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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Dick Cheney Says, I Will Vote For Kamala Harris; Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) Defends Carlson Event Despite Nazi Apologist Guest; Judge Delays Trump's Sentencing Until After The Election; "NewsNight" Discusses Stare Of The Presidential Race 2024. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 06, 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]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight --
DICK CHENEY, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I'm a Republican.
PHILLIP: -- imagine if 2004 heard this from 2024.
FMR. REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris.
PHILLIP: A nail biter election turns American politics upside down.
Plus, whatever sentence Donald Trump receives, voters won't know about it until after they cast their ballots.
Also, the Republican nominee rips his female accusers while he tries to court female voters.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: She would not have been the chosen one.
PHILLIP: And an Obama vet warns that Democrats are too confident.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's very possible that if election were held today, Trump would win.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Shermichael Singleton, Ashley Allison, Bryan Lanza, Keith Boykin, and Geoff Duncan. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, everyone. I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America is talking about. Hell has officially frozen over tonight. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who Democrats have spent decades calling evil, and Darth Vader, he says he is voting for Kamala Harris.
In a statement, he says there is no greater threat to the republic than Donald Trump, and that he can never be trusted with power again. Meanwhile, Cheney's daughter, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, endorsed Harris earlier this week, and here she is today slamming Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
L. CHENEY: Every opportunity that Donald Trump gets to show the American people who he is, he pretty clearly -- and, look, his running mate is doing this too, I mean, you know, this is my diplomatic way of saying it, they're misogynistic pigs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Joining us in our fifth seat tonight, a Republican who's done the same thing as the Cheneys, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan.
Geoff, here in the upside down world where Dick Cheney is now voting for a Democrat, this is a moment, I think. And it's amazing that Democrats who really hate Dick Cheney, I mean, I cannot underscore that, I cannot underscore that anymore. I mean, they really do not like him at all, but they are welcoming this.
GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I think the Republican playbook says I'm supposed to be surprised, but I'm not. In fact, I think I'm actually surprised when I watch level-headed Republicans not come out and endorse Kamala Harris, knowing all the things we know about Donald Trump.
I mean, look I've lived this out since the hours after the 2020 election debacle. There's been Republicans that have quietly come up to me saying for years and have said, hey, look I cannot believe we're going to do this again. And, you know, post DNC speech, I mean, I'm giving high fives, walking up the street to the studio here from folks that are recognizing and saying, hey, I'm a Republican too. Thanks for doing the right thing. I'm going to follow your lead. It's happening all over the country. There's a quiet momentum building against Donald Trump, even amongst Republicans.
It it feels different in a lot of ways from what we've seen before, because the Dick Cheney is just as Republican as Mitch McConnell. I mean, you could even argue maybe more, in some ways. Dick Cheney is not some guy who's prone to fuzzy feelings about really anything. But on this particular issue, he has drawn a line. I'm wondering if you think that you might see other people who have been hesitant to do this in the past because they say, oh, you know, conservative principles in Congress, the House, the Senate, those people might suddenly say, wait a second, this is different.
BRYAN LANZA, FORMER DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN: Yes, I don't think that it matters, because I think if you look at the polling since, you know, since January, you know, Donald Trump has held, you know, what is it, 92 percent of the Republican vote. The most impact that Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney are going to have, or at least these former Republicans who are going to have, are convincing other Republicans to sort of move away from President Trump. And you just don't see in that data, you know, at this point of the election, you didn't see it six weeks ago, you didn't see it six months ago.
And so I don't know that the opposition at this point matters.
[22:05:00]
I think the voters have sort of baked in January 6th and they've made a decision that the Biden administration, whether it's right or wrong, is so bad at inflation, at immigration, at the core issues that value to them, that they're willing to overlook January 6th. I mean, that's what the data shows. I think that's where we're headed and you'll see more people come out, but I just don't think it's going to move the needle.
PHILLIP: I want to play what Liz Cheney did in addition to all of this. It's not just at the top of the ticket. Here's what else she's doing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
L. CHENEY: Colin Allred is somebody I served with in the House, and somebody who really -- when you think about the kind of leaders our country needs and going to this point about, you know, you might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith.
And in this race, that is Colin Allred. So, I'll be working on his behalf.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: She is going to campaign for a Democrat who's running against a Republican in the Senate in the state of Texas. She said she's going to campaign for Kamala Harris. I mean, that is extraordinary.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I rarely am speechless and I find myself speechless. I mean, I think I started voting through the Bush-Cheney era. That was my first election. And you're right. You know, Democrats, we were -- he was just the enemy. But I also appreciate people like yourself, I never thought you were the enemy, just to be clear, but --
DUNCAN: Thank you for clarifying. I was worried. It's Friday night. Be nice.
ALLISON: But I think it is refreshing in a moment we are so polarized for people to really rise above and rise to the occasion and say this actually is not about politics, this is actually about our country and what I think is best for our country.
