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First Trump-Vance Campaign Trail Event Held Tonight In Michigan; Biden: Getting Back On Campaign Trail "Next Week"; Biden Facing Growing Calls To Drop Out Of Presidential Race; Source: Shooter May Have Scoped Out Rally Site Using Drone; Remembering The Life Of Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Aired 9-10p ET

Aired July 20, 2024 - 21:00   ET

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

[21:01:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: You were in the CNN NEWSROOM with me. I'm Sara Sidner here in New York.

We're entering a new phase of the race for the next president. Donald Trump just held his first campaign rally after officially becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

While Joe Biden spent another day in isolation due of course, to his COVID as his reelection bid continues to be complicated. With 108 days until Election Day, more Democrats are coming out against President Biden running for a second time.

There are now 35 lawmakers from him its own party, urging him to drop out and more than 50 former national security officials and foreign policy experts wrote him a letter, requesting the same, all of them expressing an urgent message that Donald Trump cannot return to the White House in their view.

But Trump is showing major momentum, as you know, exactly one week since surviving an assassination attempt. He wore a smaller bandage over his wounded ear and gave this message just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Republicans must win. We have to win, win, win, win, win. We want a landslide that is too big to rig. If you want to save America, get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know, and get -- you got to vote early, vote absentee. I don't care how you vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Now, we'll give you an update in just a bit on that maddening technical glitch that has left tens of thousands of people wondering if they will ever get their flight to their destination.

But we do begin this hour with the revving up of the political campaigns. Tonight was the first time the former president stumped with his new vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance. They were at an indoor event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is the first on the trail test for the secret service since the

attempt on Trump's life at an outdoor venue last weekend.

CNN's Kristen Holmes has been following this campaign from the beginning. Here's what she has to say.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESAPONDENT: Sara, this is the first time we saw Donald Trump up there on a rally stage since that nation attempt last week in Butler, Pennsylvania, and he seemed to be fully in his element. He spoke for roughly two hours. He engaged with the crowd at one point.

He was polling them on various aspects, saying who should he run again? Should it be Joe Biden? Should it be Kamala Harris? And other points he was riffing on various things that happened while he was in office, completely off script, but again, feeding to the crowd, there were thousands of people in this arena cheering for him.

He came out with just a small band aid on his ear. He has placed that gauze from that shooting that happened last week.

Now, one notable part about him being here in Michigan, obviously critical battleground state. He also appeared for the first time with vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance on the campaign trail, Vance introduced him, left the stage, then Donald Trumps book, the reason why that is notable is a part of Vance's appeal, at least if you talk to people who are close to the former were president said he might be able to help with voters, working class voters, particularly in areas like Michigan, like Pennsylvania, like Wisconsin. All of those being again critical states of Donald Trump won in 2016 and then lost in 2020.

Now I do want to point to one specific moment during the speech where he tried to distance himself again from Project 2025. That, of course, being the overall plan transition plan put into place, or at least developed by the Heritage Foundation and a bunch of other conservative groups that would be a plan for whatever the next Republican president is, people who are authors of that plan. Many of them worked for former President Donald Trump's administration or currently allies of his, but it has come under a lot of fire for how conservative some of those policies are.

Take a listen to what Donald Trump said.

TRUMP: Like some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project 25 and I don't even know. I mean, some of them, I know who they are, but they're very, very conservative. Like you have this sort of the opposite of the radical left.

[21:05:00]

You have the radical left and you have the radical right.

And they come up with this pro -- I don't know what the hell it is. It's Project 25. He's involved in project. And then they read some of the things that they are extreme -- I mean, they're seriously extreme. But I don't know anything about it.

HOLMES: Now it is clear from the times that Donald Trump has made to try and distance himself from Project 2025 that he and his team view this as some sort of vulnerability. However, it's not just them who see it as a vulnerability.

President Joe Biden's team also has gone after Trump on Project 2025, linking him to it, putting ads out, and attacking him on the various issues -- Sara.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: All right. Thank you to our Kristen Holmes.

