size goes back to the 2017 inauguration when he claimed his crowd was bigger than former President Obama's, even had Sean Spicer go out and say the inauguration was the most viewed in history, even though photos showed clearly that wasn't the case compared to Obama's in 2009. This is quite the running trend. BRIAN STELTER, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, VANITY FAIR: I like to say this is all our friend John Berman's fault. Do you know this story, Brianna?

KEILAR: No.

STELTER: It was Berman at five in the morning on the day after the inauguration in 2017, Berman was on TV with Josh Rogin, a CNN regular. They were talking about the crowd sizes, and they showed a picture of Obama's crowd versus Trump's crowd, and the rest is history.

So we can all blame Berman. But no, of course, no, that's not the case. The reality is Donald Trump's obsession with crowds goes way back, right? It goes back to the days of "The Apprentice" when he cared deeply about the television ratings and would send me messages with his handwriting scrawled in black marker, pointing out how high his ratings were for "The Apprentice."

It does seem to me that he spirals whenever crowds are an issue. And I'm out with a new piece of The Atlantic today about how he tends to tell people to reject what they see with their own eyes and ears when he feels the most vulnerable. And right now he seems vulnerable about the crowd size in particular.

KEILAR: Yes. No, that's really interesting. I'm looking forward to reading that.

I also want to ask you about Trump's interview, and I don't know - that's what it is. It's kind of a conversation, I think, he's going to be having with Elon Musk tonight. Trump is now back on X ...

STELTER: Yes.

DEAN: ... nay Twitter, ahead of this interview. How influential could X and Elon Musk be this election?

STELTER: Yes, I'm thinking about this interview more as a political advertisement. Happy to be proven wrong if it turns out to be a hard- hitting, probing interview, but I think it's probably going to be more like a free ad for Donald Trump because Musk has been very promotional of Trump recently. You know, it'll be interesting to see where they go, what directions they take this questioning.

Elon Musk recently said that civil war is inevitable. What a horrible thing, I think, to imagine, but there's Musk saying it's inevitable. Is that the kind of place he's going to take Trump down those kind of dark roads or is he going to provide Trump a space to recite, you know, the most advantageous talking points for Trump's candidacy? Because that's what Trump is doing today back on the site formerly known as Twitter.

You know, for the first time, we see his campaign using X to promote his border talking points and other messages. Now, it's clearly not in Trump's voice because the messages Trump posts on his own platform, Truth Social, are much different, right? They're about crowd size, but the Trump campaign is now back using the site formerly known as Twitter.

By the way, the stock for Truth Social way down today, because it does seem like Trump is now flirting with Musk and that old platform, the new platform.

KEILAR: Yes. No, and certainly important that you note that.

Trump campaign staff have actually liked, right, that he wasn't on X and that he was kind of relegated to Truth Social ...

STELTER: Yes.

KEILAR: ... because people weren't paying attention to it ...

STELTER: Right.

KEILAR: ... quite as much as his rants have really been confined there. That obviously would not be the case if he is very much back on ex, what do you think the impact would be?

STELTER: Right. Right, because the reality is, for better or worse, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, it is - it's a media version of cocaine, right? Journalists live on this platform. They live on X. They are following everything that happens. And the platform has moved much more to the right in the Musk era.

So there are many Republicans or moderates who are on the site who might listen and tune in and learn a lot from Trump tonight. Let's remember, though, a year ago, Ron DeSantis tried a big campaign rollout, the launch of his presidential primary on X, and it was a disaster. DeSantis had a very bad time. The platform crashed. So we'll see if Musk is able to handle it tonight.

I thought the interview with Adin Ross last week was interesting because this is part of a strategy for Trump to reach non-traditional media outlets and to reach voters in different places. Trump, with Adin Ross, said that Kamala Harris is not smart, that all the VP candidates are smarter than her and those created negative clips that the Democrats could then use against him.

[15:10:07]

We'll see if that happens again today, this time on X.

KEILAR: Yes. That's the point, too, is the stakes are really high here because this could actually be something that backfires. What does he need to do to stop that from happening? And if past is prologue, is there any indication that he really can?

STELTER: I think if past is prologue, he cannot. But, you know, there are many different versions of Trump. You never know who you're going to get at any given time. And I know one thing he's guaranteed to say, Brianna. He's going to say, why isn't Kamala Harris on here? Why isn't she talking to you? She's going to continue - he, excuse me - Trump is going to continue to pressure Harris to start to give interviews.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly is. We've heard that a lot from JD Vance. We'll continue to hear that from the campaign.

STELTER: Yes.

KEILAR: Brian Stelter, thank you so much, really appreciate it. Jessica?

DEAN: After a battleground state blitz last week, Vice President Harris taking some days off the campaign trail, gathering with close advisors ahead of next week's Democratic National Convention. CNN's Eva McKend is here with more from the Harris campaign.

