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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan To Restrict Mail-In Voting; Trump Escalates Canada Trade War 70 Days Before Midterms; Abdul El- Sayed Confronts Cultural Wars In His Fox News Interview. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 24, 2026 - 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 VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, going postal. The Supremes back Donald Trump's efforts to block mail-in ballots, at least for now, setting off a battle before November.
Plus, just 70 days before the midterms --
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Stop taking advantage of America. It's over.
PHILLIP: -- Donald Trump escalates a trade war with America's neighbor to the north.
DOUG FORD, ONTARIO PREMIER: I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.
PHILLIP: Also, one of the right's favorite punching bags --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: He's a man of hate. He's full of (BLEEP).
PHILLIP: -- joins the right's favorite channel.
ABDUL EL-SAYED (D), MICHIGAN SENATE NOMINEE: You have not asked me one time about the issues that people actually care about in Michigan.
PHILLIP: And the left flips out after House minority leader meets privately with the president's son-in-law.
JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: These people are a pack of felons and traitors, and you do not meet with them.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Charles Blow, Caroline Downey, Deja Foxx, Horace Cooper, and Terry Moran.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Tonight, the Supreme Court is allowing President Trump to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting less than three months before the midterms. Now, you might remember that Trump signed an executive order back in March which directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible voters in each state. Then it instructed the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver ballots to people on those lists. Nearly two dozen states sued, arguing that Trump's order infringed on their constitutional right to run elections.
But tonight, the Supreme Court said, not so fast. In its majority opinion, the justices did not rule on whether Trump's executive order is actually legal, but instead they ruled that the lawsuit challenging it was premature, that the states didn't demonstrate harm, and therefore had no standing to sue at this point.
However, the order is still on hold because of a separate lower court injunction that SCOTUS didn't address.
So, Attorney Donte Mills is joining us at the table in our fifth seat. And before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join our debate. Go to cnn.com/abby. Weigh in there. We'll get to some of your comments and questions throughout the show.
Donte, do you buy this argument that that no one has been harmed yet, so you can't stop an executive order even if the order might be unconstitutional?
DONTE MILLS, NATIONAL TRIAL ATTORNEY: I do. The Supreme Court, they're going to operate correct procedurally. They have to do that. They can't be swayed by kind of the hot topic of the moment, which this seems to be. But Donald Trump and his administration hasn't implemented anything yet, and that's what they said. Essentially, they called his bluff and said, you haven't done anything, you put this in an executive order, but nothing happened, so we were not in a position to rule on it yet.
We know that what he said in this order regarding this lawsuit was that if you are sending out voter ballots through the mail, it has to be a person approved by the federal government, by Trump's administration, either by Trump's administration sending states the list or states sending the administration the list for approval.
And if someone, if an official sends a ballot to someone that's not on that list, they can be criminally prosecuted. But none of that has happened yet. If it gets to that point or close to that point, the Supreme Court said, come back to us. You'll then have the right to challenge it because you'll have standing. And I tell you now that the Supreme Court will not allow that to stand. They're going to follow the Constitution and say, you cannot regulate mail-in ballots or any voting rules through executive order. It has to come through Congress.
PHILLIP: Charles?
CHARLES BLOW, THE LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, yes I think that is correct. However, the Supreme Court knows very well that they're up against the clock, right? The -- some mail-in ballots are already being sent out to service members. The idea that you're operating too early, the Supreme Court could have said that this is too close to this election that it cannot be dealt with in this cycle. They could have said that. That is not what they said. They said, you're too early.
Somehow in the meantime, in the 70 days we have left, while this mechanism starts to work already, you have to come back to us while the voting is happening and then file another suit. That is crazy. They know that's happening. That is the kind of the shell game that the Supreme Court is playing here with democracy.
MILLS: I mean, part of that was addressed by the Supreme Court. They did say that and you talk about the dissent led by Justice Jackson.
BLOW: Exactly.
MILLS: She said that you can show standing because you can show that, one, you may have to spend money if this order is implemented close to elections, the amount of money you would have to spend to regulate it or to make it happen, and also the criminal prosecution that you could potentially face could put you in a position now where you say, well, there is some harm to me now.
[22:05:15]
But, again, nothing has been implemented, so the Supreme Court will be operating off of speculation. They're not going to do that.
PHILLIP: She also added that this ruling from the majority needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.
It's also worth noting that the Trump allies are viewing this as a huge victory, even though, as Donte points out, first of all, it's still not in effect, and, secondly, it doesn't really say anything about the merits of the actual executive order.
