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Inside Politics
Harris Makes Abortion Rights Pitch On Popular Podcast; Parents Of Israeli-American Hostage Mark One Year Since Hamas Attack; The Atlantic" A Year Of "Failure" In The Middle East; The Atlantic: Biden Felt "Hoodwinked" About When War Would End. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired October 07, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:31:33]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Today, Georgia begins sending out mail ballots to start early voting. And with less than a month until Election Day, Kamala Harris is making a new push to use political strategist lingo, meet voters where they are. It started with an appearance on a podcast called Call Your Daddy.
Now, if you haven't heard of it, mom and dad, it is the second most popular podcast on Spotify. At least it was last year. And number one with women. Abortion rights was the crux of their conversation. And the Vice President had this to say about Trump's claim to be a, quote, "protector of women."
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So he who, when he was president, hand selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did just as he intended. And there are now 20 states with Trump abortion bans, including bans that make no exception for rape or incest.
This is the same guy who said that women should be punished for having abortions? This is the same guy who uses the kind of language he does to describe women?
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: I just made a terrible blunder. It's Call Her Daddy.
Everybody, stay with us.
Priscilla, on the substance of what she --
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
BASH: -- did there and what she's trying to do more broadly. ALVAREZ: Well, one of her actually most interesting answers was her response to the GOP attacks about her not having biological children, where she said that it was no longer the 1950s and that mixed families were quite common. And she says that on -- it was probably her most telling and striking answer on that exact issue.
But, otherwise, when I was listening to this, a lot of what she says in this podcast is what she says in rallies on the trail, but this audience is not always watching her rallies.
BASH: Totally.
ALVAREZ: They're not as closely as we are. And so, certainly part of this strategy is to try to amplify and increase her exposure across multiple mediums to reach women or Howard Stern, mostly male audience, The View, Stephen Colbert.
BASH: Yes.
ALVAREZ: So, they are trying, when I talked to the campaign, put her out there because in polls, what we're still seeing is that people still don't know her very well.
BASH: Well, on that note --
ALVAREZ: And that's part of it.
BASH: Yes. And on that note, Frank, let's listen to a little bit more of what she said on Call Her Daddy. And this is not political at all. This is like trying to fill in the blanks of who she is as a person.
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HARRIS: If I came home with a problem, the first thing my mother would do is she was look at me like other mothers I believe, were hugging their kids and like, oh honey, what can I do? And my mother, the first thing, what did you do?
But here's the thing that I realized. She was actually teaching me. Think about where you had agency in that moment and think about what you had the choice to do or not do. And like, don't let things just happen to you.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Frank?
FRANKLIN FOER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. Throwing shade about people who don't know Call Her Daddy. And then I admit I didn't actually know the show. And so the age of your parents apparently. But I think that for her to be in positions where she can be personally revealing in this sort of way is, it's part of this long arc that she's had with the media.
After the Lester Holt interview, there was this whole chapter where she was just treated media at arm's length and then to even sit down for an interview to get in the sort of relaxed frame of mind where she could be personally revealing and that sort of way was obviously difficult for her to get to. And now I think it's a necessity.
BASH: And --
[12:35:15]
ALVAREZ: Also 40 minutes, I just want to say.
BASH: Yes, I mean --
ALVAREZ: That was -- that's a long time.
BASH: Yes, it is a long time, which she's -- Alex started at the beginning saying, like, you don't do this very often. Why are you here? Which was interesting.
Jeff, Priscilla talked a little bit about this, but let's just look all together at what we are going to see from her this week. 60 Minutes, you've heard it -- you saw a clip there. You saw a clip, of course, of this podcast. But then tomorrow, The View, Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, Thursday, Univision.
And normally, this would be like, OK, she's like a candidate running for president, but because she has been so limited in her media appearances, what does this tell you about the strategy 29 days out?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Time is running out and people are voting and if you're not going to do it now, when are you going to do it? And to Priscilla's point, there are still many questions about who she is. So these podcast interviews are going to fill in some of the gaps.
And for the criticism from the right about, oh, these are all softball things, my recollection is the last difficult interview that former President Trump has done was on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, a friend. I mean, it has been a series of friendly interviews on Fox and other places.
He declined 60 Minutes --
BASH: Well, he did NABJ.
ZELENY: -- so look -- he did. And that was a roundtable conversation, but that would have been the last one.
BASH: Yes.
