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Dozens Killed in Military Facility in Ukraine; Harris Makes Pitch to Union Voters; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) is Interviewed about the Reproductive Rights Tour; IDF Says it Killed a Hamas Commander. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 03, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Age nine.

WAGMEISTER: And what do you remember about watching it?

JENNA ORTEGA, ACTRESS, "BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE": I remember sweating a lot because I saw a drunk Beetlejuice costume when I was like six- years-old at a Halloween costume party and he terrified me.

WAGMEISTER (voice over): As for a third movie, likely titled with those three cursed words -

WINONA RYDER, ACTRESS, "BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE": Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

WAGMEISTER (voice over): These generational stars say they could be back for more.

CATHERINE O'HARA, ACTRESS, "BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE": Yes, I'd like to be alive in another 30 years.

RYDER: Yes.

WAGMEISTER (voice over): Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking news this morning. At least 41 people have been killed, hundreds wounded after a Russian strike on a military educational facility in Ukraine. We are live in Kyiv for you.

And when it comes to the presidential race and the big presidential debate one week from today, there are two very different strategies emerging from the candidates as they're preparing to face off.

And Ticketmaster is about to face tough questions from the U.K. government over its dynamic pricing it put in place for Oasis tickets after thousands of people were essentially locked out from buying tickets. I'm Kate Bolduan, with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS

CENTRAL.

Let's start off getting to that breaking news out of Ukraine. Forty- one people killed, nearly 200 wounded in a Russian attack on what's described as a military educational facility in central Ukraine.

Let's get right over to CNN's Fred Pleitgen, who's on the ground in Kyiv for us.

What are you learning, Fred?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Kate.

Obviously, a lot of this information still just coming into us, very fresh, and the Ukrainians sort of coming out with it bit by bit. But the one thing that they have confirmed very early ones is at least 41 people have been confirmed to be killed. It's unclear whether or not that number is still going to rise as the rescue crews still very much on the scene. The Ukrainians are also saying that around 180 people were injured in the strikes that took place.

They have offered some details as to what appears to have happened there. We've already mentioned this is a military educational facility. They say that the strike partially destroyed the communications institute building of that facility. And the Ukrainians are saying that there was actually an air alert, as air raid alert, that went off shortly before the strike took place. But they also say that the time from which the air raid sirens went off to when the missiles impacted was so short that those who were in that area were still in the process of getting to air raid shelters when the impacts happened. And, obviously, a lot of them caught off guard.

The Ukrainians are, right now, speaking of two ballistic missiles. Search and rescue crews apparently on the scene very quickly in that central city of Poltava. The Ukrainians are saying they managed to save 25 people in the debris and have to pull 11 of them out of the actual debris. As you can imagine, the hospitals there are right now filled up with people that they are trying to treat.

And the foreign minister of this country, Dmytro Kuleba, he came out a couple of minutes ago on CNN and said that this once again shows that Ukraine needs more air defense systems. Obviously, the Ukrainians ripping already into the Russians over this.

Officially, the Russian military and the Russian government have not commented on this yet. However, there are some very prominent Russian military bloggers who have, in fact, said that Russia did attack this military educational facility. Obviously, a huge blow for the Ukrainians.

And this is definitely one of the largest single mass casualty strikes that we've seen here in Ukraine, at least over the past couple of months, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, a huge impact there.

Fred, thank you so much for your reporting.

Oh, one - sorry - sorry, Fred, we were having a little bit of communication problem here on our end.

PLEITGEN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: How does - how - when you take these strikes that have - this - these strikes that happened overnight, you're reporting on, how does this fit into the overall pattern we've seen, strategy we've seen unfold?

PLEITGEN: Yes. Yes, absolutely. It's something that we've seen over the past couple of weeks here, that the Russians have apparently drastically expanded the use of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, of course, in an aerial campaign, I think we can call it, against Ukrainian cities, against frontline positions, of course, as well, but also villages and entire regions.