And Eva, we - she's told us that she plans to unveil her economic plan later this week. We know she's going to appear with President Biden for the first time since she's become the presumptive nominee. What more can you tell us?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Jessica, we're all eagerly awaiting this. I don't know how much this will do to quell the criticisms that we've heard from Republicans that she's running a policy-thin campaign, but this is certainly a start. And she previewed this a bit at her Las Vegas rally when she talked about eliminating taxes on tips for hospitality workers. That, of course, is a policy that former President Donald Trump also endorses and has been talking about for weeks.

Now, just from listening to her on the campaign trail, she's had so many rallies all across the battleground states. She does talk about other economic issues. They include taking on price gouging, banning hidden fees and surprise late charges, and taking on corporate landlords and capping unfair rent increases.

So these are things that she talks about all of the time. I suspect that these are going to be part of that economic policy vision. And in these battleground states, you hear voters talk about the high cost of living, talk about their communities no longer feeling affordable. So she has to address those concerns.

DEAN: It's interesting, when I interview pollsters who talk to undecided voters, they come back, they said to rent and housing costs again and again and again as part of the economy more broadly.

You mentioned that the tax, getting rid of taxes on tip, is the campaign saying anything about that or was that just kind of - that was about the extent of it?

MCKEND: Well, they did add that ultimately this is a policy that would have to work in concert with Congress. So this is not something that even if elected president, she could do unilaterally. But you do understand why they're emphasizing this now. She needs to get worker support in battleground states. She got the support of the culinary union.

They, of course, are so important in terms of being an organizing force and she has to speak directly to those communities.

DEAN: All right. Great reporting, Eva. Great to see you. Not on the campaign trail for, like, a minute.

MCKEND: Yes.

DEAN: So enjoy being home.

MCKEND: Nice to see you.

DEAN: Thank you.

Still ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, the U.S. orders a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and speeds up the arrival of a carrier strike group as an Iranian attack on Israel appears imminent. We're going to be live from Israel.

Plus, a police officer is said to be fighting for his life after being injured during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, that marked 10 years since the police killing of the black teenager Michael Brown. We've got new details on that investigation.

And the FDA has just approved a needle-free alternative to EpiPens. We'll tell you how it works and who's cleared to use it.

These stories, and much more, coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: So today, the U.S. and Israel are preparing for a potential large-scale Iranian attack on Israel here in the coming days. The Pentagon is sending the USS Georgia to the region. It's a nuclear- powered submarine. It is armed with cruise missiles. And they're also speeding up the arrival of a carrier strike group.

Concerns about Iran retaliating for two high-profile assassinations is adding even more pressure to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Earlier today, the White House urged all sides to attend this week's negotiations after Hamas suggested that it would boycott.

Let's go to CNN's Jeremy Diamond who is in Haifa, Israel for us.

Jeremy, we should also note as it seems like talks seem - just the progress or the potential for progress on talks seems really dicey, there's also news that Hamas says that its soldiers shot and killed one Israeli hostage and injured two other hostages. What can you tell us about this?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. According to Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, two Hamas guards shot and killed a hostage. They say that they also seriously wounded two other female hostages, although we don't have any details on the nature of the injuries or exactly how this happened.

According to Hamas, quote, "Attempts are being made to save their lives," that's the lives of those two female hostages, and Hamas says that they have formed a committee to find out the details of this incident. Beyond that, Brianna, the details on this are extremely hazy, the Israeli military, for its part, says that it can neither confirm nor refute this account by Hamas, but it is looking into the details. The hostage family forum also says that they have no information about this incident.

But, of course, this just adds to that sense of urgency that the families of these hostages have had for so long now and why they are stressing the need for a deal now, because every additional day that they are in captivity, there are a whole range of risks that they face to their lives, and this obviously amplifies that.

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But at this moment, even as there was this big push by the United States, Egypt and Qatar last week to push towards a new round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas with talks scheduled for this coming Thursday, the very fact of whether or not those talks are going to happen is very much in question at this hour. First of all, because Hamas yesterday said, cast doubt on whether or not it would participate in these talks following an Israeli strike on Saturday that killed more than 90 Palestinians, according to local officials.

But in addition to that, we now have this new information that Iran and Hezbollah appear poised to carry out that retaliatory strike on Israel, perhaps even before those talks on Thursday happen. And so that very much casts into doubt whether or not those talks will actually come true, and more importantly, whether or not they could actually result in any serious progress.

If we see a significant retaliatory strike by Iran or by Hezbollah or perhaps by both of them combined, we could be much, much closer to an all-out regional war than we would be to a ceasefire. So very tense moments, but the United States, Qatar, Egypt, continuing to try and push for progress on those hostage and ceasefire negotiations. But again, right now, that seems very, very uncertain, Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes, it certainly does. Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much for that report live for us from Haifa. Jessica?

DEAN: Well, let's talk more about this now with retired U.S. Army Major General James "Spider" Marks.

Great to have you here with us to get some more context and analysis around all of this, because obviously we're in a wait-and-see period right now as we wait and see what Iran is going to do. But when deciding how and when to retaliate, what do you think Iran is factoring in right now?

JAMES MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Significant things that Iran must consider is their inability or their lack of desire, let me start with that, to engage fulsomely with Israel. I think they know with certainty, were they to do that, there would be a punishing response by Israel against an array of targets within Iran. That's number one.

