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Harris Promises "New Path Forward" In Acceptance Speech; RFK Jr. To Speak In Arizona, Withdraws From State Ballot; Trump Scoffs At Harris' Momentum In Post-DNC Interview; Source: Secret Service Members Placed On Administrative Duties; Fed Signals Upcoming Rate Cut. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 23, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

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[13:00:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: 74 days to win it all. After the DNC, the race to the White House taking on new urgency for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And today, a curveball. RFK Jr. is set to address his supporters next hour amid reports that he is dropping out and endorsing Trump. We're going to bring you his remarks and talk about how this could impact the election.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, forgotten radios and missed warnings. New details emerging about the communication failures that led to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. What we're learning.

And the time has come, the Fed Chief indicating interest rate cuts are on the horizon. What Jerome Powell said and what it could mean for everything from your mortgage rate to credit card bills.

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

KEILAR: From a historic ignite to now, the tough fight looming ahead, Vice President Kamala Harris is in full campaign mode after accepting the democratic nomination for president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The future is always worth fighting for, and that's the fight we are in right now, a fight for America's future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: A watershed moment, but perhaps one that Harris won't have much time to savor, because with just 74 days to go, this close, race is already getting a jolt that could threaten to change the outcome on Election Day.

Here in less than an hour, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will take a stage in Arizona and he's expected to formally announce that he's suspending his presidential race. His base of support is small, but it could be pivotal depending on where his voters go and whether RFK Jr. endorses Donald Trump, which appears likely, though nothing guaranteed.

We have CNN National Correspondent, Kristen Holmes in Arizona for us. Let's begin, though, CNN's Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, what do you know about Harris' mindset following the end of this convention?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, she's clear eyed that there is a long way to go. That is what sources are telling me and my colleagues. And campaign officials feel really good about what they saw last night. But they also know that they now have to focus on the battleground states, especially states like North Carolina, where they want to be particularly bullish and building out their infrastructure, trying to bring in those voters.

But they also know they really have to focus on the debate on September 10th. That's going to be another opportunity where the Vice President will be able to appeal to voters when she's up against former President Donald Trump.

But on today's headline with RFK Jr., they are looking at some of these voters as people who perhaps flocked to him because they couldn't stand or didn't want to go to Donald Trump. Now, they could have Vice President Kamala Harris as an option. And so that is something that they are also considering and how to bring in those voters as part of what they say is a bigger tent. And I think that's what we were really seeing from the Vice President last night.

And she in her remarks, it wasn't just about the people that were in the room. She was speaking to all Americans and also trying to come off as moderate, to try to bring in those independent voters that they have been thinking about and trying to target.

So the next couple of weeks for them are going to focus again on those battleground states, on reaching those voters who don't have RFK Jr. as an option if he is to suspend his campaign. And then also -- and focusing on the debate, knowing that there's another moment in this very truncated timeline for them.

And I will say another thing that I keep hearing is how do they keep bringing in -- continuing to bring in those fundraising numbers? They've had such success. But they also need to focus on those grassroots donations, too, which can sometimes be a little less predictable, which means they have to seize moments, create moments to continue to bring in that funding, because they know that Trump still has a long ways to go with his fundraising and he can certainly do it. So they have to try to get ahead of it.

KEILAR: Priscilla Alvarez, thanks so much for that. Let's get the Trump angle of this with Kristen Holmes, who's in Phoenix covering the Trump campaign. The former President seemed a bit uneasy, let's say, about the convention coverage last night. He tried to get more attention on himself, at least. Kristen, what are you hearing from the Trump campaign about what they saw last night?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Boris, I wouldn't say it's just about what they saw last night, I would say it's probably a culmination of what we saw all week. Remember what Donald Trump was witnessing, while he was out there trying to go to every battleground state, trying to break through what was Kamala Harris' week and unsuccessfully try to break through what he was witnessing was relentless attacks on himself, big enthusiasm, big excitement on the Democratic ticket, big crowds and big ratings. Those are all things that get underneath Donald Trump's skin.

And that was clear last night after Kamala Harris finished speaking and he called into Fox News, he called into various different TV stations and gave his feedback. Take a listen.

[13:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): Now she's not having success. I'm having success. I'm doing great with the Hispanic voters. I'm doing great with black men. I'm doing great with women. Because women, they want safety. And they don't have safety when they have somebody allowing 20 million people into our country, many of them very dangerous people.