So, I still to this day doubt that I agree with anything that Liz Cheney or Dick Cheney stands for on a policy position, but I do agree that you have to pick country over party, and they are doing that. And so I am in line with them and I am appreciative of them and still somewhat speechless, but good for them.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Can I jump? I mean, look, in terms of modern contemporary politics, it is significant, former vice president, Republican, very conservative, endorsing a Democrat. I don't think anyone would have ever expected that. But it does showcase this huge ideological shift, Abby, within the Republican Party of the more Chamber of Commerce, establishment wing, educated wing of the party that are clearly moving somewhat to the Democratic side, maybe because of Trump. I don't know if it's temporary, Geoff, or maybe it's permanent, Bryan, I think we'll have to see. And then you're sort of seeing this populist nationalist working class movement of people who were once reliable stalwarts of the Democratic Party move over to the Republican side.
So, this shift to me is really fascinating outside of just the Trump and Kamala Harris dynamics. I'm curious to see where does this go over the next four to eight years.
PHILLIP: I'm also curious where George. W. Bush is. Yes. I mean, and also, Keith, I mean, you've been around in the Democratic politics for a long time. Are you good with this big tense, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney?
KEITH BOYKIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Hell yes. You know, I posted about this earlier on Twitter and I was not surprised that everybody attacked me for posting this. All my liberal Democratic friends attacked me for saying this. Like we shouldn't be celebrating Dick Cheney, he's a war criminal. Yes, I get all that. But the fact that he is actually endorsing Kamala Harris for president, it does surprise me. I don't know why other people were not surprised by that. I would be less surprised if he just said, I'm not voting for Donald Trump, which is kind of where I think George W. Bush is because he hasn't said anything.
PHILLIP: For a lot of Republicans.
BOYKIN: Mitt Romney and all those other people. But he went --
LANZA: I mean, went after his daughter. Donald Trump went after his daughter. Any dad is going to say, no.
BOYKIN: But, you know, but that's what's so funny about that. You know, going back to the endorsement of Colin Allred, you know, Ted Cruz is Colin Allred's opponent. Donald Trump attacked Ted Cruz's father, and Ted Cruz's wife. He called her ugly, and accused Ted Cruz's dad of being involved in the JFK assassination. And Ted Cruz still --
LANZA: Well, that was the National Enquirer.
BOYKIN: Well, through Donald Trump. And Ted Cruz still went on and supported him, after he'd already condemned him. He knew exactly what a horrible person Donald Trump was, and he continued to support him. That's the level of cowardice from the Republican Party leadership today that is just so stunning. The party of Reagan has disappeared. The party of Bob Dole has disappeared. Even the party of George W. Bush has disappeared. You have 200 former Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris, former Bush officials and other officials. You have people like Mike Pence.
LANZA: We've had a Kennedy who endorsed Trump.
BOYKIN: Mike Pence. Kennedy -- Robert F. Kennedy is not even in the equation compared to these people. Mike Pence was the vice president of the United States for Donald Trump. And he is not endorsing Donald Trump. The person who worked most closely with Donald Trump is saying Donald Trump is not fit to be president.
ALLISON: You know what I think is interesting across the spectrum is that, two things, one, people like you who still have a very long political career ahead of you are standing up.
[22:10:03]
But people like Dick Cheney, I think we all assume that he has reached the pinnacle of his political career. So, what's the depth and the spectrum of people who are saying, I'm kind of surrendering my -- maybe not. Maybe you're hoping your party comes back, but I'm actually like --
DUNCAN: I just want to get my country back.
ALLISON: That's right. That's what I'm saying. Like you're picking -- you're not picking yourself over this moment.
DUNCAN: I just got three kids I got a stare in their eyes and I got to make sure I've done everything I can do to secure the future for them. And this is really a decision that comes down to democracy or pathway against democracy. And so, for me, I think speaking to this confidence that Republicans are starting to get, I mean, there's a lot of confidence out there in Republicans to not vote for Donald Trump, but that means they're not going to vote for anybody. But this confidence is starting to show up where folks are like, look, I'm either going to make a point and not vote for Donald Trump, or I'm going to make a difference and defeat him in his tracks and get our party back.
Long range planning here, it's going to take more than a day to fix the Republican Party, but we got to start somewhere.
SINGLETON: But you do see this sort of discontent with the base of the party for folks like Bush and Cheney. And when you talk to a lot of those grassroots supporters, they will say a part of our reason for supporting Trump, a part of the reason for the Tea Party Movement, is because they felt the establishment wing of the party completely ignored them, completely ignored their grievances about the direction of the country. Here we go with Donald Trump.
And so I do wonder, Geoff, if Trump were to lose in November, will there be a reset of the party, ideologically speaking? I'm not convinced of that. ALLISON: I think we're probably in the phase of the last two-party system. Maybe it goes on to 2028. But I think across the political spectrum, people are really finding different political homes. So, I think maybe in the Republican Party, there's not a revamp of MAGA. MAGA stays MAGA, and then there is a more moderate conservative party, but I also think on the left, green party candidates that run every four years are not what I'm talking about, but parties like the Working Families Party that work very hard and have real infrastructure in New York and are doing in different places. I think people are interested in what something different can look like for their future.
