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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump's Campaign Hits Another Snag With X Meltdown; Trump Fumes Over Harris, Struggles To Define Her In Race; Critics Pounce On TIME Magazine Giving Harris A Glowing Cover; "NewsNight" Discusses State Of Presidential Race 2024; Celine Dion And Other Artists Ask Trump Not To Play Their Music. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 12, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, X ain't the spot. America tries to watch Elon Musk interview Donald Trump live but tunes in to hold music instead.
Plus, call it the halo effect. TIME puts Kamala Harris on the cover, sparking a debate about coverage of her honeymoon period.
And breaking the mold, Harris quickie ascension makes campaigns ponder are micro elections the future?
Also, his heart will go on but the music might not. Celine Dion tries to sync Donald Trump using her Titanic tune.
Live at the table, Reihan Salam, L.Z. Granderson, Tara Setmayer and Madison Gesiotto. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
And good evening. I'm Abby Phillip here in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. This space is not available, five words and a failure tonight for a much anticipated conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. That X event that everyone was supposed to watch, well, it broke the internet and not in the Beyonce kind of way.
If you are trying to click over to watch that Trump-Musk talk, which I believe is still ongoing, for most of the time you couldn't do it for about 40 minutes. And when the interview finally did get underway, Trump went into his normal stump speech, including more Kamala Harris insults.
This was, Tara, just maybe an allegory of what's been going on with the Trump campaign for some time.
TARA SETMAYER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, THE SENECA PROJECT: Yes.
PHILLIP: 40 minutes on hold, they start off, it's meandering, and he's doing exactly what a lot of people are trying to tell him not to do, which is attacking Harris not on substance but just because she exists. SETMAYER: Yes. I mean, this shouldn't be news. This is what Trump does. He does the complete opposite of what everyone else tells him to do. He's petulant and intransigent. And he thinks that he's his own best campaign manager, consultant, political communications guru. And there's a reason why he's now losing. There's a reason why Kamala Harris, the swing in the polls, that Kamala Harris has overtaken him in swing states, people are tired of this act. It's a Vegas lounge act now. He needs new material. And the insults are something that, particularly for moderates and moderate women, who are an important constituency, if Trump thinks he's going to win this time around, they don't want to hear this.
And so the people who have been running his campaign are very smart, veteran political operatives, and now they're facing the time, the honeymoon period of keeping a disciplined Trump together is over. This is Donald Trump unleashed. He's going to do what he wants to do, and it's not working for him. And the polls show why it isn't.
PHILLIP: I'm going to play a little bit of what he's been saying on this X stream. He talks about Harris and really seems to be still grappling with the fact that she's now the candidate and it's not Joe Biden anymore.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: They're doing it right now while this third rate, phony candidate, don't forget, I beat Biden. He failed in the debate miserably.
We cannot have a Democrat, we cannot have her. She's incompetent. She's as bad as Biden.
L.Z. GRANDERSON, OP-ED COLUMNIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES: It's like watching Grumpy Old Man or something. There's just, I don't mind attacking a person for their policies or their positions. But he's just sort of griping just because she exists, to your point. And I think we know why he's griping because she exists, she's a black woman.
And everything that I've seen in the course of his career, and I know that he has black women in his circle, and I know he's appointed Omarosa and all of that, I know all of that background, but also know when he's confronted and being held accountable by black women, time and time again, he has shown to be someone who is uncomfortable in that situation. And I think he's complaining more because it's Kamala Harris a black woman than any other factor.
[22:05:01]
REIHAN SALAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There's nothing that he's saying about her, however, that wasn't actually said by Biden campaign personnel and leaks to the press for months and months before the hot swap unfolded. For literally about three-plus years, you had folks around President Biden who are leaking against undermining, characterizing Kamala Harris as a disastrous, underprepared because of extensive reporting, drawing on White House sources. GRANDERSON: If former President Trump doesn't know this, if you've known for three years this woman was coming, and now she's here, and you're confused about what to do --
SALAM: I'm sorry, I wasn't sufficiently clear. What I'm saying is that what he is saying now, when he is diminishing her capacity and what have you, these were all things that were standard talking points coming from Democrats who were anxious about her weaknesses.
Now, only over the last month or so has the narrative entirely changed about this because the press --
GRANDERSON: Are you suggesting to protect -- so are you suggesting that this is originating because Donald Trump is following the intel of Democrats and this based solely upon the intel of Democrats and not some longstanding representation of how he feels about American people since the 1970s?
MADISON GESIOTTO, FORMER RNC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: I think what he's suggesting is that this is not just off of what Democrats have said, but Democrats have also said some of the same things Trump has said. And so him saying these things is not something new that no one's ever said before, that she's incompetent. And you can point to the policies. You can look at so many policies throughout this administration that she has to own, that will hurt her in the swing states.
PHILLIP: The idea, just to be clear, I mean, I understand that maybe there were some Democrats privately who were nervous about Harris, but I don't know that you have Democrats calling her phony, incompetent, third grade candidate.
SETMAYER: That's what I was about to say.
PHILLIP: That is well beyond --
SETMAYER: I must have missed where Democrats called her a bum. I must have missed where they questioned her ethnicity. I must have missed when Democrats called her low I.Q. and stupid. And all of the litany of awful insults that Donald Trump has levied against this woman Kamala Harris since she's been in the race.
