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Zoom Calls Raise Over $15 Million For Harris Campaign; Harris Challenges Trump to Debate; Hamas Political Chief Killed. Aired 11- 11:30a ET

Aired July 31, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And you are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

And we began with breaking news in the Middle East and new fears of a wider conflict. This morning, Hamas and much of the Arab world are accusing Israel of assassinating the group's political leader. Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike during a visit to Tehran.

Iran's supreme leader now is vowing revenge -- quote -- "You killed our dear guest in our house and now have paved the way for your harsh punishment. We consider it our duty to ask for the blood of our dear guest."

The Israeli military said it is not responding to reports about the attack and the U.S. says it will defend Israel if it's attacked, but hopes the sky-high tensions in the region can be defused.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I don't think war is inevitable. We're going to work hard to make sure that we're doing things to help take the temperature down and address issues through diplomatic means.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Israel is claiming a strike hours earlier in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The blast killed the top Hezbollah military leader, whom Israel blames for the weekend attack that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights.

We're covering all the angles, including an Al-Jazeera crew killed in a reported strike while filming near Haniyeh's home in Gaza.

Jeremy Diamond is in Northern Israel, Alex Marquardt here in Washington, and Natasha Bertrand is at the Pentagon.

So much going on, Jeremy. I want to start with you. How significant is this strike in Iran, we will start there, both in terms of the target and the fact that it happened on Iranian soil?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, Pam, we know that Israel has carried out assassinations on Israel -- on Iranian soil in the past, but none quite as significant as this one, none happening at such a critical moment in time as this one did.

And because of all of those reasons, this assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its role in, is going to have enormous implications for a region that was already teetering on the brink of war.

Part of that is not only because of the significance of the target, because it happened in the Iranian capital, but also because it is the second major Israeli strike against senior leaders of two Iranian proxies in just the last 24 hours.

In addition to that strike, as you mentioned, there was also a strike in the Lebanese capital, which took out Hezbollah's senior-most military commander, a senior adviser to Hezbollah, chief Hassan Nasrallah. And so, because of all of that, we are anticipating that there will be some kind of response, as Iran's supreme leader vows revenge, and as we are also hearing similar words from Hamas, as well as Hezbollah.

We don't yet know the manner and timing of the response or what form it will take, but there's no question that the risk of escalation is very, very real at this moment. And in addition to all of that, we now have the fact that the cease-fire and hostage deal negotiations that have been ongoing for weeks now, where we had seen some progress, we had seen some momentum, it is very hard to imagine those negotiations moving forward at this stage, at least in the short term.

Part of that has to do with the fact that Ismail Haniyeh was not only a key interlocutor in those negotiations. He was also viewed as one of the pragmatic voices within Hamas as it related to those negotiations, somebody who was pushing the talks forward. And now, obviously, he is very much out of the picture.

And amid all of this, we are hearing from the Qatari prime minister, who says: "Political assassinations and continue targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?"

Qatar, of course, a key mediator in these ongoing negotiations. And so, right now, we seem further away from a potential cease-fire agreement and far closer to the prospect of war -- Pam.

BROWN: Right. I mean, this region has seen dangerously close to a wider conflict for months.

What could we be on the precipice of, Alex?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: This really does feel like a new moment, like we have gone up the escalation ladder.

We have had numerous conflicts all around Israel for the past few months, but they have been kept relatively in check, and the U.S. has taken a lot of credit for that with its work through other allies. But, Pam, think about what we have seen in the past 24 hours, a strike on a top Hezbollah commander in Southern Beirut yesterday that Israel claims openly and claims that they killed him, and then this strike today that is believed to have Israel behind it that saw the top political leader for Hamas killed in the Iranian capital.

Now, we had a similar moment back in April, when Iran launched this massive attack against Israel with some 300 drones and cruise missiles in response to Iranian IRGC commanders who were killed in Damascus. This moment is arguably worse, because you have these attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the attack in Iran, and this attack that was in Iran against a Hamas commander.

[11:05:13]

So it's kind of a trifecta there. Ismail Haniyeh was this esteemed guest of the Iranians. You read that statement from the supreme leader. They do plan to carry out some kind of revenge. In fact, we saw the red flag of revenge flying over a mosque called the Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, which is a holy city in Iran.

BROWN: A picture of it, yes.