No, it's only in your eyes that they have that, Martha. She's raising taxes. She's going to give a tax increase of four to five times what people and companies are paying right now. The country will go into a depression if they do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And just to note, the question he was answering in that first answer, where he seems to get incredibly worked up, was about the enthusiasm around Kamala Harris. So what we're expecting to see today, you heard Priscilla talking about trying to get those RFK voters. That is why Donald Trump is also trying to secure this endorsement from RFK.

Just a little bit of background here. We're not going to go through every single state where RFK stands in relation to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But one note, particularly here in Arizona, because it gives you a little bit of a glimpse into the landscape as a whole. Recent polling shows RFK at 6 percent here. Donald Trump is at 42 percent. Kamala Harris was at 45 percent.

The reason that this matters overall is that every side believes that this is going to be an election that is decided by razor thin margins. So does Donald Trump team think that if RFK Jr. drops out and endorses him, that they're going to get all 6 percent in Arizona? No, they do not.

But do they think that they could get enough of that to make a difference in a battleground state and potentially put Donald Trump over the edge in November? Yes, they do. So that's why they've been working so hard for several weeks to try and secure this endorsement as it became clear that RFK was likely to drop out.

You're going to see him on the stage today. RFK is going to likely spend his campaign. That's what we've been told. And then Donald Trump has a rally just outside of Phoenix. RFK shows up. That is what we are waiting to see. The Trump campaign has been alluding to a special guest, but we'll wait and see.

BOLDUAN: Well, we know it's not Beyonce. All right, Kristen Holmes live for us there in Arizona where there's lots of RFK Jr. news. Thank you so much. We'll be following along with you.

Let's talk more about this with Erin Perrine, she was Press Communications Director for the Trump 2020 campaign. She's now a Republican strategist for Axiom Strategies.

And we're also joined by former Press Secretary for then Vice President Joe Biden, Kendra Barkoff.

OK, we saw Erin the moment of Trump calling in to Fox. But wait, wait, there's more because, I mean, the way it works is the show's wrapping up, so they have to -- they have to kind of send him off.

But then another show starts, Greg Gutfeld's show. Trump calls in not to the control room to do really like a proper phone interview, but to Gutfeld's cell phone. And Gutfeld puts him on speaker. Here's the moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They threw Joe Biden out of the party. They did the same thing --

MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: And that's why we saw a different night tonight.

TRUMP: -- as they did to RFK.

BRET BAIER, HOST SPECIAL REPORT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Mr. President, thank you so much --

MACCALLUM: Mr. President, thank you very much, sir.

BAIER: -- for the time. We appreciate that live feedback.

TRUMP: OK. Thank you very much.

GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Hey, Mr. President, I'm on this -- I'm live now. Say hello to my audience. All right. All right, Mr. P, I got to go.

TRUMP: Have a good show.

GUTFELD: I'll see you. Bye, bye. I told you he was going to call.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Highly entertaining. No doubt there. But you see this -- you see Trump posting on Truth Social. It's kind of giving the impression he's spiraling a little bit. It's not strategic. It's kind of emotional. Is this how he should be handling things? ERIN PERRINE, FMR. PRESS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: I think it's a strong strategy position to be reacting and make sure that your voice is out there. It's very Donald Trump to find different ways to do that, which means phoning in, calling the host.

But you know what, no one's confused at all about how Donald Trump feels about that speech or the direction that Kamala Harris is going to take the country and what policy positions he's going to hit her on. She might have started to pivot toward those policy positions last night in her speech. But there's still plenty of grey room and ambiguity about where she actually stands on the critical issues to the American people.

For Donald Trump to be out there and at least causing the noise and getting the headlines on it to push her on those things, that's not a bad place for the campaign to be.

KEILAR: Kendra, your reaction. Does it seem like Trump is eager to take the headlines once more?

KENDRA BARKOFF, FORMER PRESS SECRETARY: I mean, he's trying, but as everybody saw at the convention, the excitement that was there, it was like you were at the best concert of your life. Whereas the Republican Convention, it was like sitting, waiting to go see the dentist, right? It was a very different reaction.

And everybody in that convention is going to go back to their states. They're going to go back to the battleground states. They're going to talk about what they saw, what they learned, all of those pieces. And I just think if you're trying to expand your electorate, like Donald Trump is trying to do, I just don't think calling into those stations and randomly doing what he's doing, is going to actually be able to reach those voters he thinks he's going to need to reach.

[13:10:00]

Whereas Kamala's speech did that. She is expanding. She's talking about everybody. She's talking about an exclusive patriotic Democratic Party that's going to move forward.

