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Harris and Walz kick off bus tour in battleground Georgia; First Harris-trump debate set for September 10; Controversy over Trump's Arlington National Cemetery Visit. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 28, 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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[14:00:37]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: In the hot seat, it's been over five weeks since Kamala Harris stepped up to run for president. And tomorrow, she's stepping in front of the cameras for her first interview right here on CNN. We're going to discuss how much is riding on that interview and detail her bus trip to find votes in a place where Democrats usually don't venture.

Plus, a controversy over one of our nation's most sacred spaces. Questions after a visit by Donald Trump to Arlington National Cemetery on the anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing about a possible confrontation between cemetery staff and the former President's team, a fight over the hallowed ground of Arlington.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And a catastrophic drought has one country taking brutal measures to save its people from starvation. A new plan to kill elephants, zebras, hippos, and other wild animals for food. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

SANCHEZ: It's a battle for the battlegrounds as the race for the White House ramps up. Any moment now, Vice President Kamala Harris will depart for Georgia, where she and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, will kick off a two day bus tour. Their swing will take them through the southern part of the Peach State as they reach out to voters in areas that typically lean Republican. Just to underscore how important Georgia is, the Harris campaign is pouring advertising money into Savannah, the first stop on their visit.

It's a state that President Biden won, we should note, by fewer than 12,000 votes four years ago. All of this is coming as Harrison-Walz prepare for their first major sit down interview with CNN's Dana Bash that airs tomorrow.

Let's turn now to CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, who's live for us in Savannah. So talk to us, Priscilla, about how the campaign is zeroing in on that part of Georgia.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, it's not just significant that the Vice President and her vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, are in the critical battleground state but really notable about this trip is exactly where they're going.

To your point, that is southern Georgia, those rural counties, and it's taking a page from the playbook of Senator Warnock in his 2022 runoff. He had success in those areas by essentially losing by less, peeling off voters from Republicans. And the person who was leading that campaign, Quentin Fulks, is also the deputy campaign manager for the Harris campaign. And he told me that he is trying to bring that same strategy to this campaign and in this case, anticipating much higher turnout because it is a presidential election year. So what this looks like, when you boil it down is doing well in metro Atlanta, as they expect to do, while also trying to close those margins with Republicans in the rural counties. And that they see is a pathway to victory in this critical state of Georgia. But what democratic strategists also tell me is that something to watch out for here is a Tim Walz factor. Of course, he has his rural upbringing. He has football and military routes. And the question is, how he plays? How he resonates with the voters in southern Georgia as they go on this bus tour.

Now, coinciding with this swing, as you mentioned, is the campaign pouring money into the Savannah area media market over the last three weeks, already $1.7 million in ads with much more expected. Now, those ads ran the gamut. We talked about it earlier in the week. They were focused on the economy. They're also launching ads on Project 2025, which that blueprint that they're trying to tie to former President Donald Trump.

Now, Trump is trying to distance himself from that, but his former administration officials have been working on it. But all of this to say that they are trying to draw a stark contrast between Harris and Trump while also talking about the kitchen table issues, which are really going to be front and center while they're on this bus tour.

But again, Boris, coming back to the significance of this trip, it tells us that Democrats still see an opportunity in southern Georgia, which is something they saw in 2022. And they're trying to test it out again. Whether or not it works, we'll find out in November. But certainly, the campaign is making an aggressive play in this part of the state.

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SANCHEZ: Priscilla Alvarez, live for us following the Harris campaign live in Savannah, Georgia. Thank you so much.

Let's get the latest on this upcoming interview tomorrow night with CNN's Eva McKend. Eva, what questions are you anticipating that will be asked of the Vice President and her VP pick?

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Boris, I know that there is a lot of attention on the policy differences, a lot of attention, for instance, on this issue of fracking, when she ran as a presidential candidate, she advocated for banning fracking. That is a position that she no longer supports.