MARQUARDT: And there is that picture of that, that red flag of revenge.

So what form will this take? It's hard to say. Would it come all at once, like we saw in April? Would it come from Iran itself or the variety of proxies around the region? We simply don't know. We have to wait and see.

The Houthis, Hezbollah, countless proxies in Iran and Syria could all take place, certainly major concern about what's going to come next. And we should note that there are a lot of Americans in the region as well, not just citizens living in those countries, but American service members, who have been targeted by Iran's proxy groups.

So we can certainly expect some kind of escalation, but what form it's going to take, we simply don't know right now.

BROWN: So, then, Natasha Bertrand, to bring you in, what is the U.S. role in all of this?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam. So obviously we can take some cues from what happened in April, when Iran, of course, attacked Israel with a barrage of missiles and drones.

The U.S. took a very active role in defending Israel at that point, using, for example, Navy warships to help take down a lot of those ballistic missiles and drones over the course of that event. So you can see the U.S. taking on that kind of role again if Iran were to attack Israel over this latest assassination.

Secretary Austin actually hinted at this in remarks earlier today. Here's what he said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AUSTIN: What you heard me say yesterday is that, if Israel is attacked, we certainly will help defend Israel. You see -- you saw us do that April. You can expect to see us do that again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: But short of that kind of kinetic role, where they would actually help defend Israel in light of a major attack by the Iranians, there's also the role that the U.S. military could play if tensions escalate even further and if, for example, there needs to be some kind of noncombatant evacuation operation of U.S. citizens in the region, not only in Lebanon, but elsewhere.

And that is why you see the U.S. really has a lot of assets in the area right now, including at least two ships in the Eastern Mediterranean. They have an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, all positioned so that, if things continue to spiral, the U.S. military can be prepared to respond and to help people get out if that becomes necessary.

Now, we are told that at this point, of course, the U.S. military is planning for all possible contingencies. They are planning for the possibility that some kind of evacuation might be necessary.

But, for now, they are just engaging in very intensive diplomacy to try to ratchet down tensions. Secretary Austin, he did speak to his Israeli counterpart earlier today to try to get a handle, of course, on everything that's going on, Pam.

BROWN: All right, thank you to everybody.

And coming up: Kamala Harris is just days from announcing her running mate. What she is asking her closest advisers and when the big reveal might happen.

Plus, a group called White Dudes for Harris raised more than $4 million this week. We're going to talk to one of the dudes on that call, "West Wing" star Bradley Whitford.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:13:09]

BROWN: While the Trump campaign is hammering Kamala Harris on immigration, the former president himself is focusing on her crowd size.

The vice president's rally last night in Atlanta was her biggest yet. But Trump is attributing the packed house to Megan Thee Stallion's performance ahead of Harris' speech, saying she -- quote -- "needed a concert to bring people in."

Harris says that, if Trump has something to say, he should face her on the debate stage. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So he won't debate. But he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me.

(CHEERING)

(APPLAUSE)

HARRIS: And, by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird?

I do hope you will reconsider to meet me on the debate stage.

(CHEERING)

(APPLAUSE)

HARRIS: Because, as the saying goes, if you have got something to say --

(CHEERING)

(APPLAUSE)

HARRIS: -- say it to my face.

(CHEERING)

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is at the White House.

Priscilla, what's the campaign saying today?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're certainly feeling pretty good about the rally last night that brought out more than 10,000 people.

Now, of course, the intention of this rally was to build on the surge of enthusiasm over the last week, and they seem to have accomplished that with the crowd size, but also the energy in that room.

What was remarkable, though, was seeing the new ways that the vice president is going on the offensive against former President Donald Trump, not only needling him on the debate and prodding him to go and debate her in September, but also in the way that she tackled immigration.

Of course, the former president and Republicans have been calling her the border czar, essentially using a task that she was assigned in 2021 to oversee diplomatic efforts in Central America and accusing all the issues that the administration faced on the U.S.-Mexico border on her.

But she went toe-to-toe against the former president, essentially saying that she prosecuted transnational criminal organizations, that she was the A.G. of a border state, and that he does not walk the walk.

What is notable about that is that, up until this point, the campaign has really kept border security at a distance, only recently starting to fold it into their campaign messaging. The vice president not taking any beats here and going straight against, straight for president and those attacks.

