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Inside Politics
Truth Social Will Sell Wall Street Quicker Access To Posts; Fetterman: If Democrats Become Too Anti-Israel, I'd Leave Party; New Poll: Fetterman Has 19 Percent Approval Among Pennsylvania Dems; Retired Spy Jumps Off The Page And Into Danger In Latest Thriller. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired July 17, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: But here's the key. President Trump owns the platform that he's making news on, and so by selling access to it, he is thereby making money. Remember, he owns 41 percent of the parent company, Trump Media, which owns Truth Social. And the company could use some money, Dana, because it only made $3 million in ad revenue last year.
It lost, get this, $711 million in operating losses. This is not a profitable company, and they're looking for ways to make some money.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I'm no mathematician, but that doesn't sound like a big bill -- a big profit there.
GOLDMAN: You got it.
BASH: A big loss. David, thank you so much.
And there's another really important aspect and dynamic to what Dave was just reporting, and Seung Min, you were telling us in the break, and that is about how we in the press corps get information, meaning how the public gets information --
SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.
BASH: -- and it's not the way it traditionally is through the press office, always.
KIM: Right, right. And again, we'll wait to see the fine print of what the Truth Social company puts out. They say more information is forthcoming. But just as a, you know, kind of -- how the sausage works in terms of how we get, you know, information and press releases from the White House, there really aren't press releases in the traditional way that previous White Houses have done.
So whenever the President's announcing either a smaller action or a major action, such as the tolling earlier -- tolling on the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, what it was on, and it was off, it comes on Truth Social, and then the White House's official accounts post that on X and other social platforms. So that's why we are so, you know, we as reporters are very reliant on that immediate access to the President's platform. And so this is a -- it's new territory for us too.
BASH: Yes. And what it means is that the public will not get the information until these Wall Street firms --
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.
BASH: -- get it first. Even if it's a second or a millisecond --
HENDERSON: Yes.
BASH: -- you press a button and you can make money.
HENDERSON: Yes, yes. I mean, it sort of gets to the President's priorities, right? It's not the average American. It's Wall Street. It's about making money. We already know he's -- he and his family made billions off of cryptocurrency. It's disgusting, it's corrupt.
And, you know, you obviously have Democrats who are running on this idea of this is the most corrupt President in the history of the United States. And this is, I think, Exhibit A of some of this corruption --
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Or Z. I mean, it's like --
HENDERSON: Yes, yes.
CHALIAN: -- yes, another data point. I just think this is the definition of self-dealing.
HENDERSON: Yes.
CHALIAN: Right? I mean, this is what self-dealing is.
HENDERSON: Yes.
CHALIAN: Like, you're the executive branch leader, you're the President of the United States, you have news to make, and now you're going to make money off of revealing that news.
HENDERSON: Yes, it's stunning. Yes.
BASH: OK. Yes. You just said it very well.
Coming up, Senator John Fetterman is warning he could leave his party. What is his red line? That's next.
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[12:37:35]
BASH: Democratic Senator John Fetterman is putting his own party on notice when it comes to its approach toward Israel. For the second day in a row, the Pennsylvania lawmaker warned he could leave the Democratic Party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D), PENNSYLVANIA: I've always expressed my dismay the way the Democratic Party continues to turn their back on Israel. So I've said that publicly, like that's my red line. If Democratic Party becomes official anti-Israel, then that's when I would force me out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Fetterman's comments come on the heels of more than 100 House Democrats voting to block military aid to Israel this week. This is a huge jump in numbers. It was about 37 just two years ago on the same kind of vote, which tells you where the Democratic Party is and where the Democratic base is pushing its members to be or face primaries.
My panel is back now. David?
CHALIAN: Yes, I mean, and that vote, which was stunning to see, because not just the numbers that, you know, more, a greater share of the Democratic caucus was voting to stop this aid to Israel than not, but the makeup of who was there.
BASH: Yes. I think -- we have a -- no, go ahead. We have a graphic.
CHALIAN: But like Nancy Pelosi --
BASH: Yes.
CHALIAN: -- just as an example, and I know --
HENDERSON: Yes.
CHALIAN: -- she gave a statement -- oh, there you see -- to explain that this was sort of a wake-up call in how she -- but, I mean, you would think, anybody that has observed this, that Nancy Pelosi is as staunchly pro-Israel and supportive of U.S. support of Israel as John Fetterman in her career.
And like, you see this and it just tells you, the party has so dramatically moved, not just the elected officials, but as you noted, the voting members of the party are in a different place.
BASH: Yes, and I think that this -- there's so many complications, and this is very complex, is the better way to say it. And Nancy Pelosi is somebody who does not disagree with the notion of Israel. She disagrees vehemently and has, I think it's fair to say, disdain for the current government of Israel.