GESIOTTO: But did you miss when she couldn't even get a couple percentage points in 2020 to make it to the first primary?
SETMAYER: This isn't the first time Donald Trump --
GESIOTTO: She wasn't wildly popular.
SETMAYER: It doesn't matter. She's the Vice President of the United States, and she's beating Donald Trump right now. But what also we are not --
GESIOTTO: All that matters is what happens on November 5th.
SETMAYER: What also we're forgetting is that Donald Trump's history of insulting women is very long. As a matter of fact, it's long and documented how many times when he was at the bully pulpit he insulted women journalists repeatedly, including you, Abby, who he also called stupid, which you're not. You went to Harvard, and you are far from that. And this is what Donald Trump does. He doesn't like to be held accountable.
So, because he is now in a position where he now is being held accountable for what he said, we know already that he has a history of being a sexist, and now he cannot grapple with the facts.
SALAM: These are not the arguments that are actually effective for Kamala Harris. If you look at the recent, for example, Reid Hoffman's group, Blueprint, has described what is effective for Kamala Harris. What is effective for her is taking positions that are the positions that would be endorsed by Joe Manchin and by Bernie Sanders, being perfectly down the line, I will protect Social Security and Medicare. It is not actually attacking Trump. What you guys are doing right now is, you know, helpful base management right now, but it actually isn't something that moves the needle.
What you see is actually this kind of base management doesn't actually have much of a material effect. Anti-Trump arguments are actually so played out, I'm so tired.
PHILLIP: It's an interesting point that Reihan is making about base management on the left, but, really, it seems also that Trump is doing some base management on the right. And there are people in conservative circles who think that the constant attacking of Harris is not working. And this is what they are trying to tell him at this point now publicly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position when it comes to what did she do as attorney general on crime.
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: When Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris' support among swing voters rises, particularly among women.
STUART VARNEY, FOX NEWS PERSONALITY: Not a good idea if you want to attract suburban women who can make or break your campaign.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, Madison, that's pretty straightforward. I mean, these are people who otherwise would be giving Trump advice, they think that he is on the wrong track here.
GESIOTTO: And I talked about this on your show on Friday, about the fact that many Republicans across the country are concerned about the missed opportunities that we continue to see, not just from President Trump, but from other Republicans that are out there on the stump for the president and for some of the down ballot races as well, that they just simply aren't talking about these policies that are going to swing voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia. We need to be hearing more about those policies, like I mentioned, some of the policies that people don't feel the vice president is strong on. These are the things that I don't think we hear enough about. That's what can swing these voters.
SETMAYER: Well, I can tell you that the evidence that we've seen already in the polling in swing counties, like outside of Philadelphia, Bucks County, Delaware County, Chester County, you see that there are moderate women there who are not comfortable, Republican, right of center women who are not comfortable with Donald Trump, not comfortable with the attacks against women, not comfortable with the extremist agenda in Project 2025, on issues on women's reproductive health and IVF and no fault divorce and voting rights, all of these things, these attacks on women that are really extreme, they're not comfortable with that.
[22:10:23]
And we're seeing that, and we just saw it today in The New York Times/Siena poll, that these places are shifting, women in these places, in these suburban counties that Donald Trump needs to win, they are not comfortable with that. And they may not necessarily be comfortable with Kamala Harris But they're not like Rah, Rah, Kamala, but they sure as hell know they don't want to vote for Donald Trump.
SALAM: There's no question that a policy focused attack would be more productive for Trump. However, the challenge is that when you're offering a policy focused attack, typically, what happens in a normal campaign is that it is not just the candidate who is advancing the argument, it is also an argument where there's scrutiny being applied by entities and, you know, call it prestige media, call it what you will. You know, you would not necessarily have TIME Magazine, you know, functioning as a kind of paid advertising arm on the Harris campaign. You would have something that would be more stringent scrutiny. And I think that is a bit of a challenge.
It's incumbent upon Trump to try to, you know, change his approach, right?
SETMAYER: Well, she didn't have to make up the TIME (INAUDIBLE).
SALAM: Basically, he is seeming tired. He's seeming a bit tired. It's seeming a bit old. And I think that he recognizes on some level that he needs to change tactics. And I think that that is something that --
GESIOTTO: In my home county in Ohio, there's a lot of Republican women, just like you mentioned, that do bring up to me and to others repeatedly that they don't love those things about President Trump. However, they say they're going to hold their nose and they're going to vote for him in November because what's more important to them is the economy. What's more important to them is the border. And so that is making the assumption that other issues are going to come before those top issue.
SETMAYER: Perhaps, but also your home state of Ohio, women came out in droves and codified Roe v. Wade-type protections for abortions. GESIOTTO: But not all of those women are going to vote on that. They don't need all of them. Ohio's not in play. Ohio's not in play.
(CROSSTALKS)
SALAM: The Republican Party's position on abortion is markedly more moderate than it was when you were an active Republican spokesperson.
SETMAYER: Oh, is it? Oh, was it?
SALAM: So, I mean, I think that that --
SETMAYER: You want to -- was it really? Oh my goodness, tell me what the Republican platform was. When I was a Republican, I can tell you right now that the pro-life situation --
SALAM: It's well to the left, and that's something that you could lament or celebrate, but it is certainly to the left.
