Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Security Source: Walkie-Talkies Explode Across Lebanon; Today: Fed Set To Cut Interest Rates For First Time Since 2020; Polls: Economy Is Top Issue And Voters Prefer Trump Over Harris; Harris Seeks To Bolster Key Slices Of Democratic Coalition; WSJ: Springfield City Manager Told Vance Aide That Eating Pets Story Wasn't True; He And Trump Repeated It Anyway. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 18, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, who seeing the economy? Two hours from now, the federal reserve is expected to cut interest rates for the first time in four years. It's a signal that the central bank thinks inflation is finally under control, and it could have major political aftershocks.

Plus, supporting the coalition. Kamala Harris is trying to shore up support with key voters to her campaign, holding events with minority groups and targeting the all-important youth vote in new ads.

And it's happening. The first ballots get mailed out tomorrow in a state that is crucial to any path to 270. I'm talking about Wisconsin, a battleground currently showing a dead heat. We'll talk to the state's Democratic Party chair.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We begin with major breaking news out of the Middle East, a fresh wave of explosions in Lebanon. Their health ministry is reporting at least nine people have been killed after dozens of walkie talkies apparently blew up. This comes just a day after hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded, injuring thousands.

I want to get straight to Beirut, and CNN's Ben Wedeman, Ben?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Dana, in addition to the nine people who have been killed so far today, according to the Ministry of Health. They're saying more than 300 have been injured in this second day of blasts across the country.

Now, according to Lebanese security sources, there were somewhere between 15 and 20 explosions of devices. It's believed, walkie talkies, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, that's where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One of those blasts going off during a funeral for people killed in the pager explosions yesterday in Beirut.

In addition, there were a similar number of explosions in the southern part of the country as well. This has obviously put nerves very much on edge, keeping in mind that by and large, with a few notable exceptions, the violence between Hezbollah and Israel has largely been restricted to the border area. Cities like Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon have largely been spared.

But now, given that we have seen these blasts happening in the hundreds yesterday and dozens of them today in cities like Beirut and elsewhere. It certainly does put nerves on edge. Now we are expecting Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, to make a speech tomorrow afternoon at five o'clock local time.

The fear is that we're on the verge of another escalation. In fact, we are obviously in an escalation right now, given the events of yesterday and today, Hezbollah has vowed to take revenge for these blasts.

We don't know to what extent they can given that clearly their communications networks, their intelligence networks have been to some extent compromised as by what we're seeing in the last 24 hours. Dana?

BASH: Ben, I mean, truly a remarkable story. It's like we're watching some film. I said to you beforehand, it's as if it's a James Bond movie, and you said, more of a nightmare. And I think all those things are true. Thank you so much for that reporting. Stay safe and we will talk soon if we get more information.

Now, we want to come back to the U.S. and look at one of the most important issues in the U.S. election, and that of course, is inflation. Today, at 2 pm we expect the chairman of the Federal Reserve to announce, the Fed is cutting interest rates for the first time since 2020. The central bank is essentially declaring mission accomplished in the war on inflation.

The problem is, a lot of Americans think that war is far from over. And by one measure, prices are 20 percent higher than they were when President Biden and Vice President Harris took office. And polls like the one we're showing you now from ABC News, show voters trust Trump more than Harris to bring down inflation. Here's what both candidates are saying on the trail about this, this

week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The economy is now not good at interest rates. You'll see, they'll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And you know, will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point? But the reason is because the economy is not good. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to do it. But we're going to get interest rates down.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest black unemployment rate in generations. Is the price of groceries still too high? Yes. Do we have more work to do? Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [12:05:00]

BASH: Let's bring in our great group of reporters here; Semafor's Dave Weigel, CNN's MJ Lee, Hans Nichols of Axios, and our own Fed expert, Matt Egan is here in Washington, of course, because of this big Fed meeting. Matt, take it away. Tell us what we should expect.

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Well, Dana, this is a big moment, the first rate cut since COVID. The fact the Fed is even willing to lower interest rates at this point, it really speaks volumes, because it means that they don't think inflation is this clear and present danger to the economy, and that is really good news.

