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Numbers on DNC and RNC Money; Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) is Interviewed about Whtie House Meetings; Ex-Husband Testifies in Clancy Murder Trial; Altman Meets with White House Officials on A.I. Policy; Storm System Moves into Northeast. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 28, 2026 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[08:32:03]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, "The New York Times" has been reporting that the Democratic Party is so short on cash that leaders are asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterm elections as to not highlight the lack of money. That's really just the start of their financial woes. But how much does that matter?

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.

I mean, the scope of the financial difference right now, it's immense, but.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: It's immense, but to quote "Family Guy," who the hell cares? I mean, yes, OK, look, it is immense. It's absolutely immense. Money at this point in midterms, it's the cash on hand subtracted by the party debt. You could see it right here. The RNC running away with this, $129 million. The DNC is actually in the red, the literal red, at minus $2 million when you take that cash on hand and subtract it by the party debt.

But does this actually matter? We can go back in time. We can go back eight years ago, the first Trump midterm. The RNC also had a huge advantage. It wasn't nearly as big as it is right now, but it was still huge at $51 million. And the DNC was nearly in the red at $2 million. And what happened at the end of that midterm election? Democrats were still easily able to take back the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a very good midterm for them.

So, yes, the DNC in the red. But the truth is, I'm not really quite sure it matters all that much.

BERMAN: Two woes and one slide. I can't believe how big this gap is, first of all.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: But it's also a really good point. It doesn't necessarily matter.

And, Harry, there's more history here.

ENTEN: Yes. Hey, so, you know what, you just look back through history and I was like, OK, is this something that is unusual, these two cycles, or is this something that is part of a larger pattern? And sometimes you go through the FEC, you know, backlog and you can say, OK, the RNC, when they outraised the DNC when there was a Republican president in midterm elections. Well, since 1982, it's happened every single time. It's happened every single time. So, this idea, oh, you know, Ken Martin, they're not raising all that money. Oh, this will be terrible for Democrats. But the truth is, it always happens. It always, it always, it always happens. The RNC always out raises the DNC in midterms when there's a Republican president. These complaints have been heard for years that the idea that the DNC, just simply put, is not the money raising machine. We hear it every single midterm cycle. Now, maybe it's greater this midterm cycle because they're literally in the red, but the truth is, looking back through history, it always happens and it pretty much never actually matters.

BERMAN: You want to have more money if you can.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: It still may not be decisive now.

You read "The New York Times: article, there's some incredible detail about DNC Chair Ken Martin and the trouble he's having sort of maintaining support within the party. And there are people who look at this and say, hey, this is the establishment again screwing up. We can't count on the establishment.

How fair is sort of that criticism?

ENTEN: You know, I don't think that we have been shy on ripping on the Democratic establishment through the polling data, but this is just not the case in this situation. Because you look at him, Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi, they all went for Ken Martin's opponent in the DNC race.

[08:35:05]

They all endorsed Ben Wikler, who, in fact, was the chair of the Wisconsin party, not the Minnesota party. So, yes, rip the DNC establishment all you want. Rip Chuck Schumer for his low polling all you want. But this is not a point in your favor because the bottom line is, they actually went in another direction. And maybe, hey, the DNC wouldn't literally be in the red if they did so.

BERMAN: All right, a lot going on here, the DNC, I'm sure they would like the money, but it may not be as much of a problem as you think.

Thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: Kate. KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also today, two major meetings at the White

House with two wars hanging in the balance and huge questions about where these conflicts are headed now.

First, in about an hour from now, President Trump will be meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to discuss the gains Ukraine has been making on the battlefield against Russia, and the latest efforts to try to reach a peace deal with that war. And the president will then host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their first face- to-face meeting since the war with Iran began.

Joining me right now is Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Marine Corps veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

It's good to see you again.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: What do you think is going to come of these meetings at the White House today? What do you want to hear out of them?

MOULTON: Well, I want Trump to actually stand up for our allies, like making sure that we do the right thing for Ukraine. He's been trusting Putin for years now. He's been -- and the last time, remember, Zelenskyy came to the White House, it was a total embarrassment for the United States of America when Trump was literally belittling this amazing freedom fighter. And there were so many Americans who were sadly more proud of Zelenskyy than they were of Donald Trump.