SETMAYER: Donald Trump is out here bragging about the fact that he overturned Roe v. Wade. So, that -- I don't care what the Republican platform says now in the RNC trying to gaslight America. I care what the policies are with women in these states that are bleeding out in emergency rooms.
SALAM: So, you're entirely comfortable with the Human Life Amendment? You were entirely comfortable then? And that's fair enough. That's an honest to goodness change in your perspective, but I do think that you were speaking on behalf of a party that had a markedly to the right position on that issue back then. So, you know, that's a fair enough for you to change.
SETMAYER: That party is different now, that's why I'm not a part of it anymore.
SALAM: Right, that party is different because it's actually more moderate on the abortion issue, for better or for worse.
SETMAYER: More moderate?
PHILLIP: Let me just -- let me de-conflict here, because I do want to understand what you're saying. You're suggesting that the current position that the Republican Party takes, you're basing that off the platform?
SALAM: Basing it on the platform and also --
PHILLIP: What about the six-week abortion bans? What about the (INAUDIBLE) bans? What about all of those things?
SALAM: I'm not here to talk about the wisdom or whether or not it's a good policy or not. What I will say is that Donald Trump actively was campaigning against Ron DeSantis for having backed a six-week abortion ban. These are facts about how the primary campaign unfolded.
GRANDERSON: As president, Donald Trump wanted open an abortion ban, as president. He was actually the one who --
GESIOTTO: But he specifically had said that he won't sign an abortion ban.
GRANDERSON: No. But as president, he actually was the one who wanted an abortion ban to begin with. But he did not follow through with it, with a lot of other policies. He hidn't follow through that.
SALAM: That's simply not true.
(CROSSTALKS)
SALAM: So, you're telling me that he favored a federal abortion ban -- if you're talking about late term abortion bans, that's certainly true. But if you're talking about a comprehensive abortion ban, that's not true.
SETMAYER: National abortion bans, and also, let's not forget, the position of his --
SALAM: On dilation and extraction at the end of a pregnancy?
SETMAYER: Yes, those procedures -- listen, those procedures are necessary when the life of the mother is at stake. This whole idea of partial birth abortion being a major thing, and that or the what Trump keeps saying that you can murder the baby after birth is B.S.
SALAM: You should run with that.
SETMAYER: Actually, as a matter of fact, people are running with it and women are going to make that decision.
PHILLIP: Let's bring into the conversation someone who knows Elon Musk better than most people, maybe anyone, Kara Swisher. She's the host of On and Pivot, both of them excellent podcast.
Kara, I'm going to bring you into this conversation, because one of the things that also happened tonight was just a massive failure on the part of X for the second time, mind you, because, by the way, we saw this movie last year when Ron DeSantis tried to do the same thing on the same platform.
And this is kind of an embarrassment for X, but it's also for Trump who came back on the platform for this moment.
[22:15:06]
KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Well, Trump, actually, something that Harris is doing over on Truth social media (INAUDIBLE) but he's over there trolling him, putting up tweets that he put out (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: So, we will come back to her in just a moment. But in the meantime, here at the table, this was not good from a technological perspective. I said, I was trying to get on for a long time and couldn't. GRANDERSON: No, it was not. I wanted to get on because I was just curious. That's how you would start, you know, if it's going to start more disciplined and then blow up or start off blowing up and get even hotter. But he wasn't on time.
And I'm not sure how many people he lost. It's my understanding more than a million did eventually tune in to hear what he had to say. But, again, it just sort of reminds you that he is someone who has consistently not been able to kind of follow through on the things in which he said he would follow through on.
And I know --
GESIOTTO: But this was a result of the cyberattack, according to Elon Musk.
I'll say this about the cyberattacks. We don't know that. Just what Madison is talking about, Elon Musk says there's a massive DDoS attack on X. The rest of X was working just fine. The older part was not working.
STEMAYER: Convenient excuse. It's coming from the guy who puts out, you know, deep fake videos of Kamala Harris irresponsibly and propagates all of this kind of nonsense on his own platform. So, I'm going to take what Elon Musk says with a grain of salt.
SALAM: There's a reason why Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the presidential race on X, rather than Bluesky or on Instagram, or some other platform, because this has actually become a more central, more vital platform for news under Musk's ownership.
PHILLIP: I don't think it's more under Musk's ownership, but I do want to bring in Kara. Actually, Kara, maybe you can weigh in on that. I mean, are we living in the era of X's, formerly known as Twitter's decline?
SWISHER: Absolutely. Reihan, I'm sorry (INAUDIBLE) numbers are down, the finances are down. Obviously, it doesn't work very well. You know, the DDoS attack, he's lying about it. I'm sorry, it's not true. And there's been a lot of reportings. It's not what he's -- This isn't working. It's a lot of people coming into the platform shouldn't be able to handle, another embarrassment to most technology.
SALAM: Technical difficulties happen to us all.
SWISHER: No, this is the second time after the DeSantis thing.
PHILLIP: All right.
SWISHER: Yes, this should have been iron.
PHILLIP: Yes, it really should have been. And speaking of technical difficulties, we were having a few tonight with the audio there, but everyone stick around, we've got much more ahead.
