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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Insider Says He's Spiraling, He Better Snap Out Of It; Trump Campaign Posts Racist Meme About Harris And Border; Union Files Federal Labor Charges Against Trump And Musk; Press Awaits Chance To Interviews V.P. Kamala Harris To Answer Questions About Her Policy Plans; Governor Tim Walz Acknowledged That He Falsely Claimed To Have Gone Into Combat. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 13, 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, Donald Trump sets the stage --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This third rate phony candidate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- to deny, deny, deny.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It was a coup. We had a coup.
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PHILLIP: The result of another election.
Plus, White Dudes for Harris.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm white, I'm a dude, and I'm for Harris.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Meet Republicans for Harris. The never Trump GOP gets a place in the Democratic campaign.
And Trump and Elon Musk --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They go on strike, and you say, that's okay, you're all gone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: -- talk their way into a jam. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHAWN FAIN, PRESIDENT, UAW: He doesn't give a damn about the working class.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Labor charges, filed by the Auto Workers Union.
Live at the table, Bryan Lanza, Tara Setmayer, L.Z. Granderson and Tricia McLaughlin. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
Good evening to you. I'm Abby Philip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about, a tale as old as Trump. There's some new CNN reporting that pulls back the curtain on the outright panic that is happening inside the Republican nominee's own campaign.
The question now is, can Donald Trump snap out of this spiral? Sources tell CNN that Trump simply can't compute that this is a different race now. The Democrats are arrayed and energized behind Kamala Harris. Allies are wary, again, that Trump is giving into Galaxy Brain and hugging the wrong things, both conspiracies and people. Kellyanne Conway, for example, reportedly even met privately with Trump to deliver, as bluntly as she could, this message, that he needs to start making sense, or his chances in November will slip away.
Here at the table in New York, everyone is with us. So, Bryan, this is becoming now a chorus from people who want Trump to win, people who think he had a good chance before this. Steve Deese, the conservative radio host says, the double-edged sword of Donald Trump is your standard bearer is that at any time, he can disrupt narratives that could crush Republicans, and at any time, he can construct narratives that are self-destructive. Donald Trump repeating talking points in campaign pitches would undermine his brand. But he definitely needs to be more focused.
BRYAN LANZA, FORMER DEPUTY COMMS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN: Yes, I mean, absolutely he needs to be more focused. I mean, we know what the issues are for success. We know the pathway for him. It's talking about immigration, it's talking about inflation, it's talking about the wars. Anytime you have any second of a conversation that's different than that, you're losing your opportunity to make the case.
And so the fact that we're having this conversation about him not talking about inflation, him not talking about immigration is testament that, you know, there is -- concern is not the right word. There just wants to be more focus. It's like we know what wins, we know what the pathway is. We've seen him literally knock out Joe Biden out of the race talking about these issues. We've seen the opposition talk about January 6th for three years. Those issues didn't work. The voters have already made some morality judgment on you. And that's why, you know, when they had the first debate and Donald Trump knocked Joe Biden out of the race, those are the same, those are the same factors that exist today. We're just not talking about it as much anymore. PHILLIP: You just said something really interesting. You said voters made a reality judgment about Trump, and I think that this is really what's kind of coming into play now, is that a Trump faced with Kamala Harris is struggling.
And I'm actually going to play what Maggie Haberman said about this just earlier on CNN, because I think it's important.
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MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: She's closed the polling gap with him in a pretty short amount of time. And he had gotten very used to running against Joe Biden. That was comfortable for him. He knew what the line of attack was. And his campaign had spent a lot of time and money on it. But she is a woman, and she is a black woman. And both of those factors have proven pretty challenging for him in the past.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: L.Z., I mean, I thought about you because you said something very similar on this show last night. But, you know, Maggie covers Trump. She spends a lot of time talking to people in his inner circle. She watches him closely more than anyone else. She understands Trump, and he is struggling in this moment.
[22:05:02]
And what he's resorting to is actually doubling down on the very things that, as Bryan said, voters made a morality judgment on him and they don't like that stuff.
L.Z. GRANDERSON, OP-ED COLUMNIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES: You know, it's interesting, because it's characterized as if he's a regular politician. He's just doubling down on himself. This is who he has been. The very first time he got in trouble with the federal government was because of racism was hanging over his head 50 years later, racism. What was in between those two points? Racism.
Why are we acting as if, you know, he's being something that we haven't been accustomed to? I see you're frowning at me, but the paper is, it's in the paper. He was, under the Nixon administration, was sued for racism. And here we are during the Biden administration and he has 34 felony counts. Why are we acting as if this is disconnected somehow? This is the same person, this is who he has always been. It's Republicans who keep wanting him to be something different. He has always been true to himself.
TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, if we focus on the policy though, L.Z., every time Donald Trump beats Harris almost every time. But I do want to address something that was talked about, and it's that issue of phoniness, that supposedly Donald Trump and Trump camp are using the word, phony, because it's a technique to deny the election results in the future.