Mike Lee says, Congress must still pass the SAVE America Act to secure future elections. We should have passed it months ago. Thankfully, President Trump is making up for what we haven't done. So, he's suggesting that this executive order is a stopgap measure to implement parts of the SAVE America Act that Congress hasn't done. But, again, it does not seem that that's what the court is saying here.
HORACE COOPER, PROJECT 21 CHAIRMAN: Well, I agree with you that this was a procedural assessment. However, I also believe that the lower court judges acted irrationally based on the policy concerns that Justice Jackson identified. This majority on this court isn't interested in the policy. They're interested in the statutory or constitutional elements that are in operation. None of that yet is present for them to opine upon.
PHILLIP: I would just say they're not interested yet, because, eventually, they might have to deal with this. And it's going to be a pretty up and down question of can you, as an executive of the -- the leader of the executive branch, sign your name on a piece of paper and regulate elections, which seems to contradict the Constitution.
CAROLINE DOWNEY, COLUMNIST, NATIONAL REVIEW: Well, I mean, we'll see what happens with the final ruling, but, you know --
PHILLIP: Just a second. I'm not disagreeing with you, but they are not dealing --
COOPER: But that is not what may come before the court either.
PHILLIP: Well, I'm just saying they're not dealing with --
COOPER: But that may never come before the court.
MILLS: And that's what their point was.
PHILLIP: My point is they did not deal with that at all because, to your point, they dealt with the procedural issue.
DOWNEY: Yes, it was a clunky ruling.
PHILLIP: But there is a substantive issue here with the executive order.
DOWNEY: They didn't rule on the merits and, but to disagree with Justice Jackson, it didn't really inject chaos because nothing actually changed. The court temporarily granted to the Trump administration that, yes, you could compile this citizenship list and send it out to the states, but the Postal Service doesn't actually have to reject any ballots that come back with names that aren't on that list.
So, it's basically saying you're kind of stuck. You don't really get to do anything with this ruling for the time being. But zooming out here, non-citizens voting, which is really why this executive order was instituted in the first place, is already illegal. The problem is that President Trump does not actually have the power to prevent non- citizens from voting.
A lot of people think that he does, so this is almost like a moot and irrelevant battle that he's fighting. He has the power to prosecute people who are found to have engaged in illegal voting or aiding and abetting it, but he cannot stop it. Why do you think he's fighting so hard for the SAVE Act? It's because he doesn't actually have the authority right now.
BLOW: How many non-citizens vote?
DEJA FOXX (D), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE, ARIZONA: Well, I mean, I wonder -- yes, I wonder why is he fighting so hard for the SAVE Act when there are so very few non-citizens that are voting at all? It's actually sort of an imaginary problem, and so many Americans have real problems right now making rent, buying groceries --
DOWNEY: I think the integrity of our election system is worth fighting for, even if people --
FOXX: He is actually spending most of his time undermining our election system from where I sit.
MILLS: It's very sound. I think so, another thing that's addressed here, and I think you brought this up, is the Supreme Court is telling these district court judges, stop doing these injunctions. Right. Stop jumping in when the president of the United States says something or does something and saying, in my district, I'm going to decide that none of this can happen across the United States.
I think the Supreme Court in its last recent couple of decisions has decided that we're not going to allow these district court judges to have the authority over presidential decisions. They want to keep that power for themselves.
PHILLIP: Well, I don't know that I agree with that because I think that the procedural issue that they're addressing is timing. And on Friday, when the USPS put in place the rule, it set the ball in motion for this to actually be implemented. So, it's only a matter of time before they get to a point where they try to implement this, in which case it would be ripe for a challenge, and it would have to still go through the same judicial process --
MILLS: But I think they're going to want them to come back to the Supreme Court and not rely on this --
PHILLIP: I agree with that.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: The lower court will still have to rule on the merits of a challenge to this, this issue.
COOPER: But we don't know what the implementation will look like.
[22:10:00]
The Postal Service actually has a statute more than 100-plus years old that says it can't be a party to fraudulent activity. You can't send counterfeit. You can't send drugs, you can't engage in cheating your neighbor by using the mail system. There is a robust anti-fraud position. And it is possible --
PHILLIP: You got to prove that there's fraud. I mean, that's the problem, is that you have to prove that there is fraud.
COOPER: (INAUDIBLE) that they limit what this new rule does so that it focuses on fraud prevention.
PHILLIP: Listen, that, to your point --
BLOW: What fraud? I want to know what fraud. I want (INAUDIBLE) who could tell me where the fraud is.
PHILLIP: That is already in the books. I don't understand what the executive order would be about.
MILLS: No fraud. And this isn't a win for Republicans because, essentially, the Supreme Court said he hasn't -- the president hasn't done anything with this yet. So, I don't think that they should look at this as a win.