ZELENY: And the last program, I think, before that was Meet the Press. So, look, I mean, the reality is they both go to venues where they can get their message out in a conversational way. But a 40-minute podcast interview, I mean, that is absolutely filled with tripwires --
ALVAREZ: Yes.
ZELENY: -- or it possibly could be. So look, there is early voting happening right now and people -- basically she wants to be everywhere.
BASH: Yes.
ZELENY: She wants people to hear her. And no one is watching the ballots.
BASH: And they're not --
ZELENY: That is just --
BASH: -- moving the needle.
ZELENY: Exactly. The needle --
BASH: I mean, this is not me saying this, this is the --
ZELENY: No.
BASH: -- Harris people privately saying we need to move the needle.
ZELENY: It is stuck. It is a stubborn race.
BASH: Yes.
ZELENY: So maybe on the margins, a few voters, people listen to that. But that exchange about the Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders --
BASH: Yes.
ZELENY: -- as we all know, that was --
FOER: Yes.
ZELENY: -- that is reverberating still as we speak.
BASH: Yes.
ALVAREZ: That not everybody wants to be humble. Yes.
BASH: Yes. Well, that was another, that's --
ALVAREZ: Yes.
ZELENY: Right, right.
BASH: -- that's a quote.
Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere. Coming up, we are going to turn back to the somber anniversary today. A year of anguish, angst, and anger. I'm going to talk with the parents of one of the Americans still being held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Don't go anywhere.
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[12:42:14]
BASH: One year captive. It's frankly impossible for any of us to comprehend the heartbreak that families of October 7th hostages have endured for 366 days now. After killing 1,200 people during their barbaric assault on Israel, Hamas terrorists took more than 250 people as hostages.
117 were freed in the past year, most as part of a short lived deal between Israel and Hamas last November. But now, one year later, more than 100 people are still being held captive in Gaza, including four Americans believed to be alive. That includes 22-year-old Omer Neutra.
His parents, Ronen and Orna Neutra are here with me now. Thank you so much for being here. And Ronen, over the past year, one of your sayings has been, hope is mandatory. How are you managing to do that?
RONEN NEUTRA, FATHER OF ISRAELI-AMERICAN HOSTAGE OMER NEUTRA: Well, we got to wake up every morning and understand that we have a role. We got to push our leaders. We got to push the parties in the Middle East, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and of course, Israel, to put all the pressure possible on Hamas and reach a deal between Israel and Hamas.
There's no other way. We've seen that only a deal can really bring all the hostages back, and we're expecting for that to happen, and we're looking for strong leadership that can fulfill that.
BASH: And I'll just pick up there, Orna strong leadership, what more do you want? What conversations are you having with the leaders of Israel and here in the United States of America with President Biden and his team, given the fact that Omer is American as well?
ORNA NEUTRA, MOTHER OF ISRAELI-AMERICAN HOSTAGE OMER NEUTRA: You know, Dana, unfortunately, one ingredient that we kept hearing was missing over the course of the past 12 months was political will. It's a very complicated situation, and there's many reasons for this war. And at the end of the day, we've been told multiple times that it boils down to political will. There has to be a diplomatic solution or an end game to all of this.
BASH: Where does that political will, where is it lacking right now?
O. NEUTRA: It seems to be lacking all over, all over the world. The parties are not engaged in negotiations. It's been a few weeks and they're -- the sense of urgency is not there. You know, a month ago, we heard about the murder of -- and execution of the six young people in the tunnels of Hamas. They barely survived 11 months of captivity in horrendous conditions, and they were executed in cold blood.
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And the whole world thought, you know, oh, this is, you know, this is going to change now the approach and it hasn't. It's just gotten worse. So, you know, it's missing all over.
BASH: And Ronen, pick up on that because I heard both of you speaking about exactly that earlier today. And I believe it was you who said, where's the outrage?
R. NEUTRA: Absolutely. And we know where it's all stemming from. It's all comes from Iran. And we are not holding Iran accountable. All the proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they're all sponsored and guided by Iran. And Iran also showed its true face by bombing Israel, shooting missiles directly on Israel.
And yet again, where is the outrage with the international community? Where is the pressure on Iran to put all its leverages on Hamas and release the hostages? Among them seven Americans, four are considered to be alive and three are considered to be murdered on October 7th.
BASH: Before I let you go, Orna, please talk about your son Omer. Both of you can. We've been looking at pictures of him. He's 22. He will be 23, I believe, October 14th in two weeks. And, you know, you all talk about hope. Let's hope that he can do that in freedom. Tell us about him.