I completely disagree with that. I think that they're using phony because it resonates with voters. Think about Kamala Harris' -- one of her first campaign ads, right? One of the first things she says is that she's tougher on the border than Donald Trump. 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants came into this country in the last four years under Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's watch.
GRANDERSON: That's not a number that's been verified.
MCLAUGHLIN: That has been a number that has been verified.
GRANDERSON: That's been a number that's been talked about. That's been a number that's been tried and sold. But I have not seen any government documentation that says 10 to 15 million. Has anyone seen this number documented?
MCLAUGHLIN: Do you actually believe that Kamala Harris is tougher on the border and border security than Donald Trump?
GRANDERSON: I think she's different on that one.
TARA SETMAYER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, THE SENECA PROJECT: According to polling, the American people believe that Kamala Harris is not as bad on immigration as you guys are trying to make her seem.
Now, we already know that, that immigration and the border security and all that has been a pain point for Democrats for years. I worked on border security for seven years when I was a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill. This has been an ongoing problem for three decades since Ronald Reagan. Neither side has actually been quite serious about fixing this until recently when President Biden had a bipartisan bill that he said he would sign, which is I'm telling you, if Republicans had a bill that looked like that back when I was in Congress, they would have been thrilled.
It was a bipartisan bill that Republican senators worked on and Donald Trump said do not pass this, do not support it, because it will hurt my election. I need it as a cudgel in the election. And this is exactly what I'm using as a talking point.
But I have another point that I want to finish, because did you brought up phony? No, it is true. It's 100 percent true. Why else didn't it pass?
GRANDERSON: He said he did that. Trump himself said he did that.
LANZA: And why is that? He's saying because you can't trust the people who started the border fire to put out the border fire.
STEMAYER: He didn't start the border fire though. He acted like there was no border problems because Donald Trump was president.
LANZA: There was 94 executive orders that were rescinded by the Biden administration regarding the border. Do you think that had an impact, Tara?
SETMAYER: I think some of it had an impact, sure, and also COVID had an impact, also there were court orders about things that had to be -- that were not legal, that had to be --
LANZA: Not during the Biden administration. They had no role in the border during the Biden administration.
SETMAYER: Yes it did, and there were court orders, and --
GRANDERSON: Did you say COVID didn't have --
LANZA: During the Biden administration?
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Let me let Tara finish her point, and then I want to say something else.
SETMAYER: This is a talking point that is really rich coming from Trump supporters, giving that Donald Trump's entire existence is phony, okay? He even puts on -- he has a phony tan. He has phony hair. He has phony gold in his, you know, resorts. Everything about Donald Trump is fake and phony, and yet they're going to try to use that against Kamala Harris and Democrats on issues?
MCLAUGHLIN: Kamala said she wanted to defund ICE. She said that in 2020. She also said she incentivized illegal immigration by saying that she wants to give them free health care. That is incentivizing illegal immigration. So, anytime anyone tries to say Kamala Harris is tougher on border security and illegal immigration, I'm sorry, I'm not buying it.
GRANDERSON: You know, I'm with you when it comes to the criticism. I've written and criticized this administration multiple times over the years. I've been to Eagle Pass. I've been to El Paso. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've written about it. I thought it was a mistake for the President Biden not to be in Texas for the first couple of years. I've written about all of this.
With that being said, there's also about the intent of the laws. And the intent needs to be spoken about, because it's not just about who's tougher, it's how the toughness is coming from, where the intent is originating from.
MCLAUGHLIN: Like incentivizing (INAUDIBLE).
GRANDERSON: Or we don't want or show me your papers because you're too brown and we're afraid we're being replaced.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Tara and Brian, just a second, because I do want to bring up this point. You were just talking about the policy.
[22:10:01]
I actually appreciate the policy conversation, but this is what the Trump war room just tweeted earlier today. Import the third world, become the third world. That picture on the left, they're saying your neighborhood on under Trump on the right, your neighborhood under Kamala Harris. And it's a sea of black and brown faces.
GRANDERSON: I'm sure that's not racist, right?
MCLAUGHLIN: Are you with that? I think that is showing chaos. I don't --
GRANDERSON: You don't think that's racist.
MCLAUGHLIN: I don't think that illegal immigration should be about race in any way. It is about are you entering this country? Are you from China or if you're from Europe, if you are from --
GRANDERSON: Did you think the image you just saw was racist?
SETMAYER: I don't think that image is racist. I think that they're showing 40 percent of illegal immigration comes from people who are on visa overstays, from other countries that are not coming from there.
MCLAUGHLIN: Tara, you're right. We need to crack down on that.
PHILLIP: So, Bryan --
(CROSSTALKS)
SETMAYER: If that's really what it's about, then how come Donald Trump doesn't focus on that? But he talks about S-hole countries and people of color and the browning of America and this (INAUDIBLE) theory.