KEILAR: We actually have a soundbite of that portion of her speech when she seems to reach out to Independents and Republicans. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: I promise to be a President for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self, to hold sacred America's fundamental principles, from the rule of law to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Erin, a not subtle jab at Donald Trump there. It is a bit of a contrast from some of what we saw at the RNC, where there was a moment of adulation for former President Trump, obviously had just survived an assassination attempt. But here I think Democrats were trying to suggest that the Republican Party is so focused on him that it's not focused on the American people. Do you think that's effective?

PERRINE: It could be effective, but let's talk about who you're actually talking to when you're doing a convention speech like this. Now, granted, this was the biggest political speech of VP Harris' career, but the majority of people that tuned in last night those are hardcore partisans. You're not looking at a very large, persuadable audience in there. So for her, those people are already generally pretty split. And you're looking at the margins of who you can message to.

Donald Trump by going back on Fox is going back to his base. So if he can't -- there's not a persuadable audience that's really sitting out there on there. At least he's talking to his base. When it comes to what the message should be right now for her, she wants to try and nod to those -- maybe to those RFK voters who were people who haven't really made up their mind yet or to those Nikki Haley voters.

But again, the Trump campaign is doing the same thing. You see J.D. Vance out in swing states. You see Republicans trying to message that way. Those are the core constituents that everybody is going to be talking to. The problem now for Donald Trump exists that Kamala holds the brand of being the change agent. This will be a change election. What is he going to do to wrestle that mantle away from her right now?

BOLDUAN: A lot of what we saw last night was about, you know, trying to get people to imagine Kamala Harris as the commander in chief. You have this really big showing from a pretty deep bench of Democratic veterans who are members of Congress, you had former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta there vouching for her. Harris herself promised, Kendra, the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.

I wonder if Republicans can effectively puncture that with the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal or if it's harder because she was the Vice President and not the commander in chief. What do you think?

BARKOFF: I mean, there was a clear decision that was made to put Leon Panetta out there and to speak, to talk about her foreign policy credentials. Right. And she did address the issues that are going on in Gaza and Israel

BOLDUAN: You almost said, she addressed Afghanistan.

BARKOFF: She didn't.

BOLDUAN: She did not.

BARKOFF: She did not, for the record. But so she -- that was a conscious choice where she included foreign policy in her remarks along with her other -- of her other things. And so, I think she will continue to talk about all of these issues as she's on the campaign trail. But there was a conscious decision that they made to include him in there last night.

KEILAR: Very quickly, Kendra, how do you think the RFK dynamic affects Harris' chances?

BARKOFF: I think they're going to continue to go -- like, the Harris campaign is going to go after his voters and I think they're going to go to the same states that he -- you know, in Arizona, I think they're going to go to those battle bound states and do what they can get to get all those voters.

BOLDUAN: We'll have to see.

KEILAR: Yeah. Erin Perrine, Kendra Barkoff, thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Still ahead this hour on "CNN News Central," missed warning. CNN has confirmed stunning security lapses around the attempted assassination of former President Trump that we didn't know before. We'll bring you those details.

Plus, the time has come. The Fed just giving the clearest sign yet that rate cuts are actually on the way.

BOLDUAN: Plus, witnesses say water systems in Gaza are almost completely destroyed and it's forcing children to drink from puddles and wade through sewage, as another round of ceasefire and hostage talks are underway.

We have these important stories and more ahead this hour on "CNN News Central."

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BOLDUAN: New today, we are learning that a number of secret Service employees have actually been put on administrative duties after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

KEILAR: And we're learning more about the communications failures leading up to that terrifying close call at Trump's rally in June. We're joined now by CNN Zach Cohen and former secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow.

Zack, before you tell us about these new developments, I want to clarify, it was July. It was not June. Go ahead.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Right. And look, this is sort of pre-action by the Acting Director of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe. He's putting these folks on administrative duties, essentially desk assignment, ordering them to work from home, rather than being part of the day to day security planning around Donald Trump.

And look, it's members of the Pittsburgh field office as well as one member of Donald Trump's security details, sources just telling us that. So this is really sort of the first step towards accountability we've seen from the Acting Director since he replaced his former boss, Kimberly Cheatle, who you might remember, was forced to resign immediately after the assassination attempt.

[13:20:00]

But look, we still have a lot to learn about the security failures that happened and what contributed to them. There's multiple investigations that are ongoing and we'll almost certainly see more disciplinary action as those wrap up. But today we're learning more details about one of the biggest parts and biggest focuses of those internal investigations, and that's the communication breakdown that occurred on the day of the rally between Secret Service agents and those law enforcement -- local law enforcement partners on the ground.