O. NEUTRA: Yes. You know, we really hope that Omer is keeping up hope that he's strong. He's a very social person. He's a connector. We pray that he's not alone, and we pray that, you know, his strengths hold up until we are able to save him and get him out of there.
R. NEUTRA: And how difficult it is for us to mention that he has a second birthday in captivity coming up in one week. And we just can't believe it. And, you know, as much as optimistic we are, we're probably not going to have him for his birthday, but we sure hope that the leaders will work out a deal that will bring him home to us in a few weeks and we can celebrate together and help him recover from this terrible, terrible experience.
BASH: Well, strength is definitely an inherited trait. And between the two of you, there is no doubt in my mind that he is a very strong person given what you have been doing for the past year.
Thank you. Thank you to you both, Ronen and Orna Neutra. Appreciate it.
O. NEUTRA: Thank you, Dana.
R. NEUTRA: Thank you for having us. Thank you.
BASH: And coming up, a year of failure to end the war, we're going to talk about a very enlightening report on the Biden administration's inability to broker peace in the Middle East.
Plus, the turning point in the president's complicated relationship with his Israeli counterpart.
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BASH: ?"The War That Would Not End," that is the title of Franklin Foer's new piece in the Atlantic. It is a really candid report, and it is crushing the chronicle of what happened 11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy. But still, the Biden administration has yet to find a way to release the hostages, bring the fighting to a halt, or put a broader peace process back on track.
That makes this history of an anatomy of failure, the story of an overextended superpower and its aging president, unable to exert themselves decisively in a moment of crisis.
Wow. Frank is back here with me. Talk about that, but also how you start this piece, October 6th, 2023. There was a lot of hope that an extension of the Abraham Accords that was --
FOER: Yes.
BASH: -- that was put in place by Donald Trump could extend to Saudi Arabia, making for a broader peace process as opposed to a war in the Middle East. And how that changed on a dime (ph) maybe because of that.
FOER: Yes, yes. So, on October 6th, Brett McGurk, who oversees the Middle East for the White House, was sitting in his office, meeting with Saudi diplomats, and they were outlining plans for a Palestinian state as part of a broader deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and to create a defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel. And it was it was detailed.
They were talking about what the welfare system and the energy grid would look like and how to reform the corruption in the Palestinian Authority. And then a couple of hours later, McGurk gets a text from Mike Herzog, the ambassador -- the Israeli ambassador to Washington, and he says, we're under attack. And McGurk writes back, we're with you.
BASH: And they were and are, but they're -- the approach of President Biden and his --
FOER: Yes.
BASH: -- top aides shifted over time. You write about how at first his approach was just to hug Prime Minister Netanyahu tight --
FOER: Yes.
BASH: -- hope that they can have a lot of influence by staying as close as possible. And then by March, so about five months in, "Biden was feeling hoodwinked. First, the Israelis had said the war would be over by Christmas, and they'd said it would be over by February. Now, they said they wanted to invade Rafah. For the first time, he told the Israelis he'd had enough."
FOER: Right. So, in the days after October 7th, Biden goes, of course, to Israel and he meets with the war cabinet, he meets with Netanyahu, and his goal at that early stage was to try to restrain the Israelis. That he was wrapping them up, but he also wanted them to fight a different war than the war that they ended up fighting. But he was willing to go along with what they were intending to do because he thought it would be over by Christmas. [12:55:05]
But the Israelis actually had more success in Gaza than they thought they would. They suffered less casualties. They were able to move more quickly through various parts of it. And so they have a moment where they're like, OK, we need to get the smuggling terminals because it's kind of an obvious objective for them to have.
But it wasn't in their initial war plans because those war plans were written in haste --
BASH: They didn't exist.
FOER: -- they didn't exist. They were written in a traumatized, very emotional state.
BASH: Yes. I mean, that is one of the many things that is stunning to me as we have seen in recent weeks. They had many more plans for how to deal with Hezbollah and the North --
FOER: Yes.
BASH: -- but not with Gaza --
FOER: Right, right.
BASH: -- and Hamas.
FOER: Right.
BASH: We're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately. I encourage everybody to read this. It's so well reported and of course well written.
FOER: Thank you. Thank you.
BASH: Thank you.
FOER: Thank you.
BASH: Appreciate it.
Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after the break.
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