If we look at just the past couple of days, yesterday, for instance, was the first day of school here in Ukraine of the new term and there was a gigantic Russian missile attack. Most of it focused here on the capital, Kyiv, where I am right now. A lot of us, of course, were ripped out of our sleep at around 5:00 a.m. in the morning when the air raid sirens went off and there were several ballistic and cruise missiles that impacted. The Ukrainian say they managed to take down most of those missiles. But, of course, some of them did impact at sites in the city. There were three people who were wounded in that.

[09:05:00]

And then you have the region of Kharkiv, which is very close to the Russian border. And just over the weekend, there was a big barrage of Russian missiles that struck that town. And the Ukrainians are saying that 41 people were injured in those. Because that area is very close to the border, the Russians there, for those aerial attacks, not only using drones and missiles, but also using their jets as well and some pretty heavy munitions that they're dropping on a lot of the buildings.

But it's something that we have indeed seen increase over the past couple of weeks. A Monday ago, for instance, there was what the Ukrainians call the largest barrage, the largest single barrage to ever hit Ukrainian territory where the Russians used over 120 missiles and more than 100 drones to strike various areas of Ukrainian territory. So, it's certainly something where we do appear to be seeing a pattern where the Russians have definitely increase that aerial campaign. And now the Ukrainians are saying this, another signal of - of what's been going on.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Fred, thank you so much.

Sara. SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, a post-Labor Day pre-debate tango as the 2024 race enters its official final sprint. One week from today, the first face-to-face showdown takes place, meaning right now is the time for each candidate to get their debate ducks in a row.

For team Harris, the next 48 hours is nearly all about the economy. She will unveil new policy details tomorrow, as her campaign today drops a brand new TV ad targeting the middle class, something she just reiterated on the trail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up. Who you lift up. Do you fight for workers? Do you fight for families? Do you fight for those who must be seen and heard and deserve the dignity that comes with hard work? That's what we fight for. And when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is leading us off this morning.

Priscilla, what are you learning about this message that is being the focus of the Harris campaign right now?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're certainly trying to fine tune their message on the economy. Of course, this is an issue where the vice president typically lags behind former President Donald Trump in the polls. So, they're trying to seize it again and really make the case that the vice president is focused on affordability, lowering housing prices, for example, or drug costs. And so that is what we have seen on the campaign trail yesterday.

Now, notably, she was joined by President Joe Biden. He, of course, won the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by less than two percentage points in 2020. And the campaign sees him as particularly being useful and utilized in the blue wall states, given that he has been boosted by labor groups and union workers. And so, bringing the two together yesterday gives you just a better glimpse of how they plan to strategize over the next few months on this particular issue.

Now, of course, despite all of this, the vice president repeatedly on the trail has said that they are the underdog in the race, and that is a message that she gave to those in the crowd yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's going to be a tight race to the very end. So, let's not pay too much attention to those polls because, as unions and labor knows best, we know what it's like to be the underdog. And we are the underdogs in this race. And we have some hard work then ahead of us. But here's the beauty of us in this room, we like hard work. Hard work is good work. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, the campaign is fanning out across the country with surrogates like President Joe Biden, who will be going to Wisconsin and Michigan. And also with the launch of a reproductive rights tour starting today in Florida with Senator Klobuchar and the campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez. Of course, Florida, a place where abortion is on the ballot.

Now, in a memo over the weekend, the chair saying that reproductive rights is a, quote, powerful piece of the campaign. So, in the run-up to the presidential debate, the campaign leaning on the economy and reproductive rights to make their case to voters before she goes toe to toe against former President Donald Trump.

SIDNER: Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much for your reporting this morning for us.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, with us now is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, who will be on the reproductive rights bus tour.

Congresswoman, Quinnipiac and "The Wall Street Journal" both did polls last week where they asked voters little bit different questions, but what is the most important issue to you in one poll, and extremely important to you in the other. And in "The Wall Street Journal" poll, abortion was at 14 percent. The economy is at 29 percent. You can see right there, the economy twice as important according to voters as abortion.

[09:10:03]

And in the Quinnipiac poll, democracy was top ranked, economy second. And then abortion down at 33 percent. A little bit down the list.

So, I guess my question to you is, why aren't you about to go on an economy tour?