Coming up next, the critics are pouncing on TIME Magazine for this cover of Kamala Harris. Is the blowback warranted, or is it all overblown? We'll discuss, that coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, Kamala Harris' new TIME Magazine cover, it's getting some mixed reviews, to say the least. There are some critics who are calling it propaganda. They're saying that it's an overly glowing picture and article about the vice president, but others are pointing out that Harris got the full cover treatment without actually doing a sit-down interview with the magazine.
We're back at the table, and, Reihan, since you brought this up earlier, I'll let you have the first word, because, I mean, it is -- first of all I did go back and I looked at the covers. There have been a lot of covers. There have been some nice covers of Trump. There have been some nice covers of Biden, Obama. So, having a nice TIME cover is not a strange thing. But I take the criticism that she didn't even give them an interview, even to get to this point.
SALAM: So, here's what I'll say. I think that when you look at Kamala Harris as vice president, for about three and a half years, she did struggle with some roles. For example, this idea of looking at the root causes of the border crisis in the Northern Triangle in Mexico didn't necessarily handle that portfolio very well.
What she did do while President Biden and his allies were bad mouthing her is that she built real relationships with reporters, with important influential reporters from new media outlets, from old media outlets. In some cases, this was dealing with women who came from a similar class and ethnic and cultural background. In other cases, he was reaching out beyond that. But particularly, there's a phalanx of female reporters in D.C. with whom she built real relationships by providing them with access and by connecting with them on a human level.
That turned out to be an extremely wise investment because it turns out that not having addressed the policy portfolio was not actually going to be a problem for her, but investing in media and those relationships wound up paying huge dividends right now.
PHILLIP: I wasn't expecting you to praise Harris.
SALAM: Oh, absolutely. It turns out that policy didn't matter and being an active partner in policy didn't matter, but actually getting the media on your side did.
PHILLIP: Your take on that, Tara?
SETMAYER: I'm sorry, what did Vice President Mike Pence do in his portfolio as vice president?
SALAM: Unfortunately, you could say he had to do rather a lot. He was definitely the last person in the room when it came to various decisions. He had pretty well-defined portfolios in a range of both foreign and defense policy issues and domestic policy issues. SETMAYER: So, you're admitting that Donald Trump was incompetent as president that his vice president needs to do all those things.
SALAM: No. What I'm saying is that they actually weren't active partners. Actually, President Trump is not dismissing something that was not useful.
SETMAYER: Everyone knows that the vice presidency is one of those positions where you don't really necessarily have a policy portfolio where you can accomplish things. It is one of the worst jobs in Washington because you get put into the tougher jobs, but you don't have the same abilities that the president does to actually effectuate those things.
[22:25:01]
So, she went that -- yes, the border issue is a pain point for the Biden-Harris campaign. But there's also the idea that, yes, she was looking at the root causes, which was a good idea, because it's very complicated to fix the border situation. However, when the bill came up, the bipartisan bill, Donald Trump put out the order to the Republicans, do not pass this for the good of the country, because we don't want Biden to have a policy win, we need this for my campaign.
So, this is disingenuous for people to throw out her failures as the border czar, but she wasn't a czar. That's the name I gave them.
SALAM: I'm talking about her successes, to be clear.
SETMAYER: Okay. But you were doing it tongue in cheek to say that she spent more time cultivating media relationships, which is a smart thing to do.
SALAM: Which turned to be hugely valuable, yes.
SETMAYER: And everyone does it in Washington. Don't act like that's something that everyone does.
SALAM: And A.I. safety, that was another portfolio of hers. There are many other portfolios where there was not a lot that happened.
SETMAYER: Okay.
SALAM: So she did that a number of times.
SETMAYER: That is something that happens all the time in Washington, maintaining press relationships. That happens all the time.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I don't know if --
SETMAYER: I don't understand the point of that.
PHILLIP: I don't think that's necessarily a negative thing that she invested her time in --
GRANDERSON: No, of course not. But, you know, the conversation started off with this cover, right, and whether or not it was validated. Well, she made history. And I think it's still important that journalism recognizes history when it's been made. That's part of our job, part of our role.
I really did not appreciate the tone that you took with women journalists, particularly women journalists of color and of a social whatever the word stature or class, whatever you meant by that. I think that what you said was discriminatory.
SALAM: That's wild.
GRANDERSON: I'm going to finish because I allowed you to finish. I thought it was discriminatory. I was really offended as a man, as a black man. I'm emotional about it because I really wanted to have a healthy conversation.
SALAM: As a South Asian --
GRANDERSON: I'm going to finish because -- I'm going to finish because I allowed you to finish.
SALAM: Of course.
GRANDERSON: I really wanted to have a healthy conversation. I haven't been doing --
SALAM: You're besmirching --
GRANDERSON: I'm going to finish, man. I haven't been coming to CNN. You know this. I have not been coming, but I was like, this is an important moment in this country's history. And I want to make sure we have a thoughtful conversation. And all you've been doing is insulting people on the side with tongue in cheek remarks.
And it's really disgusting that you decided to go after female journalists after what you just saw happen at the NAACP, what you've seen happen at NABJ. Time and time again, black women have been insulted by this man and you're sitting up here finding reasons to say it's about the journalists giving her favor when maybe, just maybe, what you're really witnessing is someone who stayed behind in second place because that was the job.