So when you say a message is being sent, that is a distinction that these lawmakers are trying to make. Somebody like Fetterman says, I don't see a distinction if you're going to not support the country of Israel, regardless of who the government is.
[12:40:07]
HENDERSON: Yes, but, you know, one of the interesting things that's happening here, not only do you see this movement on the Democratic side, you're starting to see some of this movement on the Republican side too. If you've listened to Vice President JD Vance over the last couple of weeks, he is increasingly starting to get critical of Israel as well and facing some blowback between more sort of mainline centrist Republicans who are staunchly pro-Israel.
So in listening to Fetterman say, you know, this might be a red line, I can leave the party. Where does he go? Does he become an Independent? Does he -- you know, maybe -- does he become a Republican? Who knows? But listen, this obviously -- we saw some of this in the 2024 election. It had a huge impact on the Democratic side, particularly in states like Michigan.
We're seeing some of these politics play out in these primary races with Democrats, but it is something that's gripping both of the parties and we'll just have to see where this goes.
BASH: How worried are Democrats about losing Fetterman?
KIM: So Fetterman, first of all, if and when he decides to run for a second term in office, he had already lost a lot of the party support in Pennsylvania. He has taken a lot of, you know --
BASH: Can we just put up a poll --
KIM: Yes, yes.
BASH: -- and I want you to keep talking about it?
KIM: He has.
BASH: Because this speaks to what you're talking about. This is Quinnipiac.
KIM: He bucked the party so often this year.
BASH: 19 percent of Democratic support, Republican support is huge, 77 percent.
KIM: Right. So if you're Fetterman or his advisers, you look at those numbers and think maybe my future is not in the Democratic Party because obviously, again, should he run for a second term, he would have to go through a primary as a Democrat. And I believe a litany of Democrats would be eager to take him on because they have more of an alliance with their party.
BASH: He is somebody who would say -- and we've heard this over the years on the GOP side during the Trump years, that if I leave the Democratic Party, it's not me leaving the party, it's the party leaving me. And the party is shifting. I'm staying exactly in the same place.
And he also has said that he believes that a lot of this anti-Israel, whether it's Israeli government or just Israel in general, rhetoric, and now that has turned into votes, is just based on a pressure from the far left in their party. And then that pressure is coming from a lot of information, misinformation that they're getting on their phones, that they're learning in elite universities, on and on and on.
Again, this is not -- this is me explaining what Fetterman says over and over again, and he thinks it's just based on antisemitism and a lot of -- not in total --
HENDERSON: Right.
BASH: -- but in a lot of instances.
CHALIAN: But we should also just note the fascinating politics of him because he was once associated with that wing of the party.
HENDERSON: Yes.
CHALIAN: I mean, the Bernie Sanders wing of the party --
BASH: Right.
CHALIAN: -- is where much of this is being generated from as it comes to Israel. That used to be where Fetterman was hanging out, or what his political identity was.
BASH: Which is why he feels he's politically homeless.
CHALIAN: Right. So, I mean -- right. Like, I think it's like where he started this out. But I will just say, I think one of the best beats in politics right now is to be on this Fetterman party-switching beat and watch for this because this could have huge consequences when you're dealing with a battle for Senate control that I still think is Republican advantage in the cycle, but that is up for grabs. You know, the Senate bath with a party switch becomes a whole fascinating factor in all of this.
BASH: Yes. I mean, it really is. It's absolutely fascinating.
Thank you all. Don't go anywhere, though, because step aside, James Bond. Watch your back, James Born.
Up next on the Inside Politics, Summer Book Club, we have the author of the New York Times bestselling Gabriel Allon spy series. And Allon is back for a thriller in his latest book. It's called "Ransom." Stay with us.
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[12:48:14]
BASH: Three decades ago, a CNN journalist spent early mornings before work sketching out a soon-to-be best-selling spy thriller set in World War II. That journalist was my then boss, Daniel Silva, and that spy thriller was just the first of 29 books and counting. Most of them center around his protagonist, Gabriel Allon, who is a spy who would much rather be restoring priceless artwork.
Allon stars once again in Daniel Silva's new book, "Ransom." and Daniel joins me now. Hi, nice to see you. DANIEL SILVA, AUTHOR, "RANSOM": Nice to see you.
BASH: I've got it here. I'm so excited to talk to you. Go ahead.
SILVA: I always hate to correct the anchor, but I think that you were my boss.
BASH: Never, never. I was a little pisher, as my parents would say.
