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for every life-saving treatment, for every next step, for every care in the world. Cleveland Clinic. It's Wednesday, August 28th. Right now on CNN This Morning, Donald Trump hit with a retooled indictment for his actions on January 6th. What was left out of the filing following that controversial immunity ruling from the Supreme Court. Plus this.
I just feel sick at what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. Footage obtained by CNN airing first here on CNN This Morning showing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi evacuating the Capitol on January 6th and capturing her unfiltered reaction to the violence and chaos of that day. And...
I think to a certain extent it's Biden's fault and Harris' fault. Trump says that President Biden and Vice President Harris are somewhat responsible for the attempt on his life and later. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month. After weeks of ridicule from her opponents, Kamala Harris has scheduled her first sit down what she needs to do in this interview.
6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the Washington Monument on this Wednesday morning. That is the White House down in front of there, but it's getting darker, guys. Fall is here. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hines. It's wonderful to have you with us. Donald Trump indicted once again. The Republican nominee hit with a superseding indictment from special counsel Jack Smith. That case has been on hold after the Supreme Court granted Trump partial immunity for official acts taken as president.
And that distinction, official versus private acts, is central to this new indictment. Smith's office writes this, quote, the defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election. Trump, responding in a lengthy multi-part statement on his Truth Social platform, says, quote, this is merely an attempt to interfere with the election.
Or, as he put it more succinctly in a follow-up post, quote, "persecution of a political opponent." The reignition of the case underscores that November's election has uniquely personal stakes for Donald Trump. If he wins, Trump will once again wield the awesome powers of the presidency, including the legal authority to shut this and any other federal case against him down.
At the core of the case are Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, culminating on January 6th, 2021. - We have stolen the Capitol. We have to the steps of the Capitol to the very top and it looks like we're trying to breach the Capitol building.
There's a time when strong action is needed. I'm sorry Pence is a traitor. But we still— What of course you are seeing is footage obtained by CNN, airing for the first time here on CNN this morning of January 6th, and the evacuation of lawmakers, including then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was filmed by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, as part of an HBO documentary. It was turned over to Congress.
And it shows how Pelosi reacted when she was told she'd have to evacuate the Capitol and go to Fort McNair. And the footage shows her questioning how the Capitol could possibly have been unprepared for what happened that day.
Every time that the members ask, are we prepared? Are we prepared? Why not? The past is at work. We're calling an annual bar. Now, we've been here since Cardinal. I believe this. Our differences are so great. I just don't understand this.
I just don't understand it. Why do we empower people this way by not being ready? I feel responsible. We have responsibility, Terry. We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous. Why weren't the National Guard there to begin with? They thought that they had sufficient resources. There's not a question of how they had resources. They don't know.
They clearly didn't know and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for war because it's stupid that we should be in a situation like this because they thought they had what? They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? Shame on us. Wow.
Joining me now to discuss Marcus Childress, former investigative counsel for the House January 6th committee. Stephen Collinson, CNN senior politics reporter. Brad Woodhouse, senior advisor to the DNC, former senior advisor to the DNC. Matt Gorman, former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you this morning. Marcus, I'm grateful that you are here at the table with us today because you have spent so much time working on the January 6th
committee really understand so much about that day. Can you help us understand? I was really struck by what Nancy Pelosi was saying there, that she takes responsibility, that she feels like they should have done more to make sure the National Guard was already at the Capitol. Can you help us understand what this means? Yeah, so at this point, I don't have the exact timestamps, but I believe this is right when she leaves
you know, Congress is being escorted out to a secure location. And what I think you really just see there is the raw emotion of that day of Speaker Pelosi feeling like
We should not have allowed these rioters to stop our official proceedings from moving forward. Look, there were tabletop exercises prior to January 6th of 2020, just like there's tabletop exercises going on right now preparing for the 2024 election. And I feel like members were worried about this possibility of rioters getting into the Capitol. They were worried about the possibility of candidate Trump at that time getting folks excited to go and try to stop this official proceeding and stop Vice President Pence