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL): We're going on a reproductive rights tour because we're starting here in Donald Trump's backyard, in Palm Beach County, which, in our state, across the - across Florida, we are the poster child for MAGA extremism that has ripped women's reproductive health care decisions from them. A ban so extreme that it - it is likely that most women don't even know that they're pregnant at six weeks, which is when our ban begins.

And on top of that, you have severe restrictions that could have doctors land in prison. And even people who are aiding in providing a woman with an abortion after - after six weeks could be arrested.

This is the worst example of the anti-democratic proposals and policies of Donald Trump. He's proud that he appointed a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. And we need to make sure that we focus on the economy, which the Biden-Harris record is incredibly strong, reducing prescription drug costs, making sure we created more than 15 million jobs and counting, bringing inflation down. We have a record to run on. But making sure that the government is not all up in your personal health care business is a critical one. And we have an abortion rights ballot - ballot initiative here, Amendment Four, that we want to make sure that folks across the state know about and vote yes for.

BERMAN: So, it's interesting because Donald Trump, just last week, in one 24-hour period, said that he wanted to vote for more than six weeks. He wanted - he didn't approve of a six-week ban. He wanted more weeks there. But then he also, 24 hours later, said he was going to vote no on Amendment Four, which, as you noted, would overturn effectively that ban.

How do you reconcile those two positions?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Right. That Donald Trump can't be trusted for anything that comes out of his mouth. He, very clearly, what stood with people who believed that abortion should be nearly completely illegal, he appointed a Supreme Court, and is proud of it, that overturned Roe v Wade, and he, you know, when he says that abortion rights should be left to the states, well, left to the state in the state of Florida, abortion rights essentially ended. You know, even if a woman's life is in danger, the legislature - the state legislature here under Ron DeSantis, a MAGA extremist copy, banned abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and whether the mother's life is in jeopardy, except only in the extreme - most extreme circumstances. This is not where the mainstream of Americans are, or the mainstream of Floridians are. And we want to make sure that we can continue the policies that have - that have been administrating by the Biden-Harris administration of reducing prescription drug costs, creating jobs, bringing costs down. And that's what Kamala Harris is continuing to talk about. And also making housing more affordable, which is a real issue in Florida too.

BERMAN: I do want to go back to the economy here. "The New York Times" did something interesting today. They had James Carville write a piece about what he thought Democrats should do - Kamala Harris should do to win the election. And Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, wrote a piece about what he thought Donald Trump should do to win the election.

And this is what Senator Lindsey Graham wrote. He wrote, "when Ms. Harris and Democrats say, we are not going back, that isn't the winning slogan they think it is. If anything, it shows just how out of touch they are. Of course Americans want to go back to affordable groceries, a secure border, and a world that respects both the United States and its commander in chief."

What do you think about that?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Americans don't want to go back to an administration that Donald Trump presided over, that killed millions of people during Covid, that - that - that had a mass deportation policy that was one that lead to the overturning of abortion rights, that supports tearing health care away. In Florida, we have the most Affordable Care Act - Care Act sign-ups in the country every year because people want to make sure that when they're sick they can afford to go to the doctor. Donald Trump supports tearing that health care away and making it so that we would go back to the days when pre- existing conditions were not covered, when you couldn't get basic, preventative care without a co-pay. He would create more economic health care crisis for American - crisis for Americans, which is where we were before the Affordable Care Act and where he tries to take us back to, more government shutdowns, more chaos, less democracy.

[09:15:02]

BERMAN: Sixty-three days to go.

Congresswoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz, thank you so much for your time this morning.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: New overnight, tension escalating between Israeli citizens and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he says he refuses to change course on a hostages and ceasefire deal.

And a critical hearing in President Trump's election subversion case. New reporting on how special prosecutor Jack Smith plans to tackle the issue of immunity.

And new video of the moment a man was launched out of the water by a humpback whale.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden someone was in the air on top of a freaking whale.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:15]

SIDNER: Breaking overnight, the Israeli military says it has killed a Hamas commander responsible for the massacre of civilians in a southern Israeli town on October 7th. This as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure to secure a ceasefire deal and bring the remaining hostages still in Gaza back home.

