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Maduro Retains Power Despite Doubts in the Election Results; Simone Biles Battles her Injury in her Olympic Return. Firefighters Struggle the Wildfire in California; United States, Japan revises Military Partnership; Ethan Ewing Returns for His Gold Medal Quest in Paris. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired July 29, 2024 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:00]

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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world and to everyone streaming us on CNN Max. I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will serve a third term in office following a highly contentious election. Why there's still doubt about the results hours after vote counting ended.

And tensions are high between Israel and Hezbollah following a deadly airstrike in the Golan Heights as world leaders warn against sparking a wider conflict.

Plus, we are 99 days away from the U.S. election and Kamala Harris is gaining ground in the polls, how her team is working to define her campaign as they start the sprint to election day.

UNKNOWN (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Rosemary Church.

CHURCH: Good to have you with us and we continue to monitor the situation in Venezuela where longtime strongman Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Sunday's election. That is according to the country's National Electoral Council.

The government-controlled council reports Maduro won more than 51 percent of the vote with more than 80 percent of the votes counted. Now this marks Maduro's third consecutive six-year term. Maduro suggested there would be bloodshed if he lost but sang a different tune after being declared the winner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICOLAS MADURO, VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I said it, there was peace before and there was during and we have it and there will be peace, stability and justice after the 28th of July starting from today. Peace, justice, respect of the law and justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The leader of Venezuela's main opposition coalition rejected the council's results saying their candidate won 70 percent of the vote. Maduro's main challenger was opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a former diplomat who the coalition rallied behind after their two preferred candidates were barred from running.

Journalist Stefano Pozzebon brings us the latest from the capital Caracas.

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STEFANO POZZEBON, JOURNALIST: Venezuela is living through hours of tension this Monday morning as the electoral authorities, which are heavily controlled by the government, have declared longtime strongman Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the presidential election celebrated on 28th of July.

The announcement came around midnight on Monday morning, six hours after the polling closed and after an extensive wait when the opposition was claiming that they were ahead in the voting count and this is why there has been a lot of doubts, cast a lot of doubts over these results.

This is how the Venezuelan opposition reacted.

MARIA CORINA MACHADO, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER (through translator): We want to tell all Venezuelans and to the entire world that Venezuela has a new president-elect and that is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. We won and everyone knows it, everyone knows it. I want you to know that this was something so overwhelming, so big, that we won in every sector of the country.

POZZEBON: On his part Maduro was quickly to claim a victory. He took the stage in a presidential palace saying that the election occurred in a climate of peace and tranquility, that he's the true leader of Venezuela.

However, many countries in Latin America have already announced that they have doubted these results. All of these countries include Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and others.

The United States are urging caution and inviting the electoral authorities to proceed with the publication of all the numbers and the data they have. In the next few hours the situation will continue to evolve here in Caracas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Turning now to the Middle East where the region is on edge following a deadly rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security cabinet meeting on Sunday to discuss the situation. The cabinet authorized Mr. Netanyahu and his defense minister to quote "decide on the nature of the response against Hezbollah."

Israel has blamed the Lebanese militant group for the strike which killed 12 children and injured more than 40 people on Saturday. Hezbollah has firmly denied it was behind the attack.

Israel's military says it conducted airstrikes against Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanese territory and along the border overnight Sunday. Lebanon is warning Israel of a regional war if it goes too far.

Meantime, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington does not want to see an escalation in the region.

And for more, CNN's Salma Abdelaziz joins us now live from London. Good morning to you Salma. So what is the latest on the deadly strike on the Golan Heights and of course Israel's response to it as the region worries that this could very well escalate to a wider conflict?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Rosemary, and I think that anyone living in that region, any families along that border area right now are absolutely either waiting with bated breath or trying to pull out. Hezbollah itself says that it is pulling out of certain posts, certain areas. Of course it didn't provide details on that.

It has denied responsibility for this attack but it's absolutely preparing for the possibility of retaliation.

You also have warnings that are pouring in. Iran saying that Israel shouldn't take, quote, "any new adventures in Lebanon." You had warnings as well from the Lebanese government saying of course they don't stand with Hezbollah in a broader sense but at this time that if Israel did attack Lebanon, the Lebanese government would stand with Hezbollah, that that would drag in the militias of the region from Iraq to Syria, all of these Iran-backed militias that could potentially be drawn into a wider conflict.

But I also want to draw your attention again, Rosemary, just back to the original incident, back to the horrific attack that happened that killed 12 children and wounded more than 40 others among this tight- knit community, this Druze community that lives on the border that has for many years felt it is treated as a second-class citizens within Israel.