A lot of people didn't think we would get here at this point without the Fed wrecking the jobs market, but that hasn't happened. Unemployment is up, but it is not skyrocketing. So, I don't think we should lose sight of the bigger picture here. But now they face this decision, right? Do they go big with a 50-basis point interest rate cut, or do they lower interest rates more gradually?

And what they decide there really is very important, not just because a bigger cut means a bigger break for borrowers, because of what it signals, right? They're able to do a gradual interest rate cut. It would signal some confidence, right?

They don't think the economy needs to be rescued, but if they do a bigger cut, it would suggest some level of growing concern about the jobs market. We can kind of debate how concerned, and we'll hear from Powell himself, but a lot is at stake here for the real economy, for markets and for main street.

BASH: And talk a little bit more about the interest rate, where it is, where it could go?

EGAN: Sure. Well, we're talking about 23-year highs for interest rates. The Fed had to spike rates to try to put out this inflation fire. And the big question is whether or not they cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, or if they go bigger with a half a percentage point. And right now, the market is leaning towards a bigger interest rate cut.

But you know, what, that's not. That's a risky thing that the Fed could do here, because there is a chance that some people are going to see that the Fed is moving big, and they could end up getting worried about maybe what the Fed knows that we don't know. And so, it's going to be a tough decision.

I talked about Moody's economist Mark Zandi, he told me, he thinks they're going to do a smaller cut, because he said bigger cuts are for emergencies, and this doesn't feel like an emergency.

BASH: And Hans, I want to talk about how this relates, of course, to politics, because so much of the way that voters are thinking about who they're going to choose in November has to do with what I call crisis and affordability, which is all about inflation, but also all about, you know, because of the high interest rates, it being so difficult to buy houses and cars and so forth.

I remember when I first started covering presidential politics, particularly I was on the Bush reelection campaign in 2004. everybody would hold their breath in the John Kerry campaign, in the George W. Bush campaign, when the jobs numbers came out the first Friday of every month, to see what that meant, because that was so indicative of where the electorate was. This time, it's all about inflation and where those numbers are.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah. For the true nerds, and I don't mean to implicate anyone this table, what they really look at the White House is the consumer sentiment, the survey boards, and conference boards and the surveys, and that gives you an indication of just how healthy consumers are.

That brings you into this big debate is that should you listen to what consumers say, or should you listen to what consumers do? And what are they doing, they're spending. So that means they might actually be happier than they're telling pollsters.

And what you really see from the White House's angle on this is that they look at a couple headline prices that are not going to be a huge surprise, and in with this table, in large part because we all see them. And that's the price of eggs, the price of gas, things that people see every day. And when they see theirs, that those are going down, especially on the gasoline front.

So, inside the White House, there are two views. They're not necessarily in contradiction with each other. But one, they like where prices are trending, especially on some of these headline numbers. Yes, they have to acknowledge that they're higher. But two, there's this view, and I want to be very careful here. It's a private view. And it's a private view that the Fed is too late on cutting rates.

Now, you'll never get anyone the White House to say that publicly, because they respect the Fed's independence. But privately, it's not controversial among Democrats to suggest that the Fed is behind, and they should perhaps go bigger, and they won't -- don't want to play catch up on an economy. But the soft landing, I think this is Matt's point, still possible.

The better question is, Matt, what's your question for Powell?

EGAN: Well, I think one of the big questions a lot of us around the table have, how would Powell deal with another Trump administration, right? I mean, former President Trump was the one who nominated Powell to the job. But they had a tense relationship, and Trump has advocated for presidents having a greater say in interest rates, which is something that the Fed obviously does not want to see.

NICHOLS: He called him a bad putter. And for Donald Trump, when he calls you bad putter, they had no touch -- those are fighting words, as we saw from the debate. You don't want to get in the gulf debate with president.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, Trump is very clear that the Fed has gotten it wrong. He is saying what the Biden people are saying privately, no surprise publicly. I want to kind of broaden out the aperture a little bit and look at -- I mean, I mentioned, obviously inflation, the economy is number one across the board.