Now, with Netanyahu, we've got to bring this Iran war to an end. This war has been a disaster. And when Secretary Rubio himself says that Netanyahu pushed Trump into the war, well, these two better figure out how to bring it to an end.

BOLDUAN: On Iran, the president was asked and talked yesterday about the status of U.S. munitions stockpiles, and reports that it is one of the reasons that he is not escalating the war with Iran further. I want to play what the president said on Air Force One.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we're in very good shape. But for some of the more sophisticated stuff, we'd certainly like to have more. Biden gave a lot of it away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Your reaction to that, and also, what is your understanding of the status of U.S. weapons stockpiles right now?

MOULTON: Well, shocker, the president is lying once again. I've been concerned about depleted stockpiles for months now. On the Armed Services Committee, there is bipartisan concern, although you'll probably only hear the Republicans admit to this behind closed doors. But the fact that the administration is now publicly letting out the fact that there are concerns means that we should be gravely worried about the safety of our troops and our allies, and even just civilians in the Middle East. Because if Trump decides to escalate this again, the next Iranian salvo of missiles and drones could kill a lot of people because we're not prepared to shoot them down.

But this portends even bigger worries because the Middle East is not the only place that we need these advanced munitions, especially the interceptors, to protect our troops and our allies. We need them all across the globe. And they're pulling missiles out of other places, including the Pacific, where we need to deter and prevent a war with China.

And one of the worst outcomes you could possibly imagine from this total failure of a war in Iran is that it distracts our attention and Jinping starts a war over Taiwan, which could literally go into World War III. We can't let that happen. And we are in a much worse place to do so if we don't have the munitions to deter and prevent a conflict like that in the Pacific.

BOLDUAN: You are running for Senate against the current Democratic senator of Massachusetts, Ed Markey. The Democratic Party -- John and Harry were talking about it before we came on together -- the Democratic Party is short on -- is so -- "The New York Times" is reporting that the Democratic Party is so short on cash that leaders at its headquarters have undertaken a new gambit to mask the severity of the problems, "The New York Times" reports, asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterm elections. Do you think the Democratic National Committee is a mess?

MOULTON: Yes, I do. And months ago I called on Ken Martin to resign.

The bottom line is that the leadership of the Democratic Party right now is a mess. And this is not the first time they've tried to hide this mess. Remember, they said -- Ken Martin said that they would release an autopsy report on what went wrong in 2024 so that we could turn it around and start winning in 2026. And then he covered that up. So, we're covering up all kinds of messes. And the bottom line is that the existing leadership, the establishment Democratic Party, is still trying to use the same old playbook that is not translating into wins.

[08:40:05]

And that's why you see a new generation of Democrats standing up across the country, running to unseat this establishment, to get us back on a winning footing, to take the fight to Trump and the MAGA Republicans. If you can't even get your own house in order, you're not going to be effective at fighting Trump. And that's what we need to do right now. This is a five-alarm fire in America. The Democratic Party needs to show up a lot better than it is today.

BOLDUAN: I listened with quite a bit of interest to your conversation with Manu Raju recently. And Ed Markey has the backing of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ayanna Pressley, all progressives. Yet you've made -- you've made the case that you're the real progressive in this race. Why?

MOULTON: Because progressive means progress. It means actually accomplishing things that you set out to do. It doesn't mean just rehashing old ideas from the last 50 years that you've never been able to actually accomplish. And I say that with respect for Senator Markey. You know, he introduced the Green New Deal, I'm a proud co- sponsor, but it has fewer co-sponsors today than it did six years ago when he promised to get it passed.

BOLDUAN: Then why don't you have the backing of Bernie Sanders?

MOULTON: So, if you want to actually make progress, then you have to get things done. And I've released an affordability agenda that I would say is the most progressive in the United States Congress today because it plants the flag in the ground and says that housing, health care and education should be human rights. And then it lays out a very reasonable way to get there by doing things like banning private equity from buying up homes, from having universal health care, by making sure that we increase investment in vocational education and things that kids want today to succeed in the automated economy.