Turning to the latest on President Joe Biden, he is in isolation as he should be. At his beach home in Delaware as he is recovering from COVID after testing positive. But he released a statement saying he's looking forward to getting back on the trail next week, the campaign trail.

CNN correspondent Priscilla Alvarez in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, covering the president.

Priscilla, there's been a lot of pressure. It's growing to get him to leave the race, but he is doubling down. He says he's staying and he'll be on the campaign trail next week.

What are you hearing?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Even in the last several hours, that pressure has been mounting with even more Democratic lawmakers coming out today telling the president to step aside. Of course, this has been a deeply frustrating and challenging time for President Biden as he continues to face those calls from members of his own party, from allies, from donors who think he is just not up to the task to take on former President Donald Trump.

Now, when pressed on this, the Biden campaign maintains that he is going to stay in the race. They've taken to the airwaves over the last 24 hours. They've really statements essentially say that the president is looking for forward to hitting the campaign trail. Again, that there is no plan B and that they are full steam ahead with the Biden- Harris ticket but, of course, the president is having to grapple with all of this behind closed doors because he has tested positive for COVID. He continues to test positive. And so he has to self-isolate and his clothes advisers are here in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

They often do travel with the president, the White House has been notifying reporters of the briefings that he is having with his team virtually, but certainly it is his inner circle that is pivotal in moments like this, these challenging moments where he is facing this pressure from the party, and it remains unclear whether he can survive this. Of course, some officials find this wholly untenable, while loyal

aides say that the president is dug in. So the resounding message ultimately from the Biden campaign and from the president himself, is that he is saying in until November with plans they say to win in November, but those around him are many of those around him are really questioning that and concerned about whether he can in fact be the best Democratic nominee for them this election year.

SIDNER: Priscilla, who is the president directly communicating with about all of this term while and sort of the fracture in the party over whether or not he should continue his campaign?

ALVAREZ: So again, the president is in regular touch with his senior advisers, many of whom are here in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he has a residence and were key is self-isolating. But in really pivotal moments, it is often his family that matters most they carry the most influence.

Now the first lady is also here with him, and it is those people who are in conversations with him particularly as they continue to face this mounting pressure on these calls from Democratic lawmakers. And he was also hear last week working the phones and talking to key groups lawmakers to try to get them in line, to try to ease their concerns.

So this has been a moment of turmoil for the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign. And the way that they have tried to work through that is to work the phones. Now, we have gotten to the point where a lot of those conversations are really between the president and his interests circle, and inner circle. By the way, that sources tell us, has grown even tighter as they wrestle with this moment.

SIDNER: Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much for your reporting out there in Rehoboth.

All right. We've got a lot to discuss tonight. Up next, a defiant President Biden reportedly seething at his fellow Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, who pulled him in private. He can't win when looking at the polling anyway. How much is the powerful former House speaker pushing to get Biden to get out of the race.

Plus, new details tonight about what the would-be assassin of Donald Trump was doing just hours before Donald Trump took that stage in Pennsylvania last weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:14:38]

SIDNER: Just as we've been hearing from sources to our CNN reporters, that President Biden is seething at Nancy Pelosi over her lack of support for continuing his reelection bid, the speaker emerita is headlining a fund-raiser known as the unity dinner in North Carolinas capital rally. You can see some live pictures there of that event on your screen. Nancy Pelosi speaking right now.

[21:15:00]

Joining me now to talk about Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, the state of the race. Republican strategist, Lanhee Chen, Democratic strategist, Caroline Heldman and presidential historian Allan Lichtman.

Thank you all for staying with us this Saturday evening.

Caroline, I want to begin with you. What do you see is Nancy Pelosi's next steps in all this? Because she is there. She is raising money, but she, according to all of our reporting and the background has been putting a lot of pressure on Joe Biden telling him he cannot win and he is defiant, saying, I'm not budging.

CAROLINE HELDMAN, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE: Yeah. Sara, what's so significant I think is how much of a role Nancy Pelosi has played in Joe Biden's rise in success so the folks who are turning on him and asking him to step out of this race, it appears that President Obama is working behind the scenes.