[12:10:00]

But if you look at where the spending is on ads, which is, of course, a precious resource, even though, particularly the Harris front, they have a lot of money, but where they're spending it. On the themes, our David Weigel did a terrific analysis of where the Democrats are spending money and abortion taxes, healthcare, Medicare, character. I mean, other issues are higher than the economy and inflation. Why do you think that is?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I think as we have been watching Kamala Harris, sort of take the torch from President Biden as she has become the Democratic nominee. It's been really interesting to watch how she has navigated the broader economic issue.

The bet that she is making is that the messaging that is going to be most successful is not to talk more broadly about the economic recovery. I mean, she's going to do that, of course, but the messaging that is going to really land is to point at specific work that the administration has done to cut prices.

Price cuts is going to be sort of the phrase that you hear the most, I think, when you are listening to Kamala Harris talk about the economy. And actually, the very first time that we saw President Biden and the vice president together at an official event after he dropped out, was in the suburbs of D.C. at an event touting, cutting prices of prescription drugs.

They know that the economy has been really sort of paradoxical story for the Biden administration. They can point to the historic economic recovery and all of that, and particularly the robust jobs market. But they also know that that hasn't perfectly translated, and certainly not proportionally translated to general economic optimism, and certainly not translated to credit to the Biden, Harris administration.

BASH: And Dave, one of the things -- when you were right about what she talks about with regard to what they have done. When you listen to Kamala Harris on what she will do, you can almost start a drinking game, every time she says, small businesses. Let me give you an example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Part of my plan under my economic opportunity plan going forward, is that, right now, startup entrepreneurs, small businesses, only get a tax deduction of $5,000. Nobody can start a small business with $5,000. So, I'm expanding that to $50,000. Understanding again, that when people have the opportunity to have the resources to get started, they're going to put the good ideas, they're going to put the hard work into it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Describe the politics of that.

DAVE WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: When she says that, she also talks about being a middleclass kid. That's also the front of her answers. If you look at the interviews they've been doing with local media, and they've opened up a bit more since the debate. The first question is often, what are you going to do to lower prices, which is a very hard question for an incumbent party to answer.

And as implications that are very Trumpian. It is, Trump says he's going to do mass deportation that'll decrease demand. Trump says, he'll explore more energy that'll decrease energy costs. Democrats can point to the fact that inflation is actually -- it was bad two years ago. It's not now.

What people want to hear is, how do you make the prices go down? So, everything she says is something realistic that could survive a fact check, that answers a very hard question. There is not a plan to say, that we're going to lower the cost of your grocery bill to what it was in 2019.

There was a pandemic. There was a money supply inflation. You can't hit the button that makes that go away, but Trump has an answer that gets them through these questions. And Harris, I think, with a different set of incentives and a different relationship to something she can back up in a policy paper, she doesn't have an answer. So, she goes to a larger -- well, imagine a future where there are more businesses, and this starts to ameliorate.

BASH: Yeah. That's really interesting. And we're going to talk a little bit more in the next segment about, wanting to say things that could survive a fact check. Don't go anywhere, because coming up, Kamala Harris is about to speak to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. We are monitoring the event. And we'll bring you any news that they have there live. Also, quickly want to thank Matt Egan for being here. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: 48 days until the election, and Kamala Harris is courting support from key slices of the Democratic coalition, one by one. Any minute, Harris will address the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute before joining a campaign call aimed at mobilizing young voters. This as her team releases a new ad, appealing to Asian American voters and on the heels of her event with the National Association of Black Journalists.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is traveling with the vice president. Priscilla, what are you hearing from team Harris?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, this is certainly a push by the Harris campaign to bolster the Democratic coalition. Taking together the events and campaign activities over the last week, amount to a campaign trying to bolster that support, putting millions into Spanish language ads, speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists, as you mentioned, and in that ad targeting Asian Americans.

And here at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, she will be addressing Hispanic Lawmakers and Latino voters, an extension of what her campaign has been doing over the last week. And then later, she's going to be joining that National Youth Organizing call again, part of that push to make sure that young voters are registered to vote come November.

[12:20:00]

Again, we talk a lot about the vice president and her campaign targeting voters who may lean a Republican or who may not be interested in voting for former President Donald Trump. Well, this has been a week focused on the vice president catering to the base and trying to shore up those votes, especially with Latinos, who have shown some waning enthusiasm when it comes to the vice president. Dana?