Some members of the Druze community even requested that Israeli officials do not attend the funerals for fear that it would turn into a political event and that's exactly what has happened, Rosemary, is you have these small communities all along that region being dragged into a conflict that perpetuates, escalates and builds that fear of a wider war.

But we've seen this possibility time and time again, Rosemary, over the last several years, more so since the October 7th attacks and time and time again everyone has pulled back from the brink. So there is hope with negotiation efforts on the table for Gaza and

mediation efforts pouring in around the region and from the U.S. that these tensions can calm from a boil to a simmer.

CHURCH: Yeah we will be watching that very closely. Salma Abdelaziz bringing us that live report from London, I Appreciate it.

Meanwhile, it has been a deadly weekend in Gaza. Palestinian officials say at least 19 civilians, including children, have died in Israeli attacks on Sunday alone. At least 10 people were killed in Hanounas when an Israeli airstrike struck a house. Gaza's civil defense says four people died when an airstrike hit tents in al-Mawassi.

The Israeli military has designated that area a humanitarian zone and had just ordered some 29,000 people to evacuate there. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the recurrent displacement of civilians is depriving them of, quote, "dignified survival." According to UNRWA, only 14 percent of Gaza is not under Israeli evacuation orders.

A diplomatic official says the latest round of ceasefire talks did not yield any breakthroughs. The official says nothing was finalized following negotiations in Rome this weekend. The talks centered around Israel's reply to the draft agreement regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The official says more meetings will be needed.

We are now less than 100 days away from the 2024 U.S. presidential election and it's hard to believe it's only been one week since U.S. President Joe Biden exited the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who moved quickly to consolidate support from the Democratic Party. Both Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took a break from the campaign trail on Sunday and instead let their allies stump for them.

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But the Harris campaign did announce in a memo that it has raised $200 million just since last Sunday. It says 66 percent of those donations are coming from small first-time donors. And according to a new ABC News-Ipsos poll, the Vice President's favorability rating has gone up eight points since last week, while Trump has seen his rating slip by four points.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny has the latest on this race from the battleground state of Michigan.

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JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris heading into a new phase of their campaign. Now it's fewer than 100 days to go before Election Day, a very busy weekend of campaigning here in Michigan and in battleground states across the country.

The former president campaigning in Minnesota, trying to bring that state back into play. Of course, President Biden carried it quite comfortably, but Donald Trump lost it narrowly back in 2016. It's seen as the reddest blue state in the country, if you will. Now, so many different polls are showing that Vice President Harris is doing much better than President Biden.

Now, of course, this race is still too close to call nationally and in battleground states across the country, but she is showing gains among younger voters and voters of color.

Now the race to define Vice President Harris is on aggressively. The Republicans are trying to do that through campaign ads, branding her as a San Francisco liberal in their words. J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator and the Republican vice presidential candidate going after her aggressively this weekend.

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The people are going to learn her record. They're going to learn that she's a radical. They're going to learn that she's basically a San Francisco liberal who wants to take San Francisco policies to the entire country. And I don't think it's going to sell in Minnesota.

I don't think it's going to sell anywhere else. So as we tell the message and as we as we talk about how President Trump has made people's lives better and can do it again, I think we're going to turn Minnesota red and a lot of other states as well.

ZELENY: But speaking of running mates, Vice President Harris is looking for one of her own. She's entering the final days of making that choice. She's considering Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and even Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Vice President Harris has relationships with most of these potential candidates. But the question is, who can be a governing partner?

Her vetting team is looking through the backgrounds of all of these candidates. And she, of course, I'm told, will begin weighing in with interviews.

She hopes to have a decision by August 7. That, of course, will frame this race. Harris and whoever she chooses against Trump and J.D. Vance going into the final three months of this campaign, clearly too close to call. This election, already one for the history books, could be headed there in November.

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Detroit.

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CHURCH: CNN's Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein joins me now from Los Angeles. Appreciate you being with us.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST AND SR. EDITOR, "THE ATLANTIC": Hi, Rosemary. CHURCH: Good to see you. So with less than 100 days to go until the

election, polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris tightening the race against Donald Trump, taking it from a runaway win for the former president to a very tight race with no clear leader as yet. So how does Harris maintain this momentum and keep the honeymoon period going right up to the election?

BROWNSTEIN: You know, she probably is the least clearly defined nominee in the eyes of the public of either party since, I would guess, Bill Clinton in 1992, if not even before that, which means that there's tremendous opportunity and risk for her in the next few weeks.