BOLDUAN: Let me put you --

MOULTON: I think that should be a blueprint for our Project 2029 or 2030. But that's the kind of forward-looking ideas that we need if we want to actually make progress.

BOLDUAN: Do you think Bernie Sanders is throwing his support behind the moderate candidate in this race?

MOULTON: I think Bernie Sanders is throwing his support behind his old friend. I mean, they're both in their 80s, and that's what the establishment in Washington does. I mean, they just released an ad with all these endorsers. The combined age of everyone in that ad is older than the United States of America. That's not the future of the Democratic Party.

The future is new leaders emerging across the country, including many that I've recruited to the Congress through Serve America, where we've flipped 24 seats from red to blue. That's investing in the future.

And I think when you see the establishment Democratic Party failing, as you just described, you know, with the DNC, a total mess that they're trying to cover up, people know that it's time for change. And that's what this election in Massachusetts is all about. It's a referendum on the status quo versus change. It's a referendum on a new generation of leadership that we desperately need in the party. It's a -- it's a referendum on taking the fight to Trump and the MAGA Republicans, as opposed to sitting comfortably, you know, in Washington with the Democratic establishment as it exists today.

BOLDUAN: Quite a fight for this Democratic primary coming up in a couple months.

It's good to see you. Thank you so much for coming in, Congressman Seth Moulton.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Kate.

Tomorrow we will hear new testimony in the triple murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the woman accused of killing her three children. Her ex-husband expected back on the stand. Jurors so far have heard heart- wrenching testimony from him detailing Clancy's deteriorating mental health and how she's had intrusive thoughts about harming her children.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PATRICK CLANCY, EX-HUSBAND OF LINDSAY CLANCY: She described thoughts of hurting the kids or having -- or them having some sort of ailment. So, like she was very worried that Cora had -- whatever she had a stomach ache, she became overly worried that she was, you know, like had like a liver problem or something much more dramatic than it was.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. But going back to that first part, she said she had thoughts of harming the kids. Is that correct?

CLANCY: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: He also said that the day that she murdered the children, that indeed it was -- it seemed to be one of her best days according to him.

CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson joining us now.

After listening to this testimony, which was really -- it was heart -- it was heart-wrenching, but it was also hard to listen to because you could sort of see, hindsight is 20/20, leading up to what actually ended up happening, these three babies are gone.

Give me some sense of what you think the ex-husband testimony did in her case, because he's -- both testifying, I think, for both the prosecution and the defense, because he has been supportive of his ex- wife and all that she's been through mentally.

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Sara, good morning to you.

Could not even imagine the position he was in. And really, to your question, going through the fact that they had been on vacation. [08:45:05]

You know, this was a family. Talking about his children. The five- year-old loving her princesses. The three-year-old loving her trucks. The eight-year-old (ph) being a happy baby. And now here we are. And so, I think, Sara, that his testimony cuts both ways. And when you say he's testifying for the prosecution and the defense, remember that the defense will cross-examine to get out their narrative.

You know, in this particular case, of course, it's not a whodunit, right, it's why it was done. And from the perspective of the prosecution, they're trying to lay out, through him, the issue with respect to, you know, was this just a normal day? You know, she -- there was a snowman that was built in the backyard. He was texting his wife. He works in his basement. And they were going back and forth in the text and, hey, honey, I didn't cook today. You know, can you go out and get some takeout? And can you, by the way, get my medication? And from a prosecution's perspective, Sara, I say that because they're using it to say he lured -- she lured him out of the home so that when he was gone for approximately 55 minutes, she can do what she intended to do. And that's important from a prosecution's perspective because you have to show that intent, that deliberation.

From a defense perspective, though, I think he gives a lot of that, too. Why? Because he lays out the course of treatment. He lays out when she took the specific medication, how she started to change, became depressed, became suicidal, needed treatment, went to a psychiatric institution, came out, was doing better. And so, it really is a tough and close call because he, the ex-husband, lays out both narratives.

SIDNER: Yes.

I want to turn to another case that everyone thought was decided. This case really, really hard to watch. But this case had the attention of the nation. The case of Brian Kohberger, who was convicted after pleading guilty to killing four University of Idaho students in 2022.

