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Trump Could Announce VP Pick As Soon As This Weekend With Milwaukee Convention Beginning On Monday; New Poll: 42 Percent Of Voters View Project 2025 Unfavorably; Soon: Jury To Deliberate In Sen. Menendez Corruption Trial; How Black Voters Feel About Biden Staying In Race; Black Voters And Lawmakers Say They're Standing By Biden. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired July 12, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Staffers of former President Trump, who are likely to work with him in a second term. If he was to pick somebody who, you know, is tied to a national abortion ban, suddenly you now have that talking point and it, you know, has some more steam behind it too. So you're -- you can expect that counter messaging as well I think going into this week with the RNC convention as well.
MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: You mentioned Project 2025. That's obviously a big Democratic message that the Biden campaign talks about. In fact, there's been a bunch of Biden tweets. There's just a handful in the last several days that have come up just from the Biden campaign itself.
Then there's the -- how does the public actually view this? And in -- there's a poll out, the same NPR poll out this morning talks about this as well. Favorable views of Project 2025, this conservative bloat plan, 16 percent. 42 percent have an unfavorable view. 42 percent have never heard of it. That's -- I guess it's kind of interesting, 42 percent have a view of this already?
Is that -- if you're a Democratic person, do you think --
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: 58 percent have a view of it.
RAJU: I guess 58 percent have a view --
MATTINGLY: That's a University of Wisconsin math fair.
RAJU: Well, it's an unfavorable view.
MATTINGLY: No, no, no.
RAJU: That's Ohio State listening there. But, you know --
MATTINGLY: We don't do that. We just kind of rock and roll.
RAJU: Yes. MATTINGLY: No, I was actually fascinated by kind of exactly that point of how many people have actually heard of it, which I think you can probably give a lot of credit to Taraji P. Henson, I think, who kind of gave it a shout out the other night as well.
Look, I think if you asked a -- an establishment Republican how they felt about Project 2025 on that, they would find many, many objectionable pieces of it, which is part of the issue that it has.
RAJU: Yes.
MATTINGLY: It is not a Trump campaign document. There are a lot of people, a lot of elements and a lot of really key pillars of that proposal that actually matched directly up with the Trump campaign's agenda.
RAJU: Yes.
MATTINGLY: But there's a lot of stuff in there too that Trump would never do. A lot of Republicans want no part of. And that creates a bit of a conflict for the Trump campaign. If you're the Biden team and you've seen it, they're not trying to get into nuance. They're not trying to get into detail. They're saying it's all them.
EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: This is a gift for Democrats.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
MCKEND: We were on the campaign trail. We were at the AKA convention. And as the vice president named this, thousands of Black women finished her sentence 2025.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
MCKEND: So they all knew what Project 2025 was, and Democratic voters are scared to death of it.
KANNO-YOUNGS: And she actually ticked through what would be in it to again, replacing civilian officials in the government with political allies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A Trump proposal as well.
KANNO-YOUNGS: A Trump proposal. Also less independence for the Justice Department. Just some --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A Trump proposal as well.
RAJU: And the question is going to be --
KANNO-YOUNGS: Right.
RAJU: -- Democratic voters are starting to get energized by it. Can they get swing voters and gen low information voters? Can they get them interested in it? That's going to be the challenge as we head into the fall.
All right, next, a United States senator on trial for corruption. A jury could soon decide Bob Menendez's fate. That could happen as soon as this afternoon.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:37:18]
RAJU: The jury is expected to begin deliberating today in the federal corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez. The New Jersey Democrat facing charges including bribery, extortion, wire fraud, and acting as a foreign agent. He has pleaded not guilty.
CNN's Kara Scannell is outside the New York City courthouse where things stand right now. Kara, the jury could get the case at any moment, so how quickly are we expected things to wrap up?
KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Manu, yes, the jury could get this case at any moment. The judge is still giving the instruction on the law that is explaining to the jury for all of these 18 counts, extortion, bribery, honest services, wire fraud, what it is that the government needs to prove.