And now that she has an opportunity to show who she is, you're recognizing that she's the person who broke history in California, not once, not twice, but thrice. Give her the credit, man. Give her the credit that she deserves.
SALAM: You have egregiously misrepresented what I said. You have besmirched my character.
GRANDERSON: I want to have a healthy conversation, not a cynical one.
SALAM: And I think that this is incredibly noxious and dishonest. I think that there are people with whom she has built real, authentic, deep relationships who are now celebrating her. And I think that that is entirely -- that is a product of investment. SETMAYER: Why didn't you just say that instead of pointing out that it was women and pointing out the status? Because I was going to ask you why you were so angry when you were saying it, I noticed it too. As a woman, I was like, wow, the misogyny is so powerful here.
SALAM: I think that is actually something that not everyone can tap into that. That's something that she did tap into. There's some people who are very, you know, quick on their feet. There are other people who are very smart and strategic behind the scenes. And I think that's what she's been.
GESIOTTO: Do you not understand at least the criticism of her not giving them an interview, when they are writing a great article and putting her on the cover?
GRANDERSON: Yes, absolutely. But if you don't have an interview, you know what you do as a journalist? You write the damn story anyway. You don't get all the interviews, but you do get the story. That's what the job requires.
PHILLIP: One of the other parts of this moment --
GESIOTTO: Do you need the cover without any interview to anybody?
GRANDERSON: I have done many a story that people who are the subject of was not happy about.
PHILLIP: One of the other aspects of this moment that we're in beyond the TIME Magazine cover is just the fact that she's starting to lead in this campaign.
SALAM: By a healthy margin, in some cases.
PHILLIP: Perhaps by a healthy margin. So, let's wait a few weeks to see where things settle out. But that's partly because she just got here in the campaign. And it started leading people to ask, okay, so should we just be doing this like the rest of the world? I mean, look at this. Japan, 12 days is how long they spend on their campaigns, France, less than two weeks. I mean, the United States has obscenely long elections. Trump has been running for 700 and or will be running for 721 days.
SETMAYER: Nine years. I think it's nine years.
PHILLIP: It's obscene. I mean, should we just make it shorter?
GESIOTTO: You know, I think this is one thing that everybody at the table's going to be able to agree on, and one of the few people I think that would say, no, we can't make it shorter, is ad makers and political consultants on both sides of the aisle that continue to take advantage of our candidates time and time again.
I saw it when I was working at the RNC. I saw it as a candidate myself going, you know, to different events with other candidates in the 2022 midterm cycle, some of these top tier races where candidates maybe didn't have the political background that I had that were getting taken advantage of.
[22:30:05]
And so I think we see this over and over again.
I do think it would be, in a lot of ways, wonderful, and we'd all be much less exhausted with a shorter election cycle, but I don't think it's going to happen.
SETMAYER: You only have this complaint because Donald Trump has turned our elections into reality shows. So, it's become trying to keep up with that reality show pace of things, which I think the debasing of our political system is what's exhausting. But I think we need to make sure that we understand that history is being made.
Kamala Harris raised $300 million in 10 days. You talk about breaking the internet. Look at the enthusiasm and the grassroots organizing behind her candidacy. Look at what happened when she picked Tim Walz. There is a vibe. There is a cultural shift going on here, and Donald Trump and the right wing don't like it because he's been in control of that cultural change agent shift.
There was a story in "Politico" written about this that I found very interesting, and I think it's true. And so, that's why they don't like this. This is part of "Time" magazine recognized what's happening. We haven't seen anything like this ever in the media before, so they made the decision to do that, and they're upset about it.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, is there a world in which future political parties say, you know what? Let's do a very, very short primary right before the conventions, and let's not drag this thing out for a year and a half.
SALAM: Well, this is how things work.
PHILLIP: And get this kind of moment, potentially.
SALAM: This is the way the thing worked. You know, you've had the creep of the calendar to make it earlier and earlier, partly because you had states jockeying with each other to have earlier primary dates.
So, I guess my sense is that the reason this has been such an unusually short campaign is because you had a candidate who won 14 million plus votes in primaries who was then jettisoned. That is very hard to replicate, partly because I think that a lot of folks are going to want a real, deliberative, competitive primary process. And also, just because it is something that's decentralized by nature.
I do think the idea of having the candidate selected in a smoke-filled back room, something like that, that is attractive to a lot of folks. But I think that just our country is just more populist. I think that it's hard to imagine under different circumstances that being unacceptable.
GRANDERSON: To your point about the cover -- to your point about the cover, I think if you were to take the amount of money it takes to get a person elected to the top tier versus the amount of days that are spent, I think you would find there's a direct correlation between why the percentile is so high.
PHILLIP: That's what Madison was pointing to. A lot of people have a lot of money to make from these long campaigns.
GRANDERSON: But there's also just a lot of money to just accumulate and sit on.
SETMAYER: Because you have a 50-state ballot access. People forget we don't have national elections the way that France and other countries do. We have 50-state individual elections. So, it's up to the states. So, it's going to take a little while to have that primary schedule and all that.