And what you see there is probably, is Speaker Pelosi just being raw, right? Just having raw emotion about letting down her other members, letting down the staff, which she's talked about on her book tour of, you know, they were in a position they didn't want to be in. It's pretty shocking to see, to be honest, just because you've only seen it through the surveillance. You can't really normally hear what she's saying. But it does line up with what a lot of members and what the leadership felt that day as terms of like just letting candidate Trump
almost stop what was an important congressional proceeding. Yeah, you can hear the anger in her voice as well. Stephen Collinson, you paint big pictures for us every day, and I know you've written about Donald Trump's superseding indictment. I was just struck by how this new footage kind of underscores and sort of pulls
pulls out the picture that Jack Smith is painting. Obviously, he was forced to do this because of the Supreme Court immunity ruling. But this all really does thrust January 6th, the events of that day, back into the spotlight, as well as, of course, indicting Trump again and reigniting the narrative that he wants to push about persecution against him. How do you see what we just
have learned about how Pelosi handled that day. How do you understand how it fits in with Donald Trump and how it is going to affect the race? Well, it's shocking again when you see that this issue has faded somewhat from the campaign during the whole period of President Biden's debate performance, him having to step down, the excitement over the new Democratic candidate. But looking at that again, it brings it all back and it raises the question of how
How has it been so difficult to bring a president who tried to subvert democracy to account before the next election in which he's standing and it raises the questions about what would happen if he wins. This new indictment is not going to decide the election, but the election probably will decide the fate of this case because if Trump gets back into power he'll appoint an attorney general and this will be all washed under the carpet.
If Harris wins, presumably there will be the space for Smith to continue pending Supreme Court interventions to get this case to fruition. But I think when we look back in, or when future generations look back at this, they will puzzle about the question of
how this took so long to deal with in the American political and legal system to the extent to which the person who is widely seen as responsible for that footage has a chance to become president again.
Right. Well, and this is, of course, something that the Trump team is trying to bring into this conversation. Matt Gorman and Brad, I welcome you to weigh in on this as well, because this is just outside the 60 day window that is the unofficial Department of Justice policy in terms of bringing an indictment or announcing investigations.
into political candidates. It's not written down, but we know from the DOJ inspector general's report this is kind of a rule that they try to follow. Obviously it was in focus in 2016 when we were dealing with Hillary Clinton, Jim Comey and her emails.
but they're basically saying yes I know impressive your head is not going back there believe me I know but at the same time they're basically making the argument like this is too close to an election to deal with this Matt how do you see this we know how it played in the primary yeah when Trump was indicted Ron DeSantis will say he thinks he lost the election in no small part because of that but now we're in a final sprint of a general election that has been historically unprecedented how does this fit
in with all of it. - Yeah, I'll leave the legal kind of machinations to the smarter people on the other side of the table. I think from politically, I think the Harris campaign is a choice to make, right? They've had a decent job these last six weeks kind of messaging joy and a lot of these other things.
This is not joy. No, but hold on. This is the opposite. I just mean like January 6th, right? This story, this is not a joyous story. No, it's not. No, no, no. It's not. But when she first took over the ticket, there was talk about the paradigm of the prosecutor versus the felon, that sort of dichotomy. Does she go back after that? I think it's a discussion her team would want to have because if...
Joy's been working, what you've been doing has been working, just like we've been talking about with not doing interviews. If what you've been doing has been working, there's a hard case to make to go off that. So I think in spite of all of kind of the news of late,
if what's been working has been working, keep going. - Yeah, Brad? - Well, first of all, the delay here is Donald Trump's, right? I mean, he was the one in court trying to delay the case, delay the case, delay the case. I think one thing we learned is that maybe he didn't get as much out of the Supreme Court ruling as he thought because these four charges have been maintained in his superseding indictment. So we'll see, look, the American people saw what happened. They're seeing this footage.
of Pelosi for the first time, the judgment here is going to have to be made at the ballot box. And look, for all my Democratic friends, this race is close.
This race is close. Joy is not gonna do it all together. It's not. There has to be a case prosecuted against Donald Trump. I'm not talking about the case in court, but a case on a campaign trail. And so it can't all be joy and hope and happiness. Look, I was in Chicago. It was all joy, hope, and happiness. But we gotta prosecute a case against Donald Trump. January 6th is part of it.