Kohberger has now told "The New York Times" from prison that he is innocent and has now filed in court documents that he was, as he puts it, convinced to falsely confess and with false promises. He says there were also threats. He's now trying to take back his guilty plea, to the horror of the families who have had to go through all this and have lost, you know, their loved ones, their children. Does he have a real chance to reverse his own guilty plea?

JACKSON: Yes, Sara, I don't see it. And I'll tell you why. Forgetting about the compelling evidence that exists against him, including the DNA with the knife on the sheath, by the way, that shows an Amazon purchase, forgetting about the white car in the area, he, by the way, has a white car, forgetting about the cell phone triangulation. Let's put the evidence to the side.

When you plead guilty, the judge does what's called an allocution. What is that in English? Sir, are you pleading guilty because you are guilty? Is anybody promise you anything? Are you under any drugs or intoxicants that might impair your judgment? Sir, are you satisfied with your lawyer's representation? Has any -- have any promises been made to you? Have you been coerced or threatened? And if you look at the transcript, all of that would appear to indicate that this was voluntary and knowing, and that's the standard. And now he's saying my lawyers were just terrible and I was made false promises.

And we all know, final point, that the death penalty was taken off the table. That's why he pled guilty, right? He's serving life sentences. He's not being put to death.

And so, I think it's a very tough lift for him to say, oh, never mind, my lawyers were bad and I was fed disinformation. I just don't see it.

SIDNER: The families are, obviously, distraught. But the Kaylee Goncalves family has said they were kind of expecting this because the appeal was supposed to come up potentially in September and now this has come forward.

Joey, thank you so much for walking us through those two really difficult cases.

JACKSON: Of course.

SIDNER: I appreciate it.

JACKSON: Thank you. Thank you, Sara.

SIDNER: Kate.

BOLDUAN: A somewhat scary report coming from the FAA now after they say seats on some Boeing 737 Max jets were installed incorrectly and now require a fix.

And how many people does it take to wrangle a squirrel and stop it from interrupting a ballgame? It turns out quite a few. What is that a dozen or more?

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[08:53:12]

SIDNER: Tomorrow, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expected back in Washington, D.C., for meetings with White House officials and bipartisan lawmakers on artificial intelligence. Altman is expected to preview the company's newest model just one week after two of its test models went rogue, escaped their test environment, and then hacked into the systems of another A.I. firm.

Joining me now is Madison Mills, senior A.I. reporter for "Axios."

I guess the big question here is, what does Sam Altman want? After people saw what happened here, and even they, OpenAI, was deeply concerned about what happened, perhaps scared even --

MADISON MILLS, SENIOR A.I. REPORTER, "AXIOS": Yes.

SIDNER: What does he want? What is he trying to gain?

MILLS: Sam would love for the administration to look away from that and let him release this model anyway. And that's what he's going to be pitching when he is in D.C. today talking to the Trump administration about all of the things this model can do that could be helpful. One of those things is this agentic swarming, where you can put a bunch of different models and agents together to work on a problem. So, he's going to say maybe something like that could be defense to all of this negative cyber impact that we've been talking about. Again, look over here at this potential positive impact instead of the negative and let me release this model.

SIDNER: I just -- I'm a little confounded here because it's clear that that OpenAI was freaked out by what their A.I. did. I do want to ask you about his stance on regulation because I think just a few years ago, three years or so ago, he was asking for serious regulation, concerned about what A.I. was going to be able to do and wanted the government's hand in it to stop it from doing something wild and dangerous.

MILLS: Yes.

SIDNER: And now?

MILLS: Yes, these A.I. CEOs are constantly talking about this idea of somebody's got to do something, and even putting money behind it.

[08:55:03]

We know OpenAI and Anthropic have been lobbying in Washington for some sort of A.I. regulation. A phrase that I hear a lot from these A.I. executives that I interview is, somebody should do something, but they are the ones who could potentially do it. The problem from their perspective is that they don't want to slow down in the A.I. race and, a, have a competitor win, but, b, have China win. And that is a huge debate right now that's really dividing Silicon Valley. We have the likes of NVidia CEO Jensen Huang coming out and saying we shouldn't be banning open weight models, which happen to be very popular coming out of China. A lot of other big tech CEOs have joined King Jensen in that effort. Notably absent is Anthropic, which is the other major A.I. lab. So, that is causing a lot of division right now about what that regulation specifically for open models is going to look like going forward.