COOPER: No, I'm just -- going to Abby's point, that we already know it's a preordained outcome of what happens then.
PHILLIP: That's literally not what I said. I did not say that. I just -- all I said was that the point at which this becomes ripe for challenge is perhaps coming very soon.
COOPER: Yes.
PHILLIP: Because they are moving forward with a process that would allow them to challenge it.
And I would -- to this point of fraud, first of all, you're right, it's already illegal to vote if you are not a citizen. It's already illegal to use the mail system in a fraudulent way. Those things are already illegal. The Trump administration is trying to claim that there is such widespread fraud that this executive order is necessary. They put out a whole bunch of claims earlier this year, including that in Nevada, there were 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in -- sorry, in four states, and in Nevada they said there were 15,000. Well, it turns out they can't prove that. It turns out that they've identified only 185 potential non-citizens in the state so far.
So, that's why people have a lot of skepticism about these claims that were made a few months ago, because they put out these massive numbers to try to make it seem way more common, and they have yet to back any of them up.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: With prosecutions, with proof, they haven't backed any of them up.
COOPER: That's a P.R. argument.
PHILLIP: That's not a --
BLOW: That's not a P.R. argument. I'm with you. That's not a P.R. argument.
(CROSSTALKS)
BLOW: There are facts underneath this. Even those cases, they said they were on the rolls, but they didn't say that any of those people actually voted illegally.
PHILLIP: Well, they also even haven't even proven that those people are actually non-citizens.
BLOW: Exactly, right. So, we've not even -- Exactly.
PHILLIP: None of that has been proven. BLOW: And then the Heritage Foundation actually keeps a record of convictions of non-citizens voting. Since 1982, they have 40, I'm sorry, it's not 44, it's less than 100 cases of people charged with voting illegally.
COOPER: And convicted.
BLOW: Right, and convicted. And that's 44 years, right?
COOPER: And convicted.
BLOW: And that's 44 years.
COOPER: How much (INAUDIBLE) has there been?
BLOW: And just -- and 44 years, less than 100. In those 44 years, there have been over 1.3 billion votes just for the president. That's not including state and local. That is not including Congress. That is not including off-year elections. That is just for the president. That is not a problem.
The idea that people are arguing that this is a problem is a lie, is a furtherance of the lie.
DOWNEY: Do you think there should be a uniform standard, though, ensuring verification of citizens?
BLOW: I don't think there should be national elections.
(CROSSTALKS)
BLOW: I do not think that elections should be nationalized, which is what Trump is pushing for. I think the states should have it.
DOWNEY: I'm with you. Democrats actually proposed this idea first.
BLOW: I think the states should have --
MILLS: The Constitution gives the states that authority.
DOWNEY: Yes, but the problem is that not all the states actually do require uniform verification. And so this is trying to address that problem.
FOXX: Here's my question.
BLOW: Uniform verification, not no verification.
FOXX: Do you really think that it's a thing that our president should be spending his time, effort, and energy on?
COOPER: I push back on that. I push back on that. That is not the basis --
FOXX: do you think this is the thing that most people are talking about at their dinner table right now? COOPER: That is not the basis for whether it is illegal or unconstitutional. And that is the reason why if a new challenge comes and these kinds of policy arguments are made, they're going -- the court is going to allow this to be implemented in the interim.
MILLS: There's no way in the world they would. I can tell you this. There's no way in the world that the court would allow an executive order to override what's in the Constitution. The states have the power. And you talk about needing evidence and to back it up legally, you still have to show some kind of proof that this is happening even for it to become an issue. He's making this an issue that doesn't need to be addressed.
COOPER: You're presenting facts that are not in evidence. We do not know if this regulation is going to do what you just described. There are things that --
MILLS: The disagreement is that the federal government has to approve who the individual states send ballots.
COOPER: But they've already pulled back on that.
BLOW: The other fact that's not in evidence is that there is no fraud.
PHILLIP: Wait, hold on. Hold on, Horace. You're suggesting that the executive order, as it's written, they've backed away from parts of it, and so that should be sufficient?
[22:15:02]
The executive order, as it's written, basically says the states or somebody -- there's going to be a list, the Postal Service is going to determine whether people are on that list, and then they are going to approve or deny ballots from being sent or received through the mail system. That is the crux of the challenge.
COOPER: Not true. Not true.
FOXX: And, really, again, when we hit the zoom out, though, what does this do to voters? Does this instill trust?
COOPER: The court isn't reviewing the executive order.
PHILLIP: Hold on.
COOPER: The court is reviewing what --
PHILLIP: Horace, you keep fighting the last --
COOPER: -- is the USPS doing.