MCLAUGHLIN: We should focus on all of it.
PHILLIP: (INAUDIBLE) talking about message discipline, right? And the ball always -- obviously, Trump is the candidate. The ball falls in his court. But this is an X -- a social media post from the campaign, okay. The campaign is backing him up on this, I mean, racist messaging. It's about skin color. That's what they made it about.
LANZA: I don't think Republicans look at skin color. I didn't feel that in that image. When I saw that image, the first thing I saw was the real contrast that Trump had. You know, safety versus dangerous.
PHILLIP: So you don't think that they chose an image of --
LANZA: No, I've been part of the internal decision-making.
PHILLIP: Black and brown migrants, to make a point about race?
SETMAYER: You were part of the decision-making that using photos like that?
LANZA: I've been part of the decision making those photos and being part of that decision-making, race never played a role in it. It was what image can help exemplify what you want to say. And when I see that image, I see the debate Trump wants to have. With Trump, you're safe. With Harris-Walz, you're unsafe. And that is the image, I think that's, -- don't know what the image looks like.
SETMAYER: (INAUDIBLE) down under Biden.
LANZA: Because it's not being reported, guys. Like let's be honest about it.
GRANDERSON: So, the FBI and CIA and police departments all around the nation are saying, keep the numbers down because we want Biden and Harris.
PHILLIP: So, you're saying crime is not being reported?
LANZA: No. I'm saying if you look at California, Proposition 47, a significant amount of that crime is no longer going to be reported because laws were passed to say those crimes don't need to be reported. So, that was crimes that are --
PHILLIP: But it's not just a California thing. It's basically across the country, almost all major cities.
LANZA: But that phenomenon is taking place, which started in California. That phenomenon is taking place in all major cities.
GRANDERSON: We're the highest prisoned nation on the planet. So, do you think --
LANZA: That's a different conversation we're having that.
GRANDERSON: Well, it's the same conversation, because it's the impetus behind the law that was put out there, because we have too many Americans who are in jail for non-violent crimes.
MCLAUGHLIN: But then you have a prosecutor as your nominee who put people behind bars for smoking marijuana, for possession of marijuana while she was laughing that she smoked marijuana while listening to Bob Marley. That's -- so which way is it?
LANZA: I would say this. As a Californian, she was very proud on the record that she put people of color in jail for petty marijuana crimes.
GRANDERSON: I do not believe she said that.
LANZA: Wrong.
GRANDERSON: She did not say people in color and jail.
MCLAUGHLIN: Disproportionately, people of color are put behind bars for marijuana.
SETMAYER: That's because the laws were disproportionately, you know, applied.
MCLAUGHLIN: But she's prosecuting these people.
SETMAYER: Well, that's her job as a prosecutor. So, which do you want? Do you want her to be a prosecutor and actually prosecute the laws or not? So, pick which one. PHILLIP: All right, guys, let's take a pause here. Stick around everyone, we have much more ahead.
Coming up next, breaking news tonight, one of America's most powerful unions filing charges against Trump and Elon Musk. We're going to have a special guest joining our fifth seat at the table.
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[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Donald Trump was never a favorite of his lawyers, and he just gave another example of why, by talking himself into a brand new mess with federal labor charges filed by the UAW over these comments that he made with Elon Musk.
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TRUMP: Well, you, you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit? They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's okay, you're all gone. You're all gone. So, every one of you is gone. And you are the greatest. You would be very good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And moments ago, right here on CNN, the UAW president, Shawn Fain, responded to that.
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FAIN: This is just -- it's just more of Donald Trump and who he is. You know, this is the corporate America playbook, the billionaire playbook. They thumb their nose at labor law, and there's got to come a reckoning in this country.
Donald Trump has a track record of always doing nothing for working class people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Pollster Frank Luntz joins us in our fifth seat at the table. Frank, I noticed in the clip with Trump and Elon Musk, Elon Musk is laughing nervously in the background, because I think he understands that it's a violation of federal labor laws to threaten firing for people who go on strike. But this also undermines Trump's big pitch to American labor, to the white working class that he says he's stealing from the Democrats. How big of a problem did he create for himself?
FRANK LUNTZ, POLLSTER AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIST: Well, he was drawing an unusual number of, and I noticed that the union officially used the phrase working class. I've been doing focus groups now for 35 years, and the people he's describing hate to be described that way.
[22:20:00] They don't see themselves as working class. They're paycheck to paycheck voters. And they actually say, that's me, somebody's trying to pay their bills at the end of the week. And Trump has been successful among those people.
This is what he's going to do. And while we were off the air, you're making a comment that Trump's going to -- under this pressure, he's going to continue to say stuff that's more and more extreme. I agree with that. But I assure you that Donald Trump is doing better among the average union member, not teachers unions and not the unions for government, but everybody else, the trades, people working their hands, he's doing better among them than any Republican has done in decades. This is not going to be a problem for him.
