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Project 2024 Co-Author Describes Trump "Battle Plan"; Russia Recalls Forces from Ukraine to Stop Offensive at Home; Harris and Trump on Taxing Tips. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired August 16, 2024 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:30:00]
JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Russell Vought, one of the architects of Project 2025, that's the controversial right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term, Vought is also the policy director of the RNC that rewrote the party's official platform. In the video, you'll see him talk about how Trump's disavowal of Project 2025 is just politics.
CNN's Kyung Lah has the story. Our father, Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL VOUGHT, FORMER CABINET MEMBER IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You are looking at secretly recorded video of Russell Vought, a former cabinet member in the Trump Administration
VOUGHT: This year has been predominantly now getting ready for a year, five of a Trump Administration. We've got about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature.
LAH (voice-over): Vought, the Platform Policy Director for the Republican National Committee says he is building the plan for Trump's second term.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know what the hell it is. It's Project '25.
LAH (voice-over): Trump publicly disavowed Project 2025 a conservative blueprint for his administration if he gets re-elected, but in private, both said that's just politics. The details of the real plans are secret and based on Trump's own beliefs.
VOUGHT: Notwithstanding. I expect you to hear ten more times from the rally, the president, you know, distancing himself from the left's boogeyman of Project 2025.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. And you're not worried about that?
VOUGHT: No, I'm not worried about it. And so, I see what he's doing is just very, very conscious, distancing himself from a brand. He's very supportive of what we do. And know that we have an all manner of things that we do that's, you know, even unrelated to Project 2025.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.
LAH (voice-over): Vought has been a mastermind behind expanding the powers of the presidency, some of those policy proposals Trump has supported, two sources tell CNN. Trump even hosted a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser two years ago for the group, Vought founded the right-wing center for renewing America.
VOUGHT: He's been at our organization. He's raised money for our organization. He's blessed it.
LAH (voice-over): In this hotel suite, Vought thinks he's talking to family members of a wealthy donor, but one is a journalist, the other an actor, working undercover for the U.K. based Center for Climate reporting. The center provided the video to CNN on the condition we blur their faces so they can continue their undercover work. The conversation covers a host of issues like abortion and how his position differs from Trump.
VOUGHT: And he talks about rape, incest and life of the mother. All, I actually don't believe in those exceptions, I want to get to abolition. But I also, we got to win elections. And so, I want to get as far as we possibly can.
LAH (voice-over): His view of who should be an American.
VOUGHT: So, I want to make sure that we can say, we are a Christian nation. And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That's pretty close to Christian nationalism. Can we, if we're going to have legal immigration, can we get people that actually believe in Christianity? Is that something or do we have to have -- you know, we're not allowed to have, ask questions about Sharia law?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What could we see America looking like, I guess, in an ideal world?
VOUGHT: I mean, in an ideal world, I mean, I think we could save the country in a sense of, you know, the largest deportation in history.
LAH (voice-over): And even pornography.
VOUGHT: We'd have a national ban on pornography if we could, right?
LAH (voice-over): But the most striking of both statements has to do with presidential power.
VOUGHT: George Floyd obviously was not about race. It was about destabilizing the Trump Administration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
VOUGHT: It's the left belief that structures in society, are the problem. Pulling society down for purposes of revolution is exactly what they want. And what you're seeing on college campuses is a part of that as well. The president has, you know, the ability both along the border and elsewhere to maintain law and order with the military.
LAH (voice-over): A major part of Vought's plan is turning thousands of career federal jobs into political appointments, meaning workers could be fired if they're not sufficiently loyal to Trump.
VOUGHT: 80 percent of my time is working on the plans of what's necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. I want to be the person that crushes the deep state.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
VOUGHT: I think there's a lot of different ways to do that. It is defunding it. It's impoundment, the ability to not spend money.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
VOUGHT: It's getting rid of their independence.
LAH (voice-over): Even as Vought talks about the so-called deep state, he claims his group is forming its own to take over on day one.
VOUGHT: We are trying to create a shadow Office of Management and Budget, a shadow National Security Council and a shadow Office of Legal Counsel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
VOUGHT: These are the main organs in government that you need outside to create the battle plan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you're not going to publish those?
VOUGHT: No, no.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They go straight to.
VOUGHT: Yes, they're very, very close hold.
[10:35:00]
LAH: We are hearing from both the Trump campaign and Russell Vought's organization in response to the video. A spokesperson for Vought's group is downplaying the video, saying Vought's has spoken about these same topics publicly, telling CNN, quote, thank you for airing our perfect conversation, emphasizing our policy work is totally separate from the Trump campaign. And the Trump campaign says, only President Trump and the campaign represent policies for the second term.
Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: Coming up, Ukraine's armed forces pushing deeper and deeper into Russia this morning as their surprising attack marches ahead, forcing Russia to scramble and pull some of its own troops out of Ukraine to defend their home front. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:40:00]
ACOSTA: Some new reporting this morning on Ukraine's offensive into Russia and the desired outcome. Ukraine says the goal of this operation is to force Russia into a, quote, fair negotiation process by inflicting enough damage.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has been reporting at the Ukraine-Russia border. Take a look at this surreal sight when he saw Ukrainian forces streaming into Russia unchallenged.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's startling to see the steady flow of military vehicles, that probably an ambulance and armor just passing through the Russian border point here.
That is the border post that clearly got heavily hit when Ukraine moved in hard over a week ago. Russia's borders here, completely undefended. It's also remarkable that the freedom with which the Ukrainian military are moving around here, they simply aren't afraid of the drones that have hampered their every move for the past months.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Joining us now to talk about this is Ambassador Stuart Holliday. He served as United States ambassador for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations. Mr. Ambassador, I mean, when we saw the invasion of Ukraine begin from the Russians, this is not a scene I expected to see a couple of years later.
AMBASSADOR STUART HOLLIDAY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR FOR SPECIAL POLITICAL AFFAIRS AT U.N.: Yes. No, this is a surprise, including to us, I think. But it reflects the resilience of the Ukrainian people and their ability to actually figure out on their own how to change the dynamic of the conversation. This may not have an enormous military impact, but it is an enormous symbolic and moral Ukrainians that sets the stage for, you know, possible --a possible beginning of an end game.
ACOSTA: Yes. I was going to say, does this benefit Ukraine in future talks, do you think?
HOLLIDAY: It does. It does. You know, this is a -- there's a diplomatic adage that you only negotiate from a position of strength. And even though this isn't necessarily a position of strength, it shows that the Ukrainians have the capacity to inflict damage in Russia, which, you know, for the first time since the Second World War, it's an unprecedented thing that the Russians have to consider.
ACOSTA: Yes, absolutely. And we have some new video this morning. It's aerial footage from Ukraine's military showing Russian troops surrendering, put this up on screen, on Russian soil. HOLLIDAY: Yes.
ACOSTA: I mean, this is would have been unimaginable a couple of years ago. This has to be humiliating for Vladimir Putin. What do you think should the Ukrainians keep going? Do you think they just make their point try into the bargaining table?
HOLLIDAY: Yes, yes. I think it's going to be very difficult, right, for the Ukrainians to hold a territory inside Russia, right? These units are, you know, operations of hundreds of people, maybe a thousand people. Russia's a vast country. The goal is not to seize Russian territory. The goal is to change the dynamic and show that they can punch when they want to. The challenge is going to be, what does the negotiation table mean?
Because the Russians are notorious for frozen conflicts of getting into prolonged talks and actually not making any concessions or doing anything. So, what might look like a victory in the short-term of getting the Russians to negotiate is only the beginning of, you know, the game of how this ends up.
ACOSTA: Yes, I mean, a little bit of this reminds me of the Wagner Group. Started to do this march towards Moscow and it just took the whole world by surprise and it demonstrated, illustrated some vulnerability on the part of Russia's military, Russian forces.
HOLLIDAY: Yes. Well, the Russian military, you know, from a conventional standpoint has been, you know, decimated by this war, and it never was that strong to begin with in terms of materiel, intelligence, command control. They are, of course, a nuclear power, and, you know, you can expect in the next 24, 48 hours, one of Putin's cronies to come out and threaten, try to scare the Europeans by threatening the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, saying, this has crossed a red line.
ACOSTA: Yes. And how is this going to play inside Russia? I mean, I wonder how much the Russian people are seeing some of this.
HOLLIDAY: Yes.
ACOSTA: Some of the activists -- that activist community that operates in the shadows inside Russia, they can see things through VPN and so on.
HOLLIDAY: Right.
ACOSTA: But you just wonder how much the Russian people are seeing this. Because I would think that this would -- I mean, this would be quite embarrassing.
HOLLIDAY: Well, Vladimir Putin has a very different message domestically than he does internationally. Of course, he's going to say this wouldn't have been possible without western support, but he's been playing it kind of down. He called it a provocation. He didn't say this is a day that will live in infamy, right? So, you know, it is true that the information space in Russia is almost impenetrable. But you can bet that the word is going to get out among the families and the informal networks that, yes, this is a problem for him.