BASH: OK. Priscilla, thank you so much for that reporting. And back here with my panel. Dave Weigel, I want to go to something that you wrote this week about part of the coalition that seems to be just gone. You wrote, most of what Harris needs is already in place. But some of Biden's supporters from the last election aren't coming back, and new voters poised to participate in this year's race appear more friendly to Trump.

One question, with only partial answers in the wave of post-debate polling, is who in the 2024 electorate will make up for that. And the Biden supporters not coming back. You were talking about something that Anna Greenberg, a democratic pollster, said really bluntly sitting at this table earlier this week, which is white working-class voters and white rural voters, like there's nothing you can do. Democrats, they're just gone. And this is the point you're making.

WEIGEL: Yeah. And that was based on talking to pollsters, and swing state pollsters and a couple of national pollsters, that's what they saw. These are the people who are very susceptible. What we were talking about in the last segment, prices were lower under Donald Trump. It was easier to do the x and y. I'm going to bring -- I want to him back.

What they're -- what the Harris campaign is trying to do is, it has echoes of 2016 which was not successful for Hillary Clinton, which is finding more female voters, inviting the gender gap in a post Dobbs environment, with a candidate who is not as unpopular for various reasons Hillary Clinton was, that's been fairly successful.

And that's what pollsters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin have seen, is there actually one more female voters turning out generally. That's a pattern across -- since 1919. Two, that there is a gap, and it advantages Harris, that she does. Trump wins men. Looking at some polling, Pennsylvania suffix. Trump was winning men by 12 points. Harris winning women by 17. And that's enough. And that's across -- that's across all racial demographics.

So, some of the new voters Trump is bringing in, they're also less reliable. A lot of what the Trump campaign and its affiliates, like turning point action are doing is trying to find new alienated voters, young men who just joined the electorate in the last couple of years. Will they vote? That's a harder question than will the suburban woman who votes in every election vote? And they're much more amenable to Harris even than they were to Joe Biden.

BASH: I mean, that's how Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, for example, in 2016 because there are voters who came from -- like appeared from nowhere who just totally disaffected, but they were really excited about Donald Trump.

LEE: Well, and the flip side of obviously, you know, finding new voters to bring into the tent is preventing the people you already have from leaving. And that is precisely what Priscilla is talking about. When you're ticking off, you know, Hispanic voters, outreach to Asian Americans, and Vice President Harris yesterday talking about, and I'm paraphrasing here, we are not taking for granted black men, for example.

We don't assume that they're going to be with us. I mean, that is a very clear signal that they clearly, and we know this, they clearly view November as an election where they can't afford to have even some of these groups that have traditionally supported Democrats, support within those groups slip in any way.

BASH: I speaking of groups, and you guys can tell me what your assessment of this is. I just want to play what Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Governor of Arkansas, the former press secretary for Donald Trump, said she was a kind of moderator of a town hall that he gave in Flint, Michigan yesterday.

Listen to what she said about being a mom versus being a stepmom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, (R-AR): You can walk into a room like this, where people cheer when you step onto the stage, and you might think for a second that you're kind of special. Then you go home, and your kids remind you very quickly, you're actually not that big of a deal. My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn't have anything keeping her humble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Before I get to you, Hans, I actually want to quickly play something from Bryan Lanza, who is a supporter of Donald Trump. He is now a senior adviser to the Trump 2024 campaign. What he said on CNN last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BRYAN LANZA, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2024 CAMPAIGN: I do want to get back to Sarah Huckabee Sanders comment, I too, was blessed to have a stepmother. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be able to have normal conversations without a stepmother. So, I found that fence and that comment to be actually offensive. I don't know what more to say about them, disappointed. And Sarah was saying that, I'm sure I'm going to get any criticism from the campaign. But I have to sort of defend somebody who's a stepmom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What am I missing here? I mean, not in what Bryan said, but in what Governor Sanders said.

[12:25:00]

NICHOLS: Well, I don't know. I think like the better sort of reporting question is, like, how much pushback is there on her internal? Like, will there be any reprimand? Will she try to -- and I maybe cleanup is not the right word --

BASH: But is she because -- or is this just part of their strategy?