PHILLIP: You keep fighting the last battle. We already established that the Supreme Court ruling doesn't address the merits of the case. But what Donte was talking about is the second iteration of this. Eventually, this will come to the merits.
COOPER: It won't be about the executive order is what I'm saying. It will be about the implementing rules.
PHILLIP: No, this will come to the merits.
MILLS: What you're saying is he created an executive but he's not going to have an executive order.
COOPER: No, I'm not saying that at all.
MILL: But that's what you --
COOPER: What I am saying that the USPS has already gone to the district court and said, notwithstanding this executive order, here are the things we're actually planning to do, and we have heard your complaints, and we have modified our plans accordingly.
PHILLIP: Oh, okay.
COOPER: This is what --
PHILLIP: So, the USPS has single-handedly modified the president's executive order.
COOPER: Just read the case.
PHILLIP: Well, look I think Donte is correct that, eventually, when we get to the merits of this case, we will have to deal with some of these substantive issues about the constitutionality of an executive order that seeks to regulate voting nationwide in this country.
Next for us, a Canadian official says that Ronald Reagan would be throwing up, and the president escalates his trade wars with America's biggest trading partner despite the midterm elections on the horizon and a shaky economy.
Plus, see what happened when the progressive candidate who Republicans call a terrorist and un-American went on Fox.
Another special guest is going to join us at the table.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, as the Trump administration threatens economic sanctions against Iran, the country i- it is currently at war with, it's now escalating a trade war with one of its closest allies, Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ended tariff talks with the United States, and in response, Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods this weekend. Trump called out Canada for, quote, ripping off the U.S. for years, adding, quote, we don't need Canada. They need us.
Now, Canada says it's retaliating with their tariffs of their own, to which Trump, again, threatened an additional 50 percent auto tariff. Carney is putting the blame on the collapsed trade talks squarely on the United States. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: There is a mutually beneficial deal possible here. But it has to be one that respects Canada's sovereignty, that respects our independence, that uses our complementary strengths to build something better, not tear apart for short-term gain. That's the offer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Ontario Premier Doug Ford was less measured, telling the Associated Press, Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave and disgusted with Trump over his treatment of Canada. Ford dug in even deeper today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORD: Well, he can kiss my ass as far as I'm concerned. We need to throw everything and the kitchen sink at him. He's arrogant, he's cocky.
I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.
I don't respond to a dictator like President Trump, a bully like President Trump. As I said before, he's the type of guy in school that would take your lunch money one day, take your toque off your head the next day, and then steal your running shoes. But I'm not going to take any advice off a guy that's the king of bankruptcies. And he's actually tariffing his own people, taxing his own people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Terry Moran is joining us at the table. Now, leave it to Donald Trump to make Canada look like the tough guy on the world stage. They're supposed to be so nice.
TERRY MORAN, VETERAN JOURNALIST: They were nice. Canada nice is a thing, until their neighbor and the closest partner that they had in the world, a mutually beneficial partnership, turned against them.
This is the true Donald Trump. He lives in fear, I'm convinced, through the night, that someone somewhere or some country somewhere is ripping him off. He does not believe in the possibility of mutually beneficial relationships, in marriage, or in trade, or in anything. It's true. He's got a track record to demonstrate.
But aside from that, there's no question that this is what Trump wants, and the American people don't. It's one thing to say, and he will go down in history for this, I'll praise him, he changed world trade policy in a way that most Americans wanted. They never wanted globalization. They never wanted China to take the entire manufacturing sector from the United States. He was right about that. But Canada? That's nuts.
PHILLIP: I mean, Caroline, he negotiated the current trade agreement that we have with China. We -- if you take our oil exports off the table, we have a surplus with Canada, meaning that they are buying our goods, a lot of them. What is his -- why does he have such a big problem with Canada?
DOWNEY: Look, I think if he -- he made the case against Mexico, right, which was a pretty distinct, compelling case that, because of the fentanyl crisis, we have a lot of grievances with that country, that is why I will launch a trade war against it.
[22:25:07]
Fine. Canada, different.
BLOW: Not fine.
DOWNEY: To your point --
BLOW: Not fine.
PHILLIP: I would say that is an arguable argument, but I take your point that that is --
DOWNEY: Well, on a national security standpoint, you could make a compelling case on a national security standpoint with Canada, a benevolent neighbor to our south, our largest trade partner. However, like the last topic, I'm less concerned about this recent rally of tariffs. Even though it's 50 percent, it's 50 percent targeting commodities that account for less than 5 percent of exports out of Canada into the United States. We're talking, like, wooden hockey sticks that aren't even used anymore. What I am worried about --
BLOW: What about the plywood?