Abortion bans are part of it. Project 2025 is part of it. - Real quick, I think coming out of each party's convention, Milwaukee had it, from what you were saying about Chicago had it, there is a tendency as you come out of these things the week or two after to be a little bit higher in your own supply a little bit. - Oh yeah. - Right?
And so I think it's important for, we certainly had that when Biden dropped out of the race within days of the convention. I mean, if you're saying Democrats have it now, it's important to kind of come back down, you know, and come off the quote unquote vibes from each party. I would advise both sides to do that. So coming back down, what I'm nervous about reading the superseding indictment is that we're seeing a lot of the same behavior that's in the superseding indictment being played on the campaign trail right now.
And that was the number one thing that, well at least was my team, a lot of our personal goal in the January 6th committee was to make sure another January 6th never happens again. And then what do you see being said on the campaign trail? It's gonna be rigged, they're gonna cheat. This is exact quotes that you see in the superseding indictment and the prior indictment. And so I think you have to have real concern about getting out to the ballot box to your point,
but also a concern about what's gonna happen in that time period between election day and January 6th 2025 and that's something that has me I'm not gonna lie very unsettled well and you said Pelosi speak to that a little bit like how could we not have been prepared for this a there seems to be something in the sense about now as well steven I mean understanding based on what happened on January 6 what could happen potentially in this election you have heard from kinda escalate this
rhetoric around cheating and things not being fair since Harris was elevated to the top of the ticket. Definitely. And as the race tightened, he started to say, well, of course I'll accept the result as long as it's free and fair. And we all know what that means in reference to 2020. And it was before about this time before the 2020 election that he was starting to raise those issues. What was interesting yesterday was this was a Trump campaign that's really struggled the last few weeks
As soon as that indictment went down, the muscle memory was back out there. The fundraising appeals were out there. It's all a witch hunt, et cetera, et cetera. Does this give Trump a foundation to try and gather himself again? Or does this play into those swing states, the moderates, the suburban voters who look at this again
And that validates Harris's message that we have a fleeting moment to move on from all of this. Yeah, I mean, Matt, again, with Trump, I mean, this worked for him in a primary. Does leaning into this, do you think that's a strategy for him that is one that's going to add to his bottom line?
I don't think either party leaning into this kind of works one way or another. I think this would be different if Biden was a nominee because he had far more comfort going after the democracy sort of thing. I think McCarthy put this best, right? The more Trump is talking about his own problems and not voters' problems, that's a problem for him. I would say the same thing with Kamala and Tim. I think they would have a better chance going after less about this and democracy. They've already kind of jettisoned a little bit of that.
and more of kind of candidly what they've been doing on the policy front. Well, look, I think democracy is going to still be a big issue in this race. There was a lot of that discussion at the convention last week. But, you know, we've gone beyond democracy as a single term. We're talking about freedoms. And so it is January 6th. It's threats to democracy. It's Trump, you know, basically...
It looks like he would mount another insurrection if he lost. But it's also about freedoms. It's about IVF. It's about abortion. It's about stopping... You're basically making the same argument he's making, right? You've got to make it... You brought it out a little bit. I see what he's doing. I see where he's going. You're saying this can be included, but it needs to be bigger. It was such a central part of Biden's
entire message. - Well, I mean, look, remember, his animating feature of running in 2020 was what happened in Charlottesville. So I think that's what got him back in the political game was what he saw as the threats then, and then of course later on we had January 6th. So I think it is different with the change at the top. - All right. Marcus Childress, before I let you go, you talked about being afraid of
I of what might happen here based on on what you what you saw that day I'm interested to know based on what you watch there with her saying that she took some responsibility is that something that Trump's team potentially uses in this January 6 case if it goes forward I thought the Trump team uses anything in litigation be completely candid right no matter what speaker Pelosi would have said in a video I'm sure the Trump team would find a way to put in a filing that will get litigators do I'm not trying to knock his team at all that's what good lawyers do
I'm not going to give it too much weight of what she said. I think what we saw was a raw, empathetic leadership moment from Speaker Pelosi. It's something that she's also been saying as she travels around the country talking about her book. I think it's very endearing. As a former military officer, it's what you actually expect of people.