Chuck Schumer, 37 Democratic leaders are now publicly calling for him to step down. These are folks who have supported him over the years, but they're looking at the numbers.

They're looking at three out of four Americans don't think he has the mental fitness for the office, two-thirds of Democrats want him to step aside. He's down, he's losing ground in 14 states according to the latest polls, he's behind Trump in all seven key swing states and states like Minnesota and Virginia even New Mexico, that shouldn't be in play that he easily want to 2020 are now in play.

So, if the election were held today, it would be a Trump blow out and that is what Nancy Pelosi and others who supported Biden over the years are responding to.

SIDNER: All right. I want to get to you, Lanhee. Donald Trump had his rally today did use some of the same sort of attack language that he's used in the past. There wasn't a whole lot of unity spoken at that -- at that rally, but J.D. Vance, alongside with him, when you look at this combination, do you think that Donald Trumps sort of missed a chance to expand the appeal of the Republican ticket?

LANHEE CHEN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I don't know that he missed the chance. I think that what you get with J.D. Vance is you get someone who can really articulately talk about the so-called MAGA agenda. So in that sense, I think that agenda has appeal beyond the traditional white working class voters we've talked about so much. It has appealed with some Hispanic voters. It has appealed with some African American voters.

And so I think that its a, obviously, if he'd gone in the direction of Marco Rubio, lets say, that would have been a more overt play for a different part of the electorate. But I think J.D. Vance does bring an interesting, much younger, energetic complexion to the ticket. Now, whether in fact that'll be enough to get Trump across the finish line, whether that will be helpful to him down the road, we'll see. But my sense is that the Trump campaign does believe that Vance brings

an element that no other candidate would have certainly loyalty to Trump as well as another factor that they were looking at when -- when Vance was picked.

SIDNER: Allan, now to you, I know you predict pretty well who the president will be, perhaps one of the things that you can look at right now, is that all Democrats agreeing on this thing that this division inside the party especially that has become so public is not good for the Democrats period where 108 days from election day.

I mean, how much more time is left to try to bring the party together behind the candidate they believe is going to win so that the public it feels good about it, too?

ALLAN LICHTMAN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: You know, I've been studying American politics from the founding to the present. And I have never seen a political party engaged in such a foolish, self-destructed escapade as the Democrats, trashing their incumbent president, the nominee, not only members of Congress, but of the voters, and sadly, the media and the pollsters, pundits, or the operatives are all complicit in this.

In fact, they are pushing the Democrats into a situation where the White House party has never prevailed since 1900, an open seat with no incumbent running and a contested nomination, whereas if Biden stays in and gets the nomination, you then have a situation of an incumbent running, an uncontested nomination. He got 87 percent of the primary vote, and almost always the White House party wins under those conditions.

What all of these critics, every one of them have in common is they have zero track record in predicting the outcomes of elections. And yet they all claim to know what the Democrats should do to be predicted winners this time. I do have a 40-year track record and my keys to the White House, and it takes six of them to go negative to count out the incumbent party.

Biden ticks off incumbency and contest. That means six of the remaining 11 would have to fall to predict the Democrats defeat.

[21:20:04]

He's not running. You have a party contest. Only four more keys would have to fall to predict their defeat.

So, not only other Democrats running against the verdict of history, they are contradicting the only political system that's been right before years. But there is one positive here, Biden should stay in. He should become the nominee, and then I guarantee you, all those spineless, cowardly Democrats who have turned against him will come running back and give us a big show party unity.

Plus, there's a lot yet to happen. We can't write off Biden right now. Remember, everyone wrote off Donald Trump after the "Access Hollywood" tape, and that was wrong. What if Biden succeeds in brokering a ceasefire and a hostage release in Gaza that would totally change the tone of the entire conversation?

Thank God. We don't govern by polls when Donald Trump would have been doing to 2016, Obama would withdrawn after that disastrous debate with Mitt Romney, when the polls turn against, Harry Truman would have drawn because every poll and every pundits said he was losing. George H.W. Bush would it was drawn when in June of the election year, he fell 17 points behind Mike Dukakis.