[11:15:29]

So that gives us a little more of a glimpse as to what her argument is going to be on the trail in the months to come, especially given indications that the Republicans won't let up on that label of her being the border czar.

BROWN: And we're also learning that the Harris campaign will launch a tour through the swing states next Tuesday, and she will have her freshly picked running mate stumping by her side.

What are you hearing about who she might pick?

ALVAREZ: Well, we anticipate that announcement will come by Tuesday. That is when she will have a rally in Philadelphia followed by that travel blitz that will be her and her to-be-announced running mate.

What we know so far is that, behind the scenes, she is reviewing notebooks with information about the contenders, that she is having preliminary conversations, and that she's asking her advisers who would be the best governing partner if she were to win in November.

What hasn't happened yet is any formal interviews, though those are expected to be conducted this week. As to who is on the short list, you see them there, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.

Now, they have been asked about this over the course of the week. They haven't shed any light as to where they stand, but, certainly, this is a very condensed timeline for the campaign to be working on to find her a running mate, but they are certainly preparing for her to be on the trail with whoever her running mate is next week, hitting the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

Pamela, what's important to note about these states is that all of them, aside from North Carolina, are ones that President Biden narrowly won in 2020. The campaign wants to keep them in play. They're hoping they can build on their momentum next week by visiting all of them within the course of a week.

BROWN: All right, Priscilla, thank you so much.

And joining us now is CNN political commentator Jamal Simmons. He was Vice President Harris' communications director.

Hi, Jamal.

Thanks for coming on.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hi, Pam.

BROWN: So Trump is wavering on whether he will debate Harris. He previously said he was willing to debate Joe Biden any time, any place, anywhere. What has changed?

SIMMONS: Well, what's changed is, I think Trump thought after the Supreme Court rulings on immunization and -- on, immunity, rather, and then the -- Aileen Cannon's rulings on the cases down in Florida, that maybe he was going to avoid having to go back in front of another judge or prosecutor.

But if he sits on a debate stage with Kamala Harris, that's really facing a prosecutor for 90 minutes on the biggest stage America is going to have, this big courtroom of a debate. And so I don't know that he really wants to do that.

If I'm his campaign, I'm thinking twice about it. The problem is, he gets called a chicken, basically. And I think that's what he's trying to avoid.

BROWN: So, Harris, for her part, drew in a huge, diverse crowd in Atlanta last night.

There is new polling out consistently showing Harris outperforming Biden with black voters. But our CNN's Ryan Young spoke with some black male voters who said they didn't feel like she is speaking directly to them. What more does she need to, do you think?

SIMMONS: You know, before she got picked, she had been spending time traveling around the country doing an economic tour, particularly thinking about African-American men and how to talk to African- American men about their financial future.

So when I think about her economic policy, what she's been talking about is wealth and wages, right? How do we get people more wealth, start more businesses, community development, financial institutions, these CDFIs that are kind of an arcane language, but really how do we get people more wealth and how do we make sure they get more wages?

We have seen wages grow over the course of the Biden/Harris administration. She's also talked about health care and childcare, because one of the things for families today that matters is that, if you're sick, if your parents are sick, your kids are sick, it's hard for you to work. You can't get that extra shift.

Also, if you don't have childcare, you can't afford childcare, if you're starting to start -- if you're trying to start a company, if you're trying to get an extra shift at work, if you can't figure out how to get your kid taken care of after 3:00, that has a direct impact on how much money you can make. So I think her talking directly about these issues to voters is really

going to matter as she goes across these states.

BROWN: I also want to ask you about this NABJ controversy. This is a conference with black journalists where Trump is delivering a speech, but Harris is not.

Of course, there's been a lot of blowback about Trump being there. Harris' team initially said she had scheduling conflicts. She does have a funeral today, but is now trying to figure something out virtually. What do you make of that fact? As her comms director, do you think that she should be there?

SIMMONS: Well, I'm her former comms director. So let's make sure --

BROWN: I mean, if you were her comms director.

SIMMONS: Yes, yes, for sure.

BROWN: If you were.

[11:20:00]

SIMMONS: Yes.

Listen, I think she's talking to journalists all the time, talking to African-American journalists all the time. Look, I think what's happening right now is, this is a real time crunch. Two weeks ago, she was not the Democratic nominee or prospective Democratic nominee for president.