The union leadership is more divided from their membership. And the louder that it gets, the greater the divides are going to come. And in my focus groups, and this is remarkable to me, the union membership says they don't speak for me. And I've been doing this now since 19, I hate to say this, 89, 1990. I've never had union people publicly say they don't speak for me.
PHILLIP: It's such an important point, but I want to dig a little bit deeper, because we talk about this a lot, union members supporting Trump. Trump there is saying he would bust unions. You have Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters, who spoke at the RNC. This is what he said today as a result of that clip, firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism. He spoke at the RNC for Donald Trump. Yes, there is a divide, but I think the divide is not about the economics of it. It's not about labor policies. It's a cultural thing.
SETMAYER: Yes. And also his speech at the RNC wasn't very well received. There were points where you could have heard a pin drop in that room because of some of the things that he said, and the Republican Party traditionally wasn't very pro-labor. So, there's kind of an identity crisis going on there.
But we also see that Kamala Harris is doing better in polling out this week with that constituency, as far as the, you know, white middle class. A lot of them are labor union folks in the battleground state. She's gained nine points. And this is something that should concern the Trump campaign, that she's making inroads in these battleground states with these non-college educated white voters.
Also, it was Kamala Harris who was on the picket line with striking workers in 2019 as a senator. It was this administration, President Biden, first president to ever walk a picket line with union workers. So like, this is -- I think people are starting to see that some of the policies under Donald Trump, they might have sound good, they might have sounded -- you know, the rhetoric sounded good, but in reality, it did not help these workers. In Lordstown, Ohio, that he uses as a perfect example about where Donald Trump made these grand deals promises, but those workers did not end up getting those jobs.
People notice these things. We want to talk about economics, then they can start talking about that. Donald Trump has some things to answer for. Tariffs, isolationism, that kind of stuff does not help labor unions and people who need those jobs and are bringing those jobs back. It was President Biden who brought manufacturing jobs back.
LANZA: You know what else doesn't help those communities? It has been 3.5 years of inflation that has wiped out paycheck to paycheck workers and half. 3.5 years of inflation --
GRANDERSON: Inflation started in 2020.
LANZA: No. Look at inflation.
GRANDERSON: Look at global inflation -- record global inflation started in 2020.
LANZA: February of 2021 is when you saw the numbers shoot up. Prior to that, it had been under 2 percent.
GRANDERSON: Remember 2020?
LANZA: I'm just telling you the facts as they exist. You may not like them. That's fine. I'm giving you the exact months.
GRANDERSON: I'm talking about those facts too. Record global inflation started in 2020.
LANZA: Getting back to what I said. U.S. inflation, because we're having a U.S. conversation --
GRANDERSON: But we're not in the U.S.? We're not on the globe?
LANZA: Well, inflation started to come up in the last 3.5 years under Biden. Prior to that, it didn't exist. And so those working class --
SETMAYER: It didn't exist?
LANZA: Well, it didn't affect the communities under 1.9 percent. So, even during Trump, it never hit that.
SETMAYER: To help create the inflation, because of the money and supply chain --
LANZA: As I would say, those communities have been wiped out by inflation.
SETMAYER: And it went from 9 percent to 2.2 percent now under Biden. What about that? It was 9 percent in 2021 as an overhang from Trump's failure with COVID.
GRANDERSON: Just real quick, because as I said, I've written -- I'm not making up the facts. I've written about this for quite some time. When the world shut down, one of the first things that happened was China obviously wasn't able to finish their orders with the supply chain. What happens when there's a higher demand and not enough to supply?
LANZA: What happens when you put a lot of money in -- GRANDERSON: What happens, Bryan?
PHILLIP: At the same time, though, this trend that we're talking about with labor preceded all of this, preceded inflation, it preceded Biden. It was going on. Frank, you know this. In 2016, that's one of the reasons Hillary Clinton struggled in the blue wall.
[22:25:03]
LUNTZ: What's strange is that Trump's language was really brutal and a lot of people were offended by it. For some reason, union membership saw him as telling the truth, that his statements, which we may find disagreeable, to be nice, or offensive, to be harsh, they responded to it because they thought he was being sincere. And they looked at Clinton and they thought, she doesn't get us. They voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but, boy, did they abandon him in 2024.
And my only point here, it doesn't matter when it started, and it doesn't even matter what the cause is. The public blames the current administration on this issue. So, I will give you credit on issues such as healthcare and abortion for the Democrats, but the Republicans have the advantage on inflation. They do blame the Democrats and Joe Biden for it, whether it's deserved. And the key here is housing and health care, which are expensive items, and the public can't afford it, and food and fuel. So, H squared, F squared, and this is the strongest case for Trump and against Biden-Harris.
PHILLIP: Tricia?