DOWNEY: -- is if this escalates to the auto manufacturing and the production of auto parts.
PHILLIP: Well, that's the threat that Trump has put on the table.
DOWNEY: And the reason why I caution the Trump administration against that is because with what hurts Canada will hurt Detroit. And we have a pretty contentious, probably tight race in Michigan right now for the Senate.
So, we don't want to give Abdul El-Sayed any more advantage when it comes to the auto sector. I mean, Michigan rises and falls with cars, and there are Ford and G.M. and Honda. Those are all vehicles that are beloved by Americans that are produced in Canada. You make it difficult to make those, and, yes, you might give Abdul El-Sayed a leg up, and I'm not so sure that's something that GOP wants.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Charles.
BLOW: Yes, but also it's also plywood, though. You just wrote a thing about how Zoomers are being priced out, and that was partly because of government policies.
DOWNEY: Yes.
BLOW: Is this not a government policy that is going to make the price be priced out even more?
FOXX: Easier for Gen Z to get a house, you think?
DOWNEY: I'm a free trader. I'm a free trader, like through and through.
BLOW: Right.
DOWNEY: I mean, I'm much more Reagan-esque.
BLOW: This is a problem then, right, the tariffs on plywood?
DOWNEY: I'm -- I would say yes, it is.
BLOW: I hoped you would say yes.
DOWNEY: It is. It is. But the point that I was saying earlier is like it's not -- it's a less than 5 percent of Canadian exports. So, it's less concerning to me than if this escalates to the auto industry, which --
BLOW: It should be concerning to us all because the pass-through is to American companies and consumers.
Overwhelmingly, Americans are paying these tariffs even though the president keeps lying and saying that the other countries are paying the tariffs and we're getting money into our coffers. No, Americans are paying more because the goods cost more when they get here.
Now, you can say, make an argument, that that is putting pressure on manufacturers in other countries. You can say that their products are now higher here, so maybe we buy fewer of them and more of our own. That is different than saying, Americans say, I want the thing that I've been getting, and it comes from there, and now it costs me 50 cents more on the dollar than it cost me last month. That is the problem.
DOWNEY: That's a good explanation of tariffs.
BLOW: That is the problem.
DOWNEY: That's a very good elementary explanation of tariffs.
BLOW: Well, elementary or college, it's the explanation that is correct.
PHILLIP: Economist Justin Wolfers made an interesting point. He said, Trump is trying to boost the U.S. economy by making it harder for Americans to trade with the rest of the world. He's also promising to destroy Iran's economy by making it harder for Iranians to trade with the rest of the world. Make it make sense, Horace.
COOPER: I can. There are two national security arguments with Iran and with Canada. If you go back six months ago, what we were talking to them about was reaching their 2 percent GDP, which they did in late 2025, but for nine years before that, they weren't even at 1 percent. Hold on.
PHILLIP: What are you saying? We're talking about Canada now.
FOXX: What's the national security --
PHILLIP: Let me just make sure I'm following where you're going here.
COOPER: We Americans pay for the national security of North America.
PHILLIP: What does that have to do with the tariffs?
COOPER: NATO --
BLOW: Nothing.
COOPER: This is what this fight is about.
BLOW: This is not what this fight is about.
COOPER: Read your paper. The New York Times, and you will see --
BLOW: I don't work at The New York Times, haven't worked there in a year-and-a-half. Let me just say this.
COOPER: I'm sorry about that.
BLOW: Look -- don't be sorry because it, I'm not sorry. Here's the thing.
COOPER: The point is, The New York Times has been clear that the primary debate and dispute --
BLOW: Just because you get louder and louder doesn't make you right or righter.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Okay. Before you go -- before you jump in, let me just play, this is what J.D. Vance said today about why we're fighting with Canada. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: Canada and China have been the two worst countries when it come to trade policy anywhere in the world. What a shame that is. China, you of course expect. They're our biggest economic competitor. I would expect that from China. I would not expect that from Canada. We have to remember, Canada is a state -- sorry, Freudian slip. That was actually an accident.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: No mention of NATO there, okay? He's not talking about NATO. He's actually likening Canada, with whom we have a trade deal that his boss negotiated, to China?
FOXX: J.D. Vance is not the best vice president, but he is a worse stand-up comic. And it's hard to watch. But, you know, when I look at this I'm really asking this question of how are we measuring success here?
[22:30:02]
Like are workers' lives getting better? Can they afford more? Are they putting dinner on the table? Are we bringing more union jobs? Are wages going up? And the answer is no.