But I am most interested in how she talks about immigration. You know, Boris, if you read her memoir, the first organization that she visited after she was elected to the Senate was CHIRLA, an immigrant rights group in California. She gives a very passionate defense of undocumented immigrants in her book, talking about how she was really distressed about families potentially being separated under the Trump administration, about how aggressively the Trump administration were targeting undocumented immigrants, even those who were not committing crimes after being in the United States.

Well, now, she advocates for a border enforcement bill that doesn't even include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. So she should really have to explain her evolution on immigration.

SANCHEZ: How about the fact that this is a joint interview? How is that going to shape the dynamic?

MCKEND: You know, Republicans are targeting her for this, saying that she should have to speak for herself in this first interview. But she chose Governor Walz for a reason. On the campaign trail as I watched them together, they have very good chemistry. They play well off of one another. And ultimately, she feels comfortable with him. And Americans are voting for the ticket. So I think it makes sense for them to appear together and it could work to her benefit.

SANCHEZ: Eva MckEnd, thanks so much for the update. Look forward to watching that tomorrow. Brianna?

KEILAR: Former President Trump also sitting down for a new interview. In a one on one with TV's Doctor Phil, Trump made a pretty stunning claim about the assassination attempt against him. CNN's Alayna Treene is with us now on this story. What did Trump say?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, he said a lot of things in that interview. But one of the interesting things was that he tried to place at least some of the blame for the assassination attempt in Butler last month on both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Now, we have heard him and other high profile republicans try to argue that the rhetoric from democrats, particularly, you could hear Trump reference this in that interview, the line about him being a threat to democracy as being something that could have perhaps contributed to this. Of course, there is no evidence of that but then he also went on to talk about his Secret Service detail. I want you to take a listen to exactly what he said.

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DONALD TRUMP: When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it? I think to a certain extent, it's Biden's fault and Harris's fault. And I'm the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren't too interested in my health and safety.

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TREENE: So a lot to unpack there. But the parts about Secret Service, he went on to say, you know, that he thinks that they perhaps tried to limit some of the Secret Service that he has had or that has affected the Secret Service protection that Donald Trump has. I mean, there's just no evidence of that whatsoever. Although I will say that, you know, this is an unprecedented election. You have a former President who still has Secret Service detail. And then it was then a current sitting president who's both running against each other. Now, you have Vice President Kamala Harris. So there's been a lot of strain that we have reported on thoroughly here on the Secret Service and whether or not that impacted them that day.

I think we're still waiting to learn more details in their investigation. But all to say, this is some really, you know, nasty attacks now from Donald Trump. We're entering that news phase, new phase of the election, where we're going to continue to see some of this. There's obviously no evidence that Vice President Harris or President Joe Biden contributed at all to this. But he's trying to argue that their rhetoric, some of the perhaps did play a role that day. You know, Donald Trump has said this before. I think we're going to continue to hear some of these lines, but obviously no evidence to back it up.

KEILAR: All right, Alayna, thank you so much for that. We appreciate it. Let's talk more about this with Pollster and Communication Strategist Frank Luntz.

Frank, listen to what Trump said, something else he said in this interview. He covered a lot of things, as Alayna said with Dr. Phil, this was about vote counting in California.

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DONALD TRUMP: I look at California, I gave a speech. I had a crowd, so big. I said, there's no way I could lose California. But automatically, they mark it down if you're a Republican, as a loss that you lose by 5 million votes. I

[14:10:01]

I said 5 million votes? I guarantee, if Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?

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KEILAR: I do, Frank, like to point out that Jesus took some bread and fish and made a lot more bread and fish out of it, so maybe not the best vote counter. However, I just wonder, when you're looking at voters undecideds independence, does this cut through? How do they see these kinds of comments?

FRANK LUNTZ, POLSTER AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIST: I want to make one clarification about Jesus and politics. Jesus was Jewish. He lived at home until he was 30. He went into his father's occupation. And his mother thought he was God. So that's something that Donald Trump should understand as he's speaking about Jesus. Nobody cares. Genuinely, nobody cares. They don't care how big your crowd size is. They don't care about whether you're going to win California, lose California. It's not relevant. California, with all due respect to your California viewers, the state is not going to vote Republican no matter what. What matters is how it plays in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, which is now up for grabs, Georgia, which is now up for grabs again, or the states of Nevada and Arizona. That's all that matters in this election. That's number one.