PHILLIP: That's an interesting idea. I mean, I do think that there's not a whole lot of evidence that the third party or any other party ever gets far in the national system, but at the local level, state level, maybe it does.
One other interesting thing, a little bit of a different topic, but maybe it's actually the same topic. The party, the Republican Party today is expanding to include people like Tucker Carlson and all the things that he represents. And we've talked about this earlier in the show. Tucker Carlson had this, you know, Holocaust denier, essentially, on his show earlier in the week.
We also know that J.D. Vance, the vice presidential nominee, is going to appear with Tucker even after all of that. And here is what Vance had to say in defense of his alignment with Tucker.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Agree or disagree with anything that Tucker Carlson or his guests say, we believe in free speech. We believe if you don't like an idea and obviously, you know, the Holocaust was a terrible tragedy and it's something that we have to make sure never gets repeated again in this country. The best way I think to ensure or never gets repeated again anywhere in the world, certainly in this country or anywhere else, the best way to ensure that doesn't happen is to debate and push back against bad ideas. It's not to try censor and suppress them.
That's the Donald Trump approach. It's anti-censorship, and I'm proud to stand with him on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Anti-censorship is what he would describe as sitting a holocaust denier basically at the table and saying, you're the most wise historian I've ever encountered. And there was no pushback, by the way, from Tucker Carlson. It's hard to understand that and it's hard to understand why that is consistent with conservative values.
SINGLETON: Again, this goes back to my original point about this ideological paradigm shift that I believe is occurring within the modern Republican Party. This is certainly not the part of like the William F. Buckley days of the early years of the National Review. It just isn't. And so you're sort of seeing this morphing of conservatism that is certainly fused with populism and nationalism.
And I'm not exactly sure if they've intellectually defined necessarily what this movement will look like long-term, but it is absolutely disparate from conservatism of yesteryears. That's just a fact.
DUNCAN: Yes. Look, the Republican Party is definitely developing different flavors inside of it, right? You've got the MAGA far right side, and I don't even know why we call them far right. They're not conservative. I mean, I guess we used to call right and conservative to be equal partners, but I think the left has probably got that same fight going on, but just in different topics.
Whichever party takes their medicine first, right, whichever party shows up and says, you know what, we need to figure out a way to get more towards center. I think that's really been some of the traction that Kamala Harris has gotten. She's come back to the center on a couple of issues. She's shown a willingness to entertain the middle.
And I think if the right could figure out how to do that, I just don't think there's any sense of that until we purge ourselves of this Trumpism and situations like Vance talk. I mean, what did he say? I mean, I'm a washed up minor league baseball player. I still have a few brain cells. I have no idea what he was trying to say.
[22:15:00]
No. Every day I turn on the T.V., I don't know what he's trying to say.
PHILLIP: It's so interesting because you brought up the National Review. They really slammed J.D. Vance earlier this week. Here's the piece. It says, can we talk about just how dumb as rock stupid this was as political messaging? Look, I'm aware that the Trump-Vance national conservative wing of the right is ascendant right now, but Trump and Vance still need millions of normie-style Republican votes if they want to win big swing states. One would think that a man running hard to be elected vice president of the United States would be at least interested in trying to persuade a shaky wing of his coalition to stay in the boat.
And another piece he was criticized for subtracting rather than adding for saying, we don't want you in the party. We don't want your vote. Is that really the right strategy?
LANZA: No. Listen, we need to build more voters. We need to be broader in who we appeal to. You know, I think that the challenge that J.D. has, and, you know, for full disclosure, he's a former client of mine, is he almost speaks too much, right? He doesn't speak in bullet points. He doesn't speak in talking points. He wants to elaborate to make the point. And you have a lot of content over the years where he's made that point with respect to Tucker Carlson, and that, I think, he missed an opportunity.
Listen, you know, I have a lot of friends in politics who are left, right, all these centers, and friends say stupid things all the time. Tucker said something stupid. The right thing for J.D. would have been to say, hey, you know, Tucker, let's be abundantly clear, Hitler was one of the most evil people in the world, in our history world. And anybody that comes and says anything differently is somebody that, you know, we shouldn't take serious.
That would have been the correct action to take, and I think we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd be having a conversation about immigration. We'd be having a conversation about inflation. We'd be having a conversation about things that matter to everyday people and they're not sort of focusing on this Tucker conversation.
KEITH BOYKIN: And don't you get tired of cleaning up for these guys over and over again? I mean, you come on T.V. and you say all the things that they should have said, but they never say those things themselves.
LANZA: That's the nature of the business, right? I was a Democrat during Bill Clinton. Now, you know, I had to do a lot of cleanup during that era too. So, that's politics. You always have to clean up certain mistakes that the candidates you support.