MCLAUGHLIN: I know we all have different data here. I think we can all agree prices are up 20 percent. But that all being said, I think speaking to the cultural piece of this, keep in mind, the last two UAW presidents went to prison for corruption and for fraud. So, I think that --
SETMAYER: No, they didn't.
MCLAUGHLIN: That is --
SETMAYER: No, they did not. That was fact-checked earlier tonight.
PHILLIP: The two presidents before that.
SETMAYER: Not recently.
MCLAUGHLIN: Two presidents before that. But still, culturally, there is a problem here. The bosses and the rank and file members have a complete divide. They're not trusting their union bosses. And that's why you're not going to see a huge shift with the UAW.
PHILLIP: You know what? Here's another data point. The Black Caucus of the Teamsters, Teamsters has not endorsed, by the way, any candidate. The Black Caucus did. They endorsed Harris and Walz. And to me, when we talk about the divide, we cannot ignore that that divide also exists within union membership as well. GRANDERSON: Always have existed, and it's actually the sort of Achilles heel of the union power, if you will. Because as long as you can separate union members by race or by class and by fear, you can keep the union weaker. You know, if you're able to convince poor whites and poor blacks that you're actually in the same barrel, and that anyone who tries to divide you is just looking at it from a capitalistic perspective and not from a cultural perspective, if we can ever get that unification message across in terms of socioeconomics, then you will see a significant labor change.
But that has always been the boogeyman for the union movement, using race. And it's actually, if you go back and check the last 50 to 60 years, it has shown up time and time again that racial issues have been what's been keeping unions from being completely fulfilled for what they can be. It hasn't been anything dealing with no capital.
LUNTZ: There's also a gender difference, which men are much more likely to support Trump, within the unions. It's actually even bigger than the population overall. Male union members are much more likely to support Trump. Female union members are much more likely to support Harris, and that divide.
And that's probably the challenge right now, is that there are so many divides, and we're looking for things where we disagree on. Even on this discussion in the last five minutes I've sat here, where do we disagree, rather than where can we find common ground? And that's a tragedy. And regardless of who wins or loses, we're going to have to find this common ground when this is done because we can't be fighting like this and expect a country to move --
SETMAYER: That's the message of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, right now. That's why you see the happy warriors, the joyfulness and what they're doing and why they went to the unions right away out of the gate when she unveiled him versus the very dark and divisive message coming out of Donald Trump.
PHILLIP: Well, it is interesting that the broader divides in the country. They also exist within these organizations and within these groups. They're not immune from it, even if they have an economic message as, you know, their banner.
But everyone, hang on for just a second. Coming up next, while Vice President Harris is preparing to deliver some big policy speeches coming up, Frank just conducted a focus group with some voters who say they weren't going to vote for Biden, but now they do support Harris. We'll find out what he learned. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:33:45]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Vice President Kamala Harris has been a presidential candidate now for nearly four weeks, but she still has given zero interviews or news conferences to answer questions about her policy plans. But soon, voters will get their first glance at her positions. She is set to deliver an economic speech this week. And in addition to that, get this, according to "Axios," her campaign is now sponsoring these Google search ads that are kind of controversial. The ads, they manipulate headlines in search -- to imply to viewers that they are more positive and that they are from news outlets.
All of this part of the effort by the Harris campaign to try to reintroduce her to the voters. But this is going to be the main argument, I assume, that Republicans are going to make about her, which is that she's a flip-flopper, that she's changing her policy positions.
LANZA: Nearly everyone, right? Every position that we -- immigration, she's changing. Now she's -- during the Biden administration, she supported, you know, a crackdown on people who received tips or had to pay tips for tax.
She's now reversing those positions. And that's probably why she doesn't want to do interviews. She has to actually articulate why she's flipping on those positions, which is, you know, it's better than just, say, raw politics, which is what it appears to be.
[22:35:04
So, I mean, it's, you know, we welcome this discussion because we've known this for very long.
LUNTZ: Absolutely, because I'll tell you what.
PHILLIP: I do wonder, though. I mean, she's --the justification, if you're the Harris campaign, might very well be she is now her own person. Doesn't she get to decide what she runs on?
LANZA: No.
MCLAUGHLIN: Didn't KGP just say that there was no daylight between Kamala Harris and Biden? So, whether it be what she talked about in 2020 on fracking or banning private health care.
PHILLIP: I think that's exactly the point. Her positions, when she was running against Biden might be actually different from Biden's positions right now.
MCLAUGHLIN: But she --
PHILLIP: So, you guys are trying to hold her to her candidacy.
MCLAUGHLIN: She continually said, well, which is it? She won't answer her question. It's been 47 days since actually she was on this very network on a televised interview.
PHILLIP: I mean, she flip-flopped on fracking four years ago.
LANZA: Listen, what we're holding her to -- no, she didn't. What we're holding to is her California positions that she took as district attorney of San Francisco and as attorney general of California. She wanted to ban fracking then when it was in the legislature. So, that was her position when she ran in 2020.