You expect your officers and the people in charge to take responsibility if something goes bad, and you see her doing that in part, but also keeping the limelight on former President Trump's actions. Yeah, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that later on in the show because there's some more new footage from the day after January 6th where she really focuses in on Trump. Marcus, thank you so much for being here this morning. I really appreciate it.
All right, coming up, Republicans have been demanding it. Now Kamala Harris will sit down for her first interview. It's going to be joint with her running mate Tim Walz since the beginning of the campaign, and it's going to be right here on CNN. Plus, an animal rights group is demanding an investigation into RFK Jr. after a bizarre story came to light about his cutting off the head of
of a dead whale. And J.D. Vance has brushed off his childless cat lady's comments as a one-time thing. But does another resurfaced interview tell a different story? So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they're people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children.
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Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish. The point has to be performance in terms of what a president does. A president who incites an insurrection against the Capitol. But I got the point that you're making about a one and a half hour debate tonight. I'm talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic.
That has aged, interestingly. That was the last time Kamala Harris sat down for an interview. She was, of course, trying to do damage control after President Biden's disastrous CNN debate performance. Ever since then, Team Trump has been criticizing her for not doing an interview.
She refuses to sit down for an interview, even with the extremely friendly media. What is she gonna do other than play around on TikTok? She sure as hell isn't giving interviews. Kamala Harris has been the nominee for three weeks. She hasn't sat down for a real interview. I also wanted to go say hello to the Vice President and ask her why Kamala Harris refuses. Why does she refuse to answer questions from the media? Unlike Kamala Harris, President Trump showed up and took some tough questions.
But now Harris and her running mate, Tim Walls, have agreed to sit down for a joint interview with our own CNN's Dana Bash. The interview airs tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN. Matt Gorman, did they wait too long to do this? Because this has become like turned into kind of a thing. It has snowballed.
That said, they are doing it. They will be on camera here. What do you expect? A couple things. I took note, first of all, kind of the structure of it, right? It's a joint interview, so it's going to be divided time, obviously. And then also it's on the cusp of a holiday weekend, so there's a couple little structural things I took note as an operative.
The second thing is, look, I am very interested to see what she says in a host of topics and same with walls. We've talked about some of the things, especially on the walls and with military service and circumstances that you talked about that haven't matched up with the facts.
A lot of that has been left to fester for now weeks because it wasn't addressed when it first got out there. And so does this kind of give them each a chance to address some of this stuff? But look, I think the biggest thing is now Republicans, and I think everybody rightly so, is watching what she says in this interview, how she explains a lot of the flip-flops, and we'll go from there. Well, Brad, I'll let you kind of jump in on the flip-flop thing. But that said, we
There are a lot of situations, policy proposals, we don't know necessarily where Kamala Harris stands. I mean, Dana is going to be asking about those things, fracking some of the other issues that Republicans are criticizing her on. And this has not always been her strongest forum, necessarily, interviews. Well, look, she did say she would do an interview by the end of the month. She is doing an interview by the end of the month. And by the way, a joint interview with your vice presidential secretary.
pick is pretty standard, pretty standard fare. But I just love those clips of J.D. Vance and the Republicans just hammering and hammering hammering that she needs to do an interview. It just shows how desperate they are. And you know what? I want them to do more interviews. And I want Donald Trump to do more interviews. Well, they do a lot of interviews. Well, no, right. And how do they work out for him?
Donald Trump did a 64-minute press conference and he lied 162 times. He looked unhinged. He looked off his game. So, you know, they should do more interviews and they should do more press conferences. Look, I think she'll... Are you a Democrat saying Trump should be on the air more often now? Oh, yes, please, please. Because that's the reverse of what a many...