BOYKIN: Yes, but I mean, Donald Trump's cleanups and Bill Clinton's cleanups are totally different messaging issues you're talking about. I mean, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are consistently saying things that are not trying to expand the tent. You know, that's what's so problematic.
You know, politics is about addition. It's not about subtraction.
LANZA: Politics, I view it more and more. Policy today is very much about subtractions. Because the minute you make a policy decision, you lose people immediately. I've always -- look, I was always taught in politics.
BOYKIN: But these aren't policy decisions, Bryan.
LANZA: I was always told this way. For every decision you make, for every --
BOYKIN: Sitting next to a Holocaust denier is not a policy decision.
LANZA: No, that's a bad decision.
BOYKIN: Yes, that's not a policy decision.
LANZA: And I said that the other day on the T.V. But I would say what I've learned in politics, and what I learned very early from an elected official, one of my first bosses in this space, he said, for every decision you make, make one temporary friend and ten permanent enemies. That's the politics that I know. So, when you say politics is a game in the edition, I've never viewed it that way. It's always a game.
DUNCAN: Donald Trump's confused. He thinks he needs more clicks to win an election. That's what Tucker Carlson's chasing is clicks and likes. Donald Trump, if he wants to win, he has to get voters and he's got to add by -- he's going to add them to the -- LANZA: We're in a jump ball race. So, it's clearly whatever he's done is working.
PHILLIP: We'll talk about that too. Coming up, everyone hang tight for us. Coming up next, a judge decides that voters, they just won't hear Trump's hush money sentence until after this election.
Plus, Trump spends an hour railing against his accusers and his legal team and despite only 60 days to go in the election. Another special guest will join us in our fifth seat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: The first ballots of the 2024 election are being sent out already, and voters are going to be making their choices soon, all without knowing whether Donald Trump will be sentenced to prison time.
The judge overseeing his criminal hush money case in New York is now delaying his sentencing until after the election. The court's decision partially clears up some of Trump's many court dates that he would have been facing this fall. But the question is, was it the right decision?
Geoff Duncan is going to be back with us in a minute, but joining us now in our fifth seat is Joanna Coles. She's the chief content officer at The Daily Beast.
This is going to delay this whole thing for voters. It's a relief in a way for Trump. But voters, I mean, is it all just baked in?
JOANNA COLES, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, THE DAILY BEAST: Well, I think the extraordinary thing is that Donald Trump didn't need to turn up at the appeal hearing today, and he did because he's really treating it like a fundraiser. Let's not forget that after he was found guilty of 34 counts, felony counts, after the Stormy Daniels trial, he raised $50 million. And we know that he's not raising great amounts of money at the moment. He needs the attention. Kamala is in debate prep, and out he pops in a sort of, you know, what Donald Trump is really good at doing, which is getting attention for doing completely the opposite of what a regular person would do. And it's worked for him, and he's doing it again.
PHILLIP: Yes. He showed up, he said he was going to take questions, didn't take questions, and then spent most of the time reciting the allegations against him, which is a baffling choice, attacking his lawyers, and also attacking the women who, you know, accused him of all of these things. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I never met the woman, other than this picture, which could have been A.I.-generated, I don't know.
She wrote a book and she made a ridiculous story up.
I did nothing with her, never touched this woman.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:25:00]
COLES: Can I just jump in? So, what I absolutely love about that shot is the picture on his lawyers' faces.
PHILLIP: Just standing at the side.
COLES: Because they have no idea what he's going to say next. And then he criticizes them at some point. He says, well, I'm disappointed in my legal team. And they're standing right behind it. It's astonishing behavior. And it's incredibly effective television.
LANZA: I was going to say, it's must-watch T.V.
COLES: It's must-watch television. Yes. It's exactly what it is every day.
PHILLIP: Okay. It is like watching a train wreck in a way because it's not leading to anything positive, as far as I can tell. I mean, can you see something that's good that comes out of this for Trump other than what Joanna just pointed out, which I think is very legitimate, the attention, the -- maybe the money. I don't know how that's going to work.
LANZA: I think Joanna is right in the sense that you know, if you sort of go back to 2016, what we've learned, you know, and I don't think the media has learned this at all, is that, you know, former President Trump likes to be the center of attention, right? And he will do things to be that part of the center of attention so that the cable news is talking about it, so that maybe broadcast maybe talks about it for 30 to 45 seconds, but the real conversation going on with America are pocketbook issues that's not being addressed.
So, he's almost winning the conversation by, A, we're talking about the scandal of the day, not talking about the issues that matter and, B, you know, the issues that actually matter to the voters that they're thinking about and they're subset of what's the most important issue to me. Trump's already having that conversation and they've already sort of validated his position.
