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Inside Politics
Trump Vows To Sue Robert Murdoch's "A-Off" Over WSJ Report; CBS Cancels Colbert's "Late Show" Days After He Criticized Network For Paying Trump To Settle "60 Minutes" Lawsuit; Ambitious Governors Make Stops In Early 2028 Primary States; Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear In South Carolina Talks About How To Win As A Dem In A Red State; Youngkin Offers 2021 Lessons For Republicans Looking To The Future; Author Explores Portrayal Of Women As Witches In Film, Politics. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired July 18, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: But, somehow, someway, these stories do sometimes break through. Remember, the Signalgate story from the spring. Some of these stories do eventually break through to MAGA Media. And certainly the Epstein case is one of those.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. So fascinating.
Brian, thank you so much for that terrific reporting.
Back here at the table. And Nia, by -- when I was talking about Fox News, what we're not seeing there, when the President said, quit talking about Epstein, they by and large said, OK.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, yes, they did. And now I imagine, we'll see how they talk about it now that The Wall Street Journal is involved in it. And you saw that he sent a similar message to, you know, folks like Charlie Kirk. But there also was a sense among those sort of chattering classes of conservative folks in the manosphere, this idea that they still expected Donald Trump to do something, right?
So, Charlie Kirk was like, oh, I'm stopped talking about it for now. And I expect that the White House will handle it. And that's, I think, what we're seeing now, some of the handling of it.
Oh, listen, I think we should keep in mind that when they go to the grand jury, the grand jury will -- you know, this court saying they want this grand jury testimony to be released. It's unlikely. There is a lot more information that they could release on their own that is a lot more voluminous than what a grand jury would have.
BASH: I do want to go back to the Colbert of it all, and I'll just -- it's a jump ball. Anyone want to take it? Go for it. Because I think that is fascinating.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I think the timing is -- the questions that are being asked are obvious, given the timeline that you guys already laid out. The one thing I would quibble with what Brian said, and it's not on his reporting, but when he said at the end, the people who are involved are never going to say what was actually happening behind the scenes.
The president says it. I mean, honestly, as a reporter covering him, one of the best parts of covering him is he tends to just say everything, including the things you're not supposed to say, including after the deal for the $16 million to wrap up the suit or complaint, whatever he was going for there. He said afterwards that there was a side agreement that the company said did not exist, and the company has not confirmed the details of since.
What that side agreement may mean, there's some talk about financing some kind of PSAs related to conservative causes or the president's causes. Whether or not --
BASH: Or could it be firing Colbert?
MATTINGLY: Whether or not this was involved in it. And it's one of those things where, obviously, taking Glee (ph) this morning, which I assume will sooner rather than later evolve into taking credit for, which will probably illustrate some more about what was actually discussed behind the scenes. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I'm saying this isn't one of those things that's going to stay in a locked box. He will talk about it if he feels like he deserves some credit for it.
BASH: And I'm going to make a not-so-bold prediction. This is probably not the last change we're going to see at CBS as this deal goes through.
Up next, the 2028 shadow primary is well underway this week. A couple of heavyweight governors are hitting the early primary states, hoping to make an early impression. Stay with us.
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[12:37:35]
BASH: Some typical travel for two governors this week in South Carolina. All week, Kentucky's Democratic governor -- Kentucky's Democratic governor. That's right, I said Kentucky is in South Carolina. Andy Beshear, we're talking about last night. He was fundraising in Pawleys Island.
And in Iowa, Virginia's Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, is speaking at a high profile Lincoln dinner. Actually, he did so. That happened last night. South Carolina and Iowa. Whatever could that mean?
Well, listen to Governor Beshear's not-so-subtle hints.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D), KENTUCKY: The Democratic Party definitely has a job to do to re-earn the faith of the American people. We can't be running after every outrage of the day.
I'm traveling more because I'm trying to be a common sense, common ground, get things done type of voice that can pull not just Democrats back together, but hopefully pull Republicans and Independents together, too.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: And we are back at the table. Lauren Fox?
LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm traveling more to show that I'm doing something outside my state, which is clearly looking like the beginnings of a campaign, right?
BASH: Right.
FOX: And I do think it's really interesting because Beshear is sort of this person that a lot of moderate Democrats point to as an example of someone who can win in a red state, who can govern in a red state, who can go out and argue that he's already done the hard work of winning over some voters that perhaps Democrats have lost in the past. Whether or not in a Democratic primary, you can continue to espouse that message and it resonate with Democratic primary voters, I think remains to be seen.
BASH: Yes.
FOX: But, you know, the earlier you get out there, the more hands you shake, the more people you meet. I think that we've seen in the last couple months that that can be effective.
BASH: Not to harsh on your home state, but remember President Steve Bullock? Is that harsh?
MATTINGLY: What's she catching strays for?
FOX: Because I have no idea. I mean --
MATTINGLY: Sitting there somewhere like, why am I into this right now.
BASH: We're about to get to South Carolina. Nia, Nia, don't laugh. We're getting to South Carolina soon.
JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, I mean, look, I was looking at my clock like, what time is it? We're seeing all these Democrats just go out earlier and earlier. I remember being in bed (ph). We were out in September 2018. I thought that that was early. Now it's like a year before that would even happen in terms of the midterms.
And these Democrats are all trying to find the right message. They're all trying to telegraph to both the individual voters that they're meeting in town who maybe don't like the larger Democratic Party anymore, but also to all the cameras and all the reporters who are going down intriguing and asking, are you going to run?
[12:40:10]
That they can do something differently than what happened last year in 2024. That they can speak to the American public differently and that they can hear their concerns and then translate that into a viable message much differently than what happened in 2024. But the question is, is whether they actually can and whether people believe them. And I just think we don't know that yet.
HENDERSON: Yes. And whether or not you actually have to have some charisma to run credibly --
BASH (?): Yes.
HENDERSON: -- for president. You know, I think Beshear is starting to have more charisma. I don't think Glenn Youngkin has any charisma at all. You heard -- I'm just, you know, I mean, this is --
MATTINGLY: Man.
HENDERSON: -- you know, this is --
MATTINGLY: It's a tough block.
HENDERSON: You know, I mean, you know, you heard Barack Obama come out and say, listen, you know, people need to stop looking for messiahs, right? But there has to be some sort of attraction that voters have for a candidate.
BASH: Yes, of course.
HENDERSON: And, you know, you have a lot of, I think, bland centrists who are running. If you look at the people who have run and won for president, they've been had a kind of star quality. And I think that's what these candidates need to work on.
BASH: Let's listen to the aforementioned Glenn Youngkin. Obviously, this is now on the GOP side of the potential 2028 ledger.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
GOV. GLENN YOUNGKIN (R), VIRGINIA: I think we should all have a swelling heart that says America understands that common sense conservative values don't just win, but they work. There is a fundamental right for parents to make decisions with regards to their child's upbringing, their care and their education. And we are going to make sure we stand for it.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: I don't know. I think there's some charisma there.
MATTINGLY: Who roasted him? I mean, look at that.
HENDERSON: Yes.
WRIGHT: Swelling of the heart. MATTINGLY: Yes. Geez. I don't think I can weigh in here.
BASH: Yes, you can.
MATTINGLY: I don't have the fire in my --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) charisma. You can.
MATTINGLY: -- fire in the back. The one thing I think that's interesting about Glenn Youngkin that Nia-Malika obviously does not, is that if you look at kind of the seeds of the kind of coalition that built towards President Trump's victory in 2024, a lot of that was built in 2017 -- sorry, 2021, leading into the Youngkin victory.
BASH: Right.
MATTINGLY: The disparate groups of the conservative coalition that united on very specific issues, cultural issues, really started to come to the forefront during that. We talked about the education schools, which became very up to the forefront. And then the ability to turn out their voters, turn out their voters in a purple state that had been trending heavily towards blue. I don't know that Youngkin is the guy. And I'm going to be a little bit more circumspect than others at this table who are very clear that he is not the guy.
But I do think that people forget what 2021 meant to the party as it was building towards 2024. And watching him and how he plays out over the course of the coming months is price and value to it.
FOX: It's also very possible that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and what they're going to be looking for in the presidential cycle are two very different things, right. Democrats may be --
BASH: I think probable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, yes.
FOX: -- looking for that very charismatic --
BASH: Yes.
FOX: -- person to carry a message. Meanwhile, Republicans may be ready to return to someone who's a little bit more of a traditional Republican. And let's not forget, George Bush ran on, you know, making sure that kids could have access to education and reading, right?
BASH: Yes.
FOX: And that doesn't sound --
BASH: Yes.
FOX: -- like the most compelling message in some ways, but it also resonated. BASH: On that note, there is -- there was a story in The Washington Post talking about, you know, Glenn Youngkin was -- or is in Iowa about JD Vance.
WRIGHT (?): Yes.
BASH: And the vice president of the United States saying that several in the audience at that event were mentioning JD Vance as their first choice for 2028, which is -- that's a teaser. We'll talk about the next time we discuss this which is, you know, probably Monday.
Coming up, the witches of politics? Yes. It's a thing. We're going to explain after a break.
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(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Girls, watch out for those weirdos.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are the weirdos, Mister.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
[12:48:42]
BASH: That was a clip from the 1996 cult classic "The Craft," one of the many movies. My next guest cites as she explores how the portrayal of women as witches in American cinema reflects American society and by extension, American politics.
Payton McCarty-Simas is here now. She is the author of the new book, "That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Films." Payton, thank you so much for being here. You watched over 300 witch films in researching your book. And as you write about these films, their witchy themes, you link them to what was happening at the time in society and also in politics, including who was president. Can you talk about that?
PAYTON MCCARTY-SIMAS, AUTHOR, "THAT VERY WITCH: FEAR, FEMINISM, AND THE AMERICAN WITCH FILMS": Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. But the basic idea of the book is that you can get a real sense of what's going on politically in American culture through the horror movies of the moment. And you can tell how women are doing based on what's going on with witches and horror movies.