Well, look, it's working for us. Look, I think she's going to do this interview. But this whole, it's not been a controversy. Look at the polling. Look at the excitement. Look at how well she's done. She's had a great rollout. She had a great rollout of a VP pick. But look, 40 days ago, she wasn't the nominee. She had to put up a campaign. She had to pick a vice president. She had to prepare for a convention. She's preparing now for
She's doing this in the middle of preparing for a debate. I don't think this has been that dramatic. Stephen Collins, and part of why there has been this focus on it is because there is this sort of history of Harris in some cases struggling. And I know from talking to sources that in particular, this moment that she had with Lester Holt in a major interview in 2021 is something that has stuck.
with her. It's something they still talk about. Let's watch that moment and then I just want to get you to weigh in briefly. Watch. We are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole this whole this whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't I don't understand the point that you're making.
So what do you see in that moment that could inform how this interview may play out? That interview has hung over the entire vice presidency and it's formed a lot of the political attack lines that the Trump campaign has been pushing forward. I think that interview took place right at the beginning
I think it's fair to say she wasn't very well prepared. The whole issue of what her job was on the border wasn't well defined. She is going to be ultra prepared for this one. It's coming, as you said, right in the middle of debate preparation. The Trump campaign believes it will expose her as not ready for primetime, not fit to serve in the Oval Office.
If the other side of that happens, if she does get through it fairly well, I think that will take away one of the attack lines that the Trump team has been using. And whatever happens, if she does well, if she doesn't, it's going to raise the stakes massively for the debate on September the 10th. Right, which of course has already massively high stakes. All right, ahead here on CNN this morning, the Harris campaign trying to appeal to young voters where they are on social media, how they're using TikTok to reach Gen Z.
And a major Israeli operation underway right now in the West Bank. Multiple Palestinians are dead. We're going to bring you the latest in our morning roundup. All right, a live look right now at Kennedy Space Center, where the big countdown has been called off again for the second time. SpaceX scrubbing plans to launch the Polaris Dawn mission. This time it was the weather. Yesterday, takeoff was called off because of a helium leak. The weather not expected to clear up tonight or tomorrow, so unclear when this one's going to launch.
And speaking of weather, severe storms are hitting the Great Lakes region overnight, knocking out power to nearly half a million customers, plus a cold front making its way across the Midwest towards the mid-Atlantic, finally breaking hopefully the record heat. Let's get to our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, with more this morning. Allison, what are you seeing out there?
All right, so it is still summer, Casey, but I think a lot of us are over it. We're ready for it to be fall, get those cooler temperatures in. And that will be the case for some folks today, but others, you've still got about another day or two of dealing with those extreme heat temperatures. And that's going to be highlighted in all of these orange areas you see here. So St. Louis, Cincinnati, D.C., up through New York, still looking at another day of incredibly warm temperatures. St. Louis topping out at 102 yesterday, Chicago 99. Again, we're going to start to see things calm down. So a place like
Chicago going from 99 yesterday to a high of only 84 today. So a little bit better similar in Cleveland going from 95 yesterday to 83 today, but it's going to take at least another day for areas in the mid Atlantic and the northeast to drop. So D. C. Topping out at 100 today tomorrow
will drop down maybe below that 90 degree mark. New York City, Philadelphia, both still going to be in the 90s today, but hopefully getting back into the 70s again tomorrow. Now, one of the things that's helping with that heat is it's also helping to fuel a lot of severe thunderstorms in similar areas, especially along the mid-Atlantic Ohio Valley. You can see here most of these areas looking at the potential for damaging winds. Large hail also going to be a concern across portions of the high plains. Could see some hail up around the size of golf balls.
Wow, okay. Allison Chinchar for us this morning. Allison, thank you very much. All right, coming up here on CNN This Morning, just released footage of Nancy Pelosi during the January 6th Capitol attack. The former speaker also had quite a bit to say about who was to blame. We'll show you that next. Church's original recipe is back. You can never go wrong with original.
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I just feel sick that what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. He's got to pay a price for that. He's got to pay a price for that. This morning, newly obtained footage of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 6th and the day after, showing us her real-time reaction to the Capitol attack and revealing how in the hours after, she sought to lay blame directly at the feet of former President Trump.
with an unusually unfiltered set of footage here. Pelosi is seen slamming capital security for their lack of preparation. Still, she saved her strongest rebuke for Donald Trump as she prepared and considered whether they were going to again impeach the outgoing president. -We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. There is a domestic enemy in the White House.