Protesters have flooded streets across Israel, including outside the prime minister's home. The demonstrators anguished over the killing of six young hostages at the hands of Hamas.

I'm joined now by CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid. He is also a politics and foreign policy reporter for "Axios."

Thank you so much for coming in this morning for us.

Can you first give us any sense of who this commander is, was and what - and how this all went down?

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I think that at the moment, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave this speech last night, laid down his terms for the hostages and his main term that he says, I will not - I will not withdraw IDF forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, the stretch of land along the Gaza-Egypt border. And, you know, he stands on this - on this condition. And as -

SIDNER: What - what did come out of national -

RAVID: And as long as this -

SIDNER: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

RAVID: No, no, and as long as - as, you know, he stands on this condition, it seems that nothing can move forward. And that question is whether the Biden administration, in the coming days, will do something to put a new proposal on the table and face both Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in front of a decision.

SIDNER: What did come out of that national security meeting that they had with negotiators yesterday, that Biden, you know, which they are trying to figure out, you know, what they're going to do next because you can't keep saying that a deal is almost going to be made and it just never comes to fruition.

RAVID: Yes, I think, you know, Biden is also in front of a crucial decision point because yesterday when he met with his national security team, with Vice President Harris also in the Situation Room, the dilemma was, according to what I heard from U.S. officials is, OK, we put forward another final - the final, final, final proposal for a hostage deal. And what if then Hamas and Israel say we don't want it? What then? Does that mean that the U.S. says, all right, we're out. Whatever happens to the hostages, happens. We don't care anymore. It's - you know, it's a big risk. And I think that the question Biden and his top advisers are asking themselves is, before we do such a thing, what is our plan b? And for now at least, I don't have a sense that there's a plan b.

SIDNER: What are Netanyahu's options at this point? You talked about, you know, what he'd like to keep a force in there. That's a nonstarter, of course, for - for Hamas. So, what are the options?

RAVID: Well, Netanyahu doesn't seem to be moving anywhere with this demand regarding keeping IDF forces along the Gaza-Egypt border. All the Israeli negotiators, all the heads of the Israeli security forces and intelligence community, all tell him that this is a nonstarter for Hamas. Netanyahu says, you will see, maybe not now, but in a week, in two weeks, in two months, Hamas will cave and we will achieve our goals. And then they tell him, the security chiefs, the head of the intelligence community all say, that's great, but the hostages in captivity don't have that time because every day another hostage could die, as we've just seen a few days ago.

SIDNER: As far as the hostage situation, I mean, Hamas has been clear that if Israel tries to rescue the hostages, which they tried to do in this past instance, that they are going to send the hostages home in body bags. That message doesn't give you any real hope that there is a solution here.

Is there anything that the Biden administration, you think, can do to try and push a final proposal, and what that might include?

RAVID: I think there's one thing the Biden administration hasn't done so far. And the hostage families, the American hostages, the seven hostages that are still in Hamas captivity, their families urge the Biden administration again and again, and even more in the last few days, to consider saying to Mr. Netanyahu, we understand that you don't want a deal at the moment.

[09:25:09]

That's OK. You're a leader of a sovereign country. But we have seven Americans in Gaza. So, we, as a - as the U.S. government, will have to act on our own, separately, to try and cut a deal for our citizens who are in Hamas captivity.

The Biden administration has so far been reluctant to go down that road, claiming that it doesn't have leverage, et cetera, et cetera. But the families say to the Biden administration, you did not have leverage over Russia when it comes to the release of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, but you manage to do a deal anyway because you managed to find leverage. You went to Germany, you went to Slovenia, you went to other countries. You found a way to square that circle and get a deal. So, do the same thing here for the seven Americans that are still in captivity.

SIDNER: You know, it's an interesting proposal. Barak Ravid, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Appreciate you.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: So, we are standing by for an important hearing in the election subversion case against Donald Trump. New reporting on how Jack Smith plans to keep the case alive.

And also, there is new video of Joey Chestnut moments after he shattered his own hot dog eating record.

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