I've talked to multiple pollsters in both parties over the last few weeks who said that voters' impressions of her, positive and negative, are extremely shallow. So the question of which side can fill in the picture, you know, more tangibly for voters in the next few weeks is going to be critical.

The fact that she is as close to Trump as she is in this first blush, which don't forget is coming right after the Republican convention, which is usually the high point for a candidate, is encouraging to Democrats. But the question of who really fills in the blanks and defines her for voters, I think, is going to be absolutely critical over the next month.

CHURCH: Right. And there is a race to do that clearly. And in the key Great Lakes battleground states, there's no clear leader, according to Fox News polling, with Trump just one point ahead in Wisconsin, but tied with Harris in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. Is that Harris' only path to victory as things stand right now, or is there another possible path, perhaps via the Sunbelt?

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BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. So that was Joe Biden's only path to victory. He had fallen out of play in the four key Sunbelt battlegrounds of North Carolina and Georgia in the southeast, Arizona and Nevada in the southwest. And that was largely because his biggest problem in this election was how much ground he had lost among younger and more diverse voters since 2020. And those are all younger and more diverse states.

Now, Harris, I think, without doubt, is going to regain at least some of the ground that Biden lost among younger and more diverse voters. The question is whether she regains enough to actually have a shot at any of those states, in particular, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, since North Carolina seems a bridge too far, even for her.

If she can put any of those states back on the board for Democrats, it would enormously ease the pressure on them in terms of reaching 270 electoral college votes. But if she can't, if she only does better in those states, but can't actually win them, then she is in the same position that Biden was in, which is that she has to sweep the three states that were formerly in what I once called the blue wall: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in order to get to 270. And Rosemary, those states, unlike the Sunbelt states, those states are not built for her strengths, they are older and whiter. And so she's going to have to show she can compete for those voters. The good news for Democrats is that those three Fox polls you mentioned all showed her running better than Biden did in 2020 among white voters without a college education.

If she can really do that in November, she would be in a very strong position to win those states and thus in a very strong position to get to 270.

CHURCH: And Ron, meantime, Trump is coming up with new attack lines against Harris as he struggles with this change at the top of the Democratic ticket and past comments made by his running mate J.D. Vance are coming back to bite him. How much has this thrown the Trump- Vance ticket into disarray and the Republican Party as a whole?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, I think the Republican Party was feeling extremely confident and Trump was feeling extremely confident about his prospects. There's really no other way to explain a vice presidential choice like J.D. Vance. I mean, J.D. Vance doesn't really bring any conventional political benefits in the near term. He was really more about stamping Trump's brand on the party and succession and so forth.

So they felt that the race was locked into place, that their lead over Biden may have been small, but it was steady and that Biden had failed to dislodge negative impressions about him even after spending enormous sums in all of the swing states this year, really unrebutted by Republicans.

Now you have a race that's much more unpredictable, that's much more fluid, where Trump's inroads among certain groups, particularly black voters and young voters, may be more at risk certainly than they were to Joe Biden. It is a new environment. It doesn't mean that Trump is now the underdog. I mean, Vice President Harris on Saturday acknowledged that she was still the underdog. And I think that's right in that Trump has more plausible pathways to 270s.

But now he has to face someone who is much more effective than Biden was at making the core democratic case against Trump, that he's a threat to your rights, to your values and to democracy itself. And it is just a completely different race than it was a week ago.

CHURCH: It certainly is. Ron Brownstein, many thanks for joining us and sharing your analysis and perspective. I Appreciate it.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you for having me.

CHURCH: J.D. Vance is now accusing Democrats of lying about his controversial childless cat ladies comments. Here's the Republican vice presidential nominee talking to Fox News on Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANCE: I do think that being a parent actually has a profound effect on somebody's perspective, and we should honor and respect that. But there are a whole host of people who don't have children for a whole host of reasons. And they certainly are great people who can participate fully in the life of this country. And that's not what I said, Trey. If you look at what the left has done, they have radically taken this out of context and in fact, aggressively lied about what I've said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Well, Vance told Fox News back in 2021 that the U.S. is being run by, quote, "a bunch of childless cat ladies." He also said the future of the Democratic Party was in the hands of childless people who did not have a stake in the country. It is on tape.

Still to come, Simone Biles made an epic comeback in Paris, even fighting through an apparent injury. The latest from the Olympic Games. That's next.

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CHURCH: The Olympic Games in Paris saw the return of superstar Simone Biles on Sunday. Fans in the arena held their breath after she appeared to injure herself while warming up. But that didn't stop the Olympic champ, who now has a shot at five more medals after her stunning performance during qualifiers.