NICHOLS: Is the quiet part out loud, right? And that's just a question I have with a lot of things that the Trump campaign does, is that they're things that on the outside don't seem to make a lot of political sense. But internally they may have their own logic for it. And I -- you know, I get -- it's just really a reporting inquiry. Like, do they think this is helpful or was it just a blunder that they wish they could take back? And I don't know the answer to that.

LEE: Well, this one is just so strange because with some of the language you hear from Trump or Vance or, you know, those around the campaign, that is like anti-immigrant, for example, or like racially tinge. Like yeah, you can make the political, unfortunately the political case that like there's a group of people or a kind of person that they are trying to appeal to who would like hearing that kind of language.

I don't know who you're winning over with. The mom versus stepmom. The childless cat ladies. It's --

BASH: Go ahead.

LEE: Yeah.

BASH: No, I just want to -- I want to quote one of our colleagues, and I won't say who, who said this morning, who has children, who said, you know what, even before I had children, just being a woman keeps you humble in society. You don't have to respond to that. If you know, you know.

So, let's talk about -- you sort of made an allusion to immigration and to what we continue to see in Springfield, Ohio. Kamala Harris yesterday had a sort of, kind of a soliloquy about how bad it is, which was noteworthy because she has really tried to sidestep controversy on their side of the aisle and tried to stay focused on hers.

But meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has reporting this morning that says the following. Vance's staff member asked point blank. Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten? Recalled the city manager. I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.

By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up and repeated the claim the next morning. And I should, of course, remind everybody that it was Donald Trump who talked about this eating cats and dogs on baseless rumor before 67 million viewers on Tuesday night at the debate.

I just also want to add that we have asked Senator Vance or the Vance campaigns, spokesman to respond to the fact that one of his aides was told point blank that is not true. And the spokesperson says that he received -- just as he told me on Sunday, he's received countless messages from residents in Springfield on the disastrous effects of Kamala Harris's immigration policies.

And went on to talk about the challenges in the community with the new Haitian migrants. There doesn't say anything about the cats and dogs' rumor. His office being told that it wasn't true, which is according to the Wall Street Journal.

WEIGEL: It created story, and I guess to borrow a phrase from the Senator Vance from this weekend. What you were saying before and you were asking about the Trump campaign. The overall theory of a lot of these attacks and a lot of these lines is, if you push the envelope, people are going to condemn you, but the media is always going to condemn you. So, why not try it out?

If you're talking about Haitian migrants, even though people might say out loud in public, well, I'm offended by this. Maybe they're thinking something else. And this is -- when you hear people, the judge talk about the campaign and how they should -- they want us -- they want people, voters to be talking about these issues and not one of Harris's policies. That's the theory.

Is that there are -- anytime you shift the conversation to this, even if it looks like you're losing, you're winning. I think that's a fairly untested theory and --

BASH: And nevermind cynical is dangerous.

WEIGEL: Well, and also there was a story in Springville, which the media was telling. It was a New York Times story front page before Vance said anything about the, some of the difficulties of integrating new Haitian migrants in Springfield. They're moving that to a more conspiracy-based story.

This could be your town. It's in -- if a piece of some of the memes the Trump campaign has shared online where it'll show a picture of MS- 13 gang members, and say, meet your new apartment managers. Or here's a -- here's a dilapidated looking scene. Here's a nice suburb. The dilapidated looking scene is what Harris is going to do. Is that effective? It definitely, he gets attention every time. But you might look back and say, hey, this is an electorate that says the economy's going the wrong direction. Could you be talking about that and not making up a story? And they're all in, on the making up or inflating a story theory --

BASH: It also just -- it also maybe brings this conversation before we go to break together, which is that your story about how Democrats might have sort of given up on the white working-class man that maybe Republicans have kind of given up on the swing voter, particularly women and on people who get offended by such things and don't get, you know, quietly excited about it.

Thank you, guys. Great reporting, great discussion. Coming up. Get ready to check the mail, cheeseheads, because ballots go out tomorrow in Wisconsin, where Joe Biden won by less than 21,000 votes in 2020. Can Kamala Harris keep the state blue? The Democratic chair of that state will be here next.