SIDNER: I'm curious if you're hearing from the other side of all this, the sort of -- the congress people, the lawmakers who are grappling with this but don't really understand it the same way the Sam Altmans of the world understand it. What are you expecting from them? What are you sort of hearing?

MILLS: Well, this is one of the big challenges, right, even with open weight models. First of all, what even is that?

SIDNER: Right.

MILLS: We're all catching up on what this stuff means. There can be open models that come from U.S. companies, and those companies don't want to get caught up in this regulation just because there's this language that is very anti-open right now. So, those companies having a hard time keeping Washington informed.

SIDNER: It is a lot to wrap your hand around and there's a lot of different levers that are going on at the same time, wanting to innovate but also wanting not to like make the world a horrible place.

MILLS: Absolutely.

SIDNER: We will wait and see what happens in that tug of war.

MILLS: Yes.

SIDNER: Madison Mills, it's great to have you. Thank you.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: So, a story at least two people will be telling for the rest of their lives. The pilot of this small plane was taking his nephew for a ride when he was forced to make an emergency landing on Huntington Beach. You can see it was actually quite smooth. The pilot says that they were in the air just five minutes when he saw the propeller was malfunctioning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE BREMNER, PILOT: I just called mayday, mayday, mayday that we were -- we'd lost our engine and that we were making a forced landing on Huntington Beach in front of the smokestacks. And he acknowledged the mayday. And then we had to get busy landing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Thankfully, no one hurt. One witness on the beach said it was a perfect landing. So, congrats all around on that one.

So, a few FedEx employees got the surprise of a lifetime when one of their customers decided to open his package in the store. Roderick Duncan had a new pet iguana named Titan shipped to him inside a cold container. Reptiles at those low temperatures, they're supposed to go into something of a hibernation state. That's the whole point. And employees at the store, they were apparently curious about that. But when Duncan opened the box, the six foot long lizard was very much not in a hibernation state. Very much awake. And then took off with a mad dash. Like, you're going to see this thing. It's like shot out of a cannon it goes once he gets this. He was able to corral the thing with the help of an employee, get it back in a bag. We're going to reveal this at some point, I promise. And as we wait for it, I will also inform you that it is entirely legal, apparently, and not uncommon -- there we go -- to apparently ship reptiles via FedEx as long as you have prior approval and special packaging. Thank you so much for your attention to this matter.

John Berman -- oh, no, no, I've got more. But wait, there's more. From a leaping lizard to a squirrel stealing bases. A black squirrel

took over the Tigers-Orioles game in Detroit last night. That little guy, or gal, made its way onto the field in the bottom of the sixth, lingering around and -- on -- and making a run for it into the infield. But after the top of the seventh, the entire grounds crew, well, they were just sick of it and they were on a mission to get the squirrel. Even the Orioles outfielder tried to help and flung him in his mitt. Eventually, one of the grounds crew was able to throw a towel on top of him and apparently we're going to make some more puns about baseball and say they struck the critter out.

BERMAN: I just want you to open a box with an iguana inside again.

BOLDUAN: Dude.

BERMAN: And have it there.

BOLDUAN: Dude.

BERMAN: Right.

BOLDUAN: Did you see how fast that thing moved?

BERMAN: Eventually I did. It took a while. It took a while.

All right, this morning, a powerful storm system is moving into the northeast after leaving behind widespread tornado damage in Wisconsin. You can see some of it there. In Chicago, the same system flooded underpasses and left cars stranded in water. Again, now this is coming our way. We're getting all kinds of warnings.

Let's get to senior meteorologist Derek Van Dam for what we can expect to see.

Derek.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, John, it's hard to believe that all of this is connected, but the rainfall and the flooding you saw yesterday in Chicago and the tornadoes that were just north of Chicago. This energy is all heading towards the East Coast. It's riding around this dome of high pressure. We call it a heat dome because it is baking the southwest, but it's also driving our shower and thunderstorm activity around the periphery of the edges.

[09:00:03]

So, the atmosphere is primed and ready to produce a lot of rain.