And let's not mince words about this.
Let's not mince words about this. Marcus Childress did not actually leave the show earlier, even though I said thank you. You're the former investigative counsel for the January 6th committee. Some of what we saw there was from January 7th, where Pelosi is now, you know, the morning after digesting what has happened. And there's a little bit more footage I want to play for you also. She's driving in a car on her way in.
on January 7th on the phone with her aides about what they're going to do to try to respond to what they had just seen. Let's watch that. I think our focus has to be on the president. Let's not divert ourselves. I don't want to have it on a par with the insurrection and the impeachment and the rest of that. If they ask, I will respond, but I'm not doing it on a par because it's a diversionary tactic. Understood, understood.
So that's actually arguing with her longtime aide, Drew Hamill. And Hamill was noting that she should call in the speech she was about to make for the resignation of the chair of the Capitol Police Board, Stephen Sund. And she's saying, I don't want to do that. I want to keep this focus on Donald Trump.
I know we talked about this a little bit earlier in the show, but this does kind of illuminate how she was thinking about Trump himself in that moment. And especially that line, he needs to pay a price. Yeah. I mean, I think the big takeaway from January 6th, even to this day, right now, is the fragility of the peaceful transfer of power. And that's
That's a core tenet of our, I know we use the term democracy and it's not really popular right now on the campaign trail, but it is a tenet of Talking Points is it's real fragile. And I think what you see here is Speaker Pelosi saying that but for the actions of Donald Trump, not acting in his capacity as president, but acting as a candidate who wanted to keep power.
Capitol Police would have had to respond. National Guard would have had to respond, just like every other election in American history. And so I think she's appropriately pointing at the leadership, pointing at the head that was actually inspiring, sewing down to our election, and wanting to keep the focus there in those important moments after January 6th. Yeah, and it's worth... Sorry, Stephen, go ahead. I was just going to say, what's so fascinating about that, and following on from your point, that key phrase, he needs to pay a price, it explains so much of what's happened
in the subsequent years. At that point, it would be impossible for us to imagine that there's a way back politically for Donald Trump. Yet his strength in the Republican Party was such that within three or four weeks of that, Kevin McCarthy was down at Mar-a-Lago. And the speaker's reaction there helps us understand why she was so active in recent weeks about trying to change the Democratic ticket, because she believed
that this under President Joe Biden was a ticket that couldn't thwart a return of Donald Trump. And what she's seeing there is why she believes that a second Trump term could be so dangerous for the country. It's like it's a full circle moment, that footage. Yeah.
I always take issue with the thought that McCarthy legitimized Trump or gave him a path back. I mean, Kevin McCarthy is now not in power. The voters...
legitimized Trump. I mean, look, I was there. You know, he won a primary, I think, and it was very important for the party. Right, but the argument, I mean, he was not, I mean, that photo that Kevin McCarthy took just a handful of weeks after going down to the floor and saying that he bore some responsibility. I mean, the 180, I mean, I remember talking to
right because I'm a card in the whole game like so using that point but like but McCarthy like people the bro the primary version to say you know can McCarthy and listen to him no McCarthy was in response to the primary voters and and now it was it when he was a little the opposite he was seeing what was I'm saying that the tail was wagging the dog exactly it was not like I have my heart out you know yet
- Well, look, McCarthy gave him a lifeline, but I think what we're sleeping on here is what Stephen mentioned earlier, is that Trump's doing all this again. He said that Kamala Harris going to the top of the ticket, or that you said, Marcus, is a coup. He's sowing that doubt. He's gonna work his supporters up, and if she wins, we're gonna see this. - The damage was done, to your point. The damage was done by January 6th, January 7th of 2021. For five, six months, all you had heard from
the candidate Trump out in the campaign trail was that he was being cheated, he was being rigged through mail-in voting. This election was fraudulent. The same thing we're hearing right now. It's not just from the candidate either. You're hearing it from all the surrogates. You're hearing it from other members of Congress. So the damage was done. You can't now turn around and tell your base that it is a lawful election. I think that's why it is such a red flag right now to start seeing some of the big lie rhetoric
return back to the campaign trail and why we outlined in our report for January 6th the long prelude before the actual day of January. So if you look at our report, we don't get to January 6th until chapter 8, right? We're talking about what led to that day on the campaign trail, who was the President of the United States who was not acting as President but acting as a candidate to keep power.