SIDNER: Caroline, I do want to ask you. Thank you, Allen, for that.

I want to ask you about the polls that show that Biden is behind in some of them that he is very, very close with Donald Trump. But is there a poll out there that you've seen that shows he has no chance of winning, which is what he's being told by some in sort of -- in private well,

HELDMAN: Well, I wouldn't -- I would assume that they're looking at internal polls that are better than what we have access to.

But yes, if the election were held today, it would be in a Trump blowout because he's ahead in enough key swing states by outside of the margin of error.

Allan is right, right, that we have time between now and then. But as a student of history, we have never been here before. These are not stupid people. Nancy Pelosi is a very politically savvy person.

The fact that we have a dashboard with flashing lights going off, it's not just one poll, its a lot of different metrics. I think the most important being that any he time a president has been an incumbent president in the modern political age has been under 40 percent, they have lost Jimmy Carter, George Herbert Walker Bush, and, of course, Donald Trump in 2020.

But at the end of the day, we've never been here before. We have not had a candidate for major political party this close to an election who appears to be physically unfit. And the thing is, Biden had some time to turn this around. He doesn't appear able to turn it around.

So again, history is -- obviously data and history are great ways to look at this through that the long context and look at what's happening in the Electoral College and the popular vote right now, but we haven't been here before. So trying to base predictions on something like this, it's a black swan if you will.

SIDNER: Lanhee Chen, Caroline Heldman, Allan Lichtman --

(CROSSTALK)

(CROSSTALK)

LICHTMAN: -- is likely wrong. We have been in very worst positions for incumbent parties. George H.W. Bush down 17 points, came back to win by eight, a 25-point swing in the polls. Biden is not down close to that. Harry Truman, 36 percent approval, won by five points in the general election, brought it in a Democratic House and a Democratic senate.

And your notion, you know, of this guy being physically able, not able to perform so worst kind of ageist and ablest. Yes, he does have a small disability, stutters. He's not quick on his feet. He makes gaffes.

HELDMAN: That's not what this is.

LICHTMAN: And what you said is insult -- let me finish -- is insulting to the tens of millions of Americans with similar small disabilities who do their job extremely well as Joe Biden, not a single critic has said, oh, its supposed deficiencies have led to a bad presidency has been one of the best president of the modern era.

HELDMAN: Agreed, agree, but apparently, we saw very different debate and were assessing a very different Joe Biden. I've been defending him against ableism and ageism up until the point where it was very obvious that something has happened to him physically. And that's why three and four years --

(CROSSTALK)

SIDNER: Allan, let Caroline. Go ahead, Caroline.

LICHTMAN: Sure, please.

HELDMAN: I agree. I think Joe Biden has been one of the most consequential presidents. Certainly he shifted the paradigm away from government being the problem that Reagan instituted. He's going to be in the annals of policy achievements along with FDR in terms of providing a social safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, it is obvious at Donald Trump poses a massive threat to democracy because he inspired violent insurrection.

But to act like we're not all seeing what's happening with Joe Biden, like I think is really missing the point. There is a reason why so many Americans are looking at this and they are panicked. And he hasn't turned it around in the two weeks that he's had.

(CROSSTALK)

SIDNER: OK. We're going to get to talk more about this --

CHEN: This demonstrates why Donald will waltz to the presidency.

SIDNER: We're going to -- Lanhee just had to put that in there. We're going to talk with you just after the break.

So we're not going away. We're going to continue this conversation as spicy as it is.

And ahead, we will wait to see what Joe Biden will do. It is up to him. New questions emerging tonight about Vice President Kamala Harris. We will talk a lot more later with that spicy panel.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [21:30:10]

SIDNER: All right. Right now, one thing is clear for Democrats and that is if, a big if, President Biden decides to end his reelection bid and to be clear, he insist he is not exiting the race and will be on the campaign trail, he says, next week. But if he changes his mind amid the growing probe pressure from within his own party, the process to replace him at the top of the ticket would be a doozy, especially for Vice President Kamala Harris.