I get that she's reversing her position now because she needs to win Pennsylvania. And she decided she didn't want Josh Shapiro to help her win. She decided to go with Tim Walz, which is turning out to be a disaster day by day. But at the end of the day, well, he's talking about his military.
SETMAYER: She's winning in all the polls, or it's even with them. And Tim Walz has a 41 percent approval rating now. And the more people get to know him, the more they like him. Well, because they didn't know him. And unlike J.D. Vance, who actually came out of the convention negative, which is the first time ever.
So let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. If you're talking about flip-flopping, are you going to apply the same standard to J.D. Vance, who completely reinvented himself about four times since he was a "Never-Trumper" and called Trump "America's Hitler" and took the positions he took in his book in "Hillbilly Elegy" and all the positions he took? And now he's a completely different person because he's talking about politicians and political expediency.
LANZA: And he went before the voters and the voters says, yes, we accept your answers. And then we move forward. Yes.
SETMAYER: Well, okay. So, you honestly believe -- so you're okay with -- you're okay with that? Yeah. Completely.
MCLAUGHLIN: Everyone should answer questions.
SETMAYER: Do you honestly think that Kamala Harris is not going to answer questions when I have an interview ever? Have you ever heard of the concept that when your enemy is blowing themselves up that you stand back and let them do that? She is going to answer questions after the convention, I'm sure.
PHILLIP: I am very curious about what Frank's -- have said about this moment, because Harris now, according to some polls, is getting a fresh look. What did they tell you, Frank?
LUNTZ: Three things. Number one, she is really lit up and excited young women who were turned off by Biden, who were turned off by Trump, and they can't wait to vote. So, the intensity is now significant.
Second, to be blunt to both sides in this, they feel like they don't know enough about her. So, they're all -- all these people who switched are probable Harris voters, not definite. They're waiting to be sold, which is why September 10th in that debate is going to be so significant.
And third is they really don't like Trump's attacks because they want to know about inflation and immigration. They don't want to know what Trump thinks about her crowd size or --
SETMAYER: Or ethnicity. LUNTZ: Or ethnicity. And what I found was to them, this is a brand-new race. It's a brand-new future. And they actually have a sense of optimism that things can get better. But the yelling and the screaming and the talking over each other and all of that isn't cool for them. They don't like it.
And actually, you asked me when I'm walking up here. I'm trying to figure out how to behave on live television because I'm listening to what they're saying. And I don't want to be part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution. So, I'm quieter. I'm trying to focus on the numbers and the opinions. And in the end, the Harris people appreciate that she's bringing something new. And the Trump people --
PHILLIP: One of the interesting things, I mean, to your point about they're open, right? This is a new race. The "NPR", PBS poll about the economy shows that Harris has now all of a sudden brought this race into a margin of error race on the issue of the economy.
You know, Trump has, for us, that is within the margin of error here. So, it's not even really technically a lead. That is a completely different race. I mean, we talked so much about inflation, but the voters are basically saying they don't necessarily hold her to blame for that.
LANZA: It's not that they don't hold her to blame. It's what Frank says. They're giving her a fresh look. And as we remind voters that that fresh look is Biden's second term, they're going to be like, wait a second.
We rejected this, you know, several months ago. Why do we have it now? We firmly believe, and the campaign at least firmly believes, when they have a conversation about the economy, it's a position they're just going to win.
GRANDERSON: I think the economy, the way that we talk about it is also different than the way that a lot of people that I've interviewed over the years talk about the economy. Because it isn't just about how Wall Street is doing.
[22:40:00]
It isn't just even about, you know, how much money they're making from work.
LANZA: Affordability.
GRANDERSON: It's about affordability of living. Can I afford childcare, which she talks about? Can I afford to go and adopt, or if I need to leave and take care of someone, can I afford to do that, which she talks about?
If they reverse or repeal the Affordable Care Act, and I now have to have pre-existing conditions, and I can't have an insurance company to help me take care of that, how do I manage that? She talks about those issues. I think the economy for the American people is a lot broader than it is for the way that we talk about it, or even sometimes it's talked about on the campaign stuff.
LANZA: Yeah, but I would say from the Republican standpoint, they just have to remind the voters, these voters that are giving a second look to Kamala and saying, hey, you know, you've had three and a half years of Kamala Harris.
GRANDERSON: No, you've had three and a half years of Joe Biden and Vice President Harris.
PHILLIP: I'm listening to -- I'm listening to Bryan, and what comes to mind is, you know, when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket, you kept hearing from Democrats, we just need to remind voters about who Donald Trump was. Now, I'm hearing the same thing on the Republican side. We just need to remind voters.
It's almost as if, if you're looking backwards, you're kind of in a defensive position. And that's the thing that's working for Harris, is that she isn't really doing so much of the looking backwards. She's saying, the person that you're seeing right now is the person that I'm running.