So, you know, it's difficult for me to explain how J.D. Vance can get up and own a win here when isolating one of our closest allies and failing to deliver for workers, manufacturers, farmers.
DOWNEY: Manufacturing jobs actually have increased. The last jobs report, manufacturing jobs --
BLOW: I want to get back to this terrible argument that says that the national security is the reason that we should be raising tariffs that cost America's more money. Now, make that make sense?
COOPER: Okay. What happened is for six months, we've been having this back and forth and back and forth. And in order to pull them up to the 5 percent commitment that other NATO members have had, the President announced, we are not continuing our existing agreement.
Canada then said, well, fine, we don't need that. And this has escalated. The issue is the negotiators are not talking about these things that you described. They are talking about the NATO commitment.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: I just have to say, that is not the case.
Let me just say, that is not the case.
When the U.S. Trade Representative, Jameson Greer, talked about where the breakdown happened, the breakdown was over trade. The breakdown was over whether Canada was willing to basically subservient itself to the United States on trade.
And to be honest, it's hard to see why any country would want to do that, any sovereign nation would want to do that.
MORAN: Carney is going to hit back, and he's right. Now, Canada used to be a first-ranked defense country, and they aren't anymore. And that is an issue.
COOPER: It's a huge issue.
MORAN: But that's not what this is about.
COOPER: It's a huge issue.
MORAN: And what it really is about is, once again, Trump and Vance trolling Trump called Carney Governor Carney. He said, oops, I didn't mean to say they were a state.
That infuriates Canada. It breaks real relationships that we need.
FOXX: This is the outcome of a male performance that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are trying to put on.
COOPER: Carney wins re-election by promising not to increase defense spending. Now, what he comes in and tells us is an entirely different world.
DOWNEY: Although, I agree. He's right.
He's right to that point. They need to distribute more.
PHILLIP: Canada's ripping us off. That happens to not be true.
COOPER: They are ripping.
PHILLIP: But that's what the President believes.
DOWNEY: In geopolitics, though.
PHILLIP: Next for us, Abdul El-Sayed appeared on Fox tonight. And if Michigan voters wanted to hear about culture wars, well, they certainly got an earful.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: He's become one of the right's new favorite punching bags. And tonight, Abdul El-Sayed joins the right's favorite network.
The Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan has been attacked for his name, his faith, his politics, and some Republicans have called him un-American, a terrorist, and a communist. And during an interview with host Jesse Watters, El-Sayed was asked about red meat for the MAGA audience, racism, reparations, the NFL, Colin Kaepernick, ICE, sex changes, the Green New Deal, whether Beyonce should pay more taxes, and whether El-Sayed was glad Iran's Ayatollah was dead. El- Sayed called him out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABDUL EL-SAYED (D), MICHIGAN SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Jesse, you have not asked me one time about the issues that people actually care about in Michigan. You don't want to talk about gas prices, you don't want to talk about groceries, you don't want to talk about health care, you don't want to talk about this stupid trade war that's about to destroy Michigan's economy.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: We spent the whole interview talking about that stuff. EL-SAYED: That's destroying -- that is destroying our own military.
You don't seem to want to talk about any of those things. You want to bring up all this culture war that, you know, I'm not here to fight a culture war, I'm here to fight the affordability crisis that people are facing.
WATTERS: We talked about the war, we talked about gas prices and the Green New Deal, okay? If you want to do an interview, you can do the interview. I'm getting at whether you think men should play in women's sports. As the next U.S. Senator in Michigan, it's a big issue.
EL-SAYED: I'm interested in getting money out of politics, putting money in your pocket, and passing Medicare-for-all. Most people don't care about -
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, on the one hand, I mean, this was sort of like the greatest hits of what you would expect to hear on Fox. However -- and actually, and it might work for the people for whom those are issues that they're sensitive about.
However, I do think that it kind of, El-Sayed's point is that it sort of obscures the other issues that are at the top of the list for actual voters in this race.
BLOW: No, but I think it shows strength and courage to go do it. Like, when I first started doing television, the place that had me on most was Fox in the morning. It is not easy to be a liberal in that mix.
And just going in there, standing on your own two feet, holding your own, is good. It's strong. And I think that what they were trying to accomplish in his campaign is to come out of that with clips.
Of him being asked a question that is not about one of the priorities of Michigan, and him going back and saying, but you haven't asked me about what Michigan voters care about. I think that he got exactly what he wanted out of that interview, even though I think Fox got what they wanted.
[22:40:01]
They wanted to throw all the culture war stuff at him and have him deflect from it and not answer it so they can play it a million times. But he's also going to play it a million times on his social media. And I think social media in his campaign is proving to be really potent.
FOXX: Yes, it's right. And when we think about the clips, right, it can go both ways.