ACOSTA: Yes, the Russians are taking note. I have to think inside that country despite all the, you know, blackout that Putin puts on information there. All right. Ambassador Stuart Holliday, thanks a lot.
HOLLIDAY: Thanks, Jim.
[10:45:00]
ACOSTA: I appreciate it. Really appreciate it. Coming up just ahead, both Vice President Harris and Former President Trump are calling to end taxes on tips. We'll talk about what that means with the head of the Las Vegas Culinary Union. That's coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ACOSTA: All right. There is no doubt we're in a very divided presidential race, but one issue Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump agree on, putting an end to taxes on tips.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips. People making tips. We're going to do that right away, first thing in office, because it's been a point of contention for years and years and years.
[10:50:00]
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America. Including to raise the minimum and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Joining me now to discuss Ted Pappageorge, secretary and treasurer of the Culinary Union, which has endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Ted, hey, thanks so much for being with us. I come from a blue-collar family so I know how important this issue is for folks who work in the hospitality sector. But explain this to our viewers. Why is this a big issue, this idea of eliminating taxes on tips?
TED PAPPAGEORGE, SECRETARY-TREASURER, CULINARY UNION: Well, thank you so much for having me on. Look, there's a couple things. One, the idea that the current tax structure it's not etched in stone. It was brought in by Ronald Reagan in 1983. And it's quite rich that the -- you know, there's this heavy push on going after basically workers, working folks that are making tips. When we see this issue, as we talk about big corporations and billionaires like Trump that don't pay taxes.
So -- but what the thing that you heard from the vice president is really key. It's not just the idea of taxes on tips. We think the IRS has overreached on that. But it's also the idea of raising up the minimum wage. In most states in the country, they have a subminimum wage, and many of them are $2.13 an hour. So, a company can pay you, if you make tips, $2.13 an hour, and that's outrageous. And that's what you heard the vice president say, we're going to raise taxes on tips -- I mean, raise the minimum wage for all workers. That would include tip earning workers, too.
ACOSTA: Yes. And help us understand you know, what is this going to mean for somebody who is a server in a restaurant? Somebody who cleans hotel rooms? You know, I think that this could go a long way in providing a lot of folks some relief. I mean, I hear what you're saying about other issues that need to be tackled as well, but what does this mean for a lot of workers out there?
PAPPAGEORGE: Well, there are two sides of the same coin. This issue of-- and it's in the kind of the overarching program that you're hearing and we've been talking about for a couple of years. I mean, really just the economy's back. It's doing great, but the price of food, gas, housing are out of control because of big food, big oil, and large Wall Street landlords price gouging.
And look, this idea of taxes on tips being just, you know, not the way to go is part of that program of looking at working class families and what affects them. And look, we're just saying that tips should be treated differently than wages when it comes to taxes. But look, in Nevada, we're one of the seven states where we've been fighting literally for 30 years to make sure we don't have that subminimum wage, that $2.13 an hour.
But across the country -- you know, this is a federal issue, Jim. So, across the country, the subminimum wage and then getting relief or eliminating these taxes on tips will go a long ways for working class families to be able to -- you know, be able to own homes and take care of their kids.
ACOSTA: And what else needs to be done? I mean, if you were to lay out a couple of ideas that would really help working families out there. You know, we saw Trump and Harris, they don't agree on a whole lot, but they agree on this one item. But what else do working families need to see happen?
PAPPAGEORGE: Well, let me just say this. First of all, Trump lies and he lies a lot. And his followers like him because he speaks his mind, and that's wonderful. Sometimes it's a little half baked. But the difference here is that the vice president has credibility.
You know, here in Nevada, you know, Senator Reed for years backed up the tip earning workers here, Congressman Horsford, Senator Rosen, and to hear the vice president come out with a specific program of going after, you know, big food conglomerates, big oil and again, going after the high price of housing, look, the idea of doing something about taxes on tips and this subminimum wage, it's part of a real program to take on the high cost of living. It's just not fair for working families.
So, it doesn't need to be complicated, Jim. We've got to stay focused and this is the right program and it's a powerful program. And in Nevada, it's going to drive votes.
ACOSTA: All right, Ted Pappageorge, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.
PAPPAGEORGE: Thank you so much. Anytime.
[10:55:00]
ACOSTA: All right. And thank you everybody for joining us this morning. I'm Jim Acosta. Our next hour of Newsroom with Wolf Blitzer begins after a quick break. Have a great weekend.
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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Wolf Blitzer. This is a special edition of the CNN Newsroom. We're following breaking news. We're reporting live from Tel Aviv.
We begin this hour with the breaking news here in the Middle East. The ceasefire talks in the Israeli-Hamas War have --
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