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Harris and Trump hitting key battleground states this week; Congressional task force tours site of Trump assassination attempt; Russia strikes Ukrainian energy infrastructure in overnight attack. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 26, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:07]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: To mute or not to mute, that is the question as the presidential campaigns argue over the rules for the September debate, putting that showdown in jeopardy. Both candidates are on the trail this week as Donald Trump focuses on the Midwest and Kamala Harris gets on the bus for a trip down south.

And mosquito threat. A deadly virus has towns in one state telling people, stay inside as one of America's most famous healthcare officials is hospitalized with another infection. The danger from those insects is front of mind, top of mind, as Americans get ready for a holiday weekend of cookouts and time outside.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And no Starliner, no problem. The two astronauts stranded on the space station are going to have to wait until February to head home. But that return journey is not going to be on the same capsule that took them to space. They're getting a ride from somebody else. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

KEILAR: Shifting into high gear any moment, former President Trump is expected to speak at a campaign event in the critical swing state of Michigan, the first stop of what his team is promising to be an aggressively ramped up campaign schedule all the way until election day. But as the former President prepares to take the stage in Detroit, there's another stage that he's now suggesting he may not step foot on for his September 10th debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC.

CNN National Correspondent Kristen Holmes is live for us in Detroit. Kristen, let's start with Trump's campaign stop there. What are we expecting?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, he's speaking to the National Guard here in Michigan. I do want to be a little bit quieter because he has taken the stage who's actually early this time, which is generally unheard of for politicians in this presidential race. But he took the stage. He was invited to talk about his future with the National Guard if he were to be reelected. We are told he would talk about the military, he would talk about the three-year anniversary of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Obviously today, earlier he was in Arlington, some of the family members of the fallen soldiers from that event. It's become one of his main talking points against the Biden administration. We will be listening closely to see if he actually stays on message. But we're also told in just a few moments, Tulsi Gabbard, who was once a Democratic presidential candidate, she's now an independent. She's actually helping him prepare for the debate against Kamala Harris. And she shared the stage with Harris. She's going to come out and officially endorse Donald Trump.

Now, that might not seem that surprising given the background there, but clearly, they are trying to capitalize off of what we saw last week with RFK Jr. coming out and endorsing Donald Trump, kind of the mindset of two Democrats, former Democrat, coming out to support Donald Trump, something they want to shine a light on. As you said, this is just the beginning of many stops this week. He's going to be back in Michigan later in the week in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, a series of these various battleground states. They say they are really ramping up this campaign. We've seen that the last two weeks, we'll see if that continues because this is something we have heard before. But we also know they want to make some changes to the campaign, particularly now that Kamala Harris is at the top of the ticket with this change in enthusiasm, a boost on the Democratic side, as well as a boost to the polls for Harris.

KEILAR: And Kristen, Trump seems to be at odds with what his own team is saying they want when it comes to these rules for his upcoming debate with Harris. Tell us what's happening.

HOLMES: Yeah, this is what we often see with Donald Trump and his team. His team says one thing, Donald Trump comes out and seems to undercut what they're saying. So essentially, this is all about what whether or not the mics should be muted at the debate the way they were when Donald Trump was on stage with President Joe Biden. Donald Trump's team says, we agreed to the rules. Biden was at the top of the ticket to this debate, and it was the same rules of the CNN debate. We want the mics muted.

[14:05:01]

On the other side, Harris says, well, it's a different time now. I am now in office. I mean, I am now at the top of the ticket, so those rules were never agreed upon. We want those mics open.

Then we hear Donald Trump come out and say this when asked about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're thinking about it. We're thinking about it. They also want to change the rules. You know, the deal was we keep the same rules. Now, all of a sudden, they want to make a change in the rules. We agreed to the same rules. I don't know. It doesn't matter to me. I'd rather have it probably on. But the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted.