Remember, this jury has been listening to testimony for over the past nine weeks in this case, hearing a lot of testimony about the gold bars, about the cash found in Senator Menendez's home and about the convertible that prosecutors say he received as bribes as his payments in order to help two New Jersey businessmen attempting to interfere in criminal investigations. And as you said, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Egypt.
Now, once this jury gets this case, they'll have to digest everything that they heard, as well as go through these 18 charges. Senator Menendez is facing 16 of them. It's a complicated case, and they don't have it just yet. But once they do, then they'll be able to begin their deliberations.
It's really anyone's guess how long it could take them to go through that, whether they think the government has proven its case or whether it's going to take some time for them to work through each of these charges. Remember, it's a jury of 12 people. They have to have a unanimous verdict.
So we'll -- once this does get underway, then we'll be able to start the clock and see how long this is going to take. But a lot is at stake for the senator. You know, he had stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but as you know, he is still on that committee. And if he is convicted of the most serious charges, he could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison. Manu?
RAJU: Yes. And if he's convicted, he could face expulsion from the Senate. If he decides not to resign, if he's acquitted, he may run for reelection as an independent. A lot riding on this case.
Kara Scannell, in New York, thank you so much for that. All right, next, black voters have been Joe Biden's bulwark, so far at least. Eva McKend spent the week traveling the country with the vice president and has new reporting on whether the voters still, that she's talking to, still want Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NYREE CLAYTON-TAYLOR, KENTUCKY VOTER: Riding for Biden, that's what we're going to do. Let's make that a hashtag.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:44:00]
RAJU: If Democrats went on a nationwide listening tour, they might not like what they hear about Joe Biden. A majority of Democratic voters say he should not be the nominee. But if they talk to black voters, their story is different.
CNN's Eva McKend traveled the country this week to find out exactly what the people who will decide this election are thinking about this precarious moment in the campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CRAIG TURNER, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: I've judged President Biden based on his day to day governance as president. And for that, he's been excellent. So I don't have a problem with it.
CHINELLA WEBB, ALABAMA VOTER: I do not think he should step aside. He is our president. I feel like he should remain in place until they internally decide whether or not we should change.
JILL NICKERSON, ARKANSAS VOTER: Just because he's an older person and he had a bad debate does not mean that he cannot do the job.
CLAYTON-TAYLOR: Riding for Biden. That's what we're going to do. Let's make it a hashtag. Hashtag RidingForBiden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: This is interesting. I mean, what is your take away from all these interviews? Why don't they want Kamala Harris instead?
[12:45:03]
MCKEND: Well, I think that older black voters, in particular, what we're hearing is that they feel especially loyal to President Biden. They're also risk averse. You know, they're like four months out from the election. They want to blow up the whole ticket. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
And they view Harris as part of the team, you know? I said to -- I asked someone, well, wouldn't you like to see Harris ascend to the top of the ticket? They're like, well, she's already on the ticket. And that suffices. Younger black voters, you hear something different. They are more eager and willing to sort of see this shake up. But they think that President Biden should arrive at this decision on his own.
I don't really see so much that they want to push Biden aside or cast him aside. So this time and time again has clearly emerged as his most loyal voting bloc. And I think it's so important to listen to black voters and it's so instructive because they're the ones that ultimately, as the reason why President Biden is president right now, right?
It was that South Carolina primary. It was black voters that, in his own words, he says, brought him to the dance. And right now, what we're seeing is that they -- many of these black voters want to see the tickets stay the same.
RAJU: And you were on the road as well, so --
KANNO-YOUNGS: I was on the road --
RAJU: -- so what was your take?
KANNO-YOUNGS: -- we were on the same route. And at these events, I got the same sense. I did talk to some voters who said, look, you know, most people wanted Biden to remain at the top of the ticket. You're totally right. That is the supportive voting bloc here. That's what we're talking about.
However, when posted the question of, well, if he made a decision, you know, who would you want at the top of the ticket? Immediately, Kamala Harris was brought up by almost every voter I talked to, which goes back to something we were talking about earlier of, if the party went in another direction and held a sort of mini primary.
I really can't emphasize enough the backlash that I think would come --
MCKEND: Yes.
KANNO-YOUNGS: -- from black voters and particularly also black women as well that have supported this party through the years. If you take the first black woman to be vice president and suddenly sideline her.