And specifically this warning that local law enforcement transmitted via radio about three minutes before shots were fired. That warning went to the local law enforcement that had the radios. But we're told now that Secret Service was not -- never picked up their radio. So they would have heard this warning if they had done that.

And there's a moment that was captured on body camera that really speaks to the frustration after the fact by one of the local officers who is really dismayed as why his warning was not heard by everyone on the ground. Take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dude, I was (BEEP) calling out, bro, on top of the roof. Were you all on the same frequency?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So are we all in the same frequency? They don't even know if they're listening to the same radio channel. And of course, we're learning now that the Secret Service didn't even have the proper radio because they failed to pick it up. This underscores really the broader communication problems that we're learning about now.

The secret Service really operating in sort of a disjointed, decentralized communication structure where, we're learning, that they don't even talk to the officers on the ground -- the local law enforcement officers on the ground. They instead rely on a series of liaisons and command posts to basically play a big game of telephone to receive information from local law enforcement partners.

So this is something that lawmakers on Capitol Hill are you really focused on. Chuck Grassley is really, as part of his investigation, has honed in on this problem and is really demanding answers from the Secret Service as a result.

BOLDUAN: And just real quick, do you have details on who specifically from his detail is being, I guess, benched or however you put it?

COHEN: We don't have a name, but we do know it's somebody who's involved in the advanced planning of the rally. So it's somebody who was supposed to be anticipating these various issues, making sure everybody was on the same page. And I clearly that did not happen.

BOLDUAN: Really interesting. All right, Jonathan Wackrow, your reaction to all of these new details?

JONATHAN WACKROW, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Well, listen, first of all, let's talk about the accountability, right? Putting supervisory agents who are assigned to the Pittsburgh field office and one agent from the Trump detail on basically telecommuting into work. So I don't understand what -- how that is holding people accountable, because what we haven't heard is what did they specifically do wrong? Where were they responsible for some of this breakdown? Right?

If they really was accountable, then you would put them on full administrative leave. You would take their badge and gun away from them. We didn't see that. We're basically giving them the option to work remotely, which is a little bit odd. And I think that the viewer is going to look at that going, that's not really accountability from what we heard and what we heard the deputy or the Acting Director say that he was going to hold people accountable. So there is that point.

But let's get back to the radios, the communication breakdown. We've been talking about this, and it's getting worse and worse. Now hearing that there was a pathway -- and Brianna, you and I actually talked about this on air, saying, all you have to do to communicate with each other is just share each other's radios.

Now, we know that that was talked about in advance, but wasn't acted upon on the day. The fact that Secret Service didn't pick up local radios or local PD didn't pick up secret Service radios really just speaks to the complete and utter breakdown of communication and roles and responsibilities 41 days ago.

And what we're not hearing is, we're not hearing this come from the Secret Service or as an output of their mission assurance review. We're hearing it in the drip, drip, drip from the DA's office, from the ESU team members, from other law enforcement entities, not the Secret Service. So I question the Acting Director today as to where is the transparency, where's the reassurance that you're going to build confidence back in the Secret Service, and where's the accountability?

SANCHEZ: So, Jonathan, we were just outlining a moment ago with Zach, the org chart or the flow chart of communication between Secret Service and these local agents at events like this. And it does sound like a game of telephone, so to speak, with all these intermediaries. Would it have been as simple to resolve that if these Secret Service agents had just taken those radios that had been provided to them? Or is there more work that needs to be done to improve that communication and coordination?

WACKROW: Well, I'll start with your last part first. You know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to reestablish the communication structure. I don't want to speculate that if they had that radio, we would not have had this tragic event. But it would have been a pathway for communication, direct point to point communication from that officer on the ground that we heard the frustration from, that he was calling out on his radio that there was a man with a gun on the roof.

[13:25:00] At a minimum, Secret Service agents, whether they were the counter sniper teams or other agents, would have heard that call and then would have taken direct -- you know, should have taken direct action. So again, there are stopgap measures which, you know, it looks like they attempted to put into place to be able to communicate, because they know it's important, but it was never acted upon that day. Have to figure out why those radios weren't picked up, who was responsible for that, and those people need to be held accountable.

KEILAR: Yeah, it's wild that it may be as simple as that. It really is. Jonathan Wackrow, thank you. Zack Cohen, thank you for your reporting.

And next, Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, he just hinted that a rate cut is coming. So we're going to tell you when, we're going to tell you by how much. What do we think? We'll see.

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