For starters, time, time, time, time, running out, the parties convention kicks off on August 19th. That is just over four weeks from today.

Let us continue our discussion now with our panel, Lanhee Chen, Caroline Heldman, and Allan Lichtman.

Lanhee, I'm going to start with you. I interviewed Kamala Harris when she was the district attorney in San Francisco many moons ago. And then, of course, she moved on to higher office in California. How would you describe what she was like back then?

CHEN: Well, look, I think she's had a little bit of an evolution, her own political career. Obviously, she's had various points at which she has been maybe a little bit more conservative, been kicked around criminal justice issues. And over time, I think she's gotten probably more progressive as the base of her party's gotten more progressive.

But there are still some things from her California history that will haunt her. For example, the decision not to pursue the death penalty for slain police officer in San Francisco in 2004, even amidst opposition from her own party, the likes of Senator Dianne Feinstein, former Senator Dianne Feinstein, for example, who argued at the officers funeral in front of Kamala Harris's face that frankly, the death penalty should have been pursued. So that will haunt her.

I think her policies on energy are going to be very challenging. She's been anti fracking, anti an all of the above energy strategy. I think that will be a challenge in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which the Democrats have to win.

And the last thing I'll just say is this. In California, she had won tough race and that was when she first ran for attorney general back in 2010 against Steve Cooley, a moderate Republican. She has not had to run a tough race since then. So I think a lot of people wonder, does she have what she needs -- does she have it in her to run a tough race against Donald Trump?

So I think those are the questions from her California background that people will look at if she does indeed become the Democratic nominee.

SIDNER: Well, she's certainly won two races and got the vice president position.

Caroline, we hear from Kamala Harris. She talks about being a tough prosecutor, but somebody who was fair though San Francisco, to be fair as one of the most progressive some places which seemed to be softer on crime than most places. What do you know about her record?

HELDMAN: Well, Kamala Harris is going to have a difficult time paying herself as a centrist as Lanhee pointed out. I actually think she'd been underestimated and is painted as far more liberal than she actually is. But there has been a concerted campaign sent he took the vice presidency, assuming that she was the natural heir, the next time around to discredit her.

And it's been, as we saw with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump knows the presidential contests are always, there are a lot of different things, but they're always a contest about competing notions of manhood and so he's, you know, he's talking about doing push-ups and hand size and golf handicaps.

And you put a woman on the racing, you see that straight up, you know, misogyny. We saw with Hillary Clinton, talked about her voice. He tried to paint her as frail, a very feminizing frame. He's also done that with male contenders.

And I think with Kamala Harris, we know that there's this blanket about a 13 percentage to point bias against women who worked for the presidency. It gets smaller when it's a specific woman.

But as a black woman and an Indian American woman, Kamala Harris is going to face a lot of sexism and racism, and we've seen some of this with the Donald Trump trope that comes up where Donald Trump and others talk about her sleeping the way to the top of being a DEIA candidate. So, I think she's going to have an uphill battle. There's no good option for Democrats at this point.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you, Allan, we haven't seen this in history, certainly not in recent history.

How would it even work if Biden stepped down from the campaign? I mean, how would they go forward with such a short period of time before the election?

LICHTMAN: It's going to be almost impossible. We're going to see a repeat of a convention brawl like we saw in 1968 after Lyndon Johnson has stepped down. And what was the upshot of this? We've got Richard Nixon as president and we also almost lost our democracy then.

If, in fact, the Supreme Court's immunity decision had been in effect in the 1970s, Nixon would have gotten away scot-free with Watergate and likely our democracy would die. And so, all of these credits who have no record of accessible prediction are exactly pushing us to the scenario of 1968 and to the scenario of 2016 that led to the election of Donald Trump.