MCKEND: Absolutely.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Now that being said, I also want to know that when I would also sort of travel away from some of these events after the vice president finished speaking, particularly in Dallas, and I went, you know, to, you know, just away from the event, away from where we knew a lot of the Biden supporters would be and there was frustration.
You know, I heard voters talking about the economy as one of the primary issues talking about housing costs. I talked to one single mother who said that she was going to be head to eviction court, and she asked me to talk about this, heading to eviction court for the second time in recent years. And when I asked her to point to a policy or point to something like, did she know about the efforts that President Biden and the Biden administration was doing when it comes to the economy, because they have passed a lot, she was saying, look, I'm going to blame the person that's in office right now for these struggles.
RAJU: Interesting.
AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT: And I think it's important too to appreciate that. We've been seeing polling now, whether it's in the individual states or national polling showing Donald Trump getting anywhere from 15 and all the way up to 30 percent of the black vote, which would be historic if he were seeing these numbers. Now it's sort of averaging around 20 percent.
Again, we haven't seen anything like that in recent history of a Republican getting that strong a share of the vote. And these were decisions made. But, again, this is all pre-debate. This is all pre the talk of him being -- no longer being the nominee. And it's really driven I think a lot by need for change, shaking that up and the economy and Latino voters the same.
There's a reason that Nevada has been just so difficult for the Biden team to kind of get back into the blue category. It's been there for years and years and years. A lot of it is really driven by the fact that the Nevada economy, the Nevada economy has really suffered.
RAJU: Yes.
WALTER: And folks don't feel particularly good about where it ended up.
RAJU: And you mentioned the Republican effort to try to cut into that margin, which we definitely will see an effort when the Republicans meet for their convention in Milwaukee next week. Tim Alberta on that same profile on The Atlantic who speaks to Susie Wiles, the top campaign aide for the Trump campaign, discusses about the effort to reach out to black men.
It says, "Wiles, for her part, wanted to be clear about the campaign's aims. It's so targeted. We're not fighting for black people, she said. We're fighting for black men between 18 and 34. As we stood chatting, I remembered something that one of Trump's allies had told me earlier. A sentiment that we has -- that has since been popularized and described in different ways. For every Karen we lose, we're going to win a Jamal and an Enrique. And then Wiles nodded in approval," trying to get black and Hispanic voters from that coalition.
What do you think about that?
MCKEND: Well, you know, they have said this cycle after cycle. So I'm a little bit -- I don't know.
[12:50:03]
We'll see how they make out. But, yes, you do see some disaffected black men. Democrats have picked up on this. They know that this is a vulnerability and they're trying to speak to those rulers.
RAJU: Yes. All right. OK.
Much more to come after the break. How the city of Milwaukee is preparing for the Republican National Convention next week.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALICE COOPER, AMERICAN SINGER: I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600s to trade with the Native Americans.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In fact, isn't Milwaukee an Indian name?
COOPER: Yes, Pete, it is. Actually, it's pronounced Miliwaukee (ph), which is Algonquin for The Good Land.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was not aware of that.
COOPER: I think one of the most interesting aspects of Milwaukee is the fact that it's the only major American city to have ever elected three socialist mayors.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does this guy know how to party or what?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:55:05]
RAJU: Is that a great movie or what? I love it.
All right, for visitors to Milwaukee, maybe Alice Cooper included, the city is busy preparing for the Republican National Convention starting on Monday. The city estimates more than 50,000 people will be in attendance, from delegates, to media, security, political and support staff.
Among things being done to help local businesses capitalize on the week, bars will be allowed to stay open an extra two hours until 4:00 in the morning. I will not be there. Of course, I'll be fast asleep.
All right. And we want to remind you to tune in to CNN's special coverage of the Republican National Convention live from Milwaukee. It starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Monday.
And another programming note, tune in this afternoon when newly elected U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer goes one-on-one with Jake Tapper. Starmer's center left Labor Party won in an historic landslide victory. But will they be able to revive Britain's economy? Lead with Jake Tapper begins at 4:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN.
Thanks for joining INSIDE POLITICS. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts after a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