Now, do I think someone should be running for three years? No, it's exhausting. But, you know, a good year and a half out from the election is fine. The problem here, though, is also that it hurts with legislating. Because now, you know, with Congress, we already see it's tough enough. There's gridlock.
And then when you start getting into a longer election season, it's more difficult for Congress to pass bills because they're looking at the election as opposed to what's good public policy for the American people.
GRANDERSON: It's a worse-down ballot, too. I mean, the Senate races are getting more and more pricier, which means the races are going to get longer and longer in the Senate seats and House seats.
PHILLIP: These primaries --
GRANDERSON: Yes.
PHILLIP: We had two of the most expensive primaries in history just this election cycle.
SALAM: And then you got the wrong result, and then you just booed out the candidate.
SETMAYER: When did that happen?
SALAM: Let's see if they can do it again.
SETMAYER: When did the wrong result happen? When did that happen?
SALAM: That is the decision that Joe Biden made a catastrophic mistake by running for re-election. And then they had an opportunity for a do-over.
SETMAYER: And guess what? Kamala Harris is on that ballot, too. So, the 14 million people who voted for Biden also voted for Harris.
SALAM: That's actually not true. PHILLIP: And you know what? Look, we've been talking about this, the
booting of Joe Biden from the ticket. But the reality is, is that it's allowed to be that way.
SETMAYER: Correct.
PHILLIP: And that is why it is that way. Everyone, hang on. We've got much more ahead. Coming up. Celine Dion is joining the ranks of musicians who are telling Donald Trump, okay, it's time to stop playing their music at his rallies. We'll have a special guest joining us in our fifth seat on the intersection of pop culture and politics.
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[22:38:35]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Tonight, Donald Trump is facing the music quite literally. Isaac Hayes' family is now suing him for using the song that you're hearing there. And on top of that, Celine Dion and her team are slamming Trump for using the Titanic song at his rallies without permission.
These music battles are obviously nothing new for Trump or his campaign, sometimes honestly for any campaign. But what is different is the role that pop culture seems to be playing in this new matchup between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Joining our fifth seat is "The Grio" writer and host of the "Toure Show" podcast, Toure himself. And actually, I'm going to quote Celine Dion -- this is what Celine Dion tweeted, "In no way is this use authorized. And Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use. And really, that song?" Which is actually --
TOURE, HOST OF THE GRIO'S "TOURE SHOW" PODCAST: Really? Really? No, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's an old song about one of the great disasters in human history.
PHILLIP: Trump has a very dramatic streak.
TOURE: Everybody in the movie dies almost. Why are you using that song? Almost every song he chooses. I'm like, what? At the RNC, he came out to "It's a Man's World", right? Which in his -- with him, it gives me toxic masculinity.
[22:40:02]
But he completely misunderstands the song. Because the core of the song is about, yes, it's a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman, right? Without women, what they bring to the table, the world would be nothing. So, you've completely didn't even listen to the song. It's bizarre.
GESIOTTO: I just had to explain that to my husband the other day about that song, True Story. So, he's out there listening. PHILLIP: You have the whole soundtrack memorized.
GESIOTTO: I think -- I think, one of the things, though, that I think everybody forgets is President Trump isn't picking the songs at his rallies, not sitting down before making a playlist of every single song. I know the president. I know he doesn't do that. Doesn't mean he doesn't like the song.
TIURE: But why are they all old?
GESIOTTO: And we can all get together and say that we enjoy a lot of this music. It doesn't matter whether you're Democrat, Republican, liberal, or conservative. Music brings people together. And it always has.
TOURE: But "It's a Man's World" is a fantastic song. But when you put Trump with a song from the '60s, while Kamala's coming with "Freedom", a modern song from the hottest artist in the world right now that's very upbeat and glorious, you're like, she's in the modern world and he's stuck in the past, which is what the conversation has been all about.
SETMAYER: Well, also, 14 other artists have asked Trump not to play their music. And we can add two more, which is the latest two, Celine Dion and Isaac Hayes' Estate. So, there's been a lot of artists that want nothing to do with Donald Trump and his ilk.
And understandably, earlier tonight on another channel, Isaac Hayes' son said, listen, I don't want my father's music or his legacy associated with Donald Trump's sexism and racism. So, you know, that's something that these artists are very protective of their intellectual property and their brands. And they don't want their music associated with it.
PHILLIP: This is part of the -- right?
TOURE: Let me just want to explain to the folks, right?
PHILLIP: Yeah.
TOURE: If you're in a bar, they can play whatever they want because they are paying into the music industry for the right to play music. At a political rally, at a convention, you cannot play music without express permission from the copyright holder.
So, he's going out and playing all these songs, Celine Dion, the Sam and Dave song that's owned by the Hayes' Estate, a white stripe song, on and on and on, that he's not getting credit for. So, here again, the lawlessness and the disrespect for copyrights.
SETMAYER: And it's consistent. He doesn't pay his bills and anything. He doesn't pay his contractors. He doesn't pay the cities where he goes and has his rallies. He doesn't pay those police departments. He doesn't pay his lawyers.
GRANDERSON: He didn't pay for dinner. SETMAYER: He didn't pay, right. I mean, so this is consistent. He's
not paying for music either. He's a softball.