Japan is now leading the gold medal count after another full day of competition. Australia is a close second. Both countries with four golds. But Japan has the edge with an extra bronze. The U.S. holds the third spot with three gold wins and 12 medals total. France and South Korea round out the top five.

CNN's Amanda Davis joins us now from Paris. So Amanda, we all know how important it is for a host nation to get off the mark quickly. France's star of the pool certainly delivered a statement gold medal win on Sunday. Tell us all about it.

AMANDA DAVIS, CNN WORLD SPORT: Yes, absolutely, Rosemary. I think it's fair to say the host country have a new gold goggle wearing, gold medal winning rock star in the name of Leon Marchand. I say new, but you get the feeling that this is a man born for this moment. 22 years of age from a family of swimmers, many would have crumbled with the weight of expectation and pressure on their shoulders.

[03:25:05]

There's a building just to the left of me, 40 stories high, with this man's face on it. And that was even before what he did last night in the pool, aiming to become France's first gold medal winner at an Olympic Games in the pool.

Since London 2012, in 12 years, he'd set his sights from very early on in his career and emulating the success of the great Michael Phelps. He'd taken himself to ASU, Arizona State University to work with Phelps coach Bob Bowman. And boy, has it paid off.

He was already the world record holder in the 400-meter medley. But last night, with a packed arena, it really was like a music venue that sounded like 90,000 people, more than 15,000 French supporters all cheering him on as he led from start to finish to claim the gold that he was wanting. He has described it as a dream come true, the worrying bit for the rest. He's still got three more events to go.

But the atmosphere at the pool last night really only matched, as you were mentioning, by what we saw at the gymnastics. Nobody before has attracted a crowd with the likes of Tom Cruise, Ariana Grande, John Legend, Lady Gaga, Anna Wintour. That is what we are talking about with the Simone Biles effect.

Such was the anticipation of her return to the Olympic Games, the greatest gymnast of all time after that devastating disappointment of Tokyo. And she did what people wanted her to do, leading Team USA to the top of the qualification table in the team event and individually for her in the all-around, but not without a scare, as you rightly mentioned, landing really heavily as she was practicing her floor routine. She completed her last three disciplines with really heavy strapping on her ankle.

We understand it's a recurrence of a calf injury, but while she didn't do any official media, she did say afterwards she's doing as OK as she could be. So we take that as a positive sign and she's back in action on Tuesday. Just in terms of other notable results for Team USA in the last 24 hours, a big win for LeBron and the defending basketball champions, Team USA on the court, also on the football pitch as well.

A big win for Emma Hayes' U.S. women's national team, making sure they qualified with a game to spare for the quarterfinals.

CHURCH: And Amanda, on Monday, viewers are going to be treated to a showdown between two tennis icons. What can we expect?

DAVIS: Yes, and honestly, there couldn't be a better place to be talking about the facts. I'm here in Paris, the home of Roland-Garros, the French Open. And what do we have in the second round? Well, we have a match worthy of any Grand Slam final. Rafael Nadal up against Novak Djokovic, one of the greatest rivalries, not only of this generation of tennis, but of all time.

Here in Paris, the place where Nadal has had so many of the iconic memories and moments of his career. He's a 14-time winner at Roland- Garros. And we're at that period in his career where every singles match could be his last, although he keeps trying to play that talk down. That is the reality. He's booked his place in the second round against an old adversary in Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic, for all that he has won in his career, 24 Grand Slam titles, he has never won an Olympic gold. And he's set his sights very much from the start of the year on getting his hands on a medal. It promises to be a fantastic occasion. We do have some question marks about whether Rafael Nadal's body is

going to be able to cope. He said to me just a couple of months ago, he wakes up every morning and he just doesn't know what his body is going to do.

On Friday, he carried a torch at the opening ceremony. On Saturday, he was playing doubles with Carlos Alcaraz. Yesterday, Sunday, he was in singles action and now four days running, he's back on court.

But we know something and he's going to be giving it his all. And this last time they met actually here was two years ago in the French Open and it was Nadal who got the better of his great rival.

CHURCH: Magnificent. Amanda Davis, joining us live from Paris. You have the assignment there. Many thanks. I Appreciate it.

Well, just into CNN, the French Interior Minister says they have identified several people who carried out Friday's railway sabotage. He said the tactics that were used resembled those of the far left.

But authorities are still trying to determine whether those responsible were manipulated by others or did it voluntarily.