Number two is the negativity does not play. The public is just frustrated with it. It's had enough of it. And when you compare the two candidates side by side on personality, Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump overwhelmingly. But when you compare them on inflation, when you compare them, which is really affordability, when you compare them on immigration, which is really security and safety, and a sense of not being afraid in the country. When you compare them on those two issues, which matter more to the voters than anything else, that's what Trump does well.

And I want to emphasize this. To every viewer who thinks I'm anti- Trump or anti-Harris. If you talk about things that voters don't care about, they're not going to vote for you. And Donald Trump is already talking about this election being stolen. You can't steal something that you gave away. I've never seen the candidates more miss the mark than Trump has. His advertising is exceptional. It's very explicit and very clear.

But in terms of he himself, he's all over the map and he deserves the fact that he's been falling. But again, I have to give you one caveat, and then I'll be quiet. He's actually stopped falling. Even though they had a pretty strong convention last week, it looks like the Harris boomlet has reached his peak with her having roughly a three point advantage. I remind you that that was the advantage that Hillary Clinton had over Donald Trump on Election Day 2016 and he still beat her in the Electoral College. This election is way too close to call.

KEILAR: We do bring you on to make noise, not to be quiet, Frank. But I wonder as we seed the Vice President heading to Georgia with her running mate. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows Trump leading Harris in Georgia among registered voters, 51 to 44. So that's a, you know, that's quite a spread right there, a seven point spread. Is that what you think Georgia is at right now?

LUNTZ: Trump is leading in Georgia. And if Trump wins Georgia and wins Pennsylvania, it's going to be very good. That's going to indicate where North Carolina is going. It's going to be very hard for Harris to win. Those are the key states. And we still go back to, did Donald Trump choose the right vice president, vice presidential nominee? He did not need that to win Ohio. Did Harris choose the right vice presidential nominee? She does not need the governor of Minnesota to win Pennsylvania. I think that both campaigns are calibrated perfectly. Both candidates are not.

And you're going to have this bigger divergence as time goes on between how the candidate performs and how the campaign performs. And mark my word, they both matter. And the fact is that debate on September 10th when it is side by side is going to be mind-blowing. Arguably, it's going to be the most important day of this entire campaign, except for the day when Biden and Trump had that same interaction and Joe Biden came up wanting.

KEILAR: Yeah. No, very good point. Frank, thank you so much for the great analysis. We do appreciate it.

LUNTZ: And I can't tell, by the way, if you were laughing with the Jesus line, but that was a joke.

KEILAR: I was laughing. I was just thinking, are we going to get in trouble for our jokes? But no, I took your joke, Frank. Thank you. Appreciate it. Ahead this hour on CNN News Central, a New Hampshire man has died after contracting a rare mosquito-borne infection. It's known as EEE. What we know about this virus that has some New England states enacting curfews. Plus, Namibia says, it is going to kill hundreds of wild animals.

[14:15:04]

We're talking elephants, zebras, hippos, and offer their meat to families struggling amid the country's deadly drought. We are live from Africa. But first, it's a story that you'll only see here. CNN gets an inside look at Iran's hacking operation, including one of the phishing emails sent to Trump's allies that once clicked, gave Iran unfettered access to the user's computer.

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SANCHEZ: Iran's hacking operation has cybersecurity officials on guard this election season. In an exclusive, CNN got access to copies of emails used by the hackers and found their work started years before the infiltration of the Trump campaign about two weeks ago.

[14:20:08]

U.S. officials believe that Iran was behind that hack, while Tehran has denied it. Let's turn to CNN's Zach Cohen and Evan Perez for their exclusive reporting.