Marcus Childress, I'm going to go through, kind of look and see, because we've seen some of this just in recent weeks since Harris was at the top of the ticket of how these conversations are playing out. Look at perhaps how they played out before. Maybe we'll have you back. Thank you very much for being here today. I appreciate it. All right, coming up here on CNN this morning, another old video clip resurfacing of Trump running mate J.D. Vance. We're going to dive into his history of going after political opponents who don't have children. Plus...
Why Tim Walls is waxing poetic about his love of gutters. I've had problems with gutters before. You get your basement wet, you get ice dams, cause a lot of problems. How often do you like looking at gutters? I look quite often, surprisingly.
All right, 50 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Israel launching a deadly military operation overnight in the northern occupied West Bank. Palestinian health officials report at least nine people have been killed. Hamas is responding by calling for a, quote, escalation of resistance, end quote, against Israel.
Arlington National Cemetery confirms an incident occurred around the use of photography when Donald Trump visited the cemetery on Monday. The cemetery says federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities there that includes photographers. In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump shared a statement from families of fallen soldiers expressing their approval for photography use. NPR reports there was a verbal and physical altercation with an official at the cemetery.
A Trump spokesperson disputes this, but says an unnamed person did physically block the Trump team during the ceremony. And an environmental group is calling for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated. They want more information about Kennedy's beheading of a whale carcass that washed ashore near his home. The story was shared by Kennedy's daughter, Kik Kennedy, in a 2012 interview with Town & Country magazine and is getting renewed scrutiny right now.
and then there's this more past comments from jd vance resurfacing where he is talking about the childless status of a political opponent this during a 2021 ohio senate forum then candidate vance went after a teachers union leader who didn't have kids
A CNN KFAL report found several other instances in recent years where Vance brought up this topic.
Not just because it's bad for our economy, but because we think babies are good. And we think babies are good because we're not sociopaths. Why have we let the Democrat Party become controlled by people who don't have children?
And why is this just a normal fact of American life? We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies. Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
So while that childless cat lady's remark is perhaps like, you know, you can print it on a t-shirt, which is why it makes it so devastating for him, this is part of a pattern, Matt Gorman. There are more comments that basically underscore the philosophy he was trying to articulate with that one phrase. Yeah, look, I kind of keep thinking back also to earlier in the show. This is kind of in a new reality now we're seeing for candidates. It changed very quickly. It was a little bit, maybe 10 years ago, when you had a little sporadic things.
What are the best attacks you have against Kamala Harris? Things on video. What are the best attacks they have on JD Vance? Things on video. Pelosi, we talked about before whether Trump will use, you know, I feel responsible for this. The proliferation of video is now a massive, you're being videoed everywhere.
And I think how candidates deal with that, especially with vetting candidates and how they respond to these attacks, is going to be a huge new problem with the campaigns going forward. Yeah, I mean, look, I take your point. I will also say one of those was in a forum for when he was running for Senate, and the other was when he was a candidate for vice president. I mean, that's actually really interesting to me in terms of he was articulating the childless cat lady philosophy, what underlies it, as recently as July 30th.
Matt, you did a really good job there of not addressing how disastrous your vice presidential candidate is. And I mean, who is who does he think he is? I mean, some people can't have children. Some people have circumstances where they don't want children or can't have children at a certain at a certain time. I mean, this this is turning off suburban America. There is no doubt in my mind that J.D. Vance is a huge.
anvil on Trump's chances of winning because of stuff like this. And he'll say, well, I made one comment. It was sarcastic. It's not. It's over and over and over. And it's really, as Tim Walz would say, it's weird as hell. Stephen, this was how he addressed it in an interview on Meet the Press. He did say he has no regrets about the childless cat lady comment.