BOYKIN: I don't think that that's winning. And, you know, Bill Clinton made a speech at the Democratic Convention that I think really hit the nail on the head. He said, the next time Trump speaks, don't count the lies. Count the I's. And Trump is all about I, I, I. It's all about me, it's all about my agenda, the people who are against me, it's all about -- everybody in the world is out to get me. And people are tired of that. We've had nine years of Donald Trump's I statements. It's time for the president of the United States to focus on us. It's time for the president to talk about the policy, talk about jobs, and healthcare, and housing, and college education, and talk about fixing our criminal justice system. Talk about all these things.
PHILLIP: I mean, something tells me, Bryan, I don't think you'd necessarily disagree with. I mean, that seems to me like basic politics, like you talk about the people, not about yourself.
LANZA: Oh, absolutely. But I also remind people, you know, this race is a jump ball. So, whatever the criticisms you have of the talk about I's, it's a jump ball in the swing states. It's within the margin of error in nearly all the swing states. So, the talk about I's is clearly working. The victimization of politics where he's the victim of what's taking place is clearly working. Don't discredit that.
And while we're having this conversation about non-policy related issues that matter to the American people, somebody's going to the gas station and paying 40 percent more than what they paid four years ago.
(CROSSTALKS)
COLES: I have no idea what jump ball is. What is jump ball? When you say, it's jump ball, what on Earth does that mean?
LANZA: Within the margin of errors.
COLES: Oh, okay.
ALLISON: I somewhat agree with you in that.
LANZA: And we'll have this conversation.
PHILLIP: That's a sports metaphor.
ALLISON: Like a basketball.
COLES: It's --
ALLISON: No, that's a jump shot. A jump ball is when you throw the ball in the air and they like tip it.
COLES: I thought it was some kind of sporting metaphor.
ALLISON: In the break. In the break, okay.
I agree with you that in 2016, when the Access Hollywood tapes came out, many of us thought that that would be determinative of Donald Trump's campaign, and it wasn't. And so I think -- even though I don't think it's a good strategy, I think what Donald Trump is doing is like, it didn't take me out then, so it's not going to take me out now. And so that's why he continues to do it.
But what I think everyone is missing in this moment is we're talking about this because the sentencing was delayed. And Donald Trump has built this storyline that the system is against him, that they're so political. And instead of us talking about, you know, whether or not he should be doing it, we should be rallying and saying, like I think he should have been sentenced but the judge said I don't want to -- the appearance of politics to be played in this. And so the system actually worked yet again for Donald Trump in ways that it didn't work for the average American.
PHILLIP: It's throw in like a -- it's not it's not my kind of counter-opinion, but this is from Karl Rove, who kind of takes a bit of a different view of it, a different way of looking at what happened with the sentencing today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARL ROVE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: If he had gone forward with this, it would have, ironically enough, served the interest of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has risen in the polls. The more that people have reacted negatively to his treatment in the courtroom, he would have potentially gone after Donald Trump. In his verdict and the reaction of the American people might have been wholly negative on it and helped advance the cause of Donald Trump in the election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ALLISON: That's exactly my point. I'm agreeing god help me. I'm agreeing with Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove in one night.
BOYKIN: Right, early 2000s or --
ALLISON: I mean, but that's what I mean, is that like --
PHILLIP: Hell did freeze over. We've established.
ALLISON: If we would have sentenced, it would have played into Donald Trump's book. And instead of like letting him continue with this narrative that everyone is out to get him, the system actually said we want to let the American people decide.
[22:30:00]
Even if like as a political person, I was like, I don't think that's the way it should have gone, but it did.
COLES: But even when it went in his favor, what was fascinating was he suddenly started attacking his lawyers with his lawyers. It's fascinating.
UNKNOWN: Because he has got to attack somebody.
SINGLETON: I think this is going to be a race that's going to be one of loss on the margins. And I do think that there is an effective message undercurrent to what Trump is ultimately trying to say. And it's not just necessarily about the establishment or the legal system or the president or the vice president is after just him.
There's about 40 percent of the country who believes they're also after them and their values and their culture and their way of life. And I don't think that should be dismissed. And many of those voters do look at Donald Trump as this mechanism to achieve some type of restorative action for their plight. T
PHILLIP: Those people are already voting for Trump. PHILLIP: Okay, the problem for Trump is that those people -- if you
believe that, you're probably voting for Trump already.
COLES: Although, I do think that Arlington --
PHILLIP: Is he going to raise his ceiling?
COLES: I do think Arlington changed things, actually and the shoving and the pushing of the poor personnel who were trying to manage Section 60, and, you know, where you are not allowed to take photos.
I actually think that was a bad moment for Trump in an otherwise attention-getting sequence for him. And I think he's had a better week this week. I think the Arlington thing has switched off a lot of voters.
SINGLETON: I want to respond to your question about whether or not it's good for Trump. You absolutely have to maintain energy and excitement among your base. Kamala Harris, I think, is doing a pretty good job of that. Trump needs to do the same.
If you look at a state like Pennsylvania, where there's 16 percent of the voters there who are undecided. I'm not necessarily certain that they care about some of Trump's pronouncements any more than they are about suggestions that their issues are not being met. And that could make a difference.