I didn't like it the last time, but it worked out fine. I mean, ask Biden how it worked out. It was fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Donald Trump, clearly, they're not wanting to hear that he can't do the debate if the mics aren't muted. So going out there against what his campaign has said, but I would imagine, Brianna, will see a couple more reiterations here of what this debate is going to look like before they both end up on the stage on September 10th, both sides here jockeying what they believe is best for their candidate.

KEILAR: All right. We'll be looking for that, Kristen. Thank you. We have CNN's Priscilla Alvarez with us now with more on the Harris campaign. What's the latest?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they say, at least in terms of the debate, that the matter is resolved. Now, Of course, she is going to be hitting the campaign trail this week. She's going to Georgia. That's an important state for Democrats. That's one that President Biden only won by less than 12,000 votes in 2020. And so they want to replicate that and more this time around, which means a lot of visits to the state. What's going to look like this time is a bus tour and concluding it with a rally with the Vice President on Thursday.

Now, this pace of travel may seem like a little less than it was over the last several weeks where the Vice President was blitzing all the battleground states. The reason for that, I'm told, is because they want to put a lot of focus on the debate preparations. Of course, there has been this behind-the-scenes feud about the issue over the mics. And now that former President Donald Trump has said that he is open to it, the Harris campaign feels as though the matter is now put to rest.

What she is doing behind the scenes, however, is familiarizing herself with the former President's record, with his statements, doing practice sessions, and essentially just doubling down on these preparations, not leaving it until the week prior to go into depth on these issues and policies.

So this is another moment, essentially, where they see an opportunity to have a large audience and especially bring in those grassroots donations, which have really come in and they've capitalized on these key moments.

KEILAR: Yeah. Donald Trump characteristically sort of deemphasizes how much prep he's doing, even if he's doing some. But she's clearly doing quite a lot. Priscilla, thank you. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's talk about the race for the White House with Larry Sabato. He's the Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Larry, great to see you, as always.

I want to ask you about something that two Trump pollsters mentioned, including Tony Fabrizio, a veteran of previous Trump campaigns. They were talking about Kamala Harris's lead in certain national polls. And they were saying that they were not focused on that, especially as they're showing Harris pulling ahead. They want to keep their eye on the ball. So what do you see as far as the seven swing states and where polling is there? What does polling indicate to you about where they stand?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR POLITICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, Boris, it's usually a cop out to say everything is really, really close and everything's a toss-up. But, you know, sometimes, it's true. And in the case of the seven swing states this year, I think it honestly is very, very close. Now, nationally, right now, at least, Harris has a lead. You can argue about what it is, a point, or two, or three. But of course, as we've learned over and over, certainly in the year 2000 and then in the year 2016, the popular vote, it doesn't matter except in individual states. It's the Electoral College that matters.

So if that's what they mean by the big picture, then I get it. Although I have to say, all politicians and certainly Trump fits into this, they will cite the polls endlessly while they're leading. And if they stop leading or it's a close case, and they had been leading, you won't hear them mention it, or they'll diss the polls and call them inaccurate. You know, Lyndon Johnson used to carry the polls, the newspaper clips of the poll results in his pockets until he started to fall in the polls and then his pockets got clean.

SANCHEZ: Larry, we noted a moment ago on a graphic that crystal ball, your analysis, switched North Carolina from leading Republican to toss-up. Tell us more about that.

SABATO: Sure. Well, there are a number of reasons for it, including the fact that Harris has restored the enthusiasm and energy to the Democratic Party. And it has affected North Carolina, which is a very closely divided state.

[14:10:05]

You wouldn't believe it from the election results because the Republicans almost always win. Obama was the exception. He barely won in 2008. But Democrats have won the governorship frequently there.

Now, what is happening right now is that you're seeing it even up the pieces of North Carolina that are more liberal, that are the white collar, college-educated, centered around major cities. They have become more democratic even in the last four years. And so that's balancing the rural areas. The rural areas are more important in North Carolina than they are even in a number of the other southern states.