SETMAYER: That's right. Listen, defense may win championships, offense wins elections. And right now, Kamala Harris is on offense, and she has an opportunity to reintroduce herself to the American people because she played a back, you know, a backseat role to the President of the United States, which is what most vice presidents do, that the American people are willing to give her a second look. And now is the race to who is going to define whom first.
And so, so far, Kamala Harris has been able to get her message out to the American people, and they have reacted positively, unlike Donald Trump, who is continuing to look back, who is continuing to complain and grievance monger. And to Frank's point, the American people are sick and tired of it.
They're sick and tired of the nastiness, the name calling, the grievance mongering, the lies, the conspiracy theories, and the fact that Donald Trump is some --who represents the past. That's why he can't recalibrate. He's incapable of doing that.
PHILLIP: You get the last word.
LUNTZ: The attributes that they're looking for, number one, accountability, which is say what you mean, mean what you say, and most importantly, do what you say. Number two is a detailed plan of action, because they want to know what you're going to do over the coming months and coming years.
And finally, number three is to prove that you know how to get things done, because they're tired of the politics, and they actually want these things solved. So, childcare, yes, make it more affordable. Housing, health care, food and fuel. I sympathize with these people, because they are genuinely struggling.
And that's why they call themselves paycheck to paycheck voters because they don't know if those paychecks are going to be enough for what they need over the coming weeks and months.
PHILLIP: Yeah. Frank Luntz, thank you very much, as always, for joining us. Everyone else, hang on for us, because up next, Governor Tim Walz is responding for the very first time to attacks on his military service. Hear the remark and how J.D. Vance is reacting to it tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:37]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D) VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm going to say it again as clearly as I can. I am damn proud of my service to this country. And I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person's service record. Anyone brave enough to put on that uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I just have a few simple words. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Governor Tim Walz there giving his very first response tonight to attacks on his military record. And the attacker isn't backing down. J.D. Vance, while also thanking him for his service, is also calling Walz a liar. Back with the panel here. This is not going away, but what did you make of Walz's response?
MCLAUGHLIN: I mean, again, I feel not equipped to speak to this issue because I didn't serve this country. But I felt that J.D. Vance, I mean, he's not the one who's laying these attacks. It was actually a number of people who served with Walz, including his battalion commander, who made these points that he lied about his rank.
That all being said, J.D. Vance -- people, you know, on the left also attacked J.D. Vance's record of service as far as they were mitigating it, saying, yes, he was a Marine in a combat area, but he was only a public affairs officer. That's very disrespectful to those who fought and died, including the first Marine, female Marine, who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Meghan McClung -- she died. She was a public affairs officer. And she was an escorting journalist.
PHILLIP: You're probably right that those criticisms were being made, but they were not being made at the top of the ticket, which I think is significant.
SETMAYER: That's right. That's correct. And also, let's, okay. Let's, let's say the foundation here. Tim Walz served this country honorably for 24 years as a National Guardsman - twenty-four years. He was honorably discharged.
The attacks against him are despicable, especially coming from someone who was running as a running mate with a silver spoon draft dodger, who used bone spurs as an excuse to get out of serving.
Who used wackadoo doctors that wrote, you know, medical reports to say that he didn't --he couldn't serve, who said that not getting a venereal disease was his own personal Vietnam, who's called military members suckers and losers.
Who denigrated a war hero in John McCain as someone who was, you know, didn't deserve to be honored because he got captured. And you're going to go after Tim Walz's service in the military.
[22:50:02]
This is despicable. It's absolutely despicable.
LANZA: I would say this. I would say this.
SETMAYER: Donald Trump attacks Gold Star families.
PHILLIP: Let me let Bryan get in here.
LANZA: Thank you. Thank you, Abby, for letting me have this conversation.
SETMAYER: Because you don't like the list of the litany of things that Donald Trump has said against the military members? PHILLIP: Hang on, one second.
LANZA: Because I would say this. His service of 24 years is honorable. Nobody has any compunctions with that whatsoever.
SETMAYER: And it shouldn't be attacked.
LANZA: The fact that he's exaggerated about some of those things has come to light, has left veterans uncomfortable. I've never served. So, I don't know what it means to say you're in country, you're under a combat vet. But he made that claim. And there are veterans who say, you know what, we have a problem with that.
SETMAYER: There are a lot more veterans that are upset that he's attacking his service.
LANZA: I've never had a rank there. So, I don't know what it means to claim a higher rank that I didn't have. But I know veterans are very much bothered by the fact that he's claiming a rank he didn't have. So, you know, his service is great. I think we're an amazing country because we have a volunteer army.
But there is a path of littered candidates for office who've exaggerated their military service much less than this guy has, who's sort of been disqualified for running for office. And we're going to see it come up more. We're a week later, and we're still talking about this. This is not what Harris wants to be talking about.
PHILLIP: I mean, I do think that, look, he -- he acknowledged that he falsely claimed to have gone into combat.