OK, so you include a lot of storylines in these books. They're ripped from the headlines. This book is no different. It starts with a kidnapping and ransom plot, but shifts focus to a fictionalized Russia, increasingly more -- their relationship is much more hostile with Western Europe. How do you pick which headlines to incorporate? Because you can pick a lot of them these days.
SILVA: Well, I was just -- this book is truly inspired by a single event. If you remember last autumn, the -- there was a big, big drone incursion at Copenhagen Airport, and it shut down Copenhagen Airport for several hours. It disrupted travel across the continent. There were other drone swarms at other Danish airports, at Danish airbases.
And just a few days later, there was an emergency summit in Copenhagen dealing with Russia. And the Danish government and Danish intelligence service was so afraid that the Russians might try to attack that summit, that they grabbed every piece of -- every anti-drone kit, every signal jammer they could lay their hands on to try to secure that airspace.
[12:50:23]
They closed Denmark's airspace. And so that is the single incident that inspired the plot of this new book.
BASH: That's the inspiration. But part of the message here, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, is sounding the alarm about how drones are changing, not just war, but espionage. And I just want to say, one of the craziest scenes involves a drone the size of a mosquito --
SILVA: Right.
BASH: -- being used as an assassin. Could something like that actually happen?
SILVA: Yes, they -- we have the capability now. And the Russians, of course, have extremely deadly toxins. So it's only a matter of time before you could have a moth-sized little drone, you know, deliver a fatal dose of some kind of nerve agent. You know, Ukrainians have obviously used drones to great effect, you know, kept their country in the war.
The Iranians are arguably using drones to great effect as well. This Pandora's box is now fully open. It's never going to close again. We're going to have -- you know, drones are going to be a feature of warfare. And in the case of Russia, clandestine warfare right now. What I would, you know, point out in the book is that, yes, they are at, you know, war of conquest in Ukraine right now. But they are waging a clandestine war of sabotage and subversion against all of the countries in Western Europe right now.
It's being run by a secret unit of the GRU, Unit 29155. On a daily basis, they are already at war with Europe. And Europe has finally come to that realization.
BASH: Some of Gabriel Allon's biography details really match up with some details that I'm familiar with. That is, I don't know, twins.
SILVA: Yes.
BASH: You have twins.
SILVA: Yes.
BASH: The personality and some of the traits of his wife remind me a lot of my friend and your wife and our colleague, Jamie Gangel.
SILVA: Yes.
BASH: I'm sure this happens with every author, but as somebody who knows you and knows your family, how much do you intentionally take the sort of traits of people close to you and put it into your books?
SILVA: You know, I don't necessarily think it's intentional. A lot of it happens, I think, subconsciously. And but, look, I'm -- one of the things that makes the Gabriel Allon character work is that he's very self-deprecating. And yes, he's a superhero, but when he's at home, he's just a normal person.
And like me, he's sometimes a figure of ridicule at home. I get a lot of eye-rolling and slow head shakes and little things that Jamie does to me all the time. I have applied to Gabriel's wife, Chiara. And my children sort of match up with their children, in a way.
BASH: Yes. It's -- I will say, I don't think you're alone, no pun intended. I think that this is a lot of dads out there. Before I let you go, I did mention that your first novel was written while you were a senior producer, executive producer here at CNN. I was among your employees.
And I just remember the day that you came in and were like, so I've got this manuscript and I think it's going to sell. And then eventually you were like, peace out. I'm going to go be a novelist. And thank goodness for the world that you did. What was that like? Can you describe getting up early in the morning?
And I know -- I think your twins were newborns and --
SILVA: Yes.
BASH: -- writing before coming in here. SILVA: You know what? It's -- it was a lifelong ambition. I think that, you know, in many respects I became a journalist so that I could become a novelist. All of my literary heroes were journalists first. And I just reached an age and a place in life where it was time to give it a shot.
And I told Jamie what I wanted to do and how I was going to go about doing it. And I did get up early. I would get up, you know, 4:30, 5:00 in the morning right until my first conference call of the day. Back then it was the old CrossFire 9 o'clock conference call.
And, you know, I wish that I had been able to do both to be honest with you. But at a certain point, I just had to make the leap and write full time.
[12:55:05]
BASH: Yes. Well, it did produce, you know, about 29 --
SILVA: 29.
BASH: -- 29 fantastic novels, including the latest, I'm putting it up here, "Ransom." And what a pleasure to have you here. You are a national treasure and I'm lucky to have you and Jamie as friends.
SILVA: Thank you so much. Thank you.
BASH: Thanks for being here.
SILVA: Thank you.
BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics. Don't miss State of the Union on Sunday. Jake's guests include the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. That's at 9:00 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN.
CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
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