Number two is they also have to spend time, which I think they have over the course of the last week or so, building up diplomatic support. So they're talking to Russia, they're talking to China, they're trying to make sure India's in support. Even our NATO partner, Turkey, has got a role to play in all this. So I think they're spending time ensuring they've really shored that up.

And then also, I think there are two additional factors, one is they're probably trying to move strike capabilities, maybe that's drones, maybe that's additional cruise missiles, in closer proximity to Israel. If you recall what happened two months ago with the strike, long closure time of drones launched from Iran gave everyone in the region a sense of what was going to happen next and allowed air defenses to respond really effectively.

And then the third thing is, what is the internal narrative, the domestic narrative that Iran must send to its own people, which says we are responding, we are a sovereign nation, we reserve the right to do this. So they're working through all of those, I say those four factors, pretty aggressively.

But I think the most important thing, Jessica, is that Iran does not want to muddy itself. It doesn't want to get its fingers dirty in a direct engagement with Israel. We're talking about an expansion of a broader war in the Mideast. If that happens, it's going to be as a result of excessive efforts on the part of Hezbollah. The Houthis in the Red Sea may begin to try to distract and force other nations to move forces down there to try to keep the Red Sea open. But I don't see Iran directly engaging. They're concerned about the punishment that they might have to suffer afterwards.

DEAN: And so I do wonder what role you expect those Iranian proxies to play because there is a thought that while Iran is doing what they're going to do, that Hezbollah, the Houthis, others, could also be participating and what that might look like.

MARKS: Yes, that's - you see, that's the great - this is the unknown. That's the great question here. There could be an unintentional success on the part of the Iranians via the proxies, if that makes sense to you. If Hezbollah achieved a tremendous amount of success, Tehran's going to have to underwrite that and be prepared for what's coming next.

You could see, we might be able to see, Hezbollah taking a very, you know, a very large step in the direction of trying to overwhelm the Israeli well-known air defense capabilities, the multiple layers of their air defense capabilities and trying to create a level of havoc in Israel. The challenge with that, if it's too great, Israel reserves the right to respond and has the capacity to conduct operations on what's known as multiple lines of effort.

[15:25:04]

They're doing - they're continuing operations in Gaza. They are continuing to fight against Hezbollah. They've got the capacity. They've got the ability. They just have to be able to pull the trigger if they're going to go after targets in Iran as well. DEAN: And so you have the military retaliation that Iran is working on here. What other objectives are they trying to balance here as well, because it's more than just militarily.

MARKS: Yes. I think the key thing for Iran is a demonstration to their partners and then internally that they have the diplomatic and they have the leadership will to respond. They're not going to do nothing. They're going to do something and then they're going to build the narrative that says we are protecting our sovereignty. We are doing what we must do in order to be a thriving influential voice in the reason region.

That is I think the primary thing that they're trying to achieve.

I think they understand there will be limited military success that they will achieve in terms of a military response. They're doing this for other reasons.

DEAN: And it is interesting just - to just kind of broaden out and again see the through line here of their relationship with Russia with China. The moves that are being made, of course, Russia's war on Ukraine all of it does kind of start to fit together in some ways.

MARKS: Oh, it really does, so absolutely. And we've seen this played out before. Look, Iran exports about 3.5 million barrels a day through the Straits of Hormuz and it goes to India, it goes to China. These are partners of Iran in this transaction that we are very much aware of and we understand that if we were to cripple that - and guess what, we've got the capacity. Israel with our support has the capacity to go after the Iranian Navy if we wanted to. And that would cut down the support to the Houthis as well.

So we have to be very conscious of what those - and those are intended consequences not unintended. We know clearly what that ripple effect would be if this thing were to expand. That's why it's absolutely critical that there has to be a diplomatic effort to continue to move in the direction of cease talks - cease fire talks. My only comment about that is kind of good luck with that based on everything that's been happening, right?

DEAN: Yes. And we've got this new reporting that two Hamas soldiers shot and killed one Israeli hostage and injured two others in two separate incidents. This is a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades saying this. The IDF has not yet confirmed that. We have reached out to Israeli authorities for more.

But factoring that in to what you were already laying out in terms of Thursday and what they - what, I think, the U.S. and others were hoping could be a day where they could make a breakthrough. It seems like a tall order at this point.

MARKS: Not likely. You're exactly right, Jessica. That's a - in not surprising turn in events that Hamas might be a brute - furthering, you know, the brutalization of these hostages, let's also try to bear in mind how many of these hostages are still alive. I mean this is the unanswered question. Israel is not going to do anything unless they can have proof of life and if they can be able to get these hostages back. I think that's the tripping point in all of this.

DEAN: All right. Major General "Spider" Marks, thanks so much. We appreciate it.

MARKS: Thank you, Jessica.

DEAN: Up next, we are learning more about the Ferguson police officer now fighting for his life after being injured during protests marking 10 years since the fatal police shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown.

Plus, new details about what caused this massive home explosion in Maryland that left two people dead.

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