SETMAYER: He said he misspoke.
PHILLIP: He did not go to combat. He's acknowledged that he said so and did not actually do that. So, that -- that is on the table. And I think the question is, how significant is that ultimately going to be?
GRANDERSON: Well, I think when you are talking about the military, if you're comparing both tickets, I don't really think there's much of a comparison. Now, I know you were shaking your head a lot when Tara was running off the laundry list.
And I'm assuming you were shaking your head because you were disappointed in Donald Trump, not because they weren't true. Because they all were true. Everything that she listed were true. And yet, yes, they were.
MCLAUGHLIN: Suckers and Losers was debunked.
GRANDERSON: By whom?
PHILLIP: It was not debunked. It was perhaps denied by Trump allies. But it was not debunked by the people who said what they heard him saying.
LANZA: Voters for the last eight years have heard these things about Donald Trump, and they've passed judgment on it. And as of six weeks ago, Donald Trump was leading in the polls against Joe Biden because they've passed judgment, morality on his issues, that those things didn't matter. Now, we're talking about --
GRANDERSON: I don't think it's going to matter.
LANZA: Now, we're talking about Tim Walz for the first time. And voters are just now beginning to pass judgment on Tim Walz. And the reason why that judgment matters so much is because that was Kamala Harris' first decision as the nominee for the Democratic Party. Everybody thought she was going to pick Shapiro because that would have been a slam dunk for her in Pennsylvania.
SETMAYER: No, not necessarily. Not necessarily.
LANZA: Instead, she collapsed to the liberal left saying, hey, we don't want this guy.
SETMAYER: No, no.
GRANDERSON: No, not at all.
LANZA: Like a cheap tent.
GRANDERSON: I'm sorry, Bryan, I'm sorry. You're completely wrong. My reporting does not verify anything that you're saying right now in terms of math and calculus, in terms of Shapiro versus Walz. That's number one.
Number two, when you talk about moving past certain things, the veterans that I've spoken with, and that includes Adam Kinzinger, who was on the January 6th Committee, they did not move past those comments, what he said about John McCain. I lived in Arizona during 2020. Arizona did not move past what he said about John McCain. So, I think just sort of wishing that we moved past it because they elected him, I don't think you should be trying to conflate those two things. They're still separate. You can vote for someone and still not like what they had to say about the military service.
SETMAYER: And the polling doesn't reflect what you just said.
PHILLIP: Everyone, stand by for me. It is primary night in the state of Minnesota, and we have a CNN projection. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar will survive a primary challenge. She defeats an opponent that she's already faced in the past.
Now, it's notable that since the so-called squad has already lost two of its members to primary challenges just this year, Omar has faced a torrent of criticism against her over her outspoken stance on the conflict in Gaza. But she survived this primary, it looks like, by quite a lot. Coming up next for us, our panel, they're back, and they'll give us their night caps.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:58:37]
PHILLIP: And we are back, and it's time for the "NewsNightcap." You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Bryan, you're up first.
LANZA: Yeah, listen, I'm just going to go to the Donald Trump-Musk Twitter space yesterday. You had the E.U. sort of send a notice to the to the Elon saying, hey, you have to be careful with what Trump's saying. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with any type of censorship.
We had a "Washington Post" reporter at the White House say something similar. You know, where have we gone as a society that now you're having the media and now you have public politicians saying we need to censor American speech during the presidential election? I think we should reject it.
PHILLIP: Tara?
SETMAYER: Well, we just found out this week that abortion is now on the ballot in Arizona and Missouri. And in Arizona, women are galvanized over this issue because they do not want to go back and have their rights taken away. Five hundred and seventy-seven thousand signatures set a record for this ballot initiative to be on to codify abortion in Arizona. And it's not just Arizona and Missouri.
It's Florida. It's Nevada. There are eight states where women's reproductive health is on the ballot. And that is going to make a huge difference in this election because women are going to save this democracy.
PHIILIP: It's certainly going to be a factor. Tricia?
MCLAUGHLIN: No one seems to want to talk about it. But Joe Biden is still in the White House. And the cover up of his cognitive decline is a scandal of historic proportions. I don't think we're going to find out for another decade what really happened. But when we do and there's a book and then a film adaptation, my prediction is that Mark Ruffalo is going to play Joe Biden.
[23:00:03]
PHILLIP: That took a turn. All right, LZ?
GRANDERSON: That's not a bad selection at all. I have to call out the former president, President Obama, who's trying to be Switzerland when it comes to summer music and took a nice neutral approach. You did not have a Drake song during that, President Obama. You did not have a Kendrick song. Choose a side.
And it should be Kendrick because that's the song of the summer. What you can do is pretend like those two men do not exist this summer and not include them on your summer playlist. Pick a side.
PHILLIP: Message received. Everyone, thank you very much. And thank you for watching "NewsNight" State of the Race. "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