GESIOTTO: The reality is across the country, people are struggling to afford groceries. They're struggling to afford to pay for dinner. That's what they're concerned about when they go into the polls in November. So, while we can all talk about this, I don't think the majority of Americans are thinking about what song was played at this rally or whether he was allowed to play it.
PHILLIP: That's -- that's fair.
GESIOTTO: They don't care.
SETMAYER: Here's the principle, though. He's a cheater. He's a cheater. He cheats at golf. He cheats at not paying musicians.
GESIOTTO: Well, he didn't cheat in 2020, apparently.
SETMAYER: Well, no. He's accusing other people of cheating.
GESIOTTO: But according to him, he won. But I thought he's the cheater.
PHILLIP: One of the interesting things about this moment is that while Trump is stuck in, you know, his favorite songs from his early 20s and 30s. Harris is kind of getting the youth vote on the new stuff. Charli XCX calling her brat, changing the game on TikTok.
Beyonce, you mentioned that. That song, "Freedom", now being part of the Harris campaign, has taken the streams up for that song up a thousand percent or more. So, there is a vibe shift that's almost represented by --
GRANDERSON: Absolutely.
PHILLIP: -- the pop culture kind of getting into this campaign.
GRANDERSON: Absolutely. And there's a reason why, like, Ronald Reagan associated himself with, like, Frank Sinatra and Noah Hollywood, right? It brings more than just the artistry. It brings the culture and the feeling. Trump is trying to reach a certain type of audience with the songs he's selecting. And obviously, you know, Vice President Harris is doing the same.
Now, I made note that when she first came out as vice president, she came out to MJB, Mary J. Blige. And that particular song was about her being self-confident. "Freedom is about something beyond her. And when she came out to "Freedom", to me, she was communicating something about her campaign, as well.
You know, the criticism about her initial campaign was that the messaging wasn't clear. We weren't sure why she was running for president. And I think the song that she selected with Mary J. Blige kind of emulated that.
GESIOTTO: And you think that fills in for her lack of policy proposals?
GRANDERSON: Right, right. Exactly. It was worth that. It was worth that. And now, she's with freedom. She has a message that she can rally around, and it doesn't sound like she's searching for who she is. She knows who she is.
GESIOTTO: But where are her policies? Where are her proposals? What is she going to bring to the table?
TOURE: We're talking about looking forward. We're talking about liberation. We're talking about moving forward. We're also talking about he wants to be a dictator. I'm talking about freedom. That's what he's talking about. All these messages connect you to the candidate in a way that many other things cannot.
PHILLIP: It's interesting. You know, Trump, I don't know. I think the Harris campaign is perhaps thinking about it that way. For Trump, as someone who covered him for a long time, some of these are just songs he really likes.
UNKNOWN: Right.
SETMAYER: YMCA. Like, what does that have to do with anything? It's just a rally song.
PHILLIP: I think you probably remember at the RNC, they had this whole like kitschy video of him dancing to YMCA.
GESIOTTO: It's very weird.
PHILLIP: Some of this is just Trump being a creature of the things that he likes from decades ago and from his lifestyle as a mover and shaker in New York.
SETMAYER: As a reality show star. I mean, that's what it's about. It's about entertainment. But I think to Toure's point about that music speaks to people in a way. You're sending messages. And I think that, you know, the point --I'm glad you brought it up about the RNC.
The coming out -- "It's A Man's World" and most people not really even listening to the actual song. It's kind of like Born on the Fourth of July, you know, or "Born in the USA". But that was such a hyper masculine display that evening with Hulk Hogan tearing off the shirt.
PHILLIP: That's the context. It wasn't just the song.
SETMAYER: It wasn't just the song. That was clearly sending a message. And Donald Trump does pick out these things, you know, all the way down to certain details. So, all of that is purposeful. It was sending a message.
UNKNOWN: For sure.
SETMAYER: Also, like picking J.D. Vance. Sending a message.
PHILLIP: That's definitely supposed to send a message, for sure. SETMAYER: For the women, not for the ladies.
PHILLIP: Everyone, hold on. We've got much more ahead. Coming up next, the panel will give us their nightcaps.
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[22:50:39]
PHILLIP: And we are back and it's time for the news nightcap. You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Reihan, you're first.
SALAM: "The Wall Street Journal" has a story about this analysis finding that in the event that the Biden-Harris policies with respect to China and China tariffs continued, that would knock off about 0.03 percent of Chinese GDP.
In the event that Trump's planned policies were in place, that would knock off 1.45 percentage points off of Chinese GDP. What that means, in effect, is that China has a really vested interest in ensuring a Trump defeat.
PHILLIP: All right. Madison?
GESIOTTO: Everyone continues to talk about no tax on tips. My hot take for tonight is that doesn't really matter. It's not going to impact the election. Only 2.5 percent of people in the country work in tipped occupations. And now we have people on both sides saying they're going to do it. So, I don't think they're going to be able to get one person to get all those votes.
PHILLIP: My hot take is that that's a good idea. I don't know. I mean, just low-income workers who are working on tips.
GESIOTTO: I mean, it's a great idea, but it's not going to swing one way or another.
SETMAYER: I think Nevada might have a different take on that.
GESIOTTO: Yeah, but are they going to swing to one candidate you think over the other?
TOURE: I love that they both agree on this idea.
GESIOTTO: Right. That's the way they both agree. So, not one of them is going to get all those votes is the point.