LANZA: I would add one thing to that, where I think it's actually bad for what happened to President Trump today. The judge would probably have shown some level of restraint before the election because he would have -- understand the blowback.
And if Trump loses this November, there's going to be no restraint. The judge is going to say, you know, there's nothing holding me back. I'm not worried about a reaction. I'm not worried about you getting elected if you didn't win.
BOYKIN: He should be treated like any other criminal defendant.
LANZA: But we're not.
PHILLIP: Well, we will -- I guess we will find out in November. Joanna Coles, thank you so much for being here. Everyone else, stick around. Coming up next, a former Obama White House adviser is sounding the alarm, telling his fellow Democrats they are getting too cocky. We'll discuss all of that when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:36:50]
PHILLIP: Are Democrats getting too confident about Kamala Harris' chances in November? Well, a former senior adviser to President Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, he thinks so. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAN PFEIFFER, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA ON "IMPOLITIC" PODCAST: I think if you polled all of the press corps, secret poll, right, secret ballot here, all the press corps coming in the race, most Democrats who are not working on either the Harris-Walls campaign or one of the super PACs trying to help the Harris-Walls campaign, you would get like 85 percent of people who would say that Kamala Harris would win if the election were held today.
If you ask the people who are actually deep in the numbers and paying really close attention to what's happening in the battleground states, it's closer to 50-50 who would say that she would win today. And I think it's very possible if the election were held today, Trump would win.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: All right. Geoff Duncan is back with us. And just to be clear, not to quibble too much with what he said, I think if you hold -- the press corps, they're looking at the numbers like everybody else are talking to their sources. We know this is a 50-50 race, and it is. I mean, it's such an important point about where we are. But there is this sense of excited exuberance among the Democrats that does not seem to factor that in.
ALLISON: Yeah, I don't -- I'm not measuring drapes for the Oval Office. I hope no one else is either. I think everyone who has any sense of politics realize this is so close. And it's really close not just because it's Donald Trump. It's because the change of the ticket and what we need to do to communicate to voters.
The internet is important, but Twitter and TikTok are not real places. You are being fed an algorithm to believe the stories that you are being told. But if you're an organizer like I am, you know you need to go and talk to people on the doors.
You know that if a person is an unlikely voter, that it takes seven touches, whether it's a text, a phone call, a door knock, an ad, another door knock, to get someone to go from an unregistered voter to a voter to then actually show up to the polls.
So, there is a lot of ground game that needs to happen and just getting people familiar really with voting again like we did in 2016, unlike we had to do in 2020 because of COVID. So, there's a lot of obstacles we can do, let alone we just have had a new candidate for the last six weeks. So, no one thinks it's a runaway race.
DUNCAN: It's hard -- it's hard to blame the Democrats for being euphoric. I mean, if you think about where they were at two months ago, I mean --
PHILLIP: That part is a huge change.
DUNCAN: Within hours of the debate, they had a negative 12 percent chance of winning and now, all of a sudden they're back in the game is so certainly euphoric. But yeah, I think you've got to be guarded and you've got to make sure that you continue to work hard down the stretch. I mean we've got -- can't forget this debate that's coming up. I mean this is huge like if you didn't think debates were important just ask Joe Biden.
PHILLIP: The flashing red light for the Harris campaign as both of you have been mentioning all night tonight is Pennsylvania, and that race according to CNN is tied, no clear leader, 47-47. And I want to play what Dan Pfeiffer says is the problem for the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PFEIFFER: And it doesn't have a particularly elastic electorate. We can go get a bunch of new voters like Georgia does. Georgia has huge swaths of unregistered, very likely Democratic voters, black voters, younger voters.
[22:40:03]
This is the problem with these races. There's no like one simple thing. It's you need a little bit from every single pot and all the pots are in Pennsylvania.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Yeah, I mean, this is a -- this is a whack-a-mole election here for both candidates, actually.
BOYKIN: I talk to a lot of Democrats. I don't know any Democrat who's overconfident. I think every Democrat is sweating bullets. We're all nervous about this because we remember 2016.
We remember how confident we were when Hillary Clinton was a candidate. The polls had her eight 10 points ahead and she still didn't win. She lost Pennsylvania by what was it, 44,000 votes? Yeah, we remember that.
And so, I think what is happening now is that there's two stages to this. The first stage is, we had to convince people within the party that she could win and that was why there was this emotional reaction to her joining the race, the fundraising, the enthusiasm, the crowd size. It was not overconfidence. It was a statement of relief that we had a candidate we could believe in to get the party to rally behind.
The second stage is, now that we've convinced people that she can win, how do we convince people to get out and vote so that she does win? And that's the stage we're in right now. That's the reason why she calls herself an underdog. She doesn't say that she's favored to win.
Even though she raised $361 million, almost three times as much as Donald Trump did in August. She's not going around and bragging that she's beating Donald Trump. She knows this is a tough race and Pennsylvania will be decisive in that race.