It was a long interview. We watched it, so you at home don't have to. Because in large part, it was a bit of a waste, right? There's a man, Jesse Watters, in makeup on T.V. talking about transgender athletes and billionaires' rights. When people at home in states like Arizona, where I'm from, another swing state, right, half of people that were on Snap fell off in the last year because of Trump's Big, Beautiful bill. Like, they are worried about actually making rent this month. They are in crisis.
They're worried about putting food on the table. And I think what El- Sayed did really well was go in there and say, that's what I want to talk about. That's what Democrats want to talk about, whether they're far-left, centrist, right? He came in and said, this is what our agenda is.
It is about making your life better, while the Fox News' of the world are litigating cases and issues that don't really matter to you.
PHILLIP: One of the interesting things, again, this is actually characteristic of how El-Sayed is being handled by the right. They have a lot of issues with his policies, his economic policies, but they keep attacking him on culture war issues.
Here's Tim Scott just tonight talking about El-Sayed.
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SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): These radicals don't just want new policies. They want to change the very DNA of what it means to be an American. They're coming after our culture, Sean, and that is what makes them dangerous.
Their policies are radical, their cultural shift, it is dangerous for Americans, and we must stand in the gap and make sure they never see the floor of the Senate. This is the most important midterm election in our lifetime.
It is no longer Democrats versus Republicans. It's communists and socialists against what makes America great, our Judeo-Christian values and a free market system.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Would they be better off just simply attacking him, if you're going to attack him, on the policies, on the economic incompatibility of what he's putting on the table with what people in Michigan want, rather than saying, oh, he's going to change our culture. What does that even mean?
DOWNEY: Well, two points. That network has more independent viewers than you think, and those clips are going to circulate on social media, and it was quite clarifying, I think, to a lot of people that he could not give simple answers to questions about the culture war. He conflated circumcision with sex changes for children.
So now it's good to know that he's on the 20 percent of an 80-20 issue nationally. But if you want to talk economics, fine, let's talk economics, which that network has talked about extensively as well. His biggest economic goal is Medicare for all, also known as single- payer health care, also known as nationalizing health care. He doesn't want to talk about El-Sayed, about how that would require taxing the middle class. That seems to defeat the whole championing of the working class mantra, don't you think?
He doesn't talk about how that would kick off many millions of Americans off their private or employer-sponsored health care, and the majority of Americans, polling says, like their health care. So why doesn't he want to address that?
PHILLIP: He wasn't asked about it.
DOWNEY: But he regularly.
PHILLIP: No, he was asked about health care, but he wasn't asked about those. I think those are actually important, detailed questions about how this would work. He wasn't asked about that.
MORAN: But Trump is - I'm sorry, excuse me.
FOXX: I just wanted to be very clear that these are issues that also impact the folks watching Fox, right? Whether we're red or we're blue, people at home are struggling.
DOWNEY: And they like their health care. But they like their health care.
BLOW: If they haven't got kicked off of Medicaid because they're a big group of people.
DOWNEY: So you want to kick them off even though they like it? Is that what you're saying?
BLOW: I don't want the poor people that got kicked off.
DOWNEY: How are you going to pay for Medicare for all? How are you going to pay for it?
BLOW: I'm going to let you get that out. Let me finish.
Now, what I don't want is the poorest of Americans to get kicked off of Medicaid, which is what happened to pay for these tax cuts that were part of the big budget.
DOWNEY: That's also a big number. Work requirements for Medicaid? No.
FOXX: Okay, but that's a big number.
I want to know. This is crazy. Because you're talking about work requirements for Medicaid.
In fact, when we are talking about these administrative barriers, these are my neighbors that I'm going home and talking to, and they're missing paperwork by one day and they're falling off their care. They're going in and sitting in DES offices, Department of Economic Security offices, with packed waiting rooms where staff has been slashed, and they are forced to miss work. COOPER: And the answer to that is a huge new bureaucracy where they
will do it to everybody?
MORAN: The person in America who has taxed the middle class the most is Donald Trump. If you are at the 60th percentile of income or below, any tax cut you might have gotten from the Big, Beautiful bill has been chewed up by terrorists.
Tariffs, if you're 50 percent below, you're now paying more in the tax impact of tariffs than you would have before.
[22:45:04]
FOXX: That's not an argument for Medicare and Medicaid.
MORAN: Most Americans are.
BLOW: And at the same time, he's been raking in cash hand over fist and calling affordability a con job or a Democratic hoax at the same time. And we just found out in June that he had 1051 stock trades in one month.
There's only 21 trading days in that month. You do not see that as corruption?
PHILLIP: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this.