SALAM: It's not going to happen regardless of the outcome of the election.
PHILLIP: Yeah, yeah. It's too big of a tax hit. But I also think, you know, in this day and age of tips on every screen, the people who are making the most of their money that way, they're getting hit pretty hard.
SALAM: It does demonstrate Kamala Harris' strength in a way and her willingness to kind of lean in, because there are a lot of folks, policy wonks, who are denouncing what Donald Trump said two minutes ago. Suddenly she says it, and those things all go silent. They're crickets, which I think is a testament to her willingness.
PHILLIP: The economists are still upset about this.
SALAM: But it's a testament to her willingness to seize the main chance and actually do something that would have been deemed unacceptable.
TOURE: But it's an idea you can understand viscerally and quickly. Oh, my God, they're for me.
SALAM: Which was Trump's insight, but then, yeah, I mean, the willingness to seize it was.
PHILLIP: All right, L.Z., you're up.
GRANDERSON: Well, ILC --
PHILLIP: You took a deep breath for that one.
GRANDERSON: I had to, because the ILC made us endure something they referred to as breaking, breakdancing or something. That was not it. And now, there's a conversation that they may not bring it back.
Don't you dare, ILC, make us suffer through what we just witnessed. And then when it get ready to come to L.A. where the coach is located, you decide it's not going to be there anymore. No. If you're going to do breaking to us in 2024, doggone it, bring it to Los Angeles so we can do it right.
TOURE: Oh, God, no.
GRANDERSON: So, we can do it right.
Toure: Oh, God. Oh no. I thought we were on the same side of this issue. Oh, God, no. Well, first of all, I agree. I was told this was a more fun segment. Some people were taking it in a very complex direction. Oh, God, no.
The breaking segment, most of them, let me say 95 percent of them, were super cringe. I was so disgusted as somebody who's been part of hip hop forever. That reflected nothing of the breakdancing that I know and love. I was like, please, never do that again.
GRANDERSON: Exactly.
TOURE: Definitely not in America. My God.
GESIOTTO: I thought it was a joke.
GRANDERSON: No, but they can do it right.
UNKNOWN: I didn't think it was real at first.
TOURE: It seemed like a joke.
GESIOTTO: It was pretty embarrassing.
PHILLIP: If it looks like that, don't you dare bring it anywhere near Los Angeles. That's going to be a huge mistake.
GRANDERSON: Now they can do it right.
TOURE: No, they're not going to do it right.
GRANDERSON: We have four more years.
TOURE: This is like gentrification, right? It always screws up the culture, right?
GRANDERSON: What we do is we screw it up when they get rid of boxing. When you don't have boxing, how are you going to bring in breaking? That means you don't really understand how it all connects.
SETMAYER: If they're going to do it, though, then at least bring in the legends. You know, like Crazy Legs and those guys who are like the legends who can actually judge it. He was out there talking about, listen, I'm not trying to denigrate anybody, but I don't know what that was.
I mean, that was terrible. It was terrible. It was unwatchable. My husband and I were watching about 30 seconds of it between that and the commentators. We're like, who are these people? Where did they come from? It's obviously not New York. It was terrible.
TOURE: "Raygun" is a PhD who's teaching this, who understands the culture, but does not understand, I don't know how to produce it. Talking about it is great. You may be a fantastic professor, I have no idea. But you should know, I don't know enough about this to be dancing it in public. It's on anybody's stage.
SETMAYER: I blame her friends and her coach. They should have told her, I'm sorry, but that's not good enough to put that on now.
GRANDERSON: No, no, no. You know who I blame? I blame the IOC. They got video. They know they didn't look right.
PHILLIP: Yeah, exactly. They should have known better.
SETMAYER: No, I agree. Listen, as someone who grew up in North Jersey and you know, understands the culture, they should not have brought breaking to the Olympics if that was what it was going to be.
PHILLIP: All right--
SETMAYER: So, speaking of the Olympics, I want to give a shout out to the women of the Olympics team, because this time around, not only did the Olympics have gender parity with the athletes, but the American women brought home the majority of the gold --of the medals, and the majority of the gold medals.
[22:55:12]
Out of 126 medals the U.S. team won, 67 were won by women. Out of the 40 gold medals that were won, 26 were won by women. And a bunch of firsts, like in rugby, which is very cool. Rugby sevens is awesome. And we also saw weightlifting, was another one. We saw the women's soccer team win again. We saw the women's basketball team keep their streak alive.
So -- and the women's track team is a former track athlete. I appreciate what they did. And there was a talent involved, too. Tara Woodall, who won the gold in the long jump. So, shout out to the ladies.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
TOURE: The women's team run away with it like that, while the men are stumbling.
SETMAYER: The men have had problems for a long time.
GRANDERSON: You got Carl Lewis all mad.
SETMAYER: Carl Lewis is from Jersey, by the way.
GRANDERSON: Should have been mad.
SETMAYER: And then you also had the 400 hurdler, who's also from Jersey City. But the four by one was the real A for everybody to watch.
PHILLIP: It was -- it was -- guys, we got to go, but it was an excellent, excellent couple of weeks for the women. Everyone, thank you very much. And thank you for watching "Newsnight" State of the Race. "Laura Coates Live" starts right after this.
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