Look, I regret certainly that a lot of people took it the wrong way, and I certainly regret that the DNC and Kamala Harris lied about it. But do you regret what you said, Senator? Look, Kristen, I'm going to say things from time to time that people disagree with. I'm a real person. I'm going to make jokes. I'm going to say things sarcastically. Those sarcastic comments were made in the service of a real substantive point. This country has become too anti-family. So no regrets? Those things that people disagree with. I have a lot of regrets, Kristen, but making a joke three years ago is not in the top ten of the list.
Look, as you said, he was running for office at the point that he made some of these remarks. It almost seems like some Republicans are going out of their way to widen the gender gap, even though it's a massive issue in this election and female voters and suburban voters are going to be very important. I think it does speak to the fact that
Primary elections are so important in politics, people speak to their own concentrated ideological electorate. And they say things to woo those people that end up, when they're on a much wider stage, being quite damaging.
All right, let's turn now to this. In the battle for younger voters, both the Harris and Trump campaigns have turned to social media influencers to try to bring in new voters. Here is the latest instance. This is Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz making an appearance on the popular TikTok show Subway Takes.
What's your take? My take is the most neglected part of homeownership is the gutters. It's personal for me. 100% agree. I've had problems with gutters before. You get your basement wet, you get ice dams, cause a lot of problems. How often do you like looking at gutters? I look quite often, surprisingly, because I can't judge it. I try not to be judgmental on people, but when I see a well-tended gutter, it says a lot about somebody.
Brad, it's losing it over here. Well, first of all, it's so relatable and it gives me a little bit of PTSD. I remember as a child, my father would make me take a 40-foot ladder and walk up and pull the... Oh, we didn't even play the part where they get to the ladders. Guys, can you pull the ladder?
pull that up? I'm probably asking too much of the control room, but continue. I would have to get the leaves out of our gutters in our home. And we had a sloping backyard, so it was like a 40-foot ladder. So your dad would make you get up on the ladder. Oh, he would make me get up on the ladder. I mean, that's probably smart on his part, frankly. This is just great. I think about gutters, too. I mean, I think about, I mean, I think about, I make my husband think about the gutters, which is, unfortunately, gender division of labor in our household, but there you go. Very relatable.
I mean, I will say, like, in a seriousness, this is something that they feel like Tim Walz brings to the ticket is this sort of down home. I mean, like, this is something that it doesn't matter what party you're in. If you own a home and you're, like, dealing with a problem, like, gutters are a problem that most people.
I'll take it from you. I don't have anything to worry about. But no, look, I think that was always, like, that's always the thing, right? Like, it's how do you balance, right, whether these, the TikTok shows, how do you balance kind of the non-mainstream media, as we've talked about, and Kamala's team has talked about, the more
kind of normal mainstream channels with ways that you can reach a more subsection of audiences, but it displays your personality a different way. I mean, one of the things on our side we did was Bryson DeChambeau and Trump played around a golf, right? And it was very interesting to see kind of personalities. You're always looking for what are the ways that aren't too weird and put your candy in a weird spot, but can show off a personality in a relatable way. Yeah, there's that weird again. I will say, Stephen, I've been,
They're not taking over the word weird. No, I know. I understand. We're taking that back. Stephen, I have been surprised. This is firmly in the realm of anecdata, but I have been surprised how much of the sort of social media viral stuff has made its way to people in my life who are over the age of 55. Right. I mean, I'm just grateful for a turn to gutter politics after all that joy we had last week. You have been waiting so long to find out.
But to your point, it's not just the Harris campaign that's been doing it. Trump has been going on all of these podcasts, social media stuff that appeals to young people
You know, the whole extreme fighting, Theo Vaughn, the Nelk Boys, all of that is playing into this as well. So both these campaigns are pretty clear about slicing this electorate and getting certain people who perhaps don't watch the mainstream media how they can reach them.
Central definitional difference between this campaign and campaigns past the fragmentation of media and speaking to different audiences. All right, guys, thank you very much for joining me today. I appreciate it. Thanks to all of you for being with us as well. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.
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