So, again, it's close. What I think is the critical factor, at least so far, is the fact that you have an extreme republican candidate running for governor. And even the Republicans privately describe him as extreme. He says all kinds of outrageous things. You know, at one point, he denied the existence of the Holocaust. And that's just one example. And he's causing so much distress for the Republicans that he is discouraging some of them who may not show up to vote or might even vote Democratic. These things matter. Little things matter whenever a state is really close, and North Carolina is in that category now.

SANCHEZ: A really interesting to hear that the lower part of a ticket has potential impact for the top of the ticket. Usually, we hear the inverse, right? I was curious about another bit of your analysis about the popularity of an incumbent president determining the outcome of an election. Obviously, Harris doesn't technically count as the incumbent president, even though she's running to stay in the White House. How is incumbency factoring into this election, given that Donald Trump is a former occupant of the White House, too?

SABATO: Yeah, this is very scrambled. No question about it. It's very scrambled. There is no real incumbent, but there are two quasi incumbents. Maybe it cancels one another out, Donald Trump, the former President. I've often wondered if Grover Cleveland had some of these same problems when he ran after losing for a term. And Kamala Harris, so while she lives in the naval observatory, she doesn't live in the White House. She does have an office very near there. And so she is a quasi-incumbent.

But one thing that we've discovered that I think most people have forgotten is that people really don't associate the vice president with a number of the president's policies, I think that's true in most administrations. Why? Because logically, people say a vice president doesn't make the decisions. He or she is there to cheerlead for the president when the president makes the decisions.

So they're listening to her to see where she's different, what she might do differently, what her approach is. And that's been helping her.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. An unprecedented election in more ways than one. Larry Sabato, appreciate the analysis. Thanks so much.

SABATO: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Ahead this hour on CNN News Central, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is in Butler, Pennsylvania right now trying to learn more about the security failures that led to the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump.

Plus, today marks three years since the terror attack that killed 13 U.S. service members outside the Kabul Airport. In just moments, we're going to speak to a gold star mom whose son was killed in the abbey gate bombing.

And the crew of SpaceX's Polaris Dawn are about to make history with the world's first ever commercial space swap. Details in just a few minutes.

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[14:18:32]

KEILAR: Happening right now, the Congressional task force that is investigating the assassination attempt against former President Trump is in Pennsylvania. They are visiting the scene where the shooting happened. Lawmakers are also meeting with local officials as they're trying to piece together the events that led up to that shooting last month.

SANCHEZ: Now, this is the first major investigative step for the task force since it was formed. And we expect to hear from lawmakers in roughly an hour when they will hold a press conference. Let's get some perspective now with CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst and Former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

Andrew, great to have you, as always. What kinds of things do you think these lawmakers should really zero in on during the visit today?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST AND FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI: Well, you know, it's really important this trip that they're making up there. I know some folks are commenting that it's, you know, performative or whatever.

But when you're conducting an investigation into an event that happened in the past, especially one like this where the perspective and the depth and the kind of spatial relations of that site are so important and really integral to the recommendations that they will likely make. There's no substitute for actually going on site and seeing that for yourself, understanding where was the roof of the AGR building where we know the shooter took his position, relative to where the stage was set, understanding where the foliage might have been blocking those lines of sight for the snipers. So there's a lot of really important issues that I think they're only going to understand fully if they go see it for themselves.

[14:20:02]

KEILAR: Yeah. Why wasn't the perimeter wider? What kind of challenges might that have provided? These are all questions they can ask sort of in real time.

SANCHEZ: Exactly.

KEILAR: CNN has learned that the day before the shooting, local police had actually set aside radios so that Secret Service, you know, could grab them and then be in direct communication with them, and Secret Service didn't pick them up. How big of a failure is that?

MCCABE: One of the biggest negative facts that we have learned about since this incident, massive failure. It tells you a couple of things. One, the infrastructure they setup for communication and coordination was not very good, not very direct. We now know that the -- they were supposed to listen to those radios and communicate over them. And if that was not possible, they would communicate through a state police representative over to the local police. This is far too attenuated.

