'There is no floor for him': Harris speaks out about Trump debate

debates matter. We all saw it 74 days ago, right here on CNN, when one debate completely upended this presidential race. And the stakes are just as high in different ways for tomorrow night, because in some states, early voting starts in just 11 days, which means that debate stage will likely be the candidate's last chance to make their case to those all important undecided voters. It will also be the first time Donald Trump and Kamala Harris meet. Literally, the vice president talked about the big night in a taped interview with the Ricky Smiley Morning Show that aired earlier today. He plays with this really old and tired playbook right where he is. No flaw for him in terms of how long he will go. And, and we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth. and we should be prepared for the fact that he is probably going to be glad. Entry. CNN's Jeff Zeleny is here with us now from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, one of those critical collar counties around Philadelphia. Bucks County. What are you hearing from voters there, Jeff? Dana, there is no doubt there will be a global audience on this debate, but it is the voters here in Pennsylvania, really across the Commonwealth, that are perhaps the most important audience of all here, as Vice President Harris and Donald Trump do have their very first meeting. We know that because look at the spending. There is no battleground state that has seen more advertising spending, some $157 million. So Democrats have a slight edge on that. But Republicans also spending more than 70 million here. So look, the backdrop of this is a very, very tight race. The vice president has been preparing all weekend long for five days in Pittsburgh, the western part of the state. I'm told she has one objective overall to still introduce herself to some voters who may be exhausted at the notion of a second Donald Trump presidency, but also who are not sure about her. So to fill in some of those gaps, and also to be seen as the candidate of change for Donald Trump, of course, he wants to tie her to the Biden administration. So talking to voters as they begin to tune in, there's a bit of, a sense of exhaustion as well. Of course, they've been living and breathing this debate for a very long time on television with candidate visits. But the head to head contest tomorrow evening in Philadelphia here certainly is likely one of the biggest final moments of this debate. So voters certainly will be tuning in and paying attention because they know that once they vote, they can tune out some of those advertisements that have just been, losing them here. But there is no doubt a big moment. And the slice of undecided voters, they are still out there. Sometimes they seem as though there are unicorns. They are out there. So that is what both Harris and Trump are going after. Tomorrow night dinner. I absolutely do not think that you see real life unicorns. They exist. I believe that Jeff Zeleny, thanks for your greatrillioneporting as always. I'm joined now here at the table by other fantastic reporters. CNN's Manu Raju, the Washington Post's Leanne Caldwell, and CNN's Isaac Dovere. Hello, everybody. And you debate Eve Isaac, you talk often to Harris campaign officials and people in her orbit. What's the latest that you are hearing about how she's feeling inside the base camp? Like they have been preparing for this debate since before the Biden and Trump debate. and of course, it was originally geared to be a vice presidential debate, a kind of launch into a 2028 campaign. This has been something that they've worked on. They want her to come across as her as a normal human being. That's a big part of the thinking here, but also as strong and confident, not going to through different policy positions like Joe Biden tried to do. But, tripping Trump up whenever she can, letting Trump trip whenever, she can make that happen. And then just making herself presented to the American people as someone that they can see as president, we can forget almost just how little most people know about her. of course we're all paying so much attention, but this is other than the interview that she did with you, Dana. She has not had an unscripted moment since she became the Democratic nominee for press. Yeah, and there's a poll out this weekend asking that very question. Do you feel like you need to learn more? Kamala Harris 28%. Donald Trump 9%. As we were joking, like, who are the 9% who don't know all about Joe Donald Trump? Kamala Harris makes a little bit more sense since she's a relatively new candidate at the top of the ticket. I do want to talk about the way Donald Trump has been preparing for this debate. Not so much about the mechanics of it and the informality of it and all of the things that we have told. But what he is saying on the stump and on his social media platform. he's going back to election denialism, threatening voters. excuse me, threatening, poll workers both past and present and future, talking about Mail-In ballots being fraudulent, which I'm sure that really thrills the people who are trying to win Pennsylvania, for him. But then also this truth. Cease and desist. I, together with many attorneys and legal scholars and watching the sanctity of the 2024 presidential election very closely, because I know better than most the rampant cheating skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, prosecuted at levels unfortunately never seen before in our country. If I'm a swing voter, well, first of all, we should also say, just for the record, there is no evidence that what he said is true. It went through in 2020. All of the courts, including Trump appointed judges. They did not see any evidence, nor is there evidence yet that anything that he is suggesting will happen will in this election. But going back to sort of the politics of this particular argument, do you know any swing voters who hear this and say, oh, okay, so I better vote for Donald. This is the reason why that here is one of the microphones unmuted, because he could say things like, this is pop off in ways that will make him look unelectable to a lot of voters who want to move on past the 2020 elections, a challenge for Trump. He's going to try to make Harris look like someone who's going to be a continuation of the last several years, and that he can actually represent a serious change, to something completely, totally different. Because voters in the New York Times Siena poll make clear they are tired of the status quo. They're tired of 61% want a break from Joe Biden, but they don't necessarily want to go back to all the chaos in the Trump years and all the things that he's been saying. So can Harris draw out Trump to say things like that that will undercut his credibility in the eyes of the swing voters? That is something that Joe Biden was not able to do in the last debate. When Harris wants to change, and I and I don't want to just just for one second, set aside the politics of this and just talk about the danger of what I just read and what the former president continues to do. We saw it bear out on January 6th. We talked about this book that I coauthored, which I wish I knew a lot more about what happened in 1872, in this country before I covered the 2020 election, because when you, sow the seeds of doubt and when you threaten people who are supposed to be in charge of counting votes, it has real life impact and potential, potentially could lead to violence. Absolutely. Diana, it's twofold. It's the intimidation factor that you just talked about. The people, the people who are working at the polls, the elected officials, what's happening in Georgia, how Donald Trump is trying to persuade, the Georgia, the new Georgia election board to move forward with these, pretty draconian rules. And you know what the governor, Republican governor, is going to do there? but it also has to do with, the people who do support him. Donald Trump has successfully and effectively convinced a large portion of the American public that the last election was stolen. he is trying to already do the same again. It's because he is scared. He does not like what he sees in the polls. He has done this in every single election. He has run in, 2016, 2020. And he's doing it again in 2024. It's the same old playbook. It had consequences in 2020 and it could very well have consequence. Kamala Harris running for Kamala Harris, wants nothing more than for him to say the election was stolen. And I want to pick up on some of your reporting about what's happening in, the Harris camp. And I want you to listen to what Pete Buttigieg, said. He actually helped her prepare for her debate against Vice President Pence in 2020, debated against her in the primaries. It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate. It's no ordinary proposition. not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they're going to make people better off. it's because he's a master of taking any form or format that is on television. And turning it into a show that is all about him. So when Harris is up on stage, she will be facing Donald Trump in a way that she has never faced anyone quite right. I reported years ago that when she was preparing to run in 2019, her team then asked her what she would have done, when if she'd been in the debate with Hillary in the Hillary Clinton spot where Trump was stuck around, behind her, and she said that she would turn around and say to him, why are you being so weird? Right. so she was the one who came up to where, she was there in 2018 was when that conversation happened, but they've never met before. The dynamics are strange. Trump. they're strange, no matter what the debate is. Trump is an unpredictable character and a lot of things that he could do. This is part of why they want the mics to be unmuted. And we'll see what happens with that. So far, they will stay muted. But Harris's job here is to make Trump look unelectable. And like the person that Americans won't want to have back. We'll see if she can do that.