So Zach, give us the details on what we've learned about these hackers.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yeah, Boris, we're learning more about what really is a relentless campaign in a multiyear campaign by Iranian hackers to target both former Biden administration officials and former Trump administration officials, really casting this wide net as sort of an intelligence collection effort that does focus on national security issues that are relevant to Iran's future security, right?

And I want to take you inside a specific operation that we're learning more about, this hack and leak operation targeting a former Trump administration official who was close to former National Security Advisor John Bolton. You'll remember John Bolton, very hawkish when it comes to Iran.

Not exactly one of Iran's biggest fans per se. But this former official had his personal email account compromised. Iranian hackers were able to then impersonate that former official, sending out a wide net of emails and pretending to be this person seeking advice on a manuscript, a book manuscript that they were working on. I want to read one of the emails impersonating this former Trump official that was sent to D.C. based think tankers who are also hardliners on Iran.

It says, I'm close to finishing the manuscript and have begun asking experts like yourselves to review the chapters. The email then has a link and asks the recipients to click that link, purporting to be innocent enough, linking to the chapters of the book he once reviewed. It was actually a link to malware that would have given the hackers access to these various individuals accounts.

Look, we don't know the scope of the success of this operation, but we do notice that the tactics are very similar to what we've seen recently by Iranian hackers, the same Iranian hacking group to target Trump campaign officials using Roger Stone's personal email account that they were able to compromise. We're also learning that they were able to successfully infiltrate the account of a former Biden ambassador who has a lot of visibility into issues dealing with Israel. So you can kind of see why they're -- who they're targeting and why.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Evan, put this into context for us, given the capabilities of Iran compared to Russia and China and other actors that have been aggressive toward the United States with these cyber- attacks.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, I mean, they're clearly very much aggressive. But in comparison, the Chinese are obviously so much bigger and much more, you know, a much more on the forefront of this effort. And certainly the Russians had a lot of success in 2016. You know, they did influence that election in 2016.

And so what the Iranians are doing now, certainly intelligence officials are very concerned about because, you know, they've gone from just routine intelligence collection to what appears to be an effort to try to influence voters before November. And that's what is the most concerning part of this.

Obviously, Iran has a lot of things that's on their agenda, including, of course, people who are critics of the regime. But also, you know, they clearly want to sow chaos with the 2024 election. And so that appears to be one of the efforts that they're making this year.

SANCHEZ: Evan Perez, Zach, thank you so much. Appreciate you both. Still to come, former President Donald Trump faces questions after a possible physical confrontation between staff at Arlington National Cemetery and his photography team.

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[14:27:51]

KEILAR: The Trump campaign is facing backlash for an apparent altercation at Arlington National Cemetery between the Trump team and cemetery staff. The former President was at Arlington on Monday to mark the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing when 13 U.S. service members died in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to NPR, while there, Trump campaign staff verbally abused and pushed a cemetery official when the official tried to prevent the Trump campaign from filming in Section 60, which is a section of the cemetery reserved for those recently killed in America's wars abroad.

Arlington National Cemetery confirmed the incident, telling CNN, quote, "federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries to include photographers, content creators, or any other persons attending for purposes or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign." The Trump campaign says an unnamed individual did block members of Trump's team, but denies a physical altercation occurred. And they claim to have video to back up their account. However, they have not released that video. Trump has, however, posted a video from his visit online in which he criticizes the Afghanistan withdrawal under President Biden.

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DONALD TRUMP: We didn't lose one person in 18 months. And then they took over that disaster, the leaving of Afghanistan.

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KEILAR: Joining me now is Retired Army General and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark. Sir, I just wonder what you make of this news and of this alleged altercation.

WESLEY CLARK, RETIRED U.S. ARMY: Well, I think it's totally inappropriate that Donald Trump has used that part of Arlington Cemetery that way for a partisan political purpose. But it's deeper than that. First of all, we know that in private, he doesn't respect service. He doesn't respect sacrifice. He's never done it for anybody. And so this was a stunt. And it's particularly distasteful for those of us who've lost friends in these conflicts to see this kind of manipulation on Arlington National Cemetery. That's hallowed ground for us. And he should know better.

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