[21:35:11]

And this time, you know, Donald Trump, you write in the open, he's going to govern like his buddy Viktor Orban in Hungary. And what does that mean? Snuffing out the political opposition and snuffing out the free press protected by immunity. And I couldn't disagree more about the criticism of Kamala Harris. That's exactly what they said about Barack Obama in 2008. He can't win. He's a Black man, America is not ready for a Black man.

And the Republicans typically misogynist attack on her couldn't well backfire, and you don't know that, particularly given that abortion rights are on the ballot in many key states, and abortion rights for women are a critical component of this election.

So Republicans are playing with fire, with their misogyny.

SIDNER: And, Allan, we should point out that in 1968, the convention was held in Chicago.

LICHTMAN: Chicago.

SIDNER: The Democrats will be back in Chicago in 2024 on August 19th. I liked how you put your hands on your head because that says everything.

Thank you to Lanhee. Thank you, Caroline, for coming in this evening instead of going out and having a great dinner at 9:35 p.m. I really do appreciate you coming in on a Saturday for us.

HELDMAN: Thank you, Sara.

LICHTMAN: Thank you.

SIDNER: All right. We have new details tonight about the young man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. What investigators found in his car and how it played a key role in the plot. All of that straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:41:29]

SIDNER: New developments tonight in the attempted assassination of former President Trump. Investigators now believe the young gunman involved Thomas Crooks, was scoping out the rally -- the site anyway -- on the day of the shooting using a drone. We have more from CNN's Gloria Pazmino.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, this new detail about the drone that was found in Thomas Matthew Crooks' car is significant because law enforcement sources have told us they believe he was able to deploy the drone on Saturday morning, the morning of the rally, presumably he got a birds-eye view at the location where the rally was set to take place and that's significant because we know that he positioned himself on a rooftop and had that very clear direct shot at the former president.

Now investigators are still trying to pull all the pieces together. Why did this happen and how could it have happened? The motive behind all of this remains elusive, but there are a few things that we do know. And that is about the deal details and the kind of Internet searches that Thomas Matthew Crooks was doing in the days before the rally.

He looked up information both about the former for President Donald Trump and about the current President Joe Biden. He looked up information about the Democratic National Convention as well as information about other high-profile political figures, including Congressman Hakeem Jeffries.

We also know that Thomas Matthew Crooks locked up information on the Internet about Ethan Crumbley and his parents. You might remember Ethan Crumbley and his parents were recently prosecuted and convicted in a mass shooting at a high school in Michigan.

What we do not know is why he was looking up that information. We do know that the weapon he used on Saturday belong to his father. It was illegally obtained along with about 20 other weapons that will recover but here at this house, a family home, which you see behind me.

And, Sara, we have also been able to pinpoint some of the movements that Crooks made bowl on the day before the rally on Friday, he went to a local -- a local shooting practice where he spent some time and then on Saturday morning, he purchased a ladder at a local Home Depot and about 50 rounds of ammunition before returning here to his house grabbing the weapon, and then driving about an hour north of here where that rally was taking place.

Now, over the next several days, as we enter for next week and investigators continue to gather information and more clues about how this happened and why it happened, with lawmakers, the public, this community still looking to understand what drove Thomas Matthew Cooks -- Thomas Matthew Crooks, I should say to, this, why he did this, and if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it -- Sara.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: All right. Thank you to Gloria.

Last hour, I spoke with Chris McClenic, who was a senior special agent at the U.S. Secret Service. Here is part of that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: I want to start with Trump's rally.

[21:45:00]

It was indoors tonight. That's likely to remain in the future because of what happened in the outdoor rally where he was nearly assassinated. A father and firefighter was killed and two others injured?

CHRISTOPHER MCCLENIC, FORMER SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT, U.S. SECRET SERVICE: Well, first things first, good evening, Sara, and thank you for having me. I can only imagine that. Yeah, that's probably going to be the case at this point, this late stage of the -- of the campaign that better safe than sorry. They probably will lean more towards indoor rallies as opposed to the outdoor ones for what would pretty much obvious reasons. Indoor rallies are easier to control, they're easy to maintain, and overall safer. So, I would imagine that they would be pushing more for them than for obviously, he since the outdoor rallies.