SINGLETON: It will be decisive, but the issue for the vice president is once you get out of the urban corridors of Philadelphia, the rest of the state is pretty rural. It looks more like South Georgia or parts of Alabama or Mississippi.
BOYKIN: That's why Tim Walz and she are in those other parts, too. They're not just in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
SINGLETON: But I'm not convinced though that Tim Walz will necessarily move the needle. I mean, Republicans are doing a very good job, some of those ancillary groups, not the campaign, not the Trump campaign itself, of targeting those low propensity, disengaged, rural white voters.
They're registering them, they're making sure that they're aware of how to request an absentee ballot to make sure that they turn out to vote come November 5th. And I'm not necessarily certain that the Harris campaign has the apparatus in place to one, figure out where those voters are, how to message and target them.
BOYKIN: Are you kidding me? They have the field offices, they have the money, they have the infrastructure.
SINGLETON: I agree with that, they have the apparatus. They have the major cities like Philadelphia.
BOYKIN: No, no, no. And they have Josh Shapiro's campaign organization behind them too, are you kidding me? They have all that.
LANZA: Here's the problem.
BOYKIN: The question is will that be enough for them to win? They have that.
LANZA: Because here's the problem that the Harris, you know, Walz campaign has in rural Pennsylvania and other places is -- the communities that have suffered the most under Joe Biden and Harris administration as a result of inflation have been rural communities. You know, it's been paycheck to paycheck workers. It's been those rural communities.
And so, every time they see this bus, this -- Kamala Harris doing this bus tour around these rural communities, you know what the voters see? They see the inflation express. They see, okay, these are the --
ALLISON: Wait, I just --
BOYKIN: Donald Trump coming in, Donald Trump coming in from his gold- plated penthouse in Manhattan or his Mar-a-Lago. What do they think about that?
ALLISON: I just think the same way I think the thing is that as the person who had to put the pieces together in 2020 of the Biden coalition to get those rural voters, what I think the Harris campaign can do is the exact opposite of what you said is not to say, you rural voters have suffered the worst is that things are hard for all of us, whether you're in Philadelphia or whether you're in the middle of the state or whether you're in Pittsburgh.
And that what I'm doing is I'm not pitting you against you. I'm saying here's a plan that can help all of us. And I just want to say, there is, I will just say there are some of the best in the game that know how to run fill operations that turned out historic numbers in 2008 and 2012 that are now leading the fill operations. It's not just in the rural, they're in the urban areas, it is everywhere.
SINGLETON: But Ashley, the Vice President going to Luzerne, to Bucks, to Erie.
ALLISON: Yes, they're going everywhere. Yes, yes.
SINGLETON: No, I'm talking about the vice president because the former president is going to those places.
ALLISON: I think you will see them. I think you will see them everywhere.
DUNCAN: Kamala Harris has a gift that keeps on giving called Donald Trump and she has to play that out, too. He continues to step on himself over and over and over again and do those rural voters sit on the couch and not come to vote for a convicted felon that's a loud mouth, that's the question.
PHILLIP: All right, everyone. Hang on, we got a lot more to discuss. R.F.K. Jr. wants his name off the ballots in a couple of swing states in order to help Donald Trump, and he just got closer to getting his wish. What that's going to mean for this nail-biter of a race that we've been discussing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:48:54]
PHILLIP: And welcome back. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he scored a big legal win today with a Michigan court ruling that his name should be removed from the state's election ballot, and then a North Carolina court saying that voters will have to wait a little bit longer to begin early voting.
That's because the state's board of elections is now appealing to try to keep RFK's name on the ballot after a court decided that it should be taken off. The early ballots are already printed. They were supposed to be sent out today.
Now, all of that is on hold. It's so interesting to even have this conversation because I remember when RFK Jr. was fighting to get on the North Carolina ballot and some sort of like pro-Trump groups were trying to help him do it. And now all of a sudden, he wants off and parts of the system are trying to facilitate that. But this is going to be an interesting fight when voters are supposed to be voting right now.
LANZA: Yeah, R.F.K. Jr. is a plant. He was planted by the Trump campaign. He's there to help the Trump campaign any way he possibly can. He was never a Democrat, all of his family members will tell you that. His whole purpose is to make sure that Donald Trump wins. And he will do whatever he has to do, whether he gets on the ballot or gets off the ballot, and the Republican Party will support him doing that.
He should not be considered as a serious factor, except for the fact that he may be able to shave half a point here, half a point there, which would be just enough to win in the battleground state. That's all they care about. They don't care about RFK's views. They just care about how they can manipulate this guy to become a terrorist.
PHILLIP: I still think that now, you know, the Harris part of this, like, RFK Jr.'s Harris support, that's all gone. What's left is the Trump support. And that's why this is such a nail-biter for the war campaign.
LANZA: Everything matters. Every single vote's going to matter, and it's going to matter a lot. I mean, so, listen, I've been at the polling locations, I've been counting ballots. You never know why somebody's going to pull the trigger as a protest vote. So, now there's no longer a protest vote, you know, and so, it's a good thing that RFK is off the ballot.