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[22:50:10]
PHILLIP: Welcome back.
Before we went to break, one side of the table was in the middle of a heated debate about the policy around health care. But again, that's not really the question that has been dominating this race.
There's been some surveys of the conversation around El-Sayed. And I believe it was the "Washington Post." They basically found that it supercharged anti-Islam commentary on social media. Is that the way to go for Republicans?
COOPER: Okay. All of a sudden now, you have this wackadoodle who's now the nominee in Michigan.
It's the job of his opponents and the political party opposing him to be pristine, prim, proper when it comes to a debate and a dialogue for a political campaign.
DOWNEY: Because he campaigns with Hassan Piker.
Because he campaigns with Hassan Piker. And also, can I just talk about that point real quick? Do you mind, Horace? Okay.
This is what I don't understand about Democrats right now. So when Obama was running for President in 2008, he disavowed Reverend Wright, who said something to the effect of, about 9/11, it was America's chickens coming home to roost.
The same parallels with Hassan Piker, except now the Democratic Socialist candidates, because let's be real, El-Sayed is, even though he doesn't claim to be Socialist, the DSA is like, we approve, we love him, they're not disavowing him one bit. But they're not eschewing Hassan Piker. They're saying, well, you know, okay, he kind of hangs out with some of our candidates, and we're going to bless that indirectly.
BLOW: So now your argument is guilt by association, is that correct?
COOPER: No.
DOWNEY: No, you're known by the company you keep. And I'm saying Obama. Obama's got a good precedent.
BLOW: I want to finish this point. You said known by the company you keep, right?
So I have a really hard time when Republicans make this argument because I happen to have been following Donald Trump for the last 20 years. And so the company he keeps is dictators from around the country, it is from around the world.
It is Jeffrey Epstein. It is crooks and criminals. It is Nick Fuentes having lunch with him.
So you guys have the gall to talk to anybody about guilt by association?
DOWNEY: Okay, let's talk about exact parallels. Number one, is Donald Trump stumping with Nick Fuentes?
BLOW: He had lunch with Nick Fuentes.
COOPER: He was at a table, and another person showed up. And there are videos with him giving it to Epstein.
BLOW: Is that a problem for you? Are you okay with that? Are you okay with him partying with Epstein?
COOPER: I am not going to relitigate this.
BLOW: Oh, now you're quiet. You were enunciating before, but now you're quiet.
COOPER: No. There's no truth to that.
COOPER: If I could reclaim my time --
PHILLIP: Let me -- let Horace respond to what you're saying, Charles.
COOPER: It is 2026. And in this year, the Democrats and the left are advantaged nationally. And they're likely able to take back the Senate and the House.
However, if they do what they did in 2018 in Georgia, in Florida, and in Texas, where they run crazies, what they do is they lose, and they will come up short.
And that is what they're doing. I was on this show where they talked about Graham Platner as an awful candidate that the party should never have allowed. El Sayed is an awful candidate.
MORAN: I just want to take issue with one word that you said, and it's pristine.
Abby showed us a chart of skyrocketing, vicious anti-Muslim content online, sponsored by the Republican Party in many ways.
COOPER: No.
MORAN: All right. With a wink and a nod, they're like, okay, do they condemn it? And you just said, oh, you're expecting people to be pristine, not being racist is not being all of the anti-semitism that we have watched over the last hundred years, was a wink and a nod from the left.
And the right has a bigger anti-semitism, and an anti-Islam problem, and an anti-immigrant problem, and still an anti-black problem.
[22:54:53]
FOXX: Nick Fuentes, he had lunch with Donald Trump, and you said well he happened to sit down, who just happens to sit down at the lunch table with the President, and a Nazi, a self-proclaimed Nazi.
COOPER: -- reported that what actually happened was he was an uninvited guest, and the President didn't even know who he was.
DOWNEY: I'm campaigning for senate, I mean guys, come on, it's like, it's like, the guy that he tried to get kicked out of his club,, the one he's smiling in pictures with, where are the files he's in?
FOXX: Where are the files he's in?
DOWNEY: Where did Abdul El-Sayed said I disavow my old friend, close personal friend Hassan Piker, who said we deserve 9/11, he's a thousand times better than Israel.
PHILLIP: Hold on. I just want to say, I let you guys do all of this, but I just have to point out that El-Sayed did respond to this Hassan Piker thing, he says, "I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople, while politicians and pundits try to make this race about a Twitch streamer," he's talking about Piker, "we are going to be talking about gas, groceries, good schools, and healthcare."
So, there is an attempt to distance himself from it, it has happened.
All right everyone, thank you very much. Thanks for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right after a quick break.
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