SIDNER: I'm curious your assessment on some of our reporting that says that the gunmen apparently used a drone for reconnaissance over the Trump rally just a few hours before the president was there on the podium. What does it tell you about his state of mind? But also what does it tell you about the Secret Service and how they handled this clearly a admitting that they made some very big mistakes?

MCCLENIC: Well, I'd like to answer those questions in reverse order that you ask them. I can't speak on what they were thinking at this site, but I can say that I was an agent while the drone craze, if you will, became what it is today and the Secret Service absolutely has policies and procedures in reference to drones and drone activity. So I would imagine there's going to be a lot of questions in regards to how this individual, if in fact, it's true, he did use a drone to do basically surveillance.

So that strikes me as a little odd that service did not take greater action against the drone.

Now, with regards to his mindset it appears he was doing his homework by using a drone to do surveillance. That's something that's being utilized more both with law enforcement and even with military, where you are able to get a birds-eye view if you will, of an area that you're planning to infiltrate. So, if in fact he did do that? Then, yeah, that's becoming standard operation procedure for bad guys, if you will.

SIDNER: Yeah, certainly, premeditation for many of the different things that he did.

I do want to ask you this question that the public and all the victims, families often want to know. It doesn't change things in any way, doesn't take away the hurt, but they want to know why, what was the reason exactly?

And a week on, we still have no motive. Investigators saying that they're not sure they haven't found the exact motive. Do you think we'll ever know that? There's been this long, they talked to 100 people, including family members and friends, look, to through his social media, looked through his phone and we still don't have a clear answer yes.

MCCLENIC: Yes, to answer your question. I do believe that they will eventually find it. I know that they've sifted through, like you said, hundreds of witnesses all of his -- all of his videos, all of his social media accounts, and they have not found anything distinctive as of yet, but I have faith, every one of these experiences that I've seen in my law enforcement career, and it spans over 35 years. There has been a motive. Sometimes took a while to find it, but there has been I firmly believe

they will finds that motive in this individual, and it may not be the motive that be are thinking it might be, but they will be one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Now for an update on the massive worldwide global tech outage that started Friday morning and people are still dealing with the consequence of that. Earlier today, Microsoft estimated the outage affected 8.5 million window devices worldwide with various businesses and industries, including banks and airlines, still filling the aftermath.

Although airlines have largely resumed services, many customers our still of course, dealing with a knock-on effect, the disruption in the schedules. In other words, passengers are still trying to get where they're headed.

Flight Aware says today alone, more than 3,300 flights were delayed and more than 1,200 were outright canceled.

And next, we remember a titan of American progressive politics, the life and extraordinary public service of Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:54:37]

SIDNER: She was a hard charging no nonsense congresswoman who made history. Tonight, people all over the United States are remembering the life of a true trailblazer, Texas lawmaker Sheila Jackson Lee. Her family confirmed her death Friday night. She was 74-years-old.

During her time in Congress, Jackson Lee represented her Houston area district for decades, advocating especially hard for women and Black Americans.

[21:55:05]

She also spurred change. The congresswoman was one of the legislative sponsors who turned the Juneteenth movement into a national holiday signed by President Biden.

And tonight, the tributes are pouring in. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remembers her as a, quote, accomplished legislator, passionate public servant, loving mentor, and wonderful friend.

President Joe Biden also offered his condolences, remembering Jackson Lee as a great American, adding she's part of a long line of patriots who delivered the promise of America to all Americans.

And fellow Texas Representative Al Green had this to say.

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REP. AL GREEN (D-TX): She had a work ethic that all who knew her admired, you could not help but admire her work ethic.

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SIDNER: The congresswoman's death comes after she announced in June that shed been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. May she rest in peace.

And as someone who is dealing with cancer herself, although in a different part of the body, she had a very hard fight and she did a lot for this country.

Thank you so much for joining me this evening. I'm Sara Sidner. I'll see you monde on "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starting at 7:00 a.m. Eastern, HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" up next.