We learned after September 11th, the benefits of what we call joint incident command, having everybody together in the same room on the same wavelength. So they were working with a tough situation to begin with. By failing to even collect the radios and clearly not using them, they really set their own course to this mess. SANCHEZ: So we got what appears to be the first step toward accountability. It may be the only as far as we know at this point, but some of the Secret Service staff was -- and I'm not sure if reassigned is the right word, but they were essentially told to work from home. What did you make of that decision?

MCCABE: So it appears -- I've seen it reported a few different ways, but it appears most consistently it's been referred to as administrative leave, which is what government agencies call it when they tell an employee because of an investigation or an outstanding issue they're trying to resolve to go home, don't come into work.

We don't want to prejudge these folks. It was a few folks at the Pittsburgh Field Office and one person from the detail. But the fact that they're not allowed to participate in investigations, they're not allowed to go out into the field, and they're supposed to stay home, leads you to believe that they are caught up in this investigation in some substantive way, and that we might ultimately see a negative finding about their performance. But we're not there quite yet.

KEILAR: What questions do you still have? What questions are still outstanding?

MCCABE: Oh, my gosh, there are so many questions about this thing. But there are those fundamental ones that we all saw, you know, easy for us to ask these questions. The tougher part is to answer them. But what determined the breadth of that security perimeter and why? Was it an affirmative decision to leave the AGR buildings outside the perimeter? Or was it just a failure to really adequately understand what sort of a vulnerability that would pose? I think that's the most important question.

And then there's many others why not counter drone techniques? How did they allow this person to disappear for 90 minutes and then come back and present a lethal threat?

KEILAR: Yeah, so many questions. Andrew, thank you. We appreciate your insights.

MCCABE: Sure.

KEILAR: Coming up, Russia unleashes a huge attack across Ukraine. 15 regions struck. That includes the capital of Kyiv, in one of the largest aerial attacks yet. We are live with the latest on the ground.

And three years after the deadly attack at Abbey Gate, the families of the soldier and marines killed in the bombing there at the Kabul Airport grieve as their frustration grows over the lack of answers from the White House. I'll be speaking with the mother of one of the service members who was killed next.

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[14:28:06]

SANCHEZ: Today, the Kremlin is responding as Ukraine's military incursion pushes deeper into Russian territory. Overnight, Moscow launched what Ukraine calls the most massive air attack it's seen since the war began, firing hundreds of missiles and drones at more than a dozen regions overnight, including the Capital of Kyiv.

So far, the attacks are blamed for killing at least 5 people and injuring at least 30. The barrage sent people scrambling into underground subway stations for safety.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen is monitoring the situation for us. Fred, what's the latest?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Boris. Yeah, actually, as we were going to air, we got another update from the Ukrainian emergency services. And they say that the death toll is actually now at 7 with 47 people wounded in these massive airstrikes, as the Ukrainians say, that really targeted areas throughout the entire country, including, as you mentioned, the Capital of Kyiv as well.

And if we look at some of the missiles that were used, the Ukrainians are saying that 127 missiles were fired by the Russians and 109 drones. Some of those missiles are absolutely huge. There's some that are actually designed to destroy whole carrier strike groups. Others are hypersonic missiles, so certainly the Ukrainian air defense is very busy in the overnight hours. They say they actually managed to shoot about 200 of these missiles and drones down. But of course, some of them did go get through doing massive damage to Ukraine's critical infrastructure, especially the energy infrastructure.

And one of the other things that the Ukrainians told us just a couple of minutes ago, Boris, is that there are going to be rolling blackouts in Ukraine starting tomorrow because the damage is so substantial.

Now, the Russians have come out and they've actually confirmed that they were behind these strikes. They say they were targeting the energy infrastructure to deplete Ukraine's possibilities of manufacturing weapons, which, of course, are used by the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Russian invasion, but also, of course, for Ukraine's incursion into Russian territory. The Ukrainians obviously completely angry about what happened.

In fact, Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after giving an update --