You know, culture is downstream of politics. Films are always responding to the politics of their moment in ways big and small. And what I found was that in moments of heightened feminist activism, you see a lot of witches in horror movies. There's a film scholar named Robin Wood who once said that horror movies were our collective nightmares, right?
[12:50:06]
So my idea is that in order to understand what we're afraid of, you can tell that from the movies. So I watched hundreds of hours of films starting in 1958 with the birth of the second wave feminism, all the way through to the present, looking at the political administrations, looking at the state of feminism, looking at the state of movies in general, and then tying them all together through these films and their representations of women.
BASH: Absolutely fascinating. OK, so let's zero in on politics, recent politics. This coming Monday, July 21st, it will be one year since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. Kamala Harris jumped in. The months that followed, we heard a fair amount of comments that sounded like this.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Have you heard her laugh? That is the laugh of a crazy person. That is the laugh of a crazy. It's the laugh of a lunatic. Have you heard it?
You know, they prohibited her. They prohibited her from laughing. I've, you know, I've been waiting for her to laugh because as soon as she laughs, the election's over.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Payton, what has your research revealed about the connection between how women are portrayed in film and how they are treated in politics?
MCCARTY-SIMAS: Yes. So the first real idea that kind of inspired this book was a pattern I noticed in the horror films of the 2010s. There were a ton of witches and horror movies in the 2010s. I argue that that's a response to the Me Too Movement, right? It's a moment of feminist ascendance. You can think about the Women's March.
And at the end of these horror movies with witches in them, the women aren't being burned at the stake. They're laughing. They've succeeded in triumphing over whatever it is that was oppressing them. And they are coming into their power, right?
So, when we think about a woman laughing, what do we think about, right? It's a dangerous thing. It represents unconstrained joy, right? It's a very liberating action. But it's also something that's often associated with witches, right? We can think about the "Wicked Witch of the West."
So this particular nickname, the one that really stuck for Kamala Harris, you know, speaks to that connection and came out in a lot of shirts and mugs that represented her as the, quote unquote, "Wicked Witch of the Left." You see her represented as the Wicked Witch of the West.
BASH: Yes. And Payton, it's not just Kamala Harris --
MCCARTY-SIMAS: Yes.
BASH: -- and it's bipartisan, obviously. MCCARTY-SIMAS: Yes.
BASH: Hillary Clinton, who is also a Democrat.
MCCARTY-SIMAS: Yes.
BASH: Nancy Pelosi. We also saw it with Nikki Haley, Katie Britt, who is a United States senator. The list goes on.
MCCARTY-SIMAS: Yes. I mean, when Margaret Thatcher died, her detractors played "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead." So it's just one of those things where that connection has been going forever. I mean, it's also been something that women in power have used in a positive way to really own that power that they have, right?
So all the way back to the Suffragettes, there's a woman named Matilda Joslyn Gage who created these caricatures of herself as a witch on a bike, right? So there, you know, it's always been a thing. And Hillary, in particular, really was able to eventually lean into that image.
There's, you know, she has an Instagram post on Halloween of herself in a witch's hat. She talked in an op-ed the way she was branded as a witch. So it's a double-edged thing. It can be used as empowerment, but it's also often --
BASH: Yes.
MCCARTY-SIMAS: -- used as an insult against women in politics.
BASH: Thank you so much for sharing all of this. It's really fascinating. Your book is, "That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film." Appreciate it.
MCCARTY-SIMAS: Thank you.
BASH: And before we go today, some of music's biggest names, from Bonnie Raitt to Jack Johnson, are harnessing their star power to reform a live music industry that demands massive amounts of energy and produces tons of waste. In "Change Amplified: Live Music and the Climate Crisis," CNN's very own Bill Weir speaks with the artists who believe that despite the political climate, fans will support their mission.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: I was thinking about your early career. When you put your first albums out, it was Richard Nixon was in power, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
WEIR: And now people wouldn't believe that looking at you. But now you were in the second coming of Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. WEIR: How do you reconcile what is happening in this country and the messages that you have put forward your whole career, how they might be going over these days?
Well, you know, half the country didn't vote for him, you know, at least. So it's a question of believing that there are people that still feel that taking care of the earth and lessening our damage to it and being more responsible and conscious. And the choices we make in the products that we buy don't take more than you need, you know?
I mean, I'm all for entrepreneurship. It's just, you know, unregulated. Greed is ridiculous. That's not what the American dream is about.
[12:55:06]
If we can be of service with our voices and we're responsible, I think it's a beautiful thing that can happen to inspire people to get active and get out in the street. That's what we did in the 70s against the war. That's what the civil rights movement did. All you have to do is just sit in a Jackson Brown concert or Mavis Staples concert and you're just transformed by the end of the night. You want to just get up and do something.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Don't miss that all new episode of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.
Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
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