So, right now, she's got a -- they don't even have e-mail addresses, right? The e-mail addresses are still JoeBiden.com. They have got to figure a lot of things out. She's got to pick out a candidate, pick out a running mate. She's got to make sure that all the talking points work. She's got to figure out her travel schedule.

I mean, I can't imagine the number of things they're trying to balance right now. And so I imagine when they started looking at the schedule, something's got to give, because the one thing you can't make more of in the midst of a campaign is the candidate's time, right?

You can raise more money. You can hire more staff. You can get more lawn signs. You can't get more time on the candidate's schedule. So they have got to figure out how to use that time most efficiently. And that's probably, in fact, frankly, a place where this NABJ conference, traveling to that conference just took a hit.

And, instead, they're trying to figure out a way for her to do it and still manage all the other things that are on her schedule.

BROWN: I'm wondering also, as her former comms director, what you think about the strategy as it pertains to immigration. Of course, initially the campaign had been trying to sort of distance itself from immigration and her task for Biden to figure out the origins and tamp down on it. But now she's sort of confronting it head on and going on offense with

immigration and putting it back on Trump, saying that he was the one who interfered with passing that bipartisan legislation on immigration. What do you think about that tactic?

SIMMONS: Yes, they posted a pretty good ad about that goes at Trump directly for standing in the way of the bipartisan immigration law.

She was tasked to deal with sort of the migration issues and routes of migration from the three Central American countries in particular. And what we found out is that, over the course of her getting private sector involved down there and making sure they're focused on the economy and violence, now we have seen a drop of 200,000 arrests at the border from people from those countries.

So she had an impact when it came to the questions that she was asked to pursue from the president. But the fact is, the Republicans were on the verge of actually helping to pass a bill that would do something about this. And Donald Trump said no because he thought it would help him politically.

He ought to take the weight for that. If they're going to make those kind of political decisions and not do the things that are in favor of the American public, they should pay the political price for it.

BROWN: Jamal, thank you very much for coming on and offering your perspective and opinions.

SIMMONS: Thanks for having me. See you soon.

BROWN: Well, still to come, Donald Trump fielding questions from the National Association of Black Journalists, we were just talking about that, after the organization was criticized for inviting him to speak at their convention.

We head to Chicago with the latest.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:27:16]

BROWN: Well, in just over a week, the Harris campaign has enjoyed a major boost in both momentum and its war chest from an unlikely place, a series of massively successful grassroots Zoom calls that have combined to raise more than $15 million.

And one of those calls, White Dudes for Harris, had no shortage of star power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK HAMILL, ACTOR: You have got to vote. You have got to vote.

LANCE BASS, MUSICIAN: As a white guy, it's easy to think these issues don't affect us directly, but that's exactly why we need to pay attention.

JEFF BRIDGES, ACTOR: I'm white. I'm a dude. And I'm for Harris.

BRADLEY WHITFORD, ACTOR: What a variety of whiteness we have here. We got the Dude. We got Pete. It's like a rainbow of beige.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Here now, part of that rainbow of beige himself, actor Bradley Whitford.

Thanks for coming on.

What is your reaction to how successful these calls have been in raising money for Harris?

WHITFORD: Well, I'm absolutely thrilled at the -- all of the energy here for Kamala.

I think she's the perfect candidate at the perfect moment. And I think the reason you're seeing this enthusiasm is because of the stark contrast between the opportunity for all Americans that Kamala's vision is all about, and Donald Trump's really dark vision that I think a lot of people know threatens to drag us back into the dustbin of history.

I think she's the perfect messenger. I am deeply alarmed. I have always wanted men to speak out more about a woman's right -- right to choose. And I think Kamala is the perfect messenger for this in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

And I think that's a lot of the energy that is behind all this. It's easy for us -- obviously, a talking point now -- and it's absolutely true -- for the Democrats is that they're weird. And they are weird. They want to get into our discussions -- in between our discussions with our doctors.

But, more than that, it's dangerous. It's dangerous. And I think, in Texas -- tens of thousands of rape victims in Texas do not have access to fundamental health care. And I think that's a lot of the energy here. And I'm really glad to hear men raising their voices in that particular area, especially.

BROWN: It's interesting that that's an issue for you that's really galvanizing.

You are no stranger to this campaign. You have met Vice President Harris. You worked with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, right?

WHITFORD: Yes.

BROWN: Tell us more about that.