You know, that's the system he wants. I'm glad that we were getting him off the ballot he's getting off. As for him being a plant, I mean, he was a Democrat his entire life until the Democratic party said, no, we don't want you to run against Joe Biden. So, it's hard for me to believe he's a plant when he was a Democrat his whole life.
BOYKIN: Stefanie Lambert (ph) was supposedly a Democrat, too. Look where she was.
SINGLETON: In terms of strategy though, removing him off the ballots does free up the votes. I think the question for the Trump campaign, however, is what apparatus is left from RFK Jr.'s campaign? Do they know where those voters are? They're going to definitely lose some of them.
So, let's say you're looking at five percent in a state-like Arizona. Maybe you lose three. Can you maintain two to help you get over that hump of 10,000-vote loss from 2020? That's going to be the big question for the Trump campaign.
ALLISON: I find it ironic where in 2020, Republicans were screaming at the top of their lungs when people were changing rules because we were in a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic and we needed to do it to accommodate voters. And now on the day when voters should actually be able to start to vote, it's Republicans actually preventing people to do.
We are now in a system, I want to remove the politics from this and actually talk about people being able to exercise the franchise and it is disenfranchising North Carolina voters right now that they believe they could start voting today and they are not. And that is how confusion is disseminated in communities. That is how misinformation starts.
That is how you start to see narratives that our system is not working. When you let politics play into the role of when people should be able to start voting, follow the rules. He was on the ballot. He wanted to run. He decided he doesn't want to run, then he should have made a better decision six months ago, but disenfranchising voters right now is not right. I
PHILLIP: It's amazing.
SINGLETON: Does he not have the right to remove his name from the ballot?
ALLISON: Not if he missed the deadline. He may not have. Be an adult.
SINGLETON: Because I think Democrats want him on the ballot because the recognition is that most of his voters fit the category of Trump voters.
ALLISON: We actually didn't want RFK on the ballot but he fought and fought and did what he needed to do to get on the ballot. And then he did some quid pro quo with Donald Trump to get a cabinet slot or whatever, and now he wants off the ballot. Well, tough luck, guys. If you want it --
DUNCAN: I almost saw a flag.
ALLISON: Wait, wait, no, no. Tough luck, bro, if you wanted to be the leader of the free world, make better decisions. Don't wait till the last minute when people are actually starting to vote and then try and file an injunction four days before.
SINGLETON: But it's beneficial to Democrats to have them on the ballot.
PHILLIP: We got to let it go there, everyone. Stay with me. We got to wait for that conversation. Coming up next, our panel. They've got their nightcaps including a Republican idea for Kamala Harris.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:52:53]
PHILLIP: It's that time again for the news nightcaps. You each have 30 seconds. Geoff, you're on.
DUNCAN: I'm on a mission to convince level-headed Republicans to vote for Kamala Harris so we can get our Republican party back. One of the biggest pushbacks is tax policies. I think these 2017 Trump tax cuts are a big deal to small business owners across America, not only Democrats, or not only Republicans but Democrats, too.
I'm encouraging the Harris administration to consider implementing some of those policies that were in that 2017 tax package to integrate into her policies going forward.
PHILLIP: All right, Bryan?
LANZA: You listen, if you've noticed the parking lot at Walmart's a little bit more crowded, it is. And if you notice the cars that are there, they're now Mercedes, BMWs, I've seen a Bentley there, and that's because of the politics of Harris by the administration. You now have to stretch your dollar further than ever before and Walmart seems to be the place where the affluent community's going to stretch their dollar even further.
PHILLIP: All right, not your Bentley.
DUNCAN: At a Tahoe, my Tahoe's there. Yeah.
PHILLIP: Shermichael?
SINGLETON: Who wants to live forever? This is something I'm fascinated by all of these tech billionaires from Larry Page, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this research trying to extend life. And what the science is suggesting is that this research may not necessarily allow us to live to 500, but it may allow us to live healthier in our older age.
PHILLIP: Okay, all right, I can buy that, Ashley.
ALLISON: I would like chartreuse, the color, to extend into fall and perhaps winter in fashion. And I think that people are trying to retire it because of the whole brat summer thing. Chartreuse was a delightful color before there was a brat summer, so let's keep it going into fall.
PHILLIP: You are the queen of color, so I will take it from you, Keith.
BOYKIN: It's New York Fashion Week, so I want to thank and give a shout out to James Jeter, who is the first black creative director of Polo Ralph Lauren. And he was the one who created the Spelman Morehouse collection. And I'm a former model myself for Ralph Lauren. So yeah, so I'm happy to see that a black man is getting his due.
PHILLIP: Yeah, that is a really good one. They had a great show apparently, we were hearing about. The Vice -- the first lady was there here in New York just a couple days ago. Everyone, thank you very much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight State of the Race". It's a good Friday to watch "Laura Coates Live". It starts right now.
